Brendan, Richard and Nathan are menaced, drugged and tied up, which means it’s either a normal Saturday night or the rather spectacular Image of the Fendahl.
Buy the story!
Image of the Fendahl was released on DVD in 2009. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
Ma Tyler is played by Daphne Heard, who was Peter Bowles’s mother Mrs Polouvicka in 70s/80s sitcom To The Manor Born. Here’s the first episode.
We’ve mentioned him before, but H. P. Lovecraft was a twentieth-century racist and horror writer, who popularised the idea that the world is hideously haunted by nightmarish creatures from beyond the dawn of time. His most famous short story is The Call of Cthulhu.
Fans of nightmarish creatures from beyond the dawn of time will enjoy Quatermass and the Pit, a BBC television programme from 1959 featuring, um, nightmarish creatures from beyond the dawn of time.
The Stone Tape was a 1972 television play by the author of Quatermass, about, you know, totally scary things. It’s available on YouTube. You can also find a recent radio version, starring the lovely Jane Asher, here.
Sapphire and Steel was a crazily fascinating and boring ITV science fiction series from the 1970s and 80s, starring Joanna Lumley and David McCallum. And, of course, there’s a Big Finish version of the series, but it can’t be found anywhere on their website for rights reasons, probably.
Should we mock the 70s? Do let’s. Here’s a link to the website of Erich von Däniken, who believed that human culture was totally influenced by aliens.
And while we’re mocking the 70s, you might enjoy Desmond Morris’s The Naked Ape and Manwatching.
Survivors is a hilarious 1970s TV series, written by Terry Nation, in which a horrible plague wipes out everyone except Dennis Lill, his moustache, and a small number of other middle class people. But at least Patrick Troughton is in an episode.
The terribly handsome actor who plays Stael in this story also plays Carnell in the Blakes 7 episode Weapon. He goes on to reprise his role in a totally-not-Big-Finish series of audio dramas by Magic Bullet Productions.
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 make you a fruit cake by throwing in the apple cores very hard, putting the lot in a shallow tin and baking in a high oven for two weeks.
This week, Brendan, Nathan and Richard enjoy the worst prawn cocktail of the entire 1970s: it’s The Invisible Enemy.
Buy the story!
The Invisible Enemy was released on DVD in 2008 as part of the K9 Tales box set, which also includes the execrable 1981 Christmas spin-off K9 and Company. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK).
Notes and links
We’re still in the middle of Doctor Who’s Blakes 7 years, and so the terrible cardboard corridor they fly down in Part 1 looks like an extremely low-rent version of the already fairly low-rent Xenon Base in Blakes 7 Season 4.
Roger Dean is an artist famous for his 70s prog-rock album covers, particularly for the band Yes. The picture Richard mentions is the cover of a Lighthouse album called One Fine Day. You can enjoy more of Dean’s work on his website, including images he used as evidence when he sued James Cameron for (allegedly) shamelessly ripping him off in Avatar.
As always, the world is ending, even in the 1970s, and so it’s time to mention Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb, as well that indispensible condiment Soylent Green (1973).
Well, we should have listened to Mrs Nethercott, really. Yet another story that we all love: the Graham Williams era kicks off with a spectacular Edwardian Base Under Siege™ — it’s Horror of Fang Rock!
Buy the story!
Horror of Fang Rock was released on DVD way back in 2005. So, no, you can’t borrow my copy. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
Richard’s here this week, but despite that, we don’t make many fabulously obscure references to British television from the 1960s and 70s. (Apart from the obligatory references to The Prisoner and Are You Being Served?, of course.)
Here’s the BBC miniseries Count Dracula (1977), which put paid to Terrance Dicks’s original script, The Vampire Mutations, more of which later. It manages to be both tiresome and terrible, apparently. You can even buy it, if you feel you have to. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Fans of television programmes that make you long for a Rutan to join the cast and massacre all the regulars will enjoy When the Boat Comes In, a BBC television series that ran from 1976 to 1981.
While the entire world goes crazy over what might be Daniel Craig’s final outing as Bond (sob!), why not re-visit a much worse Bond film — Thunderball (1965)? We’ll all be donning wetsuits and recording our first underwater commentary next week, and releasing it the following weekend. In the meantime, you can enjoy our existing commentary tracks, Goldfinger (1964), From Russia With Love (1963), and Dr. No (1962). You can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on our website, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.
Episode 50: The Practical Problem with Leaving Someone Alive
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This week, we risk the goodwill of our entire audience by spending the first 18 minutes of the episode discussing the appalling racism of fan favourite The Talons of Weng-Chiang. After that, Brendan and Todd talk about how great the story is, while Nathan just says Do you know what I mean? over and over again.
Buy the story!
The Talons of Weng-Chiang was released on DVD as a Special Edition in 2010/2011. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
You can buy The Doctor Who Discontinuity Guide as an ebook on Amazon (Amazon US) (Amazon UK). You can find most of the content for free (you cheapskate) by following the links from the Fourth Doctor page on the archived BBC Doctor Who website. We diss it this episode, but it’s actually really great.
Less great is Doctor Who: The Television Companion, by Howe and Walker. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Fans of completely ruining the Sontarans, who are totally a credible and interesting threat, will enjoy the upcoming Big Finish series Jago and Litefoot and Strax. The first episode will be out in November.
Henry Higgins and Colonel Pickering go off to buy a dress for Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady (1964).
The simple analogy from Star Trek is fabulously referenced in the Futurama episode Where No Fan Has Gone Before.
Fans of Joanna Lumley and ludicrous giant rats will enjoy the New Avengers episode Gnaws.
Picks of the week
Todd
This week, Todd recommends the Big Finish Jago & Litefoot series, which has been going on for, like, 9 years. The delightful Pamela Salem returns in _Counter-Measures_, but, frankly, she’s more glamorous than they deserve.
Foe from the Future is a Big Finish audio that, in a nearby parallel universe, might have replaced The Talons of Weng-Chiang.
Nathan
Well, Nathan got nearly everthing wrong about his pick. You can find the Blakes 7 podcast Down and Safe here. They release a new episode every fortnight, or every two weeks if you come from the United States.
Pamela Salem is a goddess and The Robots of Death is just brilliant. Is there anything more to say here?
Buy the story!
The Robots of Death was the first proper Doctor Who DVD release way back in 2000/2001. Does that make you feel old? The Special Edition was released in 2012 as part of the Revisitations 3 box set in Australia and the UK, and individually in the US. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
Sapphire and Steel was an amazingly weird and almost unwatchably slow ITV series starring time agents Joanna Lumley and David McCallum as Sapphire and Steel respectively. David Collings, who played Poul in this story, occasionally guested as Silver.
Well, these are Doctor Who’s Blake’s 7 years, so here goes. Chris Boucher, who wrote this story, was the script editor of Blake’s 7, and went on to write lots of fabulously bitchy dialog over Blake’s 7’s four seasons. Borg is played by Brian Croucher, who played Travis in Blake’s 7 Season 2, and Miles Fothergill, who played camp newsreader robot SV7, played some guy in the Blake’s 7 episode The Web.
Fans of doing your hair and makeup in preparation for your big villain moment will enjoy Cancer in the Blake’s 7 Season 4 episode Assassin.
This week, Flight Through Entirety is conducting a weird experiment in eugenics to create the perfect race of Doctor Who podcasters. And so Brendan’s fake tan is orange, Nathan is wearing turquoise nappies and Todd’s face has been carved into the side of a mountain. That’s right, it’s time for The Face of Evil.
Where has the magic of Doctor Who gone? It’s the first time we’ve been back to Gallifrey since the last time, Todd is cross, and Mary Whitehouse is furious. It’s time for The Deadly Assassin!
Buy the story!
The Deadly Assassin was released on DVD in 2009. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
It’s impossible to understand the negative fanboy reception of this story without reading Jan Vincent-Rudski’s review of this story. There’s a video version of this review on YouTube.
You can find Jan Vincent-Rudski’s review in License Denied, edited by Paul Cornell, which is well worth a look. It includes Gareth Roberts’s defence of the Graham Williams Era, which Nathan thinks is utterly brilliant, of course.
The Manchurian Candidate (1962) tells the story of someone brainwashed into committing a terrible political assassination. Which really has nothing to do with The Deadly Assassin.
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 stick you in a Doctor Who story with no companion apart from a talking cabbage perched on your shoulder. Which would just serve you right.
Bondfinger
We recorded our commentary podcast episode for Goldfinger mere moments ago, so keep an eye out for its release in the next week or so on Bondfinger. We have already done two commentaries: From Russia With Love (1963), and Dr. No (1962). You can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.
It’s time to bid a fond farewell to Lis Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith, and what better way to do that than blowing her up, hypnotising her, sticking her in an exploding nuclear reactor and dangling her over the edge of a precipice in The Hand of Fear? Till we meet again, Sarah.
Buy the story!
The Hand of Fear was released on DVD way back in 2006. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
Fans of Bob Baker and Dave Martin’s tendency to run out of ideas will enjoy K9 and the Time Trap, one of four K9 adventure books written by Dave Martin and published in 1980.
Florana is the beautiful planet that Pertwee persuaded Sarah to visit on holiday at the end of Invasion of the Dinosaurs.
Outland (2012) is a six-part ABC comedy series written by John Richards and Adam Richard, about a group of gay SF fans, full to the brim of hilarious Doctor Who references. John Richards is also one of the hosts of the Splendid Chaps podcast, which reflected on the history of Doctor Who in the lead-up to the 50th anniversary.
The Flight Through Entirety vanity James Bond project continues with Bondfinger, our commentary podcast on the James Bond films. We have already done two commentaries: From Russia With Love (1963), and Dr. No (1962), with more on the way. You can keep up with all the Bondfinger news — including an upcoming commentary on Goldfinger early next month — on Twitter and Facebook.
Well, Todd’s enthusiastic, Brendan’s cheerful and Nathan just wishes there was a Sontaran involved. We’re off to the Duchy of San Martino in Wales, where clichéd but gorgeously-designed things are afoot in The Masque of Mandragora.
Watch the show
The Masque of Mandragora was released on DVD in 2010. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
Famously, the location work for this story was done in Portmeirion in Wales, which is a tourist thing built last century in the style of an Italian village. It’s probably most famous as the location of Patrick McGoohan’s cult classic The Prisoner (1967). Which is really, really worth watching. You can book your stay in one of Portmeirion’s self-catering villas here, but watch out for bouncing weather ballons.
The BBC Television Shakespeare ran from 1978 to 1984 and included adaptations of all of Shakespeare’s plays. Yes, even Pericles, Prince of Tyre. It was almost completely studio-bound, with sets much like those created by Barry Newbery for Masque. The Wikipedia article is exhaustingly detailed.
Quentin Crisp was a famous twentieth-century English homosexualist and author, made famous by (among other things) his portrayal by Doctor Who’s very own John Hurt in The Naked Civil Servant (1975), a TV movie adaptation of his biography, produced by Verity Lambert. Fancy!
If you’re enjoying your flight, why not check out Bondfinger, our commentary podcast on the James Bond films? There are two commentaries so far: From Russia With Love (1963), and Dr. No (1962), with more on the way. You can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.
Brendan, Richard and Nathan enjoy the rare treat of watching a really great episode of 60s television: it’s one of Robert Banks Stewart’s sources for The Seeds of Doom: a 1966 episode of The Avengers called Man-Eater of Surrey Green.
Watch the show
You can watch Man-Eater of Surrey Greenin its entirety here. (But is has since been taken down due to a copyright claim.)
Notes and links
If you want to find out all there is to know about The Avengers, take a look here at Avengers Forever.
Future Steed sidekick Linda Thorson appears as a Cardassian in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode The Chase, which is otherwise pretty terrible, to be honest.
Joanna Lumley (eventually) played the Doctor in Steven Moffat’s The Curse of Fatal Death, a Comic Relief special broadcast in 1999.
In the Thin Man films, including Thin Man (1934) and its five sequels, a detective and his wife, played by William Powell and Myrna Loy, have a lovely time solving mysteries together. It’s terribly good, apparently.
We’ll be back next week with The Masque of Mandragora.
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 take a break from podcasting about your favourite TV show to discuss something you’ve never actually heard of.
It’s time to put down those bonsai pruners and catch the first helicopter to Antarctica, as we discuss the final story of Season 13, that florid, fecund, flexuous and frutescent classic, The Seeds of Doom.
Buy the story!
The Seeds of Doom was released on DVD in 2010 and 2011. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
The Seeds of Doom came 20th out of 241 stories in Doctor Who Magazine’s The First Fifty Years Poll in 2013. You can see the full list of results here.
Fans of people slowly being taken over by plants will enjoy the film Creepshow (1982), in which Stephen King himself is taken over by some lush, aggressive vegetation.
The Italian Job (1969) stars Michael Caine, Noël Coward and Benny Hill. It looks amazing. And our very own Harrison Chase, Tony Beckley, shows his extensive range by playing a character called Camp Freddie.
Here’s our usual list of films plundered in the making of this story: Ice Station Zebra (1968), an espionage thriller set on a base in the Arctic, Day of the Triffids (1963), in which giant plant monsters take over the world after most of humanity is blinded, and the brilliant Howard Hawks film The Thing from Another World (1963) in which a plant Frankenstein’s monster thing attacks yet another base in the Arctic.
Can we possibly have failed to mention H P Lovecraft before? The Hinchcliffe Era is massively indebted to his SF/Horror stories, in which the universe is haunted by ancient evil gods from beyond the dawn of time. You can get a free ebook of all of his fiction here.
Picks of the week
Brendan
Brendan’s pick is Refuge (2015), a short film set on an alien planet, shot entirely in moonlight. You can watch it here, but be careful: it’s a bit scary.
Next week, we’re taking a break from our usual schedule to watch one of the inspirations for The Seeds of Doom: the Avengers episode The Man-Eater of Surrey Green. Your homework is to watch it in preparation. You can find the entire episode here. (Actually, you can’t: it was taken down due to a copyright claim.)
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 forget to pay you for your lovely painting of the Fritillaria meleagris that we’re storing in the boot of our Daimler.
Next weekend: Istanbul
Keep an eye our for the next episode of Bondfinger, which will be released next weekend, and which features Brendan, Richard and James talking about From Russia With Love (1963). You can hear our first episode here. And you can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.
This week, we’re off to the planet Karn for wine, cheese and cyanide with Dr Mehendri Solon and his pet brain-in-a-jar Morbius. And Sarah Jane Smith has never had so much fun!
Buy the story!
The Brain of Morbius was released on DVD in 2008. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
As usual, the first thing we do with a Hinchcliffe story is to work out which classic horror films it’s, er, paying homage to. This time, it’s the films of James Whale — Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935). James Whale’s own story is told in Gods and Monsters (1998), where he is played by Doctor Who’s very own Sir Ian McKellen. (He did a voiceover in The Snowmen. That totally counts.)
Fans of the hilarious way Nathan continually mixes up the names of Doctor Who stories will enjoy how, in his incisive analysis of this season’s terrible flaws, he manages to refer to The Android Invasion as Invasion of the Dinosaurs. And Brendan will try and muscle in on the action later on by calling The Seeds of DoomThe Seeds of Death. Aren’t we silly?
For once, Elizabeth Sandifer is not actually responsible for the rule Nathan quotes about canon: it’s part of this brilliant anti-canon rant on the sadly defunct Teatime Brutality blog.
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 come round to your house and challenge you to a mind-bending contest. We have all the apparatus here, after all.
The Death of Dr. No
If you’ve been affected by issues raised in this podcast, please contact our new project Bondfinger, which currently just consists of a single a commentary track on Dr. No (1962), with more to come early in September. You can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.
Harry and Benton are back, but no one cares, as robot replicas of Brendan, Nathan and Richard trudge through Terry Nation’s penultimate Doctor Who story, The Android Invasion.
Buy the story!
The Android Invasion was released on DVD in 2012. In the UK and Australia, it was released as part of the UNIT Files box set, along with Invasion of the Dinosaurs (Amazon UK). It was released on its own in the US (Amazon US).
Notes and links
We’re going to put you through a whole lot of terrible vintage televsion in this episode’s shownotes, so are you sitting comfortably? Then let’s begin.
Nathan’s phrase “robot replica” was shamelessly lifted from an episode of Steven Moffat’s Press Gang called UnXpected, in which the eponymous gang encounter the fictional hero of a terrible, terrible 70s science fiction TV series. Which is probably just a coincidence.
Such fans will also enjoy The Avengers episode The Hour that Never Was, not because of robot replicas, because there aren’t any, but because it’s just superb.
And such fans will be completely overwhelmed by these Six Million Dollar Man episodes: Steve Austin fights a robot replica of someone else in Day of the Robot, and there’s a robot woman with a Sarah-from-the-Part-2-cliffhanger face in the Bionic Woman crossover Kill Oscar.
Fans of robot replicas of English villages will enjoy the Danger Man episode Colony Three.
No one at all will enjoy Terry Nation’s first Avengers episode Invasion of the Earthmen, which was described by the Avengers Forever website as “one of the worst classics Avengers episodes of all time”.
This week we discuss Pyramids of Mars, a classic Hinchcliffe story that comes in the top ten in every reputable fan poll. Naturally enough, Nathan doesn’t like it.
Buy the story!
Pyramids of Mars was released on DVD way back in 2004. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Links and notes
Well, it’s a Hinchcliffe/Holmes story, so let’s get the sources out of the way: The Riddle of the Sands (1903) by Erskine Childers is a rollicking adventure about an impeding German invasion, and The Secret Garden (1911) by Frances Hodgson Burnett is a beloved children’s book about why doctors cannot be trusted.
Michael Bilton’s Collins the manservant impobably survives the conflagration in Part 4, and goes on many years later to do for Audrey fforbes-Hamilton in To The Manor Born (1979).
Fans of both friction and lubrication will enjoy, among other things, the Journal of Tribology.
Follow us!
Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard’s Twitter account has been locked in a pyramid for millenia with only robots, forcefields and deadly missiles for company. You can follow the podcast on Twitter as @FTEpodcast.
In a strange universe, in the distant future, the President, Vice-President and Treasurer of the Prentis Hancock Appreciation Society, Brendan, Richard and Nathan, meet to discuss shower curtains, detergent bottles and undeserved survival in Planet of Evil.
Buy the stories!
Planet of Evil was released on DVD in 2007/2008. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
In Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris (1961), the members of a scientific expedition are studied and psychologically traumatised by the sentient ocean of an alien planet.
Ponti is played by Louis Mahoney, who also appears in Frontier in Space and Blink, but perhaps he is most famous as a doctor in the Fawlty Towers episode, The Germans.
Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard’s Twitter account has fallen into a black pond full of antimatter. You can follow the podcast on Twitter as @FTEpodcast.
This week, we’re high in the misty Highlands, out by the purple islands, being attacked by Zygons, Scotland the Brave!
Buy the stories!
Terror of the Zygons was finally released on DVD in 2013. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Terrance Dicks’s novelisation, Doctor Who and the Loch Ness Monster, was re-released to celebrate the 50th anniversary, and so it’s still actually in print. Hooray! (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
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 Angus Ferguson McRanald round to your house to play the bagpipes and drastically lower your property prices.
And coming on 1 August…
Check out our new project: Bondfinger. You can keep up with all the news on Twitter and Facebook. One week to go!
As our flight through Tom Baker’s first season comes to an end, we pull on a latex mask, strap on some bombs, fill our pockets with gold dust and drop down into Wookey Hole to discuss Revenge of the Cybermen.
Buy the stories!
Revenge of the Cybermen was released on DVD in 2010. It can be bought by itself in the US (Amazon US), but in the UK and Australia it was released in a box set along with Silver Nemesis (Amazon UK).
Links and notes
In Unnatural Selection, a Season 2 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Dr Pulaski (Diana Muldaur) is cured of some terrible aging makeup by a quick trip through the matter transporters. Coincidence? Probably.
The 1970s Japanese TV Series Saiyūki was dubbed into English by the BBC and broadcast under the title Monkey in the UK and Australia, with David Collings (Vorus) as the eponymous Monkey God. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation often ran it in the traditional 6.30 PM weekday timeslot that rightfully belonged to Doctor Who.
Brendan’s mysterious claim that Kellman was a collector of James Bond memorabilia will become clear if you just check out this page here.
Cottage Under Siege was a brilliant Doctor Who fanzine from the wilderness years, edited by Neil Corry and Gareth Roberts. There were three issues, published in 1993 and 1994. I’d love to see it again. Anyone?
The Doctor Who Monster Book, by Terrance Dicks, was published by Target Books in 1975. It was Nathan’s first introduction to Doctor Who, so we have that to thank it for. It is, sadly, currently out of print.
Harry Sullivan’s War, by Ian Marter, was a spy thriller published by Target Books in 1986, in the same month as Marter’s death. It’s out of print too, but if you’re keen you can almost certainly get hold of a second-hand copy through Amazon.
Brendan
I, Davros is a series of four Big Finish audios chronicling Davros’s life from his teens up until the events of Genesis of the Daleks.
Follow us!
Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard did have a Twitter account once, but he spoke to it in ALGOL that one time and it exploded. You can follow the podcast on Twitter as @FTEpodcast.
Our weekly flight through Tom Baker’s first season continues with an episode made entirely of thirty foot thick reinforced concrete. That’s right, it’s time for that 1975 classic, Genesis of the Daleks!
Buy the story!
Genesis of the Daleks was released on DVD way back in 2006. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Links and notes
Commedia dell’arte is a genre of theatrical comedy featuring an array of various stock characters. It dates from 16th century Italy, but is based on a tradition that goes all the way back to Greek New Comedy from the end of the fourth century BC. So does that make Davros just the latest iteration of Pantalone?
Severin is the hero of Venus in Furs (1870), a novella written by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, who gave his name to something called masochism. Probably best not to look that word up on Google.
Sadly, I’m unable to locate the Parliamentary speech made by a Conservative MP in the 1990s, in which he quoted Davros’s virus speech from Part 5 of this story. Fact fans will be able to corroborate its historicity, however, by referring to Miles and Wood’s About Time volume 4. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
This week, Flight Through Entirety is on location in Dartmoor, testing our resistance to fear, burning, pressure, fluid deprivation and immersion in liquids, as we discuss the third story of Tom Baker’s first season, The Sontaran Experiment.
Buy the story!
The Sontaran Experiment was released on DVD in 2006/2007. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Links and notes
Fans of posh white people living in orbital space stations will enjoy The Ark in Space, of course, and also Elysium (2013), which makes reasonably good use of Jodie Foster, whatever Brendan says.
Dr Josef Mengele worked as an SS Officer in Auschwitz and performed brutal and sadistic experiments on some of the prisoners, as well as assigning many to the gas chambers.
Todd has given that helmic regulator quite a twist, I’m afraid, and we’ve found ourselves in the year 16,087, on a space station being menaced by bubble wrap and fibreglass ants. And still it’s one of the best Doctor Who stories to date. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you The Ark in Space.
Buy the story!
The Ark in Space Special Edition was released on DVD in 2013. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
The novelisation, Doctor Who and the Ark in Space, written by Ian Marter himself, was re-released to celebrate Doctor Who’s 50th anniversary in 2013. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Links and notes
Fans of this story and of Revelation of the Daleks will enjoy a delicious serving of Soylent Green (1973). (Spoilers: It’s people.)
Sorry, dear listeners, we don’t have any pictures of Ian Marter being giantly muscular. And don’t think I didn’t spend time looking.
J. V. McConnell, (1962) “Memory transfer through cannibalism in planarians”, Journal of Neuropsychiatry 3 suppl 1 542-548. (See, we can be academically rigorous if we put our minds to it.)
I’m not sure that Ridley Scott has ever actually admitted to ripping off this story in his film Alien (1979), but that hasn’t stopped people from speculatingaboutthepossibility.
We haven’t yet managed to upload Todd’s interview with Lis Sladen, but we promise we’re working on it. Keep an eye out for an announcement in the shownotes over the next few episodes. In the meantime, you can enjoy Lis Sladen’s second appearance in this 1972 episode of Z Cars, directed by The Underwater Menace’s Julia Smith.
Follow us!
Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard adores all of you and can’t wait to chat to each and every one of you in person. You can follow the podcast on Twitter as @FTEpodcast.
