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Episode 195

Welcome to the Kandy Kommentary

This week, Thatcherism, marshmallows and contractual obligation collide as we fulfil a promise made late in 2017 to record a commentary on one of Doctor Who’s angriest and most revolutionary stories, The Happiness Patrol.

Buy the story!

The Happiness Patrol was released on DVD in 2012. In the US, it was released on its own (Amazon US), while in the UK and Australia, it was inexplicably released as part of the Ace Adventures box set, along with Dragonfire (Amazon UK).

Our original discussion of The Happiness Patrol, featuring Brendan and Richard, can be found in Episode 122: This Neocon World, recorded in July 2017.

James and Nathan discussed the story with Erik and Adam on The Real McCoy Podcast in December 2019.

James nominates The Happiness Patrol as his favourite Doctor Who story on New to Who’s surprise Christmas Special back in December 2018.

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, James is @ohjamessellwood, and Todd is @toddbeilby. 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.

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 run off with your husband in your personal escape shuttle. Again.

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.

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 195: Welcome to the Kandy Kommentary · Recorded on Sunday 19 July 2020 · Duration 1:18:18 · Download · Open in new window

CommentariesSeason 25The Seventh Doctor

Episode 194

Mr Cole, Mr Scoones, Mr Fetch and Mr Commentary

It’s Christmas in July, and an amnesiac Todd is cosplaying as Colin Baker while his missing son Brendan is slaving away in a workhouse somewhere. Meanwhile, Richard is frocked up and ready to take over the British Empire, as usual, while Nathan is wearing a brass N95 mask and a gorilla suit and dreaming of summer days spent frolicking in the forests of the planet Tara. Pass us the eggnog, someone: it’s time to meet The Next Doctor.

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, Brendan is @brandybongos, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. 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.

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 upstage you at your next family Christmas by pretending to be a much more bombastic and somewhat less annoying version of you.

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.

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 finished our Honor Blackman tribute season, and before embarking on our impending Kate O’Marathon, we recently spent a lovely 50 minutes admiring Joanna Lumley as Purdey in an episode of The New Avengers.

Episode 194: Mr Cole, Mr Scoones, Mr Fetch and Mr Commentary · Recorded on Friday 19 June 2020 · Duration 1:03:57 · Download · Open in new window

ChristmasCommentariesSpecialsThe Tenth Doctor

Episode 193

Dalek Caan Saves the Day

This week, we look back on Series 4 and consider some of the unanswered questions from the last thirteen weeks of Flight Through Entirety. Is Series 4 the best ever series of New Who? Sylvia Noble: threat or menace? What is the best story of the season, and why is it Midnight? And, as always, who or what should we snog, marry and avoid?

James mentions Donna’s solo return to the world of Doctor Who in the Big Finish box set Kidnapped!, which also stars Jacqueline King. Big Finish has also released an adventure with the Doctor and Donna that features Sir Bernard Cribbins as Wilf: it’s called No Place.

TV’s Sylvia Noble, Jacqueline King, stars as the Good Witch of the North in the Big Finish adaptation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which also stars the extremely pretty and excitingly named Dan Bottomley as the Scarecrow. No relation.

Ryan Sampson, who played Luke Rattigan in The Sontaran Strategem, has a Twitter account. Of particular note is his currently pinned tweet.

And finally, this article in the Radio Times reveals the true identity of the Library’s Doctor Moon.

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, James is @ohjamessellwood, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Peter is currently meatspace only. 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.

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 never again do a run of episodes as good as the last few months have been.

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.

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 again commemorate Honor Blackman by watching her appearance as Ronald Allen’s wife in an episode of Patrick McGoohan’s Danger Man called Colonel Rodriguez.

Episode 193: Dalek Caan Saves the Day · Recorded on Sunday 3 May 2020 · Duration 1:16:27 · Download · Open in new window

RetrospectivesSeries 4The Tenth Doctor

Episode 192

Why He Wins

This week, all four of us gather in the Console Room to tow the podcast home after a particularly trying week. It’s time for our journey to end, in — er — Journey’s End.

Perennial FTE punching bag Dodo Chaplet contracts syphilis — or at least an alien sex virus — in Daniel O’Mahony’s Virgin Missing Adventure The Man in the Velvet Mask.

During the Doctor’s year off in 2009, the 456 arrive on Earth to kidnap millions of children and are thwarted by Torchwood, without the assistance of Martha or Mickey. Despite this, Children of Earth is just about the best thing produced in Doctor Who’s modern era. If you haven’t seen it, you definitely should.

After the traditional transporter accident, Troi finds herself with two Will Rikers in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Second Chances, and somehow fails to take the obvious course of action.

Picks of the week

James

James wants you to watch The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith, which is episodes 5 and 6 of Series 3 of The Sarah Jane Adventures, and which includes the last scenes David Tennant filmed at the Doctor before his final regular episodes were broadcast at the end of 2009. It features the Trickster and Nigel Havers, only one of whom is trying to marry Sarah.

Peter

Peter recommends War of the Worlds, a Fox co-production from 2019, which features Ty Tennant, the son of Georgia and David Tennant, previously seen in his grandfather’s Doctor Who fiftieth anniversary special, The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot.

Todd

Todd wants to take us a bit highbrow this week, with the sensational Netflix series, Tiger King, which for many of us was the way we celebrated the beginning of our endless COVID lockdown. Very much worth a look.

Nathan

Taking the opportunity to retreat into his own childhood, Nathan suggests that you read Tove Jansson’s Moomin books, which range from charming and whimsical to elegiac and character-driven. Recommended.

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, James is @ohjamessellwood, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Peter is nowhere at all. 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.

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 rudely push your ex-girlfriend across the room in an unsubtle attempt to hit on your ex-boyfriend. You really have quite the complicated love life, don’t you?

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.

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 again commemorate Honor Blackman by watching her appearance as Ronald Allen’s wife in an episode of Patrick McGoohan’s Danger Man called Colonel Rodriguez.

Episode 192: Why He Wins · Recorded on Monday 13 April 2020 · Duration 1:05:16 · Download · Open in new window

Series 4The Tenth Doctor

Episode 191

Mr Smith’s Fanfare Is Diegetic

This week, Nathan, James, Todd and Peter sit in our separate homes, longing for an invasion where the aliens order us all to congregate in the street together. Which is what happens, of course, in The Stolen Earth.

We’ve mentioned this over and over again, but for an account of how this season and its finale came to be, there’s no better place to go than Russell T Davies and Ben Cook’s The Writer’s Tale: The Final Chapter. It’s illustrated with cartoons by RTD himself, including his original conception of the Shadow Proclamation, and his headcanon explanation of Harriet Jones’s daring escape from the Daleks. An absolute must-read.

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, James is @ohjamessellwood, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Peter is nowhere at all. 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.

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 Zoombomb your next departmental meeting and flirt outrageously with your boss.

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.

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 again commemorate Honor Blackman by watching her appearance as Ronald Allen’s wife in an episode of Patrick McGoohan’s Danger Man called Colonel Rodriguez.

Episode 191: Mr Smith’s Fanfare Is Diegetic · Recorded on Monday 13 April 2020 · Duration 0:57:54 · Download · Open in new window

Series 4The Tenth Doctor

Episode 190

Just One Thing

This week, we’re joined by TV’s Joe Lidster, to discuss one of our favourite Doctor Who episodes while the world around us devolves into fascism and the universe collapses into nothingness. I guess that’s what happens when you fail to Turn Left.

We spend a lot of time talking about Years and Years, which is Russell’s latest iteration of the story of society’s impeding collapse, and which we first mentioned way back in Episode 159. If you haven’t seen it, you must. If you’re worried that it’s too bleak, it is, but it’s funny and heartwarming as well.

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, James is @ohjamessellwood, Brendan is @brandybongos, and Joe is @joelidster. 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.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or when the impending disaster strikes, we’ll send you to Leeds. We’ve got an enormous stamp.

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.

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 commemorate Honor Blackman by talking all the way through her appearance alongside Roger Moore in an episode of The Saint called The Arrow of God.

Episode 190: Just One Thing · Recorded on Sunday 8 March 2020 · Duration 1:00:03 · Download · Open in new window

Series 4The Tenth Doctor

Episode 189

Your Bezzie Mate

Remember tourism? Sure, you would always end up on a crappy bus full of middle-class English holidaymakers who wanted to kill you, and there was always the imminent threat of alien attack, but at least it got you out of the house. Which is why this week we decided to catch up with Doctor Who YouTuber Josh Snares for a weekend getaway on the planet Midnight.

Russell T Davies’s script for Midnight is no longer available on thewriterstale.com, but it can still be found here. (It doesn’t have a title yet, and it’s still called Episode 8.)

In her essay on Fury from the Deep, El Sandifer explains that in a trad base-under-siege story, characterisation tends to focus on the competence of the characters rather than on anything more human and interesting.

The Midnight Entity™ (sigh) reminds James and Brendan of the creature from The Twilight Zone episode Nightmare at 20,000 Feet. (Which starred William Shatner, excitingly.)

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, James is @ohjamessellwood, and Brendan is @brandybongos. 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.

On Josh Snares’s YouTube channel, he can be found narrating the history of the missing episodes and animating missing scenes, comparing the DVD animations of Doctor Who stories with their original versions and many other things. He also created the official making-of documentary on the recent recreation of Mission to the Unknown. Josh’s videos are clever, informative, sophisticated and beautifully produced. Do not miss.

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 record ourselves reciting the creepy goblin poem and sneak it onto your iPhone when you’re not looking.

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.

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 commemorate Honor Blackman by talking all the way through her appearance alongside Roger Moore in an episode of The Saint called The Arrow of God.

Episode 189: Your Bezzie Mate · Recorded on Thursday 13 February 2020 · Duration 0:50:39 · Download · Open in new window

Series 4The Tenth Doctor

Episode 188

Our New Brigadier

This week, we’re joined again by rockstar Doctor Who blogger Johnny Spandrell, for just under an hour of conversation and fruitless dieting in a VR environment. It’s the start — and the end — of a beautiful friendship, in Forest of the Dead.

Richard mentions the fact that Donna arrives at the virtual sanatorium in a Judeo-Christian ambulance. Other kinds of ambulance are also available.

Carole Lombard and Clark Gable do a number of films together, but their big romcom is called No Man of Her Own (1932).

Just by sheer coincidence, Kenny Phillips meets an Irish girl, who he falls in love with, loses and then nearly meets again in two episodes of Press Gang, Season 2’s Love and the Junior Gazette and Season 3’s Chance is a Fine Thing.

Miss Evangelista’s exciting new look owes more than a little to Picasso’s Weeping Woman series. One of the series, belonging to the National Gallery of Victoria, was stolen in 1986.

Picks of the week

Johnny

For some mysterious reason, Johnny wants you to read the Wikipedia entry on Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveller’s Wife. I suppose the reason will somehow become clear to you as you read it.

Peter

Peter wants you to rewatch The Tomb of the Cybermen to see a prototype of Mr Lux in the character of Betty Kaftan. He also wants you to watch the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Relics to see the prototype of someone saved in a transporter buffer for many years. And finally, he wants you read the New Series Target Novelisations Rose by Russell T Davies and The Day of the Doctor by Steven Moffat, two writers whose relationship is characterised by warmth and cameraderie. (In fact, by the most amazing coincidence, the most recent issue of Doctor Who Magazine has them interviewing each other, and the warmth of their relationship is very much evident there.)

Richard

Richard refers to Naomi Klein’s recent book on Donald Trump, No Is Not Enough: Defeating the New Shock Politics. You can read an extract from the book here.

Nathan

As usual, Nathan suggests that you read the TARDIS Eruditorum entry on this story, which is actually a 100,000-word history of the first 50 years of Doctor Who. It’s an amazing piece of work.

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, Johnny is @JohnnySpandrell, and Richard is @RichardLStone. 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.

Johnny’s magnum opus is his blog Random Whoness, in which he goes through every single story from the first thirty-seven series of Doctor Who, in random order, and manages something surprisingly new and insightful about each one. It’s like Flight Through Entirety, only random and less tiresome.

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 forget to charge our sonic screwdriver properly before our last date at the Singing Towers of Darillium.

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.

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. Our Honor Blackman retrospective continues with her appearance alongside Roger Moore in an episode of The Saint called The Arrow of God.

Episode 188: Our New Brigadier · Recorded on Sunday 23 February 2020 · Duration 0:55:40 · Download · Open in new window

Series 4The Tenth Doctor

Episode 187

No One to Blame but Himself

This week, Nathan, Peter and Richard are joined by renowned Doctor Who blogger Johnny Spandrell, but we spend most of our time lurking among the bookshelves frightened by our own shadows. And despite the customary non-stop chattering, it’s all about Silence in the Library.

Fans of the Vashta Nerada will also enjoy the episode of Scooby-Doo, Where are You? in which the gang are confronted by a terrifying skeleton in a space suit, characteristically called the Spooky Space Kook.

The Library of Babel (1948) is a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, in which he imagines a library the size of the universe, which contains every book ever written, in a series of hexagonal rooms lined with shelves full of 410-page books containing every possible combination of letters. It’s a weird and interesting thought experiement. You can find a copy of the story itself here. Philosopher Daniel Dennett explores the idea further in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (1996).

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, Johnny is @JohnnySpandrell, and Richard is @RichardLStone. 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.

Johnny’s magnum opus is his blog Random Whoness, in which he goes through every single story from the first thirty-seven series of Doctor Who, in random order, and manages something surprisingly new and insightful about each one. It’s like Flight Through Entirety, only random and less tiresome.

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 feed your lunch to the shadows. And you were really really hungry.

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.

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. Our Honor Blackman retrospective continues this week with her appearance alongside Roger Moore in an episode of The Saint called The Arrow of God.

Episode 187: No One to Blame but Himself · Recorded on Sunday 23 February 2020 · Duration 0:57:49 · Download · Open in new window

Series 4The Tenth Doctor

Episode 186

Lowbrow–Highbrow

This week, Peter’s having a quiet drink, Brendan’s spending a suspicious amount of time in the toilet, Max has gone for a walk in the woods with Sacha Dhawan, and Nathan is looking at dirty postcards and reminiscing about the days when he still used to get out of this chair. Plus, Agatha Christie’s here for cocktails. So be sure to watch out for The Unicorn and the Wasp.

Nathan has dim memories of three Agatha Christie miniseries, adapted for TV by Sarah Phelps, who is writing a second series of RTD’s A Very English Scandal in 2021. These adaptations were And Then There Were None (2015), Witness for the Prosecution (2016) and Ordeal by Innocence (2018).

Meanwhile, at TARDIS Eruditorum, El Sandifer talks about how The Robots of Death draws on the genre features of Agatha Christie novels.

The Doctor reminisces about rescuing Charlemagne from an insane computer, a scenario taken directly from a Doctor Who story on the BBC website: The Lonely Computer, by Peter’s old friend Rupert Laight.

This Guardian article from 1999 theorises that Agatha Christie disappeared to get back at her cheating husband, and that her amnesia was feigned to conceal this fact. Nathan learned this story, like everything else he knows, from a tweet. (You can see his reply here).

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, Brendan is @brandybongos, and Max is @maxpjelbart. 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.

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 write a whole bunch of Doctor Who episodes that you really enjoy and then behave so poorly in public that you have no choice but to cancel us.

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.

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. Our Honor Blackman retrospective will be continuing soon.

Episode 186: Lowbrow–Highbrow · Recorded on Saturday 15 February 2020 · Duration 0:52:15 · Download · Open in new window

Series 4The Tenth Doctor

Episode 185

About His Manpain

This week, we basically stand around gloomily watching a fish drown until Todd cheers us up with some surprisingly athletic backflips. It’s The Doctor’s Daughter.

During the recording of our episode on 42 last year (Episode 170: I Believe Beryl Reid as a Freighter Captain), Brendan and Todd enter an unholy pact to reunite on this week’s episode to redeem The Doctor’s Daughter. With the most terrible consequences.

A few days before we recorded this episode, Chris Chibnall was interviewed in the Radio Times, saying that he would love one day to bring back some of the show’s earlier companions, like Amy, Rory, Ace and Tegan.

Over on Brendan’s YouTube channel, he is — among other things — reviewing each episode of Series 1 exactly 15 years after its first broadcast. Please like and subscribe, of course, and send him your takes on the episodes of the Eccleston Era.

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, Brendan is @brandybongos, and Todd is @toddbeilby. 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.

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 give you three delightfully unexpected weeks of work, during which you’ll mostly be required to flail around in mud.

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.

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. Our Honor Blackman retrospective will be continuing soon.

Episode 185: About His Manpain · Recorded on Saturday 22 February 2020 · Duration 0:49:04 · Download · Open in new window

Series 4The Tenth Doctor

Episode 184

This Soldier, This Soldier, This Soldier, This Soldier

This week, Nathan is crushing on that nice Colonel, James is crushing on a cloned replica of himself, and Peter is crushing on that nice young man who runs the local startup cult academy. And all the time, Adam Richard is roaming this suburban street with an axe, looking for cars to attack. It’s the end of the world, as usual: it’s The Poison Sky.

Adam’s TV show Outland (2012) screened on ABC-TV and told the story of five queer science-fiction fans thrown together after the breakup of their local fan group. Adam was co-creator, co-writer and one of the stars of the show. Outland was must-see TV for another small group of queer science fiction fans who would one day grow up to create the podcast Flight Through Entirety.

In March 2020, Catherine Tate returned to Big Finish with Jacqueline King in the Kidnapped! box set, in which Donna teams up with an old school friend to fight aliens in the Doctor’s absence.

Freeman Agyeman has just made her Big Finish début, but not in a Doctor Who story: instead, she’s joining Eve Myles in Torchwood: Dissected, released in February 2020.

As we said last week, 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.

Peter ponders the similarities between Luke Rattigan and convicted fraud Martin Shkreli, who is literally one of the world’s most appalling people.

Picks of the week

James

James wants you to watch Up the Women, a BBC4 sitcom created by Jessica Hynes, starring Hynes, Rebecca Front, Vicki Pepperdine and the Rattigan Academy’s very own Ryan Sampson.

Adam

Adam recommends The Stranger, Netflix’s answer to Broadchurch, produced by Nicola Shindler’s Red Production Company (Years and Years, Cucumber, Queer as Folk).

Peter

Hoping for the Rutans to make a return to Doctor Who, Peter suggests that you should watch Horror of Fang Rock, which we covered in the our delightfully named Episode 50, The Practical Problem with Leaving Someone Alive.

And he’s particularly keen for you to watch Netflix’s Elite, a Spanish teen drama in which attractive young people have sex and occasionally murder someone.

Nathan

Nathan finds depressing parallels between life in 2020 and life in 2060 as depicted in Avenue 5, a new HBO science-fiction comedy series by Armando Ianucci (The Thick of It).

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, James is @ohjamessellwood, and Peter’s not here, man. 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.

Adam is @adamrichard on Twitter, adamrichard on Instagram and Fabulous Adam Richard on Facebook. His website is at www.adamrichard.com.au. He can currently be found opining about Doctor Who and Star Trek: Picard on his own podcast Adam Richard Has a Theory.

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 foil your dreams of conquest by simply walking out the door.

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.

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 released a new episode yesterday commemorating our favourite Bond girl, the incomparable Honor Blackman, by watching The Mauritius Penny, an episode of The Avengers in which she starred as Cathy Gale.

Episode 184: This Soldier, This Soldier, This Soldier, This Soldier · Recorded on Saturday 8 February 2020 · Duration 0:54:35 · Download · Open in new window

Series 4The Tenth Doctor

Episode 183

Crossed That off the Whiteboard

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.

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.

Adam is @adamrichard on Twitter, adamrichard on Instagram and Fabulous Adam Richard on Facebook. His website is at www.adamrichard.com.au. He can currently be found opining about Doctor Who and Star Trek: Picard on his own podcast Adam Richard Has a Theory.

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 rudely correct your grammar even though you’re speaking perfectly idiomatic English.

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.

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 · Download · Open in new window

Series 4The Tenth Doctor

Episode 182

The Icy Moral High Ground

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.

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.

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, James is @ohjamessellwood, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. 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.

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 slip something unpleasant and unexpected into your Minoxidil.

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.

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 just released our first episode for the new year, in which we slur incoherently during the first ever episode of Roger Moore’s The Saint.

Episode 182: The Icy Moral High Ground · Recorded on Saturday 1 February 2020 · Duration 0:47:45 · Download · Open in new window

Series 4The Tenth Doctor

Episode 181

The Cambridge Latin Course

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.

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?’”

Here is a 3D recreation of the house of Lucius Caecilius Iucundus in Pompeii. It’s seen better days, to be honest.

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.

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, James is @ohjamessellwood and Brendan is @brandybongos. 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.

Erik is @sjcAustenite on Twitter, and appears by arrangement with an impressive number of podcasts, including The Writer’s Room, which discusses the writers of Doctor Who and The Outer Limits, So Much Stuff to Sing, about the American Musical, and The Real McCoy, which has released two episodes since we recorded this one, on Silver Nemesis and The Greatest Show in the Galaxy.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or challenge you to a yo’ mamma competition the likes of which you’ve never seen.

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.

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 just released our first episode for the new year, in which we slur incoherently during the first ever episode of Roger Moore’s The Saint.

Episode 181: The Cambridge Latin Course · Recorded on Monday 27 January 2020 · Duration 0:59:56 · Download · Open in new window

Series 4The Tenth Doctor

Episode 180

For Exactly the Same Reason

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.

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.

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 put on some lippie, dump you and head off to a nightclub in search of someone better.

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.

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 · Download · Open in new window

Series 4The Tenth Doctor

Episode 179

Mrs Golightly’s Happy Travelling University and Commentary

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.

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, James is @ohjamessellwood, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. 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.

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 trick you into wearing fancy dress to our black-tie Christmas Party.

And more

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 · Download · Open in new window

ChristmasCommentariesSpecialsThe Tenth Doctor

Episode 178

Remember Who We Were

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.

See you at Christmas!

A festive shout-out to Elizabeth Sandifer from TARDIS Eruditorum, whose essay on Time Crash James has been reading behind Nathan’s back.

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley and James is @ohjamessellwood. 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.

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.

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 (rather hypocritically) make snarky remarks about that bald patch that you think we haven’t noticed.

And more

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 · Download · Open in new window

Series 3SpecialsThe Tenth Doctor

Episode 177

Subtlety and Undertones

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?

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).

Nichola McAuliffe as Vivien Rook (no, not that one) was awarded Richard’s very first Bonnie Langford in this episode. She had previously done seven seasons as the lead in the ITV sitcom Surgical Spirit. Catherine Tate’s first ever TV appearance was in the first episode of its third series.

Follow us

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.

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 confound your expectations by praising an episode that you don’t really like very much.

And more

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 · Download · Open in new window

RetrospectivesSeries 3The Tenth Doctor

Episode 176

Saving the World with the Power of Podcasting

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.

Todd mentions the Voyager Reset Button™ — the overuse of the Reset Button Trope in Star Trek: Voyager. You can find a detailed fan complaint about this here.

Picks of the week

Todd

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.

Nathan

Nathan wants you to read Sally Rugg’s How Powerful We Are: Behind the Scenes with One of Australia’s Leading Activists. It’s an account of the campaign for the YES vote for marriage equality in Australia, whose successful outcome was finally finalised almost exactly two years ago today.

Richard

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.

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, James is @ohjamessellwood, Todd is @toddbeilby and Richard is @RichardLStone. 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.

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 give you a manly hug and dribble snot in your eye.

And more

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.

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 run out of Bond films, but there’s plenty of 1960s spy-fi nonsense to keep us going until James Bond returns next April.

Episode 176: Saving the World with the Power of Podcasting · Recorded on Sunday 22 September 2019 · Duration 0:53:30 · Download · Open in new window

Series 3The Tenth Doctor