Episode 47 · The Face of Evil · Sunday 4 October 2015
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.
Episode 46 · The Deadly Assassin · Sunday 27 September 2015
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.
Episode 46: A Hookah in the TARDIS
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Episode 45 · The Hand of Fear · Sunday 20 September 2015
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.
Episode 45: Not Sufficiently Executed Enough
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Episode 44 · The Masque of Mandragora · Sunday 13 September 2015
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.
Episode 43 · The Avengers, Man-Eater of Surrey Green · Sunday 6 September 2015
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.
Episode 42 · The Seeds of Doom · Sunday 30 August 2015
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.
Episode 42: Playing It Straight
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Episode 41 · The Brain of Morbius · Sunday 23 August 2015
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.
Episode 41: Philip Madoc in Fishnets
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Episode 40 · The Android Invasion · Sunday 16 August 2015
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”.
Episode 39 · Pyramids of Mars · Sunday 9 August 2015
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.
Episode 38 · Planet of Evil · Saturday 1 August 2015
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.
