This week, Nathan and James are joined by friend-of-the-podcast Max Jelbart to discuss perennial fan favourite and stone-cold classic Aliens of London. Spoiler alert: we all like it.
Notes and links
Doctor Who’s last soap-genre mashup was not an unqualified success — it was the thirtieth anniversary special that none of us had been dreaming of, as the Doctor and his friends collide with the cast of EastEnders in 1993’s Dimensions in Time.
Not for the last time, one of us mentions The Writer’s Tale, Russell T Davies’s account of his last few years as Doctor Who showrunner. It’s very candid and informative — an absolute must-read.
A massive supernatural event is also covered by the world’s media in RTD’s brilliant miniseries The Second Coming (2003), starring Christopher Eccleston and Lesley Sharp (Midnight).
RTD returned to commenting on the lives of gay men in Cucumber (2015) — this time looking at the differences between gay men in their forties and younger queer people in their twenties. It’s brilliant, but utterly harrowing.
Before the Weeping Angels, before the Silence, before the Monks, Steven Moffat brought us the Tersurons, unseen aliens who communicated by “precisely modulated gastric emissions”, and who were the butt of a number of jokes in Moffat’s first ever Doctor Who story, The Curse of Fatal Death.
After the untimely death of Lis Sladen, RTD and Phil Ford created Wizards vs Aliens, to take the place of The Sarah Jane Adventures in the BBC children’s television schedules. Among the cast were Annette Badland, Gwendoline Christie and TV’s Brian Blessed. It’s usually good, and sometimes actually great.
Follow us!
Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, James is @ohjamessellwood, and Max Jelbart is @max_jelbart. 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 also find intermittently amusing and incredibly accurate facts about Doctor Who at @FTEwhofacts.
This week, our flight takes us to nineteenth-century Cardiff, where Nathan is worried about the stiffs, Todd is shocked by all this talk about the butcher’s boy, and James is teaching Charles Dickens to enjoy life again mere months before he dies of a stroke. Turns out that we’re all just The Unquiet Dead.
Notes and links
Todd mentions Mark Gatiss’s Big Finish story Phantasmagoria (1999), starring Peter Davison and Mark Strickson, which he manages to get Charles Dickens to name-check in this episode.
Simon Callow’s willy can be seen in the film adaptation of E M Forster’s A Room with a View (1985), which also features an important cameo from Rupert Graves’s willy. Worth a look. (Not just for the willies. Honestly, grow up.)
This week’s episode of Flight Through Entirety contains over 200 special effects shots and was recorded in a delightful civic temple somewhere in Cardiff. It’s not quite the new normal, but we’re definitely on our way there. Welcome to The End of the World.
Notes and links
(Whatever happened to the Buy the story section? I used to love that.)
Russell T Davies’s historical miniseries Casanova starred David Tennant as a mouthy romantic lead, and meant that we were all fairly certain that he would be the new Doctor when Eccleston’s departure was announced.
Another hint came from Tennant’s appearance in The Quatermass Experiment (2015), which was a live-to-air remake of Nigel Neale’s 1953 TV series.
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 replace our moisturiser with acid, sneak up behind you in the bathroom and scare the crap out of you when you’re trying to shave.
– I’m the Doctor, by the way. What’s your name?
– Rose.
– Nice to meet you, Rose. Run for your life!
The wilderness years are finally over, and we’re back at last with an entirely new series of Flight Through Entirety, in a reassuringly familiar format.
This week, Nathan’s new job is giving him airs and graces, Brendan is carrying a whole bunch of Semtex for some reason, Richard finds a strange man in his room, and Todd’s skin has a strange and unconvincing glossy sheen. Welcome to a whole new era of Doctor Who — it’s Rose.
Buy the story!
This has always been our favourite part of the shownotes, but now that we’ve reached the Twenty-First Century, it’s no longer needed, so it’s appearing here for the last time.
From now on, Doctor Who is available on DVD, Blu-ray and streaming literally everywhere, and was released on all of these media very soon after broadcast. So you probably own it already. In several digital formats.
Notes and links
In 2003, the future of Doctor Who looked very much like Paul Cornell’s Scream of the Shalka, starring Richard E Grant as the Doctor, which was a web series available (alas no longer) on the BBC website. You can see the trailer here). It was released on DVD in 2013. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (Amazon AU)
The scripts for all of Series 1, including an introduction and a copy of the pitch document, were released as a book back in 2005. It’s definitely worth your time.
Fans of undistinguished pop starlet Billie Piper will definitely enjoy her 2000 hit, from the fondly remembered album Walk of Life. You can find the music video on YouTube, or you could always ask Todd to lend you his CD.
Rose was novelised by Russell T Davies earlier this year, and was released in a range of Target novelisations from the New Series. They’re all pretty good.
Damaged Goods is Russell T Davies’s brilliant but deeply upsetting contribution to the Virgin New Adventures range, first published in 1996. Unavoidably, a Big Finish adaptation also exists.
In this impressive tweet, Doctor Who showrunners Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat scowl menacingly at Michael Grade, who cancelled Doctor Who after a rough night in 1985. (Not pictured, Chris Chibnall.)
Fans of knowing all kinds of crucial nonsense about the production of Doctor Who (and that’s all of you, admit it) will enjoy Doctor Who: The Complete History, a blisteringly comprehensive history of everything it’s possible to know about the entire programme.
We’re all stories, in the end. Just make it a good one, eh?
Brendan, Richard, Nathan and Todd fly backwards in time through the entirety of the Classic Series. Who are our heroes and villains? What stories should you watch, avoid, or remake on a film budget? And what, finally, have we learned about Doctor Who, and about each other?
Thank you very much for listening. And no, you have something in your eye.
All you do is talk and talk and talk
In fact, this isn’t quite our last flirtation with the Classic Series. We still have three commentary podcasts to record: Enlightenment, with Peter Davison, Revelation of the Daleks, with Colin Baker, and a Sylvester McCoy story that our listeners are still voting on. It’s not too late to cast your vote, just head over to our shownotes for Episode 129 and make your views known.
Notes and links
The Nth Doctor, by Jean-Marc Lofficier, discusses in depth the unmade film scripts that preceded The TV Movie.
This week, we’re celebrating the end of another tiresome millennium: Brendan’s dressed as Madam Butterfly, Nathan’s mooching about in the morgue as usual, Todd’s going on about his boots for some reason, and Richard has made a terrible mess in the Console Room. It’s the 1996 TV Movie!
Well, that’s democracy for you
There’s still plenty of time for you to vote for a story for us to cover in our upcoming Sylvester McCoy commentary podcast episode. No rush though. You can probably afford to worry about it later.
Buy the story!
This one’s quite complicated. The TV Movie was one of the first stories to get a DVD release, way back in 2001, in the UK only. It finally got a Special Edition release in 2010/2011 (Amazon US) (Amazon UK). This release was also part of the Revisitations 1 Box Set, along with The Talons of Weng-Chiang and The Caves of Androzani, only available in Australia and the UK (Amazon UK). An upscaled Blu-ray version was released in 2016 in the UK only (Amazon UK).
Notes and links
We don’t plan to cover fan favourite Dimensions in Time, which was a one-off Doctor Who/EastEnders crossover broadcast on BBC1 in November 1993, as part of Children in Need. However, Brendan says you’ll enjoy this version, which includes production notes by Andrew Orton.
Friend-of-the-podcast Gary Russell wrote the novelisation of this story, published in 1996, written before Gary got to see the actual episode and available in bookshops before the audience had either. It is now, sadly, out of print. You can read some of Gary’s thoughts about the novelisation here.
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 relaunch the podcast as an ill-fated series of remakes of previous episodes featuring American actors in major roles and including a number of inept Star-Trek-inspired continuity errors.
– My lady, who is that little man?
– Oh, glorious evil. It is he?
We’ve reached the end of another era. Three years at the tail end of the Classic Series, reviled by some, forgotten by others, and not watched at all by a sizeable proportion of the audience. But all four of us love literally every single aspect of it without exception. (Quiet, Todd!)
There’s always a choice
And now it’s time for you to vote for a Sylvester McCoy story for an upcoming commentary podcast episode. Vote wisely!
Nathan mentions The Stranger, a video series created in the 1990s by BBV, starring Colin and Nicola as more quiet and sombre versions of their Doctor Who characters. You can watch the first episode, Summoned by Shadows, on YouTube.
Big Finish has released a series of Lost Stories audios based on the production team’s sketchy preliminary ideasforSeason27. And no, we’re not doing an episode on it.
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 send Nathan over to your place to go on and on about that one time that Sylvester played the spoons on his chest. Just like he did to the Rani, you know.
Bondfinger
Over on Bondfinger, we’ve already recorded our final commentary for the Pierce Brosnan era, so we’ll be releasing it in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, our three previousBrosnancommentaries are still available, and so are ourcommentaries on the Timothy Dalton films.
There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, where the sea’s asleep, and the rivers dream. People made of smoke, and cities made of song. Somewhere there’s danger, somewhere there’s injustice, and somewhere else the tea’s getting cold. Come on, Ace, we’ve got work to do!
This week, all four of us assemble on Horsenden Hill to light a fire, muck about, and discuss the last story of the 26-year run of the Classic Series. It’s Survival.
Fans of the music of Dominic Glynn will also enjoy FTE’s multi-award winning radio drama Time Inc.
The Planet of the Cheetah People (Cheetos in the constellation of Acinonyx) operates like a single biological entity. The Gaia Hypothesis postulates that the Earth operates in the same way.
For the second time, Nathan’s pick is the New to Who podcast, which covers those Doctor Who stories which you might actually want to watch, particularly if you’re a fan of the New Series.
Brendan
Dominic Glynn has recently released an EP called The Happiness Patrol Remixes, with new versions of the superb incidental music he composed for that story
Todd
Fans of both unnecessarily long films and TV’s Sylvester McCoy will want to rush out and buy the Blu-ray box set of The Hobbit Motion Picture Trilogy. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
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 secretly cancel your favourite TV show so that you don’t realise for a couple of years that it’s over forever and is never ever coming back.
Bondfinger
Over on Bondfinger, we’ve resumed our long-delayed flight through the Pierce Brosnan Era, which is nice, with the release of our latest commentary on The World Is Not Enough.
Our commentaries on the firsttwo Pierce Brosnan films are still available, and so are ourcommentaries on the Timothy Dalton films.
This week, we’re far too busy fending off Haemovores to talk about The Curse of Fenric. Fortunately, we’re each possessed of a deep and abiding faith: Nathan in Barbara, Richard in German Expressionism, and Brendan in the essential goodness of human nature.
Buy the story!
The Curse of Fenric was released on DVD in 2004/2005. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
According to this story, humanity will eventually evolve into sucker-faced blue monsters with seeds sprouting out of their heads. In the Blakes 7 episode Terminal, Servalan essentially reveals that humanity really evolves into the Taran Wood Beast.
If you want to learn more about the life of Alan Turing, you could watch the film The Imitation Game (2014), which did take some liberties with the details of Turing’s life story, or you could read Alan Turing: The Enigma (2000) by Andrew Hodges. We mention some of the people that inspired Turing’s work, including Kurt Gödel and Lewis Carroll. Turing was pardoned by the British government in 2013.
Nicholas Parsons is as famous as possible in the UK, as the host of Sale of the Century from 1971 to 1984 and as the host of the radio quiz show Just a Minute, from 1967 to the present day.
Here’s the story of Sonequa Martin-Green meeting Nichelle Nichols on the red carpet at the premiere of Star Trek: Discovery.
Ace has another difficult conversation with the Doctor in the Big Finish adaptation of Paul Cornell’s Love and War.
We’ll be returning to complete the Pierce Brosnan era any day now, but in the meantime you can still enjoy our commentaries on the firsttwo Pierce Brosnan films, and ourcommentaries on the Timothy Dalton Era.
This week, Nathan’s outraged by Richard’s blasphemous theories, while Brendan just wants to be a real ladylike. Don’t tell your probation officer — it’s Ghost Light.
Control asks the Doctor to “spare a farthing, guvnor” — her climb up the evolutionary ladder is based upon the 1913 play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw.
Gwedonline calls Ace Alice, which is the most obvious reference to Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll, but Nathan points out that this story owes much more to Alice than that.
After Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden of Eden, God places an angel with a flaming sword at the entrance to the Garden to prevent them from returning.
Fans of the song That’s the Way to the Zoo will enjoy this rendition by the hosts of the Splendid Chaps podcast, one of the inspirations for Flight Through Entirety. If you have never followed a link from our shownotes, break your habit, and follow this link immediately.
Douglas Adams’s Doctor Who movie script, Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen will be released as a novel by James Goss some time in January. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (Amazon AU)
Fans of FTE outside of Australia might not be aware of the non-binding non-compulsory postal survey which our wretched government is using to determine whether LGBTI people get to enjoy legal equality with every bogan arsehole who enjoyed threatening to beat us up in the playground when we were children.
And, finally, here’s a list of the amazing contributions Marc Platt has made to Doctor Who over the years since this story was first written.
Doctor Who in Ten Seconds
Brendan’s accelerated recaps of Classic Doctor Who are finally back, with some speedy ten-second summaries of all of the stories from Season 8.
We’ve now got a bunch of James Bond commentaries banked and ready to release. While you’re waiting for us to get our act together, you can enjoy our previouscommentaries on the Pierce Brosnan films, and ourcommentaries on the Timothy Dalton Era.
It’s the final season of the Classic Series of Doctor Who, and to celebrate, Brendan, Nathan and Richard are blowing up either an archaelogical site or the entire world. Let this be our last Battlefield!
Buy the story!
Battlefield was released on DVD in 2008/2009. Included in the release is a re-edited special feature-length version. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Richard Franklin’s novel Operation H.A.T.E tells a the weird story of Captain M, whose narrative has been completely stripped of all overt Doctor Who references for intellectual property reasons.
This story’s writer, Ben Aaronovitch, is now an accomplished novelist. But, back in the day, he had terrible difficulties meeting publication deadlines. Marc Platt ended up writing the novelisation of Battlefield, and Kate Orman had to step in to finish a crucial New Adventures novel, So Vile a Sin, when Aaronovitch couldn’t meet the deadline (he claimed his hard drive had failed).
Doctor Who in Ten Seconds
Brendan’s accelerated recaps of Classic Doctor Who are finally back, with some speedy ten-second summaries of all of the stories from Season 8.
Our long-awaited commentary on Die Another Day will be recorded next Friday, probably. While you’re waiting for that — and who wouldn’t be? — you can enjoy our previouscommentaries on the Pierce Brosnan films, and ourcommentaries on the Timothy Dalton Era.
Remember the 1960s, when this podcast first began? We had such high ideals, and we enjoyed making people happy. Well, it’s 2017 now, so welcome to our bitter, jaded and utterly mercenary take on The Greatest Show in the Galaxy.
The pebble drowning in his lake
Campaigning for our postal plebiscite has turned predictably nasty, but it’s very important for everyone to have their say on this issue: which Colin Baker story should be the subject of our upcoming commentary podcast? Head over to the show notes for Episode 121 to cast your vote.
Buy the story!
The Greatest Show in the Galaxy was released on DVD in 2012. (That was easy.) (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
Brendan’s “surprise mirror” remark is totally incomprehensible unless you’ve seen this literal music video of Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart. Watch it now.
The first episode of Australian comedy series Outland featured a gay Doctor Who fan who briefly considered abandoning his date when he made a crack about Daleks being unable to climb the stairs.
Chris Chibnall will be taking the reins of Doctor Who any day now. Here he is on the BBC’s Open Air programme in 1986, criticising The Trial of a Time Lord.
The Pakleds from the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Samaritan Snare were intended to be a parody of Star Trek fans.
This sketch from A Bit of Fry and Laurie depicts Stephen Fry’s reaction to increasing choice in the media landscape. Watch it all the way through — there’s a lovely surprise in there for fans of Doctor Who.
Richard identifies 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964) as one of the inspirations for this story. The eponymous Doctor is played by Tony Randall in some appalling yellowface. Check out the trailer here.
Picks of the week
Brendan
Take a deep breath. Brendan’s first pick is Doctor Who on Holiday a remix by Dean Gray of The KLF’s Doctorin’ the TARDIS, featuring Green Day. It’s good.
Richard is off on a top-secret mission to Piz Gloria right now, so our coverage of the Brosnan era will resume in a few weeks’ time. While you’re waiting, you can enjoy our previouscommentaries on the Pierce Brosnan films, and ourcommentaries on the Timothy Dalton Era.
This week, Brendan’s listening to some meaningless jazz, and Nathan’s hanging from a tree in his underwear, while Richard rides — to destiny. All things shall soon be ours: it’s Silver Nemesis.
Ungrateful wretch
The cost of our plebiscite has blown out enormously, and we reserve the right to completely ignore the result, but it’s almost certainly still worth casting your vote for the Colin Baker story that will be the subject of our upcoming commentary podcast. Head over to the show notes for Episode 121 to make your views known.
Buy the story!
Silver Nemesis was released on DVD in 2010. As usual, it was released on its own in the US (Amazon US), but in the UK and Australia, it released strapped to Revenge of the Cybermen in the unimaginatively titled Cybermen box set. (Amazon UK).
Notes and links
This episode’s title is taken from Shakespeare’s most improbable stage direction, in The Winter’s Tale, Act III, Scene 3, alluded to by Lady Peinforte in Part 2.
Death Comes to Time was an animated webcast on the BBC website in 2001, starring Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred, Jacqueline Pearce, John Sessions and Stephen Fry. It’s terrible, but you can still hear it as an audiobook in the US (Audible US), or as a CD in the UK (Amazon UK).
Over on Bondfinger, we’ve stalled in the middle of the Brosnan Era, and so our commentary on The World is Not Enough (1999) has been delayed. In the meantime, you can enjoy our previouscommentaries on the Pierce Brosnan films, and ourcommentaries on the Timothy Dalton Era.
This week, we’re manic, reactive and endogenous, as we contemplate fondant, marshmallow, and the practical problem with leaving someone alive. Make sure you’ve paid your poll tax — it’s time for an outing with The Happiness Patrol.
On with the Motley
In our ongoing postal plebiscite, you’ll be voting on which Colin Baker story will be the subject of our next commentary podcast. Take your mind off the horrors of democracy, head over to the shownotes for Episode 121, and cast your vote.
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).
Notes and links
Richard continues to feud with the hosts of the New To Who podcast. They’re all very attractive.
Dog lovers will find today’s upsetting media landscape impossible to navigate without referring to doesthedogdie.com.
The sound, look and feel of this story owes a lot to noirish thriller The Third Man (1949).
Section 28 of the Local Government Act (1988) was a dogshit piece of legislation enacted by the viciously homophobic Thatcher Government that banned the “promotion” of homosexuality. It remained in force in the UK until 2003.
Neither Richard nor Nathan have ever even heard of T-Bag, a British TV programme about a weird witch who travelled around time and space collecting weird objects. For the last few years of the show, T-Bag was played by Georgina Hale, our very own Priscilla P. (It’s horrifically bad. Take a look at one of the episodes from Season 3 here.)
Flight Through Entirety roars back into the feed with one of its best episodes ever, in which we go back to the very beginning of the history of the show and subtly reference tons of things we’ve done before. Except for Shirley Bassey as Davros. We’ve never done that, I think. It’s Remembrance of the Daleks, of course.
A web of mayhem and intrigue
Once again, it’s time for you to vote for another story for our next commentary podcast — a Colin Baker commentary, which is currently scheduled for release in a few months’ time.
The voting for our Colin Baker commentary podcast has now closed. In this poll, our listeners were given the choice between The Mark of the Rani, Revelation of the Daleks, The Mysterious Planet and Terror of the Vervoids. The winner, with 45% of the vote, was Richard’s choice Revelation of the Daleks.
Buy the story!
Are you sitting comfortably? After its original DVD release in 2001/2002, Remembrance of the Daleks: Special Edition was released in the UK and Australia as part of The Davros Collection in 2007 (Amazon UK). It was later released on its own in 2009 in the UK (Amazon UK), and in 2010 in the US (Amazon US).
The last time Moffat oversaw the Twelfth Doctor’s regeneration into a woman was in his very first Doctor Who story, The Curse of Fatal Death.
Ben Aaronovitch is now a well-regarded author, famous for his six-book Rivers of London series, which deals with a young policemen who works in a divison of the Metropolitan Police that deals with the supernatural. The first novel was inexplicably called Midnight Riot in the US.
The novelisation of Remembrance of the Daleks is excellent, and is actually available on Amazon. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (Amazon AU)
Counter-Measures is a series of Big Finish audios featuring Rachel Jensen, Allison Williams and Group Captain Ian “Chunky” Gillmore battling various alienesque threats in 1960s London.
The Profumo affair refers to a scandal in which the Secretary of State, John Profumo was forced to resign as a result of his 1961 affair with Christine Keeler, who may have been in a relationship with Yevgey Ivanov, a Soviet naval attaché; it contributed to the resignation of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in October 1963, just weeks before the first episode of Doctor Who aired. It was dramatised in the film, Scandal (1989), starring our very own Ian McKellen and John Hurt.
Scottish comedian Susan Calman, from Radio 4’s The News Quiz talks about how she plans to dress when she’s cast as Doctor Who.
David Banks wrote a coffee-table book called Cybermen, which explains everything you never wanted to know about why the Cybermen changed their costumes all the time.
Fans of Australian podcast episodes about Remembrance of the Daleks will enjoy the latest episode of New to Who, a podcast in which Colin, Daniel and Steven discuss Doctor Who stories you might actually want to watch.
This week, we give Sylvester McCoy a brief holiday while we revisit a Doctor Who story with some actual women in it. Which seems like the right thing to do nowadays. Sausage sandwiches at the ready, everyone: it’s our commentary on The Stones of Blood.
Buy the story!
In the US, you can buy The Stones of Blood by itself (Amazon US), or as part of the Key to Time box set (Amazon US). In the UK, it’s only available as part of the Key to Time box set. (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
You can find a much more concise and sensible discussion of this story in our regular episode about The Stones of Blood — Episode 58: The Fool Idwal Morgan, recorded in December 2015. Makes you think.
Next week on Bondfinger, we’re planning to record our commentary on Pierce Brosnan’s good Bond film, The World is Not Enough (1999), which was released just months after The Phantom Menace. While you’re waiting for that, you can listen to our twoprevious Brosnan commentaries, as well as ourcommentaries on the Timothy Dalton films.
After acquiring a mysterious treasure map from a German Expressionist filmmaker, Richard goes off to discover a fabulous treasure hidden deep in the bowels of a space mall, while Brendan and Nathan stay behind pouring milkshakes on each other. It’s Dragonfire.
Well, that’s democracy for you
You now have less than a week to vote for a Peter Davison story to be the subject of yet another FTE commentary podcast; we’ll be announcing the result at the end of our Tom Baker commentary episode next week.
Dragonfire was released on DVD in 2012. It was released on its own in the US (Amazon US), of course, but in Australia and the UK, it was released as part of the Ace Adventures box set, along with The Happiness Patrol, for some reason (Amazon UK).
Notes and links
Tony Osoba plays Kracauer, one of Kane’s followers. This is the second of three Doctor Who appearances: he was previously a Movellan in Destiny of the Daleks, and will go on to play an astronaut in Kill the Moon. He was also in Charles Chilton’s Space Force 2, a BBC science fiction radio series which served as a sequel to Chilton’s Journey into Space. He also appeared in Porridge, starring Ronnie Barker, in which he played a black Scotsman, which was apparently a hilarious thing in the 1970s.
Australia’s answer to Martha Stewart (without the criminal record) was called Tonia Todman, and who expected her to turn up in this episode? She’s still with us, apparently, and seems to have outlived her fame, such as it was.
Coincidentally, many of this story’s characters share names with famous figures in the history of film criticism, including Pudovkin, Kracauer, Belazs (nearly) and Eisenstein.
The guard’s line about “the semiotic thickness of a performed text”, which we are all terribly fond of, is a direct quote from Doctor Who: The Unfolding Text, which was an early attempt at academic criticism of Doctor Who.
Brendan recommends a Big Finish audio starring Sylvester McCoy and Bonnie Langford: Flip Flop, which consists of two discs that can be played in either order. Big Finish calls it “a unique innovation in storytelling”, which is sweet of them.
Nathan
Nathan recommends getting a subscription to Audible (US) (UK) (AU), where you can buy audiobook versions of many of the Doctor Who Target novelisations, particularly Delta and the Bannermen read by Bonnie Langford.
Brendan recounts his experiences reading his way through the Doctor Who novels on his blog, The Doctor Who Reader.
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 lounge around in the emergency services tea room ignoring your increasingly urgent messages about that ice jam in the upper docking bay.
Bondfinger
Over on Bondfinger, we’re halfway through our flight through the Pierce Brosnan era, with commentaries on GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies. Fans of things much better than those films will enjoy ourcommentaries on the Timothy Dalton films. Or will they?
It’s 1950s night at Flight Through Entirety, which means putting on bobby socks, combing Brylcreem through our remaining hair (if any), and leaving our copies of The Doctor Who Monster Book at home. It’s Delta and the Bannermen.
Er, just remind me. What day is it again?
As a valued listener of FTE, it is your democratic right to inflict a particular Peter Davison story on us, which we can inflict, in turn, upon your fellow listeners.
Delta and the Bannermen was released on DVD in 2009. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
Well, the ur-source of this story is the long-running 1980s sitcom Hi-de-Hi!, set in a 1950s holiday camp, starring Ruth Madoc, former wife of our very own Philip Madoc (in fishnets).
The Tollmaster was played by Ken Dodd, who earned a place in The Guinness Book of Records for the longest joke-telling session ever — 1,500 jokes in three and a half hours. (Not four days, sadly.) Other actors considered for the role included comedian and stand-up comic Bob Monkhouse, and Doctor Who-impersonator and part-time Roman Emperor Christopher Biggins.
Weissmuller is played by Stubby Kaye, who is best known for his role as Nicely-Nicely Johnson in Guys and Dolls.
The music in this story is provided by Keff McCulloch, apart from one track during the Doctor and Ray’s hunt for Delta and Billy — The Devil’s Galop by Charles Williams. Fans of Keff’s work will also enjoy the Doctor Who 25th Anniversary Album, particularly the track “8891 Royale”.
Over on Bondfinger, we have now released twocommentaries on the Pierce Brosnan films, to match our twocommentaries on the mercilessly (or mercifully) short Timothy Dalton Era. (We own him, remember?)
This week, Richard’s admiring the architecture, Brendan wants to say how-you-do, and Nathan has had a disappointingly small meal and is still feeling a little peckish. We’re all trapped in an excitingly hopeful modernist dystopia, so what else could it be but Paradise Towers?
Attendance is compulsory
Once again, we’re asking you to shape the future of this podcast by nominating a Peter Davison story to cover in our next commentary episode. But beware: this time the choice comes with potentially complex interpersonal repercussions.
Le Corbusier was a French architect who was massively fond of steel, concrete and plate glass, and who would probably have enjoyed more than a few astringent beverages with Kroagnon in Space Architect School.
High-Rise tells the story of “a class war…inside a luxurious apartment block”. It was written by J G Ballard, about whom Richard has some surprising things to say.
David Snell was originally commissioned to write the incidental music for this story, but his score was rejected by JNT, and Keff McCulloch ended up hastily writing a replacement score instead. Snell’s score is available as a DVD extra.
Deputy Chief Caretaker Clive Merrison played Sherlock Holmes alongside Michael Williams as Watson for BBC Radio 4, covering every canonical Sherlock Holmes story. They’re all available from Audible, so go out and buy them immediately.
In Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan talked about the differences between hot and cold media, which are concepts dear to the heart of any Doctor Who fan who has ever attempted to watch the Loose Cannon reconstruction of The Space Pirates.
Big Finish tackles some of this story’s themes in Spaceport Fear by William Gallagher, starring Colin Baker and Bonnie Langford.
Steven Wyatt had got the job partly on the basis of Claws, a TV play starring Brenda Blethyn and Todd’s beloved Mary Morris. It’s about cat people. Like Survival, I imagine.
And going slightly more highbrow, Richard alludes to The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin, which discusses the implications of our newfound technological ability to experience works of art whenever and wherever we like.
Brendan mentions the fraught political history of Yooka-Laylee, which actually looks like a lot of fun.
The Pruitt-Igoe public housing project seems like it was a massive conglomeration of dozens of Paradise Towers in St Louis, Missouri. Read about it here.
Doctor Who creator Sydney Newman offered Michael Grade some surprising advice about how to fix Doctor Who in the 1980s. More information about this is available as a DVD extra on the Time and the Rani DVD.
Richard makes a triumphant return to the podcast just in time for the start of the Sylvester McCoy era. And the Rani’s back too, cosplaying as Brendan for some reason. It’s Time and the Rani.
So free will is not an illusion after all
Every time we turn around it’s election season, and here at Flight Through Entirety, things are no different. This time we want you to vote for a Peter Davison story for our upcoming commentary podcast, scheduled for release after we finish Season 25.
Voting in the FTE Peter Davison commentary poll has now closed. In this poll, our listeners made a choice between Four to Doomsday, Arc of Infinity, Enlightenment and Resurrection of the Daleks. The winner, with 40% of the vote, was Enlightenment.
Buy the story!
Time and the Rani was released on DVD in 2010/2011. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)
Notes and links
Elizabeth Sandifer has posted a video blog in which she explains why she thinks the visual style of this story is a vast improvement. Scroll to the bottom of her discussion of this story, or, better still, read the whole thing.
Fans of terrible dialogue and refreshingly simplistic plots will also enjoy Pip and Jane’s episode of Space: 1999, which is called A Matter of Balance. (That’s a link to the actual episode, by the way, so click carefully.)
The story of King Solomon’s wisdom can be found in 1 Kings 3:16–28.
Mrs Malaprop was a hilarious comedy aunt from Sheridan’s play The Rivals (1775), famous for continually choosing the wrong word; despite that, she was the very pineapple of politeness.
Brendan’s quixotic quest to read every original Doctor Who novel is insightfully and entertainingly chronicled on his blog, The Doctor Who Reader.
Over on Bondfinger, we’ve just recorded a new commentary on the second Pierce Brosnan film, Tomorrow Never Dies (1997). We’ll be releasing that this week. In the meantime, feel free to enjoy more of Pierce in our commentary on GoldenEye (1995).
Of course, you can still catch our commentaries on bothfilms of the Timothy Dalton era.
