Our flight through E-Space crashes into a mysterious white void inhabited only by crazy alchemist Christopher Hamilton Bidmead and some hirsute slaves on the run from a Jean Cocteau film. It’s Warriors’ Gate.
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Warriors’ Gate was released on DVD in 2009 as part of the E-Space Trilogy box set. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
Fans of the weird magical way that time works in this story will enjoy the ITV series Sapphire and Steel, so long as they’re blessed with a lot of patience for glacial pacing. And Joanna Lumley, obviously.
This story reminds Brendan of two stories of Star Trek: The Next Generation: Contagion, in which the mysterious Iconians have constructed gateways that allow them to plunder planet after planet, and Remember Me, in which the fabulous Beverly Crusher discovers that the universe is “a spherical region 705 metres in diameter”.
Kenneth Cope, who played Packard in this story, was well known for his role in Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), where he played the eponymous Hopkirk, a fabulous crime-solving ghost. Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) was created by Dennis Spooner, the best Dennis to contribute to the creation of the William Hartnell era.
We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or, I don’t know, we’ll knock over a goblet of wine and confront you with a totally inexplicable (but utterly beautiful) cliffhanger.
Doctor Who in 10 Seconds
As usual, all three of us find ourselves able to drone on about a single Doctor Who story for more than half an hour. But what if we only had 10 seconds?
By the time you read this, the third episode of Doctor Who in Ten Seconds might even be up, covering the glorious car crash that is Doctor Who’s third season. You can see the entire series on YouTube. You might even get to see Brendan dancing. Shut up. He’ll be totally wearing clothes, you deviant.
Bondfinger
Over the weekend, we released our commentary podcast on Roger Moore’s first Bond film, the casually racist classic Live and Let Die. Our eight previous commentaries cover the Connery films, George Lazenby’s classic outing and the inexplicable Casino Royale (1967), starring David Niven. You can find all these commentaries on our website, and you can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.
Our flight through the vast green void of the E-Space Trilogy continues, as we land on an unnamed planet inhabited only by playing-card monarchs, unconvincing plastic bats and press-on BBC beards. But we still have a pretty good time. Welcome to State of Decay.
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State of Decay was released on DVD in 2009. Unlike last week’s Full Circle, I can’t find it on sale by itself on Amazon in the US, but it’s available as part of the E-Space Trilogy box set from either of the Amazons. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
As is now well known, State of Decay started life as the Season 15 opener The Vampire Mutations, which was nixed by the BBC so that it wouldn’t steal the thunder from BBC’s own version of Dracula scheduled for broadcast that same year. The Wikipedia article on this lavish production links to several fairly positive reviews, despite Nathan’s tiresome and predictable insistence that it would have been simply terrible.
Terrance Dicks will revisit this unnamed planet in his Virgin New Adventures book Blood Harvest, published in July 1994, which is before some of you young people were even born, for God’s sake.
These days, the Flight Through Entirety team can usually keep going on about a Doctor Who story for upwards of 40 minutes. But what if we only had 10 seconds?
In the latest (well, only) video project from Flight Through Entirety (well, just Brendan, really), Brendan summarises Doctor Who season by season, spending no more than 10 seconds on each story. Season 1 is up already; by the time you see these shownotes, Season 2 will probably be up too. You can see Brendan’s fabulous work here.
Bondfinger
Next week, we hope, we’ll be releasing our commentary podcast on Roger Moore’s Bond début, Live and Let Die, so you’ve got about a week to enjoy it one last time before we ruin it for you forever, probably. Our most recent commentary is on Diamonds Are Forever (1971). You can find our other commentaries on our website, and you can keep up with the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.
This week, our trip to Gallifrey is unexpectedly diverted when we fall headlong into Doctor Who’s first ever trilogy, set in a bubble universe weirdly intersecting with the Newtown Branch of The Sofa of Reasonable Comfort. While there, we discuss polar vs Cartesian coordinates, the laws governing space evolution and skimpy transparent underwear. Tell Dexeter we’ve come full circle!
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Full Circle was released on DVD in 2009. It’s available by itself in the US (Amazon US), and also as part of the E-Space Trilogy box set (Amazon US). In the UK and Australia, it is only available as part of the E-Space Trilogy box set. (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
If you’re planning a career as a Doctor Who villain, you will obviously need to familiarise yourself with the Internet’s Evil Overload Checklist.
Brendan’s Tom Baker and K9 action figures recreate key scenes from Full Circle on location in Black Park, Buckinghamshire in our occasional series Toys on Tour.
Perhaps we’re unnecessarily cruel about Matthew Waterhouse’s performance in this story. To hear his side of the story, you must read the excellent Blue Box Boy, Waterhouse’s own account of his childhood as a Doctor Who fan, his time on the show, and his subsequent life on the convention circuit. You won’t regret it. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (Amazon AU)
Although the Marshchild paid a terrible price for trusting the Doctor, we think you’ll enjoy listening to Trust Your Doctor, a podcast by our internet pals Dylan and Kiyan. They’ve only just overtaken us, so, you know, spoiler alert.
Before we start our flight through Rodge’s glorious series of Bond films, there’s still time to catch up on our commentaries on Sean and George’s entries, including Sean’s final film (for now), Diamonds Are Forever (1971). You can keep up with the Bondfinger news on our website, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.
The Season 18 fun continues this week as we head off to the planet Tigella to confront megalomaniacal pot plant Meglos. On the way, we discuss another important trope, hating the Doctor’s old friends, and, of course, the awesome wonder of Jacqueline Hill.
The horrific helmet hair on the Savants has its roots (ha!) in the Gerry Anderson TV series UFO (1980). Check out the sexy purple version of the Savants’ wigs in this blog post on the first episode of the series.
On the subject of tropes, Brendan mentions the delivery of exposition by having characters explain to each other things they clearly already know. According to TV Tropes, this trope is officially called As you know. Please take note.
According to Brendan, who is very young, you know, Tigella’s lush, aggressive vegetation looks very much like the Pokémon Victreebel. You can compare them yourself here.
We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or you’ll be caught in a fold of time and forced to listen to this episode round and round for all eternity. Not even you can escape a chronic hysteretic loop, as you well know.
Bondfinger
In our most recent commentary, we respectfully discuss the first James Bond film of the 1970s, Diamonds Are Forever (1971). Other commentaries are also available, covering all of the Bond films from the 1960s. You can keep up with the Bondfinger news on our website, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.
Exhausted by a two-hour tracking shot along Brighton Beach, Brendan, Nathan and Todd head off to the leisure planet Argolis, a beautifully-directed planet under attack from an army of David Haigs. Welcome to the 1980s, everyone!
Fans of obsessing over the minutiae of things that are completely unimportant, will enjoy, well, Flight Through Entirety, to be honest, but they will also enjoy the website broadwcast.org, which enumerates every single time a Classic Doctor Who episode has aired on terrestrial television in over 80 countries around the world. Nathan loves it.
Here’s an article from The Telegraph in which Christopher Hamilton Bidmead, starved for relevance, explains exactly what’s wrong with the new series.
And now, some really terrible TV science fiction for your enjoyment: eleven episodes of the 1979 series Buck Rogers in the Twenty-Fifth Century, and Chapter 1 of Jason of Star Command (1978), intriguingly titled Attack of the Dragonship.
And here’s Bablyon 5, which is apparently a television series of some kind, shamelessly ripping off the composition of one of the many beautiful shots in this story.
This morning, we released our commentary on Connery’s last (?) Bond film, Diamonds Are Forever (1971). It’s the eighth in our series, which now includes commentaries on all of the 60s Bond films. You can keep up with the Bondfinger news on our website, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.
We’ve reached the end of the Graham Williams Era, and before we go off to have a relaxing one-month break in a nearby parallel universe, we have just enough time to discuss Shada, the sadly uncompleted keystone of the last three years of Doctor Who. Tea, anyone?
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Odd and unsatisfactory versions of this story were released on DVD in 2013. In the US, as usual, it was released on its own (Amazon US), whereas in the UK it was one of two discs in the Legacy Collection box set, along with the 1993 documentary More than Thirty Years in the TARDIS. (Amazon UK)
Gödel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter was published in 1979, and was wildly loved by just the sort of people who might stumble upon an ancient book of Gallifreyan lore in the study of some old Cambridge professor. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
The Star Wars Holiday Special first screened around Christmas 1978, and is perhaps the most horrific thing ever to screen on television. Despite George Lucas’s relentless attempts to suppress it, it can be viewed in its entirety on YouTube. But, really, just don’t.
The Somebody Else’s Problem field is “a cheap, easy, and staggeringly useful way of safely protecting something from unwanted eyes”, by exploiting our natural tendency to ignore things that we just don’t want to think about.
Fans of ruthlessly mocking pompous homophobic lackwits will enjoy these Amazon reviews of Cory Bernardi’s absurdly jejune magnum opus The Conservative Revolution.
Picks of the Week
Nathan
Nathan just picked a whole heap of stuff that we’ve mentioned in the last few episodes of the podcast. There are links to Gareth Roberts’s novelisation of Shada above; James Goss’s novelisation of City of Death was released by BBC Books in 2015. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Paul Cornell’s collection of fanzine articles, Licence Denied, is out of print.
Douglas Adams’s novel Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency shamelessly recycles many of the ideas in both City of Death and Shada. It’s great. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Our flight finally reaches the end of the 1970s, only to run out of hymetusite and crash ignominiously into The Horns of Nimon.
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The Horns of Nimon was released on DVD in 2010. It was released by itself in the US (Amazon US), but in the UK it was released along with The Time Monster and Underworld in the rightfully unloved Myths and Legends box set (Amazon UK).
Fans of the Nimon (and who isn’t?) will enjoy the Big Finish Eighth Doctor audio Seasons of Fear by Paul Cornell.
Once again, we mention Licence Denied, which was a collection of fan writing edited by Paul Cornell first published in 1997. Notable essays include Tom the Second, Gareth Roberts’s defence of the Williams Era, and Why the Nimon Should Be Our Friends, by Phillip J. Gray.
So, we’ve all taken several hits of vraxoin, which means that we really enjoyed this week’s story, in spite of the sets, the script, most of the performances and the ham-fisted anti-drugs message. It’s Nightmare of Eden!
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Nightmare of Eden was released on DVD as recently as 2012. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
In 1983, First Lady Nancy Reagan was in the throes of her Just Say No campaign, in which she made numerous television appearances warning the American people about the dangers of drugs. Horrifically, she guested on an episode of Diff’rent Strokes in order to patronise Gary Coleman’s entire class.
Fans of the fabulous model work in this story, along with everyone else, will enjoy the Blakes 7 episode Gold. (It’s worth mentioning at this point that Blakes 7 is now available on YouTube in its entirety. So why are you wasting your time on this podcast, for God’s sake?)
In 1980, Lalla Ward played Ophelia in the BBC Season of Shakespeare’s version of Hamlet. Hamlet himself was played by Derek Jacobi, Doctor Who’s very own Professor Yana. (We love Lalla, but she’s really terrible in this.)
This week, Brendan, Richard and Nathan are just simply too mature to make fun of the ludicrously phallic monster in The Creature from the Pit. Aren’t we? Aren’t we?
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The Creature from the Pit was released on DVD in 2010. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
Orac is, of course, the computer in TV’s Blakes 7.
Fagin is the appalling Jewish stereotype from Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist. We own Charles Dickens! He’s in Doctor Who.
This week, Brendan, Richard and Nathan tackle City of Death, by Douglas Adams and Graham Williams. How many superlatives can fit in a single 40-minute podcast episode?
Buy the story!
City of Death was released on DVD in 2005. Seriously, if you don’t have a copy, just buy it. At once. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
We’ve uploaded some photos from Brendan’s Facebook album Toys on Tour, which is the best place to go to see a plastic Tom Baker crawling up the gate to the Galerie Denise René in Paris.
When she wasn’t busy helping her husband to steal the Mona Lisa, Catherine Schell appeared in the second season of Space: 1999 as Maya, a shape-changing alien from the planet Psychon. It’s really much worse than you could possibly imagine.
For two years, from 1911 to 1913, the Mona Lisa was no longer in the Louvre: it was hidden in a trunk in Vincenzo Peruggia’s apartment after he entered the Louvre, hid it under his smock and made off with it. See, we’re educational as well as entertaining.
Captain Tancredi’s bodyguard is played by Peter Halliday, who won our hearts in his role as Packer in The Invasion.
Romana’s naughty schoolgirl outfit seems to be inspired by the St Trinian’s film series in the 50s and 60s. Another inspiration might be Madeline, the heroine of a series of children’s books written by Austrian author Ludwig Bemelmans in the 1950s and 60s.
Licence Denied was a collection of fan writing edited by Paul Cornell and first published in 1997. It is, sadly, out of print. Notable essays include Tom the Second, Gareth Roberts’s defence of the Williams Era, and Why the Nimon Should Be Our Friends, by Phillip J. Gray. And no, you can’t borrow my copy.
James Goss’s novelisation of City of Death was released by BBC Books in 2015. It’s good. Buy it. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Comic Book Guy kidnaps Lucy Lawless in The Simpsons Halloween episode Treehouse of Horror X. Hilariously, the Simpsons Wikia page warns that “this episode is considered non-canon and the events featured do not relate to the series and therefore may not have actually happened/existed”. Which is nice to know.
It’s the start of an exciting new season of Doctor Who. Terry Nation’s back and Mary Tamm isn’t, but we still manage to pull ourselves together long enough to discuss Destiny of the Daleks.
Buy the story!
Destiny of the Daleks was released on DVD in 2007/2008. That was simple. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
In 1980, Tom and Lalla recorded a series of Australian ads for minicomputer company Prime Computer. These are available as a DVD extra on the Destiny DVD, but you can also see them on YouTube.
In 1979, Tom recorded a series of three ads for conservation group Keep Australia Beautiful. You can see a terrible videotape copy of two of these on YouTube as well.
The nightmarish scenario of wars run by computer will later be taken up by Matthew Broderick in War Games (1983), which you are all too young to remember. Damn you.
Star Trek’s Wil Wheaton interviews Doctor Who’s Jenna Coleman and Peter Capaldi on the Series 9 DVD and Blu-ray releases. You can watch some short excerpts from that interview here and here.
Chaos on the Bridge is a 2014 documentary written and produced by William Shatner, chronicling the first few difficult years of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s available on Netflix. (Not any longer, apparently.)
Mark Michalowski’s short story The Lying Old Witch in the Wardrobe was published in 2003 as part of Big Finish’s anthology Short Trips: Companions. It explains — whimsically — why Romana regenerates at the start of this story, and suggests that the Romana we see here is not exactly who we expect her to be.
The impasse faced by two perfectly logical computer opponents is an outworking of game theory, used by mathematician John von Neumann to model, among other things, the interactions between the US and the USSR in the Cold War.
The same impasse is also the basis of the short story Fool’s Mate, first published in Astounding Science Fiction in March 1953. In this story, two computerised battle fleets are frozen, unable to attack one another, until one decides to put its attack strategy under the control of a complete madman. Which just goes to show, really.
It’s the final story of the Key to Time season, whose story wheezes and groans to a halt in The Armageddon Factor. Meanwhile, Brendan, Nathan and Todd have a lovely time praising Mary, dissing everything else, and answering that pressing question: what did we think of Doctor Who’s first ever season-long arc?
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And now, for the last time: In the US, you can buy The Armageddon Factor by itself (Amazon US), or as part of the Key to Time box set (Amazon US). In the UK, it’s only available as part of the Key to Time box set. (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
We’ve referred to Cornell, Day and Topping’s The Discontinuity Guide before. It’s out of print, buy you can still buy for your Kindle (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (Amazon AU). The text of the book is reproduced on the old BBC Cult Doctor Who website, which is pretty hard to get to these days, but I have at least managed to find their take on The Armageddon Factor (“the whole thing is very uninvolving”).
Davyd Harries, who plays posh idiot sidekick Shapp, is also fairly horrifying as Vila’s hilarious bluebeard pal Doran in the horrifying Blakes 7 episode Moloch, written by Blakes 7’s resident horrifying misogynist Ben Steed.
Fans of the entire contents of the Bristol Boys’ kitchen drawers will enjoy Dave Martin’s entry in the Make Your Own Adventure series, Search for the Doctor, which features the Sixth Doctor, K9, Drax and Omega.
Picks of the Week
Brendan
This week, Brendan has decided not to pick the Big FinishThe Key 2 Time series, which consists of The Judgement of Isskar, The Destroyer of Delights and The Chaos Pool, and stars Peter Davison as the Doctor. He has also decided not to pick Graceless, an entire Big Finish series which serves as a sequel to The Key 2 Time, and which has now run for three whole series.
Instead, he’s picked The Auntie Matter, a Big Finish full-cast audio drama starring Tom Baker and Mary Tamm.
Nathan has picked The AV Club, which is a sister site to satirical newspaper The Onion, and is the home of some of the best writing on pop culture on the internet. He particularly recommends the reviews of the Classic Series written by Christopher Bahn.
We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, because if you’re not rating or reviewing us on iTunes, we can make you rate or review us on iTunes, because we can do anything! As from this moment there’s no such thing as free will in the entire universe! For we possess the Key to Time!
In this fart-astic episode of Flight Through Entirety, our search for the fifth segment of the Key to Time takes us to the third moon of Delta Magna where we confront The Power of Kroll.
Buy the story!
Same as last time, really: In the US, you can buy The Power of Kroll by itself (Amazon US), or as part of the Key to Time box set (Amazon US). In the UK, it’s only available as part of the Key to Time box set. (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
Not many links this week. (There’s an appalling dearth of references to German Expressionism in our discussion.) So to pass the time while listening to this episode, why not read a review of The Power of Kroll from the AV Club website? And for once, there’s no need to avoid the comments thread.
This is Philip Madoc’s last performance in Doctor Who. He passed away in 2012. You can read his obituary in The Guardian.
Todd is puzzled by the idea of feeding Krollfarts to the hapless population of Delta Magna. What he didn’t know was that bacteria actually can be used to convert methane to proteins. Fact fans will enjoy this article on the topic.
We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll send you a hundred tons of compressed protein a day — a fifth of your protein requirements. And you know were we’ll be getting it from!
If there was ever any doubt that Brendan is a young man of exceptional taste and discernment, this episode finally lays it to rest with the revelation that his favourite Doctor Who story ever is The Androids of Tara!
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You know the drill by now: In the US, you can buy The Androids of Tara by itself (Amazon US), or as part of the Key to Time box set (Amazon US). In the UK, it’s only available as part of the Key to Time box set. (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
Famously, The Androids of Tara is shamelessly ripped off a loving tribute to Anthony Hope’s popular 1894 novel The Prisoner of Zenda. You can read it here.
We’ve mentioned the fanzine Cottage Under Siege before: it was edited by Neil Corry and Gareth Roberts and published in 1993–1994. Again, please, please, please contact us if you know where we can get copies of it.
You can read the summery and charming discussion of The Androids of Tara from Cornell, Day and Topping’s The Discontinuity Guide at the old BBC Cult website.
Cousins to the Taran wood beast, the Links in the Blakes 7 episode Terminal held a terrible secret to the future of all of mankind. While looking amazingly silly.
Fans of Peter Jeffrey’s Count Grendel of Gracht will also enjoy his turn as a villain in the Avengers episode, Game.
Declan Mulholland, who plays Till in The Androids of Tara played a humanoid Jabba the Hutt in a deleted scene from the original Star Wars (1977).
This week, we’re back on Earth, being menaced by giant glowing fibreglass rocks. Incidentally, we’re also discussing the third story in the Key to Time season, The Stones of Blood.
Buy the story!
In the US, you can buy The Stones of Blood by itself (Amazon US), or as part of the Key to Time box set (Amazon US). In the UK, it’s only available as part of the Key to Time box set. (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
For the first time ever, Brendan was wrong about something. When auditioning to replace the divine Miss Rigg in The Avengers, Susan Engel didn’t act against Moray Laing, the current editor of Doctor Who Adventures magazine. It was actually Moray Watson, who played Sir Robert Muir in Black Orchid.
Evelyn Smythe was one of the Sixth Doctor’s companions in the main Big Finish series of Doctor Who audios.
And in other things that Nathan is wrong about, Gareth Roberts’s comic strip about sentient sand that attacks people was actually written by Paul Cornell and called Seaside Rendezvous, published in DWM’s 1991 Summer Special.
We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or, like typical males, we’ll strand you here in the middle of nowhere with two complete strangers while we go off somewhere enjoying ourselves.
By the left frontal lobe of the Sky Demon, it’s a new golden age, and we’re off to Calufrax to confront The Pirate Planet.
Buy the story!
In the US, you can buy The Pirate Planet by itself (Amazon US), or as part of a box set (Amazon US). In the UK, it’s only available as part of the Key to Time box set. (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
Those young people on Todd’s lawn who don’t know who Leo Sayer is should totally watch this video.
Rotating knives are an important element of any modern architectural design, as this Monty Python sketch demonstrates.
If you’ve never heard Douglas Adams’s Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy radio series, then you should have a word with yourself immediately. (Audible US) (Audible UK) (Audible AU)
Unlike Nathan and Todd, Brendan had a spectacular career as an extra on the Australian TV series, Rescue Special Ops in 2009.
It’s the start of a new season, and Brendan, Nathan and Todd are sent on a mission from God to find six hidden podcast episodes, that, when assembled, form hours and hours of tiresome commentary on Season 16 of Doctor Who. First stop: The Ribos Operation.
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Okay, this one’s complicated. In 2002, The Ribos Operation was released on DVD exclusively in the US both individually and as part of a Key to Time box set. In 2007, there was a limited edition box set released in the UK and Australia, which was then released more generally in 2009. You can read all about that on the Wikipedia page, if you’re interested. The upshot of all this is that in the US you can buy The Ribos Operation by itself (Amazon US) or as part of a box set (Amazon US). In the UK, it’s only available as part of a box set. (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
Ian Marter’s novelisation of this story is available as an audiobook read by John Leeson. (Audible US) (Audible UK) (Audible AU)
Here is a Season 16 publicity photo of Mary and Tom with a giant sticking plaster on his lip after Paul Seed’s dog bit his face.
As Season 15 limps towards its inevitable conclusion, we discover a new trope, reflect on the possibilities of Sevateem–Gallifreyan romance, and deplore the indefensible cruelty of horse racing: it’s The Invasion of Time!
Buy the story!
The Invasion of Time was released on DVD in 2008. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK). It was also released in Australia and the UK as part of the Bred for War box set, along with the other Classic Series Sontaran stories. (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
The Vardans appear to share a stylist with the Ultraman Science Patrol. No, I don’t know who they are either.
Gallifreyan hippy Presta is played by Gai Waterhouse, a famously wealthy Sydney horse trainer.
Gallifrey is a Big Finish audio series chronicling political intrigue on the Doctor’s home planet, featuring Mary Tamm, Lalla Ward and Louise Jameson, among others.
Green Wing was a Channel 4 comedy series set in a hospital, starring Doctor Who’s very own Tamsin Grieg and Michelle Gomez.
Underworld just might be the worst Doctor Who story of the 1970s, which is why we spend this episode discussing Hellenistic epic, orgies in Diana Dors’s house, and the reason why you might choose to wear a bag on your head. Enjoy!
Buy the story!
Underworld was released on DVD in 2010. In the US, it was released on its own (Amazon US), while in the UK and Australia it was part of the rightfully unloved Myths and Legends box set. (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
Fans of things with real literary merit — unlike Underworld — will enjoy the Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes, which tells the story of the quest for the Golden Fleece and the romance between Jason and Medea.
Fans of things that are interesting — unlike Underworld — will enjoy this lurid account in the Daily Mail of the orgies that went on in the home of British film star Diana Dors, as told by her son Jason Dors-Lake.
Fans of things that are crap but enjoyable — unlike Underworld — will enjoy these high-concept traditional SF series: the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov, and the Lensman series by E. E. “Doc” Smith. (The Foundation series is discussed in a recent episode of the brilliant nerd-culture podcast The Incomparable.)
Fans of amusing and inventive science fiction — you know what I’m going to say next — will enjoy Bea Arthur as the fem-puter in the 2001 Futurama episode Amazon Women in the Mood.
This week, we head off into the far future of the distant planet Pluto (yes, we know, shut up), to liberate humanity from the Company, in The Sun Makers. Hey Cordo, don’t bogart the pentocyleinicmethylhydrane, man.
William Simons, who plays sub-Blakean rebel leader Mandrell in this story, is more famous for his role in ITV period police drama series Heartbeat, playing Alf Ventress.
The Company takes Marx’s phrase “opiate of the masses” quite literally, drugging its oppressed population to keep them compliant. The Federation will adopt a similar tactic in Season 4 of Blakes 7, using the drug Pylene 50.
Richard points out the similarities between this story and The Space Merchants, a 1952 novel by Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth. It’s still in print. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Richard also points out the story’s many visual references to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927).