Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Talks to Luke Sims-Jenkins about his choice of Earthshock (1/4)

Transcript

Talks to Luke Sims-Jenkins about his choice of Earthshock (1/4) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:33
  Hamster with a blunt pen mic for doing quicker.
• 0:37
  Quicker, quicker. Hello everyone, and welcome to
• 0:40
  the Mar and Chess Club, a 5th Doctor podcast coming to you
• 0:43
  live from the dark places of the inside my name.
• 0:47
  Excuse me? The dark, bloody places of the
• 0:51
  inside. That's my asshole, all right?
• 0:55
  What is going on here? Are you hijacking this podcast?
• 1:00
  I found it quite interesting that someone actually sent me an
• 1:03
  invitation to be on their podcast and I was like, do you
• 1:06
  want to watch Peter Davidson story?
• 1:11
  Yeah, yeah, I do. I really do.
• 1:14
  You're literally now, right? Yeah.
• 1:15
  When you look up Peter Davidson fan in like any book, it's just
• 1:19
  a picture of your grinning face. Or maybe you with your finger
• 1:22
  up. I'm not sure.
• 1:24
  I suppose I should probably say welcome back to Hamster with a
• 1:29
  Plump and Knife, the Doctor Who Commentary podcast.
• 1:33
  Who else? Who else could do this?
• 1:36
  I mean, it's a classic Peter Davidson story.
• 1:42
  I thought of you straight away, immediately.
• 1:46
  This is the first episode of the Mar and Chess Club that I did
• 1:51
  with yours truly so. So it is a no.
• 1:56
  One could say we're getting style.
• 1:57
  Could they? You want to see style about, you
• 2:02
  know, about a month ago I just finished doing what the five
• 2:07
  doctors for about two months, so.
• 2:09
  You've done more versions of The Five Doctors as a podcast than
• 2:13
  there are versions of Sharda now.
• 2:14
  I mean that is some feat. It's a it's a badge of honour.
• 2:19
  I. Suppose I should ask you, how is
• 2:23
  it all going? So like we obviously we do the
• 2:26
  book clubs all the time and we did a couple of plugs for the
• 2:31
  mower and chess club, but sort of early on when you started.
• 2:33
  But you've been going for what have you been going for a year
• 2:35
  now? Almost a year.
• 2:38
  So I got 47 episodes out, but it's not quite every because I,
• 2:45
  you know, I split one of my commentaries up into four parts.
• 2:48
  Yeah, I noticed all right. And and then I thought after.
• 2:54
  Toby did it before me. I'll stole from him.
• 2:56
  You stole from me. We're all stealing from each
• 2:58
  other. I think so, but then we then I
• 3:00
  thought, well if I ever did other commentaries I'll just
• 3:03
  split them in half. Like later Davidson stories were
• 3:06
  how? Do you get more episodes?
• 3:07
  You cut it down into episodes. You get more listens because you
• 3:10
  get more episodes to put out. So I, I think, I mean, I've
• 3:15
  recorded like 47, let's say just 47, the same amount I've
• 3:21
  released. It's just so many, I've recorded
• 3:23
  separate episodes. So I don't have anything special
• 3:26
  planned for the 50th, but it's just going to be another yeah.
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  I can still remember. I'm sure you won't mind me
• 3:34
  sharing this tentative conversation with you where you
• 3:39
  were like, I don't know if I can do this.
• 3:42
  Like you were so nervous to start off with, weren't you?
• 3:45
  And I even remember that first episode that we did, and I'm not
• 3:50
  used to the host being nervous. But it was your very first one
• 3:53
  that you were doing of your own podcast.
• 3:56
  How it's amazing how quickly you start flying though, isn't it?
• 3:59
  Like, and then you start getting guests in, you sort of figure
• 4:02
  out how to interact with lots of people and schedule it all and
• 4:08
  it just all falls into place, doesn't it?
• 4:12
  Yeah, I, I think I went from over preparing with, with the
• 4:17
  notes to just trusting that I know my know my shit.
• 4:22
  Like not a black belt, like I'm not a 10th and Davo expert.
• 4:25
  I will get things wrong like calling Stein lead no lead Stein
• 4:31
  or something like that. Every time I'm I mention I'm
• 4:34
  talking about professor LED from resurrection of Daleks.
• 4:37
  I do things like that. How could you even forget
• 4:39
  Professor lads, you know. She's shot in the back and
• 4:42
  everything taken that Tegan sees that.
• 4:44
  And then that's like one of the reasons she's she's like, I'm
• 4:47
  out of here. But yeah, it's been, it's been
• 4:50
  good. Like there's been, it's been
• 4:54
  mostly positive lessons and I've had to learn new skills like
• 4:56
  editing. I think I've, I thought I'd calm
• 5:00
  down with the editing as time went on, but I, I can't help it.
• 5:05
  I'm like there's a break, a bit of sound bite right there.
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  This might be funny message this other podcaster if I can borrow
• 5:12
  some of their music, things like that.
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  I don't know if anyone notices things like that, but they
• 5:18
  tickle me and and all that kind of stuff.
• 5:21
  So. It's.
• 5:23
  A. Great move when you've got a
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  silence, putting in an excellent aura, you know what I mean?
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  It's a clever move because dead air in a podcast, I mean, it can
• 5:33
  be very awkward. I mean me, you know, I don't
• 5:35
  edit the commentaries at all because they're commentaries and
• 5:39
  it's live and people might watch alongside.
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  So if there's dead air, there's dead air.
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  That's generally why I never shut up.
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  Now it's, that's another thing I, I, I do learn just little
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  tricks like who, who might need more prompting, who I can just
• 5:58
  sit back and let let loose and all that kind of stuff.
• 6:02
  And that's, and then I, I kind of learn how to do that, not
• 6:07
  necessarily on someone's first time, second time on the show,
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  like I can, sorry, first time. So it used to be, all right, I'm
• 6:15
  building this up now. I can kind of get a sense pretty
• 6:18
  early. I'm like, all right, I can sit
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  back and they're going to talk my ears off And that's great.
• 6:22
  That's what you want. Or hey, I everyone who does a
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  podcast in some way likes the sound of their own voice.
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  If I have to do a bit of talking as well, it's fine.
• 6:31
  Excuse me? It's usually pretty good back
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  and forth, yeah. Excuse me, what did you just
• 6:36
  say? Everyone who does the podcast
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  likes the sound of their own voice.
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  It must be some, some, some. Never.
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  Mr. over 1000 of these. I couldn't believe, you know
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  what? Look, the other day it had hit
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  1100 and I said what? How did that happen?
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  It was 1000 last week, wasn't it?
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  Yeah, it feels like it. Oh my goodness.
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  Christ. No, it's all good fun though,
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  isn't it? And I'll tell you what given, I
• 7:03
  mean, I'm trying very hard not to look at the news right now.
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  It is so depressing. The more I want to talk about
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  Doctor Who with wonderful people, the more the world goes
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  to shit. I mean, this may be us burying
• 7:17
  our head in the sands, but who cares?
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  It's fun. It's.
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  Very comfortable sand. You know, it's, it's a nice
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  little bubble to be in. Well, I suppose we should move
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  on to the story we are talking about today, which is the season
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  19 winner of the DWM poll I believe at the time.
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  You know the story that put the shock back into Doctor Who Earth
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  Shock. Now anyone who listened to our
• 7:50
  episode of the Mar and Chess Club will know that we are both
• 7:53
  massive fans of this. Even the gossipy hand gestures
• 7:57
  of the Cybermen guarding the TARDIS.
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  Can I confess something though? I think that there as these
• 8:10
  things tend to ebb and flow, I've started to notice a bit of
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  criticism creeping in about this story.
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  People either saying things like, oh, well, this is
• 8:21
  responsible for where the mid 80s Doctor Who ended up because
• 8:27
  it was so popular, bringing back old villains and the sort of the
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  violence of it and the flashy visuals over sort of smart of
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  sophisticated storytelling. But also as well that like, you
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  know, I know that and I just want to say to those people,
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  you're all a bunch of cunts because.
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  Yes. Because there's a reason.
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  Like, it was a great instinct, don't you think, on J&T's part.
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  It was a great instinct to bring the Cybermen back.
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  It was a massive rating success at the time.
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  And the shocks. Go and watch that fucking
• 9:06
  commentary or go and watch that documentary with the biggest
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  names in Doctor Who, Steven Moffett, Mark Gases.
• 9:13
  People like that saying that this blew their socks off on
• 9:17
  transmission. Like, whatever people think of
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  it now, then when it went out, come on, it was a triumph,
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  right? So I saw, well, I would have
• 9:29
  been like one or two when this came out.
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  So I, I did see this early morning repeats.
• 9:34
  Never seen it before, didn't know Adric died.
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  Like, you know how sometimes when you're young and getting
• 9:40
  into Doctor Who, so your knowledge of certain things is
• 9:43
  quite sporadic. And I knew his last words were
• 9:47
  Adric, but I don't I didn't know why he didn't explain it.
• 9:50
  Like, I had no idea I'd already seen Andrew Zani, you see, but
• 9:54
  I'd only seen Andrews, only the five Doctors in Castrovalva, the
• 9:57
  only Davos I'd seen early morning repeats.
• 9:59
  We get to Earth shock. And yeah, it, it hit me hard.
• 10:06
  I loved it. In fact, it, it hits that realm
• 10:08
  for me of the five Doctors where I can see that it has problems.
• 10:14
  Like the Cybermen of Bonkers would have been more scary if
• 10:17
  they just stood at the stairwell or in front of the TARDIS and
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  like statues, like, you know, like they garden the queen or
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  something, you know, instead they're they're gossiping like,
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  and things like that. Excellent.
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  Make him suffer what we want to. What?
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  Yeah, it's. It's still tell you though,
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  we're still talking about personality.
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  With so much style and, and and fun it has.
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  All right. So I've been paying attention
• 10:45
  more to the music since I've been doing the Mar and Chess
• 10:48
  Club. And then you've got that like
• 10:51
  his second appearance in Doctor Who since the Sea Devils,
• 10:54
  Malcolm Clark. And maybe he knew he needed to
• 10:58
  kind of crush this because he didn't really crush the last the
• 11:01
  last gig. And I think he does like some of
• 11:05
  that music has stayed with me since I was like, what, 11?
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  Boom boom, boom, boom, boom boom boom boom.
• 11:15
  Oh my God it's so great. I like all the weird music as
• 11:19
  well, though he does sort of weird ambient music, like when
• 11:22
  the sideman after they've emerged from the silos and
• 11:27
  they're all sort of coming out into the corridors and there's
• 11:30
  weird music playing as they're surrounding all the soldiers and
• 11:33
  stuff like that. And I don't even mind the farts,
• 11:36
  you know, the sort of they're going up the space like, you
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  know, it's different. Is it the air squishing out of
• 11:43
  the moon boots? That's what I want to know.
• 11:47
  Well, look, you know what? We've got an hour and a half to
• 11:51
  talk over everything, all right? We should probably go into
• 11:55
  episode one. I'm so excited to do this.
• 11:59
  It's such a fabulous story. Would you care to count us in to
• 12:03
  Episode 1? Sure, 321 go it's.
• 12:11
  Always your excuse to stick your finger up at me, isn't it?
• 12:14
  When you get to 1. I understand the impulse though.
• 12:19
  Oh my God, the exploding stars. Luke, come on now.
• 12:23
  Yeah, every time it's I've had to.
• 12:25
  I've had to hold back from using the star field because I feel
• 12:29
  like I'd overuse it. It's obligatory, though, for me
• 12:32
  to say that, Janet Fielding says.
• 12:34
  Pete, you look like you've been goosed every time.
• 12:39
  What does that mean? You're Australian.
• 12:42
  I no see, maybe she's that's a Queensland thing.
• 12:46
  Maybe that's that's up north, way, way up north.
• 12:50
  Oh, look at this fabulous quarry that we're in.
• 12:53
  They have what? An unusual location for a Doctor
• 12:55
  Who story. Yes, yes, indeed.
• 12:58
  Like I like the military slash BMX bandits outfits that they're
• 13:03
  all wearing like they're about to go dirt bike riding.
• 13:06
  This is trails on some of the mountain bits like like they've
• 13:08
  been like written up and down on.
• 13:11
  It is literally Doctor Who doing aliens.
• 13:13
  This though, isn't it? I will tell you, though, that
• 13:17
  I'm pretty sure this predates Aliens by by James Cameron.
• 13:22
  Yeah. Well, arcade space predated
• 13:25
  Alien. So you know, Doctor Who man is
• 13:29
  so influential. Now this poor woman, Professor
• 13:33
  Kyle, she's a bit useless, isn't she?
• 13:37
  Yeah, we'll see. Her expert, expert field is
• 13:40
  dinosaur bones. And So what the hell does she
• 13:43
  know about any of this other stuff that's going on?
• 13:45
  What I find really interesting is obviously this is all we see
• 13:49
  of the earth in it. Was it the 25th century?
• 13:52
  Is that where we are? 26, it'd be like 25 and 50.
• 13:56
  Someone will send their letters, they'll say it in a minute.
• 13:58
  We hear all about the conference and the politics that are going
• 14:01
  on, but actually all we see is this expedition, which is
• 14:06
  probably quite a savvy move. I'm sure they wouldn't have had
• 14:08
  the money to sort of do it. Well, I don't know, like, all
• 14:12
  right, Frontier in space might not be my favorite story, but
• 14:15
  kind of like how they pull off Earth's government central with
• 14:19
  the, you know, people, the soldiers shooting and all that
• 14:21
  kind of stuff. It's kind of cool.
• 14:23
  I like that fella on the new screen.
• 14:25
  War War. Although to be fair, I mean he
• 14:29
  could do it right now. Jesus Christ.
• 14:33
  What's the name of the fellow who's at the scanner?
• 14:36
  I don't remember the scanner guy's name, but.
• 14:40
  Excuse me, 5th Doctor expert. I know who's the guy manning the
• 14:44
  scanner. Well, what?
• 14:46
  All I'll say is he's very hard indeed and he improves my
• 14:51
  enjoyment no end. Can I just point out, I don't
• 14:56
  think I noticed it until I gave this a cursory rewrite to the
• 14:59
  last couple days before this. All right?
• 15:03
  It is very a very white cast. That's fine.
• 15:05
  All right. It's old Doctor Who.
• 15:06
  We kind of used to that fine, but there's a good mix of men
• 15:11
  and women. Soldiers, they're really not
• 15:13
  just. Characters but like extras as
• 15:15
  well. I like Snyder.
• 15:18
  Snyder's really Butch woman, isn't she you?
• 15:21
  Know. Oh yeah.
• 15:22
  Well, you know, maybe this did come out after Aliens and
• 15:26
  they're ripping off Velasquez or something like that.
• 15:29
  Like the the value, I know we said this in the morn episode,
• 15:33
  the value of good lighting. We just cut to the caves there,
• 15:37
  right, which are sort of under lit with those lighting lights
• 15:41
  on the wall. And then the way that those
• 15:44
  black androids just come out of the darkness, it's so effective.
• 15:49
  Man, I wish this fellow was it Don Babbage.
• 15:52
  I wish he had lit every single 80s Doctor Who story.
• 15:56
  Yeah, he he doesn't like that many.
• 16:01
  What else does he do? Does he do K Sandra's Ollie?
• 16:04
  Yeah, Yeah, he does. Yeah, you can tell.
• 16:06
  You can really tell. I just I like how dude, I like
• 16:12
  this is this is kind of like not just AD sci-fi vibes with the
• 16:17
  outfits. It's kind of BMX bike riding
• 16:19
  vibes. It's like 80s post apocalyptic
• 16:23
  movie kind of vibe outfits, you know that that kind of stuff.
• 16:27
  I really like the gear and the equipment is like this simple
• 16:31
  mix of kind of camp equipment and military stuff that's well
• 16:33
  done. Look.
• 16:34
  At the way they slide out the back there and then their
• 16:36
  shadows are on the wall. Don Babbage, I will not stop
• 16:39
  going on about you in this story.
• 16:40
  All right. Justice for Don.
• 16:43
  Some people knew how to turn the lights down in the 80s.
• 16:48
  So, you know, the sort of the lights on the scanner and where
• 16:53
  people are and sort of driving up suspense.
• 16:55
  That is really famous in Aliens, isn't it?
• 16:59
  Yeah, it's one of and yeah. You're saying this did it first?
• 17:02
  I'm pretty sure it did, yeah. Wow, OK.
• 17:05
  I mean those. Gorgeous as well, I thought.
• 17:07
  Aliens must be like 1984 or 1986.
• 17:11
  There's an even number, I know that much.
• 17:12
  And this is what, 82? So.
• 17:16
  Oh my word. Look, it's Atrix Bedroom.
• 17:19
  What a geek. He's got science charts on the
• 17:22
  wall. What's on the shelves there?
• 17:26
  Terry's going to call it all a boring pile of shit in a few
• 17:28
  episodes time. It'll take it all out, you know,
• 17:31
  Although look, it's those fabulous walls from the mutants.
• 17:39
  Oh, he's got the Master and the Visitation.
• 17:41
  Lucy McCall. Oh, look, what is that?
• 17:44
  The Kinder DNA. Yeah, the double Helix.
• 17:48
  That's really cool. And actually, do you know what's
• 17:51
  rare? There's a ceiling.
• 17:53
  There's a natural ceiling in this.
• 17:56
  I don't think I've noticed that before.
• 17:58
  You're right. You don't see many.
• 18:00
  It's Doctor Who. That's because there weren't
• 18:02
  many. I'm used to blue rays showing me
• 18:05
  more problems in the old Doctor Who, not actually showing me
• 18:08
  things that are that are nifty that I missed.
• 18:11
  I've heard people say that, you know, sort of Adric having a
• 18:15
  Paddy now and saying he wants to go home and all that is, is sort
• 18:18
  of really obviously signposting the fact that this is going to
• 18:23
  be his last story. No, he's behaved like a little
• 18:26
  brat throughout the entire Davidson era today.
• 18:30
  Like he certainly has. Listen to me, you little idiot.
• 18:36
  That look at that, they've got water running down the walls of
• 18:39
  those sets in the studio. Now I know that's a small
• 18:42
  detail, but it just makes you feel like you're outside.
• 18:45
  Makes it look all a little bit older too, like they're in an
• 18:48
  old cabin. But with Adric, you got to think
• 18:52
  like, all right, even if you knew he was leaving or thought
• 18:55
  you knew he was leaving, rightly or wrongly.
• 18:57
  So Doctor Who didn't kill off companions.
• 19:01
  They hadn't done it for what, 20 years by this point, right?
• 19:04
  So there's even if you knew he was leaving, you didn't know how
• 19:08
  he was, how he was going out. That's JNT though, right?
• 19:12
  And JNT is a showman and he recognizes a big fan of soaps,
• 19:16
  right? And he knows that deaths in
• 19:18
  soaps, those are the big hitters.
• 19:20
  Those are the ones that everyone remembers.
• 19:23
  You know, Alan Bradley going under the tram in Coronation
• 19:26
  Street, things like that. Tiffany being hit by the car in
• 19:29
  EastEnders. Those are the episodes that
• 19:31
  everyone remembers. Has anyone ever forgotten Earth
• 19:35
  Shock? I cried like, I'm not an
• 19:38
  advocator. I understand the criticisms, and
• 19:41
  yeah, I agree with a lot of them.
• 19:42
  But I know I felt for Matthew Waterhouse at the time, and I
• 19:45
  kind of warmed to the character. I like Wesley, too.
• 19:48
  So every time you say you like Wesley, I'm like, you know,
• 19:50
  maybe not quite the way you did, but you know, he was my age on
• 19:54
  the freaking Enterprise. Come on.
• 19:56
  I love that shit. But.
• 19:57
  He was, I mean, he was what? He was older than me when I was
• 20:00
  younger. So I fancied Wesley Crushes so
• 20:03
  much. I mean, I never fancied Adric,
• 20:05
  but Lucy McCall did and she watched this, right?
• 20:08
  It was her first crush and then at the end he died.
• 20:11
  I mean, she said she never ever got home for it.
• 20:14
  She can't watch the Simon stories that much anymore.
• 20:17
  She never again. But it's also a really good
• 20:21
  indication of where fandom was at the time, right?
• 20:23
  Because this this was the top of the polls.
• 20:25
  And I think this is what fandom wanted.
• 20:27
  They wanted, you know, military with guns.
• 20:30
  They wanted sort of like tips back to the Pertway era where
• 20:34
  the show was serious and gritty and full of violence and shocks
• 20:38
  and things like that. And so I'm, I mean, I think at
• 20:42
  this point, JNT and Eric, to be fair, they had their finger on
• 20:46
  the pulse of what found and wanted.
• 20:50
  No, I agree. I look, I also think that people
• 20:54
  can say whatever they want about the visitation.
• 20:56
  I like it and it's fine if people don't.
• 20:59
  But that's an outlier in terms of all the rest of the stories
• 21:03
  Eric Saywood has done. So the success of this well,
• 21:07
  pretty much ensure that it's this sort of story that he will
• 21:11
  lean to next. He won't try to mix up genres
• 21:13
  anymore because he's because because he's found like a
• 21:17
  formula, at least to his stories and maybe a couple of others
• 21:21
  more as the Devon, something like that.
• 21:23
  You know, it'll it'll use this kind of template, this kind of
• 21:27
  vibe. But to say that he turned the
• 21:31
  whole show to this, I think it's kind of like it's a bit of an
• 21:35
  insult to to like snake dance enlightenment.
• 21:38
  Awakening Planet. Yeah, you know you.
• 21:42
  Can't say The Two Doctors is like this.
• 21:44
  Good, great. I mean, it's violent, but it's a
• 21:46
  holiday in Spain for God's sakes.
• 21:48
  He has AI think a template for this kind of stories he likes to
• 21:53
  write, which is eventually what this kind of story, you know,
• 21:56
  the the big kind of pretty action story.
• 22:00
  And other writers might actually do those as well, like Robert
• 22:03
  Holmes and I think Johnny Byrne. But that's not all he
• 22:07
  commissions either, so. I mean people.
• 22:10
  Forget the variety that like Mark of the Ronnies.
• 22:12
  Like a pseudo historical kind of romp.
• 22:15
  I'll really enjoy it. I mean, Revelation of the Darks
• 22:18
  is a massacre, but it's a fucking take on an evil in war
• 22:22
  book, for God's sake. There's nothing like this at
• 22:23
  all. It's got sort of, you know, dark
• 22:26
  black comedy in it. Yeah.
• 22:30
  But what you said about the Visitation, and you know what?
• 22:32
  I do like the Visitation. And that's another one that
• 22:35
  people are really hard on these days.
• 22:37
  And they say it's boring and they say, you know, it's lacking
• 22:40
  in incident and it's all atmosphere and, and, and no
• 22:44
  substance. But I don't think you can forget
• 22:47
  how well that went down at the time as well.
• 22:50
  And again, that's what fans wanted.
• 22:52
  They wanted a romp in history. And I think the reason of Shock
• 22:56
  hits the way it does is because it comes after a romp in
• 22:59
  history. Then it comes after the quietest
• 23:03
  murder mystery that you could possibly imagine in the 20s.
• 23:07
  And then suddenly we're like whiplash.
• 23:09
  We're into action in the 26th century with Cybermen and bombs
• 23:13
  and companions dying. And it does.
• 23:16
  It really makes you sit up and pay attention.
• 23:19
  I need to point out something here, Mr. Joe, and that is the
• 23:24
  scanner guy. He's like, hey, someone in them
• 23:28
  caves has two hearts. Later on in the story, the
• 23:31
  Cybermen with their superior technology are like, hey, which
• 23:35
  one's the doctor? I don't know.
• 23:38
  I think it's this one. Like what do you mean which one
• 23:41
  it is? The humans know which one is has
• 23:44
  the two hearts. What's going on the?
• 23:46
  Scanner Guy is not only really hot, he's really smart as well.
• 23:51
  James Warwick, who plays Scott? Yeah.
• 23:54
  I mean, I think it has a wonderful performance because
• 23:57
  he's he's really sort of playing it.
• 24:00
  Too many people have died for you to play The Fall.
• 24:02
  He really gets into playing like the military idiot, don't they?
• 24:07
  Have you ever seen the photograph that Janet Fielding's
• 24:10
  got of him in the bath? It is.
• 24:12
  I have. I have.
• 24:14
  Yes, indeed. It just goes to show apparently
• 24:17
  he was such a laugh. Like he plays a really stiff
• 24:20
  character, but apparently he was really naughty on the set.
• 24:24
  That's that's some acting chops then, because I don't see a
• 24:27
  single hint of that on screen. You know, I know why people
• 24:33
  don't like Adric. Yeah, it's because we were all
• 24:36
  that little come when we were younger.
• 24:38
  We were all that sod going. Oh, don't wander too far,
• 24:41
  Doctor. You know, like that was me aged.
• 24:44
  What's he supposed to be, the 15?
• 24:46
  Something like that? He's supposed to be young, isn't
• 24:48
  he? I think like I related to him
• 24:52
  maybe not in terms of personality, but just the figure
• 24:55
  of Adric. So when you look back at all of
• 24:58
  Doctor Who, all right, all the doctors amend, that's fine.
• 25:03
  And but there's a lot of companions of a similar age to
• 25:06
  ADRIC or thereabouts throughout the whole run of Doctor Who.
• 25:09
  There aren't many companions Adric's age, that of male, and
• 25:15
  so that made me kind of glom onto him, I guess more than a
• 25:19
  lot of other fans did, I guess. So looking forward, I think the
• 25:22
  trouble is I think Turlo's a more interesting companion.
• 25:26
  I love him more. Adric, If you look at Adric's
• 25:28
  story, you look at Turlo's stories, Adric gets far more to
• 25:31
  do in his realm than Turlo gets to do in his run.
• 25:34
  It's just the fact that Mark Stricken is so good, you're
• 25:37
  almost convinced that he got to do more than he actually got to
• 25:40
  do. He's always moving.
• 25:44
  There's a bit in a minute, right where they go, Oh no, we must
• 25:47
  stop. And then all of a sudden the
• 25:49
  androids just sort of glide into the room and murder the lot of
• 25:53
  them. Oh, we love this stuff, don't
• 25:55
  we? This sort of suspense.
• 25:57
  It's awesome you got the the really cool foreshadowing with
• 26:00
  the dinosaur bones. I don't know why the Cybermen
• 26:02
  really wanted to protect the dinosaur bones I guess.
• 26:05
  Do you? Remember the music?
• 26:08
  Yeah, I reckon they used one of the body stockings on one of
• 26:14
  these androids for the Five Doctors.
• 26:17
  You know that it's a RAST on warrior robot style of Android.
• 26:22
  I think as well, you can really see Janet Fielding relaxing into
• 26:29
  the role throughout Season 19. I think in Force Doomsday, she's
• 26:34
  just ghastly, like she thinks she's playing some kids show and
• 26:39
  everything's that's crazy level. Adric, get out of my way, you
• 26:42
  know, like it's all like that. And then when by the time you
• 26:45
  get to like, Black Orchids, she's rich.
• 26:49
  She's realised, oh, OK, I can be a bit more naturalistic.
• 26:53
  I haven't got her overplay every line.
• 26:56
  Yeah. But by the time she gets to
• 26:58
  Earth Shock, I think she's wonderful.
• 27:00
  I think she's really great. She's so proactive in this
• 27:02
  story. She's surprisingly proactive.
• 27:06
  I don't think we've seen, maybe with the exception of Leela, a
• 27:12
  companion that's maybe a bit willing to be like, Nah, Doctor
• 27:17
  do it like she hexagram, I guess like she she use the gas Doctor
• 27:22
  now defend my planet. Please.
• 27:24
  He's like he's going. To blast Cyberman later on.
• 27:27
  Yeah, he's damage. She goes running in with the
• 27:30
  gun. She just pumps bullets into him.
• 27:33
  Oh, it's great. Couple stories ago she just was
• 27:36
  backing the backing. A Terelliptal with the business.
• 27:39
  End of a rifle, anyone? That complaints that Nyssa is
• 27:43
  stuck in the tard, isn't it? And she is.
• 27:45
  She got to go around with that eye on Bonder and keep her a
• 27:49
  trachon and with the staser in Arc of Infinity.
• 27:54
  Oh my God, look at this. Pools of blood and goo and
• 27:58
  horrible dislocated hands. Dude, I know this stuff might
• 28:03
  have been controversial at the time, and that's fair enough,
• 28:05
  but when you've got Help me in Resurrection, when you've got
• 28:08
  like all this kind of goo and stuff, oh, we like, we see
• 28:11
  Daleks exploding paralettals, melting chromite stuff.
• 28:16
  Fabulous. See.
• 28:17
  That stuff at 11, this is great. And this is coming from like. 45
• 28:21
  I still love it I. Still love it, too.
• 28:23
  Yeah. I can watch Resurrection and
• 28:25
  think, like, all right, that's too much.
• 28:27
  Are you entertained, though? Oh, yeah, Hell yeah.
• 28:30
  Every, every, every moment. Do you remember when the
• 28:32
  Hexachromarkgax goes off and all those sea devil wise fill with
• 28:37
  green pus? I mean, it's just wonderful.
• 28:40
  It is so awesome. Oh dear.
• 28:43
  Now look, I did just say that rock wobble there, you know
• 28:46
  that. So there you go.
• 28:47
  That's just to remind us we're still watching Doctor Who.
• 28:49
  Yeah, no, that's all right. The the archaeologist doing
• 28:55
  everyone a favour by Professor Kyle, bumping her knee and
• 28:59
  looking down or in upset the whole time.
• 29:01
  I can. I am guilty sometimes of talking
• 29:05
  over talking the production values of Doctor Who, but I do
• 29:09
  think the lighting in those caves and later on in the
• 29:12
  freighter, it does look really filmic for once.
• 29:16
  I think the studios look like they could possibly be outside
• 29:20
  and that's just down to really great lighting.
• 29:24
  I think JNT kind of kind of knew, you know, maybe not
• 29:29
  everyone, not maybe not everyone making this realized on you, but
• 29:32
  I think he knew. All right, We're bringing back
• 29:34
  this old monster. Let's let's let's put some
• 29:37
  effort behind this. Let's make this a kind of big
• 29:39
  deal. He's got he's got his cast from
• 29:42
  stunt casting, I guess to, you know, all that kind of stuff.
• 29:47
  You've got the new look, Cyberman.
• 29:48
  That's great. The lighting here is all of the
• 29:51
  dinosaur bones in the wall. Looks so cool.
• 29:55
  The only unfortunate thing, right?
• 29:57
  It was all savvy. Yeah, all of it.
• 29:59
  So I've men back all of this horror in episode 1 to get the
• 30:03
  kids talking. Yeah.
• 30:05
  Bringing aside me back at the end of episode 1, Beryl Reese.
• 30:09
  So the newspapers were full of stories about being in Doctoroo
• 30:14
  and then Adric Dyne at the end. Brilliant.
• 30:16
  All brilliant. And it worked like gangbusters.
• 30:18
  And the ratings grew and they were already strong to start
• 30:21
  with. The one bad move was, I mean, it
• 30:24
  was a good move to make this the penultimate episode story of the
• 30:27
  season. The one bad move was that he
• 30:32
  didn't have something better. Not I'm not dissing time flow
• 30:36
  because I think it's fun, but come on, it ain't nerve shock.
• 30:40
  He didn't have something better to go after this because when
• 30:43
  you capture everybody's attention then you need to keep
• 30:46
  giving them great stuff. I feel that way about Indra Zani
• 30:51
  dilemma as well. You know, like I feel bad for
• 30:55
  Colin because I love him the. This is one of my favorite
• 30:58
  shots. The camera zooms through this
• 31:01
  mist right? And then it zooms in on the gunk
• 31:04
  with Snyder's badge. That's so cool.
• 31:09
  Oh, this. Look at this for an Eric Saywood
• 31:11
  line. I don't know and I don't care.
• 31:13
  I don't want the people who did this.
• 31:18
  Wow. And then look, I don't.
• 31:20
  Care about evidence or nothing. Look at that, you just see the
• 31:22
  shine of the helmets. At first and the silhouette of
• 31:26
  the because they're humanoid, you can just see the silhouette
• 31:28
  of the arms. In a way, that's a.
• 31:32
  Why didn't they do that with the marker?
• 31:35
  I love dude. Dude they couldn't even turn the
• 31:37
  lights down in in that. Then they had ink.
• 31:40
  Repeat, decide the karate chop the bloody thing.
• 31:42
  I know, I mean, do you know what?
• 31:44
  I am very anti AI these days for all kinds of reasons.
• 31:48
  One, because I think it may be destroying the planet.
• 31:52
  But I have seen a couple of clips recently of somebody that
• 31:55
  did like AI warriors in the deep with sort of dripping walls and
• 32:01
  all the red submarine light. And I was like, fucking hell,
• 32:04
  this would have looked great like this.
• 32:08
  Yeah, I don't know. You know what, Luke?
• 32:13
  Too many people have died for you to play the fool.
• 32:21
  And you know, like, he's got a really tough task.
• 32:25
  I think it's really easy to do action on location because you
• 32:28
  have better cameras and more space.
• 32:30
  He has to do a prolonged action sequence.
• 32:33
  What loads of them in cramped studios in Bbci.
• 32:40
  Think he got off lightly? He gets sure he's got to wear
• 32:42
  those layers of uniform. But you know, you see David
• 32:45
  Banks and his cronies, they've got the moon boots, the cricket
• 32:48
  gloves, you know, the chest thing, the head mask.
• 32:53
  That's a great shot with him. Scott over the Doctor with the
• 32:57
  Tegan, Anissa looking on. God, Peter Grimwave was a good
• 33:00
  director, wasn't he? I know he's fucked off the
• 33:02
  actors but. It's such a doctor thing though,
• 33:05
  to turn up at a situation and be like this a bit light, a bit,
• 33:09
  hey, how's it going? Because he doesn't know that
• 33:11
  people have died, doesn't he? He shakes Professor Carl's hand.
• 33:15
  Doesn't he? Hello.
• 33:16
  You know. Yeah.
• 33:20
  Oh my God, Here comes the androids.
• 33:23
  Yeah. This is where, though, I defy
• 33:28
  any actor to be sort of pressing these buttons and going, oh,
• 33:32
  where's it coming from? I don't know.
• 33:35
  You know, it's, I mean, it's very hard to do that sort of
• 33:37
  acting. I would need Peter Davidson's
• 33:40
  second console to do that because at least it has the
• 33:43
  little screen that I could like that I could watch things on.
• 33:47
  So can I ask this bomb that is behind this and not this shield
• 33:52
  yet in the rocks that Professor Carl?
• 33:54
  So This is why they were all killed, The archaeologist?
• 33:56
  Yeah. Because they they basically went
• 33:58
  into the cabin where the sidemen were hiding their bomb.
• 34:01
  Yeah. So just pure coincidence.
• 34:04
  So they was attempting to destroy the conference with the
• 34:07
  bomb? Yeah.
• 34:09
  They were indeed, yes. OK.
• 34:12
  So if they could do it from there where the dinosaur bones
• 34:17
  are and if like were they digging near the with it?
• 34:21
  Like if they were digging into the other wall and not the wall
• 34:24
  with the, I don't know, like why are they, why are the Android
• 34:28
  guards? Why aren't they like a couple
• 34:29
  Cybermen there? If they have a bomb that could
• 34:32
  blow up the conference, like from like, how far away is this
• 34:36
  cave from the conference? Because if it's far enough to
• 34:39
  destroy the conference, it's probably far enough to destroy
• 34:42
  all the people that are going to attend the conference already.
• 34:45
  So I just set the bomb off. I think it might be a Cyber
• 34:48
  Megatron bomb, you know, the ones that they had in the
• 34:51
  invasion that could fracture the entire planet and destroy
• 34:54
  everybody. That's right, yes, finally we
• 34:58
  had a maths genius to help solve the problem of that.
• 35:02
  Oh, we do. I do like, did you see a minute
• 35:06
  ago the smoking cloves that were on the floor there?
• 35:09
  The victims of the androids? Oh, Oh my God, what's going on
• 35:13
  here here? We go destroy them.
• 35:17
  At once. Destroy them at once.
• 35:23
  Oh my God. And that's a really cool reveal.
• 35:26
  That's how you do it. Every piece of Doctor Who
• 35:30
  fiction. Here's what you do.
• 35:32
  You name it Earth Shock, Not Earth Shock of the Cybermen.
• 35:35
  You name it Earth Shock. And then when the Cybermen come
• 35:37
  in at the end of episode 1, guess what?
• 35:39
  It's like a surprise death to the Daleks.
• 35:42
  I wonder who's going to turn? It's been 20 minutes.
• 35:45
  Where are the Daleks coming? Oh, they're the cliffhanger,
• 35:47
  aren't they? Yes.
• 35:48
  Oh, what a surprise. Chipnall knew how to do it.
• 35:51
  He called it the Haunting of Villa de Adarsi.
• 35:53
  And so when the sideman turned up and then he called the next
• 35:56
  one, Ascension of the Cyberman to get us excited.
• 36:00
  Yeah. Oh, do you know what that is?
• 36:04
  If that was a new series episode, yeah, that entire, I
• 36:10
  think that entire 25 minutes would be done in about 5
• 36:13
  minutes. Maybe, but I I've said this on
• 36:18
  on the on my show that this does have the feeling of a big dumb
• 36:23
  in a good way. I mean like because I like some
• 36:26
  of those big dumb new series finales, but this feels like a
• 36:28
  big dumb series finale style Doctor Who story or or at least
• 36:32
  a big dumb epic two-part Doctor Who story that they do in the
• 36:36
  new series. Like you know, it's got this.
• 36:39
  You could level the same problems at it logic with logic
• 36:43
  and stuff that you can with a new series episode that everyone
• 36:45
  likes to do. Oh, totally.
• 36:47
  And it's it's kind of, it's got the pace of the new series.
• 36:52
  Yeah, to a point. I just don't think you would
• 36:54
  have endless scenes of people wandering around Kate.
• 36:58
  I don't know, actually. And now I'm thinking of Time of
• 37:01
  Angels, and that first episode is a load of people wandering
• 37:04
  around caves for the entire first episode.
• 37:07
  Yeah, well, maybe I'm talking bullshit.
• 37:11
  That's all right, we've got three more episodes to talk
• 37:14
  bullshit on as well. Episodes, Luke.
• 37:16
  I might as well not stop now, I think.
• 37:21
  OK.