Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Talks to Robert Valentine about his choice of Pyramids of Mars (2/4)

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Talks to Robert Valentine about his choice of Pyramids of Mars (2/4) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:33
  Hamster with a blunt. Pen knife for doing quicker.
• 0:36
  Welcome back to A Hamster with a Blunt pen Knife, the Doctor Who
• 0:40
  Commentary Podcast. My name is Rob Valentine.
• 0:42
  I am an occasional writer of Doctor Who stuff for Big Finish
• 0:48
  and this general gobshite, and I'm here with the lovely Joe
• 0:51
  Ford, your regular host, who is a wonderful guy who hates being
• 0:57
  complimented, so I wouldn't dream of saying anything nice
• 0:59
  about him again for the rest of this episode.
• 1:02
  And we are about to watch Part 2 of Pyramids of Mars.
• 1:09
  I've actually got the hang of this now, you'll notice.
• 1:11
  That was so smooth. Compared to some of the ones
• 1:15
  I've done in the past, you're. Just monologue, all right?
• 1:18
  It'll be the smartest. Well, I.
• 1:19
  Usually do, Joseph. Not with me interrupting all the
• 1:23
  time. You don't.
• 1:25
  Only one of us on this call has actually written for the great
• 1:28
  Tom Baker himself, and it ain't me.
• 1:31
  Unfortunate. Yeah, No.
• 1:33
  I, I have and I, I can't lie, it's, it's the one of the things
• 1:39
  I'm proud, not not proudest of, just delighted to have done.
• 1:45
  It was really, it's really nerve wracking writing for Tom Baker
• 1:50
  for multiple reasons. You didn't have one of those you
• 1:53
  know who wrote this horseshit moments, did you?
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  Well, I wasn't. I'm a present for any of the
• 1:58
  ones he's recorded for me, so I probably have.
• 2:00
  But you know, I've been, I've been safely shielded from that.
• 2:04
  But yeah, yeah, he is. He probably is, I think the
• 2:10
  ultimate doctor and in a way always will be.
• 2:16
  And yeah, I, I love the 4th Doctor.
• 2:19
  I I just think it's the it's the iteration of the character that
• 2:23
  really kind of makes it really hits the point of being
• 2:28
  definitive. I mean, I love Hartnell.
• 2:31
  I've granted love Hartnell, Patrick Trout and you, you know,
• 2:34
  is wonderful. I, you know, I love the Pertui
• 2:37
  era with, with Pertui in it, but really he's part of it.
• 2:42
  He's part of an ensemble cast and I love that ensemble cast.
• 2:46
  It's slightly different kettle of fish.
• 2:48
  A wonderful prick. John Purway.
• 2:50
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the 4th Doctor for me,
• 2:54
  especially in stories like this, hits hits a certain pinnacle.
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  When he stares out the camera right and goes.
• 3:01
  Oh yeah. Curse you, Suitek, in every
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  civilized name, whether that name be Set, Satan Set, or Serve
• 3:08
  Me, Doctor. Never but God.
• 3:10
  When he gets scenes like that later on, it's the best we've
• 3:12
  ever seen the Doctor. Exactly.
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  Yes, yeah. I mean.
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  That wasn't a great impression of it there, but we will
• 3:18
  actually get to hear it. So that's the best you're going
• 3:19
  to get on this call, I'm afraid. Would you want to watch Episode
• 3:22
  2? I'd love to watch episode 2 I.
• 3:25
  Don't think we're going to see an awful lot of Mr. Namin after
• 3:29
  this. What?
• 3:30
  Yeah, I I have it. Yeah, I think you may be right.
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  It might be something to do with the fact he's being cooked.
• 3:37
  Cooked alive. Yeah, as as we as we watch.
• 3:41
  You've never had a smoky shiatsu?
• 3:43
  It's. I don't recommend it.
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  No, I used to have a Jack Russell.
• 3:51
  That's as good as it's getting tonight, folks.
• 3:53
  All right, yes. Thank you.
• 3:55
  I'm here all week. Yeah.
• 3:56
  Fortunately, we've got Robert Holmes's dialogue to quote.
• 4:00
  Well, just like out us in Then you start this.
• 4:02
  Please do. Please do.
• 4:03
  Yes, yeah. Mate, we'll go in then in three
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  2/1 the time. Vortex yes.
• 4:12
  Now again, back to the title, which has nothing to do with the
• 4:15
  Martian Sphinx Pyramids of Mars, as of as someone who has written
• 4:20
  some Doctor Who for audio the OR not to thee, that is the
• 4:25
  question. Yeah, I agonise over, you know,
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  should it be the noun of the noun or just noun of the noun or
• 4:33
  noun of noun? I see.
• 4:34
  What you're saying, well, why don't I?
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  You know, I can remember absolutely some of your titles.
• 4:38
  You had Shadow of the Sun, didn't you?
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  Not the shadow of the Sun. Exactly.
• 4:42
  Yes, and other times the something of the something is
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  the better type. And these are the things one
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  agonises over. In fact, I, I do actually have,
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  I've got a Tom Baker that hasn't come out yet and I don't know
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  which what year it's coming out in, but that was one where I
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  really agonised over the, the something of the something you
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  made. The right call.
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  Yes, yes, I, I, I'm, I decided on the something of the
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  something. I'm going to look out for your
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  the yes coming out yes. Yeah, but these are the things I
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  lose sleep over anyway. I do think that Pyramids of Mars
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  is a much punchier title than the Pyramids of Mars.
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  Yes, it is. It is.
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  Yeah. And here we have.
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  OK, Namin is dead and the servant of Sue Tech has turned
• 5:23
  into Marcus Scarman. This fella.
• 5:27
  What's the actor's name? Bernard.
• 5:28
  Bernard Archard, who I best know and always scared me as a little
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  kid as the general in Dad's Army, the movie who has it in
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  for captive mannering. It's that damn Bangkok.
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  Yeah, I was always scared of him.
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  He. Does turn off a better music
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  Power of the Daleks in a fabulous role as breaking as
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  well. Now he looks a little,
• 5:47
  unfortunately, he looks a little bit like the undead when he's
• 5:51
  not covered in makeup. So it's a great casting cube
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  because it's about the look as much as the performance.
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  Yeah, well, it's a great performance, but he Bernard
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  Archer does have one of the great character faces.
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  He's he's exactly the kind of actor who I'm I'm amazed didn't
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  turn up appear playing an an Imperial officer in Star Wars or
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  the Empire Star X back or something.
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  All this stuff where they're hiding behind statues and in
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  chests and things. When I was a kid, I just loved.
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  Oh, good kids. Kids hiding behind stuff,
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  watching the doctor do, kids that play hide and seek like a
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  kid is stuff that as a kid I used to adore.
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  But you know, he means business. He's got a rifle in his hands.
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  Yes, yeah. And bringing in the Egyptology
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  stuff a bit, we had the these Canopic jars, which aren't
• 6:40
  Canopic jars, they're generator loops.
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  So it definitely lets you know we're in sci-fi territory
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  because the servant of Sutec is talking about generator loops.
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  So we are there. There's no kind of teasing.
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  This is sci-fi. Sutec is an alien.
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  But that is the magic of Doctor Who Wright taking all these
• 7:00
  myths and giving it a sci-fi explanation.
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  Yeah, but then they get bored of that in the 80s and suddenly you
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  go beyond that where it's like actually, no Fenrix of God and
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  that and that kind of thing. That's the that's the natural
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  development for a different decade.
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  But yeah, they go. Beyond that, and they say, well,
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  that God's a big doggy that we're going to drag through the
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  tide vortex and lead. Let's not talk about.
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  That we'll talk about that when we get to the Empire of Death
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  podcast and not before. OK, Fair, Fair, fair, fair.
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  You know, I knew something about generator loops.
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  Oh, yeah, I do. Yes.
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  Well, I pay attention at school. You know, repairing a generator
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  loop with the wrong signal. It's like repairing a watch with
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  a hammer and chisel. One false move and you'll never
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  know the time again. I wish I had your teacher.
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  It's a great line though isn't? It it's one of the great lines
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  in Doctor Who. Actually, I I do love the
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  sarcophagus when just the the striped parts of its mantle
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  light up. It's actually a really good bit
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  of CSO, isn't it? Are they?
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  Yeah, yeah. Oh, here is Ernie Clemens, now
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  the mute poacher for who suffers interminably in this episode.
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  And look at this part's in the dark and it works.
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  It worked, but it's it let's you know time has passed as well.
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  It's day for night. It's day for night and we
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  American. But also, this is directly from
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  the Hammer film, because in the Hammer film, the character of
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  Poacher is played by the great Michael Ripper and he's setting
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  traps. Is that his name, Poacher?
• 8:32
  Yeah, yeah, the the character in the Hammer film was just
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  poacher. It's the great Michael Ripper in
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  this one. The fact he's Ernie Clements.
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  We never, we we find out that we only find his name out after
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  he's dead. We don't know his name in this
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  episode. You know who the actor is, don't
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  you? Oh.
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  It's Roberto Toby's dad. Oh boy.
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  Yes, yes. You gave us the best Susan ever.
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  Thank you very much. And we have here we have one of
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  the mummies caught in a man. Trap.
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  Great joke, you know, like really very funny and a bit
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  disturbing because that's this is where I learned that animals
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  end up in those bloody things. Yeah, well, this is.
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  I'm pretty sure they were illegal even in 1911 when this
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  is set, but it lets you know how terrifyingly powerful and
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  intelligent these robot mummies are.
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  But you know what the Ernie Clement scenes are?
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  They're scenes from a movie. Movies kind of cut down on the
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  dialogue and just tell a lot of the scenes in pictures.
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  Yeah. Oh.
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  Yeah, you're absolutely right. Yes, in.
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  Episode 2 here where usually you start cutting down the location
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  work as well. Normally they put all the
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  location work up front in episode 1.
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  Not in this one, no. No.
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  They spread it across 1-2 and three and a lot of two.
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  Is him just on the run from these mummies in some of the
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  ultimate Hammer scenes that you're ever going to see in
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  Doctor? Yeah, yeah.
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  And here we have. The.
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  Yeah, I, I also, I love the fact that a bit later the Doctor will
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  point out that you don't get priest holes in in in Gothic
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  houses of this kind. And the Victoria Gothic folly.
• 10:09
  That's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  Because that way you get to you get to have your peace priest
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  hole and hide in it that way. Like it's, it's small moments of
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  education, right? But it's education.
• 10:19
  When I was younger, that's how I found out about priest holes.
• 10:22
  Yeah, No, exactly. Yeah, yeah.
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  I, I, I'm a strong believer in Doctor Who should entertain and
• 10:26
  educate at the same time. You know, it has a, it has a
• 10:28
  reef and responsibility you've got to learn about, you know,
• 10:32
  even if it's, even if it just leads you on to inquire about
• 10:35
  stuff, then that's what Doctor Who should do.
• 10:38
  One of the things, one of the many amazing things I think
• 10:42
  Paddy Russell gets right here is she's chosen her editor
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  extremely well because these scenes of Ernie Clements running
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  into this deflection barrier could have been so pony.
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  But the quick edits, I mean, you've just, you're going what,
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  what the hell happened there? He's very lucky, it's not like
• 10:57
  the one in the Demons, otherwise he'd have been cooked.
• 11:00
  He would have, but look at this. When the stick comes back at
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  him, she just reverses the footage.
• 11:04
  It's so good. That's really clever.
• 11:06
  Holy Moses, they did get a line. Oh no, he gets 2, doesn't he?
• 11:12
  When that wonderful scene where the bullet is in Scarman's back
• 11:16
  in reverse, it's just like. Yeah, Professor.
• 11:19
  Scarman. Oh my God.
• 11:24
  This scene. Is this the scene where he gets
• 11:26
  killed? Yeah, this scene with Warlock
• 11:28
  where Scarman murders him and he was one of his best friends.
• 11:32
  As a kid this really frightened me because nothing scared me
• 11:36
  more as a child than seeing adults in extreme fear like like
• 11:42
  hysterics scared. And this is, you know, these are
• 11:45
  a bunch of elderly, say elderly, middle-aged, they just look
• 11:49
  terrible. Edwardian gentlemen all
• 11:52
  essentially dying. They're paying the price for
• 11:56
  Marcus Scarman going off and disturbing the graves, graves of
• 12:01
  Egypt. And that's kind of a thing that
• 12:03
  a lot of Egyptological horror has, which is, yes, they're full
• 12:08
  of, you know, they can be full of racist tropes and, you know,
• 12:10
  cowering natives and things like that.
• 12:13
  But in this particular sub genre, there is a price to pay
• 12:18
  for your colonialism in that you know you invade somewhere, it's
• 12:22
  going to come back and come after you and punish you for
• 12:26
  your arrogance and hubris. Do you think it's always there
• 12:30
  in these stories? It's not always, but I think
• 12:34
  it's it's there under the surface because I went to see
• 12:36
  the Brendan Fraser, the Mummy, Rachel Vice, Brendan Fraser, the
• 12:40
  Mummy. Wonderful fun.
• 12:41
  Yeah, I love that movie. But I saw it at the British
• 12:43
  Museum followed by AQ and a with Izzy Lawrence and Doctor Stephen
• 12:48
  Mountain. But anyway, yeah, I love that
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  film. And that's that's kind of that's
• 12:54
  from 1999. It's a very unself aware
• 12:58
  adventure movie that doesn't explore the fact it's, you know,
• 13:02
  the racist stereotypes in it, but you know, there, there,
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  there are people, characters in it do pay the price for the the
• 13:08
  mummy's curse, but our heroes do not.
• 13:13
  But yeah, it's it's always in there.
• 13:15
  I'd love to see a mummy movie, a modern one set in a museum with
• 13:19
  a mummy in a museum. That kind of they.
• 13:21
  Were going to do that, weren't they?
• 13:22
  They were going to do that museum story in the new series
• 13:24
  and. Oh, were they?
• 13:25
  Because Because you could, you could handle the whole issue of
• 13:30
  provenance and whether museums should have certain things like
• 13:34
  the Benin Bronzes and the Elgin Marbles.
• 13:37
  You know you. Could always write it for us,
• 13:39
  Rob. Yeah, could do, could do, but
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  you know. You're one of my few guests.
• 13:44
  I could, I could say that to you.
• 13:46
  There are many. The idea that Scarman is The
• 13:50
  Walking Dead, that he's an animated human cadaver as Tom
• 13:54
  Baker. We get the week we.
• 13:56
  As a shine. I just couldn't.
• 13:59
  I just saw him as a zombie, right?
• 14:00
  Just as a man acting strangely. And it wasn't until I was sort
• 14:03
  of in my teenage years, I was like, Oh my God, he's been dead
• 14:06
  from the moment he came back and he's just being puppeteered
• 14:10
  around. It's so scary.
• 14:12
  Just and the word cadaver, we get the word cadaver, an
• 14:16
  animated human cadaver. Uses his words very carefully.
• 14:19
  Why we're saying he's like, he's like the the Victoria Woods of
• 14:23
  Doctor Who scripts, you know, agonises over the right words.
• 14:27
  Yes, exactly. Oh, here we go.
• 14:31
  Sarah goes. Well, it doesn't matter.
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  Don't worry, Don't worry. This priest hole can't be here.
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  It's here. So.
• 14:35
  It's not, it's not a real priest hole.
• 14:37
  It's a priest hole made by the Victorians to play it.
• 14:39
  Having a priest hole, that's the, that's the implication.
• 14:43
  I might use that actually. Don't be so pedantic at a time
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  like this. This is where we find.
• 14:51
  This is where we find out. Yeah, the expedition was to
• 14:54
  Sakara, which is where the oldest tombs were.
• 15:00
  I'm going to ask this not being rude for once.
• 15:03
  What is a master bar? I looked this up.
• 15:06
  It is. It's a kind of flat roofed tomb.
• 15:11
  That's so that's what a master bar is.
• 15:12
  Yeah. I didn't want to come on this
• 15:14
  podcast having not looked up what a master bar was.
• 15:17
  OK, something else I learned, you know, is if you beam an
• 15:20
  etheric pulse at just the right sort of place, you know, you can
• 15:22
  wake those sort of things up. I just looked that from the
• 15:25
  subtitles there. I didn't actually know that.
• 15:28
  Oh, and also the ring. I think that again, having a
• 15:32
  mystical Egyptian ring might be a reference to the Arthur Conan
• 15:36
  Doral story, the Ring of Thoth, which is another, which is a
• 15:39
  Victorian romance again about there's a there's a caretaker in
• 15:43
  a museum, an Egyptian caretaker in a museum who looks very, very
• 15:46
  old indeed. And I'll tell you no more, but
• 15:49
  he's very, very, very old indeed.
• 15:51
  The. Mummy's dragging out the corpse,
• 15:53
  I mean. Not not a corpse.
• 15:55
  Remove this carcass again. Did you see the the the body in
• 16:01
  the dust, don't you That the trail yes, left behind?
• 16:05
  Cadavers and carcasses. This is the language we're
• 16:08
  getting here. And and a quick note, because I
• 16:12
  have a long held argument with Fraser Gregory about many
• 16:14
  things, but mostly about exposition.
• 16:16
  The way they handle that exposition there, they're hiding
• 16:19
  in a priest hole. That's fun.
• 16:21
  They're doing jokes. That's fun.
• 16:23
  They're they're all sort of interesting characters, but
• 16:26
  they're saying stuff which is giving context.
• 16:28
  To the story and also the doctor desperately wants to know, needs
• 16:32
  to know this stuff. Oh, here we are.
• 16:34
  Scarman's just been shot in the back and we get this incredible
• 16:39
  slow MO unbulleting. That's incredible.
• 16:44
  Flies out of his back. When I was a kid, I just
• 16:49
  couldn't figure out how they did it.
• 16:50
  Of course, they just reversed it, didn't they?
• 16:53
  But so, well, this is so brilliantly directed.
• 16:58
  So I think now from this point on, Marie says seek and kill.
• 17:02
  I'll see. Look at you.
• 17:03
  See the hole in his window that that's my, my, my, my window is
• 17:07
  now like that, you know, because it got blown shut this evening
• 17:09
  and it's got a hold of it like that now there's.
• 17:12
  Something I should know about you people trying to shoot you
• 17:14
  in the back. Oh, no, no, I yeah.
• 17:16
  It's just there was a gust of wind and a window slam shut and
• 17:19
  there was a hole in it just like that one.
• 17:20
  I find the idea that the mummies are slow.
• 17:24
  I'm just yes. So scary.
• 17:27
  Being chased by something that it can't be bothered to even run
• 17:31
  after you, it's more terrifying. It knows you're going to tire
• 17:34
  out eventually. And it won't.
• 17:36
  Yeah, it's why those sidemen in Nightmare and Silver, even when
• 17:39
  they try to make them like super, super fast sidemen, they
• 17:42
  were actually like, what are you doing?
• 17:44
  Being pursued with patience. There's nothing more frightening
• 17:48
  than that. In the sunshine, it's it.
• 17:51
  On paper it shouldn't work. It's bright, it's slow and yeah,
• 17:57
  you know, because we've seen those mummies murder two or
• 18:00
  three people already. We know as soon as they catch up
• 18:02
  with him. Boy that looks like Canines head
• 18:04
  what that mummy is holding? So it does, yeah.
• 18:07
  You know he's dead the second they catch up with him.
• 18:10
  Yeah. In terms of time frame, is this
• 18:12
  sort of like the the, the, the early dawn hours of the next day
• 18:16
  because the poacher was poaching at night?
• 18:18
  So have they? Yes, Yeah, yeah.
• 18:21
  Yeah, but like, like in in horror movie terms, they
• 18:23
  wouldn't make a horror movie now in the middle of the day with
• 18:26
  very slow monsters lumbering after people, and yet it's very
• 18:30
  effective. It's very, very effective and
• 18:32
  and Namin is now dead and the doctor takes his ring.
• 18:35
  So these these are all things you get in in Egypt, logical
• 18:40
  stories. What's an interesting direction
• 18:44
  moment is as Clement starts slowing down, the mummies do
• 18:49
  start getting faster and the editing starts getting quicker.
• 18:52
  So they're really fast coming towards the camera as he's sort
• 18:55
  of tripping over and you know, yeah, he's had it.
• 18:59
  He's toast. Yeah.
• 19:02
  And even then, even then, Rob, we didn't realize that he was
• 19:06
  going to face his end crush between a pair of massive
• 19:09
  bosombers. Yeah, I let's see.
• 19:14
  Let's see. I want to.
• 19:14
  I want to see how I respond when we get to it, See what I think
• 19:17
  when we get to it. I.
• 19:18
  Mean being strangled, being strangled, right?
• 19:20
  Like the result is the same. Yeah, but mummies strangle you.
• 19:25
  That's kind of the that's what they tend to do.
• 19:27
  They they come along and throttle you.
• 19:30
  This bit where they take Lawrence Carman into the
• 19:32
  targets, right? We'll pop up to the future and
• 19:35
  see what may happen if they don't achieve what they need to
• 19:38
  hear. I think I've seen something
• 19:40
  quite similar, you know, in a recent season of Doctor Who.
• 19:45
  Have you indeed? I do love the scene, I do
• 19:48
  because this was Michael Shears decision to play it this way,
• 19:52
  wasn't it? He chose to play it as excited
• 19:55
  as the children in the audience would be, and that's that's
• 19:59
  rather delightful. But and the doctors grinning
• 20:02
  like it's infectious. Yeah, yeah.
• 20:04
  Sarah, say this is what you should be like.
• 20:06
  All right, this is wonderful, this machine.
• 20:09
  And Sarah is making that very reasonable suggestion.
• 20:11
  Shall we just leave? Yeah.
• 20:14
  And if Sudha isn't stopped, he'll destroy the world.
• 20:18
  But he didn't. We know the world intend in
• 20:20
  1911. Do we?
• 20:22
  Yeah, and this is the second interesting thing this story
• 20:26
  does in terms of time we get to see an alternative 1980, the
• 20:32
  year I was born. Actually, and they too.
• 20:35
  Oh, there you go. You're you're weathering better
• 20:37
  than me. Well done.
• 20:38
  Oh, knock it. Oh, you're looking fantastic.
• 20:40
  All right, you had that compliment at the start.
• 20:43
  All right. Oh, sorry.
• 20:44
  Yeah, yeah. I think this is a really nice
• 20:48
  best CSO as well. I could sort of see the
• 20:50
  fringing, but the model work is really effective.
• 20:52
  Yeah, but also the brilliant decision not to show the TARDIS
• 20:55
  materializing there, but just to see it.
• 20:58
  We see it when the characters see it.
• 21:01
  I may have sounded facetious earlier, but I think that scene
• 21:04
  in The Devil's Cord is really potent.
• 21:06
  When they do this again and you see London blasted, you know,
• 21:10
  and the London Eye is half destroyed.
• 21:13
  Oh, I, I, I I've seen it once. I I Yeah.
• 21:17
  Now you mention it. I remember.
• 21:18
  It well, it's absolutely saying to the audience that.
• 21:22
  We have to do. Pyramids of Mars is coming at
• 21:24
  the end of this season. Oh, yeah, no, it absolutely
• 21:27
  does. Yes.
• 21:28
  Yeah, it's. Look at Scarborough, trying to
• 21:31
  figure out. Fascinating.
• 21:32
  Are you saying that the future can be shaped, Doctor?
• 21:39
  To a small extent, yeah. And that's that's the thing.
• 21:41
  This is, you know, this is a story telling us this is the
• 21:43
  greatest threat the doctors ever faced.
• 21:46
  And also that the future is at stake in a way that it doesn't
• 21:53
  always feel it isn't. Doctor Who?
• 21:55
  Does this not then redefine what these adventures are?
• 21:58
  Because before this, you know, I think the audience are like,
• 22:01
  well, we're all right. Like, that's in the past, That's
• 22:03
  fine. Now he's like basically saying
• 22:07
  that yeah, if things go wrong in the past, then your future is a
• 22:11
  goner. Yeah, it's certainly making it
• 22:14
  text. I've always had the feeling I I
• 22:16
  always kind of supposed that anyway.
• 22:19
  They were just wasting those monies.
• 22:21
  Like waiting for him. Off the top of the hill, weren't
• 22:24
  they? And the music.
• 22:27
  Came. Yeah.
• 22:28
  Could you hear the music? No, I can't.
• 22:30
  No, I know the music though. Yeah, do, do, do do.
• 22:33
  But also we're, you know, more than an episode of a mummy
• 22:38
  chasing people would get boring. But they they very wisely,
• 22:41
  they've got 2 mummy they have, they have.
• 22:43
  The escalation of the numbers of mummies chasing people increases
• 22:46
  between these two episodes. I think as well, doing different
• 22:49
  types of mummy deaths is really interesting.
• 22:54
  So we don't really know early Clements, but it's a great
• 22:57
  action scene. But making the warlock scene
• 22:59
  really personal, you know, God, I've been so worried about you.
• 23:03
  What's wrong with you? You know, that's really
• 23:05
  interesting. And then we'll get to it in
• 23:06
  Episode 3, Lawrence. Oh, yes, yeah.
• 23:11
  Look now, look at that. They're getting faster.
• 23:13
  Look. Yeah, yeah, we got him now.
• 23:15
  It lets you know they're capable of speed, and that's frightening
• 23:18
  too. They've chosen to.
• 23:21
  To be, yeah. Wow, this oh, the first Gabriel
• 23:26
  Wolf Lion, isn't it? Yeah, and look at the way the
• 23:29
  sarcophagus is shimmering. That's so beautiful.
• 23:32
  That's a really inventive, creative way of doing this.
• 23:38
  And again, in, in, in traditional mummy stuff, you
• 23:41
  have you have mummies lurching about and you might have the
• 23:43
  person controlling the mummy sort of praying to their God in
• 23:47
  the form of a sarcophagus or statue.
• 23:49
  But this goes the extra thing of what Robert Holmes adds is the
• 23:52
  God talks back and that's that's the refinement, that's the
• 23:56
  progression. That's the thing that he's found
• 23:58
  original to do. There are a few actors.
• 24:04
  John Chalice is another one that have sort of turned up in very
• 24:08
  well regarded Doctor Who stories and given a great turn that are
• 24:13
  celebrated ever since. And Gabriel Wolf Sutek is one of
• 24:17
  those. But like, you know, I've seen
• 24:19
  I've heard him in big finishes arrangements for war, playing an
• 24:23
  amazing romantic foil for Evelyn.
• 24:25
  Like he's got ranged Gabriel Wolf, that voice.
• 24:28
  It's a precision weapon. Oh, yes, yeah.
• 24:32
  It's, it's, it's it's no accident that it stood the test
• 24:37
  of time. Here we are.
• 24:39
  The doctor is telling Laurence Scarman that Marcus Scarman is
• 24:43
  no more. He no longer exists.
• 24:46
  And he's not right. Because we later on we do see
• 24:49
  Marcus Scarman struggling. Yeah, it's a brilliant choice to
• 24:55
  have him there. Yeah, but the Doctor is sort of
• 24:58
  wrong. But it's not.
• 25:00
  But it's it's in terms of the Doctor's priorities, it's so
• 25:04
  infinitely low that it's not worth, it's not worth
• 25:08
  addressing. And it it gives the companion
• 25:11
  another role beyond asking the question, because Lawrence is
• 25:14
  asking the question. So she's empathizing with
• 25:17
  Lawrence and she's condemning. Then she certainly does later.
• 25:20
  The Doctor for being such a heartless bastard or for his
• 25:23
  priorities to not include hurting this man whose brother
• 25:28
  is walking around as a walking corpse.
• 25:30
  Yeah, but in the Doctor's defence though, and this is the
• 25:32
  fascinating thing, yes, he's being alien, but it's also the
• 25:34
  way you have to look at things if you're you're dealing with a
• 25:37
  massive crisis as well, you know, which he is.
• 25:41
  I have a slight disagreement with Elizabeth Sladden on her
• 25:45
  view of this story because she says, and all the actors say in
• 25:48
  the documentary as well, that Paddy Russell made them
• 25:50
  overhearse. So they went over these scenes
• 25:52
  again and again and again until she was happy and they would
• 25:55
  have to do it. And so, you know, it was the
• 25:57
  Kubrick effect. Now one more time we've got a
• 25:59
  better take on us. And she thinks that their line
• 26:02
  reading sounds over rehearse and unrealistic.
• 26:07
  I actually think Paddy Russell has gone for the right approach
• 26:10
  here because I think her performance in this as well,
• 26:13
  it's one of her best. Yeah.
• 26:15
  Oh, here we go. Death by Dalek Chest Dalek.
• 26:19
  Very quick. Also my yes, very quick.
• 26:24
  Also the mummies knew how to do that, as if they've had this
• 26:31
  like Joe. One day, if we ever, yeah, if we
• 26:35
  ever get to kill someone, we should crush them between our
• 26:38
  chests. Oh well, we're taking Nathan up
• 26:40
  the downs, aren't we? Excuse me.
• 26:47
  Yes. Yeah.
• 26:48
  Joe and I will be trekking. Trekking.
• 26:51
  Is it the South Downs? S Downs.
• 26:53
  Nathan The lovely Nathan Bottomley?
• 26:55
  Soon, we hope. So.
• 26:57
  I hear we have to death. We have mummy fight with mummies
• 27:01
  and shotguns going off. This is this is a we wait an
• 27:04
  over an hour for this for Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee to
• 27:07
  do this in hammers the mummy. And so we have a cliffhanger
• 27:10
  with Liz being throttled. Yeah.
• 27:13
  Which is a great cliffhanger, but I I think she holds it too
• 27:16
  long because yeah, poor old Elizabeth Sladen has to look
• 27:19
  terrified for a maybe two or three seconds too long there.
• 27:23
  Yeah, it's it is too long also because any self respecting
• 27:26
  robot mummy would have killed her by this just.
• 27:29
  Snapped her neck. Yeah, just.
• 27:30
  Yeah, I do remember that as a nipper, Rob.
• 27:33
  I do remember as a as a kid screaming every time this
• 27:36
  happened. Don't you know, we, the doctor
• 27:39
  literally throws Lawrence inside the lodge and I just remember
• 27:42
  screaming, don't go inside. There's no way out, you know
• 27:45
  it's. Not funny.
• 27:47
  Our Doctor Who experiences are so different.
• 27:49
  So I did not have access to any of this as a kid.
• 27:51
  This is all the stuff I discovered in my in my teens.
• 27:54
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 27:56
  But OK, we have our death count on this.
• 27:58
  So Doctor Warlock is dead and the poacher is dead.
• 28:02
  So this episode has a death count of two.
• 28:05
  That's right, yes. Well, technically a death count
• 28:08
  of two plus everybody in the alternative Earth.
• 28:14
  Oh, that's the point. Well, yeah.
• 28:15
  If yes, yeah. OK.
• 28:16
  If you're counting everyone on planet Earth, then.
• 28:19
  Hundreds of millions of people. Well, by by 1980, what 5 billion
• 28:25
  people and Doctor Warlock and the poacher?
• 28:27
  I think he kept 5 human beings as playthings.
• 28:30
  You know two of them were members of the Han fam.
• 28:34
  I can't say. Which ones they were?
• 28:36
  Well, you know this. I haven't read the target novel,
• 28:38
  so I don't know that, yeah. But I've got to say, Jesus
• 28:43
  Christ, there's just no time to get bored with this, is there?
• 28:46
  No, no, so far it's it's, it's still a damn good Doctor Who
• 28:51
  story. It's for two episodes in a row.
• 28:54
  I think it's done a pretty great job of sustaining itself and
• 28:57
  being Doctor Who kind of does the mummy, but also does more
• 29:01
  than the Mummy. It's and we have, we already
• 29:04
  have, I think Marcus, Marcus Scarman is one of the great
• 29:08
  Doctor Who villains. But we, And then we have SU
• 29:11
  Tech, another of the great Doctor Who villains, looming,
• 29:15
  looming large behind him. I reckon and I'm sort of pre
• 29:18
  empting the next episode and don't think I didn't notice you
• 29:21
  saying you know so far. Then another promise that you're
• 29:25
  going to be mean later at the end of an episode.
• 29:29
  Every now and again there is a scene in Doctor Who that is so
• 29:32
  utterly perfect and doesn't feature the Doctor and it
• 29:36
  doesn't happen very often. I think it happens in Revelation
• 29:38
  of the Daleks when Natasha finds her father.
• 29:41
  That's one. The scene in the next episode
• 29:43
  between Lawrence and Marcus where Lawrence dies and he's
• 29:48
  trying to get through to him. It's just gorgeous and I fancy
• 29:53
  watching it. Should we go and do it?
• 29:55
  Let's do it.