This week, we’re joined again by Adam Richard for a discussion about RTD’s early-season two-parters, sidelining the main characters, the military, cloning, Sontarans, and the perils of spending too much time with our families. It all smells very much like The Sontaran Stratagem.
Notes and links
Martha is now engaged to the impressively handsome Thomas Milligan from Last of the Time Lords, who is played by Tom Ellis, who can now been seen in the titular role in Netflix’s supernatural police procedural Lucifer.
Sergeant Benton’s pretty new replacement in this version of UNIT, Ross Jenkins, is played by Christian Cooke, who was recently one of the suspects in the BBC adaption of Agatha Christie’s Ordeal by Innocence (2018).
Take a drink, dear listener. In her TARDIS Eruditorum article on The Time Warrior, El Sandifer explains that Bob Holmes did not create the Sontarans as a second-tier race of Doctor Who monsters; what he created there instead was the character of Linx.
If you’re young enough, you might not know that Christopher Ryan — who plays General Staal in this story — first became famous as Mike the Cool Person in the Thatcher-era BBC comedy series The Young Ones. He went on to play Jennifer Saunders’s long-suffering ex-husband Marshall in Absolutely Fabulous.
Adam writes for the ABC-TV comedy quiz show Hard Quiz, which has been running in Australia since 2017, and is now in its fifth series.
Follow us
Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, James is @ohjamessellwood, and Peter is still, unaccountably, nowhere to be found. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam, and the strings performance was by Jane Aubourg. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.
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 183: Crossed That off the Whiteboard
· Recorded on Saturday 8 February 2020 · Duration 0:48:26
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This week, James is admiring Mr Halpern’s hardware, Richard’s showing a PowerPoint presentation to some very important clients, Todd’s trying desperately not to fall over this railing, and Nathan’s ranting incessantly about Marx while seriously regretting his lunch order. Welcome to the Planet of the Ood.
Notes and links
Keith Temple was well-known for a BBC TV Movie called Angel Cake (2006), in which the Virgin Mary appears in some rock buns baked by Sarah Lancashire, to miraculous effect. You can read an interview with both of them about the production here.
Temple has also written a number of books, including It’s Behind You, in which a washed-up soap actor starts to receive death threats in the post while she’s doing panto, with hilarious results.
This week, while Nathan’s lying on the couch hungover, James is in an ecstatic vaporous trance, and Brendan’s admiring his latest avant-garde objet d’art, we are unexpectedly joined by friend-of-the-podcast, Erik Stadnik, who we hope will (eventually) find it in his heart to save us from the latest impending apocalypse, The Fires of Pompeii.
Notes and links
Strap yourself in. There’s a lot this week.
The Doctor’s previous and completely contradictory visit to Pompeii is chronicled in the first Big Finish audio starring Sylvester McCoy and Bonnie Langford, called The Fires of Vulcan.
Roman historian Mary Beard defines the Dormouse Test like this: "[In a modern recreation of ancient Rome,] how long is it before the characters adopt an uncomfortably horizontal position in front of tables, usually festooned with grapes, and one says to another: ‘Can I pass you a dormouse?’”
This article appeared just days before our recording: the remains of one victim found in Herculaneum revealed that their owner’s brain turned to glass in the heat of the eruption.
David Whitaker was, in many ways, the creative genius who gave us Doctor Who, and in his very early novelisation, Doctor Who and the Crusaders, he not only gives his take on how history works, he also explains the morality of the Doctor’s historical adventures. A must-read.
Caroline Simcox finds a new way to approach historical Doctor Who adventures in Big Finish’s The Council of Nicaea. Son of the Dragon, by Steve Lyons, covers similar territory.
Tat Wood’s About Time 9 is the (sort of) definitive guide to Series 4 and the 2009 specials. No sign of About Time 10 yet, but we’re desperately hoping it will arrive before 2021.
We’re back for a new year, a new companion and an exciting new series of the Biggest Thing on TV These Days. But first, we have a simple and effective new weight-loss programme to explode. It’s Partners in Crime.
Notes and links
So, if you want to find out more about how this era of the show from Russell T Davies himself, you must take a look at The Writer’s Tale: The Final Chapter, which contains his candid real-time account of how this final RTD series developed. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (Amazon AU)
In The Writer’s Tale, Russell says that the Adipose were inspired by the horrific puppet creatures that pursue a Vauxhall Corsa in this appalling advertisement.
Whereas Nathan had always assumed that they had been inspired by the horrible food creatures that featured in an ad campaign for Wrigley’s chewing gum. (Which would have had to travel back in time five or so years for that to be possible.)
The Supernanny was a British reality TV show in which Jo Frost would turn up at your home and explain to you exactly how terrible your parenting was. It had been running on Channel 4 since 2004.
Follow us
Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby and James is @ohjamessellwood. Peter continues to deprive himself of the world’s biggest source of cat pictures and targeted harassment, so Twitter fans will just have to do without him. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam, and the strings performance was by Jane Aubourg. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.
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 planning to continue releasing episodes of sixties spy-fi nonsense despite the delayed release of No Time to Die.
Episode 180: For Exactly the Same Reason
· Recorded on Saturday 1 February 2020 · Duration 0:56:33
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In our highest-rated episode since 1979, Nathan, James, Todd and Richard celebrate Christmas aboard the Titanic with champagne, buffalo wings and Kylie Minogue. It looks like it’s going to be a successful maiden voyage — after all, the episode is called Voyage of the Damned.
You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on Series 11 of Doctor Who, at jodieintoterror.com, at @JodieIntoTerror on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and wherever podcasts can be found. We’re planning to return in the New Year with our ill-considered hot takes on Series 12.
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’ve just released a Very Special Christmas Bondfinger, in which we comment on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which shares a surprising amount of DNA with You Only Live Twice.
Episode 179: Mrs Golightly’s Happy Travelling University and Commentary
· Recorded on Sunday 8 December 2019 · Duration 1:17:20
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Our farewell last week was so heartbreaking that we decided to sneak in one last episode before Christmas. So, here are Terry Wogan and John Barrowman to introduce a heartwarming episode of Flight Through Entirety, in which Nathan and James are joined by Steven B and Dan from New to Who to discuss the 2007 Children in Need special, Time Crash.
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 Series 11 of Doctor Who, at jodieintoterror.com, at @JodieIntoTerror on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and wherever podcasts can be found. We’re planning to return in the New Year with our ill-considered hot takes on Series 12.
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’ve already recorded a Very Special Christmas Bondfinger, which should turn up in your feed any day now.
Episode 178: Remember Who We Were
· Recorded on Tuesday 10 December 2019 · Duration 0:24:32
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We’ve survived our first year of post–Camille Coduri Doctor Who, and our only full year in the company of the charming and charismatic Freema Agyeman. So, what did we all think?
Notes and links
The Angry Black Woman stereotype combines sexism and racism, and seems designed to discourage black women from speaking out. You can find out more about it in this article from the BBC; this article from Forbes discusses ways of combating it.
As we’ve said before, Derek Jacobi had previously played a weird robot version of the Master in Scream of the Shalka, a Doctor Who story written by Paul Cornell and released by the BBC as a Flash animation in 2003. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (Amazon AU).
Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby and Richard is @RichardLStone. Peter doesn’t know what Twitter is and just wishes you would all stop asking him about it. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam, and the strings performance was by Jane Aubourg. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.
You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on Series 11 of Doctor Who, at jodieintoterror.com, at @JodieIntoTerror on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and wherever podcasts can be found. We’re planning to return in the New Year with our ill-considered hot takes on Series 12.
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 planning to release a Very Special Christmas Bondfinger this year, so make sure you keep updating the podcast feed every few minutes between now and the end of December.
Episode 177: Subtlety and Undertones
· Recorded on Sunday 13 October 2019 · Duration 1:13:26
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It’s the last episode of Series 3, so we’re walking the Earth and telling anyone who’ll stand still for long enough about our favourite television show in the whole world. It’s Last of the Time Lords.
This week, Todd wants you to go back and watch Tom Baker and Louise Jameson in The Invasion of Time, which we discussed in Episode 55: Timothy Dalton’s Pyjamas.
James
Quite rightly, James recommends Life on Mars, in which John Simm plays a present-day police officer who finds himself stranded back in 1973.
And Richard recommends John Lanchester’s article in The London Review of Books, Good New Idea, in which he makes an argument for the introduction of a Universal Basic Income.
We’re on the run this week — skulking in shadows and eating chips while talking about the Master’s backstory and the deplorable state of British politics. Which is a normal Sunday for us, even when we’re not talking about The Sound of Drums.
Broken News was a six-episode comedy series shown on BBC Two in 2005, which recreated the experience of channel surfing across a range of 24-hour news channels while some weird and incomprehensible news story is breaking. We love it.
This week, we’re joined by TV’s Adam Richard to talk about Martha, the Master, Heather Locklear, Coronation Street and Russell’s original plans for the end of the season. And we also talk about a little Doctor Who episode that we like to call Utopia.
Notes and links
Scream of the Shalka was a Doctor Who story written by Paul Cornell and released by the BBC as a Flash animation in 2003. It starred Richard E Grant as the Doctor and Derek Jacobi as a weird robot version of the Master, who was kept captive in the Doctor’s TARDIS. It was released on DVD in 2013. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (Amazon AU).
Unlike so many Doctor Who YouTubers, Brendan loves Doctor Who. And what more proof of this do you need than his web series Say Something Nice, in which he goes through all of the lowest-rated Doctor Who episodes and says something nice about them. Bless him.
Another Master, Geoffrey Beevers, joins Tom Baker in a battle of terribly mellifluous voices in Big Finish’s Death Match, whose key scene Brendan recreates expertly during this episode.
And our final Master for the week is Alex Macqueen, who eventually reveals himself opposite Sylvester McCoy in the Big Finish story Dominion.
This week, we’re joined by Lizbeth Myles from Verity! podcast to discuss a terrifying romantic comedy about the brevity of human life. It’s called Blink. People seem to like it.
Notes and links
Nathan’s allusion to a Phrygian king at the start of the episode comes from a half-remembered story in Herodotus Book 2, in which the Egyptian king Psammetichus kept two children in isolation, believing that they would grow up speaking the oldest human language.
This episode’s conceit and the name Sally Sparrow were first used by Stephen Moffat in a story in the Doctor Who Annual 2006 called What I Did in My Christmas Holidays by Sally Sparrow. You can read it here.
And, of course, we never stop mentioning Stephen Moffat’s breakout TV show Coupling, which is essential viewing for Moffat fans (if somewhat problematic at times). Here’s what Elizabeth Sandifer had to say about it.
Simon, Todd and Nathan are still trapped in 1913, which is better, at least, than being trapped in chains, a collapsing galaxy, every mirror, or a scarecrow. With World War I on the horizon, all three of them await the answer to a single question: Will John Smith have the courage to leave the stage, so that the Doctor can confront The Family of Blood?
Notes and links
A group of scarecrows inflicted on the Doctor the horrifying fate of regenerating into Jon Pertwee in the 1969 Doctor Who comic The Night Walkers. The Fourth Doctor also met walking scarecrows in Tom Baker and Ian Marter’s Doctor Who movie treatment Doctor Who Meets Scratchman, novelised by James Goss in 2019.
When The Family of Blood was released in 2007, Harry Lloyd was playing Will Scarlett in the BBC’s Robin Hood (which also starred Patrick Troughton’s grandson Sam). He can be seen in this episode’s corresponding Doctor Who Confidential episode, looking very sweet and just ever-so-slightly stoned.
The Inner Light is a highly regarded episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, in which Captain Picard, in the blink of an eye, lives an entire life as a Californian hippie whose community is devastated by the effects of climate change.
Picks of the week
Todd
Wisely, Todd recommends watching Horror of Fang Rock. You could also listen to our Horror of Fang Rock episode, The Practical Problem with Leaving Someone Alive.
Simon
Simon recommends taking a look at Jessica Hynes in another role, in the BBC sitcom W1A, set in the BBC itself. It’s on Netflix in the US, probably, but not in Australia, where it used to be available on iView but isn’t any longer. In the UK, its on Amazon Prime Instant Video. Television is delightful in 2019, isn’t it?
Nathan
Of course, Nathan recommends Paul Cornell’s original novel. He thinks Chapter 8 is particularly good. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (Amazon AU).
We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or the next time you try to serve us lobster thermidor for dinner, we will overreact in the most terrifying and poetic way.
Well, the Doctor has been exiled to Earth again, but instead of hobnobbing with lizard men, he’s spending his time flirting with Matron and delivering incredibly tedious history lessons. There’s some indefensible name-dropping in this episode, including local radio star Simon Moore, but after all, that’s just Human Nature.
Buy the story!
You all have actual video of this episode on disc already, I imagine, so here are some links to Paul Cornell’s original Virgin New Adventure. It’s very good, and even better in places. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (Amazon AU).
Notes and links
In honour of Simon’s return to the podcast, here’s the TV Tropes entry for the KickTheDog trope, in which a villainous character confirms their villainy by doing something pointlessly cruel early on in the narrative.
It’s been a while since we mentioned that the entirety of Blakes 7 is available to watch for free on YouTube, so here’s a link to the episode Nathan mentions, Series 2 Episode 2, Shadow.
We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll get you a detention by deliberately including several obscure Roman obscenities in your Latin prose composition homework.
This week, we hop aboard the SS Pentallian just in time for it to start plummeting into the heart of a blazing sun. And so while we wait for our inevitable incineration, we answer trivia questions about Bananarama, forget everyone’s names, throw shade on the Captain’s marriage, and spend far too much time crawling around the ship, gurning and gnashing our teeth. Fortunately, it’s all over in 42 minutes.
Notes and links
The 1972 film Solaris, based on Stanislaw Lem’s 1961 novel, features — spoiler alert! — a sentient ocean on an alien planet.
Fans of real-time narrative in cinema will also enjoy Run Lola Run (1998), Fail-Safe (1964), and The Set-Up (1949); United 93 (2006) is also good, but might be more difficult to enjoy.
Lis Sladen gets to do some much more enjoyable possessed-by-aliens acting in the third story of the first season of The Sarah Jane Adventures, Warriors of Kudlak.
And there’s coffee in that (sentient) nebula in the sixth episode of Star Trek: Voyager, The Cloud.
This week, we’re hosting our first ever black-tie function, and you’re all invited! Nathan’s scoffing all the canapés, Brendan keeps being mistaken for the waiter, and somewhere upstairs is a roaring and slavering Colin Neal, who will join us later — we hope — to discuss The Lazarus Experiment.
Guga Mbatha-Raw appeared in the Series 3 Black Mirror episode San Junipero. She also played Ophelia to Jude Law’s Hamlet in a production in the West End and on Broadway in 2009 — she is interviewed about it here.
This week, we discuss human nature, animatronic willies, easily avoidable deaths, and the ethics of cooking pork. Which is probably all just a way of distracting ourselves from the Evolution of the Daleks.
Notes and links
The script for this episode is clever enough to borrow from David Whitaker, the Doctor Who script editor who wrote the cleverest Dalek stories from the 1960s. To find out more about him, have a listen to our episode on Evil of the Daleks, which is Episode 13: Airwick Gatport.
James identifies one of the influences on this story as a period-appropriate adaptation of The Island of Dr Moreau called Island of Lost Souls (1932), starring Charles Laughton as Dr Moreau.
And last of all, our founder and dear friend Brendan has revived his YouTube channel and is producing huge quantities of fantastic content every day now. Please like and subscribe.
Picks of the week
James
James wants you to watch James Whale’s classic Universal film Frankenstein (1931), which is undoubtedly an influence on this story. After that, you should immediately go and watch Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Finally, you can round all that off with a read through Paul Magrs’s series of novels, the Brenda and Effie Mysteries, in which the Bride of Frankenstein, who now runs a B & B in Whitby, solves supernatural mysteries with her friend Effie. Audiobook versions are also available, some of which are brought to life by our very own Anne Reid, (Audible US) (Audible UK) (Audible AU)
Peter
Peter wants us to curl up on the sofa and re-visit Blood Harvest, a Virgin New Adventures novel by Terrance Dicks, and a sequel to his TV story State of Decay.
Richard
Richard wants only what’s best for us, and so he thinks we should all pour a small glass of whisky, draw the curtains, switch on the turntable and listen to Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Because we should.
Nathan
Nathan was not allowed to pick Russell T Davies Years and Years again, even though it screens in Australia on SBS starting on 6 November. Instead, he wants you to read Eric Saward’s novelisation of Resurrection of the Daleks, which is every bit as good as you might expect.
We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll force you to read our lengthy post on Gallifrey Base which explains in leaden detail that this episode has no idea about how DNA actually works.
Episode 168: A Long Tradition of Doctor Who Monsters That in Some Way Resemble Human Genitalia
· Recorded on Sunday 11 August 2019 · Duration 0:41:06
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This week, we learn that the mortal enemy of showtunes is capitalism, that the mortal enemy of some Doctor Who fans is fun, and that the mortal enemy of the Doctor has descended upon Depression-Era New York in an exciting new thematic guise. The show must go on, in spite of the Daleks in Manhattan.
Notes and links
The idea of the City as a hostile, inhuman place is found in Fritz Lang’s masterpiece of German expressionist cinema Metropolis (1927) and the terrifying version of 1980 depicted in Just Imagine (1930). Both of these are inspired by the looming monuments of architect Hugh Ferriss’s cityscapes.
On a lighter note, Busby Berkeley choreographed lavish dance number for both Broadway and Hollywood during the era of the earliest move musical. Take a look at some examples here.
Andrew Garfield’s big break wasn’t that superhero film at all: it was his film début, Boy A (2007).
It’s been some time since we did this, so here’s a link to El Sandifer’s discussion of this entire story on TARDIS Eruditorum.
This week, Brendan’s high on Honesty, James is driving naked, and Nathan can’t stop scratching himself for some reason, while special guest star Erik Stadnik brings some philosophy and literary criticism to our discussion of Gridlock.
Notes and links
Fans of David Tennant massively overplaying the Doctor’s enthusiasm will also enjoy his audiobook reading of The Stone Rose by Jacqueline Rayner. (Audible US) (Audible UK) (Audible AU)
The actor who plays Valerie in Gridlock and Bill’s foster mother Moira in Series 10 also had a small part in RTD’s series The Second Coming, which stars Christoper Eccleston in the title role and which is very definitely worth watching.
This week, we’re joined by Pete Lambert and Conrad Westmaas for a social history of Elizabethan England, a whirlwind tour of the life and works of Shakespeare, and some serious criticism of Martha’s taste in men. It’s Tuesday, so this must be Hamlet — it’s The Shakespeare Code.
Notes and links
Conrad has two recommendations for you. For a straightforward guide to Shakespeare’s life and works, see Emma Smith’s This is Shakespeare.
And we’re back! It’s a new year for Doctor Who, and there’s a new companion, with a new mother who will at some point slap him in the face. But until then, it’s all about a bunch of rhinos menacing a hospital on the moon, which is just the kind of premise literally any TV show would come up with. Welcome aboard, Smith and Jones.
Notes and links
It’s a scientific fact that San Junipero is the only episode of Black Mirror in existence which won’t reinforce your hatred of humanity in general and everyone in the world in particular. And Gugu Mbatha-Raw is spectacular in it. Watch it.
We will be mentioning Years and Years every week until we finally get to The Eleventh Hour. Anne Reid stars.
(Our Australian listeners should keep an eye on SBS, which has reportedly bought the series. Maybe.)
An exhaustive search has unearthed a copy of one of the Zovirax ads referenced in this episode.
The Judoon will return in The Sarah Jane Adventures Series 3 story Prisoner of the Judoon. They fit right in. (I miss that show. It’s great.)
We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or you’ll never see your daughter in Florida again. Unless you actually have a daughter in Florida, in which case please give her our love.
