Did you know that if we had a nickel for every Doctor Who episode in which you have to pay the Company for the right to breathe, we’d have ten American cents? Which still wouldn’t be enough — even with Kate Orman’s help — to pay for today’s supply of Oxygen.
Notes and links
A clear inspiration for this episode, and for the opening scene in particular, is Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity (2013), which was a film about George Clooney and Sandra Bullock tumbling through space while discussing their relationship or something. It was huge at the time but it seems to have vanished without a trace. So it goes.
At the end of the episode, when Nardole joins Bill and the Doctor in a hug, he signals his intention (delightfully), by saying ‘Cuddle’. The Blu-ray subtitles incorrectly render this as ‘Glad though. [Chuckles]’. Neither line is in Mathieson’s script.
You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s a summary of where we’re up to right now.
500 Year Diary is our latest new Doctor Who podcast, going back through the history of the show and examining new themes and ideas. Its first season came out early this year, under the title New Beginnings. Check it out. It will be back for a second season early in 2025.
The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire has broadcast our hot takes on every new episode of Doctor Who since November last year, and it will be back again in 2025 for Season 2.
On 5 October, Blakes 7 came to BFI Southbank for a screening of the newly remastered HD versions of Seek–Locate–Destroy and Orac and a Q & A with Jan Chappell and Sally Knyvette. And Maximum Power was there. So check out the latest episode with our hot takes on the new versions of these beloved fan classics; we’ll be back with another hot take when the new Series 1 box set is released.
Last weekend, on Startling Barbara Bain, we faced what is perhaps the most memorable and terrifying episode of Space: 1999 ever with our usual mix of valour and prosecco. It’s Dragon’s Domain.
And finally there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. This week, they went back in time to watch the crew of Star Trek: Discovery start off their second season in the far, far future in Kobayashi Maru.
Episode 287: Cowed or Crushed
· Recorded on Sunday 25 August 2024 · Download (55.6 MB)
This week, six millennials are astonishingly successful finding a large house to rent — the power points don’t work, there’s no mobile reception and the walls are quite literally made of alien woodlice. Oh, and it collapses into dust on their first night. It’s Knock Knock.
Notes and links
Brendan quickly identifies two of the film antecedents of this story: The Evil Dead (1981), with its demonically possessed trees, and Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), whose antagonist has a complex relationship with his mother.
Knock Knock was written by Mike Bartlett, who was famous for a TV series called Dr Foster (2015), starring Suranne Jones as a woman who starts to suspect her husband of infidelity.
David Suchet’s first appearance in a Poirot property starring Peter Ustinov as Poirot — the 1985 made-for-TV movie Thirteen at Dinner (1985), an adaptation of Christie’s Lord Edgeware Dies (1933), in which Suchet played Inspector Japp.
Simon refers to the vault-related theorising of Whovians, a comedy aftershow that accompanied Series 10, 11 and 12 of Doctor Who on ABC-TV in Australia. Our very own Adam Richard was a regular in the show’s first two seasons.
And finally, Brendan recklessly introduces us to another possible inspiration for this episode, the 1977 film Death Bed: The Bed That Eats, which we would all have been better off not knowing about.
You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s a summary of where we’re up to right now.
500 Year Diary is our latest new Doctor Who podcast, going back through the history of the show and examining new themes and ideas. Its first season came out early this year, under the title New Beginnings. Check it out. It will be back for a second season early in 2025.
The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire has broadcast our hot takes on every new episode of Doctor Who since November last year, and it will be back again in 2025 for Season 2.
On 5 October, Blakes 7 came to BFI Southbank for a screening of the newly remastered HD versions of Seek–Locate–Destroy and Orac and a Q & A with Jan Chappell and Sally Knyvette. And Maximum Power was there. So check out today’s newly released episode with our hot takes on the new versions of these beloved fan classics.
And finally there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. This week, they went back in time to see the origin story of breakout character Peanut Hamper in Star Trek: The Next Generation’s The Quality of Life.
Episode 286: Pearl Clutching
· Recorded on Sunday 25 August 2024 · Download (46.1 MB)
This week, we’re joined by Melvin Peña for a day trip to the Thames Frost Fair in 1814, expecting a jolly afternoon of daydrinking, sword swallowers and juicy sheep hearts, only to find ourselves tied to a bomb and engaged in an intriguing discussion about race, class, death and the ethics of killing. It’s Thin Ice.
Like Martha before her and Ruby after her, Bill is concerned that treading on a butterfly in the past will change the present in terrible ways. That concern comes from Ray Bradbury’s 1952 short story A Sound of Thunder, which you should really just go off and read right now.
In Bong Joon-ho’s post-apocalyptic film Snowpiercer (2013), the poor people who live in the back of the train are fed on glistening black protein bars, which we discover are made from ground-up cockroaches.
Melvin alludes to the Slave Compensation Act 1837, which authorised the payment of about £20 million in compensation to slave owners in the British colonies. This sum was finally paid off when the British Government restructured its debt in 2015. (The people who had been enslaved didn’t receive any compensation, of course.)
You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s a summary of where we’re up to right now.
500 Year Diary is our latest new Doctor Who podcast, going back through the history of the show and examining new themes and ideas. Its first season came out early this year, under the title New Beginnings. Check it out. It will be back for a second season early in 2025.
The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire has broadcast our hot takes on every new episode of Doctor Who since November last year, and it will be back again in 2025 for Season 2.
And finally there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. Last week, they dropped in on the Q Continuum in an episode of Star Trek: Voyager called Death Wish.
Episode 285: The Ones That Make You Want to Raise Your Game
· Recorded on Sunday 11 August 2024 · Download (71.3 MB)
In a distant future where all life has been destroyed by technology, Brendan, James and Nathan sit down with their friend Bjay from The Bjay BJ Game Show to record a podcast about a Doctor Who episode called Smile.
Brendan admits that he is a regular reader of Lance Parkin’s AHistory: An Unauthorised History of the Doctor Who Universe, which is an impressively quixotic attempt to harmonise all the televised stories, spinoffs and deuterocanonical material into one vast, sprawling ridiculous chronology. We thank him for his service.
Grey goo is a kind of technical term for the possibility that everything on Earth might be consumed by rogue nanotechnology. The term was first coined in 1986 by Kim Eric Drexler in his book Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology. It’s also the basis of Michael Crichton’s 2002 novel Prey.
Erewhon: or, Over the Range (1872) by Samuel Butler is a satirical description of a utopian society, which bans machines for fear that they might become conscious and self-replicating.
You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s a summary of where we’re up to right now.
500 Year Diary is our latest new Doctor Who podcast, going back through the history of the show and examining new themes and ideas. Its first season came out early this year, under the title New Beginnings. Check it out. It will be back for a second season early in 2025.
The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire has broadcast our hot takes on every new episode of Doctor Who since November last year, and it will be back again in 2025 for Season 2.
This week’s guest on Flight Through Entirety is Bjay Hobbs, who can be heard regularly discussing indie games with our very own Brendan Jones on The Bjay BJ Game Show. In their most recent episode, they discuss The Talos Principle (2014), a puzzle-based game that raises questions about identity, consciousness and religion. The episode Brendan mentions on Lost in Play will actually be out in a couple of weeks.
Brendan, Richard and Steven have just released another episode of their Avengers podcast The Three Handed Game. It’s the third episode of their triptych The Cool War, covering an early Season 2 episode called The Decapod, featuring Julie Stevens as Venus Smith, with a guest appearance by Philip Madoc, (probably) not in fishnets.
The Blakes 7 podcast Maximum Power started recording its Series D coverage yesterday; new episodes will be released in December.
And finally there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. Last week, they paid a visit to an idyllic bird person planet with deranged exocomp Peanut Hamper in an episode of Lower Decks called A Mathematically Perfect Redemption.
Episode 284: Happy to Be There
· Recorded on Sunday 4 August 2024 · Download (58.0 MB)
Episode 283 · The Pilot · Sunday 15 September 2024
We’re back for the first episode of Peter Capaldi’s final year — a simple, well-told tale of Girl Meets Girl, Girl Becomes Puddle, Girl Loses Girl and, finally, Girl Goes off with Her Tutor on a Series of Adventures in Time and Space. Welcome aboard, Bill Potts. It’s The Pilot.
Unsurprisingly, Nathan is wrong about the music cue that greets Bill when she arrives in the TARDIS. It’s not River Song’s theme at all: it’s Murray Gold’s iconic A Madman with a Box, which you should listen to immediately.
Peter mentions the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Skin of Evil as another TV episode containing a high-concept puddle. It’s famously not very good, as Joe and Nathan discovered in this episode of Untitled Star Trek Project.
And you’ll be unsurprised to learn, again, that Nathan is wrong about John Peel: he doesn’t claim that Genesis of the Daleks took place in 1831. However, TARDIS Wikia dates it as set in the 15th or 16th centuries, probably because in The Daleks, one of the Daleks claims that there were two races on Skaro 500 years ago. But the whole idea is absolutely enervating, don’t you think?
The squishy thing Todd mentions as a possible companion for the Doctor is, of course, Mr Huffle from The Return of Doctor Mysterio. The Doctor does apparently take it with him at the end of the story.
Douglas is Cancelled is Steven Moffat’s most recent TV show — a four-part miniseries starring Hugh Bonneville, Karen Gillan and Alex Kingston, about a middle-aged male TV personality who is overheard making a sexist joke at a friend’s wedding. Worth a look.
You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s a summary of where we’re up to right now.
500 Year Diary is our latest new Doctor Who podcast, going back through the history of the show and examining new themes and ideas. Its first season came out early this year, under the title New Beginnings. Check it out. It will be back for a second season early in 2025.
The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire has broadcast our hot takes on every new episode of Doctor Who since November last year, and it will be back again in 2025 for Season 2.
There’s also Startling Barbara Bain, our Space: 1999 commentary podcast. We’ve covered the first six episodes of Series 1; Episode 7 should be out some times in the next couple of weeks.
The Blakes 7 podcast Maximum Power has been on hiatus for a while, but arrangements for the recording of Series D are well underway, and we will definitely have some new episodes for you before the end of the year.
And finally there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. Last week, they took a trip with Kirk, Spock and McCoy to the Planet of Space Ancient Rome in Bread and Circuses.
Episode 283: Just a Person
· Recorded on Sunday 28 July 2024 · Download (59.8 MB)
Episode 282 · The Return of Doctor Mysterio · Thursday 25 July 2024
This Christmas in July, we are joined by Adam Richard on a sleigh ride that flies right past the Marvel Cinematic Universe and lands on Margot Kidder’s rooftop in 1978. Which is, it turns out, not a bad place to be. It’s The Return of Doctor Mysterio.
Notes and links
Steven Moffat’s clear inspiration here is Richard Donner’s Superman: The Movie (1978), an astonishingly well-made and entertaining superhero movie starring Christopher Reeve as Clark and the wonderful Margot Kidder as Lois. If you haven’t seen it, put your phone down at once and go and find a copy.
In Episode 271: Eels with Jazz Hands, we mentioned the previous life of director Ed Bazalgette as a member of 1980s one-hit wonder The Vapors. The one hit in question was called Turning Japanese, and it was a massive thing at the time.
Ang Lee’s unloved film Hulk (2003) liberally used comic book panels to transition between scenes (in a way far more sophisticated than what’s attempted in this Doctor Who episode). This brief video will give you the idea.
It was Adam’s job to watch Series 10 of Doctor Who as a regular on the ABC’s Doctor Who aftershow Whovians, which covered Series 10 to 12 and screened a day or so after each episode aired.
Attractive Coal Hill Academy student Ram loses a leg in the first episode of the Doctor Who spin-off Class, which screened over eight weeks leading up to the start of December 2016. And then no one ever mentioned it or even thought about it ever again.
Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1993) was an insanely popular television show in the 1990s, starring Teri Hatcher as Lois Lane and featuring the incredibly beautiful Dean Cain as Clark. (He’s a horrid alt-right nutcase these days, which is a grim warning to all of us, I suppose.)
Adam Richard’s daily Doctor Who podcast is called Adam Richard Has a Theory: it’s the place to find Adam’s hot-to-lukewarm takes and wild-to-really-quite-sensible theories about everything Doctor Who.
You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s a summary of where we’re up to right now.
500 Year Diary is our latest new Doctor Who podcast, going back through the history of the show and examining new themes and ideas. Its first season came out early this year, under the title New Beginnings. Check it out. It will be back for a second season early in 2025.
The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire has broadcast our hot takes on every new episode of Doctor Who since November last year, and it will be back again in 2025 for Season 2.
There’s also Startling Barbara Bain, our Space: 1999 commentary podcast. We’ve covered the first five episodes of Series 1; Episode 6 should be out in the next couple of weeks.
The Three Handed Game is a podcast on The Avengers and The New Avengers. In the most recent episode, Brendan, Richard and Steven watched an episode from Diana Rigg’s first series, Two’s a Crowd.
Brendan’s gaming podcast is called The Bjay BJ Game Show, and in its most recent episode, Brendan and Bjay visited some tilt-shifted Minecraft-inspired holiday destinations in The Touryst.
And finally there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. Last week, we visited the centre of the galaxy and met up with the Devil (who seemed nice) in an inexpensively produced episode of The Animated Series called The Magicks of Megas-Tu.
Episode 282: Finger on the Zeitgeist
· Recorded on Sunday 21 July 2024 · Download (45.6 MB)
Episode 281 · The Power of the Daleks · Sunday 14 April 2024
A big week for beginnings this week, with a new Doctor, a new origin story for the Daleks, and a whole new approach to defeating the bad guys. Oh, and a new podcast to discuss them all on. So let’s welcome Patrick Troughton to the studio floor, as we discuss The Power of the Daleks.
Notes and links
The most recent Blu-ray release of The Power of the Daleks was the Special Edition in 2020, which includes a compilation of all the surviving footage, including material shot on an 8mm film camera pointing at a TV screen. This material was also included on the Lost in Time DVD release way back in 2004.
Simon also mentions a site which chronicles the upsetting history of Doctor Who’s missing episodes. It’s called The Destruction of Time, and it’s well worth reading, if a bit dispiriting at times.
The Omnirumour was a series of rumours arising during 2013 that as many as 90 missing Doctor Who episodes had been found and were ready for return to the BBC Archives, possibly as part of the 50th anniversary celebrations. This didn’t happen, obviously, but we did at least get nine episodes: five episodes of The Enemy of the World and four of The Web of Fear.
Let’s continue the tradition: here is Elizabeth Sandifer’s essay on this story, which (inevitably) discusses the importance of mercury to the new Doctor’s character.
James very thoughtfully plugs Brendan and Richard’s new podcast about The Avengers, called The Three-Handed Game, in which they are joined by old friend of the podcast Steven B to discuss episodes from different eras in the history of the show.
At the end of the episode, Simon recounts the story of the gradual revelation of The Power of the Daleks throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s. Among the things he mentions are Peter Haining’s Doctor Who: A Celebration (1983), the Radio TimesDoctor Who 20th Anniversary Special (also 1983), The Making of Doctor Who by Malcolm Hulke and Terrance Dicks (2nd edition, 1976), an edition of DreamWatch Bulletin (possibly issue 121 in December 1993) announcing the upcoming publication of the telesnaps in Doctor Who Magazine, and the discovery of some clips from this story in an Australian TV Show called Perspective: C for Computer.
For now at least, 500 Year Diary shares a social media presence with Flight Through Entirety. So you can follow us on Mastodon and Bluesky, as well as on X and Facebook. Our website is at 500yeardiary.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll write next week’s shownotes in a completely incomprehensible acrostic code.
And more
You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s a summary of where we’re up to right now.
Flight Through Entirety will be back at Christmas in July to discuss The Return of Doctor Mysterio, and we’ll be covering Peter Capaldi’s final year on the show after that, concluding with Twice Upon a Time at Christmas.
The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire will be back a couple of days after the screening of the first two episodes of Season 1 of the Ncuti Gatwa Era on 11 May. In the meantime, you can hear our hot takes on the fourepisodeswe’veseen of Doctor Who’s second RTD era.
There’s also Startling Barbara Bain, our Space: 1999 commentary podcast. We’ve covered the first four episodes of Series 1; Episode 5 should be out in the next couple of weeks.
Maximum Power will be back later in the year to talk about the final series of Blakes 7.
Episode 280 · The Husbands of River Song · Monday 25 December 2023
No, you can’t. They’ve been there for millions of years, through storms and floods and wars and time. Nobody really understands where the music comes from. It’s probably something to do with the precise positions, the distance between both towers. Even the locals aren’t sure. All anyone will ever tell you is that when the wind stands fair and the night is perfect, when you least expect it but always when you need it the most… there is a Song.
This week, the Doctor and River live happily ever after, and Jack Shanahan joins us to discuss The Husbands of River Song.
Notes and links
Brendan mentions that this story was recorded after Alex Kingston started working with Big Finish on her long-running series The Diary of River Song. In fact, the first volume of that series is, like The Husbands of River Song, released in December 2015.
We get our first sight of Peter Capaldi’s wedding ring on 4 August 2013, during a close-up of his right hand in Doctor Who Live: The Next Doctor, the thirty-minute live broadcast in which Peter Capaldi is unveiled to the world as the Twelfth Doctor.
Night and the Doctor is a series of five minisodes released on the Blu-ray box set of Series 6 — Bad Night, Good Night, First Night, and the completely unrelated Up All Night. In Last Night, the Doctor runs into a future version of himself, with a new haircut and a suit, about to take River to their last date on the planet Darillium.
Speaking of Moffat recycling his own ideas, Sally Sparrow is first featured in a short story in the 2006 Doctor Who Annual called What I Did on My Christmas Holidays by Sally Sparrow, in which Sally receives messages from the Ninth Doctor, who is trapped without the TARDIS in 1985. Here’s a link to the story itself.
There’s also Startling Barbara Bain, our Space: 1999 commentary podcast. Two episodes have been released so far: our commentary on the pilot episode Breakaway, and our commentary on the episode Force of Life. We’re planning to release the next episode, Collision Course, just before the start of the new year.
Maximum Power continues its journey through Series C of Blakes 7. This week, a proper science fiction writer takes hold of the show — with remarkable results — in Sarcophagus.
And finally there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. It’s taking a well-earned break during the holidays right now, but it brought in the festive season with a commentary on Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, featuring friend-of-the-podcast Tom Salinsky.
Episode 280: He Finds a Way to Fix It
· Recorded on Wednesday 6 December 2023 · Download (47.6 MB)
Episode 279 · Series 9 Retrospective · Sunday 10 December 2023
From Skaro to Gallifrey, twelve episodes of one of the strangest seasons in Doctor Who’s history. What did we think, what did we learn, and what are we most looking forward to? And, as always, who would we snog, marry or avoid?
Notes and links
Thanks to Bob Gilbey (@bobgilbey), Bryan says… (@bryan1981) and DJ Alpha-T (@DJ_AlphaT) for contributing their questions to this episode.
As we well know, an anthology of short stories about the life of Ashildr was indeed published in 2015. It was called Doctor Who: Legends of Ashildr, and it includes stories by Justin Richards and James Goss.
In the shownotes for last week’s episode we discussed the fact that Heaven Sent was nominated for a Hugo Award in 2016, Doctor Who didn’t receive any awards at all for its 2015 season.
And, since we properly failed to mention it (or even remember it, you might say with some justification), the Jenny Laird Award goes to a season or era’s most puzzling creative choice, and the Bonnie Langford goes to someone or something that is surprisingly and delightfully good.
There’s also Startling Barbara Bain, our Space: 1999 commentary podcast. Two episodes have been released so far: our commentary on the pilot episode Breakaway, and our commentary on the episode Force of Life. We’re still planning to release the next episode after Christmas.
Maximum Power continues its journey through Series C of Blakes 7. This week, Servalan kills a bunch of people in Children of Auron.
This week, the Doctor learns that mere relentless persistence is no match for the inevitability of loss, and a Doctor Who spinoff is created which we will never get to see. It’s Hell Bent.
Notes and links
According to Todd, the old woman in the barn is either Leela or Aunt Adah from the Star Trek: Voyager pilot episode Caretaker — a hologram created by a vast pan-dimensional being to make the crew of Voyager feel at home by offering them lemonade, sugar cookies and corn.
Magic or magical realism is a genre closely associated with Latin America, and particularly the writers Gabriel García Márquez and Jorge Luis Borges, although the genre has influenced other writers like China Miéville (who got a mention in the shownotes a couple of weeks ago). Here’s an article about the genre published by Vox in 2014, just after Márquez’s death.
We speculate about awards which Heaven Sent might have won. It was nominated in 2016 for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form), but it lost to the Jessica Jones episode AKA Smile. (The Saturn Awards don’t include an award for an individual television episode.)
We’ve just launched a new podcast called The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire, which broadcasts to the world our ill-considered first impressions of each new episode of the new RTD era. Here’s our take on The Star Beast; our take on Wild Blue Yonder will be out on Monday.
Our second newest podcast is Startling Barbara Bain, our Space: 1999 commentary podcast, whose second episode was released a week ago. In that episode, we talked over the show’s second story, Force of Life. We’re planning to release the next episode after Christmas.
