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!
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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.
We have a new Doctor, and a new release schedule. In the first weekly episode of Flight Through Entirety, Brendan, Nathan, Richard and Todd, the sort of girls who give motorcars pet names, discuss Tom Baker’s first ever Doctor Who story, Robot. Please do not resist. We do not wish to cause you unnecessary pain.
If, like me, you’re disappointed that Miss Bassey won’t be singing the theme to the next Bond film, SPECTRE, you can console yourself by remembering the valiant It’s Got To Be Bassey campaign. Bless you, boys.
Some moments in this story are reminiscent of Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke’s second-season Avengers episode The Mauritius Penny, which exists on YouTube in its, er, entirety.
In yet another Very Special Episode, Todd joins Brendan, Richard and Nathan for a retrospective of the Pertwee Era. Liz, Jo or Sarah? Peladon, Spiridon or Exxilon? And, the most important question of all, which 70s sitcom would have been most improved if they’d only had the foresight to cast our very own Richard Stone?
Linx
We mention, with frank admiration, two novels by David McIntee: a Virgin Missing Adventure, The Dark Path, featuring the Second Doctor, Jamie, Victoria and the Master, as well as a BBC Past Doctor Adventure, The Face of the Enemy, in which, while the Doctor and Jo are visiting Peladon, the UNIT team join up with Barbara and Ian to fight the Master.
Mark Gatiss reads the novelisation of Planet of the Daleks. (Audible US) (Audible UK)
Birds of Prey (2002) was a short-lived American TV series in which three female superheroes join with Batman’s butler to fight metahuman crime in New Gotham City. Which sounds fantastic, but isn’t, apparently.
There’s no need for you to watch Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal in Love Story (1970) now that Richard has given away the ending.
The Queen Spider pays a pivotal role in the appalling 2002 South Park episode Red Hot Catholic Love. She sounds like Eric Cartman doing an impression of the Great One: take a look.
Geoffrey Beevers reads the novelisation of Colony in Space, Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon. (Audible US) (Audible UK)
Fans of the very worst things imaginable will enjoy the robot dog from Battlestar Galactica (1978), which is, alarmingly, played by a chimp in a suit. You can read the appalling history of this character here.
In an alternately languid and lachrymose episode of Flight Through Entirety, Brendan, Richard and Nathan spend a hilarious 30 minutes moaning about The Monster of Peladon, before farewelling Jon Pertwee’s Doctor in Planet of the Spiders. Tears, Sarah Jane? Of course they are!
Buy the stories!
If, after everything we’ve just said, you want to revisit The Monster of Peladon, you’ll be delighted to learn that it was released as part of the box set Peladon Tales in the UK and Australia, and on its own in the US. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Planet of the Spiders was released on DVD in 2011. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Gareth Hunt played Mike Gambit in The New Avengers in 1976–1977, while the role of Steed was played by Patrick Macnee in a corset.
Jon Pertwee’s final memoir I am the Doctor! was published postumously in 1996. It’s out of print, but still available for fabulous amounts of money. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Whodunnit? was a 1970s panel game show thing, which ran on for six seasons on ITV. A murder mystery was acted out, and the celebrity panellists would have to work the identity of the murderer. Jon Pertwee took over from Edward Woodward as compere at the start of the second season. You can get a taste of it from this clip on YouTube. The first five seasons have also been released on DVD.
In the 1990s, BBC Radio released two new audio stories, written by Barry Letts and starring Jon Pertwee, Elisabeth Sladen and Nick Courtney. There were The Paradise of Death and The Ghosts of N-Space, both of which are available on iTunes.
Richard
In 1971, ITC released Jason King, starring Planet of Fire’s Peter Wyngarde as the dashing and indescribably ugly Jason. Buy it on DVD! (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 I’ll come round to your house and draw a picture of a little girl on one of the pages of your favourite Ladybird book.
So, we’ve changed the desktop theme, and we’re ready to start on the delightful Jon Pertwee’s final year on Doctor Who, as we discuss the first three stories of Season 11: The Time Warrior, Invasion of the Dinosaurs and Death to the Daleks. Oh, beshrew me, but I grow fond of this fellow!
Buy the stories!
The Time Warrior was released on DVD in 2007/2008, including an option to watch a version of the story with acceptable special effects. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Invasion of the Dinosaurs, sadly, has no such option. It was released as part of the UNIT Files box set in 2012. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
And finally, Death to the Daleks was released on DVD in 2012. So there’s that. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
The Time Warrior
Mark Gatiss and Katy Manning are among the contributors to the BBC Radio 4 documentary Black Aquarius, which discusses the wave of interest in the occult which washed over British popular culture in the 1970s. Or if that’s no longer available, fans of the 1970s might enjoy Cilla Black singing Aquarius instead.
I searched and searched for the interview with Peter Cushing posted on our Facebook page by friend-of-the-podcast John Edwards Davies. But I couldn’t find it. In the meantime, here’s Peter Cushing being interviewed about the Hammer Horror films by Terry Wogan in 1988.
Moonbase 3 was a BBC science-fiction series designed to be Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts’s escape route from Doctor Who. Dr Elizabeth Sandifer is less than impressed with it.
I wish I could find John Molyneux’s video of dinosaurs snogging to the tune of Je t’aime, but just I can’t. I remember seeing it in the 90s, and it was superb. Anyone who knows where it is, please, please, let me know the URL and I promise I’ll post it.
The novelisation of this story is called The Dinosaur Invasion, and it’s brilliant. It was originally released in 1976 with a fab pop-art cover by Chris Achilleos, and then it was re-released in 1978 with a more conventional cover by Jeff Cummins. You can compare the two here. The audiobook is read by Martin Jarvis, and it’s great as well. (Audible US) (Audible UK)
Death to the Daleks
We discussed Erich Von Däniken’s crazy Chariots of the Gods? a few episodes back. This story, with its tales of Exxilon astronauts building pyramids in Peru, is not the last time that this book will be relevant.
Fans of romping adventure romps will enjoy She, by H. Rider Haggard, first published in 1886. Fans of Ursula Andress will enjoy the film version starring Ursula Andress, first released in 1965.
In a heartbreaking series finale, Brendan, Todd and Nathan say goodbye to Katy Manning, as we discuss naked aliens, two-syllable names, dog-headed maggots and patronising the Welsh. That’s right: it’s Planet of the Daleks and The Green Death. Goodbye, Jo. You were fantastic.
Buy the stories!
Planet of the Daleks was released in 2009/2010 as part of the Dalek War box set. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
The Green Death: Special Edition was released on DVD in (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Planet of the Daleks
Mark Gatiss gets to read his very favourite Target novelisation, Terrance Dicks’s Doctor Who and the Planet of the Daleks. Which is nice. (Audible US) (Audible UK)
David Graham was once of the original Daleks way back in 1964. In 2015, at the age of 88, he reprises his role as Lady Penelope’s chauffer Parker in Thunderbirds Are Go. You can see the trailer for it here.
Brendan mentions a very rude re-edit of Jon Pertwee reading the Planet of the Daleks novelisation. It’s by the Doctor Who Breastoration Team, so you’ve been warned.
And here’s a comparison of the 1976 cover of Terrance Dicks’s novelisation and Clayton Hickman’s loving tribute to it for the 2009 DVD release.
The Green Death
Rachael Carson’s 1962 novel Silent Spring talks about the damage caused to the environment by the use of pesticides. We talked about it when we discussed Planet of the Giants, oh, so long ago. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Todd picked the Sarah Jane Adventures season 4 serial The Death of the Doctor. It’s a DVD extra on The Green Death: Special Edition, so you might already have a copy without even realising it!
Brendan
The Big Finish Companion Chronicle Find and Replace, features Katy Manning playing both a future Jo Grant and the inimitable Iris Wildthyme.
Nathan
In 2015, Russell T Davies had three linked shows on Channel 4 in the UK: Cucumber, Banana and Tofu. Cucumber follows the story of Henry Best, a 46-year-old gay man living in Manchester, Banana is an anthology show, mostly featuring younger queer characters from Cucumber, and Tofu consists of actors from the other two shows and ordinary people discussing issues of sex and sexuality.
It’s the Doctor’s tenth birthday, but we get the presents, as we discuss non-existent Time Lord heroes, the inestimable Cheryl Hall, and large and savage reptiles in The Three Doctors, Carnival of Monsters and Frontier in Space. Thank you Miss Grant, we’ll let you know!
Buy the stories!
The Three Doctors was released as a Special Edition in 2012 — by itself in the US (Amazon US), and as part of the Revisitations 3 box set in the UK and Australia (Amazon UK).
Similarly, Carnival of Monsters was released in 2012 — by itself in the US (Amazon US), and as part of the Revisitations 2 box set in the UK and Australia (Amazon UK).
Frontier in Space was released in 2009/2010 as part of the Dalek War box set. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
The Three Doctors
Guy Crayford, from The Android Invasion, is famous for never looking under his eyepatch to discover that his eye isn’t actually missing. Is he as careless about his personal appearance as Omega is?
The Gell Guards look like a slightly more cuddly version of Sigmund the Sea Monster, a horrifying Saturday morning TV show from the 70s by the equally horrifying Sid and Marty Krofft.
Fans of inexplicable time paradoxes that drive Todd crazy will enjoy the first Big Finish Paul McGann audio Storm Warning, which features the real-life doomed airship R101, and its only survivor, India Fisher’s Charley Pollard.
And it’s time for the end of Season 9 of Doctor Who, and so Brendan, Richard and Nathan explore the weighty themes of colonialism and utter nonsense, as we discuss The Mutants and The Time Monster. Simmer down, Stu!
The Time Monster was relesed in the US in 2010 (Amazon US). In the UK and Australia, it was only released as part of the Myths and Legends Box Set, which also includes the rightfully unloved Underworld and The Horns of Nimon, which I secretly quite like. Shut up. (Amazon UK)
The Mutants
The Marshal of Solos is eerily reminiscent of everyone’s favourite wartime reactionary cartoon character, Colonel Blimp.
We haven’t mentioned this for a while, so I guess it’s time for About Time by Tat Wood. His Pertwee volume is in its second edition, with heaps more information, and, sadly, heaps less Lawrence Miles. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
The Curse of Peladon novelisation is out of print, and it’s not available as an ebook either. (And why on Earth not?) However, the audiobook is available, narrated by David Troughton. (Audible US) (Audible UK)
Brendan
Reeltime Pictures has rebranded, and it is now selling its video back catalogue as Time Travel TV. Mythmakers #73, which is a 45-minute interview with Robert Sloman can be found here.
We have a competition!
If you would like to win a Target novelisation from our personal collection, just write a comment on our website underneath the post for this episode. We’ll be giving away three books every time we reach the end of a season.
We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes. We’ve got a couple of lovely reviews already, but more reviews will help people to find our podcast and will help us to achieve our ambitions of internet fame. So off you go!
It’s the start of Season 9, and so it’s time for Brendan, Richard and Nathan to grow a terrorist moustache or stick on a military-issue UNIT one and settle back with a sardonic wine and a runny brie to watch Day of the Daleks, The Curse of Peladon and The Sea Devils. Oh, Centauri, stop it!
Buy the stories!
Day of the Daleks was released in 2011 as a Special Edition DVD, with an excitingly remastered version which we discuss in the episode. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
In the UK and Australia, The Curse of Peladon was released in 2010 as part of the decreasingly impressive Peladon Tales Boxset (Amazon UK). It was released separately in the US. (Amazon US)
Again, in the UK and Australia, The Sea Devils was released in 2008 as part of the Beneath the Surface Boxset (Amazon UK). It was released separately in the US. (Amazon US)
Earlier this month, Australian activist group Beyond Green responded to Attorney-General George Brandis’s plan to save details about every Australian’s online activity, by suggesting that we should CC him into every email conversation we have.
(Not that) Louis Marx was responsible for a range of toy Daleks in the 1960s, some of which later found their way into the programme to represent armies of Daleks that the production could actually afford. (See, among others, Planet of the Daleks.)
Here’s Clayton Hickman’s tweet about the poor condition of the Dalek props in Day of the Daleks.
Arcturus, apparently, went on to have a prolific television career, starring as Bernard, part of Queen Asphyxia’s triple husbandoid, in Blackadder’s Christmas Carol.
If you would like to win a Target novelisation from our personal collection, just write a comment on our website underneath the post for this episode. We’ll be giving away three books every time we reach the end of a season.
Brendan, Nathan and Todd return to space after a two-year absence in our last episode on Jon Pertwee’s second season. It’s time to don a hippie frock and visit Colony in Space, and then take a relaxing two-week holiday on location at a sleepy country village beset by The Dæmons!
The Good Life stars The Chief Caretaker and Lady Clemency Eddison as lovable middle-class eccentrics who decide, much like this story’s colonists, to opt out of the capitalist rat-race and live self-sufficiently. You can find Vyvyan’s take on the programme here.
Hornets’ Nest is a five-story audio drama series starring Tom Baker, Richard Franklin as Mike Yates and Captain Dent’s almost-henchwoman Susan Jameson as Mrs Wibbsey. You can watch the official trailer for the series here.
The Dæmons
Fans of weirdly incorrectly used Latin pronouns will enjoy this dictionary entry for the word qui quae quod. Doctor Which?
If you would like to win a Target novelisation from our personal collection, just write a comment on our website underneath the post for this episode. We’ll be giving away three books every time we reach the end of a season.
It’s our second reboot in two years, and to celebrate Richard’s sabbatical in Cambridge, we’re joined by everyone’s favourite ham-fisted bun vendor, Todd “Josephine” Beilby. And we’re discussing the first three stories of Season 8: Terror of the Autons, The Mind of Evil and The Claws of Axos.
Buy the stories!
In England and Australia, Terror of the Autons was released on DVD as part of the Mannequin Mania box set. (Amazon UK). It was released separately in the US. (Amazon US)
Check out Jo’s facial expression on the Mind of Evil DVD cover. And Pertwee looks like he’s just realised he left the gas on. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
The Claws of Axos has had a Special Edition DVD release. So there’s that. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Terror of the Autons
Paul Cornell’s brutal 1993 review of Terror of the Autons from DWB can be found here.
David McIntee’s novel Face of the Enemy has the Master working with UNIT while the Doctor and Jo are off mucking around on Peladon. Oh, and Corporal Bell gets sacked. Here’s El Sandifer’s review.
Richard Franklin wrote a post-UNIT Mike Yates novel called The Killing Stone. You can even hear him reading it aloud, if that’s your thing. (Audible US) (Audible UK). Paul Cornell definitively outed Mike Yates in the 50th Virgin New Adventures Novel Happy Endings.
A work of fiction passes the Bechdel test if it contains a scene where two women talk to each other about something other than a man.
Bill Filer looks like he’s wandered into The Claws of Axos on his way to appearing in The Champions or The Persuaders!.
Brendan mentions the episode of Black Books where Bernard and Manny drunkenly write a children’s book called The Elephant and the Balloon. You can find the entire episode on YouTube.
We have a competition!
If you would like to win a Target novelisation from our personal collection, just write a comment on our website underneath the post for this episode. We’ll be giving away three books every time we reach the end of a season.
As our flight through the first season of post–Doctor WhoDoctor Who comes to a close, Brendan, Richard and Nathan discuss The Ambassadors of Death and fan-favourite Inferno. Hold on tight: there’s never been a bore like this one!
Buy the stories!
The Ambassadors of Death was released on DVD in 2012. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Inferno has had two DVD releases: the original in 2006, and a Special Edition in 2013. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
The Ambassadors…of DEATH!
We’ve mentioned The Ipcress File (1965) before as an inspiration for Doctor Who during this period. Gosh, it’s great. Have you watched it yet?
The Scooby Doo/Doctor Who comic that Brendan mentions can be found here.
Here’s Peter Capaldi and Katy Manning larking around on the TARDIS set. And here’s Peter and Janet Fielding from Janet’s Twitter feed.
Much to Nathan’s horror, the adventures of Dr Liz Shaw continue in the BBV series P.R.O.B.E., which also stars Louise Jameson, Jon Pertwee, Peter Davison, Sylvester McCoy, Terry Molloy, Mark Gatiss and Reece Shearsmith (TV’s Patrick Troughton).
Fans of kissing Peter Davison will enjoy David Walliams and Mark Gatiss in The Kidnappers, which can be found on Disc 1 of The Beginning DVD box set.
Counter–Measures is a Big Finish spin-off series chronicling the further adventures of Group Captain Gilmore, Professor Rachel Jensen and Allison Williams from Remembrance of the Daleks.
And while we’re on the subjects of Mark Gatiss and Big Finish, Richard loves Invaders from Mars, starring Paul McGann and India Fisher.
Fans of digging crazy deep holes into the Earth’s mantle will enjoy this account of the real-world Project Mohole.
Arthur Conan Doyle’s story When the World Screamed (1928), featuring another doomed attempt to drill into the Earth’s mantle, can be read here.
And yet another Big Finish spin-off, starring Christopher Benjamin as Henry Gordon Jago: Jago and Litefoot, soon to enter its tenth season. Great Jumping Jehoshaphat!
Picks of the Week
Brendan
Caroline John reads the Target novelisation of Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters, by Malcolm Hulke. (Audible US) (Audible UK)
Nathan
The recently reissued Target novelisation of Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
As mentioned above, the ITC Entertainment productionUFO — essential for your understanding of genre television of the early 1970s.
Brendan again
The inexplicably fabulous Japanese versions of some early Target novelisations. You can see the covers and the wacky Japanese titles on this site here.
We have a competition!
If you would like to win a Target novelisation from our personal collection, just write a comment on our website underneath the post for this episode. We’ll be giving away three books every time we reach the end of a season.
We’ve jumped a time track only to find ourselves in the 1970s, watching a strange parallel-universe version of our favourite show. Where’s the TARDIS gone? What’s with all these different colours? And, most importantly, what’s happened to the Doctor’s nose? Join us, my dear fellow, as we try to find the answers to some of these questions by watching the first two stories of Jon Pertwee’s first season, Spearhead from Space and Doctor Who and the Silurians.
Buy the stories!
From now on, not only do all the stories exist, but they’ve all been released on DVD. So this bit’s easy.
Spearhead from Space (Amazon US). In the UK, it can be bought as part of the Mannequin Mania box set, which includes Terror of the Autons. A must-have. (Amazon UK)
Doctor Who and the Silurians is published as part of the Beneath the Surface box set, which includes The Sea Devils and Warriors of the Deep (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Spearhead from Space
Kim Catrall, from Sex and the City and, of course, Star Trek VI (1991), played a slightly less lethal and slightly more creepy mannequin in the film, er, Mannequin (1987).
The Avengers and Peter Wyngarde’s Jason King both have a history of strong, fabulous women, but none more strong and fabulous than Caroline John’s Liz Shaw. (Oh, okay, Emma Peel.)
Even in the early 70s, millions of deprived Britons would tune into radio comedies like Round the Horne and The Navy Lark, starring Jon Pertwee.
If you’re thrillingly open-minded, you might enjoy the idea of agalmatophilia, which is a fetish involving sexual attraction to a statue or mannequin. If not, I’m sorry I brought it up.
Terrance Dicks’s novelisation of this story, The Auton Invasion, has been recently re-released as a paperback. It’s also available on the Kindle. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Fans of the moments of gritty realism in 1970s Who might enjoy Steve McQueen in Bullitt (1968), Michael Caine in Get Carter (1971) or Dennis Waterman in The Sweeney. Fans of Pertwee hurtling down the hill in a wheelchair might enjoy the Ealing Comedies of the 1950s.
Captain Kremmen was an important part of Richard and Nathan’s childhood. You can get a taste of it here. Watch it on YouTube. You won’t regret it. (Oh, okay, you might.)
Moonboots and Dinner Suits is Jon Pertwee’s autobiography, first published in 1985. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Doctor Who and the Silurians
Derrick Sherwin and Peter Bryant had an escape plan in the form of Special Project Air. It didn’t really work out though.
Malcolm Hulke’s novelisation of this story, Doctor Who and the Cave-Monsters, was also recently re-released, both in paperback and for the Kindle. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK). Caroline John reads the audiobook, and does a superb impersonations of both Jon Pertwee and Fulton Mackay. (Audible US) (Audible UK)
The New Series Silurians are based very closely on the Voth from the Star Trek: Voyager episode Distant Origin, who were in turn based loosely on the Silurians from this story.
If you would like to win a Target novelisation from our personal collection, just write a comment on our website underneath the post for this episode. We’ll be giving away three books every time we reach the end of a season.
In this Very Special Episode, Brendan, Richard and Nathan are interviewed by Doctor Who convention impresario Todd Beilby about their experience of podcasting their way through Doctor Who in the sixties. Hartnell, Troughton or Cushing? Barbara, Polly or Zoë? (Barbara, obviously.) What’s our favourite story? Our favourite moment? Our favourite villain? Our favourite pratfall? And, most importantly, what have we learned from our flight through entirety?
Special thanks to friend-of-the-podcast Peter Griffiths for his help with the questions.
Links
Anita Sarkeesian’s series Tropes vs Women in Video Games can be found at the Feminist Frequency Website.
Anneke Wills’s autobiographies can all be found and ordered from her website.
Well, it’s literally the end of an era. In our last episode for 2014, we discuss the last two stories of the 1960s, and the last two stories of the Patrick Troughton era, The Space Pirates and The War Games. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!
Buy the stories!
The Space Pirates is the last story with missing episodes. Which is quite a relief. Episode 2 is the only one that remains: you can see it on the Lost in Time box set. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK). An audio version exists, with linking narration by Frazer Hines. (Audible US) (Audible UK)
And Patrick Troughton’s final story, and the last story of the 1960s, The War Games, has been released on DVD in its gloriously restored entirety. It costs nearly $400 on Amazon US for some reason; it’s also available from Amazon UK at a much more sensible price.
The Space Pirates
Fans of slow-moving model spaceships will enjoy Stanley Kubrick’s science fiction masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
Oh! What a Lovely War (1969) is Sir Richard Attenborough’s musical take on World War I, based on a 1963 stage musical.
Journey into Space by Charles Chilton, who also wrote Oh! What a Lovely War, was a science fiction radio series first broadcast on BBC radio between 1953 and 1958. (Philip Hincliffe mentions it in the DVD commentary for The Robots of Death.) It regularly out-rated TV programmes that were on at the same time. Some public-spirited individual has uploaded much of the series to YouTube.
Astrophysicist Fred Hoyle’s novel October the First Is Too Late was first published in 1966. Its world is splintered into different time zones by the effects of radiation or something, much like the battlefields of The War Games.
Matthew Waterhouse’s entertaining autobiography Blue Box Boy. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Richard
Shockingly, Richard’s been watching things other than Doctor Who, including Catweazle, starring the planet Chloris’s very own Geoffrey Bayldon (Amazon US) (Amazon UK), and The Champions, co-created by Dennis Spooner. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
We have a competition!
If you would like to win a Target novelisation from our personal collection, just post a comment on our website underneath the post for this episode. We’ll be giving away three books every time we reach the end of a season.
In this week’s trippy episode, we say hello to Robert Holmes and goodbye to the BBC foam machine, as we discuss two stories from Patrick Troughton’s final season: The Krotons and The Seeds of Death. Smell that hydrogen telluride. Very bracing.
Buy the stories!
For the first time in a very long while, both of the stories we cover this episode exist in their entirety. And they’re both (kind of) worth watching! So off you go:
In the UK and Australia, The Seeds of Death: Special Edition was released on DVD as part of the Revisitations 2 box set, along with Carnival of Monsters and Resurrection of the Daleks. (Amazon UK)
The Krotons
Prison in Space by Dick Sharples was a truly horrifying script, mercifully dropped by the production team in favour of The Krotons. It was revived, unwisely, as a Big Finish audio drama, and released as part of the Second Doctor Box Set in 2010.
More horrific sexism can be seen in The Worm that Turned, a series of “comedy” sketches from the 1980 season of The Two Ronnies. (Which is otherwise pretty great.)
The Seeds of Death
Let’s get all literary for a moment. Brendan mentions The Machine Stops (1909) by E. M. Forster, an English writer perhaps best known for A Room with a View. In this short story, Forster imagines a future where humanity is completely dependent on technology, and the terrible consequences when that technology fails.
Lords of the Red Planet was Brian Hayles’s original script for this part of Season 6. It was dropped by the production team, only to be revived as a Big Finish audio drama in 2013.
We have a competition!
If you would like to win a Target novelisation from our personal collection, just post a comment on our website underneath the post for this episode. We’ll be giving away three books every time we reach the end of a season.
All set, Jimmy? It’s time for Flight Through Entirety to enter the final season of the 1960s, as we discuss a rapidly-improving and largely foam-free trio of stories: The Dominators, The Mind Robber and The Invasion.
Buy the episodes!
For once, all three of the stories we discuss in this episode have been released on DVD. So you can actually watch them. (Although, in some cases, you might not want to.)
The Dominators episode 3 was returned to the archives in 1978, so we have all of it. Sigh. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
The Mind Robber has always existed. It was repeated on ABC-TV in Australia in 1986. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
The Invasion is still missing episodes 1 and 4, but they were expertly animated by Cosgrove Hall for the story’s DVD release in 2006. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
The Dominators
Fans of Joan and Jackie Collins won’t want to miss their fabulous biopic by French & Saunders.
Oh, God, what else? Elizabeth Sandifer’s review is a good place to go for a discussion of the horrible politics in this story. (“Not only is it an attack on the entire ethos that underlies the Doctor as a character, it’s an attempt to twist and pervert the show away from what it is and towards something ugly, cruel, and just plain unpleasant.” Yeesh.)
The Mind Robber
George Orwell’s essay on Boys’ Weeklies discusses the politics of the kind of stories written by the Master of Fiction before he was kidnapped by, er, whatever.
According to The Living Handbook of Narratology, metalepsis is “any intrusion by the extradiegetic narrator or narratee into the diegetic universe (or by diegetic characters into a metadiegetic universe, etc.), or the inverse”. And this story has metalepsis in spades. Don’t tell me we’re not educational.
Edith Nesbit’s Five Children and It, which sounds like a terrifying premise for a Stephen King sequel, is actually a famous English children’s book, published in 1902. It’s a part of the tradition of children’s fantasy fiction which will eventually give rise to Doctor Who.
You should also ignore Nathan and read Gulliver’s Travels. It’s really clever and funny and entertaining, particularly the bit where Gulliver puts out a fire in the Lilliputian palace by weeing on it. No really.
The Invasion
Richard identifies the inspiration for the incidental music as The Ipcress File (1965), a brilliant kind of anti-Bond spy film starring Michael Cain. Just watch it.
Fans of Isobel Watkins and her modelling aspirations might enjoy Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up (1996), a groovy film in which a very now young photographer, creeping on a mysterious woman in a park, accidentally photographs a murder.
We have a competition!
If you would like to win one of three 1970s Target novelisations from our personal collection, just post a comment on our website underneath the post for this episode.
We’ve reached the end of Season 5, so pull up a bernalium rod, switch on the sexual air supply, and get ready to discuss the last two stories of the season, Fury from the Deep and The Wheel in Space. And just you watch your lip or I’ll put you across my knee and larrup you.
Buy the stories!
No full episodes of Fury from the Deep survive. Which is terribly sad, obviously. Still, you can get the soundtrack, narrated, as always, by Frazer Hines. (Audible US) (Audible UK)
The two surviving episodes of The Wheel in Space, Episodes 3 and 6, are available on the Lost in Time box set. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK). An audio version is also available, beautifully narrated by the delightfully pert Wendy Padbury. (Audible US) (Audible UK)
Fury from the Deep
Richard mentions Adult Swim’s Too Many Cooks. I can’t tell you anything about it. Just watch it.
Fury from the Deep is based on ideas from Victor Pemberton’s own 1966 radio drama, The Slide, starring future Time Lords Maurice Denham and Roger Delgado, as well as Pemberton’s long–time partner and one–time Buddhist monk David Spenser. You can read a review of it here. And you can even buy it! (Audible US) (Audible UK)
H. P. Lovecraft is a twentieth-century racist and horror writer, who is a huge influence on Doctor Who, particularly in the Hinchcliffe Era. His most famous short story is The Call of Cthulhu.
Victor Pemberton also wrote The Pescatons, an audio drama starring Tom Baker and Lis Sladen, which was released as an LP in 1976. Here’s Elizabeth Sandifer’s review.
Brendan theorises that Star Trek was a possible influence on Wheel. But, fascinatingly, Richard mentions two possible influences on Star Trek itself. The first is Raumpatrouille Orion, a German science-fiction precursor to Trek from the 1960s. You can watch the entire first episode online. It’s in German. It’s fabulously modernist and spectacular. The second is Conquest of Space (1955).
Victoria Waterfield meets the Doctor again in the crazy multicoloured form of Colin Baker in the Big Finish audio Power Play.
FACT FANS! If there’s anything at all you need to know about Doctor Who in any of its incarnations, consult the TARDIS Data Core. There’s even an app for it on the iOS App Store, and an Android app on Google Play. (Sadly, these apps no longer exist.)
Richard
Victor Pemberton’s novelisation of Fury from the Deep is out of print, and mysteriously unavailable as an e-book on Amazon. However, there is an audio version, read by David Troughton, who does a lovely impression of his father’s Doctor Who. (Audible US) (Audible UK)
Nathan again
An audiobook of Carnival of Monsters has recently been released, read by television’s Katy Manning. (Audible US) (Audible UK)
We have a competition!
If you would like to win one of three 1970s Target novelisations from our personal collection, just post a comment on our website underneath the post for this episode.
