Episode 267 · The Magician’s Apprentice · Sunday 17 September 2023
So Doctor Who is back, doing the same old thing for another year, but this time we’re relitigating the main moral question of a thirty-year-old episode: can we kill a genocidal dictator even though he’s just a small child with a dirty face lost on a battlefield somewhere? Tom Spilsbury joins us to discuss The Magician’s Apprentice.
Notes and Links
Nathan compares the hand mines in this episode to the terrifying Gloom Spawn from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
Tom and Peter mention two videos that accompany this episode. The first one is a deleted scene on Karn starring Clare Higgins as Ohila; the second one is a six-minute skit by Steven Moffat called The Doctor’s Meditation, in which the Doctor’s attempts to meditate fail because of the poor quality of the water he’s drinking and so he spends days and days getting the townsfolk to dig wells instead.
You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on the entirety of the Whittaker Era of Doctor Who, at jodieintoterror.com, at @JodieIntoTerror on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and wherever podcasts can be found. We’ll be back with a new flashcast on the second Russell T Davies era in November. Stay tuned for more details: it’s not long now.
Our James Bond (et al.) commentary podcast is called Bondfinger, and you can find that at bondfinger.com, at @bondfingercast on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and everywhere else as well.
We can also be heard on the Blakes 7 podcast Maximum Power, which has completed its coverage of the first half of the show’s entire run. Stay tuned for news about the release of our coverage of Series C.
There’s also our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. In our most recent episode, we watch a top-tier episode from Deep Space Nine’s sixth season, Rocks and Shoals.
Episode 267: Making My Head Hurt
· Recorded on Sunday 30 July 2023 · Download (64.7 MB)
Episode 266 · Last Christmas · Tuesday 25 July 2023
It’s Christmas in July, and what could be more Christmassy than having your brains sucked out by predatory alien crabs? Why, Nick Frost as Santa, of course! So welcome, everyone, to your Last Christmas.
Notes and Links
We often use an episode’s show notes to enumerate a story’s influences, but Mr Moffat has already done it for us. Towards the end of the episode, Shona picks up a piece of paper which outlines her Christmas Day itinerary, including DVD (Alien), DVD (The Thing from Another World), and DVD (Miracle on 34th Street). She also plans to forgive Dave, which is nice.
Brendan mentions the long-forgotten Doctor Who spin-off Class, whose only season aired towards the end of 2016. Peter Capaldi’s Doctor appears in the first episode, which is his only onscreen appearance between the 2015 Christmas Special The Husbands of River Song and the 2016 Christmas Special The Return of Doctor Mysterio.
Before Last Christmas there was, of course, Inception (2010): Christopher Nolan’s film about people making a journey through nested dreamscapes.
Brendan mentions the Futurama episode called The Sting, which is full of nested dreamscapes in which it’s unclear who is doing the actual dreaming. Clever, moving and ridiculous — you could almost say Moffaty. (Futurama is back right now with a new series. Exciting.)
You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on the entirety of the Whittaker Era of Doctor Who, at jodieintoterror.com, at @JodieIntoTerror on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and wherever podcasts can be found. We’ll be back with a new flashcast on the second Russell T Davies era in November. (We also hint at another untitled Doctor Who project this episode, but you’ll find out more about that later in the year.)
Our James Bond (et al.) commentary podcast is called Bondfinger, and you can find that at bondfinger.com, at @bondfingercast on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and everywhere else as well.
We can also be heard on the Blakes 7 podcast Maximum Power, which has completed its coverage of the first half of the show’s entire run. We’re determined to bring you our coverage of Series C later this year.
There’s also our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. In our most recent episode, we watch a terrible episode of the Animated Series called Bem and spend a lot of time laughing.
Episode 266: The Tangerine in the Window
· Recorded on Saturday 17 June 2023 · Download (53.3 MB)
Episode 265 · Series 8 Retrospective · Sunday 9 July 2023
Peter Capaldi’s Doctor might not be sure if he’s a good man, but can Nathan, Todd, Peter and Simon be sure if his first series is a good series? Let’s find out (while determining who to snog, marry and avoid on the way).
Notes and links
Thank you to Steven B for his question about the ratings during the Capaldi era.
Fans of tables of numbers (like Todd) will also enjoy the Doctor Who Guide’s ratings page, which has information on the ratings and audience appreciation data for every Doctor Who episode since An Unearthly Child.
You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on the entirety of the Whittaker Era of Doctor Who, at jodieintoterror.com, at @JodieIntoTerror on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and wherever podcasts can be found. We’ll be back with a new flashcast on the second Russell T Davies era in November. (We also hint at another untitled Doctor Who project this episode, but you’ll find out more about that later in the year.)
Our James Bond (et al.) commentary podcast is called Bondfinger, and you can find that at bondfinger.com, at @bondfingercast on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and everywhere else as well.
We can also be heard on the Blakes 7 podcast Maximum Power, which has completed its coverage of the first half of the show’s entire run. We’re determined to bring you our coverage of Series C later this year.
There’s also our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. In our most recent episode, we watch an episode of Voyager with Kazons and Seska and things. Just like the old days.
Episode 265: New Life Crisis
· Recorded on Sunday 18 June 2023 · Download (76.7 MB)
Episode 264 · Death in Heaven · Sunday 2 July 2023
It’s happened again: it’s the end of the season, and all our long-dead relatives have come back as Cybermen. Only this time, instead of hanging around the kitchen reeking of tobacco, they’re wandering through graveyards and — well, that’s it really, wandering through graveyards. Fortunately, Missy is here to liven things up a bit. It’s Death in Heaven.
We mention Doctor Who and the Silurians as a previous story where the Doctor comes into conflict with soldiers, and we refer to El Sandifer’s take on the end of that story, a scene which presents this conflict explicitly but which is never followed up in any satisfactory way.
Richard brings up Chris Addison’s Radio 4 comedy series Civilisation, which co-stars the original Ford Prefect, Geoffrey McGivern.
And, finally, the Doctor plummeting to his death from a plane inevitably reminds us of Roger Moore in a similar situation as James Bond in Moonraker (1979).
You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on the entirety of the Whittaker Era of Doctor Who, at jodieintoterror.com, at @JodieIntoTerror on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and wherever podcasts can be found. We’ll be back with a new flashcast on the second Russell T Davies era in November.
Our James Bond commentary podcast is called Bondfinger, and you can find that at bondfinger.com, at @bondfingercast on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and everywhere else as well.
We can also be heard on the Blakes 7 podcast Maximum Power, which has completed its coverage of the first half of the show’s entire run. Recording of our coverage of Series C is nearing its conclusion: it will be ready for you later in the year.
There’s also our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. In our most recent episode, we watch an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called Genesis, in which the crew devolve into various types of monsters and animals, upsetting fans who have the (baffling) expectation that their franchise will take itself more seriously.
Episode 264: Absolutely Ainley
· Recorded on Sunday 4 June 2023 · Download (52.6 MB)
This week, Danny’s death is somehow made up for by the culmination of a season-long arc which finally brings Michelle Gomez properly into the limelight. It’s Dark Water.
Notes and links
This week’s evil corporation is 3W, which gets it’s name from the three words Don’t cremate me. But, as Brendan points out, it’s also the production code for Invasion of the Dinosaurs. We explain about production codes in unnecessary detail in the shownotes for Episode 237.
The Black Orchid problem is that a two-part story has its climax at the halfway point instead of somewhere more appropriate. It’s identified by El Sandifer in her essay on that story.
Well, we found the clip for the shownotes: Brendan mentions Chris Addison’s appearance on an episode of Have I Got News for You? hosted by Tom Baker. The whole episode is worth a watch, but the incident that Brendan refers to starts here.
Once again, we allude to the Troops to Teachers programme, which gave veterans the chance to fast-track their teacher training so that they could work in schools. The Guardianreports on the scheme here.
Fans of Missy’s (other) gay sidekick Dr Chang can see much more of Andrew Leung in Lilting (2014), where his lover is played by Ben Whishaw.
We’re also on Facebook and Mastodon, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll turn up unexpectedly on your next trip to London and reveal to your surprise that we’re actually the Vardans, from the beloved Doctor Who classic, The Invasion of Time (4Z).
And more
You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on the entirety of the Whittaker Era of Doctor Who, at jodieintoterror.com, at @JodieIntoTerror on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and wherever podcasts can be found. We’ll be back with a new flashcast on the second Russell T Davies era in November.
Our James Bond commentary podcast is called Bondfinger, and you can find that at bondfinger.com, at @bondfingercast on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and everywhere else as well.
We can also be heard on the Blakes 7 podcast Maximum Power, which has completed its coverage of the first half of the show’s entire run. Recording is continuing on schedule, and our coverage of Series C will be ready for you later in the year.
There’s also our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. In our most recent episode, we watch an episode of the kids’ show Star Trek: Prodigy, and have a really good time.
Episode 263: Terribly Gay
· Recorded on Sunday 4 June 2023 · Download (60.3 MB)
Episode 262 · In the Forest of the Night · Sunday 18 June 2023
It’s like the New Forest only newer, as well as more sudden and completely worldwide. But is it here for revenge, or to provide us with some much-needed help? Let’s find out as Mathew Hounsell and Kevin Burnard join us to discuss In the Forest of the Night.
Notes and links
Here’s an article on William Blake’s ‘The Tyger’, from which this episode gets its name (and its tiger, I guess). Delightfully, as well as providing a short analysis of the poem, it reproduces Blake’s full version of the poem in its original form as a text on a watercolour painting. [Sadly, a cyberattack on the British Library in October 2023 has caused the loss of this article and a good deal of its digital collection.]
Bubble Shock is the extremely unhealthy soft drink created and marketed by the alien Bane in the first story of the first season of The Sarah Jane Adventures.
The Gaia Hypothesis proposes that living organisms and the environment in which they evolved form a complex, self-regulating system that keeps the Earth habitable. It was developed in the 1970s and has generally recieved a fair degree of criticism ever since.
We’ve got an exciting new Doctor Who project to launch at the start of 2024, but — annoyingly — we’re not going to tell you anything more about it until later in the year. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, you can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on the entirety of the Whittaker Era of Doctor Who, at jodieintoterror.com, at @JodieIntoTerror on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and wherever podcasts can be found. We’ll be back with a new flashcast on the second Russell T Davies era in November.
Our James Bond commentary podcast is called Bondfinger, and you can find that at bondfinger.com, at @bondfingercast on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and everywhere else as well.
We can also be heard on the Blakes 7 podcast Maximum Power, which has completed its coverage of the first half of the show’s entire run. Recording is continuing on schedule, and our coverage of Series C will be ready for you later in the year.
There’s also our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. In our most recent episode, we watched in stunned horror as Enterprise chief engineer Trip Tucker got unexpectedly pregnant, with predictable results.
Episode 262: She Was the Hydrangeas All Along
· Recorded on Saturday 6 May 2023 · Download (55.0 MB)
This week, we’re doing some judicially-mandated cleaning up around a council estate in Bristol when we make some terrifying discoveries about the source and nature of the graffiti we’re painting over, and some even more terrifying discoveries about our own and our friends’ moral characters. Also, someone left the TARDIS prop from Logopolis Part 3 lying around here somewhere. It’s Flatline.
Notes and links
Brendan mentions Jamie Mathieson’s film Frequently Asked Questions about Time Travel (2009), a film starring Chris O’Dowd, Dean Lennox Kelly and Marc Wootton as three friends in a pub coping with a weird Moffat-y time travel thing. Nathan mentions Toby Whithouse’s series Being Human (2008–2013), originally about a ghost, a vampire and a werewolf flat-sharing in Bristol, and eventually about a completely different ghost, vampire and werewolf flat-sharing on Barry Island: Jamie Mathieson wrote four scripts, one for each of the last four seasons of the show.
The idea of beings living in a two-dimensional world was explored as early as 1884 in Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, written by an English schoolmaster, which combines a lightly comic critique of Victorian social hierarchy with imaginative speculation about the weird experience of living in a two-dimensional world.
Steven’s description of Series 8’s gradual development of the Doctor’s character as a magic trick is explicitly based on The Prestige (2006), an early Christopher Nolan film in which two Victorian magicians, Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman, are pitted against one another in a quest for the ultimate illusion.
In For Your Eyes Only (1981), Roger Moore’s Bond tries to protect a young woman by dissuading her from killing the people who murdered her parents. That woman was Carole Bouquet, whose bottom and alarmingly long legs adorned the film’s poster, six years before the first release of Adobe Photoshop.
We’ve got an exciting new Doctor Who project to launch at the start of 2024, but — annoyingly — we’re not going to tell you anything more about it until later in the year. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, you can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on the entirety of the Whittaker Era of Doctor Who, at jodieintoterror.com, at @JodieIntoTerror on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and wherever podcasts can be found. We’ll be back with a new flashcast on the second Russell T Davies era in November.
Our James Bond commentary podcast is called Bondfinger, and you can find that at bondfinger.com, at @bondfingercast on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and everywhere else as well.
We can also be heard on the Blakes 7 podcast Maximum Power, which has completed its coverage of the first half of the show’s entire run. Recording is continuing on schedule, and our coverage of Series C will be ready for you later in the year.
There’s also our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. In our most recent episode, we say goodbye to Star Trek: Picard Series 2, before it returns in 2023 as a massive television event.
Episode 261: The Prestige
· Recorded on Sunday 30 April 2023 · Download (54.4 MB)
Episode 260 · Mummy on the Orient Express · Sunday 4 June 2023
This week, a technologically-augmented interdimensional mummy runs amok on a replica of the Orient Express in space under the control of a terrifying alien intelligence or something. It’s a day at the office for Doctor Who, in Mummy on the Orient Express.
Notes and links
Mummy on the Orient Express marks the triumphant return of Janet Henfrey to Doctor Who after about twenty-five years: she plays Miss Hardaker in The Curse of Fenric. She will come back some time after that to play the Adjudicator in Sil and the Seven Seeds of Arodor.
David Bamber is in charge of this version of the Orient Express: Nathan recognises him immediately as Cicero in Rome and as Mr Collins in Pride and Prejudice. Richard notes that he plays Adolf Hitler in Valkyrie (2008), and perhaps more terrifyingly Noel in Camping, a sitcom created by Julia Davis. Si saw him turn up in an episode of Endeavour, the Inspector Morse prequel set in the late 1960s.
Meanwhile, Christopher Villiers returns to Doctor Who as Professor Moorhouse; thirty years earlier he was young Hugh Fitzwilliam in The King’s Demons. Alarmingly, Richard is right to suggest that he is a descendant of the aristocracy.
And finally, Frank Skinner is a famous standup comedian and radio presenter. The show Richard is thinking of may be The Rest is History on Radio 4, but he has been in many, many radio shows over the years.
You can see John Sessions’s 1994 audition to play the Doctor in the TV movie here on YouTube. He plays the terrifying General Tannis in the BBC webcast Death Comes to Time (2001).
In 2018, Jenna Coleman starred in a TV miniseries called The Cry, which was shot in Australia.
We’ve got an exciting new Doctor Who project to launch at the start of 2024, but — annoyingly — we’re not going to tell you anything more about it yet. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, you can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on the entirety of the Whittaker Era of Doctor Who, at jodieintoterror.com, at @JodieIntoTerror on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and wherever podcasts can be found. We’ll be back with a new flashcast on the second Russell T Davies era in November.
Our James Bond commentary podcast is called Bondfinger, and you can find that at bondfinger.com, at @bondfingercast on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and everywhere else as well.
We can also be heard on the Blakes 7 podcast Maximum Power, which has completed its coverage of the first half of the show’s entire run. Recording is continuing on schedule, and our coverage of Series C will be ready for you later in the year.
There’s also our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. In our most recent episode, we watched a massive soap opera event two-parter from Deep Space Nine, complete with long-lost children and scheming lookalikes — In Purgatory’s Shadow and By Inferno’s Light.
Episode 260: Dangle Your Lallies
· Recorded on Sunday 30 April 2023 · Download (45.6 MB)
This week, Nathan, Brendan, Simon and Colin are trapped in a room with only forty-five minutes to decide whether Kill the Moon is terrible or a towering work of genius. It goes quite well, surprisingly.
El Sandifer’s essay on TARDIS Eruditorum contains, as you might expect, a clever reading of this episode, and both Brendan and Nathan find reasons to refer to it here.
Colin and Brendan mention science fiction shows called The Expanse and Babylon 5, but I absolutely refuse to do any research into them at all.
We’ve got an exciting new Doctor Who project to launch at the start of 2024, but — annoyingly — we’re not going to tell you anything more about it yet. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, you can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on the entirety of the Whittaker Era of Doctor Who, at jodieintoterror.com, at @JodieIntoTerror on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and wherever podcasts can be found. We’ll be back with a new flashcast on the second Russell T Davies era in November.
Our James Bond commentary podcast is called Bondfinger, and you can find that at bondfinger.com, at @bondfingercast on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and everywhere else as well.
We can also be heard on the Blakes 7 podcast Maximum Power, which has completed its coverage of the first half of the show’s entire run. Recording is continuing on schedule, and our coverage of Series C should be ready for you later in the year.
There’s also our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. In our most recent episode, we were bored rigid as the crew of the Enterprise completely dismantled a horrible authoritarian human colony in The Masterpiece Society. Back to Deep Space Nine next week.
Episode 259: The Goldilocks Zone
· Recorded on Sunday 29 January 2023 · Download (56.7 MB)
This week, Pete Lambert and Hannah Cooper join us for a particularly embarrassing Coal Hill School parents’ evening, which goes horribly wrong when a Mechanoid is found roaming the premises. It’s The Caretaker.
Notes and links
Pete has a dim memory of something similar happening during his childhood, but mere months before Series 8 aired, the Troops to Teachers programme was introduced, giving veterans the chance to fast-track their teacher training so that they could work in schools. The Guardianreports on the scheme here.
Vasquez Rocks is a park not far from Hollywood, and was famously used in the original Star Trek episode Arena (the one with the lizard man in a skimpy cocktail dress). A particular famous rock formation, nicknamed Kirk’s rock is recreated in the opening shot of this episode.
Nathan alludes to the fact that Barbara is absent from Episodes 4 and 5 of The Sensorites because Jacqueline Hill was on holiday, and that she returns from her time on the Sensorite spaceship with a spectacular tan in Episode 6.
In the Press Gang episode UnXpected, Mmoloki Chrystie’s character Frazer Davis encounters the fictional Colonel X, who was the main character in a cheesy spy-fi show he watched as a child. Michael Jayston is magnificent as Colonel X. (You might be able to find it on YouTube if you look hard enough. It’s worth the effort.)
We’ve got an exciting new Doctor Who project to launch at the start of 2024, but — annoyingly — we’re not going to tell you anything more about it yet. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, you can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on the entirety of the Whittaker Era of Doctor Who, at jodieintoterror.com, at @JodieIntoTerror on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and wherever podcasts can be found. We’ll be back with a new flashcast on the second Russell T Davies era in November.
Our James Bond commentary podcast is called Bondfinger, and you can find that at bondfinger.com, at @bondfingercast on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and everywhere else as well.
We can also be heard on the Blakes 7 podcast Maximum Power, which has completed its coverage of the first half of the show’s entire run. Recording is continuing on schedule, and our coverage of Series C should be ready for you later in the year.
There’s also our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. In our most recent episode, we watched a barely competent episode of the Original Series called Wolf in the Fold.
Episode 258: Both as Bad as One Another
· Recorded on Saturday 28 January 2023 · Download (48.9 MB)
