Episode 177 · Series 3 Retrospective · Sunday 15 December 2019
We’ve survived our first year of post–Camille Coduri Doctor Who, and our only full year in the company of the charming and charismatic Freema Agyeman. So, what did we all think?
Notes and links
The Angry Black Woman stereotype combines sexism and racism, and seems designed to discourage black women from speaking out. You can find out more about it in this article from the BBC; this article from Forbes discusses ways of combating it.
As we’ve said before, Derek Jacobi had previously played a weird robot version of the Master in Scream of the Shalka, a Doctor Who story written by Paul Cornell and released by the BBC as a Flash animation in 2003. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (Amazon AU).
Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby and Richard is @RichardLStone. Peter doesn’t know what Twitter is and just wishes you would all stop asking him about it. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam, and the strings performance was by Jane Aubourg. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.
You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on Series 11 of Doctor Who, at jodieintoterror.com, at @JodieIntoTerror on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and wherever podcasts can be found. We’re planning to return in the New Year with our ill-considered hot takes on Series 12.
Our James Bond commentary podcast is called Bondfinger, and you can find that at bondfinger.com, at @bondfingercast on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and everywhere else as well. We’re planning to release a Very Special Christmas Bondfinger this year, so make sure you keep updating the podcast feed every few minutes between now and the end of December.
Episode 177: Subtlety and Undertones
· Recorded on Sunday 13 October 2019 · Download (71.2 MB)
Episode 176 · Last of the Time Lords · Sunday 8 December 2019
It’s the last episode of Series 3, so we’re walking the Earth and telling anyone who’ll stand still for long enough about our favourite television show in the whole world. It’s Last of the Time Lords.
This week, Todd wants you to go back and watch Tom Baker and Louise Jameson in The Invasion of Time, which we discussed in Episode 55: Timothy Dalton’s Pyjamas.
James
Quite rightly, James recommends Life on Mars, in which John Simm plays a present-day police officer who finds himself stranded back in 1973.
And Richard recommends John Lanchester’s article in The London Review of Books, Good New Idea, in which he makes an argument for the introduction of a Universal Basic Income.
Episode 175 · The Sound of Drums · Sunday 1 December 2019
We’re on the run this week — skulking in shadows and eating chips while talking about the Master’s backstory and the deplorable state of British politics. Which is a normal Sunday for us, even when we’re not talking about The Sound of Drums.
Broken News was a six-episode comedy series shown on BBC Two in 2005, which recreated the experience of channel surfing across a range of 24-hour news channels while some weird and incomprehensible news story is breaking. We love it.
This week, we’re joined by TV’s Adam Richard to talk about Martha, the Master, Heather Locklear, Coronation Street and Russell’s original plans for the end of the season. And we also talk about a little Doctor Who episode that we like to call Utopia.
Notes and links
Scream of the Shalka was a Doctor Who story written by Paul Cornell and released by the BBC as a Flash animation in 2003. It starred Richard E Grant as the Doctor and Derek Jacobi as a weird robot version of the Master, who was kept captive in the Doctor’s TARDIS. It was released on DVD in 2013. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (Amazon AU).
Unlike so many Doctor Who YouTubers, Brendan loves Doctor Who. And what more proof of this do you need than his web series Say Something Nice, in which he goes through all of the lowest-rated Doctor Who episodes and says something nice about them. Bless him.
Another Master, Geoffrey Beevers, joins Tom Baker in a battle of terribly mellifluous voices in Big Finish’s Death Match, whose key scene Brendan recreates expertly during this episode.
And our final Master for the week is Alex Macqueen, who eventually reveals himself opposite Sylvester McCoy in the Big Finish story Dominion.
This week, we’re joined by Lizbeth Myles from Verity! podcast to discuss a terrifying romantic comedy about the brevity of human life. It’s called Blink. People seem to like it.
Notes and links
Nathan’s allusion to a Phrygian king at the start of the episode comes from a half-remembered story in Herodotus Book 2, in which the Egyptian king Psammetichus kept two children in isolation, believing that they would grow up speaking the oldest human language.
This episode’s conceit and the name Sally Sparrow were first used by Stephen Moffat in a story in the Doctor Who Annual 2006 called What I Did in My Christmas Holidays by Sally Sparrow. You can read it here.
And, of course, we never stop mentioning Stephen Moffat’s breakout TV show Coupling, which is essential viewing for Moffat fans (if somewhat problematic at times). Here’s what Elizabeth Sandifer had to say about it.
Episode 172 · The Family of Blood · Sunday 10 November 2019
Simon, Todd and Nathan are still trapped in 1913, which is better, at least, than being trapped in chains, a collapsing galaxy, every mirror, or a scarecrow. With World War I on the horizon, all three of them await the answer to a single question: Will John Smith have the courage to leave the stage, so that the Doctor can confront The Family of Blood?
Notes and links
A group of scarecrows inflicted on the Doctor the horrifying fate of regenerating into Jon Pertwee in the 1969 Doctor Who comic The Night Walkers. The Fourth Doctor also met walking scarecrows in Tom Baker and Ian Marter’s Doctor Who movie treatment Doctor Who Meets Scratchman, novelised by James Goss in 2019.
When The Family of Blood was released in 2007, Harry Lloyd was playing Will Scarlett in the BBC’s Robin Hood (which also starred Patrick Troughton’s grandson Sam). He can be seen in this episode’s corresponding Doctor Who Confidential episode, looking very sweet and just ever-so-slightly stoned.
The Inner Light is a highly regarded episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, in which Captain Picard, in the blink of an eye, lives an entire life as a Californian hippie whose community is devastated by the effects of climate change.
Picks of the week
Todd
Wisely, Todd recommends watching Horror of Fang Rock. You could also listen to our Horror of Fang Rock episode, The Practical Problem with Leaving Someone Alive.
Simon
Simon recommends taking a look at Jessica Hynes in another role, in the BBC sitcom W1A, set in the BBC itself. It’s on Netflix in the US, probably, but not in Australia, where it used to be available on iView but isn’t any longer. In the UK, its on Amazon Prime Instant Video. Television is delightful in 2019, isn’t it?
Nathan
Of course, Nathan recommends Paul Cornell’s original novel. He thinks Chapter 8 is particularly good. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (Amazon AU).
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Episode 171 · Human Nature · Sunday 3 November 2019
Well, the Doctor has been exiled to Earth again, but instead of hobnobbing with lizard men, he’s spending his time flirting with Matron and delivering incredibly tedious history lessons. There’s some indefensible name-dropping in this episode, including local radio star Simon Moore, but after all, that’s just Human Nature.
Buy the story!
You all have actual video of this episode on disc already, I imagine, so here are some links to Paul Cornell’s original Virgin New Adventure. It’s very good, and even better in places. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (Amazon AU).
Notes and links
In honour of Simon’s return to the podcast, here’s the TV Tropes entry for the KickTheDog trope, in which a villainous character confirms their villainy by doing something pointlessly cruel early on in the narrative.
It’s been a while since we mentioned that the entirety of Blakes 7 is available to watch for free on YouTube, so here’s a link to the episode Nathan mentions, Series 2 Episode 2, Shadow.
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 get you a detention by deliberately including several obscure Roman obscenities in your Latin prose composition homework.
This week, we hop aboard the SS Pentallian just in time for it to start plummeting into the heart of a blazing sun. And so while we wait for our inevitable incineration, we answer trivia questions about Bananarama, forget everyone’s names, throw shade on the Captain’s marriage, and spend far too much time crawling around the ship, gurning and gnashing our teeth. Fortunately, it’s all over in 42 minutes.
Notes and links
The 1972 film Solaris, based on Stanislaw Lem’s 1961 novel, features — spoiler alert! — a sentient ocean on an alien planet.
Fans of real-time narrative in cinema will also enjoy Run Lola Run (1998), Fail-Safe (1964), and The Set-Up (1949); United 93 (2006) is also good, but might be more difficult to enjoy.
Lis Sladen gets to do some much more enjoyable possessed-by-aliens acting in the third story of the first season of The Sarah Jane Adventures, Warriors of Kudlak.
And there’s coffee in that (sentient) nebula in the sixth episode of Star Trek: Voyager, The Cloud.
Episode 169 · The Lazarus Experiment · Sunday 20 October 2019
This week, we’re hosting our first ever black-tie function, and you’re all invited! Nathan’s scoffing all the canapés, Brendan keeps being mistaken for the waiter, and somewhere upstairs is a roaring and slavering Colin Neal, who will join us later — we hope — to discuss The Lazarus Experiment.
Guga Mbatha-Raw appeared in the Series 3 Black Mirror episode San Junipero. She also played Ophelia to Jude Law’s Hamlet in a production in the West End and on Broadway in 2009 — she is interviewed about it here.
Episode 168 · Evolution of the Daleks · Sunday 13 October 2019
This week, we discuss human nature, animatronic willies, easily avoidable deaths, and the ethics of cooking pork. Which is probably all just a way of distracting ourselves from the Evolution of the Daleks.
Notes and links
The script for this episode is clever enough to borrow from David Whitaker, the Doctor Who script editor who wrote the cleverest Dalek stories from the 1960s. To find out more about him, have a listen to our episode on Evil of the Daleks, which is Episode 13: Airwick Gatport.
James identifies one of the influences on this story as a period-appropriate adaptation of The Island of Dr Moreau called Island of Lost Souls (1932), starring Charles Laughton as Dr Moreau.
And last of all, our founder and dear friend Brendan has revived his YouTube channel and is producing huge quantities of fantastic content every day now. Please like and subscribe.
Picks of the week
James
James wants you to watch James Whale’s classic Universal film Frankenstein (1931), which is undoubtedly an influence on this story. After that, you should immediately go and watch Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Finally, you can round all that off with a read through Paul Magrs’s series of novels, the Brenda and Effie Mysteries, in which the Bride of Frankenstein, who now runs a B & B in Whitby, solves supernatural mysteries with her friend Effie. Audiobook versions are also available, some of which are brought to life by our very own Anne Reid, (Audible US) (Audible UK) (Audible AU)
Peter
Peter wants us to curl up on the sofa and re-visit Blood Harvest, a Virgin New Adventures novel by Terrance Dicks, and a sequel to his TV story State of Decay.
Richard
Richard wants only what’s best for us, and so he thinks we should all pour a small glass of whisky, draw the curtains, switch on the turntable and listen to Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Because we should.
Nathan
Nathan was not allowed to pick Russell T Davies Years and Years again, even though it screens in Australia on SBS starting on 6 November. Instead, he wants you to read Eric Saward’s novelisation of Resurrection of the Daleks, which is every bit as good as you might expect.
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 force you to read our lengthy post on Gallifrey Base which explains in leaden detail that this episode has no idea about how DNA actually works.
Episode 168: A Long Tradition of Doctor Who Monsters That in Some Way Resemble Human Genitalia
· Recorded on Sunday 11 August 2019 · Download (40.2 MB)
