Episode 227 · Closing Time · Sunday 5 December 2021
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 · Download (66.8 MB)
Episode 226 · The God Complex · Sunday 28 November 2021
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 · Download (62.3 MB)
Episode 225 · The Girl Who Waited · Sunday 21 November 2021
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 · Download (48.7 MB)
Episode 224 · Night Terrors · Sunday 14 November 2021
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 · Download (53.8 MB)
Episode 223 · Let’s Kill Hitler · Sunday 7 November 2021
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 · Download (52.9 MB)
Episode 222 · A Good Man Goes to War · Sunday 24 October 2021
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 · Download (53.1 MB)
Episode 221 · The Almost People · Sunday 17 October 2021
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 · Download (59.0 MB)
Episode 220 · The Rebel Flesh · Sunday 10 October 2021
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 · Download (47.0 MB)
Episode 219 · The Doctor’s Wife · Sunday 3 October 2021
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 · Download (47.4 MB)
Episode 218 · The Curse of the Black Spot · Sunday 26 September 2021
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 · Download (41.7 MB)
