Trapped in a futuristic dystopia run by crazed B-grade reality television stars, Brendan, Nathan and Todd attempt to take their mind off things by watching the remarkably vengeance-free Vengeance of Varos.
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Vengeance of Varos was originally released very early on: in 2001 in the UK, in 2002 in Australia, and in 2003 in the US. Mercifully, a special edition of the story was released in 2012. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
Todd draws a deft comparison between this story and Gogglebox, a television programme on Channel 4 in which we get to watch various households watching various other television programmes. There’s an Australian version as well.
In Australia, this season of 45-minute episodes was broadcast in a 25-minute timeslot, which led to some horrifically bad cliffhangers. The worst of these will be horribly evident next week.
Nigel Kneale, creator of Quatermass and conservative grandpa angry about the way the nurses keep moving his pills, was the creator of The Year of the Sex Olympics, which depicts a future where the elites pacify the population with a steady diet of violence, pornography and reality television.
Owen Teale plays Maldak in this story, a guard with a truly regrettable 80s hairstyle. He will go on to appear in the Torchwood episode Countrycide, and in a popular television programme called Game of Thrones, which Nathan has never even heard of.
Despite his performance in this story, Jason Connery will go on to have a distinguished acting career. He stars in Robin of Sherwood Season 3 as fake replacement Robin Hood after the original Robin leaves the show/is shot to death by arrows. He also plays Ian Fleming in Spymaker: The Secret Life of Ian Fleming (1990).
This week, Brendan, Nathan and Todd are back to review the Cybermen’s 1985 compilation album Attack of the Cybermen, in which the band revisit all their classic hits from the 1960s, including Another Planet (1966), Clever Clever Clever (1967), You Belong to Us (1967), Initiate Plan Three (1968) and perennial fan favourite It Has Been Agreed (1968). Not all of us appreciate the nostalgia.
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Attack of the Cybermen was released on DVD in 2009. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
Doctor Who: The Complete History is a series of beautifully produced hardback books chronicling the entire history of the programme, from its first beginnings to the present day.
Every week, we remind you about Brendan’s brilliant video series Doctor Who in Ten Seconds, in which he summarises no less than 51 Doctor Who stories in no more than 10 seconds each. If you haven’t checked it out yet, you really should. And make sure you subscribe to his YouTube channel, so that you are informed immediately when the Season 8 episode becomes available.
This week’s episode is mostly a series of increasingly angry rants. But The Twin Dilemma may just be the worst story in fifty years of Doctor Who.
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The Twin Dilemma was originally released on DVD in 2009/2010. It is the only Doctor Who DVD never to sell a single copy. Let’s see if we can keep that record intact. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
Less than a year ago, the code was finally cracked. You’ll be surprised to find out what Romulus and Remus were actually saying to each other during their game of equations.
This is Nathan. Nathan hasn’t seen The Shining (1980). Nathan is on a Doctor Who podcast. Nathan basically only has time to watch Doctor Who these days. Don’t be like Nathan.
Richard alludes to two novels by John Wyndham: Chocky, which involves a boy in psychic communication with a mysterious alien force, and The Midwich Cuckoos, which features an entire village of creepy alien twins.
Picks of the week
Brendan
In a totally free Big Finish audio, Fifth Doctor companions Peri and Erimem (don’t ask) encounter Seventh Doctor companions Ace and Hex (no idea). It’s The Veiled Leopard, written by Iain McLaughlin and Claire Bartlett, and directed by friend-of-the-podcast Gary Russell. Download it for free here.
Nathan
Nathan has just rewritten and relaunched an improved version of his website The Randomiser. The Randomiser allows you to choose a Doctor Who story completely at random, or to avoid particular Doctors, long stories, or stories with missing episodes. He is yet to implement a feature allowing you to avoid stories that are simply tiresome.
Todd
Todd picks two stories. A prequel to Warriors of the Deep called Doctor Who and the Silurians (which we discuss here), and a sequel called Bloodtide, a Big Finish audio in which Colin’s Doctor and Evelyn meet Charles Darwin and some Silurians on the Galápagos Islands.
Richard
Richard chooses no less than four stories. The first one is Cold Fusion. This is a recently-released Big Finish adaptation of a Virgin New Adventures novel by Lance Parkin, in which the Doctor, Tegan, Nyssa and Adric meet the Doctor, Roz and Chris on “an occupied ice planet” of some kind. Hoth, possibly. And the Doctor’s wife is there as well. No, not that one.
While you’re waiting for the latest episode of Doctor Who in Ten Seconds, why not listen to Brendan’s intemperate rant about the Big Finish story Nekromanteia, starring Peter Davison as the Doctor, with companions Peri and Erimem?
For some people, small, beautiful events are what life is all about!
Another era reaches its end, and somewhere, someone’s favourite television show is cancelled again. Perhaps Peter Davison’s years on the programme weren’t its heyday, but all four of us have found a new appreciation of his portrayal of the Doctor. Thanks, Peter. Time to say goodbye.
Notes and links
We have been unable to substantiate Brendan’s claim about Janet’s knickerlessness in Frontios Part 1, but brave souls wishing to assist us might try starting at timecode 23:10.
For once, Richard is excited about his choices in Snog–Marry–Avoid. But will he pick Chancellor Flavia, played by Dinah Sheridan in the 1953 film Genevieve? Or will it be Chancellor Thalia, played by Elspet Gray, who was the mother in Season 2 of Catweazle? Or finally Joe Orton’s beloved Beryl Reid?
We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll blight the rest of your career claiming that your performance is bland and beige despite your undoubted proficiency as an actor.
Doctor Who in 10 Seconds
Fans of the podcast like to think that Brendan is a sober and responsible ringmaster, bringing much-needed gravity to every episode of Flight Through Entirety. But the truth is that he’s both crazy and remarkably attractive.
For direct visual evidence of this, check out his critically-acclaimed YouTube series, Doctor Who in Ten Seconds, in which he summarises the first seven seasons of Doctor Who, spending no more than ten seconds on each story. Check out the playlist on YouTube.
To celebrate 2017’s impending dumpster fire, all four members of the Flight Through Entirety crew take an ill-advised trip to the blowholes of Androzani Minor. Things don’t go well. For anyone.
Spoiler warnings
Spoiler warning for Rogue One about 5 minutes into this episode. Spoiler warning for Passengers: it makes Robert Holmes look like a militant feminist.
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The Caves on Androzani was originally released on DVD in 2001/2002. The Special Edition, with extra gunfire and leg pustules, was released on its own in the US in 2012 (Amazon US). In the UK, it was released in 2010 as part of the Revisitations 1 box set, along with The Talons of Weng-Chiang and Grace: 1999 (Amazon UK).
Notes and links
Christopher Gable, who plays the once-comely Sharaz Jek, starred in The Boy Friend (1971), along with Twiggy, and Doctor Who’s very own King Priam, Max Adrian. Here’s some terrifying footage of Gable and Twiggy singing You Are My Lucky Star and A Room in Bloomsbury.
Graeme Harper claims that he wanted Alan Lake and Diana Dors to play Morgus and Timmin: you can learn more about their crazy swinging antics in our Underworld episode — Episode 54: Sophisticated Psychological Realism.
Fans of bearded Doctor Who villains in other roles will enjoy Scorby as Captain Peacock in the new 2016 episode of Are You Being Served?, as well as Stotz as a sympathetic Romulan commander in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode The Chase, which, despite starring Linda Thorson as a Romulan, was not as good as the Doctor Who story of the same name.
It seems that Time Out did not enjoy Matthew Waterhouse’s definitive Hamlet, according to this excerpt from their review.
In this critically-acclaimed YouTube series, FTE’s very own Brendan Jones deftly summarises the first seven seasons of Doctor Who, spending no more than ten seconds on each story. To see this feat unfolding in real time, check out the playlist on YouTube!
Bondfinger
The Bondfinger team are yet to get together for our farewell Rodgecast, a commentary on 1985’s A View to a Kill. With a bit of luck, we should be releasing it next weekend.
As 2016 draws to a close and as major festivals approach for several of the world’s great religions, we’re taking refuge in the crude religious analogies that abound on the planet Sarn. And the Master and Peri are here! It’s Planet of Fire.
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Planet of Fire was released on DVD in 2010. It’s the usual thing: in the US, you could buy it on its own (Amazon US), but in the UK, the hapless punters were forced to buy it as part of a box set called Kamelion Tales, which also contained the massively forgettable Season 20 finale The King’s Demons (Amazon UK).
Notes and links
Peter Wyngarde was once wildly famous, and he made a point of appearing regularly in Richard and Brendan’s favourite television programmes, including a crazily popular episode of The Avengers called A Touch of Brimstone, as well as The Champions and Department S. His breakout starring role was in a series spun off from Department S: Jason King, in which Wyngarde played the eponymous groovy womanising detective whose look is clearly the inspiration for Austin Powers.
Barbara Shelley, here playing Sorasta, the only woman on Sarn, also appeared in two episodes of The Avengers. She played Venus Browne in the first colour episode From Venus with Love. She had already appeared in a Season 1 episode called Dragonsfield.
As usual, Big Finish has filled in a much-needed gap in Doctor Who by casting the fabulous Claudia Christian as Peri’s mother in Joe Lister’s audio play The Reaping, starring Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant. You can follow Claudia on Twitter at @ClaudiaLives.
Fans of Steven Moffat’s favourite tropes will enjoy his first ever television series Press Gang. We love it, despite Dexter Fletcher’s terrible, terrible accent. If you haven’t seen it, you really should. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll ignore your distinguished career in television, ridicule your religious beliefs, and generally treat you like some kind of idiot.
Doctor Who in 10 Seconds
To distract yourself from the impending annual holiday horrors of gift-giving and being surrounded by your family and loved ones, why not escape into the fun fantasy world of Doctor Who in Ten Seconds?
FTE’s very own Brendan Jones deftly summarises the first seven seasons of Doctor Who, spending no more than ten seconds on each story. To see this feat unfolding in real time, check out the playlist on YouTube!
Bondfinger
Bondfinger has wrapped for the year, but the prevailing fan theory is that we just can’t bear to say goodbye to Sir Roger Moore. We’ll be back early in the new year for our farewell Rodgecast, a commentary on 1985’s A View to a Kill.
After the whimsy and quality of last week’s story, 1980s Doctor Who is back on form with a grim 90-minute slog, bristling with guns and clunky macho dialogue. And a bigger body count than the last three seasons combined! Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Resurrection of the Daleks.
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Resurrection of the Daleks has been released on DVD many times, for some reason. The Special Edition DVD was first released in the Revisitations 2 box set in 2011 (Amazon UK), which at least includes a new edition of Carnival of Monsters. As always, it was also released on its own in the US. (Amazon US)
And if this story hasn’t slaked your thirst for ultraviolence in London (and Newcastle), you should watch the 1971 Michael Hodges masterpiece, Get Carter, which stars Michael Caine and largely deleted Avengers alumnus Ian Hendry.
And if even that’s not enough for you, The Long Good Friday (1980), launched the career of the late Bob Hoskins and featured the delightful and somewhat terrifying Helen Mirren. Like Resurrection of the Daleks, it heavily features the London Docklands and people shooting each other with guns.
And now it’s time for Flight Through Entirety Entertainment Tonight: Parker Posey will be playing Dr Smith in the new Netflix remake of Lost in Space. Meanwhile, Michelle Yeoh, who pillioned with Pierce Brosnan in the 1997 Bond classic Tomorrow Never Dies, has reportedly signed on to play the captain of the upcoming new Star Trek seriesStar Trek Discovery. Nathan’s partner Calvin continues to deny that she’s his long-lost cousin from Ipoh. But none of us are convinced by that.
And in Separated at Birth?, we encourage you to consider how uncannily similar Eric Saward looks to Baron Silas Greenback from our childhood favourite Danger Mouse. (No, not the 2015 reboot. Or the music producer.)
Most of our listeners are longing for those other guys to shut the hell up, so that they can hear what Brendan has to say. And who can blame them?
Fans of the delightful Brendan can actually see him in person in his video series Doctor Who in Ten Seconds, in which he takes a leisurely 10 seconds to summarise individual stories of Doctor Who. Think how much time you’ll save watching the show by checking out the playlist on YouTube instead!
Bondfinger
Well, we’ve been overcome by a seasonal inability to be arsed enough to watch A View to a Kill, so our Rodg-a-thon will reach its final conclusion in the New Year, possibly under a Trump presidency.
Patron of the podcast, Christopher Hamilton Bidmead, returns for a victory lap in what might be the best story of Pete’s final season. Raid at the ready, chums, it’s time to defend the last of humanity against an onslaught of fibreglass woodlice, in Frontios.
In this story, Jeff Rawle plays Plantagenet, the colony’s young and inexperienced leader. Rawle is mostly famous for his role as George in the terrifically clever Channel 4 comedy Drop the Dead Donkey. He would go on to play the Mona Lisa’s gay sidekick in a Sarah Jane Adventures story called Mona Lisa’s Revenge.
Before author and former script editor Christopher Hamilton Bidmead became the patron of Flight Through Entirety, we may have had a somewhat fractious relationship. Here’s his tweet objecting to our discussion of Castrovalva, and here’s his tweet allowing us to quote his previous tweet on our website.
Fans of things that prove the non-existence of a merciful and beneficent God will enjoy The Human Centipede, which is not a million miles away from CHB’s original vision of the Tractators’ unconvincing excavation devices. Fans of things slightly less gruesome might enjoy South Park’s take on that film, HUMANCENTiPAD. Best not to Google either of them.
Ludwig Wittgenstein’s only full-length philosophical work was called Tractatus. Coincidence? We think not.
And now, insects. (Oh, and arachnids.) In the 1974 film Phase IV, colonies of ants develop intelligence and start to attack the human race. And these days, who can blame them? You might also enjoy Joan Collins being attacked by papier mâché ants in Empire of the Ants (1977), and spiders attacking William Shatner, probably, in Kingdom of the Spiders (1977).
Big Finish have recorded an improbably long series of Doctor Who audios set between Planet of Fire and The Caves of Androzani, starring Peter Davison as the Doctor and Nicola Bryant as Peri. These include Red Dawn and The Church and the Crown.
These days, it takes Flight Through Entirety more than 45 minutes to discuss a Doctor Who story. Fans with better things to do with their time will enjoy Brendan’s ten-second summaries of Doctor Who’s earliest stories in Doctor Who in 10 Seconds. So far, he has managed to summarise the first seven seasons of Doctor Who, starring William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton and the first of five seasons of Jon Pertwee. To watch the show, check out the playlist on YouTube.
Bondfinger
Grace Jones has stolen all of our microphones and knocked us unconscious, and so we’ve actually been unable to finish our flight through the entirety of the Roger Moore canon in time for Christmas. We’ll be back in the new year for A View to a Kill.
We’re broadcasting live this week from Little Hodcombe, where there’s an ongoing battle between Eric Pringle and some long-time Doctor Who podcasters desperately trying to find anything at all to say about this story. It’s Roundheads versus Cavaliers, and somehow the Doctor finds himself caught in the middle. Welcome to The Awakening.
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The Awakening was released on DVD in 2011. In the US, it was released on its own, as usual (Amazon US), but in the UK, it was released as part of a completely inexplicable box set called Earth Story, which inadvisedly bundled this story along with the really rather wonderful The Gunfighters. (Amazon UK).
Notes and links
The ITV series Sapphire and Steel was essentially about weird anachronisms creating hugely upsetting time things. The Awakening owes a lot to this, but it’s vastly less slow-moving and intolerable. Watch it, or maybe don’t watch it.
Brendan’s back from Fiji, and he’s wearing a lovely sulu, but he’s still yet to find time in his exhausting schedule to acquire a stick-on BBC beard and record a new Master-centric episode of Doctor Who in 10 Seconds. While you’re waiting for that, feel free to enjoy the previous seven episodes, in which Brendan summarises the first seven seasons of Doctor Who. Check out the playlist on YouTube. You won’t regret it.
Bondfinger
We’ve all been totally rogered by the nightmare before Christmas, which has prevented us from recording our Bondfinger commentary episode on A View to a Kill, the final entry in Bondfinger’s flight through every Rodgefilm in the James Bond œuvre. We’ll be back on board early in the new year.
This week, Brendan, Nathan and Richard build a giant Seabase underwater. It’s going to be the best, most beautiful Seabase ever. And we’ll get the Silurians to pay for it!
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Warriors of the Deep was released on DVD in 2008. In the US, it was released on its own (Amazon US), but in the UK, it was released along with Doctor Who and the Silurians and The Sea-Devils in the surprisingly good Beneath the Surface box set. (Amazon UK).
Notes and links
This story’s writer, Johnny Byrne, wrote more episodes of the first season of Space: 1999 than anyone else ever. And, my God, can’t you tell from this story?
Cornell, Day and Topping theorise that this story’s continuity problems could be solved by positing a third encounter between Pertwee and the Silurians in this entry in their The Discontinuity Guide.
Gary Russell desperately attempts to wallpaper over these horrific continuity problems, with some success, in his Virgin Missing Adventure, The Scales of Injustice. It was republished as part of The Monster Collection in 2014. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (Amazon AU)
Brendan has spent the last few weeks in Fiji, basically living on drinks with umbrellas in them and not doing any work. So there are no new episodes of Doctor Who in 10 seconds right now. But that won’t prevent you from enjoying the previous 7 episodes, in which Brendan summarises the first 7 seasons of Doctor Who. Check out the playlist on YouTube.
Bondfinger
The Rodgeathon is reaching its ultimate conclusion: in a couple of weeks, we’ll be recording our final Rodgumentary, on the 1985 classic A View to a Kill.
This week, we’re taking a break from our relentless flight through the entirety of Doctor Who to go back and visit an old favourite. Fire up your VHS player and get ready to listen to all four of us slurring drunkenly throughout the incredible six-episode run of that 1964 Terry Nation classic The Keys of Marinus.
The Flight Through Entirety Troughton Commentary Poll
Thank you to everyone who voted in the Flight Through Entirety Troughton commentary poll, in which our listeners were asked to choose between The Power of the Daleks, The Enemy of the World, The Web of Fear and The Krotons. So who won? Listen to this episode to find out. (The announcement is finally made some time into the third hour of this episode. So you’ll probably never hear it.)
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The Keys of Marinus was released on DVD in 2010. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
If you’re keen to hear a sober assessment of the literary qualities of The Keys of Marinus and its celebrated indebtedness to German expressionism, then you will undoubtedly enjoy the third ever episode of Flight Through Entirety, from way back in 2014: Episode 2: So Maudlin.
We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll all vote for the only six-part story in your podcast fan poll and force you to talk relentless nonsense about a largely forgotten 1960s Doctor Who story for more than two and a half hours.
Doctor Who in 10 Seconds
Doctor Who in 10 Seconds is Brendan’s brilliant video projet, in which he summarises every Doctor Who story in no more than ten seconds. You can see him take on the Keys of Marinus in his first ever episode. To see the rest of the series, which currently covers the first seven seasons of Doctor Who, just check out the playlist on YouTube.
Bondfinger
Our next James Bond commentary will be released next weekend, and in it we’re suprisingly positive about Connery’s weird return to the series in the ill-advised 1983 Thunderball remake Never Say Never Again.
Our back catalogue covers all of the previous James Bond films, from For Your Eyes Only to Dr. No. You can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.
We’ve now been recording Flight Through Entirety for exactly twenty years, and to celebrate this milestone, all four of us are back for our second ever commentary podcast. So grab your iPhone, fire up your Blu-ray player and settle down to a relaxing pineapple daquiri. It’s The Five Doctors!
The Flight Through Entirety Troughton Commentary Poll
In two weeks’ time, we’ll be releasing our increasingly drunken commentary podcast on The Keys of Marinus. Until then, why not vote in our latest poll: which Troughton story should be the subject of our next commentary podcast?
Voting in the FTE Troughton commentary poll has now closed. In this poll, our listeners made a choice between The Power of the Daleks, The Enemy of the World, The Web of Fear and The Krotons. The result will be announced at the very end of Episode 91 of Flight Through Entirety.
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The Five Doctors: Special Edition was the first Doctor Who DVD released, even before the main line got underway. The 25th Anniversary edition was released (obviously) in 2008. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Weird First-Doctor substitute Richard Hurndall played old man slave murder victim Neebrox in the ridiculously camp 1981 Blakes 7 episode Assassin, which also features a villain who changes into a special villain outfit when there’s some extra villainy to be done.
Brendan is currently working undercover in an undisclosed Pacific location, which probably means that we won’t get a new episode of Doctor Who in Ten Seconds for the next few weeks. While you’re waiting, you can watch the previous 7 episodes, in which Brendan summarises the first 7 years of Doctor Who stories. So check out the playlist on YouTube.
Bondfinger
In our latest Bondfinger commentary, Brendan, Nathan, Richard and James talk all over Octopussy, the best James Bond film to be released in 1983.
As is now well known, Season 20 trails off with a whimper, and so Brendan, Nathan and Todd take a week off to allow our discussion of The King’s Demons to be conducted by shapeshifting robot replicas. And they do a great job!
Buy the story!
The King’s Demons was released on DVD in 2010. As usual, it was released on its own In the US, (Amazon US). In the UK, it was released in yet another uninspiring DVD box set, called Kamelion Tales (Amazon UK).
Notes and links
Fans of obsessively flying through the entirety of Doctor Who will certainly enjoy subscribing to Doctor Who: The Complete History, which is a series of beautifully-produced books chronicling, in obsessive detail, every Doctor Who story in the programme’s fiftysomething year history. Seriously, check it out.
Kamelion (spoiler alert!) has a key role in Christopher Bulis’s BBC Past Doctor Adventure The Ultimate Treasure, first published in 1997.
Picks of the week
Brendan
Follow @WhoLabels on Twitter, for all your Doctor Who labels needs. He’s also on Facebook. And he’s brilliant. Unmissable.
Todd
Listen to Wang Chung’s fifth studio album The Warmer Side of Cool, and in particular, the tracks Praying to a New God and Snakedance (which, heartbreakingly, seems to have been removed from YouTube).
Nathan
Read The Writer’s Tale: The Final Chapter, a book which includes a years-long email exchange between Benjamin Cook and Russell T. Davies, in which they discuss the production of Series 4 and the 2009 Specials, as well as TV in general, RTD’s earlier (and later) TV series, and writing in general. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (Amazon AU)
While Brendan tries to source a convincing stick-on goatee for his Season 8 episode of Doctor Who in Ten Seconds, you can enjoy his previous 7 episodes, in which he summarises the first 7 years of Doctor Who stories. So check out the playlist on YouTube.
This week, we discuss the final story of Season 20’s Black Guardian Trilogy. Todd wants to know all the details, Nathan is busy admiring Captain Wrack’s décolletage, while Brendan waxes philosophical on the nature of Enlightenment.
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Enlightenment was released on DVD in 1992/1993. In the US, it was released on its own, I think, but it’s completely unavailable on Amazon. Still, you can just buy it as part of the Black Guardian Trilogy box set (Amazon US), which is how it was released in the UK and Australia (Amazon UK).
Notes and links
Barbara Clegg and Rona Munro (Survival) are the only women ever to write for the Classic Series, if we don’t count Lesley Scott’s co-credit on The Ark, and we don’t, apparently.
We’ve mentioned Sapphire and Steel before. It ran on ITV from 1979 to 1982 and starred Joanna Lumley and David McCallum, who played time-travelling agents (sort of), who tried to rectify strange and scary time things caused by anachronisms or paradoxes or something. It’s worth a look, even if it’s glacially slow by modern standards. You can read Den of Geek’s take on the story here; in this essay, Sandifer discusses the series, as well as just about every other genre thing from the same period.
Brendan has now recorded 7 episodes of Doctor Who in Ten Seconds, summarising 54 Doctor Who stories in at most 10 seconds each. If you’d like to see him performing this feat with your own eyes, visit the webpage. To keep up with future summaries, subscribe to his channel on YouTube.
Brendan, Nathan and Todd are all suffering from Lazar’s disease, or possibly withdrawing from hydromel, which might explain our somewhat listless approach to that critically acclaimed Doctor Who classic, Terminus.
Buy the story!
Terminus was released on DVD in 1992/1993. In the US, it was released on its own, as usual, (Amazon US), but it will cost you 70 US dollars, which would be crazy. You could also buy it as part of the Black Guardian Trilogy box set (Amazon US), which is how it was released in the UK and Australia (Amazon UK).
Notes and links
Liza Goddard plays Kari in this story. To Australian viewers, she is better known as Clancy in Skippy (1967–1969); Nathan has almost completely forgotten her role in the British sitcom Yes, Honestly (1976–1977).
Before Mawdryn Undead came along, Turlough was originally going to make his début in Song of the Space Whale by Pat Mills and John Wagner. This was finally recorded (as usual) as part of Big Finish‘s Lost Stories range range, as The Song of Megaptera, starring Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant.
In his Big Finish story The Waters of Amsterdam, Jonathan Morris offers an explanation of why the Doctor has set up the scanner to check in on Tegan and Nyssa’s bedroom. (Bad Doctor!)
While we’ve been away, Brendan has roared into the 70s with a summary of Season 7 of Doctor Who, in which he confronts Autons, Silurians, John Abineri and a scary parallel version of himself. With hilarious results. If you want to find his summaries of the 1960s seasons of Doctor Who, check out the playlist on YouTube.
Our 20th anniversary season of Flight Through Entirety continues with a discussion of Mawdryn Undead — yet another story including delightful elements from the show’s past, such as the Brigadier, the Black Guardian and a crappy word peril cliffhanger for Episode Three.
Buy the story!
Mawdryn Undead was released on DVD in 2009. In the US, it was released on its own, as usual, (Amazon US), but also as part of a Black Guardian Trilogy box set (Amazon US). In the UK and Australia, it was only made available as part of the box set (Amazon UK).
Notes and links
A weirdly bleached version of Nyssa’s outfit from Snakedance features on the cover of Goth Opera by Paul Cornell, the first novel of the Virgin Missing Adventures series, published in 1994.
Ian Marter played the gorgeously sweet Harry Sullivan in Season 12 of Doctor Who, but also wrote 12 Doctor Who novels, including a Companions of Doctor Who novel called Harry Sullivan’s War.
While we’ve been away, Brendan has roared into the 70s with a summary of Season 7 of Doctor Who, in which he confronts Autons, Silurians, John Abineri and a scary parallel universe version of himself. If you want to find his summaries of the 1960s seasons of Doctor Who, checkout the playlist on YouTube.
This week, the Mara are back, threatening the ancient BBC Television studio Manussa in Snakedance. Roll your eyes at Nathan’s usual jejune insults, marvel at Brendan’s theories about good Science Fiction, and become increasingly concerned at Todd’s vociferous complaints that no one gets horribly murdered in Doctor Who any more.
Buy the story!
Snakedance was released on DVD in 2011. In the US, it was released on its own (Amazon US), but in the UK and Australia it was released along with Kinda in the Mara Tales box set (Amazon UK).
Notes and links
Richard’s not here this week, so there’s almost no German Expressionism, and very little intertextuality. Nathan mentions Sandifer’s take on this story, as usual, so perhaps you’ll want to go and read that.
Todd refers to the Flight Through EntiretyKinda lovefest, which is the pun-tastic Episode 79: Kinda Lingers.
Doctor Who squelches back onto our screens with the first story of Season 20 — Arc of Infinity. It’s a rollicking tale of quad magnetism, pulse loops, transduction barriers and impulse lasers, tastefully decorated with shiny plastic sofas.
Buy the story!
Arc of Infinity was released on DVD in 2007. In the US, it was released on its own (Amazon US), but in the UK and Australia it was released along with Time-Flight in a box set that would have been the worst Christmas present in human history (Amazon UK).
Notes and links
Johnny Byrne wrote 8 episodes of Season 1 of Space: 1999, and some of them were actually quite good. Sort of.
Leonard Sachs, this week’s President Borusa, wasn’t actually in The Pallisers (1974), but he had actually appeared in Doctor Who before as Admiral de Coligny in Nathan’s favourite story, The Massacre. The First and Fourth Borusas were in The Pallisers, along with other famous Doctor Who alumni, including Antony Ainley, Moray Watson, Donald Pickering, John Hallam, Derek Jacobi, Peter Sallis and June Whitfield.
The story about Ace encountering an Ergon while selling fried chicken was Anti-Matter with Fries by Gareth Roberts, which appeared in issue 199 of Doctor Who Magazine.
Tomorrow sees the release of Doctor Who in 10 Seconds Series 6, which will be every bit as delightful as all of the previous episodes. You can watch the entirety of the series by checking out the playlist on YouTube.
It’s the end of another season of Flight Through Entirety, we’ve run out of money and no one really gives a crap anymore. So join us as we listlessly discuss the worst story of the 1980s: it’s Time-Flight.
Don’t buy the story!
Time-Flight was released on DVD in 2007. In the US, it was released on its own (Amazon US), but in the UK and Australia it was released along with Arc of Infinity in an unspeakably horrid box set (Amazon UK).
Cornell, Day and Topping are the authors of The Discontinuity Guide, a repository of hilarious facts about the classic series. Here’s their take on Time-Flight.
This French & Saunders sketch tells you everything you need to know about what went wrong with Doctor Who in the 1980s. Sorry about the crappy quality though.
We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll beset you with bipedal fibreglass turds and bubbles of Fairy Liquid until you agree to watch Time-Flight again. This side of madness or the other.
Doctor Who in 10 Seconds
While Brendan edits the next episode of Doctor Who in 10 Seconds, in which he speedily summarises the delightfully strange and groundbreaking Doctor Who Series 5, why not take the opportunity to watch all of the previous videos in the series by checking out the playlist on YouTube?
All you hippy losers who thought Doctor Who was whimsical family entertainment can leave now: Eric Saward is back, and he’s brought enough guns with him to make Charlton Heston feel insecure about his masculinity. Only Beryl Reid can save us! It’s Earthshock.
Buy the story!
Earthshock was released on DVD in 2004 in the US (Amazon US), and in 2003 in the UK and Australia (Amazon UK).
When we first see the crudely-realised dinosaur fossils in the cave wall in Part 1, Malcolm Clarke treats us to a little musical reference to the Fossils movement in The Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns.
Sometimes beloved Doctor Who cast members wrangle upsettingly on Twitter, and when that happens, it’s the duty of a Doctor Who podcaster to put on a velvet fairy costume and call them out. Which is what Nathan does here.
Whatever his qualities as a writer and script editor (and they are few), Eric Saward was amazingly able to draw inspiration for this story from films that hadn’t even been written yet, including Aliens (1986), and the prescient and criminally underrated Starship Troopers (1997).
Fans of Beryl Reid will also enjoy knowing that Joe Orton was one of their number: it was for her that he wrote the part of Kathy in Entertaining Mr Sloane.
This story recklessly replaced a script called The Enemy Within by acclaimed English novelist Christopher Priest, who had previously had a script rejected for Season 17. Surprisingly, it has never been dramatised by Big Finish.
Eighties Cyberleader and Darth Vader impersonator David Banks wrote a horrific coffee table book called Cybermen (1989), in which he makes a futile and deeply inadvisable attempt to turn three decades of appalling Cybernonsense into a coherent narrative. Best avoided.
Spoiler alert: Adric snuffs it at the end of this story, so this is our last chance to plug Matthew Waterhouse’s elegiac and entertaining autobiography Blue Box Boy. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (Amazon AU)
Today Brendan released the fifth (sixth?) video in his ongoing series Doctor Who in 10 Seconds, in which he dextrously summarises all that endless base-under-siege nonsense from Doctor Who Series 5. To watch all of videos in the series, check out the playlist on YouTube.
