Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Talks to Dylan Rees & Mark Rawlins about their choice of Wartime (and other spin off media)

Transcript

Talks to Dylan Rees & Mark Rawlins about their choice of Wartime (and other spin off media) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:02
  Trouble, Sir, if there was going to be trouble, Willis, this is a
• 0:05
  spot. I.
• 0:06
  Choose no bloody copy, man. No, no, you're dead.
• 0:16
  You died years ago. It's a game, but it's not over
• 0:24
  yet. Welcome back to a Hamster with a
• 0:35
  blump pen Knife, the Doctor Who commentary podcast.
• 0:39
  I have a statement to make. My name is Joe and I'm here
• 0:47
  today with to find distinguished gentlemen from other podcasts.
• 0:54
  First there handsome Dylan Reece from Too Hot for TV.
• 0:58
  Hello, Dylan. Hello, it's wonderful to be back
• 1:00
  here. It's like we haven't recorded a
• 1:03
  live podcast. Isn't it tonight, indeed.
• 1:06
  So some other fella from Oh God, what's your podcast called?
• 1:10
  Too hot for TV? Not too hot too.
• 1:16
  There's too many twos. Too many twos.
• 1:18
  Too watch who might roll it. Hello, I won't edit a thing, no.
• 1:23
  I'm. Sure you won't.
• 1:27
  How? How are you?
• 1:28
  Yeah, I'm good. Yeah, I'm excited to watch this
• 1:31
  fantastic film. Well, well, why don't you, Mark,
• 1:35
  let everybody know what we're going to be watching tonight.
• 1:38
  It is from the world of BBCT VS Doctor Who Wartime, starring
• 1:44
  John Levine as Sergeant Benton. Hooray.
• 1:48
  Now I've got something I'd like to say to start off with please.
• 1:52
  OK. As a threesome we have been a
• 1:55
  bit mean about this sort of spin off media in the past, haven't
• 1:59
  we? I.
• 2:00
  Don't know what you're talking about.
• 2:01
  I wrote a book on praise and most of it.
• 2:03
  We did a went to die commentary and then I saw the fella
• 2:06
  retweeting and liking posts about our commentary and I
• 2:10
  thought please no, don't listen to that.
• 2:15
  I mean, look, we've but we've we've been a little mean about
• 2:17
  certain things, but there are good versions of Doctor Who spin
• 2:21
  offs. It's just sometimes it's, it's
• 2:23
  fun to get together and completely trash something.
• 2:26
  We did Cyberon, which we're all very positive about, Yeah.
• 2:29
  Actually, possibly. It could have been worse.
• 2:31
  It could have been the woman that played new Liz Shaw,
• 2:33
  retweeting and listening. Absolutely, yeah.
• 2:38
  Unfortunately, she heard that commentary and took her own
• 2:40
  life. That's not true.
• 2:41
  That's not true. It turned out she was a Saigon
• 2:44
  all. Along didn't even need to put
• 2:46
  any. Human make up on her no, no but
• 2:50
  when we did that when to die one I said to you why is he doing
• 2:54
  this story that's you know big budget movie keep it small you
• 2:59
  haven't got a lot of money. Well, the story we're watching
• 3:01
  today, Wartime, absolutely understands that.
• 3:05
  It's a simple story based on about 3 characters in one
• 3:11
  location and it works. Well, I mean, they are made by
• 3:16
  two different people, but I think Bill Bags not is somewhat
• 3:21
  over ambitious and Keith Barnfather can be over ambitious
• 3:25
  but is always very professional about it.
• 3:27
  And this is the first, well, this is the first one.
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  It is quite ground breaking in a way, you know, and they've done
• 3:33
  it for a very small budget and they've written it for a small
• 3:35
  budget and no one's trying to stretch beyond their means apart
• 3:39
  from possibly the lead actor. Yeah, it's interesting that this
• 3:44
  is what this is, 1988. Well, I should know this,
• 3:49
  shouldn't I? Because, well, Doctor Who is
• 3:51
  still in when this is being made, so it's not even like a a
• 3:54
  wilderness year's spin off concurrent with the show.
• 3:58
  Can someone? Please fill me in, I didn't
• 4:00
  realize. That I can tell you exactly what
• 4:02
  happened. Keith Barnfather in 1984
• 4:06
  approached the BBC about doing some sort of Doctor Who drama.
• 4:09
  At that point he wanted to do it was there's a bit it's a little
• 4:13
  bit hazy, but he basically wanted to do a third doctor
• 4:15
  story with the 3rd Doctor Benton and Liz Sladen straight to video
• 4:22
  and John Nathan Turner understandably said no because,
• 4:26
  you know, he didn't think they could do it on the budget and
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  Doctor Who was still the current thing and they don't want a
• 4:31
  competing show. But that didn't stop him.
• 4:34
  And so his next thing was he started the myth Makers and then
• 4:38
  he but he'd always wanted to do a drama.
• 4:40
  And so eventually he he went to Derek Sherwin, who owned the
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  copyright on Benton. When he figured that that was,
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  that was the end and got permission to make this video.
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  But it's funny with JMT being on all the the marketing and the
• 4:57
  merchandise and all these other things, didn't see a potential
• 5:00
  for like a spin off, not with the Doctor, but with other
• 5:04
  characters and something in the same vein as a when we had, you
• 5:08
  know, Doctor Who torture with Sarah Jane, you could have had
• 5:11
  that going on. You could have had the, you
• 5:13
  know, when the crew came to make that documentary about Silver
• 5:15
  Nemesis, they could have popped by to the next studio and
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  interviewed John Levine making a spin off show and stuff.
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  They could have had that, you know, they could have imagined
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  you could have had all of that going on at the same time.
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  The sad truth is John Nathan Turner liked to be in control of
• 5:29
  everything. This stuff was being made
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  independently of the BBC. He wouldn't have any creative
• 5:36
  control over this. And you know what?
• 5:38
  What year did you say that was pitched?
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  That was 84. 84 So where was Doctor Who in 84 that's.
• 5:44
  Colin Baker, yeah. Precisely this.
• 5:46
  You know, time Lash is going out, What he might have made
• 5:49
  might have been actually a bit better.
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  All I know is it was going to be set around, it was going to be
• 5:54
  filmed in Longleat the the actual stately home, not the
• 5:57
  exhibition. Because the the the guy there
• 6:00
  was a big fan of Doctor Who, but they'd also there is another
• 6:04
  spin off that never happened in between, which isn't really a
• 6:06
  spin off. There was sort of a fantasy
• 6:08
  thing where the Doctor, I'm sorry, where John Perry was
• 6:11
  playing a sort of wizard and it was basically the same thing,
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  but they decided they couldn't afford it in the end or
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  something. But they couldn't afford him
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  more like. No, no, pertly was always up for
• 6:21
  these sort of things. I mean, it's in devious isn't?
• 6:25
  It in the 80s is such a hustler for.
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  What's that? You want me to go to Crinkly
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  bottom? You'll do anything.
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  You'll do any pilot, any concept, and he'll happily tell
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  a whole convention panel that he's working on something
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  amazing that will never materialize.
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  And. Always say a word for Keith
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  Barnfather, please, because I have now watched a lot of behind
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  the scenes on all of these sort of spin off medias.
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  Yeah. And what's the other fella's
• 6:53
  name? Bill Bags.
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  Bill bags. No offence to you Bill Bags, but
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  he often comes across as a bit of an arrogant prick.
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  But Keith Barnfathers on the wartime special features and
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  he's doing information about all of this and other stuff that
• 7:08
  they've done with Katie Manning. My God, he comes across as the
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  nicest fucking bloke you're ever going to meet in your life.
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  He's like the Chris Chibnall of the day, the guy you'd meet down
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  the pub, but he's clearly got his head screwed on as well.
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  It's like you say about Barry Letts.
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  He talks bloody good sense and he basically says we'll do this
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  if we can do it and do it well. Do you know?
• 7:32
  Sorry. Go on.
• 7:33
  Well. No, I was going to say, And
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  that's what he's done here. Yeah, he said.
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  He said we need to find a a good location to do this.
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  We need sort of the right equipment to pull it off because
• 7:43
  I actually think this looks very nice.
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  It's the best bit of television ever made, but it is remarkably
• 7:51
  competent budget that it's made on.
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  He, Keith, is a very nice man and as you say, he's got his
• 7:58
  head screwed on. I've been interviewing him.
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  I must have interviewed him 20 times over the last four years
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  because I'm slowly sort of documenting his career.
• 8:08
  And he's a lovely man and he does, he knows what he's doing,
• 8:11
  he knows his limitations. He it's not always successful in
• 8:15
  terms of what he sets out to achieve and he's very honest
• 8:17
  about that. But he's also built up this
• 8:19
  amazing back catalogue of work through the dramas he did, the
• 8:23
  documentary output. One of the things as I write
• 8:26
  this book about real time, I realise just how recorded the
• 8:31
  growth of Doctor Who fandom is because of Keith Barn father and
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  not to mention the 173 Myth Makers tapes, which interview
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  and still growing interview so many people from the show before
• 8:43
  their before their stories become anecdotes they tell at
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  conventions. There's no sort of, and this is
• 8:48
  where I get the laugh and recording for the first time and
• 8:51
  then now sort of a bit more tragically, capturing people,
• 8:55
  you know, at the tail end of their career, the tail end of
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  their life, just getting their stories before you know that
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  they pass away you. Know I mock your shelf in your
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  man cave relentlessly. You're myth making.
• 9:06
  I think they're an invaluable resource, especially of those
• 9:09
  people we've lost. The jumper we won, the JNT won
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  is a real glimpse and intimate afternoon with those people.
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  You're not going. To see it when they're on on a
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  convention stage, it's when they're relaxed and with Nick
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  Briggs and Jesus Christ, I'm going to go to the whole hub and
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  compliment everyone today. Nick Briggs, who I think is one
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  of the best interviewers, Doctor Who has ever had because he just
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  has a way of making people comfortable to a point where
• 9:37
  they can open out and go listen to those Big Finish, Colin Baker
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  and Tom Baker ones. They tell stories they've never
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  told before, like heartbreaking stories.
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  When Sophie Aldridge driving around.
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  Where she used to, I love. That that's great, but.
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  Also in in the in the mid noughties he started releasing
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  myth makers about They weren't really myth makers, they were
• 10:00
  all convention panels. But it's people like Don Horton
• 10:03
  who wrote Inferno and The Mind of Evil Long Since Dead, Paul
• 10:08
  Erickson who wrote The Ark, Innis Lloyd, like all of those
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  sort of production teams that were still around in the late
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  80s, early 90s, He was there filming convention panels.
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  And it's just a time capsule that exists at these people
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  talking candidly about their work.
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  And it's also capturing the so many things that you shoot to
• 10:28
  different conventions around the world that it just captures
• 10:31
  little bits of fandom and people at different points in their
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  life. I think, you know, we're very
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  spoilt as Doctor Who fans down with VAM.
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  But I think there's a world where you talk the complete back
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  catalogue of of myth makers. And you could edit the like a
• 10:46
  super long definitive story of classic Doctor Who and it would
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  be told like nobody else has told it.
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  It would get all over that fiftiest version they did.
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  Do you remember? That all that.
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  The same old anecdotes coming in.
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  I mean, yeah, it's just stories I've never heard before.
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  So let's start on a great note. Keith Barfava, we salute you
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  for. Your top lads.
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  Doctor Who? Indeed.
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  And now back to wartime. Well, look.
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  What do you think of this? I love wartime.
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  It's a, as you say, it's the first one.
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  It's done in the late 80s. It's not perfect.
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  I don't think anybody involved with it would say it was
• 11:27
  perfect. But it knows what it is.
• 11:29
  It knows what it's trying to do and it does it well.
• 11:32
  And it's different from it's not just aping a Doctor Who story
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  without the Doctor. This almost isn't a Doctor Who
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  story. So I've always been fond of it.
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  And when I first saw it, it was re released on video in like
• 11:45
  9697. And it had all these
• 11:48
  documentaries at the start about fan films beforehand and then
• 11:52
  documentaries at the end about the making of wartime and then
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  the sort of legacy of it. And I just thought what a really
• 11:58
  honest what what what an honest making of, but also like, what a
• 12:03
  great history of like these of Doctor Who fan films up to that
• 12:07
  point. I actually talking about the the
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  making of and all of that. It's almost like, you know, you
• 12:16
  want to be an amateur film maker.
• 12:18
  This is what you're going to have to go through, all right?
• 12:20
  Like it's almost like an educational tool, which is
• 12:22
  great. What did you think of wartime?
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  Yeah, I was interested because it was this the first spin off
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  of its kind. And yeah, it does know what it
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  needs to be. It knows its limitations.
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  I was quite surprised how unambitious it was, because I
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  think I'm used to watching all of these other ones that are
• 12:44
  trying to, like, straighten too far.
• 12:46
  Well, no, because I thought just as a story was getting going,
• 12:49
  it's finished, I thought there was going to be more.
• 12:51
  Read the novelization. Now.
• 12:54
  Is there a novelisation of this? Yeah, I've got it on the shelf
• 12:57
  up there. I've not read it yet, but I will
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  do wonder. Who writes that?
• 13:00
  I think that one's Stephen James Walker, but all the other ones
• 13:04
  are novelised. All the other BBV, no sorry real
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  time ones are novelised by David J Hab apart from Seal which is
• 13:11
  novelised by Philip Martin of. Course.
• 13:15
  So what did that happen to your? Enjoyment.
• 13:16
  Slight it was actually. No, I enjoyed it.
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  And yeah, it's, it's a competent short film, but I don't know, I
• 13:25
  just thought there were going to be more, there was going to be
• 13:26
  more to it because there's a lot of walking around in forests.
• 13:30
  Well, I'll say I have seen, you know, some of your short films,
• 13:33
  all right? This is high art compared to
• 13:34
  someone else. What I noticed watching this, I
• 13:39
  mean, at the end of this, I turned to him and I said I have
• 13:42
  seen so much worse than this, like, and I didn't mean that in
• 13:47
  an uncomplimentary way. I was really shocked at how
• 13:50
  stylish some of the shooting of it was, you know, and for
• 13:53
  telling like a ghost story and doing it in the daytime, which
• 13:57
  is bored, it actually had a bit of atmosphere to it.
• 14:01
  Yeah, it did. And I think, I think we, I've,
• 14:04
  I've probably said this before, but we tarnish all these dramas
• 14:08
  with the same brush. And that tends to be the tail
• 14:10
  end of Bill bag Saigon porn. And also the fact that for a
• 14:14
  long time all these things were like only available on YouTube
• 14:19
  as VHS rips. And so they looked worse quality
• 14:23
  than they actually were. And then over sort of when
• 14:26
  Doctor Who came back, people started being interested in all
• 14:29
  aspects of it. And there was sort of a
• 14:31
  renaissance of these fan films. And they all got re released.
• 14:34
  And you know, these these were available on the High Street
• 14:36
  twice over. Let's forget this site.
• 14:39
  So when people talk about fan films, I think of fan films.
• 14:43
  As you know we got a Dalek and we pushed it around the forest.
• 14:46
  This was commercially of you could go into HMVI bought my VHS
• 14:50
  copy of Wartime from HMV and it sat there along with the 1st 4
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  Probe films. Not Went to Die.
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  That was never available anywhere.
• 15:00
  And so yeah, just it's just remember.
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  And then the re release in the The Wartime Chronicles DVD, you
• 15:06
  could go into a HMV and buy that back in sort of two 2015 or
• 15:11
  whatever it was that it was released.
• 15:13
  I think I bought some of these in Virgin Megastores.
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  You know, I definitely remember getting the Devil of
• 15:17
  Winterbourne and a few others in.
• 15:19
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK.
• 15:22
  Well, then one last thing to both of you before we go in,
• 15:26
  because it ain't very long. So we ain't got long to talk
• 15:28
  when it's on because it's only on for 32 minutes.
• 15:31
  Is let's get the elephant in the room exposed you.
• 15:37
  Want me to get my cock out? I hope it's more impressive than
• 15:42
  John Levine's performance, which is what I would like to talk
• 15:45
  about. OK, no, go.
• 15:48
  Carry on. I was going to say, before you
• 15:50
  start criticizing John Levine and his performance, can I just
• 15:55
  say he came out of retirement to make this.
• 15:58
  He had stopped acting at this point.
• 16:01
  So it's doctor fandom that brought him out of retirement
• 16:05
  and has unleashed him ever since.
• 16:07
  So it's all it's down to this because he had, he says in the
• 16:12
  making up, doesn't he? He given up acting.
• 16:14
  He wasn't going to go back, so I was actually going to say I'm.
• 16:17
  Actually being facetious because I actually think this is like,
• 16:20
  no, no, no, wait, no, I'm being, I'm being serious.
• 16:24
  This was the, the, the firmest attempt I think I've seen for
• 16:29
  him to actually give a performance, like a dramatic
• 16:32
  performance. When he played Doctor Who, he
• 16:35
  didn't really have to give a performance.
• 16:36
  He was the charming side character that could come in and
• 16:40
  do charming things, you know, and that's, that's kind of easy
• 16:42
  to do. He had the odd moment but this
• 16:45
  is where he's the centre stage and he's the lead and he's got
• 16:48
  to drive this thing and he's putting in the effort I think.
• 16:52
  He is putting in the effort. He is like, he's admitted
• 16:55
  himself that he is not a leading man, you know, And I think
• 17:00
  that's fair. And I think, I mean, he is in
• 17:03
  this. Yeah.
• 17:04
  And I think he gives the best performance he can.
• 17:08
  I think occasionally there's things he can't quite stretch
• 17:11
  to, but I also think if you turn on Doctor Who in 1988, you'll
• 17:15
  also see some people who don't quite deliver the performances
• 17:19
  that you would hope for a lead in something.
• 17:21
  I mean, we're not too far away from Richard Breyer's In
• 17:25
  Paradise Towers, for instance, so I thought.
• 17:28
  You were talking about Sylvester McCoy, so for your.
• 17:33
  I mean, boom. That's.
• 17:36
  Exactly where my mind went and then I forgot you love those.
• 17:41
  But what what I will say about Sylvester and Sophie, and maybe
• 17:44
  it's the case with John here is with more time, perhaps there
• 17:48
  would have been a chance to do a few more takes to experiment a
• 17:51
  bit more. But this was shot in three days.
• 17:55
  They tried to shoot it in two and didn't finish it and had to
• 17:57
  go back again to to finish it and he couldn't afford to pay
• 18:01
  anybody else to go back and finish it.
• 18:02
  But everybody did out of the love for the project and the
• 18:05
  fact that they really respected Keith.
• 18:07
  And you know, it would. I think Doctor Who fandom would
• 18:10
  be horror for it if this did not exist or was lavished unfinished
• 18:15
  on Avhs somewhere. I I say almost for the special
• 18:19
  features as much as the feature, because the special features,
• 18:23
  like you said, that's the time capsule and there's such an
• 18:26
  insight into everything that's going on.
• 18:29
  And it, there's a wonderful one, isn't there, about all these fan
• 18:32
  projects that were going on at the time.
• 18:34
  And oh God, that sounds great. I mean, it would have been
• 18:37
  awful, but that sounds great, you know?
• 18:38
  So there was a lot in the air at the time.
• 18:40
  Do you know what is missing which isn't real time in between
• 18:46
  audio visuals and Big finish that bill bag started making a
• 18:51
  thing called Scarecrow City which wasn't Doctor Who but it
• 18:55
  was a sci-fi thing in the vein of Doctor Who with all the audio
• 18:58
  visuals lot and he never finished it.
• 19:00
  But the tapes are long since lost, and it's such a shame.
• 19:03
  Personal. Gummidge was it wasn't all that
• 19:08
  could have been in it. He probably was £50 and a hand
• 19:12
  job and perfectly shows up to anything.
• 19:14
  That's all it takes for me. Should we go in and watch
• 19:19
  wartime? Let's start you.
• 19:20
  Have any more points to make there?
• 19:21
  No. Are you sure?
• 19:23
  No. OK, let's let's watch.
• 19:24
  Or will someone count us in then please?
• 19:26
  Yeah, so we've got the if you're queuing up with us, we've got
• 19:30
  the real time logo just about to appear with the in the blue box.
• 19:33
  So, 321, let's go. Rolling.
• 19:40
  You love that spinning tape of. Yeah, so this in the original
• 19:47
  video version, it's like a Kevin Davis did like a hand drawn
• 19:50
  animation and it's evolved over time.
• 19:52
  But that is my childhood. And I know I had a weird
• 19:55
  childhood, but I just associate that so much with like it's very
• 19:59
  nostalgic for me. Oh.
• 20:00
  My God, I knew I was in for a good thing here when you could
• 20:03
  hear the typewriter again. We're going across the screen.
• 20:06
  So you've got Nicholas Courtney doing a little bit of a voice
• 20:09
  over at the beginning that wasn't in the original.
• 20:11
  Has that been added? Or no, it was always there.
• 20:14
  There was a bit of a myth that it wasn't there.
• 20:16
  And so, being the loser that I am, I bought the original, the
• 20:19
  very first release off eBay and checked and it's still there.
• 20:23
  Your devotion to research is second to none, I swear.
• 20:29
  Thank you very much. Times if you've seen that real
• 20:31
  time the logo like unwind. Oh 1000, no.
• 20:36
  So met so many times, it's untrue.
• 20:40
  And he's still saying, just I'll tell you what, though, it does
• 20:43
  show you the, the sort of the potential of Doctor Who, doesn't
• 20:47
  it, that actually you can take this rando character from the
• 20:51
  70s in in the late 80s and do this story for him.
• 20:57
  Yeah, I bet I I don't think he's an unusual choice because you've
• 21:02
  got to remember there was a huge amount of nostalgia for what
• 21:05
  they called the golden era of Doctor Who, which was the the
• 21:08
  70s at the time in fans, because fandom had grown up and we're
• 21:12
  very nostalgic about the past. But all of a sudden they were
• 21:14
  very cynical about current Doctor Who and just wanted it to
• 21:17
  get back to the good old days. So of.
• 21:19
  Course for you in 88, that was the golden period of Doctor.
• 21:22
  Yeah, exactly, exactly. And it's quite interesting.
• 21:26
  You sort of fans of, say, Toby Haydock's generation talk about
• 21:29
  the Davison era of being that, you know, that moment.
• 21:32
  So I think it's just, it's just when you got into the show and
• 21:36
  it was all new, wasn't it? And.
• 21:39
  We've got Michael Wisher guest starring the first sort of
• 21:42
  instance of a another a Doctor Who actor playing somebody else
• 21:46
  in in. Love Michael Wisher, what a
• 21:48
  legend. He's an esteemed character
• 21:50
  actor, Michael Wisher. He did a lot of work.
• 21:52
  So that's sort of your prestige performance in this, isn't it?
• 21:56
  Yeah. And he, I think everybody from
• 21:58
  Keith to John Levine would say he's the one that really lifts
• 22:02
  the performance out of that, lifts the video and just adds
• 22:06
  that sort of, it's an overused word, but gravitas to it.
• 22:10
  They do. Like what I really like about
• 22:11
  this is they do lots of sort of POV and handheld camera work and
• 22:16
  this just different ways of making it visually interesting.
• 22:20
  It's not shots like Doctor Who at the time.
• 22:22
  As you say, there's handheld lot handheld shots.
• 22:25
  There's a lot of slow MO, which we'll come to later.
• 22:27
  It's it's it's a different style of directing the newer style.
• 22:32
  But well, yeah, that's what I was going to say.
• 22:34
  Kerrigan does scenes like this in Battlefield, and they're
• 22:38
  nowhere near as dynamic as being.
• 22:41
  Yeah. It's not like Battlefield, is
• 22:43
  it? Although that shot there does
• 22:44
  look like someone has just placed the camera by a
• 22:46
  crossroads do. You know why that's there,
• 22:48
  though? It's because he wanted to do a
• 22:50
  shot where he shot unit Jeeps exactly like Douglas Canfield
• 22:54
  did. Go on.
• 22:57
  So there's a couple of them there, the more static ones.
• 22:59
  That's why you're here. You know, that looks a bit like
• 23:04
  the Crossroads. You, me, Mark and Luke Malloy
• 23:06
  stood. At yeah, I mean, I've I've
• 23:07
  already said I want to go to the downtime University.
• 23:09
  When are we going to the for the location hunt for this?
• 23:14
  All this stuff with the filming, obviously from a back of a truck
• 23:18
  or something long. It's it's.
• 23:20
  Brilliant. Yeah, it looks really good and
• 23:22
  like you're in, there's a bit of speed to it, so.
• 23:25
  It is. It makes me feel a little bit
• 23:27
  sick. If it was going on for a long
• 23:28
  time. Maybe if we cut down a little
• 23:30
  bit when she was staring at that for a long time.
• 23:32
  I want to say shame on you Kevin Davis for nicking the music for
• 23:36
  this for 30 years in the Tardis, because I recognise that bit
• 23:39
  that goes. Mark Ayers, who I'm just holding
• 23:48
  up the CD myths and other legends, did a lot of the early
• 23:52
  myth makers. Music did return to Devil's End,
• 23:56
  did this, did 30 years in the TARDIS and he his music, he
• 24:00
  would quite often move it around.
• 24:01
  It was sort of like the unofficial motifs of Doctor Who
• 24:05
  banned them at the time. So it's fine because Mark Ayers
• 24:07
  did it so. This year.
• 24:09
  So John. John Levine, John Benton.
• 24:13
  No. Is it John Benton?
• 24:15
  It is John Benton. He goes and visits his father's
• 24:17
  grave. Is that right?
• 24:18
  No, it's his. It's his brother who died there.
• 24:21
  Who fell off that wall? We see that quite a few times in
• 24:24
  this. Don't we listen?
• 24:25
  There's a lot here. There's it's very dialogue, like
• 24:27
  it's all imagery. It's all just following the the
• 24:30
  story in that way. But that's so you're trying to
• 24:33
  sort of you're piercing together all these flashbacks.
• 24:35
  Like Dylan said, that's less like TV and more like a movie.
• 24:39
  A movie tells you more with pictures and less with dialogue.
• 24:43
  Yeah. And the location, it was John
• 24:47
  Ainsworth, who we were talking about on our previous podcast.
• 24:50
  He he grew up near there. And it's just this old Victorian
• 24:54
  folly that this industrialist built and it was all overgrown.
• 24:57
  And so, yeah, they've used it for, used it for this.
• 25:01
  I've got to say, have you seen John Ainsworth?
• 25:02
  John Ainsworth at the time, imminently fuckable.
• 25:07
  Gary Russell. You're a lucky man back in the
• 25:09
  day, all right. Yes, yes, I have.
• 25:13
  And that's why I'm here. Why are you here?
• 25:22
  But even like this little shot of John holding his head and
• 25:25
  we've had the flashback before it and it's sort of mixing
• 25:28
  between the two, it's, this feels to me a lot like an 80s
• 25:33
  music video. That's the only way I can
• 25:35
  describe it in terms of aesthetics.
• 25:36
  And that's not a criticism in any way you hear.
• 25:39
  That Once Upon a time you love. You could just see her coming
• 25:45
  over the hill. Andy Lane I'm not Andy Lane of
• 25:49
  New Adventures for. You.
• 25:50
  Yeah. This is his first professional
• 25:53
  Doctor Who writing gig. I mean, he, I think he's a good
• 25:55
  writer. He writes some good new
• 25:56
  adventures. And Helen Sterling is his, well,
• 26:00
  was his girlfriend at the time and now his wife.
• 26:01
  They're still together now, or they were as of when I
• 26:04
  interviewed him about six months ago.
• 26:08
  But they, they worked out the story with Keith based on it was
• 26:11
  always this location and they had something about alien
• 26:15
  abduction and then they had this idea and Keith went for this
• 26:18
  one. I, I know it's a, it's, it's a
• 26:21
  weird one to say this, but the military stuff is handled very
• 26:25
  well because I've seen other productions where it's not and.
• 26:31
  Let's name them Probe went to die.
• 26:33
  It was Hardware was good, but we never believed that fellow was
• 26:36
  in the army, did we? But that's because it's again
• 26:38
  within its means. It's one truck, two soldiers.
• 26:41
  It doesn't not trying to do like a whole fleet.
• 26:44
  It's not to do like I know they're escorting that like
• 26:47
  nuclear stuff. They haven't.
• 26:48
  They don't need like a big nuclear.
• 26:51
  You know it's not mind of evil. Yeah.
• 26:54
  Exactly, I know that. Again, those spin off
• 26:57
  productions can actually pull off big.
• 26:59
  I remember Alton Two and some of Alton Three.
• 27:02
  I thought that actually felt quite epic.
• 27:05
  But generally speaking, they're better off with this approach.
• 27:08
  Just thought that Jeep with the unit the logo on the side, they
• 27:11
  should have that at conventions as a photo thing.
• 27:13
  Why don't more conventions have like unit jeeps?
• 27:16
  That's about to be all. Over it, wouldn't they?
• 27:18
  Yeah, yeah. They would have so many
• 27:20
  wouldn't. They there's a business
• 27:22
  opportunity for you. It's a fire out Jeep, yeah.
• 27:25
  And so the other soldier there is just a local Territorial Army
• 27:29
  guy who bought the Jeep along and they paid him, I don't know,
• 27:31
  £50 or whatever and he plays the role and it, it works.
• 27:35
  He's not an actor. I thought it was pretty good.
• 27:37
  It was great. I thought it was better than
• 27:39
  John Levine. Now, I think this is going to
• 27:44
  sound like a bit of backhanded praise, but John Levine feels
• 27:49
  like he's very much aged into the role.
• 27:51
  Like, I don't know whether John Levine of the 70s would look
• 27:54
  quite as good in the role as he does here, but he looks older
• 27:58
  and a little bit more world weary.
• 28:00
  He's got to look quite haunted in this, doesn't it?
• 28:02
  Because he's being haunted. Not as haunted as he looks now.
• 28:10
  No. And I'm very aware of how we
• 28:12
  have very skilfully skipped over anything that he's doing these
• 28:15
  days. Well.
• 28:17
  We should keep it that way. I mean, look, if anybody wants
• 28:19
  to know what he's up to, just check out the Sirens of Audio
• 28:23
  interview and you'll see where he's at with his life now.
• 28:28
  If you have the stomach for it. Yeah, if you have this, it's not
• 28:31
  it's it's not a well man. So can I ask what are your
• 28:35
  feelings on Benton R as a whole? I mean, I he's he's an alright
• 28:40
  character. I mean, I wouldn't have been
• 28:43
  like gunning for a whole series of just Benton on his own.
• 28:47
  I mean, I think he works in the ensemble as that component.
• 28:51
  I'm not sure if he can as the character can have his own
• 28:57
  series. I mean, a lot of this, this we
• 28:59
  just stood the bit where I think everything slows down a little
• 29:03
  bit. There is a lot of wandering
• 29:04
  around the forest. That is my criticism.
• 29:07
  In terms of the the script here, I feel like it's just filling
• 29:10
  out the time. Yeah, I think there is.
• 29:12
  Well, and it's interesting, but after a few minutes I feel like
• 29:16
  it could move on. It just goes on that little bit
• 29:18
  too long. Do you know the missed
• 29:21
  opportunity for me with not with wartime, but post war time?
• 29:24
  Obviously they wanted to go bigger and so they did.
• 29:27
  That damn time was the next production, which is a much
• 29:30
  bigger production. I would have liked every couple
• 29:32
  of years if they'd just done a 30 minute drama with a different
• 29:35
  person, a different character from Doctor Who.
• 29:37
  Because yeah, you're not no one wants to watch the Benton
• 29:40
  Adventures a whole series. But for 30 minutes as a curio,
• 29:43
  it's it's, it's quite a nice little story to tell and
• 29:46
  truthful. Stay is well known, yeah.
• 29:49
  Yeah, like half an hour. Different companion.
• 29:50
  You can call it the Companion Chronicles.
• 29:54
  I thought it's got legs, you know?
• 29:57
  Talking about, you know. Wandering around a forest you
• 30:01
  love wandering. A.
• 30:03
  Episodes of Planet of the Daleks.
• 30:04
  They're just wandering around the forest.
• 30:06
  I know, but they're just. Far less convincing.
• 30:08
  At this point I was a little bit confused.
• 30:09
  What is he actually doing? Is he?
• 30:13
  He's going back to find that wall, basically.
• 30:16
  He has, he's transporting this nuclear weapon across England,
• 30:21
  and it's taken him through the area where his brother died.
• 30:26
  And he's gone to visit the grave and he starts to see ghosts.
• 30:29
  And so, yeah, he goes to explore.
• 30:33
  You know how he says about how Douglas Adams, Douglas Canfield
• 30:38
  took him on and basically sort of the posture, how to hold a
• 30:43
  gun, actually sort of trained him as a soldier technically in
• 30:47
  Inferno and the Invasion. I can really see it in this.
• 30:52
  He carries himself. He feels like a soldier.
• 30:54
  He does weirdly. I mean, I said this in my book,
• 30:59
  but Benton in the series doesn't quite convince.
• 31:03
  He's a little too. I'm going to use the word soft,
• 31:06
  and I don't mean this that necessarily negative, but too
• 31:09
  soft to be sort of a hardened sort of member of the Army and.
• 31:13
  For your actual pterodactyl. Yeah, but he but this makes more
• 31:18
  sense. He isn't.
• 31:20
  He isn't the soldier type. He's trying to be a soldier to
• 31:23
  impress his dad, and he's a lost little boy trying to piece
• 31:26
  together his past. It's quite a a clever thing of
• 31:29
  going. I'm not sure I quite buy Benton
• 31:32
  as as the Heavy at any point. So who actually is it?
• 31:35
  And I said, I love, I do love that sort of retroactive
• 31:39
  rewriting of characters. The same thing happened with
• 31:42
  Sarah Jane in The Sarah Jane Adventures when they they killed
• 31:44
  off her parents and explained why she was with Aunt Livilia
• 31:48
  and here why he's in the army to please his dad.
• 31:51
  Makes total sense to me because that's basically the
• 31:54
  relationship I had with my dad, minus the army parts.
• 31:58
  Yeah, it make it makes perfect sense.
• 32:00
  And I do think this location is beautiful.
• 32:03
  Like I know you say like it would be better shot at night,
• 32:05
  but they were never going to be able to afford to shoot it at
• 32:07
  night. But I don't mind.
• 32:09
  You know, Mark, as you're saying.
• 32:11
  Oh, it's just that there's a lot of wandering around the forest,
• 32:13
  but it's a pretty looking space. So yeah, it does, yeah, it's a
• 32:16
  great location and it does show it off well.
• 32:19
  Yeah, I don't want to labour the point, but Android invasion
• 32:22
  there's a lot of wandering app. Not this long, not this long,
• 32:26
  but something else is happening. Something sinister is happening
• 32:28
  in the background, and that's not what's happening.
• 32:30
  It's not I've seen anything yet. It's flashbacks to his little
• 32:34
  brother. Yeah, it's, I guess it's the
• 32:37
  difficulty that you're dealing with for the most part, one
• 32:41
  person walking around by himself.
• 32:43
  So you do do these flashbacks of the kid and the the memories and
• 32:47
  all these things, but it's one person trying to do that Big
• 32:51
  Finish thing of not just talk to themselves like the 8th Doctor
• 32:53
  in Storm Warning. What are we saying?
• 32:58
  Where the start of everyone someone was talking to
• 33:00
  themselves? Oh, every 9th Doctor story where
• 33:03
  he's got no companion, he's like, oh girl, where are we
• 33:06
  going now? Yeah.
• 33:07
  I going back to that thing of doing another like 30 minutes at
• 33:11
  the time. If they did want every couple of
• 33:13
  years the the the perfect one to do after that would probably
• 33:17
  been Sarah Jane and then probably Ian Martyr as Harry who
• 33:20
  was still about. Yeah, it'd be great to see him.
• 33:24
  I sorry I don't get this bit. The slow motion of the other guy
• 33:27
  at the Jeep. Well, is he caught in a time
• 33:29
  warp? Essentially, time slowed down
• 33:31
  outside of the the haunting. I get it right, OK.
• 33:35
  But what's great about it, it's not your typical slow motion.
• 33:38
  It's like this weird sort of frame, frame, frame, frame.
• 33:41
  It's because the technology. At the time it's.
• 33:45
  Creepier than normal slow motion.
• 33:46
  I don't, yeah. It is the technology of the
• 33:48
  time, but it's also not it, it works as you know, people don't
• 33:54
  realise with slow motion. Even now.
• 33:56
  You have to shoot it in a certain way at a certain frame
• 33:58
  rate with certain lenses and all these otherwise it looks like
• 34:00
  shit. And you know, I'll point to a
• 34:02
  perfect example of that day of the doctor when the three
• 34:06
  doctors or the two doctors, you know, they walk towards the
• 34:08
  camera and the, the, the, the black archive and it's slowed
• 34:12
  down. It looks really weird because
• 34:14
  they've slowed it down in post. And it was footage that wasn't
• 34:16
  meant to be slowed down. Not the only flooring day at the
• 34:20
  Doctor Mouse. No, no, no.
• 34:22
  The tide's turning on that one, isn't it?
• 34:23
  I think it is. What does it be anyway, you
• 34:25
  know? But sorry, go on.
• 34:30
  No no no, I was going to say there isn't much of A narrative
• 34:35
  to this. Like the narrative is Egostis
• 34:37
  location is haunted by his past that, you know, he comes to some
• 34:42
  sort of realisations about his family and that's about it.
• 34:46
  But I think that's all right. I think it's OK to at 30 minutes
• 34:55
  to to just have some character stuff and pretty pictures.
• 34:58
  I realise I stand in this with faint praise, like an art house
• 35:01
  movie. That's what I'm trying to say.
• 35:03
  You know those movies you go and see in those randos cinemas,
• 35:05
  Yeah, where it's all about like finding, finding the depths of
• 35:09
  it, you know? I've worked on a couple of
• 35:11
  things like that where, you know, it's a lot of people walk
• 35:13
  looking out windows and stuff. But this does have something to
• 35:17
  say about his character. Yeah, and it ultimately it comes
• 35:20
  down to the confrontation with his dad.
• 35:22
  And I know we haven't met Michael Wisher yet, but we're
• 35:24
  about to. But it's just, I mean, for me,
• 35:29
  it just works. And all the other characters
• 35:31
  apart from Wisher and Benton. They were just a local amdram
• 35:36
  group that that came along with. It young Benton there look don't
• 35:41
  know anything like that kid in the time monster.
• 35:43
  I I don't go on. You could cut this down say 3
• 35:47
  minutes and then at the end it says Doctor Who The Collection
• 35:52
  season 7. I I I do think that it's cut it.
• 35:57
  All down and then like the ghost is holding the set and then we.
• 36:01
  Go. 3 minutes of footage. I do think there's probably a 15
• 36:06
  minute short film version, but then you can't justify selling
• 36:09
  that for £12 on VHS, can you? But I don't know this.
• 36:19
  There's something quite stylistically interesting, as I
• 36:21
  said. Also, I tried to track down
• 36:23
  young Benton to interview him, but I couldn't.
• 36:25
  I couldn't find him. It's.
• 36:27
  Just directed by Keith Barn, Father, Yeah.
• 36:30
  I. Think he's got some skill, you
• 36:32
  know? He does and assistant director
• 36:36
  Nicholas Briggs, who is who was there shot by Robin Lee, who was
• 36:41
  not a Doctor Who fan but used to work with Keith a lot and was
• 36:45
  quite amused by by all of it. But Keith, he used to, and I
• 36:50
  think probably still does. He used to do a lot of corporate
• 36:52
  work and then he'd fund the myth makers and things like this
• 36:57
  through his company from that. And he would always try and make
• 36:59
  a profit, not profit. He would always try and break
• 37:01
  even out of his Doctor Who stuff and some of it made a profit and
• 37:03
  some of it didn't. But this obviously did well
• 37:05
  enough to break even to the point that he even considered
• 37:09
  doing another drama. You know, there's a story about
• 37:12
  Douglas Canfield on terror the Saigon's where in order to get
• 37:16
  certain things finished, they had, he had to convince the
• 37:18
  whole cast and crew to come in on a Saturday, right?
• 37:21
  And he managed to do it. They weren't going to get paid
• 37:24
  for it, but they loved Douglas Canfield and they did it.
• 37:27
  And I think Bob Father it has that as well because you can see
• 37:32
  in a special, they adore him. I bet there was a ton of stuff
• 37:35
  done free of charge on this. But yeah, there absolutely was,
• 37:38
  because these are all, you've got to understand, they're all
• 37:41
  frustrated film makers and television creators.
• 37:44
  And so they they all did it for the the love of Doctor Who and
• 37:47
  they got paid, just not loads of money.
• 37:49
  Are you? We're at the dancing scene,
• 37:50
  right? That's.
• 37:51
  A good scene, this imagery is really.
• 37:52
  Yeah, that's the creepy bit where they go back in the
• 37:54
  background. Yeah, really.
• 37:56
  Yeah. But it's to play.
• 37:57
  Wisher plays it like he's in a ball.
• 38:00
  He's got horrible gas mask on his.
• 38:02
  Yeah, there's some really good this.
• 38:04
  I like this stuff I think. Why did she fall off?
• 38:07
  There very, you know, deadly assassiny.
• 38:10
  Yeah. Dreams that's not what happened
• 38:12
  to her is. It no, this is, this is a dream.
• 38:14
  Well, not a dream, but it's a sort of it's it's not reality.
• 38:18
  But I think that means something.
• 38:19
  You know that that she fell off there and turned into a rose
• 38:21
  when she landed on the floor. Yeah, it's the tearing apart of
• 38:25
  these people. And now he's got blood on his
• 38:28
  hand from the road. I mean, there's lots of things
• 38:30
  through in there. Yeah, this is about the damage.
• 38:32
  You, you could sort of read anything into it you wanted to,
• 38:35
  couldn't you? The damage your parents do to
• 38:37
  you. Oh.
• 38:38
  Beautiful. Well done.
• 38:39
  You can look at that. John Benton's on his way round.
• 38:45
  OK. No, he's not coming in my house.
• 38:51
  You know what? I think a Doctor Who production
• 38:53
  team would kill for this location.
• 38:55
  Yeah, so all these paths and creepy alleyways.
• 38:58
  Do you know about five years ago I got sent a script for
• 39:02
  something and it was based on someone's real life and the
• 39:05
  climax of the film ended up here in this location and I never
• 39:13
  ended up making the film. I don't know whether it ever got
• 39:14
  made, but the when I read it, I was like, this is everything in
• 39:20
  my life coming together in one place.
• 39:24
  But like the one of our criticisms of Probe went to die.
• 39:27
  Time to die. When to die James Bond has no
• 39:33
  time to die. OK.
• 39:36
  BV doesn't know. Knows when to die.
• 39:39
  BV doesn't know when to die unfortunately.
• 39:43
  One of our criticisms was, or I think it was yours, is it very
• 39:47
  often felt like they just ran into a mall with a camcorder and
• 39:51
  before the security came, they tried to get the shot in.
• 39:54
  This doesn't feel like that at all.
• 39:55
  It feels like this script has been written for this location
• 39:59
  now, and we know that ain't the case, that they wrote the script
• 40:01
  and then they weren't the location around it when John
• 40:04
  Lansworth said this place. Yeah, but it's it's all been
• 40:08
  planned. It's all been thought about and
• 40:11
  they've gone war. Shoot this bit here, we'll do
• 40:13
  that bit here. Oh, we've got that.
• 40:14
  Let's do something around that, which you know, as is the
• 40:19
  nature. I'm sure there was a bit of
• 40:20
  improvisation and a few things done on the fly, but also, most
• 40:23
  importantly, compared to a BBV production, it was all done
• 40:26
  above board. The people that owned that area
• 40:28
  knew that they were showing up and we're going to be there to
• 40:31
  make a film. Yeah.
• 40:34
  Is this the most serious commentary we've ever done?
• 40:38
  No. A shame on you fucking people
• 40:41
  listening to this, right? Yeah, I just.
• 40:43
  You. Because I think you came to this
• 40:44
  commentary to hear us rat on war time.
• 40:47
  And actually, this is a good example of the effort and energy
• 40:53
  that was going into keeping this bloody show alive when it was on
• 40:56
  its last legs, the 80s and the early 90s.
• 41:00
  I I know we're not talking about downtime, but I cannot tell you
• 41:05
  what it was like. Just go to the premiere of
• 41:08
  Downtime at For Luke Malloy Pernopticon 1995 and see a new
• 41:12
  bit of Doctor Who related drama with the Brigadier and Sarah
• 41:15
  Jane Lesso, Victoria Waterfield. And it was, it just seemed like
• 41:20
  the most exciting thing in the world.
• 41:22
  Just like when Shakedown came out the year before.
• 41:24
  It's like the suntarans in a video.
• 41:27
  Like it was. It was new Doctor Who.
• 41:31
  Yeah, for me, that was the autumn ones, yeah.
• 41:34
  But you know, I'm going to break your heart, I'm afraid.
• 41:36
  I think this is better than downtime because I think this
• 41:39
  knows its limits, and downtime's trying to be a spectacular
• 41:42
  Doctor Who story. And there's a lot.
• 41:45
  I mean, it's Sarah Jane, Victoria, the Brigadier.
• 41:48
  There's tons to like about it, but I think that fails in ways
• 41:52
  that this doesn't because this is less ambitious.
• 41:56
  Yeah, but I think the only element for me of downtime that
• 42:00
  doesn't really work is I I'm not sure Victoria Waterfield's
• 42:04
  performance at the beginning is pitched right.
• 42:06
  And I don't think the yetis look great in the daylight.
• 42:10
  No, no. I love all this gas mask stuff
• 42:14
  here. I mean it's it's it's it's pre.
• 42:16
  The empty child is. That Nick Briggs there is the.
• 42:19
  Yeah, yeah. Go on, Nick.
• 42:21
  Nick Briggs with his cameo. And it's post post the deadly
• 42:26
  assassin. You know, we've, we've got our
• 42:28
  gas mask bookmarks in Doctor Who.
• 42:31
  Have you ever seen Myth Runner? What's that?
• 42:35
  Myth Runner's another favorite of mine.
• 42:37
  It's the film they did before this and it's basically a spoof
• 42:40
  on Blade Runner and it's cut up with all the outtakes from the
• 42:44
  Myth Makers Tapes. Oh no, I don't know about that.
• 42:49
  Have you got it? Yeah, it's honestly, it's one of
• 42:53
  my favorite things real time ever done.
• 42:54
  But a lot of that might maybe nostalgia.
• 42:56
  If I bring my duvet around your house, can we sit and watch?
• 43:01
  Absolutely. Do you know what?
• 43:03
  That's one of those things that I've never found anybody to
• 43:05
  cover on a podcast. Oh, here we go.
• 43:10
  Have you ever seen that one that JNT made?
• 43:12
  That comedy One with all the different doctors in it.
• 43:15
  JNT didn't make that. That was Kevin Davis.
• 43:17
  JNT OH. Kevin Davis, my heart goes out
• 43:20
  to you. It's the funniest thing I've
• 43:21
  ever seen. Canine versus Fifi from
• 43:23
  Happiness. That was screened again.
• 43:26
  It was made for a panopticon convention and it was screened
• 43:28
  on a Saturday night after everybody had a few drinks and
• 43:31
  it was, can it go down a storm? Yes.
• 43:34
  Then Fast forward five years and you know you're watching some of
• 43:38
  the the BBV comedy attempts and they did not go down as well.
• 43:42
  What? Was that called?
• 43:43
  I watched that the other week with the Cybermen living next
• 43:46
  door to the Doctor. Do you have a license to save
• 43:48
  this planet? No.
• 43:50
  Ghastly. To be to be fair about that
• 43:52
  production, Gareth Preston who wrote that has been on two hop
• 43:56
  TVA bunch of times and I actually think the script is
• 43:58
  fine. I think it's in the production
• 44:00
  value and the lack of care taken for the timing of the jokes that
• 44:04
  that means it doesn't work. It's actually quite a fun poke
• 44:07
  at the spin off scene. No disrespect to you Gareth, but
• 44:10
  I thought the script was pretty. You've gone very quiet.
• 44:15
  Well, I'm engaged in the conversation.
• 44:18
  We just missed the skull V effects as well so that's got
• 44:22
  that skull was actually just like a mask they bought from a
• 44:25
  shop that they enhanced with computers later on it's.
• 44:29
  Very effective. We haven't talked much about
• 44:32
  Michael Wisher. Now he's a fucking character,
• 44:35
  isn't he? I mean, I don't know whether
• 44:36
  you've ever seen him interviewed and anything, but he is
• 44:38
  absolutely brilliant. And that's a fake mustache that
• 44:42
  he bought himself because he felt his character needed a
• 44:44
  mustache. And he kept it in a tin and used
• 44:46
  to brush it every morning before I put it on.
• 44:48
  Do wonder he wasn't a bit mad though.
• 44:51
  I mean, I've seen his interviews and he's there doing the Dalek
• 44:54
  from death to the Daleks going, you know, I don't know, the one
• 44:56
  that has a meltdown and explodes.
• 44:58
  Yeah. Yeah, that that's from his,
• 45:01
  that's from his myth Makers, which was Myth makers #1 it went
• 45:04
  Bristol. House escape.
• 45:06
  I have failed. Yeah, that.
• 45:07
  Oh, he's brilliant. Wisher is a a great ally for the
• 45:12
  spin off thing because he did shake it down as well.
• 45:15
  Yeah, his last performance. He's done this.
• 45:17
  He was, he did Dalit Mania, Kevin Davis's documentary.
• 45:20
  He's the the guy who the cinema attendant in that.
• 45:26
  Has he been in any of Ian Levine's projects?
• 45:28
  No, no, he was he. Luckily for him, he'd passed
• 45:31
  away before then, but he was also in the audio visuals.
• 45:37
  He's in Myth Runner as well, and he's also in the Myth Runner
• 45:40
  skits, which are a whole nother kettle of fish do.
• 45:42
  You imagine these are all on this CVI.
• 45:45
  Think they probably weren't he just like from what they said,
• 45:47
  he just loved acting and he would show up and help out
• 45:52
  whenever he could because he just loved and and this is a
• 45:55
  serious role, but the myth runner stuff enabled him just to
• 45:58
  sort of play quite silly roles. There's literally no need for
• 46:02
  him to be given the effort he has given here.
• 46:04
  No. And and he sells his character
• 46:06
  and then so he. Goes for it.
• 46:10
  A lot of use of different effects here from the from the
• 46:13
  time. Yeah, but I mean, is it too
• 46:17
  different to a lot of Doctor Who effects at the time?
• 46:21
  Like if you were doing this sort of story, would it look any
• 46:23
  better on the BBC in terms of how they did it?
• 46:26
  The way is Michael was just sort of eyes just came through the
• 46:29
  screen, middle of the screen there reminded me a bit of
• 46:32
  Doctor in Distress. Well, Keith Barnfather did the
• 46:35
  video for Doctor in Distress. No, Yeah.
• 46:40
  Keith, if you are listening to this, that is the greatest gift
• 46:43
  you ever gave to the of the amount of times we've watched
• 46:47
  that bloody video. As he said he he wasn't so much
• 46:51
  asked to do the video, I was told to do it and just showed up
• 46:54
  on the day not knowing what he was going to get.
• 46:56
  You know the bit of the end where they all start laughing at
• 46:59
  this ridiculous song that they're singing?
• 47:01
  I wonder why that bit was kept in.
• 47:03
  Because I think everybody knew, even by the end of the day, what
• 47:06
  they were, what they'd done. I like the man conducting
• 47:09
  everybody in the video where he's like, don't take less.
• 47:13
  As. If it's a problem, paying
• 47:15
  attention to it you. Know well when when my real.
• 47:19
  Time, Father's reach was so far. When my Real Time book comes out
• 47:25
  later this year, you'll hear. You'll hear all about the Making
• 47:28
  of the Doctor in Distress video. Oh my.
• 47:31
  God instant pre-order. And with an interview with Ian
• 47:34
  Levine about downtime. What's that book called?
• 47:37
  Please. Come on, let's get.
• 47:38
  People, no, I don't have a name for it yet.
• 47:40
  Fuck's sake, you can't come on it and market in this book.
• 47:42
  I'm not having the title. I I haven't just.
• 47:45
  Haven't been out Dylan Reece folks in a couple of months.
• 47:50
  Do you think the the etchings on the wall is still there at that
• 47:53
  location? We could only hope.
• 47:55
  That would be a great OK, I can't find out now.
• 47:59
  We're back to the oh, time's speeded up now, and we're back
• 48:02
  it out of the bubble. That's because the film only has
• 48:04
  5 minutes. Left.
• 48:06
  I really hope that much like when we went to Old Bourne, that
• 48:11
  if you go to the local pub near this location, there's just
• 48:14
  pictures of John Levine dicking about in the woods.
• 48:17
  That was a good fight. Did you see that?
• 48:20
  I mean, I don't know if they had a fight coordinator, but it
• 48:22
  looked like it just beat up that accident.
• 48:24
  No, no, they did. They did genuinely have a fight
• 48:27
  coordinator. And there's footage on the DVD
• 48:30
  of them rehearsing the fights again and again and again.
• 48:35
  And. But John Levine tells a tall
• 48:37
  tale about how he knocked the OR nearly knocked the guy out.
• 48:41
  But I I can't see any footage. Yeah.
• 48:44
  I think John Levine's learnt very well from John Pertwee in
• 48:47
  telling our stories. He was hanging out with John
• 48:50
  Pertwee in Adventures for a while.
• 48:51
  Now he's hanging out with Katie Man.
• 48:52
  He's got the hang of it now, yeah.
• 48:54
  They're all one for embellishing the truth.
• 48:57
  Well, yeah, that's what you do in front of an audience.
• 48:59
  No one wants to hear about the time that you just.
• 49:01
  You heard this podcast, Dylan. None of it's true.
• 49:10
  As I when I did my first book, God, I sound like such a prick,
• 49:14
  but it was quite interesting hearing people's point of view.
• 49:19
  So you find an interview from the time and 10 years later and
• 49:22
  then you interview them currently and you you see how
• 49:25
  something becomes embellished and becomes an anecdote over the
• 49:27
  time. It's quite interesting and you
• 49:31
  get that if you get like an early Myth Makers with Colin
• 49:34
  Baker, say, and then see Colin Baker at a convention, it's
• 49:36
  like, oh, you've learned where you get laughs on this and stuff
• 49:39
  and you've learned that that bit works and that bit doesn't.
• 49:43
  The Tom Baker Myth Makers is just him telling a bunch of
• 49:45
  pretty serious stories that are now punch lines.
• 49:48
  We've reached the end already. This.
• 49:51
  Was where I was like great, the story starting now and then.
• 49:54
  I was very surprised to see the credits start rolling.
• 49:57
  I was waiting for a bit more to happen.
• 50:00
  Now as I said, I haven't read the novelisation but I believe
• 50:04
  it ties it into the other real time dramas.
• 50:06
  So maybe you get a cameo from Cavendish or Beverly Cressman's
• 50:10
  Kate, I don't know. No, we can only have.
• 50:13
  Exciting. I watching that whilst talking
• 50:19
  to you guys. I didn't have any trouble
• 50:23
  following that and that's because it's mostly dialogue
• 50:25
  free. I did miss the music by Mark
• 50:27
  Air. Yeah, Mark Air score is
• 50:29
  brilliant. No, no.
• 50:30
  He scores a lot of these early ones, doesn't he?
• 50:33
  Does shake down Return of the Sontarans.
• 50:35
  I think he does the Probe ones as well.
• 50:38
  And he manages to marry his music to all of those different
• 50:41
  tones. I know it will never happen but
• 50:43
  I'd love to hear something Doctor Who related scored by
• 50:47
  Mark Ayers where he was given a free reign of light budget of
• 50:51
  like you can have an orchestra and you can have like imagine
• 50:54
  the ghost light score but done with an orchestra.
• 50:57
  It would just. It would be so different.
• 51:00
  Yeah. We saw Marques, didn't we, at
• 51:02
  the train station. Yeah, he lives in Eastbourne, so
• 51:05
  we see sometimes on the train back I'm too scared to go over.
• 51:07
  Oh no, I started singing music from Cursor Fenrick and he's
• 51:10
  going shut up. I.
• 51:11
  Was no, we saw him at Brighton station and I said, oh, I think
• 51:14
  that's Marques. And you went no, it's not, No,
• 51:16
  it's not. Then we say an.
• 51:18
  Impression of me? You wouldn't believe me and I
• 51:20
  was like, it's Marques. And then you looked over and
• 51:22
  you're like, it is. So the whole train journey you
• 51:24
  started singing louder and louder and louder.
• 51:27
  But it was like, don't embarrass Marques and I.
• 51:30
  Could say this videos rolled on John Ainsworth with his late 80s
• 51:34
  boy band haircut. Those sort of curtains have
• 51:37
  popped up. I mean, you would, wouldn't you?
• 51:39
  Look at him. He's got he looks like he.
• 51:43
  Stepped straight out of the Backstreet Boys.
• 51:47
  Richard Landon's here now unit manager.
• 51:50
  Richard Landon was. There's a useful subtitle here
• 51:56
  that says Home movie footage. Thank you very much.
• 51:59
  Richard London was the guy who organized the mass phoning of
• 52:03
  the BBC when Doctor Who was cancelled.
• 52:06
  I mean, he's on the screen now. He looks the type he looks.
• 52:09
  Fresh off the phone. In 1987.
• 52:13
  Bryce is meeting Richard Ian and John Nathan Turner.
• 52:17
  So also for fat fans, Richard Landon's grandson is the
• 52:23
  Brigadier's grandson in downtown Gordie.
• 52:28
  That is why you're here. I've got to say that I will say
• 52:32
  one last thing about Mark Ayers, and that is what a talented
• 52:35
  musician and. Magician, part of the magic
• 52:39
  circle. It does magic, but also music is
• 52:43
  a talented musician and sound designer.
• 52:46
  Please, Mark, don't do any more commentaries.
• 52:48
  All right, but you're very boring on the commentaries.
• 52:50
  And just like no comments. On the Sea Devils.
• 52:52
  Like we need people with a bit of personality to be doing
• 52:55
  those. Oh my God, look how young
• 52:58
  Nicholas Briggs looks. He's got hair, for God's sakes.
• 53:00
  Are you still watching? No, because I was watching the
• 53:03
  DVD so. I can't get over how short
• 53:06
  Nicholas Briggs shorts are in the making of.
• 53:08
  It. Oh yeah.
• 53:09
  They are, but yeah, short shorts.
• 53:11
  I don't know if you've been watching Big Brother this week.
• 53:14
  I didn't watch the celebrity watch.
• 53:16
  I know who you mean. Who wears short shorts?
• 53:19
  That's what Nicholas Briggs looks like.
• 53:21
  Honestly, watching all the myth makers in order, watching
• 53:25
  Nicholas Briggs throughout his life is just an absolute
• 53:27
  privilege and an honour. He is just like he's got so many
• 53:31
  phases. I mean, it's great for him
• 53:33
  having all these videos of him meeting everyone from Doctor Who
• 53:36
  record, you know, but he's looking back in his life.
• 53:39
  Can we settle this now though? Because I know, I know you have
• 53:42
  a bit of an issue with all of this Nicholas Briggs criticism
• 53:46
  that occurs around podcast land and Gallifrey Basin just
• 53:49
  everywhere. I think it's very easy to take
• 53:55
  the Mickey out of Nicholas Briggs because he's everywhere.
• 53:57
  And this is sort of overexposure thing and you know, I'm prone to
• 54:00
  the odd gag myself, but he is, I think he's an absolute like he
• 54:07
  is the Doctor Who fans, Doctor Who fan.
• 54:10
  He's made being a Doctor Who fan his professional job.
• 54:13
  He is behind all the myth makers.
• 54:16
  He was a big face on the convention scene in terms of
• 54:19
  interviewing things like that. And then he obviously was behind
• 54:22
  Big Finish, parts of BBV and things like that.
• 54:25
  And he was like, he was entertaining us when there was
• 54:27
  no Doctor Who. And he should be praised for
• 54:31
  that. And not all of his scripts are
• 54:33
  fantastic, but if you'd written as many scripts as him, I would
• 54:37
  struggle. I'm sure you would struggle to
• 54:40
  consistently hit the nail on the head every time.
• 54:43
  But like the thing I want to say is because obviously I'm
• 54:46
  finished big, we are mostly me. Well, you're quite nice.
• 54:50
  Critical when we, but we do also say when he's done good stuff as
• 54:54
  well. But yeah, I think you're right.
• 54:56
  He's done so much that it's never all gonna hit.
• 54:59
  What? Amazing my.
• 55:00
  Point is, sheer body of everything that he's done.
• 55:02
  Is, I think he's a fine ambassador for the show.
• 55:06
  I think he done amazing work as an interviewer doing all those
• 55:09
  myth makers and convention circuits and all of that.
• 55:12
  He is hugely competent director and sound designer and musician.
• 55:19
  I've been noticing as we've been doing this, finished big.
• 55:21
  So just how good is Instantal Music is as well?
• 55:24
  And he can be a very good writer as well.
• 55:27
  We've just done Creatures of Beauty and it was great.
• 55:30
  I just think when you produce that amount of output, there
• 55:34
  comes a point where you are creatively exhausted, and that
• 55:37
  was about ten years ago. But how many scripts has he
• 55:41
  released in the last 10 years? And actually if you look it up,
• 55:44
  it's not that many. The problem is is.
• 55:46
  Because they're delayed. Yeah, but this, if you look at
• 55:51
  his credits over, and I think this is the problem, is that he
• 55:55
  was the guy to launch the Tom Baker range.
• 55:58
  And those scripts are fine at the beginning.
• 56:00
  They're fine. They're very meat and potatoes,
• 56:01
  Doctor Who. And there's a lot of you know,
• 56:03
  I've got and May 2 when they came out, it was like, it
• 56:06
  literally was when you know that catch phrase of it's like tea
• 56:09
  time in 1977 all over again. And that's how he felt.
• 56:12
  I thought they were OK. And then there was the 9th
• 56:16
  Doctor launch, which is for me didn't work at all.
• 56:20
  But actually he over the last 10 years, he's probably had 1015
• 56:25
  audios released from Big Finish that are scripts.
• 56:28
  He's mainly been directing. But people seem to go every time
• 56:31
  there's a bad one, they seem to go, oh, it's Nicholas Briggs,
• 56:33
  obviously. And it's like, no, it's not him.
• 56:36
  I think I mean delayed as him. It takes him 10 years to write
• 56:39
  them. I mean, they're about 1010 years
• 56:42
  from making the bloody things to releasing them, which is no,
• 56:46
  that's why he's still got a lot of output coming out now.
• 56:48
  But I think we skip forward five years.
• 56:50
  He hasn't though. When was the last?
• 56:52
  What was the last thing Mick Briggs wrote the.
• 56:53
  Annihilators. I'll listen to that recently.
• 56:55
  I bloody love the Annihilators, I think it's brilliant.
• 57:01
  The last thing I heard him was the the 1st Doctor adventures,
• 57:05
  the Icaron incident. How was that?
• 57:08
  I thought it was all right. How did this suddenly become a
• 57:12
  podcast about Nicola Britt? Was it me?
• 57:16
  Well, I mean you asked, but I mean like.
• 57:21
  I given this is 30 minutes long, I was finding 9 fabulous reasons
• 57:28
  to recommend it might be a bit of an ask, So what I'm going to
• 57:32
  ask us to do is one. One each.
• 57:35
  Thing one each, and that shouldn't be too much of an ask.
• 57:38
  And since you've said the least, we'll start with Mark.
• 57:41
  God, what is one thing? No, there's some, there is some
• 57:47
  great just in terms of the direction, there is some great
• 57:50
  imagery, although I do think it's somewhat it shows off the
• 57:52
  location really well and just things like the the dancing bit,
• 57:56
  the gas mask stuff for for a short sort of ghost story style.
• 58:03
  Yeah, I think there's some great direction here.
• 58:06
  Wonderful. I'm going to say Mark Ayres
• 58:10
  score, which I think is I think brings the whole thing together.
• 58:14
  I think it's a brilliant score. I'd love to hear it not done on
• 58:17
  since. That's not to say I'm anti since
• 58:18
  I think it's fine the way it is, but I just think he has such a
• 58:21
  big sound and it would be great to hear it a bit bigger.
• 58:25
  And I am going to say John Levine, I think one moment aside
• 58:31
  when he gets hysterical and it's a bit terrible.
• 58:36
  I think he's given a good performance here that doesn't
• 58:39
  push him too far out of what he can do.
• 58:42
  But I think it's a savvy move casting him because if anyone
• 58:45
  was going to market this DVD at conventions, it's John Levine.
• 58:50
  But they got a ton of, you know, the Andrew Cartmel approach,
• 58:53
  walking around saying, what's your name?
• 58:54
  Right. I'll sign the DVD now.
• 58:56
  You've got to buy it, you know. No, no, I think he's good in
• 58:59
  this. I think he's really, really
• 59:00
  good. And I like the additional layer
• 59:03
  they add to his character by focusing on his family.
• 59:06
  And it's actually something I could probably take away from
• 59:09
  this and apply to his appearances and Doctor Who as
• 59:12
  just a nice little layer that's there.
• 59:16
  So I think, I think this is as a character tale, this is a
• 59:18
  success. And as a as a as the first spin
• 59:23
  off film, a good start. Yeah, leading.
• 59:28
  The bar too high and the bar. For the for the rest of the.
• 59:31
  Wilderness years. So I, I, I think the bar remains
• 59:35
  consistently high until the end of the probe series and then
• 59:39
  they sort of like including Auton and stuff like that and
• 59:43
  then it sort of starts to drop off a little bit.
• 59:46
  Just to drag this out for a few minutes more.
• 59:50
  Sorry I'm not just so honest about that.
• 59:52
  I'm going to ask the pair of you now, please to highlight your
• 59:56
  two favorite Doctor Who spin offs from BBV, Dreamwatch,
• 1:00:02
  whatever. What's your two favourites?
• 1:00:04
  I know you're going to say Autumn, so that's what I'm
• 1:00:06
  saying too. Let's let's go back and forth
• 1:00:09
  and start with Dylan. Damn time.
• 1:00:12
  Because it is. It felt like 90s Doctor Who.
• 1:00:16
  It's not entirely successful, but it's got Nicholas Courtney,
• 1:00:19
  as we said, it's got Victoria Waterfield, it's got Sarah Jane
• 1:00:23
  Smith. It's just a big, ambitious bit
• 1:00:26
  of Doctor Who, and I love it. Oh, it's got that really
• 1:00:29
  fabulous fat camp man in it as well, hasn't it?
• 1:00:32
  Yes, Miss Smith. And John Leeson as a DJ and it's
• 1:00:38
  got the original, the original and best Kate Lethbridge
• 1:00:42
  Stewart. Oh, she is.
• 1:00:44
  Beverly Crestman. Beverly Crestman, we salute you.
• 1:00:47
  She is the best. Who the hell is Gemma Redgrave,
• 1:00:50
  honestly? Well, go on.
• 1:00:52
  Well, well, Alton. Yeah, but explain yourself
• 1:00:56
  because. That well, especially the first
• 1:00:58
  one, actually, I like the whole trilogy, but I love the Autons
• 1:01:03
  as as well. But it it's within its means,
• 1:01:06
  again, it's in that one setting it it's got those few
• 1:01:10
  characters, interesting characters with what's his name,
• 1:01:14
  Lockwood, Dr. Powell. It's it's just a tightly
• 1:01:19
  directed, It's that Nicholas Briggs directed, isn't it?
• 1:01:22
  Yeah. I just think that's it's just,
• 1:01:25
  yeah, it's it knows what it it's doing.
• 1:01:29
  Yeah, it's a good script as well.
• 1:01:30
  And OK, as it goes on, it gets the the trilogy gets more and
• 1:01:33
  more ambitious. Even the second one on the
• 1:01:37
  island is. Great with locations as close as
• 1:01:40
  I think they've got for pulling off a feature film.
• 1:01:43
  And you've got the arc with the characters through I just I
• 1:01:47
  don't think it gets any better than auto.
• 1:01:49
  I like lockwoods yeah, Lockwoods look good as well.
• 1:01:53
  They they kept you know, they're not a sort of a a cheaper
• 1:01:57
  version. They look authentic but also.
• 1:02:03
  They they also look like Barnaby Edwards, don't they?
• 1:02:05
  Is that? What they were based on.
• 1:02:08
  I don't know, but it just looks like Barnaby Edwards.
• 1:02:11
  It's really weird. And never forget that all.
• 1:02:14
  I think at least the first two, I don't know about The third one
• 1:02:16
  of the autumn films were broadcast several times on the
• 1:02:19
  Sci-fi Channel. You know.
• 1:02:22
  God. Channel.
• 1:02:25
  My favorite is Shakedown. Return to the Sontarans.
• 1:02:28
  Brilliant as well. Because it features Sophie
• 1:02:31
  Aldrin and Carolyn Ford sort of out of their comfort zone.
• 1:02:34
  Caroline Ford's playing like space vamp and Sophie Aldrin's
• 1:02:38
  playing the spoiled brat, and they're both wonderful in it.
• 1:02:40
  It's just so hilarious. Creativity in that as well,
• 1:02:43
  because you're supposed to be on this spaceship and it's like
• 1:02:46
  we've got a film on a spaceship. Budget's low, let's use the
• 1:02:49
  Belfast and just use all of the piping and the underneath and
• 1:02:53
  all of that. It's really.
• 1:02:55
  Brilliant, brilliant market score as well.
• 1:02:58
  Did Kevin Davis actually direct Kevin Kelly?
• 1:03:02
  Kevin Davis obviously directs Shakedown.
• 1:03:05
  He directs 30 Years in the TARDIS and Dalit Mania and The
• 1:03:09
  Hitchhiker's documentary. But he was predominantly an
• 1:03:12
  animator and so he worked on things like Who Framed Roger
• 1:03:15
  Rabbits. Waste of animation, a waste of
• 1:03:18
  direction. Because I think he's a good
• 1:03:19
  dramatic director. He did a couple of episodes of I
• 1:03:22
  think it was called Space Island One for Sky One, which was sort
• 1:03:26
  of like a soap set in a space station.
• 1:03:29
  But yeah, it's, it's a shame. Like, I mean, Kevin's a lovely
• 1:03:33
  guy. I've met him a few times and but
• 1:03:36
  I feel like he had a lot more to give in terms of a director and
• 1:03:40
  for whatever reasons that that didn't really happen.
• 1:03:43
  The sequence where the Sontarans raid to tie them off right and
• 1:03:46
  the bomb gets dropped in, and then there's handheld camera as
• 1:03:50
  they're all screaming down the corridors.
• 1:03:51
  They're shooting them. And then at the end of the scene
• 1:03:54
  where you go from corpse to corpse to corpse, corpse to
• 1:03:56
  corpse. And it builds and builds and
• 1:03:57
  builds in momentum. And that's done on a shoestring.
• 1:04:00
  If he had a budget and, you know, a really competent
• 1:04:05
  technical crew behind him, I tried to do what he could have
• 1:04:08
  done. But doing that bit where
• 1:04:09
  they're, you know, setting the sails and everything, and it's
• 1:04:11
  like virtual reality. It's such a clever way of doing
• 1:04:15
  it, just getting the actors to pretend and then you've got them
• 1:04:18
  outside with the filter on. But of course, Kevin's recently
• 1:04:21
  found sort of huge success. So Kevin has spent his life
• 1:04:25
  predominantly documenting hitchhikers, which is his first
• 1:04:27
  love. And he's recently had that, that
• 1:04:31
  Douglas Adams book that he's been touring all around the UK
• 1:04:33
  going far beyond like a little Doctor Who book or something
• 1:04:36
  like that. You know, it's, it's a best
• 1:04:38
  seller and he's been been pushing that everywhere.
• 1:04:40
  So props to him. Well, what's your second choice
• 1:04:44
  then? What's the runner up?
• 1:04:45
  But still very good. I am going to choose a stranger
• 1:04:50
  film and I'm going to choose In Memory Alone, starring Colin
• 1:04:54
  Baker as the Stranger and Nicola Bryant as Miss Brown and Nick
• 1:04:58
  Briggs as well, and it's a weird sapphire and steel thing set
• 1:05:02
  entirely on a train and I love it.
• 1:05:04
  I think it's fucking brilliant and Nick Briggs wrote it and
• 1:05:07
  it's a great script. He did a big finish set on a
• 1:05:10
  train with Colin Baker and Maggie.
• 1:05:11
  Yeah, yeah, we stopped beyond reusing his ideas.
• 1:05:14
  I bet it was really like, it was really quite scary.
• 1:05:17
  I've never seen any of the Stranger.
• 1:05:18
  I'm going to watch. This now, right?
• 1:05:20
  So we need to we need to get together and do a stranger.
• 1:05:23
  We need to do all. Things at 1:00.
• 1:05:25
  But we know we should start at the beginning and work our way
• 1:05:27
  to the. Ranger Series I.
• 1:05:29
  Don't know what to expect. From them, the first two are
• 1:05:32
  half an hour long, then they go to some balloons just pops up
• 1:05:39
  when bubbles came out of your mouth.
• 1:05:44
  I thought I'd turn that off. I thought I'd figured a way to
• 1:05:46
  because I was giving a quite I do a bit of lecturing on the
• 1:05:50
  side for little talks for like the BFI to students.
• 1:05:54
  And I had to turn it off because it kept happening while I'm, you
• 1:05:56
  know, making serious points about diversity within the film
• 1:05:59
  industry. And there's like a peace sign
• 1:06:02
  comes out of my mouth. But anyway, we should, we should
• 1:06:06
  do the run, be it for too hot for TV or for hamster, we should
• 1:06:10
  do all six of them. Oh.
• 1:06:12
  There should be commentaries, don't you think?
• 1:06:13
  Live. Absolutely.
• 1:06:17
  Let's do this right. We've we've committed this to
• 1:06:19
  audio now. So we're doing the strangest.
• 1:06:22
  Contract. Oh God, isn't there one where
• 1:06:25
  he's having it open so I. Knew I knew you were going to
• 1:06:28
  say that. I was like, you cannot talk
• 1:06:30
  about the stranger about. Saying I think you should watch
• 1:06:33
  it and decide whether you think they are actually having it off
• 1:06:35
  or if it's just actually quite an arty shot.
• 1:06:38
  Oh, really? Yeah, sound of entire thing.
• 1:06:41
  What's your second choice? Well, it's.
• 1:06:42
  Going to be shakedown. That will.
• 1:06:44
  You need the third choice and. I've done the almost one.
• 1:06:47
  Trip. I'm a huge celebration of all
• 1:06:50
  spin offs and that wartime has been the the front.
• 1:06:53
  Well, actually, OK, so after auton.
• 1:06:55
  After Auton. Auton too.
• 1:07:00
  Shakedown do you want? My third favorite would be the
• 1:07:05
  White Witch Devil's End. Yes.
• 1:07:09
  Because I'm, I mean. I've seen that, it's probably
• 1:07:12
  the one that I've seen them after Auton, the one I've seen
• 1:07:15
  the most. And why is it?
• 1:07:18
  I just find it a relaxing watch, and that's not like a bad thing.
• 1:07:22
  It's just really nice to have Tamara Saban tell you a nice
• 1:07:24
  little short story going along with it, and you can just sit in
• 1:07:28
  a chair with a cup of tea and it's just.
• 1:07:31
  Is it like a chill granny reading a bedtime?
• 1:07:33
  Story And it doesn't matter. Yeah, it's just really nice.
• 1:07:36
  I just find it comforting. That's lovely.
• 1:07:39
  And we recently went to the locations, all the three of us.
• 1:07:42
  We did indeed. We had a picture outside.
• 1:07:45
  In fact, I played the vampire that tried to kill her.
• 1:07:48
  It's not. It's not an action story.
• 1:07:50
  It is a excuse me. Did you say a vampire tried to
• 1:07:54
  kill her? The vampire.
• 1:07:55
  Didn't try to kill her, he was in love with her.
• 1:07:57
  Oh yes, why did he? Idiot because he had to give
• 1:08:01
  himself up for her because he couldn't control his bloodlust.
• 1:08:04
  What's the line again? Oh, I can't remember.
• 1:08:08
  It's for you. Olive.
• 1:08:11
  Oh, it's wonderful. It's just a lovely enhanced
• 1:08:14
  audio book and I just really enjoy it.
• 1:08:16
  Excellent. I believe I'm going to say this
• 1:08:18
  for my second choice but genuinely it's my most watched
• 1:08:23
  Doctor Who spin off thing and that is Lost in Space.
• 1:08:28
  I love Lost in Space. Oh, brilliant, I.
• 1:08:30
  Didn't love it. And who made that one?
• 1:08:32
  So that was Keith Barn father. It was written by a guy called
• 1:08:35
  Roger Stevens, who I interviewed today about Lost in Stevens and.
• 1:08:39
  Keith Barn Father, we've said many nice things about you
• 1:08:42
  today, but this will be the nicest.
• 1:08:43
  Lost in Space is the greatest. It's just, it's a documentary
• 1:08:48
  that's done very tongue in cheek.
• 1:08:50
  I think at the time when it landed, everyone was like, well,
• 1:08:52
  this isn't, this isn't serious Doctor Who's, but it was not
• 1:08:55
  supposed to be. It's very funny.
• 1:08:57
  Who? Who's that bunch of girls that
• 1:08:59
  Sophie Eldred and Katie Manic meet in like the Prison Thing
• 1:09:01
  kiss? Me Colossalon.
• 1:09:06
  They're a bunch of lesbian prisoners with only something.
• 1:09:09
  Like that would be made in the 90s.
• 1:09:10
  Right. And the best part of all is when
• 1:09:14
  everyone's sort of been beamed into the court, they have to do
• 1:09:17
  a bit of acting. And Terrence Dixon's sitting
• 1:09:19
  there and it's tight, right again.
• 1:09:22
  And the TARDIS materialized with its familiar wheezing and
• 1:09:25
  groaning sound. And then he's got, he just goes.
• 1:09:29
  And best of all is JNT who's I think he's in his kitchen or
• 1:09:32
  something. He goes, he literally goes the
• 1:09:35
  whole ham and goes what's going? On and it's the one and only
• 1:09:40
  spin off role for Mark Strickson.
• 1:09:42
  Oh yeah. Believe that he even did that.
• 1:09:45
  That's. Great in that, but but real time
• 1:09:47
  have other releases restricts and they're just not they're not
• 1:09:50
  fiction based. So he's got a myth makers and
• 1:09:53
  there's also the documentary he does an Englishman on Gallifrey
• 1:09:57
  and it's Mark Strickson's video diary of him going to the
• 1:10:02
  Gallifrey convention and it's brilliant.
• 1:10:05
  I want to see all of them. And he also hosts a thing called
• 1:10:08
  The Doctor Down Under, which is a documentary about Australian
• 1:10:12
  fandom which also features a cameo from, I can't remember
• 1:10:15
  which one, but one of the Flight from Entirety crew long before
• 1:10:19
  Flight from Entirety was a thing.
• 1:10:22
  Please can please can I please recommend that everybody goes
• 1:10:25
  and watches or finds a copy of Lust in Space as a curio.
• 1:10:29
  It is just an hour of pure delight.
• 1:10:32
  Do you think when James Brie was making the war games he would
• 1:10:35
  ever imagine he'd end up in something like Lust in Space?
• 1:10:39
  But it was mostly. Performance.
• 1:10:41
  Well, unfortunately he'd had a stroke not long beforehand, and
• 1:10:44
  that's why his. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's very sad.
• 1:10:47
  My favorite thing about it is that they they flash forward to
• 1:10:52
  the final Doctor Who companion who's called Evil Annie, which
• 1:10:55
  was the JN TS nickname for Ian Levine.
• 1:10:59
  What's really funny is Nicholas, Nicholas Briggs, Jeez, I've got
• 1:11:02
  him on the brain. Nicholas Courtney, who's playing
• 1:11:04
  the judge in a really great turn.
• 1:11:06
  That's what I think. Really fun performance.
• 1:11:08
  He goes, oh, I've got the entire catalogue of Doctor Who.
• 1:11:12
  Oh, the whip of fear. I'll enjoy that.
• 1:11:15
  Long before it came back and we were all watching it.
• 1:11:18
  Now it's just glorious. Well guys, I'm going to out this
• 1:11:22
  now because I feel like we've done, we've sort of moved on
• 1:11:25
  from wartime to why BBV and Real Time are fabulous.
• 1:11:31
  Please, will you just summarise why you think all this stuff is
• 1:11:35
  so great, Dylan? I think it's so great because
• 1:11:38
  it's people carving careers. I think it's easy to be very
• 1:11:42
  cynical about BB VS Output in particular these days as
• 1:11:45
  somebody just trying to cash in. But this at this time was just a
• 1:11:49
  bunch of people learning their craft and wanting to get
• 1:11:52
  involved in their favorite TV show.
• 1:11:54
  Sometimes getting it right, sometimes getting it wrong.
• 1:11:56
  But I think it's it's a celebration of the ingenuity and
• 1:12:00
  the creative, bonkers nature of Doctor Who fans.
• 1:12:05
  Wonderful. It adds to that rich tapestry of
• 1:12:09
  the world of Doctor Who. Imagine if Doctor Who finished
• 1:12:12
  in 89 and then it came back in, you know, 2005.
• 1:12:17
  We didn't have anything in between.
• 1:12:19
  If we never had any of that, it would just I don't there would
• 1:12:23
  be such a gap. Would it have come back if they
• 1:12:25
  if they if they hadn't kept the momentum going?
• 1:12:30
  It would have come back, but I think big, there's a lineage
• 1:12:33
  from this to Big Finish, for instance, and it involves many
• 1:12:36
  other things, including, you know, the audio visuals and the
• 1:12:39
  BBV stuff. But I think this particularly
• 1:12:43
  proves that you could commercially market something
• 1:12:46
  Doctor Who related, drama related that plants a seed in
• 1:12:50
  even subconsciously in people's heads.
• 1:12:52
  And they, you know, they, they try and do more and more and
• 1:12:55
  more. And I'm just going to say that I
• 1:12:58
  think bar father bags. Briggs, Gary.
• 1:13:02
  All the bees the. Bees.
• 1:13:03
  No, Gary Russell's not got AB in his name.
• 1:13:06
  Sorry. Barry Bussell.
• 1:13:07
  His middle name is Barry. These people, and I've said this
• 1:13:11
  a million times on so many podcasts, kept the flame alive.
• 1:13:14
  They kept the interest going and they kept creating stuff that we
• 1:13:19
  hungry buggers were desperate for in this period.
• 1:13:22
  I mean, I don't know if I'd sacrifice a decade of Doctor Who
• 1:13:26
  in the 90s because that is my greatest what if ever.
• 1:13:30
  And in a whole night of what ifs that we've had today, that's the
• 1:13:33
  biggest what if of all. But I'm so pleased all this
• 1:13:37
  stuff exists. Me too, and.
• 1:13:39
  They can all go onto the banner of BBBBG.
• 1:13:44
  No, to make that rhyme, they can all they can all go under.
• 1:13:48
  Too hot for TV, Dylan, how delight as ever to talk to you
• 1:13:54
  about Spinoffery. It's been a hoot.
• 1:13:57
  Find you. You can find me on the Internet
• 1:14:00
  if you've got it. I exist there.
• 1:14:02
  Too hot for TV. Dylan does Who on Twitter.
• 1:14:05
  It's the only place I really post about Doctor Who.
• 1:14:08
  People have me on Facebook and stuff like that, but I never
• 1:14:10
  post there. Instagram is my work and my
• 1:14:12
  personal life, so Twitter slash X is the main place.
• 1:14:16
  But for Doctor Who, Too hot for TV, we cover all things Doctor
• 1:14:19
  Who Extended Universe. I was like, you actually have to
• 1:14:23
  do that because I'll bring you up on every fucking episode
• 1:14:27
  about your podcast more than my own.
• 1:14:29
  It's very kind of you. My favorite.
• 1:14:31
  You're like, oh sorry, you're next to me as well.
• 1:14:34
  It's my other favorite. Well, I did say the other day,
• 1:14:37
  didn't I, that you've released your Talents of Wayne Chiang
• 1:14:40
  Omnibus. And I remember when it came out
• 1:14:43
  as individual episodes and I was like O2 of my my favorite
• 1:14:46
  podcasters. Mark and Luke Malloy are on this
• 1:14:49
  podcast. I must check it out.
• 1:14:50
  Who knew how that was going to change my life?
• 1:14:54
  What's great about bringing out those omnibuses is because the
• 1:14:57
  audience has grown over time, they're getting better numbers
• 1:14:59
  than the original. And whereabouts are you on the
• 1:15:04
  interweb and podcast land? Podcast is to watch Who?
• 1:15:09
  Do you want? A classic who watch through
• 1:15:12
  story by Story, and that's at to watch who on Twitter and
• 1:15:16
  Instagram. And you say classic who?
• 1:15:18
  But you occasionally touch on the new series and then get evil
• 1:15:21
  comments from people, don't you? What?
• 1:15:22
  What happened? Yeah, well, someone told him off
• 1:15:24
  because we were talking. About the specials, I think we
• 1:15:26
  had what, like 5 minutes at the beginning of an episode?
• 1:15:28
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember. The one star review being like
• 1:15:31
  you. Know the new series?
• 1:15:32
  Too much, I'm out. Mr. Die again bloody Mr. Die in
• 1:15:36
  his one star review. And on YouTube like.
• 1:15:40
  No. OK, Wow.
• 1:15:43
  Yesterday.