We’ve reached the end of an ambitious and controversial series of Doctor Who, and so we’ve all gathered at Demons’ Run to find the answers to some pressing questions. What were the high points and low points of the series? Amy’s pregnancy arc — tasteless or distateful? Who was our favourite guest star? And, finally, what is the First Question, and who will eventually answer it? It’s our Series 6 Retrospective.
Richard says that he things that the science-fiction ideas which Steven Moffat introduces in this season are ideas from the so-called Golden Era of literary Science fiction, and he names two possible inspirations: Hugo Gernsback, who founded Amazing Stories and who gave his name to the Hugo Awards, and Ray Bradbury.
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. Keep an eye out in the coming days for our Christmas Special, in which we return to our roots for a roundtable discussion of the latest Bond film, No Time to Die.
And finally, there’s our new Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. In our most recent episode, we watched an episode of Deep Space Nine’s final series: Take Me Out to the Holosuite.
Episode 229: Playthings of Steven
· Recorded on Sunday 28 November 2021 · Duration 1:03:49
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This week, the Doctor and River Song get married in an episode that completely rewrites itself before our very eyes, and the eyepatch anecdote makes its triumphant return to the show. You are all cordially invited to The Wedding of River Song.
Notes and links
Richard identifies some possible inspirations for this episode, including Cloud Atlas (2004) by David Mitchell and The Master and Margarita (1967) by Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov.
Nathan mentions Steven Moffat’s adaptation of Dracula (2020), in which two of the three episodes use the same narrative framing technique he uses in this episode, where the events of the episode start to impinge on the story being told in flashback at the start of the episode.
Steven B calls The Doctor’s Wife a “nerd-baiting title” in our episode on that story, called, appropriately Nerd-Baiting Title. Nathan levels the same accusation against the title of this story.
You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on the Whittaker Era of Doctor Who, at jodieintoterror.com, at @JodieIntoTerror on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and wherever podcasts can be found. We’ve completed our coverage of Flux, so you can go back and relieve the highs and lows of the most recent series of Doctor Who with us.
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 will be discussing the Series A finale this week, and which will be back next week with a Series A retrospective.
And finally, there’s our new Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. In our most recent episode, we watched our first episode of Enterprise, with predictably horrifying results.
Episode 228: The Magic Mavic Chen Principle
· Recorded on Sunday 24 October 2021 · Duration 0:58:43
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This week, a quick trip to Colchester with Joe Ford and Jack Shanahan, to try on a new frock at Sanderson & Grainger before being horribly murdered. In the meantime, of course, James Corden is learning a valuable lesson about fatherhood, while the Doctor comes to terms with his impending certain death, probably. It’s Closing Time.
Notes and links
We start the episode by making a list of similarities between this story and Series 5’s The Lodger. By the most amazing coincidence, Joe and Jack joined us for the first time on our episode about The Lodger earlier this year.
No, Nathan, it’s nail polish remover, not nail polish that finishes off the Cybermen in The Moonbase. (Thanks, Brendan.)
Brendan cracks the joke that the Cybermen came from Marinus, which is actually a thing that happens (spoilers) in the Doctor Who Magazine comic The World Shapers.
Joe is right — the scene where those Cylons start singing All Along the Watchtower in Battlestar Galactica (2004) is one of the great moments in television history. No spoilers.
Team Knight Rider only ran for a single season in 1997–1998, which suggests that the cliffhanger Brendan mentions didn’t have the effect on audience figures that the creators might have been hoping for.
And finally — it’s not Brendan who cracked the code in the tag: the theory that the M in Swarm stands for Meglos comes from @joshryancarr on Twitter. At the time of publication, Flux Chapter 6 is mere hours away, and so there’s still time for this theory to be proved true. Fingers crossed.
You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on 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 releasing our final episode for the current series this Tuesday.
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’re also involved in the Blakes 7 podcast Maximum Power, which is just weeks away fom the end of Series A. Episode 12 will be released today.
And finally, there’s our new Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. In our most recent episode, we watched the third Star Trek episode ever recorded — The Corbomite Maneuver.
Episode 227: Alfie
· Recorded on Sunday 10 October 2021 · Duration 1:03:22
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This week, Nathan and Peter find themselves trapped in the corridors of a grimy English hotel with Si Hart and Conrad Westmaas, where the rooms are full of biting into a woollen jumper, turning up to your maths exam totally naked, and the fact that one day, you, your loved ones and everyone who has ever heard of you will be completely and irrevocably dead. The janitor seems pretty fit though. It’s The God Complex.
Notes and links
It goes without saying that the ur-text for the scary hotel that’s the repository of the previous residents’ secret fears is Kubrick’s The Shining (1980). The AV Club review of this episode identifies it as an influence straightaway.
During the Hinchcliffe Era, nearly every story featured the Doctor and Sarah being menaced by an evil from the dawn of time who had not been sufficiently executed enough. We discuss the issue in our The Hand of Fear episode, Not Sufficiently Executed Enough.
We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or the gaps between my worship are getting shorter. This is what happened to the others. It’s all so clear now. I’m so happy. Praise him. Praise him.
And more
You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on the Whittaker Era of Doctor Who, at jodieintoterror.com, at @JodieIntoTerror on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and wherever podcasts can be found. We’re currently covering Series 13, releasing a new episode the Tuesday after Doctor Who airs.
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’re also involved in the Blakes 7 podcast Maximum Power, which is nearing the end of Series A and releasing Episode 11 today. We’ll be covering the rest of the series over the next few weeks.
And finally, there’s our new 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 beautiful Star Trek: Discovery episode from last year called Forget Me Not.
Episode 226: Something Really Different on Screen
· Recorded on Sunday 5 September 2021 · Duration 1:04:03
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This week, Simon Moore joins us again for a quick jaunt to the planet Apalapucia, where we visit a medical facility so staggeringly baffling and inept that it’s even terrifying to an audience living in the English-speaking world. It’s going to be quite a while before we get to see a doctor — that’s why it’s called The Girl Who Waited.
Notes and links
All of us think that this episode is very Star Trek, Star Trek: Voyager in particular. Nathan compares it to Blink of an Eye, in which the Voyager crew interacts with a planet where time passes incredibly quickly, and they watch the planet develop technologically from the Bronze Age through to becoming a spacefaring civilisation. (It guest stars Daniel Dae Kim, amazingly.) This is not to be confused with the Original Series episode Wink of an Eye, in which hyper-accelerated aliens invisibly take over the Enterprise for some reason.
Richard compares the direction of this episode to the Louis Malle film Elevator to the Gallows (1958), in which a man murders his mistress’s husband with hilarious results. It’s French, after all.
You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on the Whittaker Era of Doctor Who, at jodieintoterror.com, at @JodieIntoTerror on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and wherever podcasts can be found. We’re currently covering Series 13, releasing a new episode the Tuesday after Doctor Who airs.
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’re also involved in the Blakes 7 podcast Maximum Power, which is releasing Episode 10 today. We’ll be covering the rest of Series A over the next few weeks.
And finally, there’s our new Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. In our third episode, we’re stranded in the Delta Quadrant and unexpectedly pregnant in the Voyager episode Lineage.
Episode 225: The Word Elegant
· Recorded on Sunday 29 August 2021 · Duration 0:44:35
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This week we’re joined by Corey McMahon for an hour of blinking and quivering under the bedclothes in the scariest bedroom in human history, before learning a Very Important Lesson about the power of a father’s love. (There’s a plot about dollies in there, but it doesn’t really go anywhere.) Hey-ho, it’s Night Terrors.
Notes and links
You probably all know this already, but The League of Gentlemen was a surreal and upsetting sketch comedy series from around the turn of the millennium (gulp), written by and starring Mark Gatiss, Reece Shearsmith (Sleep No More) and Steve Pemberton (Silence in the Library).
Corey is alluding to Jeffrey Smart’s paintings “Study for Holiday” and “Holiday”, which both depict a small human figure dwarfed by a brightly coloured wall of balconies. You can learn more about Smart from his obituary in The Guardian.
Sapphire & Steel was a Doctor Who-like science fantasy show in the 1980s, starring David McCallum and Joanna Lumley. In the absence of much of a budget, it relied heavily on sound, atmosphere and strange conceptual horror. It’s slow-moving, but it’s definitely worth a look if you’ve never seen it.
You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on the Whittaker Era of Doctor Who, at jodieintoterror.com, at @JodieIntoTerror on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and wherever podcasts can be found. We’re currently covering Series 13, releasing a new episode the Tuesday after Doctor Who airs.
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’re also involved in the Blakes 7 podcast Maximum Power, which is releasing Episode 9 today. We’ll be covering the rest of Series A over the next few weeks.
And finally, there’s our new Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. In our second episode, we find a lot to say and a lot of laugh about as we watch the Deep Space Nine episode House of Quark.
Episode 224: Fix the Kippers
· Recorded on Sunday 29 August 2021 · Duration 0:55:14
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This week, perhaps inevitably, James and Nathan invite Simon Moore and Kevin Burnard to join them in 1930s Berlin for a gay Gypsy barmitzvah for the disabled. It’s fun, but we can’t help wondering if it’s in the best possible taste. But, what the hell, Let’s Kill Hitler.
Notes and links
Nathan compares the school flashbacks at the start of the episode to a similar scene in Iso Tank, Series 1 Episode 4 of Absolutely Fabulous, which you can actually watch in its entirety here.
The Brilliant Book was published in 2011 and 2012 as a Doctor Who Annual-style guide to Series 5 and 6, full of articles and short stories riffing on events and characters from the series, including Mels, Amy and Rory’s report cards from school. You might still be able to get a copy by searching on your country’s version of Amazon.
Amy and Rory’s final appearance in the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip was in a story about them and Mels in issue 455 called Imaginary Enemies.
Kevin’s short story will be published by Obverse Books, in an anthology in their Faction Paradox series. Keep an eye out.
Professor Candy, who appears in a scene at the end of Let’s Kill Hitler appears in Steven Moffat’s short story Continuity Errors, which appeared in Decalog 3: Consequences. It was Moffat’s first official piece of Doctor Who writing, and he would reuse its central conceit as the basis of A Christmas Carol.
You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on the Whittaker Era of Doctor Who, at jodieintoterror.com, at @JodieIntoTerror on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and wherever podcasts can be found. We’re currently covering Series 13, releasing a new episode the Tuesday after Doctor Who airs.
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’re also involved in the Blakes 7 podcast Maximum Power, which is releasing Episode 8 today. We’ll be continuing to cover Series A of Blakes 7 in the weeks to come.
And finally, this week saw the launch of a new Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. In our first episode, we watch and comment on fan favourite Yesterday’s Enterprise, and we’ll be releasing a new episode from a different series every week.
Episode 223: Tried and True Tropes
· Recorded on Sunday 22 August 2021 · Duration 0:54:17
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It’s the last episode of the first half of the season, and to celebrate, Nathan, James, Peter and Adam Richard have invited literally everyone they’ve ever met to join them at Demons’ Run for a bloodless victory swiftly followed by a painful death. Oh, and the baby shower has been cancelled. Which is just the sort of thing that happens when A Good Man Goes to War.
Notes and links
If you want to hear more about the challenges of directing a Moffat script, you should head over to Rachel Talalay’s Tumblr, which is a fascinating and very telling read.
Nathan mentions (again) The Writer’s Tale, which is the place to go to find out about how difficult RTD found the workload on Doctor Who during his first stint as showrunner of the programme. Pray for him.
Upsettingly, Lesbian Spank Inferno was the title of the fourth episode of Steven Moffat’s breakout sitcom Coupling, in which we learn that it was also the title of series lead Steven Taylor’s favourite pornographic video.
James and Adam both comment on a Big Finish sequel to Inferno called Primord, in which a recast Liz Shaw (Caroline John’s daughter Daisy Ashford) gets turned into a Primord or something. It’s in the name, people!
You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on 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 to cover Series 13 at the very start of 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.
Today sees the release of Episode 6 of Maximum Power, a Blakes 7 podcast featuring some of our regulars and guests and some of the regulars from the Trap One podcast. We’ll be continuing to cover Series A of Blakes 7 every week over the next few months.
Episode 222: Lesbian Spank Inferno
· Recorded on Sunday 22 August 2021 · Duration 0:54:31
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This week, Nathan, Peter, Richard and Simon rise up against their more viscous oppressors, launching blistering attacks on their shot composition, plot conveniences and crimes against good taste. Because, in a very real sense, we are all The Almost People.
Simon recommends Moon (2009), a science fiction film starring Sam Rockwell. No spoilers.
Peter
Peter has been watching The Good Fight, a TV series in which the reliably fabulous Christine Baranski plays a lawyer working at an African-American-owned law firm in Chicago. You can watch it on Paramount+. Its sixth season starts next year.
Richard
Last episode, Richard mentioned Kozintsev’s film version of Hamlet (1964), and so that’s his pick of the week. You can watch it on YouTube.
Nathan
Nathan comes out as a fan of Kurtzman’s Star Trek in general, and of Star Trek: Lower Decks in particular. The Series 2 finale screened just a couple of days ago in the US.
You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on 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 to cover Series 13 at the very start of 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.
Today we released Episode 5 of Maximum Power, a new Blakes 7 podcast featuring some of our regulars and guests and some of the regulars from the Trap One podcast. We’ll be continuing to cover Series A of Blakes 7 every week over the next few months.
Episode 221: Generic Potato Person
· Recorded on Sunday 15 August 2021 · Duration 1:00:39
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This week, gooey duplicates of Nathan, Peter and Richard are joined by a gooey duplicate of Simon Moore for an earnest discussion of camerawork, capitalism (again) and the deepest questions of human identity. Doctor Who ruins yet another workers’ uprising, in The Rebel Flesh.
Notes and links
Richard wishes that this story was directed more like Kozintsev’s film version of Hamlet (1964), which you can watch in its entirety on YouTube.
Richard also alludes to Walter Benjamin’s 1935 essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, which maintains that a copy of a work of art lacks the original’s aura or authenticity. You can read it here.
Although his Doctor Who stories are not highly regarded, Matthew Graham is the creator of the acclaimed TV fantasy cop drama Life on Mars (2006), starring our very own John Simm, and its sequel Ashes to Ashes (2008).
And of course, anyone who doesn’t know about Star Trek: Deep Space Nine will be mystified by our references to its shape-shifting Constable Odo until they follow this link.
You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on 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 to cover Series 13 at the very start of 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.
Today we released Episode 4 of Maximum Power, a new Blakes 7 podcast featuring some of our regulars and guests and some of the regulars from the Trap One podcast. We’ll be continuing to cover Series A of Blakes 7 every week over the next few months.
Episode 220: Centuries of Embittered Religiosity
· Recorded on Sunday 15 August 2021 · Duration 0:48:06
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This week, Nathan and James are joined by Steven B and Dan from the New to Who podcast for an episode made up of the scavenged parts of other episodes. It’s time to meet the first character from the first shot of the first ever Doctor Who episode. Say hello, everyone, to The Doctor’s Wife.
Notes and links
Suranne Jones appeared in a story from Series 3 of The Sarah Jane Adventures called Mona Lisa’s Revenge, in which she played the painting itself, which came to life for space reasons and started running around an art gallery with a big space gun, accompanied by her curator sidekick, played by Jeff Rawle (Plantagenet in Frontios).
We mention a couple of works by Neil Gaiman’s, including The Graveyard Book a strangely funny, elegiac and occasionally terrifying children’s book, and The Sandman, a best-selling comic book series, which is about to be released on Netflix.
James is right: the word petrichor was coined in 1964 by Australian researched Dick Thomas, to describe a phenomenon that had previously been called argillaceous odour. So thanks for enriching the language, Dick.
Neil Gaiman wrote a Doctor Who mini-episode called Rain Gods starring Matt Smith and Alex Kingston. It was included on the Series 7 DVD and Blu-ray box set.
Steven and Dan are two of the hosts of the New to Who podcast, which discusses Classic Doctor Who stories which might be of interest to New Series fans. You can follow New to Who on Twitter at @NewToWhoPodcast, and you should immediately subscribe to the podcast in your podcatcher of choice.
You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on 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 to cover Series 13 sometime later in the year.
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.
Today we released Episode 3 of Maximum Power, a new Blakes 7 podcast featuring some of our regulars and guests and some of the regulars from the Trap One podcast. We’ll be covering Series A of Blakes 7 every week over the next few months.
Episode 219: Nerd-Baiting Title
· Recorded on Sunday 8 August 2021 · Duration 0:48:35
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This week, Nathan, James, Todd and Richard find themselves becalmed on board the Fancy, under threat from medical hologram that has gone rogue and imagines itself to be a terrifying and murderous Doctor Who monster. There’s rum, sodomy and some very low-effort space corridors, in The Curse of the Black Spot.
Notes and links
Richard and Todd both comment on the similarities between this story and a story from the 1960s. For Richard, it’s The Smugglers, obviously, which we talked about in Episode 11: Bum Wetting. And for Todd, it’s The Highlanders, which we discussed in Episode 12: Comedy Accents.
Richard mentions friend-of-the-podcast Johnny Spandrell, whose blog post on this story discusses the omission of the disappearance of Lee Ross’s character from this episode. You can read more of Johnny’s work at Random Whoness.
As usual, Nathan brings up El Sandifer from TARDIS Eruditorum whose review of Underworld can be found here. Unfortunately, she doesn’t make the point that Nathan says she makes in that interview, so who knows where he got that idea from?
You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on 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 to cover Series 13 sometime later in the year.
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.
Mere hours ago saw the release of Episode 2 of Maximum Power, a new Blakes 7 podcast featuring some of our regulars and guests and some of the regulars from the Trap One podcast. We’ll be covering Series A of Blakes 7 every week over the next few months.
Episode 218: Everyone Is Now Sporting a Beard
· Recorded on Sunday 8 August 2021 · Duration 0:42:36
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It’s July 1969, and we find ourselves sitting around with our new friend Maxwell Coviello, stroking guns and watching the moon landing on telly. It’s time for the end of the Swinging Sixties and the start of the Shooting-our-alien-overlords-in-the-face Seventies, in Day of the Moon.
Notes and links
Early in this episode, Brendan alludes to the title of Jon Pertwee’s autobiography Moon Boots and Dinner Suits, published in 1985 and available in remainder bins basically nowhere at all at this point, I imagine.
Nathan is aware that there were phones around well before World War II. No need to at him.
Brendan mentions the Doctor Who Magazine comic Ground Zero, a famously controversial story which features the kidnapping of the Doctor’s companions by aliens for nefarious purposes. Friend-of-the-podcast Josh Snares has done a motion comic adaptation, which you can find on YouTube.
Picks of the week
Todd
Todd recommends RuPaul’s AJ and the Queen, in which a down-on-her-luck drag queen and a ten-year-old girl travel around the US spreading love and acceptance wherever they go.
Brendan
Brendan wants you to listen to the Big FinishBlakes 7 series Crossfire, featuring the late Jacqueline Pearce’s final appearance as Servalan.
Maxwell
Maxwell wants you to play Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne, a classic RPG set in a post-apocalyptic world, which has been remastered and re-released in HD for the Switch. Shin Megami Tensei V will be released later this year.
Nathan
Nathan takes the opportunity to remind us of the benefits of going outside.
Maxwell’s podcast is called Relic: The Lost Treasure Podcast, in which he discusses lost treasures throughout history, including the lost eighteen-and-a-half minutes from the Nixon Tapes. He also streams all of the Final Fantasy games in order on Twitch as TreasureHunterMaxwell.
You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on 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 to cover Series 13 sometime later in the year.
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.
Finally, today sees the release of Episode 1 of Maximum Power, a new Blakes 7 podcast featuring some of our regulars and guests and some of the regulars from the Trap One podcast. We’ll be covering Series A of Blakes 7 every week over the next few months.
Episode 217: Gaslight Girlboss Ginger
· Recorded on Sunday 1 August 2021 · Duration 1:02:54
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When a mysterious astronaut completely ruins their picnic, the Doctor, Amy, Rory and River head back to 1969 in search of something, probably. Meanwhile, Nathan, Brendan and Todd are joined behind the Oval Office curtains by their new friend Maxwell Coviello and his trusty tape recorder. Hilarity ensues as they try to remember what little they can of The Impossible Astronaut.
Notes and links
The Series 6 Character Options astronaut action figure came in both young Melody Pond and River Song versions, complete with the most-low effort accessory imaginable — a lump of slime marketed as “The Flesh”. If you like that kind of thing, you can probably still find one somewhere on eBay.
Boston-born actor Stuart Milligan played Richard M. Nixon in these two epiodes of Doctor Who, but he also played President Ronald Reagan in Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) and Republican nutcase Senator James Inhofe in an upcoming TV movie, The Trick (2021). In things that we actually care about, he also had a role in the animated David Tennant Adventure Dreamland (2009) as Colonel Stark of Area 51.
And finally, next Sunday sees the launch of a new Blakes 7 podcast Maximum Power, which features many of the people familiar to you as hosts and guests on Flight Through Entirety. To keep up with all the Maximum Power news, follow the podcast on Twitter at @MaximumPowerPod and at the website maximumpowerpodcast.com.
Maxwell’s podcast is called Relic: The Lost Treasure Podcast, in which he discusses lost treasures throughout history, including the lost eighteen-and-a-half minutes from the Nixon Tapes. He also streams all of the Final Fantasy games in order on Twitch as TreasureHunterMaxwell.
You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on 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 to cover Series 13 sometime later in the year.
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. In our most recent episode, we discussed a surprisingly excellent episode of The Champions called The Interrogation.
Episode 216: Shades of Paranoia
· Recorded on Sunday 1 August 2021 · Duration 1:25:23
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Dashing through the snow, in a one-shark open sleigh, past some pants we go, laughing all the way. (Ha-ha-ha.) Max and Peter sing, making spirits bright, and James and Nathan do their thing in Sardicktown tonight!
Notes and links
A Christmas Carol is the story where Michael Pickwoad takes over from Ed Thomas as Doctor Who’s Production Designer. Here’s an intervew with him from Doctor Who Magazine, which includes a photograph of the painting Max mentions, “The Birth of Sardicktown”.
To help the UK get through the Christmas lockdown of 2010, Steven Moffat, Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill live-tweeted this episode at the hashtag #HalfwayOutOfTheDark. In this tweet, Steven Moffat describes Karen and Arthur’s reaction to being sidelined in this episode, and in this tweet he mentions the line that he regrets cutting at the end of the episode.
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. In an unexpected development, yesterday we released a commentary on an episode of Batman starring Joan Collins. Which is a sentence that none of us ever expected to see in the shownotes.
Episode 215: Kazran Scroogedick
· Recorded on Monday 21 June 2021 · Duration 1:03:44
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In the last episode of this series of Flight Through Entirety, we fly through the first year of Matt Smith’s time as the Doctor, snogging, marrying and avoiding things, and responding to some of our listeners’ most pressing questions. More New Paradigm Daleks? Fewer Silurians? More Richard Curtis episodes? More series of Doctor Who just as good as this one?
Among the Steven Moffat comedies we mention this week are Joking Apart and our favourite teen drama of all time, Press Gang. We recommend watching all of Press Gang repeatedly, for the rest of your life, but you can safely drop out of Joking Apart at the end of Series 1.
Naturally, Big Finish have already released one box set featuring Arthur Darvill as the Lone Centurion, Volume 1, with Volume 2 scheduled for release in 2022. I’m still holding out for the Amelia Rumsford box sets myself. Don’t say it.
Peter and Nathan both think that in this era River Song plays a similar role to the Brigadier in the Classic Series. Of course, the first person to make this point on FTE was friend-of-the-podcast Johnny Spandrell in our Forest of the Dead episode, aptly named Our New Brigadier.
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.
Episode 214: A Brilliant Whole
· Recorded on Sunday 6 June 2021 · Duration 1:10:18
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This week, we celebrate the triumphant return of the entire universe with a quick snog in the bushes after Amy’s wedding, followed by a discussion of the final episode of Series 5, The Big Bang.
Notes and links
Here’s the tweet that started it all, a question from Nick H asking us what the hell this two-part story is all about.
According to The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the Total Perspective Vortex annihilates your brain by showing you exactly how insignificant you are on a universal scale. It derives its image of the universe from the extrapolated matter analysis of one small piece of fairy cake.
Erik and Adam discuss Paul Cornell’s Timewyrm: Revelation not in an episode of Doctor Who: The Writers’ Room (sorry, Kyle), but in an episode of The Real McCoy podcast. In this episode, they mention several things that Cornell does in the novel which later turn up as features of the Moffat Era.
In 2011, The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form, beating Vincent and the Doctor, A Christmas Carol and Rachel Bloom’s music video F*ck me Ray Bradbury.
And here’s the Twitter account of Liam McNicholas, who has been creating beautiful artwork to accompany our flight through the successive episodes of Series 5. By the time you read this, you’ll be able to see the complete set.
Picks of the week
We’ve all got some lovely TV shows for you to watch this week.
Todd
Todd wants you to experience the lavish off-screen wedding enjoyed by Leela and Andred some time after the end of Part 6 of The Invasion of Time. Or you could listen to us discussing it in Episode 55: Timothy Dalton’s Pyjamas, the FTE episode that mentioned word peril for the first time.
Brendan
Brendan is watching Butterflies (1978), starring Wendy Craig and our very own Geoffrey Palmer, in which the lovely middle-class Ria distracts herself from her low-level dissatisfactions with her family life by regularly meeting and chatting with another man. It’s very gentle, but also rather sweet and sad.
Richard
Richard is watching The Right Stuff (2020), which is a Disney+ series about the early days of the space race. (He also seems to have his eye on Nathan’s Season 8 box set.)
Nathan
Nathan recommends Love, Victor (2020), also on Disney+ in Australia, at least, in which a high school student in Atlanta struggles with the possibility that he might be gay. It’s sweet and funny and sad, with a lovely cast and a lot of heart. Series 2 is being released next week.
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.
Episode 213: The Todd Experience
· Recorded on Sunday 16 May 2021 · Duration 1:18:26
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There was a goblin, or a trickster, or a warrior. A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos. And nothing could stop it, or hold it, or reason with it. One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world.
This week, we’re back in time having a jolly adventure when suddenly a thousand alien invasions happen at once and then the universe abruptly ends. It’s The Pandorica Opens.
Notes and links
Nathan references two very Whoniverse–centred books whose authors probably wince every time Steven Moffat gleefully smashes their carefully crafted fan theories. They are Lance Parkin’s AHistory: An Unauthorized History of the Doctor Who Universe, and 80s Cyberleader David Banks’s titular (or eponymous?) Cybermen, a laborious attempt to sort out the history of the Cybermen, which Steven Moffat rendered completely obsolete with a single line of dialogue in World Enough and Time.
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. This weekend, we released our fiftieth episode, in which we talked all over an episode of The New Avengers in which Dr Judson killed Lord Ravensworth with a maze in order to do something that I have completely forgotten what it was.
Episode 212: Space Reasons
· Recorded on Sunday 9 May 2021 · Duration 0:57:30
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This week, we’re joined by Jack Shanahan and Joe Ford to dicuss an episode where we discover that not only is the Doctor good at saving the world, he’s a useful striker, a reliable employee and a skilled matchmaker. And someone who looks good in a skimpy towel. It’s The Lodger.
Notes and links
Daisy Haggard created, co-wrote and starred in Back to Life (2019), a BBC comedy series about a woman who returns home to live with her parents after 17 years in jail. It features a hilarious comedy turn from our very own Jo Martin.
Spaced (1999) was a comedy series starring amd written by our own Jessica Hynes and Simon Pegg and directed by Edgar Wright. It was very clever and trope-aware, and if you can find it, we’re certain that you will enjoy it.
This story’s Emergency Crash Hologram is a loving tribute to or a blatant ripoff of Star Trek: Voyager’s Emergency Medical Hologram, wonderfully played by TV’s Robert Picardo and — delightfully — also known as the Doctor.
Jack and Joe host a Doctor Who podcast called The Nimon Be Praised!, which you can follow on Twitter at @NimonPodcast, and which features the two of them discussing every Doctor Who-related topic you could possibly imagine and occasionally praising the Nimon.
Joe is also the writer of Doc Oho Reviews, which contains reviews of all your favourite genre shows, including Doctor Who, of course, but also Buffy, Star Trek, The X-Files, Battlestar Galactica and more.
And you can also hear Joe on A Hamster with a Blunt Penknife, a podcast where he teams up with other witty and attractive people, including our hosts and guests, to watch and comment on their favourite Doctor Who stories. There’s a lot there to listen to, so you’d better get started right away.
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.
Episode 211: Relatable
· Recorded on Sunday 14 March 2021 · Duration 1:01:24
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This week, James, Nathan and Richard are joined by friend-of-the podcast Fiona Tomney for a few days mooning around in the south of France, staring into the gaping maw of isolation and depression and trying to prevent Vincent from inadvertently destroying some very pretty paintings. It’s Vincent and the Doctor.
Here’s the article Nathan mentioned about the awfulness of Curtis’s Love Actually (2003), a film in which Prime Minister Hugh Grant risks causing a diplomatic incident in order to get a girlfriend.
James mentions Curtis’s About Time (2013), in which Domnhall Gleeson discovers that he can travel backwards and forwards in his own lifespan in order to get a girlfriend.
And our last Curtis film for the time being — The Tall Guy (1989), in which Jeff Goldblum keeps going to the hospital and getting a series of increasingly unnecessary vaccinations in order to get a girlfriend.
Spike Milligan is the author and illustrator of A Book of Milliganimals (1968), in which he asks the important question “Can a parrot/eat a carrot/standing on his head?” His motivation for writing this book remains a mystery.
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.
Episode 210: Balancing the Darkness
· Recorded on Sunday 14 February 2021 · Duration 0:53:25
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