Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Talks to Jack Coyer & Steven B about their choice of The Time Monster (3/6)

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Talks to Jack Coyer & Steven B about their choice of The Time Monster (3/6) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:33
  Hamster with a blunt pen knife for doing quicker.
• 0:37
  Quicker. Welcome back to Hamster with a
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  Blunt Pen Knife, the number one Doctor Who YouTube commentary
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  podcast, better than all the other podcasts.
• 0:48
  We're here today talking about Doctor Who and we've
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  accidentally landed on the Time Monster.
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  We're in episodes. Well, what?
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  The production officially titles episode 3 of the Time Monster,
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  but I'm more inclined to believe that in this era of, you know, 2
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  + 2 + 2 parties. But this is really the beginning
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  of Part 2 of the Time Monster, which is really I, I don't think
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  this episode is very well celebrated.
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  I think a lot of people sort of would put this down as one of
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  the lower points in the story. So I'll give her off you guys
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  before we go in, having got to having got to be in with that
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  first section. This is a new story and you're
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  watching it for the first time and we've watched the two
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  episodes we've watched. What sort of content are you
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  expecting from this end of season?
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  You know, common, culminating the weeks and weeks that we've
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  seen before? What sort of things are you
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  expecting from this portion of the story?
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  Should I be expecting? Well, I mean, based on what
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  we've seen so far, are there any elements that you would expect
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  to be, you know, then recovering or, you know, what direction
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  would you take the story if you don't know where they're going
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  to take you? It's, it's such a great question
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  because I can't, I can't really sort of dissociate myself from
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  all of the, the years of knowing the story and how it sort of
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  meanders along and, you know, just doesn't really do very much
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  for very long, for a long time. And then sort of gets to the end
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  and you sort of think, oh, OK, well, that's that's how that
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  went. But you know, with the master
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  playing with time, it kind of sounds like perhaps there should
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  be some apocalyptic universe halting, you know, Lugopolis
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  esque ish ending. But I know that's not what
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  happens. Well, maybe not on the version
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  you watch coming. The last place I ever would
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  expect this story to go after the first two episodes is a
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  particularly melodramatic version of The Merchant of
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  Venice, which is where we end up.
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  But I'm guessing because we've seen Atlantis a little bit.
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  So I guess that's going to be a big part of the plot somewhere.
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  And we mentioned it in Part 1. Plus we had that dream sequence
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  at the beginning of the story. So I figured there'd be some
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  kind of big master doctor confrontation at the end of the
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  season that when we're leading up to that.
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  But I, I don't think I would expect this story to be as
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  unpredictable as it is. And I figure, I think I would
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  figure that we were staying in the Institute and that maybe it
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  would be 4 parts long. And and what we've seen so far
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  is what we're going to get. So I'm quite delighted actually,
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  because I think how do these people know that don't rate this
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  episode. I think this is where the fun
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  begins. The fella on the horseback
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  coming through and fighting the UNIT soldiers.
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  The TARDIS on the back of the van.
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  TARDIS always looks great on vehicles, right?
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  The doodle bug coming through suddenly this.
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  I feel like Steven Moffett might have been paying attention at
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  this point. You know, going oh fun with time
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  on Doctor Who. It's, well, I think this is the
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  first episode. That's very much what people are
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  probably coming here for. This is, you know, the master
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  and the unit family messing around with each other, which
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  is. Yeah.
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  And then what people are probably turning on for.
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  I think the real departure is part four.
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  Well, we basically have a free hand of in two Tardises.
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  I mean, who the hell we? Think we go there, but obviously
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  that is still to come. Oh, everyone went quiet.
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  Should we? Should we come in and watch Part
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  3 then? Yes.
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  Let's let's let's. Well I see what I shall count us
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  in this time in 5432 time monster and go.
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  I forgot how we ended Oh yeah, that whopping right close up on
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  grasses. Do you know that I was learning
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  some interesting things about the actor that I think he worked
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  in? Was it accountancy or something?
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  His whole life he had a very boring job.
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  And then he got to the age of 50 and just decided, do you know
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  what? I want to act?
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  So he gave away this enormously successful career that was
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  bringing in tons of money to do a job where, you know, you're
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  lucky if you got a job twice a year, but apparently made an
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  enormous success of it and ended up working, you know, doing lots
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  of work with the RSC and things like that.
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  Like, you really did make an impact, and then he slummed it a
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  little bit on the Time Monster as well.
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  But you take the work where you can get it right.
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  Yeah, well, I think that's obviously we've spoken about the
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  2 + 2 + 2 format. That's really where classes
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  comes in because he is the Doctor personal of Part 2.
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  You know, we're getting rid of Doctor personal now, and you'll
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  notice we don't go back to that location because we have to get
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  rid of that location because we're going to put the TARDIS
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  set on that part of the studio floor.
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  So we need a new Doctor. You know, Doctor Percival is the
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  guy who knows about who can tell the Master about physics, and
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  Doctor Claussis is the guy who can tell the Master about
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  Atlantis. He knows the same function.
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  They've got a lot of functions. Did you see the way Dr. Percival
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  turned around to the camera? There it was, a look of total
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  shock when crafted. Because he's realising he's not
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  going to get his wages for next week because he's.
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  He's thinking, yeah, that's my replacement for God's sake.
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  This is my replacement at Dan being a clown can.
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  I ask you guys about Chronos itself.
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  I suppose that's the right pronoun.
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  And I'm going to try and divorce myself from everything that
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  Craig Hinton did with, you know, all of these God like beings
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  later on in extended media. So what's happening with Kronos
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  then, this great time creature? Somebody explain it to me?
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  I mean, I, I don't think I can sort of explain it outside of,
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  you know, what we eventually find out about the Kron of Wars,
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  you know, the these vast extra dimensional, extra temporal
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  beans who eat time. I think that's kind of an odd,
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  weird concept that's probably sort of outside something you
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  could truly understand. It's interesting that they
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  conflate that sort of creature with Chronos the the Greek Titan
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  rather than God. And I don't really sort of see
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  the connection to the story of Chronos and you know, the
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  Chronos as, as it's portrayed here as well.
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  So it's, it's an odd one. Like I, I kind of get the idea
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  almost perhaps like the reapers in some regard in Father's Day,
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  perhaps maybe some kind of Eternals, you know, creature
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  that sits outside time and and devours time as a snack.
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  But that is just so high concept and idea.
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  And, you know, Kronos isn't a, a big bad that we sort of get to
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  to confront or deal with directly up until the very end
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  when there's basically AI don't know, like a, you know, wisdom
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  of Solomon kind of ending to it all.
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  So I, I don't feel like I ever really get a grasp on what
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  Kronos is about. They're about.
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  You're saying then that because it's not here in the script, it
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  was there for the taking in all that, You know, that's where all
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  the contexts came in. That's where.
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  They tried. To sort of put it into some big
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  mythology. I don't really think they're
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  thinking on those terms here, are they?
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  It's just a great, it's another one of those, of course, that's
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  a great idea. A time eater.
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  Let's put it in, yeah. And they probably already have,
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  Steven said, thinking of wider mythologies that they can
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  plunder. Obviously in the next story
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  we're going to get Atlas obviously invoked in in the
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  Three Doctors and the. Festus as well.
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  Yeah, so they are thinking of, you know, they, they want to
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  show how widely learned they are.
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  Unfortunately, it's sort of conceptualized on the screen as
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  this man dressed up as a budgerigar.
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  That's. Quite interesting.
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  Well, the Doctor is already a man do.
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  You know what though, this particular scene that's on the
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  screen at the moment where you've got the flashing of that
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  form just before we actually get to see it in studio, it's
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  actually really effective. The sort of, you know, butterfly
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  out of the chrysalis. The the crystal there I think
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  works. But when you kind of see just a
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  guy in a suit flapping about in what looks to be fabric and
• 10:18
  plastic, it's not a great look. What Barry, let's suggest to
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  Paul Bernard was that they CSO in a lot of flames, so it's
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  really obscured because he can't tell that the costume wasn't
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  working. Yeah, right.
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  The thing that the Master's holding up at the moment, by the
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  way, is this potentially the first instance of Gallifrey in
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  script that we see like in the modern series.
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  Do you know the same? Potentially I mean this is of
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  course the era that comes up with the name powerful.
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  I suppose they are taking and they have you know, more Time
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  Lords in it than any other era and you know, I think they are
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  and obviously Terrance Dicks obviously colloke the war games,
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  which is where we get Time Lords in the 1st place.
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  So I think they are thinking on grand what is the Doctor's
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  place? You know, we have a tension
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  between the Doctor as a Time Lord and the Doctor as a member
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  of UNIT or the human race, which is attention that still, you
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  know, it's kept to this day. I think it's a it's a mystery
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  though that is completely debunked come the three Doctors.
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  But I don't know how we got from the war games these terrifying
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  God like beings to the wackaday set in the three Doctors, you
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  know, and those three very boring characters talking about
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  the timelines. I do feel as if there's some
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  interesting choices made here because obviously John Perry is
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  running in real time, which means the actors are pretending
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  to run in. Slowly.
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  I've not seen less convincing running since Caroline Ford was.
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  Whipped. I was just going to say.
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  God bless him. Do you know what I was watching
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  the poor man that's hoisted up there on that Kirby wire in the
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  background there going and actually, Barry Letts is right.
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  If you obscured it, it would just look like something
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  unknowable, sort of, but. You can.
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  See, it's a guy on a wire. Never mind.
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  So Crassus has now appeared. And why is it the second we do
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  this sort of thing, you know, sort of ancient Greek mythology
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  or history or anything like that, suddenly every performance
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  is incredibly heightened and everything is declared.
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  I, I think it's what you said before about The Merchant of
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  Venice, so influential and, you know, the long shadow cast by
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  the Victorian conception of particularly Shakespearean
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  history's tragedies and, and the like.
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  And the plays which by the way, continues up until, you know,
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  contemporaneous with this, BBC are doing the Shakespeare plays
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  which are effectively, you know, plays on a stage shot for for
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  television. Leave them.
• 13:12
  I swear I saw one in that Atlantis set.
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  I used to watch those when I was a kid.
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  Yeah. Jacqueline Hill's in One.
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  Yeah. And like it's just inescapable.
• 13:23
  I think, you know, it. It's not until later the Baslan
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  kind of adaptations of Shakespeare that we sort of
• 13:28
  start to break away from that declarative styles of
• 13:31
  performance of the iambic pentameter of Shakespeare and
• 13:34
  the like. But look, it is a big problem I
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  think with certainly Victorian, but you know, even up to late
• 13:42
  20th century versions of Shakespeare, it's all, it's all
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  done exactly the same way. And it's, it's kind of like the
• 13:49
  default setting for the classics.
• 13:51
  And it's just not like if you read those texts and even
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  further back, you know, into, you know, the, the Greeks as
• 13:58
  well. That's that's not what it's
• 14:00
  meant to be like. I do think there are layers
• 14:03
  though, because I feel the guy who plays the impetuous youth
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  that is in love with Queen Galaya is that.
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  It Yeah. Dreadful and you know, madly
• 14:16
  over the top and no new ones at all.
• 14:18
  And yet the guy that's playing the king.
• 14:21
  With. His sort of wittier sides, he's
• 14:23
  a lot subtle. I actually think Ingrid Pitt
• 14:25
  does a great job as well. And then I forget I've gone.
• 14:29
  I've got everybody's names. The the young girl that's
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  playing Joe's friend. Lucky's.
• 14:35
  Isn't completely naturalistic, so there are all these different
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  styles going on in Atlantis. Yeah, that's true too.
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  Obviously quite different because that actress was hired
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  at the last second because her the original actress of that
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  character kept turning up late to the rehearsals and obviously
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  Paul Bernard was having none of that and so it kicked her off.
• 14:58
  So when most of these guys have had about 10 days worth of
• 15:01
  rehearsal, that girl have about 3 maybe.
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  So I mean, that's maybe why she's, you know.
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  Just play it like you do on Angels.
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  It'll be fun, yeah. I do like George McCormick is
• 15:13
  wonderful though, isn't he? But you know the guy with him
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  here. Aidan Murphy is the actor's
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  name. He doesn't even have a red link
• 15:21
  on Wikipedia. It's just there is no leak.
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  So obviously this is the only bit of television, perhaps even
• 15:27
  acting, he's ever done. He's won the lottery, hasn't it?
• 15:29
  Like he's won some sort of competition.
• 15:31
  They got him for the documentary.
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  Though Oh wow, OK. He's talking about the subtle
• 15:36
  nuances of Hippius. There's nothing subtle about
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  this guy. And he's the one that has to do
• 15:42
  with the ranting later, isn't he?
• 15:44
  And he's kind of got a wise. Hoist like.
• 15:46
  That oh, it's unendurable. I think it's Jetty lead levels.
• 15:52
  Oh. Jetty Lead.
• 15:55
  I think it's there. Robert Sloman and Barry let us
• 15:58
  have some bad luck, didn't they? Oh no, Barry, let's cast her.
• 16:03
  Oh yeah. Yeah, that's a complete side
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  note. I wouldn't mind those shells
• 16:07
  they've got there in that room. They're quite stylish.
• 16:13
  So this is the beginning of the time flow analogue arsehole, or
• 16:16
  isn't it? Yes, but I also think it is
• 16:20
  totally stupidifying the Brigadier.
• 16:26
  He's just so stupid in this, isn't he?
• 16:29
  And having this and the three Doctors back-to-back, I think
• 16:31
  that's where that that reputation came from.
• 16:34
  And Jack, you and I talked about this in the season 10, strictly
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  when he has that line in the Green death where he goes, well,
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  I'm not such a dunderhead as you all thought.
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  No, we thought that because we sat there and.
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  Watched back-to-back. Of you behaving like a
• 16:48
  dunderhead. Yeah.
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  And and he does come out of it, he does somehow manage to regain
• 16:53
  IQ points, but it's touch and go for a little while.
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  Do you think that's made more prominent because they're
• 17:00
  featuring less and less now? Absolutely.
• 17:03
  When they're in Season 8, you can forget them have a meal
• 17:06
  episode off because they're meal's on.
• 17:08
  But now that Nicholas caught me and John, the Beam and Richard
• 17:12
  Franklin are almost glorified pistols.
• 17:15
  I mean, they're in this season less than Roddy Delgado, you
• 17:19
  know. And and so do you think there is
• 17:22
  that sense of particularly if, as a lot of us will want to do,
• 17:27
  we watch these in sequence? There's an essence of they have
• 17:32
  to be good because we don't know when they're going to be back
• 17:34
  next time. And so when they're not, that's,
• 17:37
  you know, we now know that they're not all going to be on
• 17:40
  screen together ever again after this.
• 17:43
  They didn't know that at the time, but we obviously know that
• 17:46
  now. So do you think there there is a
• 17:48
  because we are going back to work and we are dealing with the
• 17:51
  same characters. The production team can actually
• 17:53
  look at what's been and I think maybe they had a look at the
• 17:58
  time Monster and the three doctors and then went right in
• 18:01
  the Green death. They said we need to give
• 18:03
  Nicholas Courtney something to do.
• 18:06
  Absolutely, yeah. And I look, I don't think these
• 18:08
  levels of stupider are attained and plumbed again, right.
• 18:11
  You have to think about, you know, something as wonderful as
• 18:15
  invasion of the dinosaurs, planet of the spiders.
• 18:17
  The the characterization of the Brigadier is beautiful in that,
• 18:20
  particularly in that last scene, that last regeneration scene.
• 18:22
  Well, here we go again. He says it's it's a glorious
• 18:25
  line and he he's had lived it. But no, I just think these two
• 18:29
  stories are the ones where all the damage is done.
• 18:32
  Oh, there's plenty of comedy with the Brigadier in Robot, but
• 18:35
  it's just dealing with the firework that is Tom Baker.
• 18:38
  So it's absolute gold. I just noticed there, right,
• 18:42
  they were sort of sitting around eating marmalade sandwiches and
• 18:45
  the doctor said, you know, go off and get me all these bits
• 18:47
  and bobs and we're just sort of hanging out with these
• 18:49
  characters now. Why is it not OK here?
• 18:52
  But then something like Black Orchid comes along and they're
• 18:54
  and they're just playing cricket and drinking a few cocktails and
• 18:57
  things like this and everyone goes, my God, how refreshing is
• 18:59
  this? Does everyone do that?
• 19:02
  I think I think Black Orchid is now a much more mixed reception
• 19:06
  than it than it was maybe the time.
• 19:08
  I think Black Orchids is a great one episode before parter and
• 19:13
  then, you know, the rest of it is sort of playing catch up.
• 19:17
  But and obviously this is, you know, three times as long as
• 19:21
  Black Orchid tends to. Yeah, but I think there maybe is
• 19:26
  that way for expectation, you know, people just don't have the
• 19:31
  same expectations to receive 19 cast or production team as they
• 19:37
  do to to Barry and Terence and John and Katie and everyone
• 19:40
  else. I think, I think there's that,
• 19:43
  but there's also very, very different dynamics at play here.
• 19:46
  We're now in the third episode of a six part season finale and
• 19:51
  we've got everyone assembled and we've kind of just parked them
• 19:54
  and got them to just hang around and do silly things together.
• 19:57
  And look, don't get me wrong, I enjoy that because I enjoy as
• 20:00
  much screen time as I can with these characters.
• 20:02
  And if they were sitting around drinking tea and eating
• 20:04
  marmalade sandwiches for all of part three and four, I wouldn't
• 20:07
  be unhappy with that. I, I wouldn't consider it the
• 20:11
  height of drama, but I personally would not be unhappy
• 20:13
  with it. And because of the way that.
• 20:16
  This episode in particular sort of comes to a screeching halt.
• 20:19
  It it does feel like like like padding.
• 20:21
  I think like a little orchid. On the other hand, and I speak a
• 20:24
  lot about the the novelization of this in Jason Miller's Doctor
• 20:27
  Who literature podcast recently is a very different beast.
• 20:32
  It is A2 parter that is a breathing point before the epic
• 20:36
  that is earth shock and the trauma that comes after that.
• 20:40
  It's also, I think in terms of the the cricket, particularly
• 20:44
  novelization a, a key characterization point of the
• 20:49
  5th Doctor. He's wearing the cricket outfit,
• 20:51
  for instance, right? And he gets to play cricket the
• 20:54
  only time that he gets to do so. But cricket is a social metaphor
• 20:57
  for decency, and that's absolutely what the 5th Doctor
• 21:01
  is. Now I'm going to park all the
• 21:03
  black Walker talk aside, but I genuinely think they serve
• 21:06
  totally different purposes of stories.
• 21:08
  And when we get to Part 3 of the Time Monster, the reason why?
• 21:12
  And we're watching Perly grinning like a loon, spinning
• 21:15
  this contraption as it blows up in his face.
• 21:19
  The reason why this isn't great television is because what's
• 21:22
  happened to the story? You've just entirely stopped
• 21:26
  whatever pace you had. Well, to kind of give it both a
• 21:29
  positive and a negative reading, I think the negative reading is,
• 21:33
  well, you know, the masters over there.
• 21:34
  Why the hell don't you just go over?
• 21:36
  It again, yeah, we know because. There's three more.
• 21:38
  Episodes. But the positive reading is my
• 21:42
  God, the doctors just made a contraption that can detect time
• 21:46
  or cause time things out of bits and bobs that the kids can
• 21:50
  gather around at home and do themselves.
• 21:54
  Well, it seems impressive, but it's now immediately made less
• 21:57
  impressive now that the monster has what appears to be an Apple
• 22:01
  Watch is. There anything more Doctor Who
• 22:09
  than just gathering up randomly? If there's if there's one thing
• 22:11
  I want to see in Doctor Who, it's a close up of what
• 22:15
  incredibly hairy missions I'm. Very happy with that.
• 22:21
  Thank you very much. But this is Dick Tracy though,
• 22:24
  right? You were talking about comic
• 22:25
  books earlier. This is Dick Tracy.
• 22:28
  Also, what bringing the knight, Knights and horseback into the
• 22:31
  future? No, the the watch with the the
• 22:34
  television on it. That's that's out of Dick Tracy.
• 22:37
  See, now you're going to lose me now as I just watch all this.
• 22:40
  Yeah, yeah, that poor old stuntman was five weeks out of
• 22:44
  work because all this went horribly.
• 22:45
  Wrong. But this is what I think the
• 22:49
  kids are coming here for. They're coming here for unit
• 22:51
  fights and you know, you meant fighting them after, you know,
• 22:56
  even better. But the kids, that's why I'm
• 22:58
  here for. Pardon, it's.
• 23:04
  I meant it as an exclamation, not an instruction.
• 23:07
  All right, they can remember if the catching gates exists.
• 23:14
  Yeah, yeah, this. He gets a bit of a, a this is
• 23:16
  his party piece. Now, did I mention this before?
• 23:19
  Or perhaps it was in? The party piece.
• 23:21
  Yeah, yeah. You know, this is the last
• 23:23
  gathering in the unit family, and everybody gets a chance to
• 23:25
  do their party piece. And, you know, Mike's got a
• 23:29
  lovely bit here. And, you know, the Brigadier's
• 23:32
  relationship with Mike sort of comes across right at the end
• 23:35
  where you've got him calling you by his first name in the in the
• 23:38
  cliffhangers yet to come. But also it's the imagery, that
• 23:42
  sort of wonderful juxtaposition of different recognisable icons
• 23:47
  and imagery of of the different time periods clashing and I
• 23:51
  mean, but. Can you think of anything more
• 23:53
  Doctor Who? You've got the TARDIS on the van
• 23:54
  there, the UNIT army and then Roundheads firing on them.
• 23:57
  Yeah, I mean. It's now I have one day.
• 24:01
  This is deliberate, of course. This is we've mentioned this
• 24:05
  story before. The war games win by 10 steps.
• 24:10
  Cohen is obviously a story where rogue Time Lords are dragging
• 24:16
  soldiers from Earth's past onto a battlefield to fight each
• 24:22
  other. And of course, that's what we
• 24:24
  find now is a Time Lord dragging, you know, ramp heads
• 24:28
  in this case to fight with unit. And I wonder whether that's
• 24:32
  possibly a, you know. They're both end of season and
• 24:36
  they're both going for the epic aren't.
• 24:38
  They definitely, yeah. Again, I'll say the tone is a
• 24:41
  bit different than the two stories.
• 24:42
  Oh yeah, I'm not. There's not a comment on the
• 24:44
  quality or the tone or the scale or intelligence or anything
• 24:48
  like. That good grief.
• 24:50
  Oh yes, well it's less episode so it's automatically better.
• 24:54
  Yeah, there was an awful lot of because no one was getting any
• 24:57
  lines there. They were getting all 90 eights
• 24:59
  coming through on the radio. There was a lot of reaction
• 25:01
  acting going on there from all of them.
• 25:07
  It's quite odd to get back to just being the Joe, the Doctor
• 25:11
  and Joe now because Katie Mannan's kind of been in the
• 25:14
  background for most of the last two episodes.
• 25:17
  Obviously, to give, you know, the Eights and Benton and
• 25:19
  everyone else stuff to do. Maybe you're someone who's
• 25:24
  coming here for, you know, the Doctor and Joe Show you might
• 25:28
  become a little bit short change.
• 25:32
  Well, up until this point I guess, but there's definitely
• 25:34
  more than enough of it later on. And lots of be shallow or
• 25:40
  anything, but I love there's lots of lovely film work here.
• 25:43
  You know, a lot of this looks really impressive.
• 25:46
  I agree. Get back to what you were saying
• 25:47
  earlier about this being sort of the last.
• 25:50
  This is the, I think it for was the last time all the unit
• 25:52
  regulars are in one episode together.
• 25:55
  They didn't know that at the time and that Richard Franklin
• 25:57
  went off to do a load of directing next season.
• 25:59
  So we barely had him. Obviously Roger Delgado passed.
• 26:02
  They didn't know that was coming.
• 26:04
  So I think any if this is party pieces for everybody, it's just
• 26:09
  because they felt like doing it rather than they were thinking
• 26:13
  of this as their curtain call. And obviously we have to think
• 26:18
  of the wider story of the show, which is the Doctor is now
• 26:23
  starting to go back out into the universe of him.
• 26:27
  And as such, that just means that some of these characters
• 26:31
  are going to be left behind. OK.
• 26:33
  But it's it's being done by more tenuous means.
• 26:37
  But yeah, so. Well, now after some of this
• 26:40
  sort of indulgence that we have in this story, 10 feels so
• 26:44
  fresh. It feels so vibrant to be back
• 26:47
  out in space. And when you get a story like
• 26:48
  Carnival of Monsters, you know it's it's so exciting.
• 26:53
  And it's a relief, but it's actually good because, you know,
• 26:55
  the first time out in space was colony in space.
• 26:58
  And they're like. Let's reconvene for that.
• 27:02
  I'll tell you where you're wrong.
• 27:05
  Can we reconvene for Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon instead?
• 27:08
  Oh yes. Well, that is better so.
• 27:14
  That is wonderful. Somebody was going to say
• 27:19
  something then and I. Interacted.
• 27:21
  Well, no, I've just got a comment on Casey Manning's
• 27:23
  incredibly implantable, you know, 8 inch heels to, you know,
• 27:30
  just about stand level with John Perkley.
• 27:34
  One of my favorite things about the era, it's just the idea that
• 27:37
  you met this sort of super Cobra intelligence task force.
• 27:41
  Oh, and here's John Perkley and Katie Manning looking like
• 27:45
  they've just all fallen out of David Bowie's dustbin.
• 27:51
  Well, you, you know, and do you remember they do go around with
• 27:53
  folders and say top secret and a huge sign outside the base that
• 27:57
  says unit secret base, keep it out, things like this.
• 28:03
  And this, I don't know if we mentioned it before, it's a
• 28:05
  great moment, obviously, for a Brigadier when we obviously
• 28:09
  think the Mighty Age has died. He's going Yikes, Yikes.
• 28:12
  You know Mike. Yeah, Mike, that's the important
• 28:15
  thing there, isn't it? Obviously if you repeat in the
• 28:18
  next story in The Three Doctors, he does a similar thing with
• 28:20
  obviously Katie Manning, you know, Miss Grant and then Joe at
• 28:24
  the end. And so we're getting into the
• 28:27
  rhythm of things that we want to, you know.
• 28:31
  But I think after two cliffhangers of, oh, what's
• 28:33
  going on here, to actually have a moment of excitement and
• 28:36
  jeopardy at the end. You know, this would this is the
• 28:39
  sort of thing that would make me come back next week if I was a
• 28:41
  six year old and not, oh, who is that old band coming out of the
• 28:44
  light? But we sort of now push away
• 28:53
  from UNIT completely, don't we? Right until the end of the
• 28:56
  story. So again, that's weird to have a
• 28:58
  whole half of the story with all of these regulars and then go,
• 29:02
  right now it's just the Doctor and Joe, and then it's just the
• 29:05
  Doctor, Joe and the Master and Atlantis.
• 29:08
  It's it's such an old script, isn't it?
• 29:11
  Well, if the if the if the tension of the era, particularly
• 29:15
  at this point in the era, which is do we want to should we keep
• 29:20
  it as the unit family domestic sitcom, which has been doing
• 29:26
  really well in the ratings and in the reviews?
• 29:29
  Or do we start, you know, pushing into the the doc back
• 29:33
  into the Doctor Who way was a doctor and a pretty young thing
• 29:38
  jiffing off into the into the stars, which is obviously what
• 29:42
  the show is destined for. And yeah, and and where this
• 29:47
  story ultimately, you know, close to.
• 29:49
  Do I have to choose because I love both of those things?
• 29:52
  Well, in this story, you don't have to choose because we've had
• 29:54
  we have 8 hours of both of those scenarios.
• 29:59
  And in, in the next two seasons, especially this story writ
• 30:03
  large, right in the we get 2 unit stories in both seasons and
• 30:08
  then three sort of out in the universe stories.
• 30:11
  So they're having their cake and they're eating it at the same
• 30:14
  time. Yeah, I mean that is the format
• 30:16
  the the if the the previous season, this season and I guess
• 30:21
  she's maleven they're all the same format.
• 30:24
  It's 22 units and three outside of units.
• 30:28
  And you know that's. What I would say about the RTD
• 30:31
  One era, you know, if you've got a formula that works, keep doing
• 30:34
  it. Well, should we eat some more
• 30:37
  cake then, guys? I'll I'll cut it there.