Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Strictly Come Hamster - Season 16 (featuring Nathan Bottomley, Toby Hadoke & Ioan Morris)

Transcript

Strictly Come Hamster - Season 16 (featuring Nathan Bottomley, Toby Hadoke & Ioan Morris) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:00
  It concerns the key to time. You know of the key to time?
• 0:05
  Well, I've heard a few stories, you know, legends, myths, that
• 0:08
  sort of thing. It is no myth.
• 0:09
  Sorry, Sir. The key to time is a perfect
• 0:15
  cube which maintains the equilibrium of time itself.
• 0:20
  It consists of 6 segments, and these segments are scattered and
• 0:26
  hidden throughout the cosmos. When they are assembled into the
• 0:30
  cube, they create a power which is too dangerous for any being
• 0:37
  to possess. Well hidden there, I hope so.
• 0:42
  There are times, Doctor, when the forces within the universe
• 0:46
  upset the balance to such an extent that it becomes necessary
• 0:51
  to stop everything. Stop everything.
• 0:54
  For a brief moment only, until the balance is restored.
• 1:01
  Such a moment is rapidly approaching.
• 1:05
  These segments must be traced and returned to me before it is
• 1:08
  too late, before the universe is plunged into eternal chaos.
• 1:14
  Eternal chaos. Eternal as you understand the
• 1:18
  term. Look, I'm sure there must be
• 1:21
  plenty of other Time Lords would be delighted.
• 1:22
  I have chosen you. Yes, I was afraid you'd say
• 1:25
  something like that. Ah, you want me to volunteer,
• 1:29
  isn't that it? Precisely.
• 1:31
  And if I don't, nothing, nothing you mean nothing will happen to
• 1:36
  me? Nothing at all, ever.
• 2:16
  Welcome back to Strictly Come Hamster, the only Doctor Who
• 2:20
  game show podcast determined to take your absolute favorite
• 2:24
  Doctor Who stories and scatter them round through time and
• 2:27
  space. This month.
• 2:30
  It's 1978 and we're on a mission from God to seek out six Doctor
• 2:34
  Who stories, scattered and hidden in the furthest corners
• 2:38
  of the BBC Television Centre. It's season 16 of Doctor Who,
• 2:42
  the key to time, comprising the Rebus Operation, the Pirate
• 2:46
  Planet, the Stones of Blood, the Androids of Tara, the Power of
• 2:51
  Kroll, and the Armageddon Factor.
• 2:54
  I'm your host, Nathan Bottomley, and to help us on help, sorry.
• 2:58
  And to help me on my mission, we have been assigned 3 beautiful
• 3:02
  assistants. Oh, beautiful you say?
• 3:05
  Absolutely. First up, coming in at 5347.2 on
• 3:10
  the Vantala's Psycho scale, it's Toby Haydock.
• 3:14
  Toby, can you tell us who you are and.
• 3:16
  What? Your first experience was of
• 3:19
  Season 16. Yes.
• 3:22
  Hello. I'm Toby Haddock.
• 3:22
  I'm the Doctor Who equivalent of that slight twinge in the knee
• 3:26
  you get when you're younger. It gets ever more annoying,
• 3:28
  persistent and impossible to get rid of the longer that you stick
• 3:33
  around. And my used to it.
• 3:35
  Right. You get Stockholm syndrome with
• 3:39
  a dodgy knee. Yeah, my first.
• 3:42
  I was trying to work this out, my first experience of Season
• 3:45
  16. I have an abiding memory of
• 3:47
  watching the pirate planet. My earliest memory is Invisible
• 3:50
  Enemy. My earliest consistent memory is
• 3:53
  all of season 17. But so we must because we were
• 3:56
  Doctor Who watching Household, we must have watched all of the
• 4:00
  key to time. But I the the only one I
• 4:02
  specifically remember and and and quite a lot of bits of
• 4:06
  namely the end of episode 2, the end of episode 3, and lots of
• 4:09
  individual bits of episode 4 of the pirate planet.
• 4:13
  So I, I definitely watched it go out, but then it was one of the
• 4:19
  last ones I sort of was after to collect in my, you know, in, in,
• 4:23
  in those days when one then gets videos and things because,
• 4:27
  because it was in that weird sort of period of, of stuff that
• 4:33
  I could have watched bits of when so I was after older stuff.
• 4:38
  Do you know what I mean? So it was stuff that I hadn't
• 4:40
  seen but wasn't necessarily hugely after because it wasn't
• 4:44
  far enough away to be desired. Because the further away
• 4:47
  something is, the more you desire it.
• 4:49
  Which means when you go back to Australia, Nathan, once again,
• 4:53
  my compass will be pointing in your direction.
• 4:56
  The desire is real when it's open there.
• 4:58
  All right. So, yeah.
• 5:00
  So I I I do. I am old enough to remember some
• 5:03
  of it going out on its initial broadcast.
• 5:08
  Yikes. Yes.
• 5:10
  Well, well, we'll get there. Next up, we have the rightful
• 5:14
  heir to the Levitian throne, Johan Morris.
• 5:18
  Johan, can you tell us who you are and what your first
• 5:22
  experience of season 16 was? I do some stuff James Lark
• 5:28
  referred to me as like a modern day Kef McCullough in the last
• 5:31
  one of these I did and that is the one of the finest
• 5:34
  compliments I've ever received. I will have that on my
• 5:38
  gravestone, I hope. I first saw season 16 in its
• 5:46
  entirety, at least when the DVDs came out, which was a really
• 5:49
  nice way to take it all in. I recall a friend of mine had a
• 5:53
  couple of them, maybe Power of Crawl for sure on VHS.
• 5:57
  We might have watched that, but didn't leave much of an
• 5:59
  impression. So I think it was around 2000
• 6:02
  and seven, 2008. It was certainly while modern
• 6:06
  Doctor Who was in its pomp and so this was a nice tiny
• 6:10
  Christmas present and I perhaps didn't pay as much attention to
• 6:13
  it then as I ought to have. I will say it doesn't have the
• 6:18
  nostalgic pull that Season 8, Season 18 afterwards and the
• 6:24
  Hinchcliffe Holmes years before have on me.
• 6:27
  So I've always observed it a little bit from a distance.
• 6:30
  It just doesn't have that childhood thing with me.
• 6:34
  So while I really enjoy it, it it's not among my favourites,
• 6:38
  but I've the reason I asked to do this was to go back and try
• 6:42
  and investigate quite why that was.
• 6:44
  It's still very good though. Brilliant.
• 6:47
  And finally, a man who can create enough methane to satisfy
• 6:51
  the protein requirements of 1/5 of Delta Magna.
• 6:55
  It's Joe Ford. You know that for real?
• 6:57
  Because I do. For the last five days.
• 6:59
  So you're in the couch. I thought I'd find Tentacle as
• 7:03
  well. You know, I watched this when it
• 7:07
  came out on VHS. I think they came out once a
• 7:10
  month for six months. And I just love watching these
• 7:15
  in order. And unlike Yolen, I do have huge
• 7:19
  nostalgia for this season because I watched it again and
• 7:23
  again and again and it's one of my favorite, possibly my
• 7:26
  favorite season of Classic Who. I think it's witty, it's
• 7:31
  imaginative, it's smart, it's colourful, it's stylish, there's
• 7:36
  a surfeit of brilliant ideas. It's got engaging characters in
• 7:40
  it. It's got a top notch Doctor and
• 7:42
  companion combo. It's a season that makes me
• 7:45
  smile and it always warms my heart.
• 7:48
  I mean, listen to this. You ready, Doctor?
• 7:51
  Are you from outer space? No, I'm more from what you call
• 7:56
  in a time. I mean, it's just gorgeous this
• 8:00
  season. It's so eccentric.
• 8:02
  Yeah, I love it. I love it.
• 8:03
  Brilliant. So as an Australian, and of an
• 8:08
  Australian of a certain age, we had stripped repeats at sort of
• 8:12
  6:30 every every week night essentially.
• 8:16
  And I started watching Doctor Who in 1978 when I was 9 or 10/9
• 8:25
  and and I saw the entire Hinchliff era in 18 months.
• 8:30
  And so the first new season of Doctor Who, the first time I was
• 8:34
  aware I was watching something new was season 15 and season 16
• 8:38
  and 17 as well I watched on 1st broadcast in Australia.
• 8:44
  So well, it's not this is 1978. It probably came to Australia by
• 8:48
  1979. So I'm sort of 10.
• 8:50
  Oh, like a. Perfect.
• 8:52
  Age, Yeah, which 10 is always kind of a perfect age.
• 8:54
  And I certainly remember bringing up my friend Luke,
• 8:57
  who'd introduced me to Doctor Who.
• 8:59
  And, you know, I think we're about to watch Part 2.
• 9:02
  And I hadn't really twigged how this worked.
• 9:04
  And I thought, oh, maybe today we'll get to see one of the
• 9:06
  segments of the Key to Time. But yeah, I, I love this.
• 9:11
  I remember Robert, my ex, getting me the very proudly
• 9:18
  getting me the VHS tapes of it when we were together because
• 9:23
  that was such an excellent present.
• 9:24
  And yeah, I think it's just tremendous.
• 9:26
  It's one of my favourites, too. Do you remember Joan?
• 9:29
  Do you remember when we was talking in Season 25?
• 9:32
  But that really sexy Cyberman VHS, you know, the silver.
• 9:35
  Yes. Shiny.
• 9:36
  Social. Gorgeous.
• 9:37
  Gorgeous, remember? Sort of tart tin with all the
• 9:40
  bumps on it and stuff. Yeah.
• 9:42
  Well, the Key to Time DVD came in the Key to Time.
• 9:46
  Do you remember? You sort of opened it up and all
• 9:48
  the DVDs were inside. Like, I mean, they are the
• 9:52
  segments of the Key to Time, right?
• 9:53
  Yeah. Perfect.
• 9:56
  Well, we have lots and lots of reader comments and lots and
• 10:02
  lots and lots and lots of reader comments.
• 10:04
  And so before we launch into round one, I'm going to get my
• 10:11
  beautiful assistants to join me in reading some of those
• 10:16
  comments. So Toby, I'm going to get each
• 10:19
  of us to read three. OK, so Toby, would you mind
• 10:24
  doing the honours? The first three comments on the
• 10:26
  list? So I will, Oh, right, SO33-IN-1
• 10:30
  go. So we begin with Darren Lit
• 10:32
  Roundels, a regular viewer, long time, long time listener,
• 10:38
  several times correspondent. It's perfect comfort too, says
• 10:42
  Darren Randalls. When the videos came out my teen
• 10:45
  self couldn't see past the cheapness, but when the DVD box
• 10:49
  set arrived it felt vibrant, colourful, fun, full of
• 10:52
  personality and charm. In contrast to the Davison era
• 10:55
  I'd been re watching. Mary and Tom are my fav pairing.
• 11:01
  100 in red letters and underlined, which thinks means
• 11:04
  100%, doesn't it? In modern picture language?
• 11:09
  Paul Smy says second, just one second.
• 11:12
  Doesn't everything feel vibrant, colourful, fun, full of
• 11:15
  personality and charm next to the Davison, next to the Davison
• 11:17
  area? Yeah.
• 11:20
  So it's, it's always done well on on home releases though,
• 11:23
  hasn't it? Key to time because it had the
• 11:24
  IT had the pictures going along on the VHSS and then the DVD
• 11:28
  came there. So it's always felt like a bit
• 11:30
  of an event. And because it was one of the
• 11:31
  last ones I I got, I'd seen, obviously I'd seen in the
• 11:34
  bootlegs, but then I borrowed the here's a lovely bit of
• 11:38
  trivia for you. My Key to Time VHS box set that
• 11:42
  I had at home, I borrowed from Tylos, from Full circle, Bernard
• 11:47
  Padden, who lives just down the road from me.
• 11:49
  Because I, it wasn't one that I'd kind of got.
• 11:52
  It was it was one of the last I sort of collected so, so I first
• 11:56
  wrote in good quality on on his and he actually never got them
• 12:00
  back because then VHS became DVD and I gave my all my VHS's to a
• 12:06
  child. Anyway, Paul Smy says the Key to
• 12:09
  Time has some truly brilliant stories.
• 12:12
  Ribos, Rebos, Pirate and Tara. I will be mispronouncing Rebos
• 12:17
  throughout the whole podcast by the way.
• 12:21
  Stones of Blood is OK. Excellent first two parts, but
• 12:24
  then the story goes downhill rapidly then I'm afraid.
• 12:26
  Crowl and Armageddon Factor are dreadful and should be chucked
• 12:31
  in the bin. Mary Tam is excellent and the
• 12:34
  perfect foil for Tom. For me the season spanning story
• 12:38
  arc was done a lot better with Trial of a Time.
• 12:43
  Well, controversial, I suppose. You don't have the valley hard
• 12:47
  in this, do you? No.
• 12:49
  And just one more Toby, if you yes, it's, it's well, we'll,
• 12:54
  we'll whip up a Tempest for Michael Storm, who is something
• 13:00
  of it. Isn't that your nemesis, Joe?
• 13:02
  His opinions are just wretched. Go on.
• 13:05
  Well, let's see what depths he crawls in as he says that.
• 13:09
  Season 16 is by far the best of the Williams season.
• 13:15
  It has the focus and consistent tone across all fields that was
• 13:19
  lacking in season 15 and and lacks the grating excesses of
• 13:24
  the undergraduate humour that perpetuated season 17.
• 13:28
  It is in. Joint.
• 13:30
  I think 2nd place with season 18 as my favorite Tom season.
• 13:35
  I can see where you're coming from.
• 13:37
  Joe I much prefer. I much prefer merely Tams.
• 13:43
  Romana and her dynamic with Tom is far more interesting and
• 13:47
  watchable. Having a season story arc was a
• 13:50
  wise idea and it is a shame classic who didn't do it that
• 13:54
  often, especially when it is presented so simply and
• 13:57
  efficiently here. Brilliant, thank you.
• 14:01
  So what? Sorry you do Michael Storm
• 14:04
  warning. Yes, yes, yes.
• 14:05
  I'm just going to say to misquote the Seeker.
• 14:09
  All but one doomed to live. And it is not going to be
• 14:12
  Michael Storm. All right, so Yohan, would you
• 14:17
  mind reading my the comment by my friend and fellow FDA
• 14:22
  podcaster Todd Balby? And then the next two
• 14:25
  afterwards, you do it in an Australian accent.
• 14:27
  Yeah, do it. Can you do the?
• 14:28
  Accent I I will read it. I will not do the Australian
• 14:31
  accents. Fairy.
• 14:32
  I don't offend anyone on this call, but I I'm appreciative
• 14:35
  that you gave me the pronunciation.
• 14:37
  Todd Balby. That's it.
• 14:39
  Mary Tam is glorious in every way except she can't scream and
• 14:44
  she can go toe to toe with Tom, which I think is a positive.
• 14:47
  I think the first four stories are consistently good, like 8
• 14:50
  out of 10 or 9 out of 10 for stones.
• 14:52
  Crawl is also not bad, 7 out of 10 Armageddon drags.
• 14:56
  But seeing Mary and Lala together is great.
• 14:59
  Now Todd not going to one or two decimal places on the on those
• 15:03
  ratings is that's gross, I think, but Todd, but Todd
• 15:07
  putting out of 10s is very it's very in carrots.
• 15:12
  Chris Curtis says a series that matches Tom's eccentric and
• 15:16
  quirky ways. It is the most Tom series.
• 15:19
  I can't see this series working with any other doctor.
• 15:22
  There's wit, imagination, sparkle and joy all on a budget.
• 15:26
  A show that was working within its limitations.
• 15:29
  Only Britain could make this season OK.
• 15:33
  We're getting political. Only Britain made it all of the
• 15:36
  season. He's just pointing that out, OK.
• 15:40
  It's also for the women who once the series where story, for the
• 15:45
  female characters where story for story.
• 15:48
  The female characters are brilliant and interesting rather
• 15:51
  than objects of peril and plot exposition.
• 15:53
  I think there are some exceptions to that.
• 15:55
  I will. Say crawl is female in this.
• 15:58
  Because OK. Yeah, yes.
• 16:01
  Otherwise, none. Yes, that's true.
• 16:04
  Plus Mary Tam Romana is brilliant.
• 16:06
  And wiping Tom off the screen. Wow.
• 16:10
  You know yo, and before I met you I was even willing to be in
• 16:13
  play, alright? Charlie Barnes says proof that
• 16:18
  Graham Williams is lighter, whimsical and more comedic take
• 16:21
  on Doctor Who could work after a very uneven first year.
• 16:26
  The first four stories are excellent, fun, enjoyable romps
• 16:28
  ranging from Crime Story to fantastical sci-fi to gothic
• 16:32
  horror to swashbuckling adventure.
• 16:34
  Sadly, the last two let the side down.
• 16:38
  OK, now you Joe. Yes.
• 16:40
  Oh and I've got 3 very succinct comments.
• 16:42
  Thank you for choosing for me. Complete.
• 16:45
  Accident Anthony Carroll, the deaf whore from Hamster Patron.
• 16:50
  You know, he's the one that made me rank all of the deaths and
• 16:53
  resurrection of the Daleks in all that says.
• 16:56
  A fun season with a good premise.
• 16:58
  Mary Tan brings a touch of glamour.
• 17:00
  Oh, she's so sexy. Oh my God.
• 17:02
  I mean even I'm on the turn when I'm watching her and is great
• 17:06
  with Tom. Best Graham Williams seasons
• 17:08
  probably No definitely Anthony Carroll.
• 17:11
  And then the intriguingly titled Quill pen says gorgeous.
• 17:15
  A whole season of top flight bangers.
• 17:18
  Not talking about Merry Town there no flops about a bit.
• 17:23
  Harry should have been spoken to really is 4 episodes.
• 17:26
  I'm not unsure what you're doing in there, but everything else is
• 17:29
  superb apart from the Armageddon factor.
• 17:32
  My favorite is Rebos and then Stones, Pirate androids, Canal.
• 17:37
  I think it's Crow and Armageddon.
• 17:39
  Robert Holmes is a genius that. Is true.
• 17:43
  Finally, Paul, by the way, I think clarification coming in
• 17:49
  with BBC Fact Checker, I'm Marianna Spring.
• 17:51
  Harry's should have been spoken to is a reference to the actor
• 17:54
  David Harries who plays Major Shap increasing lunacy in the
• 18:00
  Armageddon Factor. I think he just shows every side
• 18:04
  kind of trying desperately to find something to do with where
• 18:09
  he goes on the corridor with his garden when he gets shot, Paul
• 18:14
  Dunn says. My first season, I remember.
• 18:17
  Not sure it's from repeats, though.
• 18:19
  A banger of a series let down by a rather dull finale.
• 18:23
  I should be coming for all of you Armageddon Factor haters,
• 18:26
  all right? It's terrible.
• 18:27
  All right, I'm going to read 3. Edward Gillooly.
• 18:31
  I really enjoy this season and as a one off the key Mac Guffin
• 18:35
  arc works well. Mary Tam is excellent.
• 18:38
  It's a shame she did only one season here here but she clearly
• 18:42
  hated it and the fun. Tara and gothic stones
• 18:45
  especially the 1st 2 episodes are the best.
• 18:48
  Armageddon Factory is boring and one of the year's worst.
• 18:51
  Outrageous. Also true, apart from the stuff
• 18:53
  about stones, which is absolutely nonsense.
• 18:55
  All right, here's Lucy McCall, one of my favorite seasons.
• 18:59
  I like the quest, but I also like that the individual parts
• 19:02
  stand on their own. Rebos operation.
• 19:04
  I like it. Bin Row is brilliant and I enjoy
• 19:06
  canine zapping the guards and saying most satisfactory.
• 19:10
  Romana makes a strong start. Pirate Planet.
• 19:12
  This one seems silly, but the ideas are big and the
• 19:14
  revelations startling. Stones of Blood is one of my
• 19:17
  favorite stories. Why?
• 19:18
  Woman Power Professor Rumford and Sasser of Diplos.
• 19:22
  What a combination. Android Zafar is a glorious
• 19:25
  romp, with the magnificent Peter Jeffrey getting the balance just
• 19:28
  right between chewing the scenery and genuine menace.
• 19:31
  Menace. I like Power of Crawl, mostly
• 19:34
  for the monster and for Philip Maddock working his usual magic.
• 19:37
  Yep. And yes, I do like the
• 19:39
  Armageddon fact. Well done say telling the well
• 19:42
  had been able to tell us No, she did I the comments down a bit
• 19:46
  otherwise we may have been here all day.
• 19:49
  David GP after the Tatty season 15.
• 19:53
  That's Hatty. Yeah, he's quite tatty.
• 19:55
  To be fair. The Key to Time gives a Series A
• 19:57
  much needed shot in the arm. Mostly.
• 20:00
  The scripts on the whole play well with Tam's increasing
• 20:03
  eccentricity. And we have some interesting and
• 20:05
  well realized worlds. It's a shame that it all Peters
• 20:08
  out in the final moments. Final six episodes of the last
• 20:13
  story. We will get there.
• 20:15
  I want to talk about that ending.
• 20:16
  All right. All right, so we will be back
• 20:21
  regularly to to. Sorry, we'll be back regularly.
• 20:30
  Oh, what's happening here? We'll be back regularly to
• 20:36
  visit, to revisit our commenters, but we are going to
• 20:41
  start round one. Our job in round one is to
• 20:45
  decide which of these stories to keep and which of them to yeet
• 20:51
  into the sun. All of them keep or yeet and we.
• 20:57
  So I want to start with Toby. Toby, do you want to choose a
• 21:01
  story to either keep or yeet and give us 3 reasons why Yeet is
• 21:09
  how young people say, oh, I'm so pleased.
• 21:11
  I was so pleased. I mean, I'd I'd assumed that,
• 21:13
  but I'm not sure I approve. Of it.
• 21:17
  So do I have to say which story I think is Well Sick Keyboard
• 21:21
  Pro well? Sick.
• 21:24
  I, I, I literally love it. You've been watching the Doctor
• 21:30
  Who Instagram page, haven't you? No comment so well, I as is my
• 21:39
  want, I will be I will not be eating now I can say that is
• 21:43
  just a principled stance against linguistic decay, but I will be
• 21:48
  keeping in in because I I enjoy to celebrate doctor and there's
• 21:52
  much to celebrate here. I my instinct is I only want to
• 21:57
  to to get rid of two, but I wonder if I should get rid of
• 22:00
  three to be. You're not keeping them all, are
• 22:02
  you, Joe? I'm not saying it.
• 22:05
  Well, I'm going to let's start with one.
• 22:06
  I'm going to keep. Oh, and by the way, I think the
• 22:09
  reason I remember Pirate Planets is of course that that was
• 22:11
  repeated, but so was Androids of Tara and I don't hugely remember
• 22:15
  that I particularly remember Pirate Planet.
• 22:17
  Anyway, I'm going to keep. I'm going to keep.
• 22:20
  Which one shall I choose? Of the my 2 favourites, I'm
• 22:25
  going to keep the Rebus operation, which I think is a
• 22:30
  delightful Doctor Who story and sort of emblematic of the
• 22:35
  season. It's a weird season, which is
• 22:37
  why I don't really have an angle on it because as has been
• 22:41
  alluded to, the Graham Williams era sort of varies in tone a lot
• 22:45
  more than than the Hinchcliffe Tom Baker era and John Nathan
• 22:50
  Turner's only Tom Baker season. You know, Hinchcliffe, this
• 22:55
  Williams goes through this, this this weird transformation.
• 22:59
  And in the middle we have this season that has stories that are
• 23:03
  sort of rather, you know, Ruritanian or have a have a
• 23:06
  period feel, but with a with a dose of fan with a dose of sort
• 23:10
  of fairy tale fantasy adventure that you don't quite get
• 23:13
  anywhere else in Doctor Who. Now that means it's not my go to
• 23:17
  Doctor Who. But the beauty of Doctor Who is
• 23:19
  that is such a vast mosaic that there is a place for this within
• 23:23
  it. And I think that's why the Key
• 23:25
  to Time has this rather strange place where it's it, it, it, it
• 23:30
  sort of exists. And it's not just because it's
• 23:32
  only got the, it's got the umbrella thing.
• 23:34
  I think it has it stylistically, it's very much its own peculiar
• 23:38
  beast, which is not necessarily how I would do Doctor Who.
• 23:42
  But of course, it's beautiful that it exists.
• 23:44
  And I think the best examples of it, even though they're the best
• 23:48
  examples of it for me as a 50 year old man, I am not sure I
• 23:52
  would begin a season with this story to draw the kids in.
• 23:56
  You know, so I am, I am talking from a position of privilege in
• 24:00
  a way that the things that appeal to me about the Rebus
• 24:04
  operation are not necessarily, I think the ingredients that make
• 24:08
  it ideal Doctor Who. And but again, one of the
• 24:11
  privileges we have is that we know that Doctor Who survives
• 24:14
  and and it is now an historical artifact.
• 24:18
  And so we can just enjoy it for what it is, not what it might
• 24:21
  represent to the that general public we invoke to try and get
• 24:26
  approval from. So, so I just love the, the, the
• 24:32
  wit of it. I love the the fact that it is,
• 24:36
  I like the fact that it's cold. I really like the fact that it's
• 24:39
  really sort of snowy. Again, it's a, it's a rather
• 24:44
  novel sort of setting for Doctor Who and it does that brilliant
• 24:48
  thing. I'd almost say it's a bit and,
• 24:51
  and Andrew Zatar is a bit like this as well.
• 24:53
  It's the sort of Bridgeton of Doctor Who in that it has all
• 24:56
  the trappings of an historical adventure, but you can, you can
• 25:00
  put a, a, a modern spin on it. So, you know, Tara's got the
• 25:04
  electronic swords and crossbow bolts And, and this, this is a,
• 25:08
  this is essentially, you know, they're, I mean, they're even
• 25:10
  using costumes from War and Peace.
• 25:12
  But you, you add a bit of sci-fi to it to make it a Doctor Who
• 25:16
  adventure. And then you throw in a whole,
• 25:18
  whole lashings of wit to make it a Robert Holmes Doctor Who
• 25:22
  adventure spoken largely by Tom Baker.
• 25:25
  And it does have some great jokes in it and, and not quite
• 25:29
  the excesses of of, of the humour, which I like in season
• 25:32
  17, but but I think I prefer, I prefer this because it's just a
• 25:36
  bit more, It's just a bit, it's just a bit more well behaved if
• 25:40
  you like, and you, which doesn't have to be well behaved, but
• 25:42
  it's, it's slightly less pleased with itself as well.
• 25:45
  I think. I think it's a it's not shown
• 25:47
  there type it well and, and well, and the start and the
• 25:50
  jokes, they sort of they're charming.
• 25:52
  They're and and, and I think Tom Baker is, is kind of also
• 25:57
  contained and we will talk about Armageddon factor later, but I
• 26:02
  think he's contained by the fact that everyone else around him is
• 26:06
  behaving in this. You, you know, Ian, Ian
• 26:09
  Cusbertson is a wonderful actor and it's a large performance,
• 26:12
  but it's not a stupid performance.
• 26:14
  He's still a very believable character.
• 26:16
  And I, I mean, I think all of the performance in this
• 26:18
  glorious, even Prentice Hancock, who's playing, you know, grumpy
• 26:23
  get, you know, even his moustaches cross.
• 26:25
  But it's, it's not a big enough part to, to, to, to dent, to
• 26:32
  dent the thing in the way that Weber and Salamar are.
• 26:36
  We have the Prentice Hancock principle, which is the less
• 26:40
  he's in something, generally the better.
• 26:42
  He. Is.
• 26:43
  Yeah, and. Yeah, and but also his energy
• 26:47
  and his style of performance kind of works for the captain,
• 26:50
  who's this sort of intransigent, you know, Bolshe authority
• 26:54
  figure. But it's got so much that again,
• 26:57
  I probably would have got totally gone over my head as a
• 26:59
  kid, but there's so many bits of it that I just think of
• 27:03
  glorious. The Scringestone scene where
• 27:06
  Unstop and Garen, you know, are it's, it's, it's so beautiful.
• 27:13
  And I and I actually, but, but aside from that, I'm, I'm so
• 27:16
  charmed by Garen and Unstop. There's a real lovely gentleness
• 27:18
  about Nigel Plaskett. But then they split those two up
• 27:24
  and they pair Plaskett with somebody who's, again, I mean,
• 27:28
  completely irrelevant in terms of if you were to do this story
• 27:30
  in 50 minutes today. And yet is the jewel in the
• 27:33
  story's crown. And that's Binro the Heretic.
• 27:35
  And those that that scene where you know a man you know, towards
• 27:40
  the end of his life, who's been kicked out of society and is
• 27:42
  living in a ditch is just given validation by this random
• 27:46
  stranger in a story that he doesn't even need to be in.
• 27:50
  I find strangely moving and and hauntingly beautiful in a story
• 27:54
  that is sort of a silly caper. And it's played like a silly
• 27:58
  caper. And yet my other great thing
• 28:00
  about it, I know I'm supposed to choose three.
• 28:02
  Choose the one. My three are the ones you think
• 28:05
  I've I've talked the most about. I absolutely adore because it's
• 28:10
  hard to do. I think Paul Seed as the graph
• 28:13
  Vindicay manages to do what Prentice Hancock, for example,
• 28:17
  if he'd played the part wouldn't have done is he manages to be
• 28:20
  huge and theatrical and scenery chewing and yet utterly
• 28:23
  believable. I think it's a terrific
• 28:25
  performance. And I know Paul Seton became a
• 28:27
  television director as I think thinks that he himself is a bit
• 28:31
  over the top and shouting, but it's actually the energy that
• 28:33
  that part requires and it never it's never embarrassing to
• 28:37
  watch. It's absolutely consistent in
• 28:40
  its own terms. And he's a he's a absolute
• 28:43
  threat and I love all the back story that he gets.
• 28:45
  There's so much import given to noises off and all the stuff
• 28:48
  that's going on with the Schlangy and and the and the,
• 28:53
  you know, his empire and his brother and all of that sort of
• 28:55
  stuff, which homes does so well, all that world building.
• 28:58
  So you have a genuine threat and this slightly, I'm sure, Joey,
• 29:03
  this slightly homoerotic thing that he's got with shellac and
• 29:07
  he doesn't kiss him. Kiss you on your deathbed, Kobe.
• 29:09
  Yeah, I love all of that. So.
• 29:11
  And and then you have something that is unlike anything you get
• 29:15
  in any other Doctor Who story. When the Seeker comes in, it
• 29:18
  goes, hello, I'm going to be this weird thing played
• 29:20
  brilliantly by La Custer from the Romans.
• 29:24
  And. And yet, you know, all of that
• 29:26
  leads to stuff that I don't necessarily approve of.
• 29:28
  I, you know, I don't want there to be psychic powers in Doctor
• 29:31
  Who. I'm not unless there's a
• 29:32
  rational explanation. So her, her prophecy that all
• 29:35
  but one is doomed to die. I sort of go slightly against my
• 29:39
  sister, what Doctor Who should be.
• 29:40
  And of course, the fact that the Doctor puts a bomb in the
• 29:43
  villain and he blows up, although that's so well done.
• 29:46
  But I don't like it when Doctor Who kills people.
• 29:48
  But I know he doesn't really kill him because he's slightly
• 29:51
  removed from it. But it is a bit.
• 29:52
  Now, in a story I didn't like, I would probably not forgive
• 29:55
  either of those things. But we're fickle.
• 29:57
  And if something does something we like, you know, I suspect if
• 30:00
  you get a blowjob from a Nazi, you suddenly go, Oh well, do you
• 30:03
  know what? Because because we're so, so so
• 30:10
  yes, the the doctor killing Graf is my Nazi, but the charm of the
• 30:14
  story is my blowjob. And so I would very much like to
• 30:20
  keep the Rebus operation because I think it's charming.
• 30:24
  I think the world building is great.
• 30:26
  It's and it's unusual and I think it keeps you engaged in
• 30:31
  ways that other Doctor Who stories don't.
• 30:34
  And I think it should be celebrated for that, even though
• 30:36
  I suspect as a child, if that had been my introduction to the
• 30:40
  season, I'd have been like, where are all the monsters and
• 30:42
  explosions? But I I love it.
• 30:45
  And it's one that I come back to not as often as a big scary
• 30:50
  gothic classic or a big, you know, action-packed adventure,
• 30:53
  but every time I do settle in to watch it, I'm utterly charmed by
• 30:57
  it. And I think it's beautiful.
• 30:58
  And I think it's a, it's a, it's a 10 out of 10 for me.
• 31:01
  So I would fight tooth and nail to keep it amongst the crown
• 31:06
  jewels and and and and try to stop people from stealing it.
• 31:13
  Oh, a long time ago. I was just an ambitious boy in
• 31:17
  those days, taking my first steps in life.
• 31:20
  Then I had a bit of trouble with a dissatisfied client who
• 31:23
  thought it best to leave. What happened?
• 31:27
  He was an Arab. I sold him Sydney Harbour for
• 31:30
  $50 million. Yeah, And then he thought I
• 31:36
  should throw in this Opera House as well.
• 31:38
  No. Oh, yes, the Opera House.
• 31:40
  Yeah, the Opera House. But I refused.
• 31:42
  I mean, one must have some scruples, mustn't 1?
• 31:44
  Of course. I mean, I couldn't let that
• 31:46
  noble head of us to our cultural heritage fall in the wrong
• 31:48
  hands, could I? No.
• 31:50
  But my refusal upset him. He took the impressive documents
• 31:54
  that I had prepared to the government.
• 31:56
  And so my little ruse was prematurely rumbled.
• 31:59
  It came after me with a machine gunner.
• 32:02
  It's the most harrowing experience.
• 32:04
  I never went back. I'm not surprised.
• 32:08
  No job from a new mission in life.
• 32:11
  It's increasingly easy to get these.
• 32:15
  Oh dear, especially in England. As we mean to go on.
• 32:22
  Now we know. Now we know what all those flags
• 32:24
  are for, you see knopping up afterwards.
• 32:30
  Is it my turn? It is.
• 32:32
  On track, please raise the tone. I'm not sure I can't.
• 32:36
  I certainly can't follow that verbal blowjob that.
• 32:40
  But I hope I can provide something of a happy ending
• 32:42
  because. I.
• 32:44
  Appreciate this, but I I don't love it.
• 32:48
  And Toby kind of nailed it there when he said about where it is
• 32:53
  in the season, the season, it being a season opener.
• 32:57
  And that's the bit that throws me every time I watch it because
• 32:59
  it just doesn't feel like that to me.
• 33:02
  And I know that's kind of a modern thing as well, the way we
• 33:05
  view TV these days. But I do think it was broadcast
• 33:09
  in September, right? It's so wintry, it's so
• 33:12
  Christmassy. I think almost that I feel like
• 33:15
  it would be better placed in the fourth or fifth spot.
• 33:19
  I know you'd have to change so much about the the key, the
• 33:23
  segment being such a basic thing.
• 33:25
  That's why it's there. It's such a basic thing in this
• 33:27
  opening story. But I also don't think it quite
• 33:32
  has the pace and the energy you want from that spot it.
• 33:36
  Doesn't have any pace at all. It doesn't, no, but I would say
• 33:41
  there are moments of greatness sprinkled throughout.
• 33:44
  Even if it's a story I don't love, there's some fantastic
• 33:47
  stuff in here. But there are also sections of
• 33:50
  it that verge on being slightly dull to me.
• 33:54
  I apologise. Yes.
• 33:57
  I mean, there's some really nice shot selection in the first
• 34:00
  part, like the Doctor and the Guardian.
• 34:03
  That big wide shot of them just stood in the distance.
• 34:05
  That's beautiful. And there's a couple of shots
• 34:07
  where they shoot through like the doors of the castle into the
• 34:11
  scene and that kind of thing. It's nice and atmospheric, but
• 34:14
  then I think every cliffhanger is weak and mistimed and it
• 34:18
  throws me every time I watch it. It just feels like they're
• 34:21
  hanging on a shot 10 seconds too long.
• 34:24
  Who is especially bad, right? George Spinton.
• 34:27
  Foster. Execute them and Tom Baker stuck
• 34:31
  there going what? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 34:34
  Have you cut? Yeah.
• 34:36
  Yeah, and it's lacking. I feel like it's lacking in
• 34:39
  music. Every time I watch it, I'm
• 34:40
  waiting for a queue to come in and just and nothing there.
• 34:43
  And I assume that's the director's choice, not to ask
• 34:46
  for a cue to be put in that section because it's got very
• 34:50
  little music in it. And I think a lot of scenes, as
• 34:53
  far as I'm concerned, could do with a bit of help on that
• 34:56
  front. But then, as Toby said, there's
• 34:59
  just so much lovely stuff in here.
• 35:02
  Anything with Binro, the Doctor, or maybe rather Tom Baker being
• 35:06
  so enamoured with Garen or Cuthbertson is really sweet.
• 35:12
  Cuthbertson and Pesca are just fantastic together.
• 35:16
  It's kind of a shame that they split them up in the second-half
• 35:19
  of the story, but it's sort of an inversion of what they
• 35:21
  typically do with the Doctor and companion, right?
• 35:25
  So you actually want to see them together.
• 35:27
  They do more of that with those two than they do with Tom Baker
• 35:31
  and Mary. Tom got a slap.
• 35:33
  You got the questioning scene. Dying is the last thing I want
• 35:36
  to do. One of the greatest lines in
• 35:38
  Doctor Who history. The world building is excellent,
• 35:41
  as you'd expect from homes. And all the exposition is done
• 35:45
  in Part 3 where they're just incarcerated and it is static
• 35:50
  and stagy, but it's so well written that you just don't mind
• 35:54
  being in the room with them while they deliver all this
• 35:56
  stuff. And I agree with Toby The the,
• 35:58
  the I will say this graph in decay, graphin decay getting
• 36:04
  blown up at the end, I think that's excellent.
• 36:06
  I really don't mind that at all. It's perfectly In Sync with the
• 36:10
  tone of the rest of the story. Onwards, onwards, it's like a
• 36:17
  cartoon. He goes like down.
• 36:19
  It is harder and then the. Explosion comes.
• 36:21
  Back. It really didn't deliver on the
• 36:22
  explosion as well. With respect, almost.
• 36:28
  I think it's one of the best looking productions in all of
• 36:31
  Doctor Who, certainly the original runners.
• 36:34
  It's beautiful, all the costumes, the sets, it's really
• 36:38
  purposeful and thought through and it it just looks great.
• 36:44
  I do think it lacks incident as a story.
• 36:47
  I know that's not what it's there for particularly, but even
• 36:50
  if you're looking at it as like a, a nice comedic fast kind of
• 36:54
  thing, I, I just want it to move a little quicker.
• 36:58
  I want more things to happen. But there's just too much
• 37:01
  quality here for it not to go through.
• 37:04
  So it has to go through. Yeah, of course.
• 37:06
  I mean, at one point, right, they're waiting for K9 to go
• 37:08
  around the corner. It does have the great joke.
• 37:10
  K9 don't stop at all corners, all right?
• 37:12
  Which is very naughty joke. But yeah, it does lack pace.
• 37:16
  What do you think? What do you think?
• 37:18
  Keeping it or eating it? Oh, this is going through.
• 37:21
  I fucking love the robots operation.
• 37:23
  OK, now reason #1 the bones, the bones, the bones, the one your
• 37:28
  seekers here, the Seeker man, the most over the top character
• 37:32
  you've ever seen in Doctor Who. And because my other half hates
• 37:36
  her so much, it's given me a reason.
• 37:39
  I say that what I just said there all the time, just to
• 37:42
  annoy him, you know? But one doomed to die like
• 37:47
  Cassandra in the myth Makers. She's always right.
• 37:51
  Yeah, as ridiculous as she is, as belittled as she is, she's
• 37:56
  always right. And Toby, you said you don't
• 37:58
  like magic and superstition in Doctor Who.
• 38:01
  I think it really works here. And it's just the fact that it's
• 38:05
  given no explanation, nothing at all, Just within the rules of
• 38:09
  this world. This woman works.
• 38:12
  Yeah, and I really love that. But then the the darkest and the
• 38:17
  sickest joke of always what? What was that prophecy?
• 38:21
  All but one doomed to die then, die now.
• 38:25
  And he shoots her right in the face.
• 38:27
  I mean, it's absolutely. Good.
• 38:29
  Tone down the fucking violence gets.
• 38:32
  Shot in the face. Second reason, Yowen, and I
• 38:35
  realise I'm going toe to toe with a musician now, so I
• 38:39
  apologise, is the score. I think the score for this is
• 38:42
  incredible, that all of that. It's a really unusual score,
• 38:51
  actually, and there's a wonderful bit where they're
• 38:53
  tiptoeing around trying to get the the Jeff Rick out of the
• 38:57
  when the when the heist is on in episode 2.
• 39:01
  It's kind of romantic. It's very atmospheric.
• 39:04
  It is leaning into the fact that this is sort of a a future
• 39:07
  historical story as well. I thought it was just enough
• 39:11
  music in this actually, and it was unique unto itself.
• 39:14
  But of course, aside from Garen, who is just.
• 39:18
  The. Best thing ever.
• 39:20
  I sold him Sydney Harbour for $50 million and he came after me
• 39:24
  with a machine gun. I mean.
• 39:26
  He's just wonderful. And do you see Tom in that
• 39:29
  scene? He's having the best time, isn't
• 39:31
  he? And reminder goes, come on now,
• 39:32
  we've got to get out of here. I know we can do that later.
• 39:35
  Let's. Listen to the stories.
• 39:37
  But the best thing about the Rebus operation is enter Mary
• 39:41
  Tam, somebody who can finally walk into this show and put Tom
• 39:45
  Baker in his place. And for the first time ever
• 39:48
  since, he's taken on the role. Yeah, he's behaving himself to a
• 39:52
  small degree anyway. And and I find the the chemistry
• 39:56
  between Tom and Louise in 15 really uncomfortable to watch
• 40:00
  because you can't know that relationship.
• 40:02
  But you don't need to be told because it's there on the screen
• 40:05
  that they're keeping them apart in a lot of the stories, whereas
• 40:08
  here they're just a joy. I mean, look at Mary Tam.
• 40:12
  You would right. Like you do anything she said to
• 40:15
  you into a room. I'll be on my knees.
• 40:17
  Go, Mary, please. I'll be like a glorious in that
• 40:20
  episode of. Like 7 when server land going
• 40:23
  Mary, please tell me what to do. And I imagine Mary town would
• 40:26
  just go, oh, get up like server land in that episode.
• 40:31
  No, she's wonderful. And I think they're scenes in
• 40:33
  episode 1. All of that.
• 40:34
  You know, before I met you, I was even willing to be
• 40:36
  impressed. Indeed put a hole in my hardest
• 40:42
  ideas. All right, it's just great.
• 40:44
  And I think we lose it a bit as the season goes on and we find
• 40:49
  reasons to separate them because they're barely together in the
• 40:51
  Pirate Planet. They're barely together in the
• 40:53
  Stones of Blood. They do give Marytown, like, fun
• 40:57
  things. But he's a great, great first
• 41:01
  step out of the gate for Marytown.
• 41:03
  Yeah. And just because Tom is on the
• 41:06
  back foot, I just think it's great.
• 41:08
  I mean it means he gets the sort.
• 41:10
  Of. Play about rather than dominate,
• 41:14
  and you can see him engaging with actors in a way that I
• 41:16
  probably haven't seen in a couple of years.
• 41:19
  So I think Remos is great. I mean, you've all said the
• 41:21
  other reasons, the script. I quite like the direction.
• 41:24
  I know you're going to say it's terrible, but I think I think
• 41:27
  it's fine for what it's trying to do.
• 41:28
  You could absolutely tell a 45 minute version of this story,
• 41:32
  sort of hustle style, you know, with lots of fast cuts.
• 41:36
  And that was Time Heist, which admittedly was very stylish and
• 41:40
  nowhere near as far as this. Like the characters and Time
• 41:44
  House. Who were they?
• 41:44
  I don't know Garen and Unstop and Bailey.
• 41:47
  Darling. Yeah, but who was he?
• 41:49
  I don't know who he was. Some Cyborg man or something.
• 41:53
  Garen Unstop Seeker. You don't forget these people.
• 41:57
  Please, let's keep it. It's just heaven.
• 42:00
  This story to watch. Thank you.
• 42:03
  Thank you for helping me escape. It was nothing.
• 42:07
  Why'd you do it? I don't know what it's like when
• 42:12
  every man's hand is against you. Been rather heretic.
• 42:17
  You heard that? Well, it wasn't much of A
• 42:22
  heresy, my friend. Just a little thing.
• 42:26
  What? Oh, many years ago now.
• 42:33
  Have you ever looked up at the sky at night and seen those
• 42:38
  little lights? They are not ice crystals.
• 42:48
  Go on. I believe they are Suns, just
• 42:53
  like our own sun. And perhaps each sun has other
• 42:57
  worlds of its own, just as Rebus is a world.
• 43:03
  What do you say to that? It's an interesting theory.
• 43:08
  What a broad minded man. Perhaps in the North they are a
• 43:18
  different people after all. You see, my friend, I have taken
• 43:23
  measurements of those little lights and of our sun, and I can
• 43:28
  prove that Rebus moves. It circles the sun, travelling
• 43:35
  far away and then returning. That's the reason we have our
• 43:40
  two seasons, sun time and ice time.
• 43:45
  Nobody believed. You.
• 43:46
  Yeah, there's blockage. They prefer to believe that
• 43:50
  Rebus is some sort of battleground over which the sun
• 43:54
  gods and the ice gods fight for supremacy.
• 43:58
  They said the Divide did not publicly recant my beliefs.
• 44:02
  The gods would destroy our world.
• 44:07
  Did you? In the end, he his hands useless
• 44:16
  for work now. That's why I live here.
• 44:22
  Binro, supposing I were to tell you that everything you've just
• 44:27
  said is absolutely true. There are other worlds, other
• 44:31
  Suns. You believe it too.
• 44:38
  I know it for a fact. You see, I come from one of
• 44:43
  those other worlds. You, I thought, I thought I
• 44:49
  should tell you because one day, even here in the future, men
• 44:54
  will turn to each other and say Binro was right.
• 45:04
  So we are definitely keeping this and I would have to say
• 45:08
  that I agree with all of you. I think it needs to stay.
• 45:11
  I also think that it's probably the best story of the season and
• 45:14
  one of the best stories of all time.
• 45:17
  I love Bob Holmes, anything that he does, you know, even when
• 45:21
  he's writing Doctor Who in his sleep, as we see later in the
• 45:25
  season, he's just superb and it's the world building and
• 45:29
  everything. My principal reason is Paul
• 45:32
  Seed. I think that he is one of the
• 45:36
  great unsung villains in Doctor Who.
• 45:39
  Every so often Holmes writes a character like Shellac or like
• 45:43
  the general in Traitor in the Blake Seven episode Traitor who
• 45:48
  is just a fucking idiot. Like stupid.
• 45:52
  But but, and, and the graph is stupid, like he's just a very
• 45:57
  thick man, you know, and and he's easily kind of, you know,
• 46:01
  he's an easy mark for Garen. But but Paul Seed plays it like
• 46:07
  he's not even on the joke, you know, like, like he's stupid and
• 46:10
  humorless and just an absolute fool.
• 46:13
  But Paul Seed doesn't play him, doesn't make fun of him.
• 46:16
  He plays him sort of completely seriously and just a bit big.
• 46:20
  And for me, that's the perfect Doctor Who villain.
• 46:23
  I spend my entire time laughing every time that he's on the
• 46:27
  screen. I just think he's magnificently
• 46:29
  great and just perfectly pitched.
• 46:31
  It's so funny. He's such a blowhard and such an
• 46:34
  idiot. And you know, you can see how
• 46:38
  relieved, like you can see why his brother usurped the throne
• 46:41
  from him. And you can imagine how relieved
• 46:44
  everyone was in the greatest Iranic empire that you know he
• 46:48
  had gone because he's just such an idiot and such a horrible
• 46:53
  person person. So I just think he's
• 46:55
  magnificent. I did the hamster and I did a
• 46:58
  hamster commentary and I just spent my entire time laughing at
• 47:02
  what an asshole he is. He's moving dipsy, he's there
• 47:05
  raw. Bringing that off resolved all
• 47:07
  that shell like thing is just so absurdly over the top and so
• 47:11
  wonderful and it's just played so perfectly.
• 47:13
  It's not played Riley or anything like that.
• 47:16
  It's lately. So when he goes, my guts are
• 47:19
  flat. It's so great.
• 47:22
  So I, I think he's really great. I also think, you know, there's
• 47:25
  something fun about a story where that introduces the idea
• 47:31
  that there's two gods in charge of the universe that have to set
• 47:35
  things right. But in the, in the main story,
• 47:39
  we learn that the gods who are fighting over Rebus aren't real.
• 47:44
  And you know, the we, it's a kind of weird thing, but sort of
• 47:49
  Giordano Bruno understanding that that space is just space
• 47:53
  and there's stars and all of that sort of thing in a Doctor
• 47:56
  Who world, which is full of gods and, and ancient monsters and
• 48:00
  threats and things. And that's why I think the
• 48:02
  seeker has real psychic powers, because that's fighting against
• 48:09
  what Bin Roe discovers about the world and which is fighting
• 48:12
  against what the, you know, the main plot of the, of the, you
• 48:16
  know, entire thing is just to apply that makeup every day.
• 48:22
  But but like, I think I just think it's incredibly well done.
• 48:26
  All of the things that you say about homes, he does world
• 48:28
  building, he does word play, which is incredible.
• 48:31
  Everything's really funny. Everyone has a back story.
• 48:33
  The jokes all land. But and you know, like he both
• 48:38
  of his stories this season have just one monster in them because
• 48:41
  they're not interested really in the monster.
• 48:43
  They're interested in interactions between people.
• 48:46
  And Speaking of someone who did see it on 1st broadcast in
• 48:49
  Australia, I thought it was boring.
• 48:51
  So Toby, I think that, you know, you know, like that I I didn't
• 48:55
  really, you know, it didn't really kind of vibe with me when
• 49:00
  I was a kid, but now I think it's easily the best of the
• 49:03
  season. So it's like a fine wine then
• 49:06
  however you get the more you love it.
• 49:08
  Well, and learning to appreciate Bob Holmes.
• 49:10
  I think you know who loves it the most, then that's my shaky
• 49:13
  way of saying who's the oldest here?
• 49:14
  Me. Oh, you must.
• 49:16
  You must absolutely adore it. I do Oh.
• 49:20
  My God, I'm so pleased. That is an easy, easy run
• 49:24
  through to leave Operation for the win.
• 49:27
  So before we go on, I want us each to read one comment.
• 49:33
  So can we start Toby with you reading John Arnold's comment?
• 49:41
  Yes. An absolute joy of a season,
• 49:44
  from Rebus's con artist caper to Armageddon's game theory
• 49:49
  shenanigans. Mary Tam is the perfect foil for
• 49:52
  Tom's outrageousness, and the arc idea is light but helps knit
• 49:57
  A diverse bunch of stories into something real.
• 50:01
  Quite really. I think he means something
• 50:03
  really quite special. Or something real quite special.
• 50:08
  Androids of Tara for the Wind though, obvs.
• 50:12
  Don't you try. Pretending.
• 50:14
  You're all down with the kids, John Arnold.
• 50:16
  All right, all right, so, Joan, could you read?
• 50:21
  You have to do the Australian accent for this one as well.
• 50:23
  This Brandon Jones, your mate also from flight to entirety.
• 50:27
  Are you OK with this? This isn't going to get me in
• 50:29
  trouble internationally, is it? No, no, I can't.
• 50:33
  I can't do it. The first four stories are among
• 50:36
  the best. The Williams era Kroll and
• 50:38
  Armageddon seem worse than they are by comparison.
• 50:42
  Crawl's wit falls flat due to poor direction and miscasting
• 50:46
  and the money just isn't there to realise Baker and Martin's
• 50:49
  ideas and Armageddon. That's pretty good.
• 50:51
  You sound like an Australian who spend a lot of time in Swansea,
• 50:54
  to be honest. Oh, that was pretty good.
• 50:56
  And now, now proving to us that somebody who can talk like the
• 51:00
  kids because he is a kid, he's John Arnold's kids.
• 51:03
  Arnold here. OK, excellent with his opinion.
• 51:06
  And let's be honest, his opinion is more important than our
• 51:08
  crusty old opinions. He's the youth, after all.
• 51:11
  Frankly, if it weren't for the bias to me from John Arnold, his
• 51:15
  father, that makes me have season 25 as my favorite, this
• 51:19
  would be my top season in the show.
• 51:21
  I don't think any story is below 9 out of 10 in this season and
• 51:25
  also one of my only seasons to score not just one, but 210 out
• 51:29
  of 10s which will be seen later. That's right, he's got a comment
• 51:32
  on everyone. Folks, here we go.
• 51:34
  Rebos. I won't mention all the typical
• 51:36
  cast is great blabber, but let's say that binning this would mean
• 51:39
  you mess with the graph indicates cliffhanger noises
• 51:43
  that mean I don't know. I don't know either.
• 51:45
  Pirate Planet is my third favorite Doctor Who story of
• 51:48
  all. Douglas Adam peeks here with
• 51:50
  scripts and it only goes down from him for him from here.
• 51:55
  Cough cough. City of death.
• 51:56
  Oh my young people. Stones of blood.
• 51:59
  First off, how the hell did they get away with that skeleton
• 52:02
  hand? Secondly, the Agriora.
• 52:03
  Amazingly terrifying creatures. They even beat canine, those
• 52:07
  bastards. Thirdly, I love the main
• 52:09
  setting. Android.
• 52:10
  Zatara is good, but since it's my father's favorite, bin it
• 52:13
  right this second. He really hates his dad, you
• 52:15
  know? Does he?
• 52:16
  Well, he was been indoctrinated into Doctor Who from a young
• 52:18
  age. You know, it's like a cycle of
• 52:20
  abuse. Stockholm syndrome.
• 52:22
  Power of Crow is awesome. Oh my God, from a child.
• 52:25
  Come on, good to him. The cults out to kill you based
• 52:28
  under siege. Giant squid.
• 52:29
  John Leeson finally appearing in person.
• 52:32
  What's not to love? And here's my favorite part.
• 52:35
  OK, believe it or not, says this child.
• 52:39
  The Armageddon Factor is my other 10 out of 10 of the
• 52:42
  season. Epic conclusion to the season
• 52:44
  long art. The Shadow is honestly creepy
• 52:46
  and I won't hear otherwise. And genuinely it feels like
• 52:49
  there are stakes at all times. It's the finale new who
• 52:53
  showrunners wish they could do. I love you Eddie so much you
• 52:59
  fucking madman. Sorry mad child.
• 53:03
  Well, is. This that thing the young people
• 53:05
  call sarcasm? Very genuine.
• 53:09
  Yeah, go and watch that YouTube channel, all right?
• 53:12
  They're not being sarcastic, all right.
• 53:17
  And finally, Steph, Destroyer of Worlds, my fave.
• 53:22
  Sure, the last two stories are a bit.
• 53:23
  Flat. But the fumes from the first
• 53:25
  half are enough to get it home. And Mary Tam is masterful.
• 53:29
  Stones is my perfect Doctor Who story.
• 53:31
  Part folk horror, part spaceship nonsense, all fun, but the whole
• 53:35
  run is a camp joyful bromp tied up in a crystal bow.
• 53:38
  Yeah, pretty good. OK, so we'll be back to hear
• 53:42
  from them, but not until we have heard from Joan.
• 53:46
  Joan, what story would you like to choose?
• 53:49
  What would you like to keep it or eat it and why?
• 53:54
  What are your reasons? Your three reasons.
• 53:56
  Well, let's go to the end now, since we've just been at the
• 53:59
  start, let's go to the Armageddon factor.
• 54:01
  You. Bastard.
• 54:02
  That's something I was going to choose.
• 54:04
  OK, well, Eddie Arnold doesn't want to hear otherwise, but I'm
• 54:08
  going to tell him otherwise because I think the brief, and I
• 54:13
  assume sort of intentionally bad bit of propaganda broadcast we
• 54:16
  see at the start of the story is the best bit of the story, and
• 54:20
  then the rest completely fails to follow up on that.
• 54:24
  There's padding and the avoidance of plot right from the
• 54:27
  beginning. Every step we are delaying
• 54:30
  progression to stretch this out to six episodes, which is
• 54:34
  obviously made of it by the time loop.
• 54:37
  But even in Part 1, I think it's pretty clear that there's
• 54:40
  nothing here. They've run out of puff, but I
• 54:43
  can't understand why Baker and Martin are the ones who've run
• 54:46
  out of puff. Every episode feels really long.
• 54:49
  It meanders, and the annoying thing is that there are some
• 54:53
  really strong ideas here. The Shadow being a servant of
• 54:57
  the Black Guardian and waiting for 1000 years or whatever it is
• 55:01
  for the Doctor to show up. Princess Astra being the 6th
• 55:04
  segment in human form? Fantastic idea.
• 55:07
  And canine getting taken over or pretending to get taken over?
• 55:11
  Another really good idea. So there's more than enough good
• 55:14
  stuff to work with, to build a strong mystery, to build some
• 55:19
  genuine tension, and yet they fail at all of that.
• 55:24
  It is boring and shit. There are some decent moments.
• 55:32
  Does agree with you, She does say it on the House.
• 55:35
  This is so boring when it's something going to happen us on
• 55:39
  the fucking commentary. There are some decent moments
• 55:43
  that I like. The return of the dog whistle
• 55:45
  from Rebus Operation Drax is fun.
• 55:49
  He's gone rather parking orbit is nice turn of phrase.
• 55:52
  Guardian looks good and negative.
• 55:53
  I think the moments with the Marshall is looking into that.
• 55:57
  So mirrored wall. Very nice, very effective.
• 56:00
  And John Woodvine is great throughout, but as with most
• 56:05
  story elements here, he disappears from the story at
• 56:09
  some point and doesn't get an ending.
• 56:12
  Oh, and it's got a good cave set as well, I will give it that.
• 56:16
  I do think we see some great chemistry from Baker and Tam in
• 56:20
  this one though. After a few stories where
• 56:22
  they've kind of been a part, or at least at least not playing
• 56:25
  themselves. The scene in episode 6 where
• 56:28
  they argue in the TARDIS after Princess Astra has been turned
• 56:32
  into the final segment is maybe their best dramatic scene
• 56:36
  together of the entire season after a couple of stories with
• 56:41
  Romana's kind of largely been a damsel in distress.
• 56:44
  Which is a shame given how strongly it did start in the
• 56:47
  Rebus operation. And that shows the potential
• 56:51
  their relationship might have had if they'd been more
• 56:55
  thoughtful about it throughout, I think.
• 56:58
  And just on the Princess being the final segment, that might be
• 57:03
  the strongest idea of the entire season in any respect.
• 57:08
  It's certainly the strongest idea that you could do with a
• 57:11
  segment of the Key to Time, I think.
• 57:13
  And they bungle it completely. And it kind of reminds me of Spy
• 57:19
  for the Jodie Whittaker story. But they had this great idea
• 57:22
  about making the humans into storage devices for an alien
• 57:25
  race. Am I getting that right?
• 57:27
  Am I remembering that right? But it's revealed in a final
• 57:30
  monologue about two minutes before the end of the story.
• 57:34
  I don't understand how you have an idea that good and then don't
• 57:38
  do anything with it. And otherwise Lala Ward doesn't
• 57:42
  have much to do and I don't think she does what she does
• 57:46
  have all that well. But it might also be a case
• 57:52
  that, as with some other recent stories that people have strong
• 57:56
  feelings about, the fact that it's a finale makes all these
• 58:00
  things worse. If it was just a middle of the
• 58:02
  season story you might go OK didn't quite work.
• 58:06
  But as the end of 2426 episode arc it's really disappointing.
• 58:14
  And it's a story with a poor reputation.
• 58:17
  But I would argue it's reputation isn't poor enough
• 58:21
  because when I was, because when I was watching this time, there
• 58:25
  were times where I felt like this might be my least favorite
• 58:28
  story of the original run of Doctor Who.
• 58:31
  Oh no, have you seen the Dominators in Underworld?
• 58:36
  OK. So that is probably a bit much,
• 58:39
  but this is my least favorite Tom Baker story because it has
• 58:43
  great ideas and it wastes all of them and it's really boring.
• 58:49
  Wow. Well, so I will not be keeping
• 58:52
  it. You might be surprised to.
• 58:53
  Hear I will be eating it. I I think you're being very
• 58:57
  generous, to be honest. But before I chip in properly,
• 59:02
  let's hear from Joe Yes, who has some?
• 59:06
  I've had a small essay about it out here on the screen.
• 59:09
  I love the Armageddon. I.
• 59:12
  Think he's rather well directed actually.
• 59:14
  I think he doesn't. Too bad he does his best.
• 59:16
  I really like the atmosphere of episode 1.
• 59:18
  I think it genuinely feels claustrophobic and desperate.
• 59:21
  In episode 1, ceilings are caving in, people huddled on the
• 59:24
  floors in the Infirmary bleeding, a mad general
• 59:27
  continuing to send his meagre battle fleet into action, a
• 59:32
  desperate royal to stop the war but utterly impotent.
• 59:35
  It's great set up for a story. What is wrong with you people?
• 59:39
  I think it's absolutely gripping.
• 59:41
  I love the ideas in this as well.
• 59:43
  And they keep on coming, which is what I like.
• 59:46
  Bob Baker and Dave Martin, they have too many ideas and this
• 59:49
  time they've got 6 episodes to spread them out like a nice bit
• 59:52
  of butter on toast. Nuclear war.
• 59:54
  The Commander communicating with an unknown phantom behind the
• 59:57
  wall. A missile heading towards the
• 59:59
  TARDIS. Russell, you weren't the first
• 1:00:01
  person to do it. The Doctor's idea of a
• 1:00:03
  psychological barrier. I love that.
• 1:00:06
  Something between Actress and Zeob absorbing the light and
• 1:00:09
  energy. A computer that has given
• 1:00:11
  Actress a battering killed millions without a flicker, and
• 1:00:14
  it's totally invincible. An explosion that will take out
• 1:00:17
  both planets. The Armageddon.
• 1:00:19
  In fact. These are big dramatic ideas.
• 1:00:23
  Faking the 6th 6th segment is a really clever conceit, as is the
• 1:00:28
  entire universe trapped in a three second time loop to stop
• 1:00:31
  the Marshall firing his missiles.
• 1:00:33
  That's really clever, and it's a great use of the key to time as
• 1:00:37
  well. Anyone who says they don't do
• 1:00:38
  nothing with that in this story, you're talking bullshit.
• 1:00:42
  The Doctor in Drax inside the Trojan canine.
• 1:00:45
  I mean, come on, it's just glorious.
• 1:00:48
  The shadow being blinded by the light of the TARDIS.
• 1:00:50
  That's a wonderful idea. The debate over Astros death in
• 1:00:55
  episode 6. I think that's wonderful.
• 1:00:57
  I just think, yeah, it is plodding because every 6th
• 1:01:01
  episode Doctor Who story is plodding, but it's packed with
• 1:01:05
  imagination and fuck me, Bob Baker and Dave Martin can write
• 1:01:09
  jokes. This story is full of really
• 1:01:12
  funny lines. But I'd like to read something
• 1:01:16
  to you, if I may, because what I really like about The Armageddon
• 1:01:19
  Factor, it's from a small essay that I've written for a book
• 1:01:22
  that's coming out next year. It's all about arcs in Doctor
• 1:01:25
  Who. And I think Douglas Adams came
• 1:01:27
  in at the end of this season. We know he sort of had and did a
• 1:01:30
  bit of work on the Armageddon factor, especially those last
• 1:01:32
  sort of 10 minutes. And I think he looked at all
• 1:01:35
  this bullshit this year and went no, no, no, we're not having
• 1:01:37
  anything about arcs and Doctor Who.
• 1:01:39
  You know, straightjacking the imagination.
• 1:01:42
  We're not doing that. So here we go.
• 1:01:44
  Enter Douglas Adams. He takes one look at this horror
• 1:01:48
  and warfare and 26 episode long arcs of operatic ambition and
• 1:01:53
  he's not having any of it. Ultimately, it has to be about
• 1:01:57
  finding the last piece of the puzzle in this story.
• 1:02:00
  You know, like that one piece that falls under the table.
• 1:02:02
  Doctor Who fans are complete as a heart, not a knock up by the
• 1:02:06
  Doctor. But smartly and surprisingly,
• 1:02:08
  they give the last piece a moral dimension.
• 1:02:11
  It gives the climax of the story an emotional bite, and the real
• 1:02:15
  sting in the tail isn't that the Black Guardian is posing as the
• 1:02:17
  White Guardian and trying to underhandedly wrestle control of
• 1:02:21
  everything for his evil purposes.
• 1:02:23
  It's that the final piece of the puzzle is the is a person and
• 1:02:27
  that the duo have been assigned to put it together Are beings
• 1:02:31
  blessed with two hearts, the trolley problem writ large.
• 1:02:36
  The good of the many or the good of the one?
• 1:02:38
  And ultimately, it is the clincher that exposes the evil
• 1:02:41
  God and turns his plans to ashes.
• 1:02:44
  The cost of a single life is too much.
• 1:02:47
  If that's the case, let the universe sort out its own
• 1:02:50
  problems. This this story chooses heart
• 1:02:53
  over Ark. And so as a parting bow to a
• 1:02:58
  season that has all the trappings of an ark, but it's
• 1:03:01
  discovered, it's much more fun to just go with the flow.
• 1:03:04
  Because really, what the fuck do they do with the Ark this
• 1:03:07
  season? And was Atara?
• 1:03:09
  They literally just go, well, there's the there's the Ark bit,
• 1:03:11
  let's have some fun to a Macguffing that binds the series
• 1:03:17
  narratively. The key to time is to just tear
• 1:03:20
  it apart and never think about it again.
• 1:03:22
  To plug in a device that literally shatters the illusion
• 1:03:25
  that will ever do anything as silly as giving Doctor Who a job
• 1:03:29
  and a responsibility ever again. It's a story randomizer.
• 1:03:33
  Once again, this ramshackle improviser is off to everywhere,
• 1:03:39
  anywhere. It's the best possible
• 1:03:41
  conclusion that the series could come to.
• 1:03:43
  It took 26 weeks of figuring out that this doesn't work and we
• 1:03:47
  won't do it again. I love the fact that the the
• 1:03:50
  keys time gets crowned out and it's like, yeah, yeah, we're not
• 1:03:53
  going to do that. There's a randomizer.
• 1:03:55
  Let's go. I think it's a great ending.
• 1:03:57
  I think I think it's got wonderful ideas.
• 1:04:00
  I do think there are performance issues in this, but this kind of
• 1:04:04
  performance issues everywhere in Classic.
• 1:04:06
  You go looking. I think it's a story that keeps
• 1:04:09
  giving, keeps giving smart ideas.
• 1:04:12
  It does have great jokes. Mary Tam is wonderful in this.
• 1:04:15
  It's got 3 great villains in it, in the Marshall, in the Shadow,
• 1:04:20
  and then in the Black Guardian. Yeah, I don't think it's boring
• 1:04:24
  at all. I would like to keep the
• 1:04:27
  Armageddon factor, and I know you won't.
• 1:04:29
  So, Toby, I'm relying on you, right?
• 1:04:31
  I'll set the coordinates for Gallifrey, shall I?
• 1:04:35
  Why Gallifrey? Well, that's where we're going,
• 1:04:38
  isn't it? We have the power to do anything
• 1:04:41
  we like, absolute power over every particle in the universe,
• 1:04:46
  everything that has ever existed or ever will exist as from this
• 1:04:50
  moment. Are you listening to me, Romana?
• 1:04:53
  Yes. Of course I'm listening.
• 1:04:54
  If you're not listening, I can make you listen because I can do
• 1:04:58
  anything as from this moment. There's no such thing as free
• 1:05:01
  will in the entire universe. There's only my will because I
• 1:05:04
  possess the kit of time, Doctor. Are you all?
• 1:05:08
  Right, Of course I'm all right. But suppose I wasn't all right.
• 1:05:10
  This thing makes me feel in such a way I'd be very whatever I
• 1:05:12
  felt like that about somebody else feeling like this, about
• 1:05:14
  that. Do you understand?
• 1:05:15
  Yes. What?
• 1:05:15
  Do you understand that the sooner we hand this over to the
• 1:05:17
  White Guardian, the. Better.
• 1:05:19
  Yeah. So I'm just going to say that I
• 1:05:22
  want to eat this and my 3 reasons are the space corridors
• 1:05:26
  on the planet Atrios, the space corridors on the planet Zeos,
• 1:05:31
  and space corridors on the planet of evil.
• 1:05:35
  This is a story where we just wander around space corridors.
• 1:05:40
  I actually think that the, the, the, you know, things like the
• 1:05:43
  two planets fighting one another and a long nuclear war.
• 1:05:47
  That's not a very novel or interesting idea particularly.
• 1:05:53
  I think it's got a cast, a guest cast that's too small, none of
• 1:05:58
  whom have any sort of particular arc.
• 1:06:01
  You know, just the fact that drag shows up in Episode 4
• 1:06:03
  because there's, I'd like drags. Do you know what I mean?
• 1:06:06
  I do like drags, but you know, he just shows up in Episode 4 to
• 1:06:09
  give a flagging story a bit of a shot, shot in the arm.
• 1:06:12
  I think all of the stuff that both Joe and Joan identified
• 1:06:16
  about what's good about it is the stuff about how we've done
• 1:06:20
  the arc. What we've we've set up in Rebus
• 1:06:23
  operation is the idea that you have two forces, both out to get
• 1:06:27
  the key to time. But in order to prevent the Ark
• 1:06:30
  from basically muscling in on all of the stories of the
• 1:06:34
  season, they decide that the shadow, the Doctor shadow has
• 1:06:39
  taken a different tack. He's just waited for the doctor
• 1:06:43
  to pick up all of the pieces and just waited there for him to
• 1:06:46
  come and get the C Come on. Well, I'll have to.
• 1:06:49
  I think that's really good. All of the stuff about creating
• 1:06:52
  the, the, the, the, you know, the fake segment, all of the
• 1:06:56
  stuff about Astra, like it doesn't go anywhere, but it's,
• 1:07:01
  it's pretty clever. I think that stuff's quite
• 1:07:03
  clever. But overwhelmingly this is, you
• 1:07:06
  know, just when people are sort of being captured and escaping
• 1:07:10
  and going up in teleports and being, you know, like hypnotized
• 1:07:15
  and stuff like that all like This is why it's like, it's just
• 1:07:20
  there's no plot. It's just a bunch of stuff that
• 1:07:23
  happens. I know you have a Star Trek
• 1:07:25
  podcast for US base. Covert was boring people.
• 1:07:28
  Beaming about the place yeah yeah, but I mean there's there's
• 1:07:30
  no like it doesn't the. Story doesn't really.
• 1:07:33
  Develop there's still a lot of things happen and I think that's
• 1:07:37
  it. Like, I just, you know, this is
• 1:07:39
  this is Bob Baker and Dave Martin at the end of their this
• 1:07:42
  is their last joint contribution to the show.
• 1:07:45
  And like, all of their worst features are really visible
• 1:07:50
  here. And I think they're running out
• 1:07:53
  of the ideas that normally proliferate in their story.
• 1:07:56
  So I reckon this one, Toby Astra, Astra and yes, Lowell
• 1:08:02
  Ward's not very good. Toby.
• 1:08:09
  Well, Lal Award does get to return as Romana as a reward for
• 1:08:17
  the Armageddon factor by taking her up the Astra.
• 1:08:21
  And so the Armageddon fact when I got this in sort of bootleg
• 1:08:26
  form and not very good quality, where Rebus operation and
• 1:08:30
  Android Zatara were actually a bit of a struggle because
• 1:08:33
  partially to do with the sort of bleeding colour and the fact
• 1:08:35
  that watching everything like this was a compromise.
• 1:08:37
  The Armageddon fact was actually my favorite story of season 16
• 1:08:42
  because I think I like the warfare element of it.
• 1:08:44
  I really like the stuff in episode 1 where, you know,
• 1:08:47
  there's a military hospital that seems very grown up and very
• 1:08:49
  Doctor Whoey. And then the fact that the war
• 1:08:52
  is a phony war has something to say that's sort of grim and
• 1:08:55
  grown up. And I particularly adored in
• 1:08:58
  really bad quality. The shadow is, I mean, I think
• 1:09:01
  the shadow is still one of the most interesting Doctor Who
• 1:09:05
  creations of this period because there is actually, again, nobody
• 1:09:09
  quite like him in the whole of Doctor Who.
• 1:09:11
  We do get sort of black villains, as it were.
• 1:09:13
  But when you're watching in bad quality, you're not almost,
• 1:09:16
  you're almost not sure where the actor ends and the costume
• 1:09:19
  begins. And he's like this sort of and,
• 1:09:21
  and, and Squire William Squire plays him like a ghost.
• 1:09:24
  And again, we get very few sort of actual phantoms in Doctor
• 1:09:28
  Who. So he's genuinely actually, I
• 1:09:29
  think quite scary and quite indefinable.
• 1:09:32
  And I, I remember being really sort of studying quite closely
• 1:09:34
  and going, how does he work? What is he as he's really
• 1:09:38
  peculiar. And, and, and you know, I rather
• 1:09:42
  liked the efforts that David Harris was going into when he
• 1:09:45
  realized the story was getting a bit tedious and that Tom Baker
• 1:09:49
  staved off his board and by dicking around, he thought, Oh,
• 1:09:51
  well, I'll join in. And, and, and I, and, and, and,
• 1:09:56
  you know, he is, he is quite a, a, a vivid actor at the best of
• 1:09:59
  times. And I'm not sure what's most
• 1:10:02
  egregious is Terry Scott in space in this or his cheery
• 1:10:04
  rapist in Blake 7, but it's a, it's a closely fought to come,
• 1:10:08
  closely fought competition. And, and, and then I, I got it
• 1:10:13
  all scrubbed up and it's a story I've not watched that often.
• 1:10:17
  And it was the classic Doctor Who story that I chose to watch
• 1:10:22
  on the 26th of March 2005, when I was waiting for that
• 1:10:27
  interminable Saturday. And I thought, well, I'm not
• 1:10:30
  going to be watching classic Coup again for a while because
• 1:10:32
  I've got 13 weeks of new Doctor Who and isn't this exciting?
• 1:10:36
  So let's watch something I haven't seen for a while and and
• 1:10:41
  and you know, so this isn't hugely familiar to me.
• 1:10:43
  So that'll get rid of this Saturday so that then I can
• 1:10:45
  watch this brand new Doctor. I got to canine on the conveyor
• 1:10:50
  belt in episode 2 and I was like, thank fuck Doctor Who's
• 1:10:53
  coming back. This is and I I've obviously
• 1:10:59
  I've watched it since there is I I I think I mean, has ever an
• 1:11:04
  actor made easier money than John Woodvine in episode 5 just
• 1:11:09
  being repeatedly saying fire take an actor that good.
• 1:11:13
  And I love that stuff with the mirror and that he has an
• 1:11:15
  episode 1, but they kind of lose sight of at least they give him
• 1:11:18
  a nice speech in episode 6, but he's kind of surplus to
• 1:11:21
  requirements, you know, put halfway through episode 3.
• 1:11:24
  David Harris, as I say, decides to take Tom Baker on, but he's
• 1:11:28
  not Tom Baker. So I mean the bit where he gets
• 1:11:32
  shot and does the comedy fall and sticks his feet up in the
• 1:11:35
  air whilst holding the gun out. I mean, you know, that's what
• 1:11:39
  you do in Galloping galaxies. That's not what you do in Doctor
• 1:11:41
  Who. And there is AI think there is a
• 1:11:44
  an excuse for being slightly silly sometimes with Doctor Who
• 1:11:47
  or winking to the audience. But you have to do it in a, in a
• 1:11:52
  containable way or a skilful way.
• 1:11:55
  It's it's not as easy as it looks.
• 1:11:57
  Suggests that you do not watch time and the Rani anytime home
• 1:12:00
  soon then All right well, I think I mean I think the opening
• 1:12:03
  scene of Sylvester's doctor in time in Irani is the worst acted
• 1:12:06
  scene any doctor's ever done so yeah, I've done in my life all
• 1:12:12
  right but it could be that I'm a humanist prick and I hold my
• 1:12:17
  hands up to them and what. And yes, the key to time being a
• 1:12:23
  person, I mean, God, if that had happened in modern who I mean,
• 1:12:27
  gosh, the tears that would have flowed would have been sure that
• 1:12:30
  Cardiff was wiped off the map by the tsunami of lacrinosity that
• 1:12:36
  that that would have been inspired by that model dilemma
• 1:12:39
  with everybody telling each other they.
• 1:12:40
  Are all asterisk. Children, you know, but, but,
• 1:12:44
  but I mean, here they take that ingredient.
• 1:12:46
  It's like making fish pie out of lobster.
• 1:12:48
  It's you know, and, and, and, and I and I, you know, and it's,
• 1:12:55
  it was always going to be hard to end.
• 1:12:57
  I can't really blame the Armageddon factor for not ending
• 1:13:00
  the Key to Time all that satisfactorily because it was
• 1:13:04
  always going to be a Mcguffin and I don't really mind that,
• 1:13:07
  and it's better than some story arcs that Doctor Who's done.
• 1:13:09
  But unfortunately it coincides with Tom Baker realising that if
• 1:13:13
  he pricks a Dicks about, nobody's going to stop him.
• 1:13:16
  And that's a shame because actually the, the, the
• 1:13:19
  combination of Tom Baker and Douglas Adams could have been
• 1:13:23
  absolutely extraordinary had Tom Baker just had a little bit of
• 1:13:28
  self-discipline and, and, and, and actually realised that if
• 1:13:33
  you, if you, if you meet it in, in a slightly less conceited
• 1:13:37
  way, if you like, you would get, you would get slightly better
• 1:13:39
  results. Nobody, you know that the whole
• 1:13:41
  thing about humour is that you don't want to, you, you as the
• 1:13:45
  audience want to be having a good time.
• 1:13:47
  You feel slightly detached from it if the people you're watching
• 1:13:50
  are having a slightly better time than they're giving you.
• 1:13:53
  And then leads to, you know, not, not unjust accusations of
• 1:13:57
  sort of smugness and, and all of that, which I, which I think you
• 1:14:00
  have to be very careful. And it's a shame because it
• 1:14:02
  could have been so different. And I do think Tom is Tom Baker
• 1:14:05
  is a, is a is, is a bit naughty. And that's a shame because he is
• 1:14:09
  so brilliant and he is so funny. And he does have that, that
• 1:14:12
  brilliant, otherworldly quality that makes him such a good
• 1:14:15
  doctor that when he, when he screws, it's like watching a
• 1:14:18
  brilliant sportsman believe his own hype.
• 1:14:21
  And then and then, you know, sort of go off the rails and
• 1:14:25
  screw up his game and it and it's sort of what he does there,
• 1:14:28
  despite the fact that that Mary Tam isn't having any of it and
• 1:14:31
  good on her for it. And one of the best things about
• 1:14:33
  the Key to Time season is actually listening to Mary Tam
• 1:14:36
  and Tom Baker on commentaries and things because they they
• 1:14:38
  have a great they have a great rapport.
• 1:14:39
  And she's she's I think Mary Tam is actually more fun than
• 1:14:42
  Romana, but that's just because of the way they they write her.
• 1:14:47
  You love that bit, though, Toby. You know where he's doing his
• 1:14:49
  eyes and goes. I possess the Key to Time.
• 1:14:53
  No, I would have fired. I would have fired.
• 1:14:55
  Love it. I would have fired him for she.
• 1:14:58
  Doctor, you're all right. Of course, I'm not all right.
• 1:15:00
  But supposedly I wasn't all right, you know.
• 1:15:01
  Yeah, you could. Yeah, he can do that.
• 1:15:03
  But the bit he does with the eyes is stupid.
• 1:15:05
  If he does, if he did the rest of it, it would be fine.
• 1:15:07
  If he did the rest of it, that intent.
• 1:15:09
  But he's going on. I'll do that as well.
• 1:15:10
  And I would say don't do that. Yeah.
• 1:15:13
  Well, I mean, now you could CGI the eyes back in.
• 1:15:16
  That's. What you could do got Billy
• 1:15:17
  Billy Piper's face on it. Yeah.
• 1:15:20
  Oh well, yeah. So, yeah.
• 1:15:26
  And, and it's, but on top of all of that, you know, especially
• 1:15:29
  the sort of dicking about and all that, it, it, it has the
• 1:15:32
  cardinal sin of being really quite tedious.
• 1:15:37
  And so I'm, I'm a it is, it is rather, rather boring.
• 1:15:44
  So even though there's some slightly weird bits, I think in
• 1:15:47
  episode 5 that are quite, that are quite fun where they try and
• 1:15:49
  do something a little bit different.
• 1:15:50
  I do like the idea of the, the automatic computer being the
• 1:15:53
  nemesis and all that. And yeah, that John Woodvine
• 1:15:57
  gets a lovely speech in episode 6 about mushrooms.
• 1:15:59
  But All in all, I think it's too long, it's too drawn out.
• 1:16:03
  It's no, nobody trying to solve the story's problems is, is
• 1:16:09
  doing it in a way that everybody else is doing it.
• 1:16:11
  So it just looks like a lot of people either, you know, who's
• 1:16:16
  rather listlessly going, well, I may as well enjoy myself.
• 1:16:21
  And that's never fun really, unless you're a dogger.
• 1:16:24
  So I, I, I will, I will happily consign the Armageddon factor to
• 1:16:33
  the great big bin in the sky. Happy times and places indeed.
• 1:16:38
  Yeah. OK, good.
• 1:16:40
  So justice has been done and it's time to return to our
• 1:16:47
  commenters. So Toby, would you mind reading
• 1:16:51
  Paul Cress's comment? I will happily read Paul Cress's
• 1:16:56
  comment, which sounds something a little like this.
• 1:16:59
  Season 16 is a strange one. There's nothing wrong with it
• 1:17:03
  and it has some great ideas and it's reasonably consistent, but
• 1:17:06
  it often feels like there's something missing.
• 1:17:09
  Just to point out, you know, the Paul Cresser now he's officially
• 1:17:13
  the pin up model Wolf hamster. A blunt pen knife, especially
• 1:17:16
  strictly come hamster. Everyone please go and check out
• 1:17:19
  his social media pages. Oh yes, he's a hottie, isn't he?
• 1:17:22
  This week he posted a picture of himself reading a Doctor Who
• 1:17:25
  book and only dressed with the Doctor Who book.
• 1:17:28
  I mean, it was extraordinary. Sorry.
• 1:17:33
  Afterwards you take my phone down now.
• 1:17:35
  OK, You have a room. Have I got another Australian
• 1:17:39
  here or is Luke? No, Yes, yeah, you do.
• 1:17:44
  Were they, were you meant to be reading these, Nathan?
• 1:17:47
  You could have done the accent brilliantly.
• 1:17:49
  I'm sure I didn't. I will just do it in mine.
• 1:17:52
  And this no, no, no. Luke Simps Jenkins in my accent
• 1:17:58
  says I fucking adore season 16, warts and all.
• 1:18:01
  A certain writer steals the show twice.
• 1:18:04
  No, it's not Holmes, Adams, or bloody Bob and Dave, It's David
• 1:18:08
  Fisher who writes not just the two best stories of the season,
• 1:18:12
  but two of the best ever. Keep them All and Crown of
• 1:18:15
  Fisher King. PS Mary Tam is insanely
• 1:18:18
  beautiful. Jesus, he's he is.
• 1:18:22
  Yeah, yeah, I'm not, but I agree with.
• 1:18:24
  It Yeah, I. Do too.
• 1:18:26
  I'm Joe Daniel Knight, says Doctor Who goes on a quest,
• 1:18:30
  picks up a posh bit of totty, totty outrage.
• 1:18:35
  He's a man of the cloth as well. I'm.
• 1:18:37
  Worried about you, Daniel? Who looks on everything with
• 1:18:40
  disdain? Art imitating life, A magical
• 1:18:43
  season of fantasy worlds, even Earth con men, pirates, witches,
• 1:18:48
  swashbuckling heroes, dodgy racial stereotypes and a war for
• 1:18:52
  in endless corridors. I love it mostly, and I'll do
• 1:18:59
  Paul Quinn. Oh no please.
• 1:19:01
  Reliable. The ever reliable in at least
• 1:19:05
  some directions, Paul Quinn Baker's worst season featuring
• 1:19:10
  Bob Robert Holmes is then two worst stories, Paul.
• 1:19:15
  Yeah, not seen them. The pirate Space pirates.
• 1:19:19
  It's got three children, you know it drains on his.
• 1:19:21
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. 2 1/2 good to two very good stories.
• 1:19:25
  No Obvious, classic, outrageous. All fairly inconsequential.
• 1:19:28
  Ironic given the potential universe shattering nature of
• 1:19:31
  the key and madness to attempt Armageddon on a Doctor Who
• 1:19:35
  budget, particularly in 1978. Although, in my opinion, Doctor
• 1:19:39
  Who does have the budget for three sets of space.
• 1:19:42
  Corridors. And they're all different sorts
• 1:19:47
  of triangle. They're all nicely different
• 1:19:49
  geometrically, They're just a little.
• 1:19:52
  They really are. All right, so it's time for Joe
• 1:19:57
  to pick a story to keep. Or yeet.
• 1:20:01
  And to give us his reasons. It's the only episode ever, you
• 1:20:04
  know, where people will say keep or eat.
• 1:20:06
  It's a unique feature. I think episode become a feature
• 1:20:09
  of the show. I keep wondering what you're
• 1:20:10
  saying. You did explain it, right?
• 1:20:13
  Yeah. OK.
• 1:20:15
  Well, you might think, you know, Joe, Andrew Zatara, Fabulous.
• 1:20:18
  Yeah. You know, Pirate planet
• 1:20:20
  wonderful. Douglas Adams, Amelia Rumford
• 1:20:23
  from the Stones of Blood. But no, really, what we need to
• 1:20:26
  be talking about it's. Grow boom boom boom boom boom
• 1:20:30
  boom boom. Grow.
• 1:20:32
  It's the only story where I'd never watch it on its own.
• 1:20:37
  I will always watch it with the DVD commentary featuring Tom
• 1:20:42
  Baker and John Leeson. Because it doesn't matter if you
• 1:20:47
  watch this as a kid and it's a huge part of your life and you'd
• 1:20:50
  love it to pieces. It doesn't matter if you think
• 1:20:53
  that the scenes on the rig are fucking boring despite the
• 1:20:56
  presence of, yeah, extreme character actors.
• 1:21:00
  No, Tom Baker is literally having the best time he's ever
• 1:21:05
  had in his entire life, and he has fucked Lala.
• 1:21:09
  When that phallic shaped squid raise its head out of the mud or
• 1:21:14
  when it's sloppy protuberances drag somebody away, he's
• 1:21:19
  literally they're going Oh yes, like you can see him punch in
• 1:21:25
  the air. I think we quite like a bit of
• 1:21:28
  confirmation bias. I think that's why people watch
• 1:21:31
  those YouTube videos of people watching stuff and we all get
• 1:21:35
  chills, you know, when they actually agree with us.
• 1:21:37
  That's why I listen to Mark's podcast and a non Doctor Who fan
• 1:21:40
  telling me the stuff I like is great, but Tom Baker giving me
• 1:21:44
  confirmation. But some the power of Crow.
• 1:21:47
  It is delirious. Like, he really doesn't remember
• 1:21:50
  much about the story, but he fucking loves that squid and so
• 1:21:54
  do I. Away from the commentary, I
• 1:21:57
  think that the location work, the swamp, is extraordinarily
• 1:22:03
  good. I think it's Norman Stewart's
• 1:22:05
  best direction. He's not great in the studio at
• 1:22:07
  all, unfortunately. His first story was Underworld,
• 1:22:10
  all in the studio, and his studio work here is pretty dull.
• 1:22:13
  But like Richard Martin, you take him outside and suddenly
• 1:22:17
  it's these huge open vistas. Absolutely gorgeous.
• 1:22:20
  There's hovercraft about the place.
• 1:22:22
  He's shooting up and down on rigs and things.
• 1:22:25
  It's unusual, it's atmospheric, it's expansive.
• 1:22:28
  I'll just think it's the best work he did and I love it that
• 1:22:31
  Williams actually saves money. I know the Armageddon factory is
• 1:22:35
  cheap. I know.
• 1:22:36
  But he does save money for his fifth story, and usually by this
• 1:22:39
  point we're getting a bit desperate, but it's probably the
• 1:22:43
  most expensive looking story of the year.
• 1:22:45
  It's certainly the story with the Android Zatara, the two of
• 1:22:50
  them, but they come back-to-back and there's just a ton of
• 1:22:52
  location work and it isn't all consigned to Episode 1 like it
• 1:22:55
  normally is. That whole set piece at the end
• 1:22:58
  with Crow, that terrible model work of Crow on top of the reek,
• 1:23:01
  sort of waving it about and then Tom underneath trying to stab it
• 1:23:05
  with the tracer. Oh, it's just gorgeous.
• 1:23:08
  And the last reason I want to put this through, I mean, Toby,
• 1:23:12
  you're probably going about some great actors.
• 1:23:13
  And I did think about talking about those, but actually I've
• 1:23:16
  also stolen something else from you, I'm afraid.
• 1:23:18
  I will go on about some great actors.
• 1:23:21
  I will talk with knowledge and I will go on.
• 1:23:24
  You'll Wang on, you'll Bang Bang.
• 1:23:28
  That's apologise. I could have worked it out more
• 1:23:34
  sensitively. You'll bang on about, but you
• 1:23:40
  did point out something about this story that I didn't really
• 1:23:44
  see before because I'm a bit daft and I've listened to your
• 1:23:47
  happy times and places on the Power of Crawl like 10 times.
• 1:23:50
  I just love it because why? It's really under regarded and
• 1:23:56
  you find 100,000 things that are great about it and I really love
• 1:24:00
  that. I love that's why we do this,
• 1:24:02
  right? But I think it's to look at
• 1:24:03
  stuff that's celebrated and go actually Katie Van Design is a
• 1:24:07
  bit shit and look, watch The Power of Crawl and go.
• 1:24:09
  Maybe that was Holmes's better script, you know, But you made
• 1:24:14
  me realize that this is a savage takedown on religion, which I
• 1:24:18
  really like about this because Thorn is a complicated
• 1:24:21
  character. He genuinely believes in Crawl,
• 1:24:24
  right? I absolutely believe that.
• 1:24:26
  I mean, Rankin. Oh, who did I say?
• 1:24:28
  Thorn? Who's Thorn?
• 1:24:30
  Neil McCarthy? Absolutely.
• 1:24:32
  But but thorns are very religious.
• 1:24:33
  You were. You were doing the religious
• 1:24:35
  iconography. You were getting Neil McCarthy
• 1:24:38
  stick martyr. Yeah, I did write these notes in
• 1:24:40
  a heart rate last night. Yeah, he genuinely believes in
• 1:24:44
  Crow, but he uses the myth and his people's fear to control and
• 1:24:49
  seize power. And you see that lots of times
• 1:24:51
  in the. So he's a really widely
• 1:24:53
  operator, and he uses belief and biblical detail to control and
• 1:24:58
  manipulate and keep him on top. And he is wonderfully rewarded
• 1:25:03
  for his machinations by the appearance of God at the end of
• 1:25:07
  episode 3. And then it wraps it suckers
• 1:25:10
  around him and squeezes the life out of him.
• 1:25:12
  And genuinely, I genuinely think that scene where he is
• 1:25:15
  prostrating in front of that limp tentacle going, oh, crow,
• 1:25:20
  crow, you know, Oh my master, is that the most savage takedown of
• 1:25:26
  religion ever in Doctor Who, Like to show just how
• 1:25:30
  purposeless this all is. And then just to just to wrap it
• 1:25:34
  all up, he literally wraps his tentacles around him and then
• 1:25:36
  pulls him down the pine. It's just glorious.
• 1:25:40
  There's more here than people give this credit for, I think.
• 1:25:45
  And I also think Episode 4 is one of the most exciting
• 1:25:49
  episodes of the year in terms of action and set pieces.
• 1:25:53
  A lot of the other episode fours, they're quite talky or
• 1:25:56
  they're sort of charming, but this one is actually going for a
• 1:26:00
  great sea monster attacking an oil rig with huge tentacles
• 1:26:05
  smashing through windows. I can't pull none of it off.
• 1:26:07
  It looks shockingly terrible, but it is very exciting.
• 1:26:11
  I really like Power Crow. I would like to keep it, so I
• 1:26:16
  would also like to keep it, yes. And I think this time watching
• 1:26:21
  in preparation for this is the first time that I really
• 1:26:23
  properly appreciated it. Like I had the very kind of
• 1:26:27
  standard belief that, you know, the first four stories are good
• 1:26:30
  and the 1st 2 are a bit crap. I don't think, you know, like it
• 1:26:33
  doesn't quite scale the height of well, obviously it's not as
• 1:26:36
  good as reverse operation, but it's still Bob Holmes.
• 1:26:41
  And you know, we will like this script a great deal when it
• 1:26:44
  turns up later as case of Andrazani because it shares lots
• 1:26:49
  and lots of elements with it. My 3 reasons are one, obviously
• 1:26:54
  the biggest fart joke in the history of Doctor Who.
• 1:26:57
  I think that's just magnificent. 2 There's two guests that I
• 1:27:03
  really like and one is Varlick. He's great.
• 1:27:09
  Carl Rick is really good. And I think it it goes some way
• 1:27:14
  towards mitigating the kind of racist stereotyping of the of
• 1:27:19
  the Swampy's because he is not an idiot.
• 1:27:24
  The way that he interacts with Rome Dart, he's smartest.
• 1:27:27
  Rome Dart, he's smarter than Rankwin.
• 1:27:30
  He doesn't believe any of Rankwin's shit and he is just a
• 1:27:35
  person. And, and it would have been so
• 1:27:37
  easy for Doctor Who to make the swampy speak like, you know,
• 1:27:41
  like speak like tribes people in a genre show in the 1970s.
• 1:27:48
  Instead, Varlick speaks just like a person.
• 1:27:52
  And I, I really appreciate that. I think he's really good.
• 1:27:57
  And then the other person I think people talk about, you
• 1:28:00
  know, why does Philip Maddock, and clearly Philip Maddock
• 1:28:02
  thought that. Why is he not Thorn?
• 1:28:05
  But I think he's really good in that role as a kind of secondary
• 1:28:10
  who isn't like a nice person in particular.
• 1:28:13
  You know, he's also kind of racist against the Swampy's.
• 1:28:17
  But like, his horror at Thorn's behaviour and what Thorn says
• 1:28:23
  helps to make Thorn a a better villain.
• 1:28:29
  And it just works really well for him to have a sort of
• 1:28:32
  detached and cynical approach to things.
• 1:28:34
  Like I just think the way he delivers those lines is very
• 1:28:36
  Philip Malkey and and works really well.
• 1:28:38
  So he doesn't get to do the scenery chewing, but he does get
• 1:28:41
  to kind of undermine the villain.
• 1:28:43
  And it's nice that he's the guy who survives at the end.
• 1:28:45
  In fact, it's a great moment, isn't it, where he finds himself
• 1:28:48
  surrounded by swampies? You know, he hasn't been quite
• 1:28:53
  as bad to it as as Thorne has. But you know, he said, you know,
• 1:28:57
  I don't, I don't love the Swampies, but I can't say I hate
• 1:28:59
  them. So I think he's really great.
• 1:29:02
  And I guess I would also say that I think the location work
• 1:29:08
  is pretty remarkable for Doctor Who.
• 1:29:09
  It's a really well chosen location.
• 1:29:11
  There's a lot of space around. There's A and I really like, I
• 1:29:17
  really like that and that, you know, it's the usual thing,
• 1:29:20
  jokes, word play, you know, when they call the monster them a
• 1:29:24
  Jemima, you know, like just see one line.
• 1:29:27
  It's Jemima, the word Baigiel, which I don't think actually
• 1:29:31
  exists. I haven't been able to find any
• 1:29:34
  evidence of it. So, you know, all of that stuff,
• 1:29:37
  all of Holmes's stuff is still there.
• 1:29:39
  So it's the holy rear. It's atrociously.
• 1:29:44
  Yeah, yeah. All of that.
• 1:29:45
  So I just. Think, you know, the it's
• 1:29:46
  probably more convincing from the front.
• 1:29:48
  It's a pretty, it's a pretty great gag as well.
• 1:29:51
  So yeah, I'm letting it through. It's not the I hate underground
• 1:29:55
  passages. Oh yeah, I hate underground.
• 1:29:58
  Someone should have told Bob Baker and Dave Martin about
• 1:30:01
  that. That way.
• 1:30:13
  Where did he come from? I don't know.
• 1:30:16
  He stopped me from behind. So the sacrifice was not made.
• 1:30:21
  No one must hear of this scar. They would think it a bad omen.
• 1:30:25
  If the Dry Foot woman is gone, we can say that Cole took her.
• 1:30:30
  And there must be fresh blood on the stone.
• 1:30:34
  I will see to it when we return. Trust me, Rankwin.
• 1:30:38
  Toby Well, the Power of Kroll is one of the stories I probably
• 1:30:45
  experienced the at the very end of my Who quest because as I've
• 1:30:50
  already insinuated, season 16 was quite low on my ones to see.
• 1:30:55
  And it was, it was sort of less available and I remember getting
• 1:30:58
  it from a friend when I pretty much polished off most of who
• 1:31:01
  and I'd and I'd heard it was bad.
• 1:31:07
  It had come with that reputation and having read the book, I, I
• 1:31:09
  could. And the book was what I came
• 1:31:11
  late to as well. I could never quite work out
• 1:31:13
  what what was going to be bad about it because it didn't seem
• 1:31:16
  like there was anything sort of problematic about it.
• 1:31:20
  And, and, and when I first came to it, it was also, I think, a
• 1:31:27
  welcome and much needed slice of monstery sci-fi in a season that
• 1:31:32
  was often swords and sorcery or, you know, non, non, you know,
• 1:31:38
  non sort of pulpy stuff that Doctor Who is often very
• 1:31:41
  comfortingly inhabiting. And then, of course, when I sort
• 1:31:45
  of grew up and got a bit older and, and particularly when I did
• 1:31:48
  it actually for running through corridors where I, I, I liked a
• 1:31:51
  lot of stories better that I hadn't seen before, But but some
• 1:31:56
  that I'd always loved, like Claws of Axos, I suddenly saw
• 1:32:00
  that in context, their flaws up close and suddenly was like, Oh,
• 1:32:04
  and watching episodically go, Oh, I can see why people don't
• 1:32:07
  like this, particularly, you know, with the bits in two and
• 1:32:10
  three where, where Philip and John Leeson are looking at that.
• 1:32:13
  And again, I love that word Beguel, which is that anything
• 1:32:27
  of of Phil showing that the really easy you try being a good
• 1:32:32
  actor and we've seen good actors be wasted, a Doctor Who and not
• 1:32:35
  be all that good. Here's a good actor with a not
• 1:32:38
  great part making it absolutely fucking mesmerizing.
• 1:32:41
  Just by deciding to play him has really has really beeved and
• 1:32:45
  he's got such good energy. But he's Hanford by being lovely
• 1:32:49
  though it is to see John Leeson in the flesh.
• 1:32:51
  I do. I put forward the argument that
• 1:32:56
  John Leeson, I think gives one of the worst performances in all
• 1:32:59
  of Doctor Who as Dougie. And he's got lines like, you
• 1:33:02
  know, if if Thorne keeps doing the line is something like if
• 1:33:05
  Thorne keeps doing this, he's gonna get us all killed.
• 1:33:07
  And that you know how to, you know how to, he's gonna get us
• 1:33:09
  all killed. Jesus, we're all gonna die.
• 1:33:11
  And he goes, If Thorne keeps doing this, well, he's gonna get
• 1:33:13
  us all killed a bit like. Saying if this.
• 1:33:16
  This keeps happening. It's it's gonna put 37 minutes
• 1:33:19
  on our journey. He will be slightly late for the
• 1:33:22
  charity Fate. And he does everything like that
• 1:33:25
  as as though it's as, as though it's a mild sort of baffling
• 1:33:28
  inconvenience. Much as I love John Leeson, but
• 1:33:31
  Mark Strickson would say, you know, my God, it's gonna be
• 1:33:34
  quite a daddy. John Lees could be quite a
• 1:33:38
  daddy. Quite a daddy.
• 1:33:39
  Yeah. I mean, could do some lorks.
• 1:33:42
  Who does that? Should we have some ginger beer
• 1:33:47
  and, and, and some of that stuff is, is a, is a bit dangerous.
• 1:33:50
  And of course we have the big elephant in the swamp, which is
• 1:33:54
  the fact that Martin Patmore, the, the, the, we see the
• 1:33:58
  cameraman with it anyway, the, the, the, the, the, the film,
• 1:34:02
  the issue with the film of, of, of masking off the top of the
• 1:34:04
  screen, which means you get that terrible lion.
• 1:34:07
  So you easily know it now. Now I think it's some sometimes
• 1:34:10
  quite artfully sort of put in, but it but it is a big technical
• 1:34:14
  flaw at the heart of the story is they botch what is actually a
• 1:34:18
  fantastic model. The model of role is brilliant
• 1:34:21
  and all of that. And and yeah, he's he's
• 1:34:25
  fantastic. And nobody really talks about
• 1:34:27
  that because everybody is diverted by the by the effect,
• 1:34:30
  which, which compromises every scene, which is a shame.
• 1:34:36
  But I'm going to shock you. I love the power of, I think the
• 1:34:41
  even though it is compromised, but I can, I can see why people
• 1:34:46
  who don't like it don't like it. There's the similarities with
• 1:34:49
  caves, which is obviously a better version.
• 1:34:51
  Oh, and some of the design is so slapdash that I think Don Giles
• 1:34:55
  got a memo complaining about him because and you can see the bit
• 1:35:00
  where the doctor hits the wall with how it's it's really
• 1:35:03
  slapdash and pour. And I can see why people might
• 1:35:07
  object to the to the swamp is but as you said, Nathan.
• 1:35:10
  Well, one, I think painting them green means well, actually
• 1:35:13
  they're and it's a daring. There's actually an element of
• 1:35:17
  Hutzpart going, well, you know, we're not going to do the thing
• 1:35:20
  that would be awkward and and you know, black up or brown up,
• 1:35:24
  which would have all sorts of ramifications.
• 1:35:27
  Then certain, probably and now certainly.
• 1:35:31
  But if you don't know they're green, it gives you an
• 1:35:32
  interesting visual. It it, it, it is therefore
• 1:35:36
  reminiscent of the sort of King Kong and all those sorts of
• 1:35:39
  things that we're supposed to be thinking about.
• 1:35:41
  But it gives it a sci-fi twist and take just one removed from
• 1:35:44
  the awkwardness of the the the the racial element of it.
• 1:35:48
  And. It was awkward for the actors
• 1:35:50
  though, that couldn't get fucking paint off.
• 1:35:52
  Very, very a job. You're gonna scrape the paint
• 1:35:55
  off this form piece at the end of the.
• 1:35:56
  Day, there's an interview. One of them saying we've been
• 1:35:59
  down the showers, we can't get the bloody paint off.
• 1:36:02
  Yeah, very, very, very awkward, but it is quite a fun visual.
• 1:36:06
  As I say, it does remove some of that that potentially
• 1:36:09
  problematic element of it. But as you say as well, I think
• 1:36:14
  I'm I thought I was going to be the only person who highlighted
• 1:36:17
  Varlick, I think because he also has contractions in his in his
• 1:36:20
  dialogue. So he's not speaking in that.
• 1:36:23
  It is epic, you know, that that that way that sort of those
• 1:36:26
  those sorts of characters often speak and rank Quinn does a bit,
• 1:36:29
  but that's because rank Quinn is a propagandist.
• 1:36:31
  And, and again, you slightly started my Thunder Joe, because
• 1:36:34
  this is my, what I maintain is the, is the best thing about
• 1:36:36
  power of gold. And it's trying to do what
• 1:36:38
  planet of fire does, which is satirized religion and how it's
• 1:36:41
  used as a tool of social control.
• 1:36:42
  But planet of fire does it in a very tedious way, whereas, umm,
• 1:36:46
  power of crawl does it in a very, very funny way.
• 1:36:48
  And John Aveniri, who who's of course played Chingachuk in Last
• 1:36:52
  of the Mohicans, which that Maddock had also been in.
• 1:36:54
  So they're the casting in this is sort of mirroring the the the
• 1:36:59
  the the BBC take on a similar sort of subject.
• 1:37:01
  But and and Aveniri had one actually been nominated for an
• 1:37:04
  Emmy for his performance. So it's this, you know, it's one
• 1:37:08
  that speaks closer, but instead of just repeating that
• 1:37:11
  performance, what he he's he, I think he's killingly funny
• 1:37:16
  because he insists on playing it so straight.
• 1:37:19
  And there's that brilliant scene where Crowell's just eaten the
• 1:37:21
  village and they basically say things like, but, but Crowell's
• 1:37:24
  eaten the village and he goes, it's a test of our faith.
• 1:37:27
  And they go, he's just at gym. What is one life?
• 1:37:31
  You know, everything he comes out with is crap religious
• 1:37:35
  justification for terrible things.
• 1:37:37
  And John Abenary plays it absolutely straight so that when
• 1:37:41
  he is praying to the tentacolumbia.
• 1:37:43
  Boy. Absolutely doing what it what it
• 1:37:46
  should be doing, but it the the satire of religion is not me
• 1:37:50
  imposing something on it to try and rescue something tatty from
• 1:37:54
  the from the doldrums of respectability.
• 1:37:57
  I mean that the brilliant line, nobody's quoted the best line in
• 1:37:59
  it, which is when Varlick says I tried to persuade Rankwin that
• 1:38:03
  only Rome Dutt deserved to be punished by the 7th ritual and
• 1:38:06
  that you others should die by the 1st.
• 1:38:08
  That's very easy. They just throw you down the pit
• 1:38:10
  and drop your Bronx on you and it's fantastic.
• 1:38:15
  And again, Carl Rigg plays it absolutely straight.
• 1:38:19
  So it's really, really funny. And I so I think the swamp is,
• 1:38:24
  are actually, rather than being as and I think we're prone to
• 1:38:27
  look through a lens where we worry about stuff these days.
• 1:38:29
  And that's absolutely fair enough.
• 1:38:30
  But actually, rather than being a problematic echo of, you know,
• 1:38:34
  savages from King Kong films and native, you know, simplistic
• 1:38:40
  native portrayals that we now look at and go, that's pretty
• 1:38:45
  out of order. They're actually shown as
• 1:38:47
  characters with agency. And anything that they do that
• 1:38:50
  is stupid is actually because Rankwin is using religion as a
• 1:38:54
  form of social control. So I think it's got something to
• 1:38:56
  say, but also it's really, really funny.
• 1:38:59
  I don't mind men shouting at each other in rooms.
• 1:39:03
  A lot of very fine Doctor Who has that.
• 1:39:05
  And we do have of that in, in, in the refinery and, and that's
• 1:39:09
  saved by the aforementioned Philip Maddock, who, who, who is
• 1:39:13
  absolutely terrific and doing above and beyond the Call of
• 1:39:17
  Duty. So I think I and I, so I think
• 1:39:20
  there's there's, there's rather a lot, yeah.
• 1:39:22
  Structurally it goes to bit tips up in episode 4 when they kill
• 1:39:26
  Thorn off really early on. And then there's a, a
• 1:39:28
  determinable countdown. There is a bit too much chat
• 1:39:31
  between Doug Eine and Fenner in the middle sections, but
• 1:39:35
  overall, I think it's stronger than its reputation.
• 1:39:38
  And because of where it is in the season, I think it's
• 1:39:41
  actually a fresh reminder of the sort of thing Doctor Who does so
• 1:39:45
  well most of the time. And, and so therefore I think is
• 1:39:49
  is to be cherished. And Tom Baker and and Mary
• 1:39:52
  Tammer are made for this. And I think they're they, they
• 1:39:55
  go through it rather deftly. Tom's occasionally naughty, like
• 1:39:58
  when he puts the drink in his pocket, but when they're when
• 1:40:01
  they're stretched out on that rack, I mean, it's actually my
• 1:40:06
  nose has stopped. But but I but I kind of enjoy.
• 1:40:10
  And there are some shocking moments.
• 1:40:11
  I think Hogg getting pulled into the pipe at the end of episode 2
• 1:40:15
  is fantastic. And and.
• 1:40:17
  And there's a lovely really just before Rome duck gets eaten.
• 1:40:20
  Or is it just other when, when a bit of the swamp just sort of
• 1:40:23
  funks into the ground and that's that's really well done.
• 1:40:27
  So I think there's I think there's plenty there.
• 1:40:29
  And and the swamp is a novel setting and and it's the key to
• 1:40:34
  time has made the the key to time has a has an impact on the
• 1:40:37
  story because that is the reason that that that Crowell is so
• 1:40:41
  massive. So, yeah, plenty, plenty,
• 1:40:43
  plenty. And and Robert Holmes does bits
• 1:40:46
  of world building as well. I like the fact that when when
• 1:40:50
  Thorne comes in and he's brought hogs something, he says, how
• 1:40:52
  much do I owe you, Sir? It's just little things like
• 1:40:53
  that that just deaf little touches that that that Holmes
• 1:40:57
  does. That means people aren't just
• 1:40:58
  space people. So I would like to and it
• 1:41:01
  partially part of me is me being bloody minded and going because
• 1:41:04
  everybody has a heart. I thought this was going to be a
• 1:41:07
  waste of I I thought I was just going to go.
• 1:41:09
  I like this, but obviously it's not going to get through.
• 1:41:11
  So I'm slightly surprised that I'm third in a in a row power of
• 1:41:16
  pro for the winds. That's not going to stop me.
• 1:41:18
  Yes, I'm I'm going to I'm going to keep the power of crow out of
• 1:41:24
  the bin. I do just want to say though,
• 1:41:26
  because you said there, you know, that the whole religious
• 1:41:29
  angle in your pocket there that you said that wasn't just you
• 1:41:33
  pulling something out of your ass to say something nice about
• 1:41:35
  something. Now, I didn't mean that at all,
• 1:41:38
  but what it means to me is, and This is why I like listening to
• 1:41:41
  your podcast. So if you're sorry you have to
• 1:41:43
  take a compliment now, just for one second, you can copy your
• 1:41:46
  hand and be English if you like. Is you look so pained.
• 1:41:51
  Oh my God, you hate compliments that much?
• 1:41:57
  There we. Go.
• 1:41:58
  It's because I used to find that scene deeply embarrassing to
• 1:42:02
  watch because of that shitty tentacle.
• 1:42:04
  And he's hamming it up going grow.
• 1:42:06
  And you just made me look at that whole thing.
• 1:42:09
  And now I think it's hilarious and really clever.
• 1:42:13
  And he has. The thing about listening to
• 1:42:15
  podcasts is that it does allow you to challenge your opinions
• 1:42:18
  like that and give things new readings.
• 1:42:21
  And sometimes the actors in Doctor Who have to commit to it
• 1:42:24
  because what else can you do? Because if you don't be.
• 1:42:27
  And that's why sometimes, you know, an actor doing things that
• 1:42:30
  could be slightly embarrassing. That's why I really appreciate
• 1:42:33
  the actors who go, no, I've this is, this is what I'm here for
• 1:42:37
  because this hasn't got an awful lot of money.
• 1:42:39
  It is science fiction being made in a television centre on a
• 1:42:42
  shoestring budget. I'm green and I've got a
• 1:42:44
  loincloth on, but fuck it, I'm a pro.
• 1:42:48
  This is what I've been hired for.
• 1:42:49
  That's why I that's why I, I love actors, yo, and I'll defy
• 1:42:54
  you to RIP this to shreds. Now, well, my vote doesn't
• 1:42:57
  matter at this point, does it? I'm.
• 1:42:59
  Afraid not, yo, but let's hear it.
• 1:43:03
  This is. I have fun watching this story,
• 1:43:06
  but I do think it is the least of the remaining ones we have to
• 1:43:11
  talk about. I didn't really know where to
• 1:43:16
  start. Everyone's been so effusive
• 1:43:18
  about it, and I think there are a lot of good things to say
• 1:43:21
  about it. I think Crawl as a monster in
• 1:43:23
  all its forms is really quite well executed as a puppet, as a
• 1:43:28
  large tentacle, even as the rudimentary computer images, I
• 1:43:33
  think they're really quite good. Not so great as how it's
• 1:43:37
  integrated, as I think Joe mentioned perhaps.
• 1:43:40
  And I think my overall issue with the story is the direction,
• 1:43:46
  because there is some nice location stuff about.
• 1:43:49
  For instance, Kroll's first appearance in this Part 2 is
• 1:43:53
  bizarre. It's just there on the screen.
• 1:43:55
  It cuts to a wide and crawl is there in all its glory.
• 1:43:58
  There's no builder, there's no proper reaction shots and.
• 1:44:03
  It. Appreciates that moment even if
• 1:44:05
  you don't. All right, sorry Tom, but no one
• 1:44:09
  even acts like they've seen it after.
• 1:44:11
  You've seen it. The biggest?
• 1:44:14
  Monster we've ever seen in Doctor Who.
• 1:44:18
  It's almost like the the director failed to convey to the
• 1:44:21
  cast what they were going to be seeing.
• 1:44:23
  And I think the most damning example of this whole thing is
• 1:44:29
  the fact that Romana reacts with more fear to a bloke dressed up
• 1:44:34
  in a costume than she does to the 100m tall squid.
• 1:44:38
  What's the line again? I guess.
• 1:44:40
  I suppose it looked more convincing from the problem.
• 1:44:42
  Hey, Gary, covered it with a line now.
• 1:44:45
  Indeed. But there is a lot of fun stuff
• 1:44:48
  here. As you've mentioned, Aveniri,
• 1:44:52
  McCarthy, Maddock, there's such classy actors, they could make
• 1:44:56
  anything watchable. I do think Maddock is miscast,
• 1:45:00
  obviously. It's just weird that he is not
• 1:45:02
  the leader in that base. So it kind of like he's not even
• 1:45:06
  wearing a hat or anything, but he draws your attention just so.
• 1:45:11
  I'd forgotten that he wasn't supposed to be the leader.
• 1:45:13
  And you're just watching it going, why is he letting this
• 1:45:15
  other guy do all this other stuff?
• 1:45:18
  And I think it's weird to say, but you've got all these actors
• 1:45:21
  in it who've been in Doctor Who before, and it just kind of
• 1:45:24
  reminds me that they've been in better stories before as well.
• 1:45:29
  And to go back to the direction, it's not so much the location
• 1:45:32
  stuff, it is the studio stuff, which is just inexcusably static
• 1:45:36
  in parts of the story. He's not moving the camera, the
• 1:45:39
  cast are moving. He's not even switching angles
• 1:45:42
  between. Isn't moving either.
• 1:45:46
  It hasn't moved in 15 minutes. They're talking about crawl.
• 1:45:49
  They're not talking about crawl. And they are compelling actors,
• 1:45:53
  but that's pushing it a little bit too far, I think.
• 1:45:56
  But there is so much fun stuff here as well.
• 1:45:59
  There's there's so many good deaths in this hard, as Toby
• 1:46:02
  mentioned, getting sucked out by Crawl.
• 1:46:05
  That's very good. The two extremists of the
• 1:46:07
  stories get very satisfying deaths.
• 1:46:10
  Even if John Neeson isn't the best in this.
• 1:46:13
  I think Duggan's death is quite effective.
• 1:46:15
  Yeah, and I like the Doctors dispassionate response to Ron
• 1:46:20
  Dutts death to which, aside from a really nice bit of scoring
• 1:46:27
  when they're getting tied up to the vines, is probably the only
• 1:46:30
  thing I'd recommend from Part 3, which I honestly think might be
• 1:46:33
  one of the most pointless episodes of Doctor Who.
• 1:46:37
  Hang on the cliffhanger where they're in the boat and crop
• 1:46:41
  coming out of the water. I'll give you the cliffhanger,
• 1:46:44
  but you can skip the other 23 minutes of it.
• 1:46:48
  A line that nobody's mentioned yet.
• 1:46:50
  Progress is a very flexible word.
• 1:46:52
  Another fantastic Homes line, Romana has almost nothing to do
• 1:46:59
  in this story apart from getting captured and tied up.
• 1:47:02
  And it is Unless, as you know Nathan suggested, you can sort
• 1:47:05
  of crawl a female. Then it's a complete sausage
• 1:47:10
  fest of a story which really stands out in season 16.
• 1:47:17
  Fuck it, let's put it through. Come on, let's go for the.
• 1:47:20
  Full thing. I enjoyed it.
• 1:47:23
  Enjoy it far more than I realized.
• 1:47:26
  Okay, excellent. I'm really happy about that.
• 1:47:29
  That was the thing I was most worried about.
• 1:47:31
  Everything else goes through and we'll call it a name.
• 1:47:35
  Okay, from one then. Yeah.
• 1:47:37
  Okay, so I'm going to go next, but not before we read our next
• 1:47:44
  set of listener. What's not feedback, is it, but
• 1:47:49
  listener comments. So listener insanity.
• 1:47:53
  Yeah. So let's start Toby with Dave
• 1:47:56
  Rennie. Yes, Dave Rennie says season 16
• 1:48:00
  is a ray of sunshine. Tom and Mary are in stellar
• 1:48:03
  form, tracing the key and meet some wonderful characters along
• 1:48:09
  the way. It's a pity the ending to the
• 1:48:11
  season is pretty poor, but the journey is great to get there.
• 1:48:15
  I'm a way to have a sausage sandwich.
• 1:48:18
  See, there's something to be sent for a sausage Fest yarn.
• 1:48:23
  It's thematically. Resonant.
• 1:48:24
  That's almost certainly euphemism.
• 1:48:26
  It sounds like he's They're obsessed with them, aren't they?
• 1:48:29
  And. Stones are blood.
• 1:48:31
  Cliff Chapman, Australian. No sort of shame.
• 1:48:37
  OK, well Cliff Chapman nonetheless says I love half.
• 1:48:40
  Rebus has become one of my favorite stories.
• 1:48:42
  The Pirate Planet has been for the last 30 years.
• 1:48:45
  Absolutely adore it. I don't much care for Stones of
• 1:48:48
  Blood. I think some of the performances
• 1:48:49
  are rather poor and the visuals let it down badly.
• 1:48:52
  Tara is great. Crawl and the Armageddon factor.
• 1:48:55
  Both tedious. Is everyone going to stick up
• 1:49:00
  for it apart from me? Let's find out if Gareth Bowney
• 1:49:03
  is going to do that. Best, he says, is pirate.
• 1:49:06
  This is the best Tom Baker story ever, where his performance
• 1:49:10
  matches the tone in the world he's in.
• 1:49:12
  The shrinking of planets is an inspired idea, and a hidden
• 1:49:16
  villain is well executed. So well executed.
• 1:49:20
  Worst Armageddon. I can never remember a damn
• 1:49:24
  thing about this one other than fire, fire, fire.
• 1:49:34
  It's a I'll come in towards the camera.
• 1:49:41
  That noise. Yeah, sorry, the Cliff.
• 1:49:43
  And he just finished his by saying funny that.
• 1:49:47
  OK. And this is Joseph Oldham.
• 1:49:49
  After a wobbly start with Season 15, this is the season where the
• 1:49:52
  Graham Williams approach really clicks into place, primarily
• 1:49:56
  because it's the only one where the three big writers are all in
• 1:49:59
  one place. Robert Holmes, Douglas Adams and
• 1:50:01
  the underappreciated David Fisher.
• 1:50:04
  I can't believe we haven't touched David Fisher.
• 1:50:06
  Yeah. Well, it's my turn to pick a
• 1:50:10
  story. And I think given that we just
• 1:50:15
  mentioned David Fisher, it's time for us to talk about the
• 1:50:20
  stones of blood. Yes.
• 1:50:23
  So I want to keep this for a number of reasons.
• 1:50:27
  I think the people who see that it has some of the aesthetics of
• 1:50:36
  a Hinchcliffe story and then they hate the second-half
• 1:50:40
  because it doesn't follow through on that wrong.
• 1:50:44
  And I think this is much more fun than a whole bunch of Philip
• 1:50:48
  Hinchcliffe stories. I think that the second-half of
• 1:50:51
  it is really fun and enjoyable. The fact that it starts off as
• 1:50:57
  like like a crap Hinchcliffe story where the villains are
• 1:51:01
  that guy with the moustache and that Lady, and then they're
• 1:51:04
  suddenly killed sort of unexpectedly early on and the
• 1:51:08
  story goes off somewhere else and somewhere a bit more fun.
• 1:51:12
  I think that's really great. I want to say that.
• 1:51:17
  Is it the only story with more than one female guest star this
• 1:51:25
  year? Oh, this decade, you mean.
• 1:51:27
  Well, but I think possibly this year.
• 1:51:30
  So we have Martha, we have Pirate Planet's got a couple,
• 1:51:36
  but Mueller, Mueller and Mueller, Mueller two whole
• 1:51:42
  women. We extravagantly decided that we
• 1:51:46
  would deploy two women in that story and sure.
• 1:51:50
  And Taylor obviously as well. I And that's super scary.
• 1:51:55
  Like that's probably scary. I think David Fisher is an
• 1:51:59
  absolute find and one of the great things about this season
• 1:52:05
  is that it has 2 Bob Holmes stories and two David Fisher
• 1:52:08
  stories, which really, really, you know, just an amazing thing.
• 1:52:13
  I think Stones of Blood is funny and clever.
• 1:52:17
  It has some astoundingly crap monsters in in a way that push
• 1:52:22
  the envelope. Can we make this work?
• 1:52:25
  You know, every so often Steven Moffat will come up with a I'm
• 1:52:28
  going to do a Doctor Who story that doesn't use the letter X in
• 1:52:32
  it or something. You know, like some insane
• 1:52:34
  formal constraint and he pulls it off with a plum, I think, You
• 1:52:37
  know, can you do a story with sort of fibreglass rocks on
• 1:52:45
  casters? Yeah, As the monster.
• 1:52:48
  Yes, you can. Turns out you can.
• 1:52:49
  We learn a valuable lesson there.
• 1:52:51
  But, you know, the story fits together.
• 1:52:53
  It works as a story. It's got some great guest
• 1:52:55
  performances, particularly in, you know, the two, the two
• 1:53:00
  women. It's funny and arch and
• 1:53:03
  adorable. I absolutely think it's great
• 1:53:06
  and we definitely should put it through.
• 1:53:11
  Here's the bird. Where's the Raven?
• 1:53:13
  Yeah. That's gone too late, Callie.
• 1:53:18
  A great goddess of mercy. What's?
• 1:53:26
  That go late. Get out of here, mother, as fast
• 1:53:35
  as you can, Quick. I'm not.
• 1:53:38
  Going to leave, you go. Danger, Master.
• 1:53:50
  Danger. Unidentified aliens.
• 1:53:57
  Come on, 2/9. I don't like the stones of
• 1:54:00
  blood. Wow.
• 1:54:03
  I thought when I when I was a young person, I thought it would
• 1:54:06
  be the story of the season for me because it sounded like
• 1:54:09
  exactly what I thought Doctor Who should be.
• 1:54:11
  Dark and scary stone circles. So a bit of sci-fi, a bit of
• 1:54:14
  horror. My perfect blend of Doctor Who
• 1:54:16
  set in the English countryside or the coast or whatever.
• 1:54:20
  I love a Batty old woman. I love an eccentric character in
• 1:54:23
  Doctor Who. And I think the stones, I
• 1:54:25
  actually don't think the stones are badly done.
• 1:54:26
  I think glowing stones that suck your blood and, and, and I love
• 1:54:30
  the way they kill Davreese and Martha.
• 1:54:32
  They look like, you know, they've crushed them to death.
• 1:54:35
  But, and I do, I think David Fisher is, is, is a great Doctor
• 1:54:38
  Who writer who who understands the tone and but yeah, it is
• 1:54:43
  fluent in how the series speaks. And, and I've had the pleasure
• 1:54:48
  of interviewing Daryl Blake on a couple occasions and I really
• 1:54:52
  like him and he's had a great TV career.
• 1:54:55
  I mean, sorry to sound like a broken record, but he worked as
• 1:54:59
  a design assistant on quite a mass too.
• 1:55:03
  But I don't think it's a great production.
• 1:55:05
  I think it's partially. I'm never a great fan of
• 1:55:10
  videotape where you can have film.
• 1:55:12
  Yeah, I think, you know, I think, I think if we used those
• 1:55:15
  of us. I'm aware that my take on this
• 1:55:18
  is entirely personal and a lot of it is not necessarily the
• 1:55:22
  Stones of Blood's fault, you know, a lot of things I, I, I
• 1:55:25
  can't get to grips with with it and not necessarily things it
• 1:55:28
  was trying to do in the 1st place.
• 1:55:30
  So it suffers in comparison to the Hinchcliffe stories, which I
• 1:55:33
  think are funny, but they're drolly funny, they're
• 1:55:35
  sardonically funny, they're organically funny.
• 1:55:38
  The humour, the humour comes from the, the situation and the
• 1:55:41
  characters. We're we're now going into more
• 1:55:44
  Graham Williamsy, Douglas Adamsy scenarios and styles where where
• 1:55:49
  the humor can sometimes be sort of grafted on in order to to to
• 1:55:53
  make this a little bit forth wall breaking or a little bit
• 1:55:56
  more avant-garde, which is which is perfectly understandable.
• 1:55:59
  And Doctor Who's format and style can handle that,
• 1:56:02
  especially if it's got very good performers.
• 1:56:04
  But as I say, Tom Baker is is fluctuating at this point,
• 1:56:08
  stepping in from one universe to another.
• 1:56:11
  He clearly loves Beatrix Lehman, who I sort of love, but it's
• 1:56:15
  she's not totally in command of what she's doing all of the time
• 1:56:20
  and getting the. Joy of you, though.
• 1:56:21
  Right. Well, I, no, I, I mean, I'm a
• 1:56:25
  bit old fashioned with that. I, I like seeing an actor doing
• 1:56:29
  well because they mean to do well.
• 1:56:31
  I like I like watching the craft of acting triumph because
• 1:56:34
  everything that the actor is aiming for pulls off.
• 1:56:37
  There is something gorgeous to be said about an actor who
• 1:56:40
  hasn't quite got to grips with it being charming anyway.
• 1:56:43
  But it does it does Take Me Out of it slightly because I can
• 1:56:46
  see, I can see the sort of the, the, the the actress cutting
• 1:56:51
  through the performance if you like.
• 1:56:56
  But it's and I think Devries and Martha and Nicholas Mcarland,
• 1:57:02
  Elaine Knives Cameron are terrible.
• 1:57:06
  And and and again, I don't mind it over the second-half.
• 1:57:10
  I mean, every remember Martha? You can always go to pull him
• 1:57:16
  off. Yeah, lay nice.
• 1:57:19
  Cat has has it. Has that really sort of
• 1:57:21
  unfortunate delivery and, and, and Nicholas Mcarthur's just a
• 1:57:27
  bit too over the top, but without it being, without it
• 1:57:30
  being over the top in the sort of pool seed sort of way where
• 1:57:33
  it has a sort of classical heft to it that helps to carry it.
• 1:57:37
  And and I find the stuff in hyperspace and terminable.
• 1:57:40
  I yeah, I get the joke of the justice machines that are, you
• 1:57:44
  know, driven by logic and need to be outwitted by, you know,
• 1:57:50
  the the the Time Lord touch that bit of, you know, organic.
• 1:57:56
  I'm trying to avoid saying humanity, you know, obviously
• 1:58:00
  outswit machine outwits machine because the doctor is not human
• 1:58:03
  but you but you know what I mean by that.
• 1:58:05
  The, the, the fact that machine logic is beaten by in
• 1:58:08
  intelligence and wit and charm and all of all of that.
• 1:58:12
  But it just means that the, the assessor of Diplos has to sort
• 1:58:15
  of sit there pretending not to be a villain in a really bad way
• 1:58:20
  up on at all. And, and it just sort of goes
• 1:58:24
  and, and all that stuff on location.
• 1:58:26
  You know, it's a hammer film shot on a camcorder,
• 1:58:28
  essentially. It's, it's how, it's how I would
• 1:58:31
  have made it. It looks like how I would have
• 1:58:32
  made a Doctor Who story in the 1980s, a home if I'd borrowed a
• 1:58:36
  mate camera and it would have looked shit.
• 1:58:38
  And that it does. It looks shit, they do that.
• 1:58:41
  Do you think it's just a main player?
• 1:58:43
  He made the choice, but in order to make the studio.
• 1:58:46
  Yeah, there's some stuff. Sad.
• 1:58:48
  It wasn't country. Yeah.
• 1:58:49
  He didn't want that disparity between film and video.
• 1:58:52
  You know, he did it all on which which which again I kind of get
• 1:58:55
  because it is there is an obvious leap, although I've said
• 1:58:58
  this before, people like my mum never noticed that.
• 1:59:00
  If you, you know, if I said to my mum, you know, about film
• 1:59:04
  having a different quality out, so should it just for her didn't
• 1:59:07
  she wouldn't have got that Monty Python joke of we're surrounded
• 1:59:10
  by. But so it's, it's just, it never
• 1:59:16
  quite becomes, I think what it wants itself to be, even though
• 1:59:22
  it has some brilliant scenes like the, the, the, the, the
• 1:59:26
  campus, which I think is the only scene in the history of
• 1:59:29
  doctor of somebody doing up their flies.
• 1:59:34
  And, and actually that, Oh, and Pete Murray, who was the, the DJ
• 1:59:38
  is the has just celebrated his 100th birthday.
• 1:59:40
  And his son was James Murray, who is the, who is the, the,
• 1:59:44
  the, the, the camper who didn't actually make it much beyond
• 1:59:47
  where we see him there. He died very young, but he's got
• 1:59:50
  nothing dad bought as well. Toby, you know that fellow that
• 1:59:53
  gets his his flesh stripped away?
• 1:59:55
  A dad bod? I was thinking I thought a dad
• 1:59:58
  bod was slightly. Sort of.
• 1:59:59
  I've never had a bod. That which is very skinny.
• 2:00:03
  And what's her face? Taylor looks very Taylor about
• 2:00:05
  the 10. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:00:07
  They've clearly just been doing the.
• 2:00:08
  That's it. Yeah.
• 2:00:09
  Too much. But, you know, I just don't
• 2:00:12
  think it hangs together. I don't think it's what and it
• 2:00:16
  doesn't deliver the story I want it to deliver when I go into it
• 2:00:20
  and what it kind of promises me with that lovely, you know,
• 2:00:23
  Raven, the shots of the Raven are great and the stones and all
• 2:00:26
  that. I'm expecting something
• 2:00:28
  atmospheric and something like the devil rides out and
• 2:00:30
  something that's got the occult sort of through it, like a rich
• 2:00:34
  seam of sort of plausible horror.
• 2:00:37
  And it and it does it doesn't, it doesn't succeed at doing any
• 2:00:41
  of those things. And the, and the Cliff anchor to
• 2:00:43
  episode 1 is almost nonsensical. And it just, in fact, none of
• 2:00:52
  the cliffhangers are that great. It just doesn't know it.
• 2:00:56
  And, and, and I think also there's probably something
• 2:00:58
  slightly contrary about me that goes, well, everybody else likes
• 2:01:01
  it and I don't think it's all that great.
• 2:01:02
  So because I don't like binning anything, I feel that this way I
• 2:01:06
  can have my cake and eat it because I know I'll throw it in
• 2:01:09
  the bin and you'll all be there underneath it, catching it and
• 2:01:12
  stopping it going in. But I would, but I would Even so
• 2:01:14
  I would because I because I also don't think it's right to play
• 2:01:18
  this and not bin anything. I think you have to try and play
• 2:01:21
  the game. Otherwise I'd just be so I will,
• 2:01:25
  I will bin the stones of blood. It's funny watching season 16
• 2:01:32
  this time all the way through. I think it's like the first two,
• 2:01:38
  the first three stories are all really just not very well
• 2:01:42
  directed. Like it's Benton Foster and then
• 2:01:46
  you've got Bennett Roberts and like like I just think they're
• 2:01:50
  like it was astounding. And I just had the conversation
• 2:01:53
  with Joe where I was complaining about how I think probably
• 2:01:57
  complaining about Revos operation because there's an
• 2:01:59
  episode of maximum power. I famously trashed the Bob
• 2:02:03
  Holmes story Gambert upset many of my Cohen Yeah, me just
• 2:02:09
  because it's so shit in the direction is so bad.
• 2:02:13
  And here's another one. You know where spending foster
• 2:02:16
  ruins like you know, threatens to ruin a brilliant home script
• 2:02:21
  and and it Joe just said to me, yes, it's classic Doctor Who.
• 2:02:25
  It's often really badly directed.
• 2:02:27
  Just you know, right by today. Yeah, it is freaky and slow and
• 2:02:32
  unimaginatively short and done in a hurry.
• 2:02:35
  And we'll have to, I actually think the Rebus operation is,
• 2:02:39
  might be, yes, the best directed story of the season.
• 2:02:42
  I think. I think I'm, I think Andrews of
• 2:02:45
  Tara, yeah, maybe Tara, yeah. And maybe Armageddon Factor,
• 2:02:48
  although it can't help being boring.
• 2:02:50
  It's just, you know, like all of the stuff, the Shrivens all is
• 2:02:52
  really poorly shot and isn't probably covered and stuff.
• 2:02:56
  It is very funny, you know, because we have two particular
• 2:02:58
  types of Doctor Who fan here. Yeah, Stones and Blood sort of
• 2:03:01
  morphs from Hinchcliffe horror into a Graham Williams sort of
• 2:03:05
  joke fest. And we've got one person here
• 2:03:08
  saying, well, thank God it got another person going.
• 2:03:11
  Well, I wish you hadn't done that, yeah.
• 2:03:15
  Come one, come all with pretty come hum stuff.
• 2:03:18
  Brilliant. All right, Jan, what do you
• 2:03:21
  think? Keep or yeat?
• 2:03:23
  Well, I, I get all of Toby's points, but those are some of
• 2:03:29
  the things I like about it. So I'm well into the sort of
• 2:03:35
  stone circle stuff. Anyway, I went to Avebury
• 2:03:38
  earlier this year for my birthday, which is where they
• 2:03:40
  have children, the Stones. And I think, you know, Toby's
• 2:03:44
  right, the idea of The Walking Stones is such a mad Doctor Who
• 2:03:48
  idea. Not entirely successful, you
• 2:03:50
  might say. But yeah, again, probably about
• 2:03:53
  as successfully as you're going to execute that kind of idea.
• 2:03:58
  Yes, the the the video rather than film.
• 2:04:02
  And I get why they did it for a production reason as well, but
• 2:04:05
  they it sort of gives it a grubbiness that I find quite
• 2:04:09
  appealing. It reminds me kind of like of
• 2:04:12
  Survivors in a weird way. It doesn't in any other way
• 2:04:15
  really feel like Survivors, but just something about that OB
• 2:04:20
  video gives me that vibe. And just generally I like the
• 2:04:24
  kind of mundane, boring, middle-aged side of the story,
• 2:04:29
  how it butts up against the glamorous, fantastic, science
• 2:04:34
  fictional side of it. Debris.
• 2:04:37
  I don't know if I'm just enamoured by his again, boring
• 2:04:41
  middle agedness, but I really enjoy him.
• 2:04:43
  He's such a 70s man in Doctor Who and you sort of imagine when
• 2:04:50
  he and his friends aren't doing the cult stuff, they're having
• 2:04:52
  key swapping parties. With that woman from Come over,
• 2:05:01
  Mr. De Fries if you have to. What's her name?
• 2:05:06
  Yeah, and I was thinking I'd quite like more of that, but
• 2:05:09
  maybe not that particular thing in Doctor Who.
• 2:05:13
  And the same goes for the coupler out camping, because
• 2:05:17
  that scene is really quite distressing and it's realness
• 2:05:21
  and it sort of comes out of nowhere and also goes nowhere.
• 2:05:24
  It's just there and you get the most gruesome death that's not
• 2:05:28
  connected to anyone and I don't think they really acknowledge it
• 2:05:32
  for the rest of the story. Did they maybe forgotten that?
• 2:05:34
  No, they're just there to die. They're just there to die.
• 2:05:39
  I also think it's a shame that doesn't go anywhere because that
• 2:05:43
  stuff is my favorite part of the story.
• 2:05:45
  And I'm, you know, rather tediously.
• 2:05:47
  The 2 1/2 episodes that are about that are my favorite
• 2:05:52
  things about it. It almost seems to me like when
• 2:05:55
  they got that scene with the couple out camping, they were
• 2:05:58
  like, oh, we're getting a little bit close to being scary again.
• 2:06:02
  Something else, because I can't remember this part.
• 2:06:06
  It's probably Part 2 where Tom says his skull was smashed to
• 2:06:10
  pulp, which is an extraordinary image to put in a children's TV
• 2:06:14
  show. I'm also a sucker for any
• 2:06:17
  mention of Wales, so there's like a mention of Bangor
• 2:06:20
  University and all the stuff about Bryn Gwuthon and the
• 2:06:24
  Welsh, Welsh Gorset and all that stuff.
• 2:06:26
  Love all that stuff. That fool, Edwell Morgan.
• 2:06:32
  Fisher's done his research because these are like arcane
• 2:06:36
  Welsh names and words, so he's been looking.
• 2:06:40
  I actually, I think the cliffhanger to Part 2 is really
• 2:06:44
  good. I really like that cliffhanger
• 2:06:46
  with the paintings and maybe I I'm misremembering how it's
• 2:06:49
  executed, but I think that's a really neat way to reveal who
• 2:06:54
  the villain is. I do think the switch the
• 2:06:59
  spaceship, well, the first thing is it always happens earlier in
• 2:07:02
  the story than I remember, and it's always disappointing to me,
• 2:07:07
  mostly because I think there's still plenty of story left to
• 2:07:10
  tell down on the ground around the stones, and it feels like we
• 2:07:14
  abandoned that before we need to.
• 2:07:17
  I suppose there's another production consideration there.
• 2:07:19
  We're like, we're not building a spaceship step set for just one
• 2:07:23
  episode. So they kind of got to spread it
• 2:07:26
  across. And I don't know if there's a
• 2:07:29
  way I would have found that satisfying, but I don't find
• 2:07:32
  this version of it particularly satisfying.
• 2:07:35
  I do like Amelia Rumford. I agree with Toby.
• 2:07:39
  You can see her grasping out into the ether for her lines,
• 2:07:43
  hoping that they will arrive in their mouth.
• 2:07:45
  And they do get there eventually.
• 2:07:47
  But I think it's so charming how much Tom clearly enjoys being
• 2:07:51
  with her and. The bit in episode 1 you know
• 2:07:53
  where she's doing all the dates and the pain on Thomas face when
• 2:07:57
  he realizes he's been out eccentric by this woman and it's
• 2:08:01
  like oh fuck it I'm a bitch for the rest of the story right?
• 2:08:04
  It is an unusually long introductory scene, but it might
• 2:08:08
  have been shorter if she'd got those words out a little
• 2:08:11
  quicker. The bits with the together as a
• 2:08:14
  doctor and companion trying to solve the mystery are just so
• 2:08:17
  lovely. I think when she wants.
• 2:08:19
  To run off and capture my God in the cause of violence is our
• 2:08:25
  duty to capture that. Creature and and they have a
• 2:08:29
  long conversation as well in part three that is not held on
• 2:08:34
  one shot, I don't think. But it's it's not very much
• 2:08:37
  camera movement, but they are really compelling and I think
• 2:08:41
  that particular version of the scene works better than it
• 2:08:43
  doesn't. Power of crawl.
• 2:08:46
  So yeah, I mainly like the 1st 2 1/2 episodes, but I do think
• 2:08:51
  those 2 1/2 episodes are great and therefore it's worth putting
• 2:08:56
  through. And one last thing is that I
• 2:08:58
  assume this is Quentin Tarantino's favorite, favorite
• 2:09:02
  Doctor Who story because there's so many feat shots in that first
• 2:09:05
  episode. Quite alarming unless you're
• 2:09:09
  into that. No kink shaming here.
• 2:09:11
  Brilliant. All right, so that goes through.
• 2:09:13
  And finally, Joe, hello. You know, they say in when
• 2:09:17
  Remembrance of the Dives went out and everyone was so happy
• 2:09:20
  about that cafe scene and they said, you know, these quiet
• 2:09:23
  moments and Doctor, they just don't happen.
• 2:09:25
  Hurrah, Bennoronovich, you revolutionize Dr. Bullshit.
• 2:09:28
  Man, the scenes between the Doctor and Amelia Rumford in
• 2:09:31
  Part 3 of this, but they're just sitting in the house in that
• 2:09:36
  domestic setting. It's like a whole episode of
• 2:09:39
  that Cafe scene. Those scenes are possibly my
• 2:09:42
  favorite scenes in the whole of the classic run.
• 2:09:45
  There's so much warmth and wit between the two of them and.
• 2:09:51
  Listen Einstein's special theory of relativity.
• 2:09:54
  Said that, you cannot travel in space faster than the speed of
• 2:09:58
  light because the speed of light is a limiting factor.
• 2:10:02
  If you travelled more than 180,000 miles per second, you'd
• 2:10:06
  encounter the time distortion effect.
• 2:10:10
  Yes, yes. Well, it's nearly right.
• 2:10:13
  The fact that she didn't become a companion is a crime show.
• 2:10:16
  She is a proto Evelyn Smythe, right?
• 2:10:18
  And you can see Gary Russell thinking, yeah, Amelia Rumford
• 2:10:21
  maybe tone down a bit, a bit more sharper and better on the
• 2:10:25
  lines. But fuck, those scenes are so,
• 2:10:29
  so good. I think as an anniversary story,
• 2:10:32
  because it is bad technically isn't it 100 and 5000 hundred?
• 2:10:37
  We didn't get the cake scene, but we did get a story that was
• 2:10:40
  packed full of horror and science fiction and wit and
• 2:10:44
  great characters and a wonderful villain that talks straight out
• 2:10:47
  the screen and all of those things that we love about Doctor
• 2:10:50
  Who. It's all in there and that great
• 2:10:52
  mishmash. But the thing I love most about
• 2:10:55
  this and the thing I think David Fisher absolutely brings to
• 2:11:00
  Doctor Who is his wit. This is such a funny script and
• 2:11:05
  I think it's don't shoot me. I think I find this more laugh
• 2:11:11
  out loud funny than City of Death.
• 2:11:12
  I think that line for line, I think this is a funnier script.
• 2:11:15
  And if you will indulge me, I've got a few lines for you here.
• 2:11:21
  I mean, he goes in episode 1. Well, I'm no fashion expert.
• 2:11:24
  She looks them up and down and goes, no.
• 2:11:28
  Does your Kaliak ride a bicycle? It's closing in fast on us.
• 2:11:35
  No, it's impossible. No, it's not.
• 2:11:37
  We're standing still. It's just one great line after
• 2:11:40
  another in the cause of science. All of that was it.
• 2:11:43
  We'll track it to its layer. And he just goes.
• 2:11:46
  Come on. They should breakthrough runners
• 2:11:50
  if something very nasty was coming after you.
• 2:11:52
  Because something very nasty will be coming after you.
• 2:11:54
  But what about you? Don't worry about me.
• 2:11:56
  I'll be doing plenty of that in any case.
• 2:11:59
  It's just so quick. It's Moffit good.
• 2:12:02
  It's that fast. And the actors are good enough
• 2:12:05
  to bass it back and forth. Are you gonna, Are you supposed
• 2:12:07
  to offer me a last toffee apple, a hearty breakfast or something?
• 2:12:10
  A free pardon time, Rust, dust, Pieces of fluff.
• 2:12:15
  How would you like it if you condemned an innocent humanoid
• 2:12:17
  to death just because you've got a bit of fluff stuck your
• 2:12:19
  brocket wheel. Oh, I got that wrong sprocket
• 2:12:22
  wheel or when what if you've got in there too late?
• 2:12:27
  I've just been executed. You know, it's so so funny this.
• 2:12:31
  But really the reason I would put this through above all the
• 2:12:34
  other reasons that you guys have said don't be you're mad is all
• 2:12:38
  the ladies. I just think they're all
• 2:12:41
  wonderful. I mean the campus of Cesare of
• 2:12:43
  Diplos staring at the screen going Oh, green.
• 2:12:49
  That's that's very me. I did spend a lot of time
• 2:12:53
  thinking about painting. You know all of those people
• 2:12:56
  green all that you know in but someone had the job of painting.
• 2:13:02
  Oh, Vivian dating Vivian plays de colletage which is.
• 2:13:06
  Nice. Because we nice work if you can
• 2:13:08
  get it. I think on that when he ripped
• 2:13:10
  off the key, doesn't he? 01 last thing K9 and Fisher can
• 2:13:15
  write K9. He's at his most archist, his
• 2:13:17
  most silliest, his most protective, and his most sniffy
• 2:13:21
  as well. I still don't understand about
• 2:13:23
  hyperspace. Well, who does?
• 2:13:25
  I do. Oh, shut up, canine.
• 2:13:28
  It's so funny. Canine's Canine's best bit in
• 2:13:31
  this story though, is where he's really brave when he fights off
• 2:13:33
  the ogre. I love that.
• 2:13:35
  He goes, I trust they were so strong, but I love that.
• 2:13:39
  That's brilliant. What?
• 2:13:41
  Happens. He is a word.
• 2:13:42
  It's like. Neat, all references to tennis
• 2:13:46
  memory arranged. Oh great, I think they've really
• 2:13:50
  got the human right with Rebus, Pirate Planet, Stones of Blood,
• 2:13:55
  and Andrew Zatara. There is the collective wig in
• 2:13:59
  those stories. It just blasts most of the rest
• 2:14:03
  of Doctor Who out there. But I mean, how do we go from
• 2:14:05
  that to Terminus for fucks sake? What happens?
• 2:14:08
  It's marvellous. All.
• 2:14:11
  Right, so that one goes through. We have two more stories left,
• 2:14:17
  but before we move on to our next one, it's time for Toby to
• 2:14:22
  read the comment by Big Orange. Michael, I have to say, give me
• 2:14:29
  a big. Big.
• 2:14:32
  Give me an orange. Orange.
• 2:14:35
  Give me a Michael. Michael.
• 2:14:38
  I'm going to take the Michael and see what he says about the
• 2:14:41
  season 16. He says it's Graham Williams
• 2:14:45
  best season as person. Tom is confident, Mary Tam is a
• 2:14:49
  superb counterpoint and the quest for the key has potential.
• 2:14:53
  The season is top heavy with two great stories before it stumbles
• 2:14:57
  to the finish line. Ribos Rebos.
• 2:14:59
  Sublime Robert Holmes coupled with great performance.
• 2:15:04
  Sublime Robert Holmes script coupled with great performances.
• 2:15:07
  Pirate give Anthony Reed credits for bringing Douglas Adams to 2
• 2:15:12
  Stones. A tale of two hearts.
• 2:15:14
  The first half on Earth it crackles along with a plum.
• 2:15:17
  Then we'd go to hyperspace and it loses momentum.
• 2:15:20
  Androids. Great location work and a
• 2:15:23
  scenery chewing adversary. Cruel.
• 2:15:25
  I've been defending it since and I refuse to apologise for
• 2:15:29
  finding it better than fans think it is.
• 2:15:31
  You'll have had a sexy time with us then.
• 2:15:35
  Your big orange will be in your mouth factor.
• 2:15:39
  It's not just no I didn't. Factor it's not just RTD who
• 2:15:44
  can't stick to the landing. Can't stick the landing for a
• 2:15:48
  season. There we go.
• 2:15:50
  You make that sound like poetry. You know, that was amazing.
• 2:15:54
  Yeah, well, I mean, I nearly tried to rhyme momentum with a
• 2:15:58
  plum, but I chickened out just at the end.
• 2:16:03
  Yeah, Next up, Rob Davidson. Leonard says such a strong
• 2:16:07
  season that there are no deaf stories, only one or only sorry,
• 2:16:12
  only two or three deaf episodes. Despite having great material to
• 2:16:17
  work with, Tom is at his most bored for the first half of the
• 2:16:20
  season. His ex Entrust has a surly edge
• 2:16:23
  to it, which could not disagree with more.
• 2:16:27
  Then he inexplicably regains his mojo in Power of Crawl.
• 2:16:33
  The truly delightful Glenn Fitzgerald says an absolute
• 2:16:38
  Corker of a season. There's a couple of stories I'm
• 2:16:41
  not keen on, but it's my favorite Doctor and companion.
• 2:16:44
  A delicious mixture of sci-fi and horror with some slapstick
• 2:16:47
  thrown in. Some great characters and great
• 2:16:49
  attention to detail in the sets. Tom is definitely loving the
• 2:16:53
  role here. I agree more with Glenn than I
• 2:16:56
  do with Rob. Sorry, Rob.
• 2:16:58
  Well, I've got the human palindrome.
• 2:16:59
  Who shouldn't call me? Call me.
• 2:17:01
  That's my compromise. I know.
• 2:17:02
  Yeah, call me. It's wonderful having to step
• 2:17:06
  away from horror movie pastiches.
• 2:17:08
  The production team turned to literary inspirations, which
• 2:17:11
  makes for tremendous fun. Mary Tam is superb as Romana, an
• 2:17:15
  ice queen who thaws considerably over the course of the season.
• 2:17:18
  Slap bang in the middle of the imperial phase.
• 2:17:22
  Excellent. He's available for podcasts and
• 2:17:26
  hand jobs. OK, OK.
• 2:17:28
  All right, So it's back to Toby now for the next story.
• 2:17:37
  What do you want to keep or eat? Well, I was getting very worried
• 2:17:40
  that I would be left with one story that I would have binned
• 2:17:44
  and one story that I'm sort of waiting to be persuaded.
• 2:17:48
  And it's the one I'm, I'm forcing myself to maybe be be
• 2:17:54
  forced into reconsidering, which is always, I think it's good to
• 2:17:57
  have an open mind, but my mind is completely closed in terms of
• 2:18:00
  my next choice. Because I am definitive in my
• 2:18:04
  opinion of the Androids of Tara, because the Androids of Tara is
• 2:18:12
  a story that I think is magnificent.
• 2:18:18
  It's, I think it's a 10 out of 10 for me.
• 2:18:20
  I, I have sympathy with what Rob said about Tom Baker being a bit
• 2:18:26
  glib in, in places, for example, I mean that, that cliffhanger
• 2:18:31
  that you mentioned to, to Rebus episode 2, it's not just that
• 2:18:36
  Tom has to do something. It's Tom's decided to do
• 2:18:38
  something. He's doing a sort of, oh, now
• 2:18:40
  wait a minute, sort of acting a bit like he does at the end of
• 2:18:43
  Sun makers one where he sort of delivered brutally tries to
• 2:18:46
  undermine the cliffhanger by going well, instead of looking
• 2:18:49
  shocked, should I look sort of as as if I've just missed the
• 2:18:52
  bus or if I'm slightly bored by something and and it's and it's
• 2:18:55
  and it actually serves to undermine the drama.
• 2:18:57
  And that's where he's being a little bit naughty.
• 2:18:59
  And he does do that and he's daring the director to tell him
• 2:19:02
  not to. And that's, that's again, an
• 2:19:04
  element of, of him during this period that I think is not to
• 2:19:07
  his credit, but I think in and when he has somebody like
• 2:19:11
  Beatrix Lehman, who he clearly respects, he's on his best
• 2:19:14
  behaviour and sometimes in great awe.
• 2:19:16
  And that's to his credit. Although again, if he's with an
• 2:19:18
  actor he's not wild about, he can be a bit, again, he could be
• 2:19:21
  a bit tricky or disdainful or dismissive.
• 2:19:23
  And that is again, a side of him that's not not the not the best
• 2:19:27
  in androids of Tara. He is facing off against the
• 2:19:30
  number one. I'll try and do the three
• 2:19:31
  things. The number one shining thing in
• 2:19:35
  the Androids of Tara is one of the greatest Doctor Who villains
• 2:19:38
  of all time, the magnificent, incomparable Peter Jeffrey, who
• 2:19:42
  pitches this absolutely perfectly.
• 2:19:44
  And Tom Baker's not going to Dick around with an actor with
• 2:19:47
  that much classical heft and comic timing.
• 2:19:50
  He's one of those people who manages to, he's not an
• 2:19:53
  attractive man. Peter Jeffrey in the sense that
• 2:19:55
  he's quite, you know, he's quite warty and he's got an enormous
• 2:19:58
  nose and yet he's extremely naughtily sexy.
• 2:20:01
  There's something absolutely, you know, he's absolutely sort
• 2:20:04
  of dashing in a villainous sort of way.
• 2:20:07
  It's also, I think, apart from the the flies being done up in
• 2:20:10
  the stones of blood, he has the most overt reference to sexual
• 2:20:14
  intercourse in the whole of classic coup when he says that
• 2:20:18
  he once granted Madame Lamia a certain courtesy, which I think
• 2:20:23
  is a delightful euphemism. Hang on, hang on.
• 2:20:27
  No, no, no. It's the time warrior, right?
• 2:20:30
  Old. No, I thought it'd be a bit too
• 2:20:32
  old for that sort of thing. Yes, yes.
• 2:20:35
  And he also, after a a glorious sword fight, gets the the this
• 2:20:41
  is some people say, oh, but he doesn't get a comeuppance.
• 2:20:44
  The whole point is that at his comeuppance, he utters the
• 2:20:48
  immortal line. Next time I shall not be so
• 2:20:51
  lenient. That's the joke.
• 2:20:52
  And what a glorious And then he doesn't jump.
• 2:20:56
  He does a proper dive off the backwards.
• 2:20:59
  He's he is absolutely glorious. It is one of the best.
• 2:21:03
  I'm so glad because Peter Jeffrey wonderful.
• 2:21:06
  He did the macro terror to please his kids essentially.
• 2:21:08
  But the pilot, he's fine as the pilot, but it's not it's not the
• 2:21:11
  best part. So it's so wonderful that he
• 2:21:13
  gets to come back and have such a great time doing this.
• 2:21:16
  And he's an actor. He's never given a bad
• 2:21:18
  performance. And I think he's an actor.
• 2:21:19
  He was in so much but that we sort of rather took for granted
• 2:21:22
  because he was always there and always good.
• 2:21:24
  But he's an absolutely terrific actor.
• 2:21:27
  Jeffrey, and I remember when he died and he got his Guardian
• 2:21:29
  obituary described him as the Horatio Horatio of actors, IE he
• 2:21:34
  always played sort of, you know, solid supporting roles, but that
• 2:21:38
  he did no harm in. And I think that was damning him
• 2:21:41
  with faint praise. He was actually a fantastic, I
• 2:21:45
  would say, leading actor and leading character actor who
• 2:21:48
  always brought an extra dimension to parts that
• 2:21:51
  sometimes didn't deserve them. And then when given a part like
• 2:21:56
  the the the Grendel, he absolutely shows his worth.
• 2:22:00
  And Tom Baker knows absolutely not to mess around with that
• 2:22:04
  because he would end up looking stupid.
• 2:22:07
  And actually, I'd credit Simon Lack as well as a less
• 2:22:10
  interesting part as part as Zadik, because Tom Baker's
• 2:22:14
  trying to fool around there and Lacks having none of it.
• 2:22:17
  And and it leaves Tom sort of have to fall into line really
• 2:22:21
  and not and not do too much because again, that would kind
• 2:22:25
  of end up making exposing his shenanigans for for for what
• 2:22:29
  they are. So I actually think this is
• 2:22:31
  possibly the the last great Tom. But well, I don't mind Tom Baker
• 2:22:36
  in season 18 as much as some do, but there is a melancholy, a
• 2:22:39
  necessary melancholy over it. But I think this is a great Tom
• 2:22:43
  Baker performance. I think Tom Baker is absolute.
• 2:22:46
  So my second thing is Tom Baker in this I think is absolutely
• 2:22:50
  and consistently good. And he doesn't fall into any of
• 2:22:52
  his excesses. He he, he pulls into line and
• 2:22:55
  him when he's, he's funny when he's supposed to be, he's
• 2:22:58
  dramatic when he's supposed to be.
• 2:22:59
  He also does what all the great doctors do at their greatest
• 2:23:03
  moments, which is that he assumes the mantle of the fool
• 2:23:07
  to hide his true intelligence. And that is Doctor Who's modus
• 2:23:11
  operandum is, is to is to use wit and guile to, to undermine
• 2:23:20
  pomposity and power. And I think he's he's absolutely
• 2:23:24
  terrific in this. And it's it's it's told his
• 2:23:27
  best. He even he even gets away with
• 2:23:29
  doing that bit when he sticks his head outside the summer
• 2:23:31
  Palace, having been betrayed by Karen Kendall and says liar that
• 2:23:36
  again, I think and and and I think it's cast to the hilt, you
• 2:23:41
  know, and you've got Declan Mulholland sort of tipping his
• 2:23:43
  caps or and and and Cyril shaps in a you know, in a small part
• 2:23:49
  and a magnificent hat. You, you know, you're doing all
• 2:23:52
  right. And there's something rather
• 2:23:53
  lovely. I love Lewis Baxter as Lamia as
• 2:23:55
  well, and I do love her little hair things that she has going
• 2:23:58
  on on down there. And, and I actually like, I like
• 2:24:02
  the, the the fact that they do dispense with the key to time
• 2:24:06
  straight away. And I don't see that as a
• 2:24:08
  problem because it would be, it would be naff if every time the
• 2:24:11
  key to time was something important or something that took
• 2:24:14
  them ages to get. And the fact that they just find
• 2:24:16
  it and then have a different adventure, I think mixes things
• 2:24:19
  up a bit. It's very nice.
• 2:24:20
  But the third thing about it is got to be David Fisher, who is
• 2:24:23
  the find of the season, because we've quoted some good lines
• 2:24:26
  from other stories. This is awash rhythm that takes
• 2:24:29
  me back or forward. That's the trouble with time
• 2:24:31
  travel. You never can remember.
• 2:24:32
  Would you mind not standing on my chest?
• 2:24:34
  My hat's on fire. I mean, I think it's pitch, but
• 2:24:39
  it's beautifully written in, in that sense, all of Grendel's
• 2:24:42
  lines and, and, and just the idea of setting it on a, it has
• 2:24:48
  its cake and eats it. It's a historical planet, but
• 2:24:50
  with futuristic things. And that's quite and the lovely
• 2:24:53
  sort of idea that the artifices, you know, the, the people who
• 2:24:56
  work on the androids instead of being, you know, stunning, you
• 2:25:01
  know, top scientists, they're the peasants.
• 2:25:03
  They're the, you know, they're, they're the workers.
• 2:25:05
  And I think that's a, that's a sort of witty reverse of all we
• 2:25:08
  understand about science fiction.
• 2:25:09
  So I think it's, it's, it is a bit like a Sunday afternoon
• 2:25:13
  adventure serial. But what it has is it has that
• 2:25:16
  extra dimension of Doctor Who's cheekiness, it's charm.
• 2:25:19
  It allows the actors to go that extra mile and it not seem a
• 2:25:23
  little bit stupid because it is in Doctor Who.
• 2:25:25
  And I think Doctor Who is many things.
• 2:25:27
  And Doctor Who has turned me on for being exciting, for being
• 2:25:30
  scary, for being funny, for being out there, for being zany,
• 2:25:34
  for being crazy. But as I get older, what I
• 2:25:36
  really love about Doctor Who that I think so little
• 2:25:39
  television has is that Doctor Who at its best is charming.
• 2:25:44
  And this is an utterly charming piece of television where the
• 2:25:48
  humor isn't people showing off and annoying you, it's that
• 2:25:52
  they're doing it because they're fun to be around and they want
• 2:25:54
  to make you be entertained and have a good time.
• 2:25:58
  But they know when to deploy it and how to deploy it.
• 2:26:01
  And of course, it gives this podcast its title.
• 2:26:05
  We're talking about witty lines. Now.
• 2:26:09
  We need to discuss this. Or because Fisher, in his
• 2:26:13
  version of the novelization I've just read, removed that line,
• 2:26:18
  which leads me to suspect this may have been a Tom Baker adlib
• 2:26:23
  where he went. No, no, no, no.
• 2:26:25
  That was not in my original script.
• 2:26:27
  Oh, I'm here to tell you gentlemen as well.
• 2:26:30
  He also removed. Next time I will not be so
• 2:26:34
  lenient from the Ed Lord I know well.
• 2:26:38
  Well, sometimes the creator of something doesn't realise what
• 2:26:41
  it is about their thing. That is great.
• 2:26:43
  Hello, George Lucas. But I, I, I adore Androids of
• 2:26:48
  Tara. It's a 10 out of 10 for me.
• 2:26:50
  Again, possibly because it's so unusual that if all Doctor Who
• 2:26:54
  was like this, I probably wouldn't think it's so good.
• 2:26:57
  But the fact is not all Doctor Who is like this.
• 2:26:59
  So it's a charming interlude that does everything that it
• 2:27:02
  does on its own terms very, very, very well.
• 2:27:05
  And I, I don't often seek it out, but when I do, I absolutely
• 2:27:09
  fall into it and, and love it. Wonderful.
• 2:27:13
  Joan, what do you think? You eating it?
• 2:27:16
  No, I can't say I love it as much as Toby.
• 2:27:21
  I don't think anyone could. After that, ask you why it's.
• 2:27:28
  Easily going through, I'll say that straight away.
• 2:27:30
  It is the story that features the biggest and most beautiful
• 2:27:34
  clock. I said clock in Doctor Who
• 2:27:36
  history and it goes without saying that it looks gorgeous
• 2:27:41
  throughout. It has actual night shooting on
• 2:27:43
  film and like another story we could mention.
• 2:27:47
  Location Episode 4. Yeah, it really looks great.
• 2:27:52
  And both the location and the studio stuff is very nicely lit.
• 2:27:57
  The sword fight in particular. I think it's so smart from a
• 2:28:01
  production standpoint to do what they did in this series of
• 2:28:03
  having those future historicals. I think you said earlier, Joe,
• 2:28:07
  is this the first time they've tried that approach to do a sort
• 2:28:11
  of period piece that's set in the future?
• 2:28:14
  No, Teledon, of course, yeah. Basically historical with
• 2:28:20
  lasers. And it's something, it's such a
• 2:28:24
  smart idea because there's something they know the BBC can
• 2:28:26
  do really well. It is a shame therefore that we
• 2:28:30
  did get the tar and wood based hat to come up at some point,
• 2:28:33
  which looks so bad and it especially stands out in such a
• 2:28:38
  handsome looking stories. It's just a bizarre little
• 2:28:41
  moment that doesn't even need to be there, really.
• 2:28:44
  It turns out it's a robot. It's not actually a beast.
• 2:28:47
  Well, go read the book. It's all in there.
• 2:28:49
  OK, it's in the book. Yeah, it's, I mean like
• 2:28:51
  fortunately Lamia can do really convincing people, but terrible
• 2:28:55
  least. Yes, fair enough.
• 2:28:58
  But that aside, I think there are very few other stories in
• 2:29:01
  this era that are so successful in executing the thing that they
• 2:29:05
  want to achieve. I wonder if I'd like both this
• 2:29:09
  and Rebus operation more if you switch them in the order of the
• 2:29:12
  series. Now I know that doesn't quite
• 2:29:14
  make sense because you couldn't have this strange double s thing
• 2:29:19
  happening in in an opener. I don't think it'd be just far
• 2:29:22
  too confusing to introduce a companion and then do that
• 2:29:25
  double s thing. But just in terms of the tone
• 2:29:28
  and the energy and like Toby said, the the charm of it, I I
• 2:29:33
  feel like that's where I want them in the season.
• 2:29:37
  Agree. It's it's really neat to have
• 2:29:38
  the opening segment discovered immediately and then show Romana
• 2:29:44
  having the book smarts but not the Street Mart St. smarts.
• 2:29:48
  She's capable, but she's naive, which mostly strikes a good
• 2:29:52
  balance. But I would say that even though
• 2:29:55
  Mary Tam is sort of the star of this story in a way, Romana does
• 2:30:00
  get repeatedly captured and imprisoned for about 2/3 of it,
• 2:30:05
  which is a shame. You kind of need that to happen
• 2:30:08
  just practically speaking so she can play the other parts.
• 2:30:12
  But I especially think. Escape showing on the horse
• 2:30:14
  though. Go Charger she.
• 2:30:15
  Does. That is a fantastic moment.
• 2:30:18
  She also gets captured on a horse pretty feebly at the end
• 2:30:21
  of part three, I think, which is a shame.
• 2:30:26
  I know you don't. It doesn't sound like a heart's
• 2:30:29
  in it, to be honest. The Society of Tara feels new,
• 2:30:34
  but it also feels really easily gettable for an audience.
• 2:30:38
  Lamia is great. As Toby said, the hair is
• 2:30:42
  fantastic. And again, it's one of those
• 2:30:45
  parts that just wouldn't have been given to a woman, a woman
• 2:30:48
  in previous seasons. So even if it's a a novelty, I
• 2:30:53
  suppose it's worth doing. And she's great.
• 2:30:58
  I love the part too. Cliffhanger because it's
• 2:31:00
  absolutely mental. It's such a bold can bit from
• 2:31:04
  the doctor to do what he does. I mean, imagine if he got that
• 2:31:07
  wrong. Not a gentle tap.
• 2:31:12
  No. He smashes us going yes, he
• 2:31:15
  does. We've seen the Android, the den.
• 2:31:20
  I enjoy the bit in part three I think, where the fake from My
• 2:31:24
  Honor tries to kill the Doctor. Although it always seemed
• 2:31:27
  confusing to me that you've got all these soldiers waiting
• 2:31:30
  outside waiting for that thing to happen.
• 2:31:32
  Whereas if they just went in that fucking house, they could
• 2:31:35
  have shot him immediately. And then at the bit after that
• 2:31:40
  we're they're having, they're having the chat like a bit of
• 2:31:45
  chit chat with the people, the person who just tried to kill
• 2:31:48
  the doctor, which I don't know if that's historically accurate,
• 2:31:50
  but it feels very true to life and very funny.
• 2:31:56
  And the gag with K9 at the end on the boat, it's very sweet.
• 2:31:59
  Gone from the book. Going.
• 2:32:01
  Oh, no. Yeah, well.
• 2:32:03
  It's the anti Terrance. It's the anti Terrance Dicks.
• 2:32:07
  It's basically so you know all the things you like about this,
• 2:32:10
  I'm going to rewrite them. And I will say this.
• 2:32:13
  Yeah, that novelization outshines Terrance says by
• 2:32:17
  several dozen. And all the back stories he
• 2:32:19
  gives people and the extra jokes and the replacements he gives
• 2:32:23
  for all the things I said he's taken out.
• 2:32:25
  Oh, just gorgeous. So it's a great read.
• 2:32:28
  I guess that canine thing as well is a is a visual gag.
• 2:32:31
  So maybe it I can I can understand that.
• 2:32:35
  And I will also say it's always nice to see Cyril Sharps as.
• 2:32:40
  Well. I did watch this on a Sunday
• 2:32:44
  afternoon. I made plans to do that and I
• 2:32:47
  did it and it was delightful. It's never been like a personal
• 2:32:52
  favorite of mine, but again, it's just far too much good
• 2:32:56
  stuff in this and it's easily going through, as I said.
• 2:33:00
  Joe, what's the name, Toby of the fellow who plays swordmaster
• 2:33:04
  Farah Paul Lavers. He tells the best behind the
• 2:33:08
  scenes story I've ever heard on the documentary on this.
• 2:33:12
  He goes right. Michael Hayes is like, right,
• 2:33:14
  you're going to storm the castle tonight.
• 2:33:16
  We're doing it tonight. OK, He goes Right.
• 2:33:18
  But they're asleep up there. OK, so I knew you should make a
• 2:33:23
  load of fussing noise, but quietly don't wake them up.
• 2:33:27
  All right, He goes and there's only we can only afford two
• 2:33:30
  other guards. So I want you to make it feel as
• 2:33:32
  if there's a huge army around. He's like, don't make noise.
• 2:33:37
  Go in, make a big dramatic scene.
• 2:33:39
  There's only two of us. Make it feel like I've got
• 2:33:41
  hundreds. Oh, fuck it.
• 2:33:42
  I'll just do it like it's a great, great documentary.
• 2:33:46
  And clearly, everyone at the best, I'm making it.
• 2:33:49
  I love it. I just love this.
• 2:33:51
  But I really like the detail that's given to the smaller
• 2:33:56
  characters in this. I love the Archimand right in
• 2:34:00
  this because he's clearly very politically savvy, but also sort
• 2:34:06
  of smarmy and and hiding all that behind the church.
• 2:34:09
  The bit where he goes. Oh, dear, dear, dear.
• 2:34:12
  He didn't look well the last time I saw him when he knows.
• 2:34:15
  Oh well, what Grendel's got planning And please go and read
• 2:34:19
  the book. All right, He's been playing the
• 2:34:20
  system for. Years.
• 2:34:22
  And they took away his. Hat in the book as well, right?
• 2:34:25
  What's wrong with you? David Fischer, Budgetary thing?
• 2:34:28
  Madame Lamia? Lois Baxter?
• 2:34:30
  That's an amazing character. Very tragic, subordinate
• 2:34:36
  character, beautifully played, wonderfully explored again in
• 2:34:39
  the book. She gets so much more to do in
• 2:34:41
  the book. He clearly loves that character.
• 2:34:43
  I really like the fact that she genuinely, properly loves Count
• 2:34:46
  Grendel. For what reason I don't know,
• 2:34:49
  but it isn't for the power or the money he yields.
• 2:34:51
  I think she genuinely is in love with it.
• 2:34:53
  It's the size of his courtesy, I think.
• 2:34:56
  Oh really? No, Interesting.
• 2:35:00
  I think he's quite pretty but. And she's willing to murder
• 2:35:04
  anyone he demands to carry his favour.
• 2:35:07
  And that's really chilling. Right.
• 2:35:10
  And I love the girls as well. I've just seen that.
• 2:35:12
  Yeah. But Lois Baxter, man, that is,
• 2:35:14
  she has the most beautiful eyes in the whole of, well, stunning.
• 2:35:18
  I've never seen her in anything else.
• 2:35:20
  I oh, I saw her play Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream Ludlow
• 2:35:25
  Festival when I was a boy. Yeah.
• 2:35:26
  Yeah. She.
• 2:35:28
  And she's been in, she's been in various other things.
• 2:35:30
  And I think she was at one point married to David Savile, who is
• 2:35:36
  Lieutenant Carstairs and Windsor in the clause of Axos and
• 2:35:39
  Colonel Crighton in the Five Doctors.
• 2:35:42
  Wonderful. She's superb in this.
• 2:35:45
  And yo, and you're right, this row wouldn't have gone to a
• 2:35:47
  woman in Hinchcliffe time. And so we are learning
• 2:35:51
  something. Women can act.
• 2:35:54
  There's like you guys have all said, the sunshine, the colours.
• 2:35:57
  I mean that stained glass window in the throne room that is so
• 2:36:01
  beautiful. That's it.
• 2:36:03
  And beautifully lit, the designs of the whole thing.
• 2:36:06
  It's one of the prettiest. It's like a feast on the eyes.
• 2:36:10
  I think this story and I just love it.
• 2:36:13
  It is a perfect summer Sunday afternoon Doctor Who adventure.
• 2:36:16
  I've written, you know, and, and yeah, love it to pieces when
• 2:36:21
  Romana is just walking through the countryside at the start
• 2:36:24
  with that tracer in that fabulous pink purple outfit.
• 2:36:28
  Beautiful costume. Yeah.
• 2:36:30
  Tea, Tara. She.
• 2:36:32
  Does say it's what everyone on Tara is wearing this year, but
• 2:36:36
  obviously no one else on Tara is wearing anything remotely like
• 2:36:40
  it. Like Fishers clearly have no
• 2:36:42
  interest at all in the Keats time right in this one.
• 2:36:45
  He has to find it right at the start and then in Stones Blood
• 2:36:48
  he hasn't found it right at the end.
• 2:36:50
  And in both cases, neither really has too much influence on
• 2:36:54
  the story. But the joy of this one is he's
• 2:36:56
  like, she's so competent. She does find it within 5
• 2:36:59
  minutes and it loses it again 5 seconds later and it's like,
• 2:37:03
  well, whose hands is it in now? And even right at the end when
• 2:37:05
  all the sword fight and all that navery's done and all that
• 2:37:09
  wonderful stuff, he's like, oh, it's in here.
• 2:37:12
  He's like, Oh my God, she goes, where is it?
• 2:37:14
  It's gone again. And the doctor goes, you are
• 2:37:16
  very careless. Just whips it out.
• 2:37:18
  Up the second. Like this?
• 2:37:20
  It's. Just gorgeous.
• 2:37:21
  There's no other Doctor Who's story like this, is there?
• 2:37:23
  I don't think so. As a sort of romantic fantasy,
• 2:37:27
  Yeah. You know, I used to watch Black
• 2:37:30
  Beauty when I was younger, you know, and this just feels like
• 2:37:35
  that to me. Lots of lovely sunny feels and
• 2:37:38
  fabulous camp, eccentric characters.
• 2:37:41
  Gorgeous. That's all over Grandma.
• 2:38:00
  And listen, you might as well surrender now.
• 2:38:14
  Surrender. You forget, doctor.
• 2:38:16
  I'm a garage. We never surrender.
• 2:38:24
  Next time I shall not be so lenient.
• 2:38:38
  So I don't really have anything more to add.
• 2:38:40
  I think it's superb. I think it probably is a 10 out
• 2:38:43
  of 10. I really have no notes.
• 2:38:47
  I just think it's quite marvellous and I think it is
• 2:38:53
  Jeffrey who absolutely sells that.
• 2:38:56
  He is so magnificent. And David Fisher dialogue.
• 2:39:00
  And last time I was here sort of 2 1/2 years ago, we went and
• 2:39:05
  visited Leeds Castle as well. And this beautiful preparing for
• 2:39:10
  this by watching it was the first time that I've watched it
• 2:39:13
  through. We naturally came home and
• 2:39:15
  watched the, you know, the DVD extras that evening, but this
• 2:39:20
  was the first time I that I've probably watched it since then.
• 2:39:23
  And that location is so incredible, I think you know.
• 2:39:26
  Doctor Who's, Sort of. I don't know.
• 2:39:28
  I don't know, I, we keep saying that the directors do a better
• 2:39:33
  job on location than they do in the studio.
• 2:39:35
  And the studio is hard. I think studios like I always
• 2:39:39
  think Colin Baker is better on location than he is in the
• 2:39:42
  studio. I think the studio is a, is a
• 2:39:45
  weird artificial environment. You know, it's like a game show
• 2:39:49
  set sometimes. And, and now we're on location
• 2:39:52
  and we're interacting with real things, and there's so much of
• 2:39:56
  that here. And it's so beautiful.
• 2:39:59
  Like, the location is beautiful. The weather is
• 2:40:02
  uncharacteristically beautiful. It's just so enjoyable and so
• 2:40:09
  fun. I I I just have no reservations
• 2:40:12
  about how incredibly fun it is. And that's what I'm here for.
• 2:40:18
  I think so. Yeah.
• 2:40:20
  Just marvellous, you know? You know, it's where Grendel was
• 2:40:25
  taking Romana to castle. Graft in episode 1, you know,
• 2:40:28
  and they're going over the hill because there, my dear castle
• 2:40:31
  Graft and you see all those that fabulous Glash you can hear that
• 2:40:35
  music can't. You.
• 2:40:39
  There's just nothing like that. It's wonderful.
• 2:40:42
  So how we went from that to the Armageddon factor in this fact,
• 2:40:45
  it's very strange. Yeah.
• 2:40:48
  But you know, Doctor Who can do anything.
• 2:40:49
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 2:40:51
  I think the line, the line, the Count Grendel line that I like
• 2:40:54
  the most is some as deadly as the plague and as beautiful as
• 2:40:58
  you. If only she were real, I
• 2:41:00
  wouldn't marry her. Yes.
• 2:41:04
  So. It just does not absolutely
• 2:41:10
  glorious. All right, so we have one more
• 2:41:14
  story and I'm going to leave you on 10 talks.
• 2:41:17
  What will the Owen pick while we read a?
• 2:41:23
  A couple. More of the listeners comments.
• 2:41:30
  So Toby, would you mind reading James Lark?
• 2:41:33
  Yes, James Lark of this parish. And if you haven't checked out
• 2:41:38
  his commentaries with Joe on various stories, he's a great
• 2:41:41
  contributor and his contribution to this is.
• 2:41:44
  I love. This a colourful fairy tale
• 2:41:47
  approach that instantly works thanks to a far more confident
• 2:41:50
  style than Williams first season.
• 2:41:53
  Tom Baker is at the height of his powers, Mary Tam is
• 2:41:56
  magnificent and I've said it before, it's the only season in
• 2:41:59
  which canine really makes sense as a regular companion.
• 2:42:03
  Rebus is gorgeous, Holmes It is wittiest, a cast chewing just
• 2:42:07
  enough of the beautiful scenery without taking the piss, A plot
• 2:42:10
  that beautifully undercuts the grandiose opening scene by
• 2:42:14
  leaning towards farce. Private.
• 2:42:16
  Lots of ideas, yes, but they're all pulling in the same
• 2:42:19
  direction and informing each other, which is the essence of
• 2:42:22
  good storytelling. It makes total sense that
• 2:42:24
  Williams wanted Adams, a script editor.
• 2:42:26
  Doctor Who was crying out for this kind of inventive
• 2:42:30
  complexity when the guy on a documentary saying Adams was too
• 2:42:34
  messy and uncurbed to be a script editor is bloody Stephen
• 2:42:38
  Moffat, I think our only option is to choke on our copy.
• 2:42:44
  He's like the heir to Douglas Adams, isn't he?
• 2:42:47
  He literally does what Douglas Adams does all the time.
• 2:42:50
  It's amazing. I think you've edited.
• 2:42:53
  I think you've got rid of James's opinions on the rest of
• 2:42:56
  no. That's not what he thought.
• 2:42:58
  Really. I went searching to the West.
• 2:43:00
  So leaper he ran out of. Well, maybe appropriately like
• 2:43:04
  the season he ran out of steam to the end.
• 2:43:06
  Yeah, I slagged off Steven Moffett.
• 2:43:08
  That's it, That's it. Are you on?
• 2:43:11
  Beeble, Pete says. Season 16 was my introduction to
• 2:43:14
  Doctor Who. I didn't even know the program
• 2:43:17
  existed before Dad and I stumbled on it while we were
• 2:43:20
  channel switching. Have fun, chaps.
• 2:43:22
  I couldn't bear to hear a word against it.
• 2:43:24
  Pure magic. 16 years into its run, Dr. Who cracked the
• 2:43:28
  American market. Tom Baker never became the
• 2:43:30
  household name. He wasn't Britain, but in a
• 2:43:32
  nation with four times the UK population, everyone who knew
• 2:43:36
  science fiction knew Tom and adored him out loud.
• 2:43:40
  The charming Mummerset countryside and the classical
• 2:43:43
  gilded societies of Rebus and Tara were typewritten gifts to
• 2:43:47
  the coffee, costume and scene departments.
• 2:43:50
  Doctor Who finely balanced how it was written with how it was
• 2:43:53
  made. And when the money run out,
• 2:43:55
  Douglas, Mary and Tom charmed their way to the end.
• 2:43:59
  Bravo. I like people, pizza.
• 2:44:01
  I like things. Yeah, that's a cool gilded
• 2:44:04
  society tomorrow. Well, Tom Newsome somewhat more
• 2:44:09
  succinctly says it feels like they're having a second go at
• 2:44:12
  season 15, but done right. All the same elements, but the
• 2:44:16
  companion dynamic, the humour, the fun, the spectacle is so
• 2:44:19
  much better. What other season could have the
• 2:44:22
  androids of Tower in it exactly. Bravo Tom Nixon, and here's Paul
• 2:44:26
  Arthur. You watch season 16 and you
• 2:44:28
  won't never suffer from the stringers, no matter how cold it
• 2:44:32
  be. This is absolutely peak Doctor
• 2:44:35
  Who. Fantastic worlds, brilliant
• 2:44:37
  villains. The gorgeous Merry Tam, Tom at
• 2:44:39
  the height of his powers. It's got the lot.
• 2:44:41
  You can't beam any of it. Because men out there, young
• 2:44:44
  men. Who can believe that that quote
• 2:44:49
  only surfaces 5 hours even. Well, that must have come from
• 2:44:56
  Douglas Adams. I can't have come from Bob and
• 2:44:59
  Dave. So great.
• 2:45:01
  OK. All right.
• 2:45:03
  So, Joan, what are you going to pick?
• 2:45:05
  And are you going to keep it or you eat it?
• 2:45:08
  Controversially, I'm going to pick the one remaining story,
• 2:45:12
  Pirate Planet. And last time I spoke about my
• 2:45:17
  least favorite story of the season.
• 2:45:19
  And now I will speak about my favorite story from the season
• 2:45:23
  because I love the Pirate Planet.
• 2:45:25
  And I'm going to start with Tom, who I think is excellent in this
• 2:45:31
  story. We haven't seen anger like that
• 2:45:36
  from Tom Baker in a really long time, it feels like before this
• 2:45:40
  story. And then obviously the comedy
• 2:45:44
  stuff is beautifully done too. I think especially the moment
• 2:45:48
  where the captain says to go look from and he just
• 2:45:51
  immediately appears that flashing his smile as he enters
• 2:45:55
  the room. I really like that they give a
• 2:45:58
  little minor subplot to Canine and he gets to have his own
• 2:46:02
  companion and I really like that they give.
• 2:46:05
  Who's that? Oh, Mueller Fucking yeah.
• 2:46:10
  I'm not saying she's a great companion, but he does have one.
• 2:46:15
  And then Romana getting to play the Doctor early on is is lovely
• 2:46:18
  as well. I think who is an oblivious swat
• 2:46:21
  is just her. Exactly what she does right?
• 2:46:25
  Although I you might say her aloofness sometimes means you
• 2:46:30
  lack peril. I'm really talked about, you
• 2:46:33
  know, Tom Baker and Mary Tam as a partnership, but I think they
• 2:46:37
  are wonderful together. They have such a lovely easy
• 2:46:41
  chemistry. And it's it's kind of an air of
• 2:46:44
  nonchalance, but I don't think it has the kind of smugness that
• 2:46:48
  some people associate with maybe season 17.
• 2:46:52
  These are two people who like each other, even if their
• 2:46:55
  characters occasionally bicker. And one of my favorite films is
• 2:46:59
  The Thin Man, and these two remind me a lot of Nick and Nora
• 2:47:04
  from The Thin Man. And then you've got canine as
• 2:47:06
  asked to the dog. This is the closest, I think
• 2:47:10
  Doctor Who comes to that kind of dynamic.
• 2:47:12
  And the only thing missing is the constant supply of
• 2:47:15
  cocktails, which I assume they were doing at lunchtime.
• 2:47:21
  I think it's AI think it's another strong production.
• 2:47:24
  It's perhaps not as obviously well realized as Reba's
• 2:47:28
  operation and Andrew Zatara because they're doing something
• 2:47:33
  very different. It's very ambitious, but I think
• 2:47:35
  the costumes are great and the sets are good.
• 2:47:38
  Love the model of the castle with the sky moving behind it.
• 2:47:41
  You even get that model of the village which is only in one
• 2:47:44
  shot. Not sure why.
• 2:47:48
  I really love the look of the location work.
• 2:47:50
  That beautiful saturated palette of 16 millimetre film and it's
• 2:47:56
  quite a lot. This is that's Star Wars
• 2:47:59
  influenced. You can see the flying car, the
• 2:48:04
  castle henchman who are wearing the great Nazi uniforms.
• 2:48:07
  Somehow we've come back to Nazis at the end of this.
• 2:48:13
  And Adams has such a great knack for names.
• 2:48:16
  So you get Calufrax, Mentiads, Mr. Fibrilli.
• 2:48:20
  These are just memorable names that don't seem forced.
• 2:48:30
  I think it's so well structured as well.
• 2:48:32
  That's a really difficult thing to do in Doctor Who, and we all
• 2:48:36
  know the dip you get in Part 3 happens a lot.
• 2:48:42
  But here in Part 3 where you think there can't be much story
• 2:48:46
  left to tell, in Part 4 it gives you the extra layer of the stuff
• 2:48:50
  for the Nurse and the Queen and it makes a really satisfying
• 2:48:54
  final episode. The twist works as far as I'm
• 2:48:58
  concerned. I always found it genuinely
• 2:49:00
  surprising and I think it's really well played.
• 2:49:03
  Yes, there are weaker bits, and again, I think it mostly comes
• 2:49:07
  from the direction, the action sequences, if you can call them
• 2:49:11
  that, a pretty limp. And for some reason, Pennant
• 2:49:14
  Roberts chooses not to have them scored, which is I, I can't
• 2:49:20
  understand why, but that was his decision.
• 2:49:25
  Yeah, perhaps. Perhaps he didn't realize he had
• 2:49:28
  to ask for this. And yes, the Part 1 and Part 2
• 2:49:33
  cliffhangers aren't good, but I think the third one is really
• 2:49:36
  fun. And the resolute resolution to
• 2:49:38
  it is is great, too. I think people who complain
• 2:49:41
  about the parrot are wrong. I like the ending with the
• 2:49:45
  spanner. I think that's good.
• 2:49:48
  Come on, why not? And then you get a nice big
• 2:49:50
  explosion. What more could you want?
• 2:49:54
  It's hugely ambitious, it's funny, has some nice meaty
• 2:49:59
  sci-fi allegory, it treats what could be some really dark
• 2:50:03
  subject matter matter with a light touch and yeah, it's just
• 2:50:07
  full of massive, mad, brilliant ideas.
• 2:50:12
  And so it's going through. Bravo Sir Joe.
• 2:50:18
  I think the scene at the end of episode 2 where Tom Baker spells
• 2:50:24
  out the horror of what is happening now he's put it all
• 2:50:28
  together and realises that that icy thing he's standing on is
• 2:50:32
  the middle of a planet that has been hollowed out is one of
• 2:50:35
  Tom's best performances ever. He sells the horror and it's
• 2:50:40
  under lit that scene as well. He's so grave.
• 2:50:44
  And that's what I love about Last Day Tom is when he's so
• 2:50:48
  flippant all the time, you know, and he's so witty and then he
• 2:50:52
  just drops it for one or two scenes and the real drama and
• 2:50:55
  the real horror of the situation comes through.
• 2:50:58
  And I think Douglas understands that and crafts a script around
• 2:51:03
  it and gives him as well in episode 3, that beautiful scene
• 2:51:06
  where he's furiously angry at the horrors that have been
• 2:51:10
  perpetuated. But the implications of the the
• 2:51:13
  enormous concept is given to Tom Baker to try and express and
• 2:51:18
  he's effortless. It's so good that scene, it ends
• 2:51:22
  on a really shitty killer factor.
• 2:51:23
  Then unfortunately with the mentions come along going.
• 2:51:25
  You know what Doctor we have come for your ended.
• 2:51:29
  With him. Saying Zala, the pirate planet,
• 2:51:32
  you know, but that's one of my earliest memories of Doctor Who.
• 2:51:35
  And it was really war. Those were scary.
• 2:51:38
  How old men. Yeah, yeah.
• 2:51:39
  What does what does Balaton call them?
• 2:51:43
  Those evil zombies? I mean, Mueller.
• 2:51:47
  Well, what can one say? Why?
• 2:51:50
  Why, why, why, why? No, I really love this.
• 2:51:54
  I did put the structure of the script as well.
• 2:51:56
  You're in. I think the way that the nurse
• 2:51:59
  is seeded into this story is so expertly done.
• 2:52:02
  It's Agatha Christie. Good.
• 2:52:04
  The way she barely features in one.
• 2:52:06
  If she features at all, she's gets one.
• 2:52:08
  No, she's in one, but she gets a line in two and then she makes
• 2:52:12
  her presence. Really.
• 2:52:13
  I think that's a good idea, Captain.
• 2:52:15
  Why don't you try that? And then the resolution to the
• 2:52:19
  cliffhanger in three is her reveal.
• 2:52:21
  It's just gorgeous. And the actress playing her.
• 2:52:23
  Toby, help me out. Rosalind Lloyd, you dare to mock
• 2:52:28
  me? Yes, Slap.
• 2:52:30
  She's amazing. She's really great.
• 2:52:33
  But I also really love these sort of peripheral characters in
• 2:52:37
  this. Like all the main characters are
• 2:52:39
  great, but Ray Boss, you had Bimro, here you've got Mr.
• 2:52:42
  Fibrilli who? Easily the most.
• 2:52:45
  Obsequious character we've ever met in Doctor Who.
• 2:52:48
  I mean, I thank you so abjectly again and again.
• 2:52:53
  So, you know, absolutely terrified of his position that
• 2:52:56
  he's going to be murdered on a daily basis by the captain.
• 2:53:00
  And then how that relationship changes on a dime in episode 3,
• 2:53:04
  where the captain has such sadness that he's lost him.
• 2:53:07
  He goes, he was a good man and he takes off his glasses and
• 2:53:11
  there's genuine paper. What the fuck is happening?
• 2:53:15
  But it's so effective. It's so good.
• 2:53:18
  This is a season that's full of secondary characters that you
• 2:53:22
  never forget. And Mr. Fibbly is one of those
• 2:53:25
  characters. I mean, it really brings in the
• 2:53:26
  charts for Earth, you know, well minded.
• 2:53:29
  Mr. Fibbly. Oh, sorry.
• 2:53:30
  It is a very highly populated planet.
• 2:53:33
  He's great. Yeah.
• 2:53:35
  Just the amount of ideas on display here.
• 2:53:38
  Obviously it's Adam so bubbling over with them.
• 2:53:42
  The amount of insane technobabble that I mean, you
• 2:53:46
  know how much I hate technobabble, Nathan.
• 2:53:48
  When it comes and hits in Star Trek, I just switch off and you
• 2:53:52
  usually do translations for me here.
• 2:53:55
  It just has a way of making the technobabble sing.
• 2:53:59
  It's so funny, the weird lot in the macromat field Integrator.
• 2:54:04
  An old macromat. Yeah.
• 2:54:07
  The. What's that corridor called that
• 2:54:10
  the linear corridor that they go down.
• 2:54:12
  That's got a stupid name as well.
• 2:54:14
  I mean, all of it. It just sounds ridiculous, but
• 2:54:16
  it rolls off the tongue. And you've got someone like Tom
• 2:54:18
  who can deliver technobabble. I talked about it with David
• 2:54:21
  Tennant, didn't I, Toby? But Tom has that gift as well of
• 2:54:24
  making gobbledygook sound utterly compelling and
• 2:54:28
  convincing. So I'm really convinced by the
• 2:54:31
  world. I think Pennant Roberts is a
• 2:54:33
  tricky director. Like he can't do pace.
• 2:54:35
  He gave us warriors that a date for fuck's sake.
• 2:54:38
  So he can't do action, but he can cast.
• 2:54:41
  He casts impeccably. And I think that's don't know if
• 2:54:44
  you can say that about the pirate planet.
• 2:54:47
  The main, the main performance. I don't even think the captain's
• 2:54:50
  great. Oh, yeah.
• 2:54:51
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, all of that.
• 2:54:52
  But don't you come off a lot of Probellatron Mueller preligs and
• 2:54:59
  poor old. What's his face?
• 2:55:01
  Kimus. What's his name?
• 2:55:04
  Kimus. Yeah, yeah.
• 2:55:06
  You think they're all hideous murdering maniac.
• 2:55:10
  OK, OK, but he gets the the horn things right.
• 2:55:13
  I I do think and I think he's pulled enough.
• 2:55:16
  Incredible designer here. I don't know who designs all the
• 2:55:18
  sets, but they have scale to them.
• 2:55:20
  They go after that power station at the end of Episode 2, which
• 2:55:23
  has huge scale and absolutely sales what's happening?
• 2:55:27
  Like, you know, it's a big idea. And even Graham, was it Graham
• 2:55:31
  McDonald who said no, no, we can't do this.
• 2:55:33
  And Pennant was the one who said, I don't care, we're going
• 2:55:37
  to do it and we're going to try it.
• 2:55:40
  And they tried it. And some production issues
• 2:55:43
  aside, I think they pulled it off.
• 2:55:45
  I think it is just a great, great story and yowen, my last
• 2:55:51
  note is I just love that the conclusion of this story is Tom
• 2:55:54
  Baker going hit it and that's banner just comes down and they
• 2:55:59
  all blow wonderful. And like you said, the Tom and
• 2:56:02
  Mary stuff, you know, making contact with an alien race is a
• 2:56:05
  intense, skilled and delicate operation.
• 2:56:07
  It requires tact and finesse. What does she know about it?
• 2:56:11
  She is pretty other new master, really.
• 2:56:15
  Yeah. He's surprised.
• 2:56:16
  Yeah. And then at the end, he's done
• 2:56:19
  that amazing thing with the planet.
• 2:56:20
  I still don't quite understand what he does with the planet.
• 2:56:23
  But she goes, oh, that's quite good.
• 2:56:25
  And he goes, I do dislike fake praise.
• 2:56:27
  Quite good. It's astoundingly good.
• 2:56:30
  Very. Very, very good, Master.
• 2:56:31
  They're just glorious. It's just wonderful.
• 2:56:34
  And I know that makes me 6 for six.
• 2:56:36
  I don't fucking care because this is a really incredible
• 2:56:40
  season of Doctor Who and I think it should all be celebrated.
• 2:56:45
  A plank. The theory is very.
• 2:56:48
  Simple, you walk along it. At the end you fall off.
• 2:56:53
  Drop 1000. Feet dead.
• 2:56:58
  You can't be serious. You see, Captain, You don't
• 2:57:10
  realize what you're doing if you just listen to me.
• 2:57:12
  You should listen to you when I hear you scream.
• 2:57:38
  Hello, everybody. Sorry I couldn't make the jump
• 2:57:41
  myself. I've got a terrible head for
• 2:57:43
  heights. I discovered your little secret.
• 2:57:48
  We're not all quite as we seem. Neat little machine, isn't it?
• 2:57:55
  And the image IT projects might almost be real.
• 2:57:59
  Hello, Doctor. Hello.
• 2:58:01
  How are you? Oh, terribly well.
• 2:58:02
  Can't complain. Goodbye.
• 2:58:04
  Bye. Bye.
• 2:58:06
  And just as I can switch off that image of myself, I can also
• 2:58:10
  switch off the image of another apparently real person.
• 2:58:20
  Try all you like doctor, it won't work on me.
• 2:58:25
  My new body has almost attained fully corporeal form.
• 2:58:28
  It can no longer simply be turned off.
• 2:58:30
  Gods season. Do as she says.
• 2:58:39
  So I'm going to say that the thing that I really like, I
• 2:58:42
  think just the complexity of the script, just how well structured
• 2:58:44
  it is, how enough everything fits together very well.
• 2:58:47
  And obviously that will be even more apparent in next year's
• 2:58:51
  City of Death. But it's a thing that Douglas
• 2:58:54
  does in his, you know, in the Dirk Gently books as well, and
• 2:58:59
  he has a chance to do it here. Whereas, you know, Hitchhikers
• 2:59:03
  was always a bit looser and, and kind of made-up as it goes
• 2:59:06
  along. But here, everything fits
• 2:59:08
  together really nicely. The revelations are really good.
• 2:59:11
  You know, you think one thing is happening and you discover
• 2:59:13
  another thing is happening. All of that I think is really
• 2:59:17
  great. I think, you know, the nurse is
• 2:59:19
  tremendous. I think Bruce Purchase is great
• 2:59:22
  as the captain and you know, Douglas knows that we're going
• 2:59:28
  to have a big blustering over the top, you know, by the nose
• 2:59:31
  of the sky demon kind of villain, and he makes that part
• 2:59:35
  of the plot. You know, he's he's doing that
• 2:59:37
  to hide the fact that he is in fact, he has his own parallel
• 2:59:42
  scheme going on at the same time as Queens anxious and and
• 2:59:46
  opposed to it. All of that stuff is great.
• 2:59:49
  It has so many funny lines. I mean, he is such, you know,
• 2:59:53
  you know, one of the 20th, 20th century's best English comic
• 2:59:59
  writers, you know, doing a script for Doctor Who.
• 3:00:03
  He's astoundingly good. It's so great.
• 3:00:07
  And one thing that no one mentions, which I think is
• 3:00:09
  really great, and I remember noticing at the time, is that he
• 3:00:14
  puts the audience in danger. So we're about to materialise
• 3:00:21
  around Earth. And I think that's great.
• 3:00:25
  You know, there's a thing in Dalek Master Plan, isn't there,
• 3:00:27
  where we know the Daleks are coming by the time the next
• 3:00:31
  episode airs, you know, around 7:00 or 8:00 or something like
• 3:00:34
  that, the Daleks are on their way to Earth and they're going
• 3:00:38
  to come and get us, you know, next week when the next episode
• 3:00:41
  is. And he is going to materialize
• 3:00:43
  around Earth. And there's no reason not to
• 3:00:45
  think that that's where we. Well, that's where I am.
• 3:00:48
  Why? And I think that's a really fun
• 3:00:50
  thing to do for the kids at home.
• 3:00:52
  How many points does off A and half maybe everyone rushed out
• 3:00:55
  very quickly. Well, that's it.
• 3:00:56
  Yeah, yeah, it's destroying Earth again.
• 3:00:58
  It's becoming a habit. So, So look, I think that there
• 3:01:03
  is some bad direction. I think that there's some very
• 3:01:06
  bad guest performances. But holy crap, this is a great
• 3:01:11
  story and absolutely superb story.
• 3:01:13
  And I'm I'm putting it through. Toby.
• 3:01:17
  Well, I mean, I've listened to this podcast before and you've
• 3:01:20
  had some, you know, universally tip top seasons where you've
• 3:01:23
  consigned all sorts of classics to the dustbin in the first
• 3:01:26
  second. And and this season, which I
• 3:01:30
  enjoy is season 16, but it's certainly not one where I
• 3:01:33
  thought I would be the only person trying to stick some
• 3:01:36
  stuff in the bin. What's a come?
• 3:01:37
  I don't know what's wrong with you.
• 3:01:40
  I didn't say it was my favorite. At the start.
• 3:01:42
  This is the podcast that Carnival of Monsters didn't
• 3:01:45
  survive you. That's more madness.
• 3:01:49
  It's a war. Crime.
• 3:01:50
  It was I was going to. Surprise, you right?
• 3:01:52
  It was wrong. So I, I was prepared to come
• 3:01:56
  into this to, to to to try to be harsh, because I, I sometimes
• 3:02:02
  think I play the game too benignly and I think that can be
• 3:02:07
  tedious. But I if you're going to get all
• 3:02:11
  fucking, you know, Nathan Joe and you and sitting in a tree 16
• 3:02:18
  KISS ING. I'm going to have dreams
• 3:02:21
  tonight. You're giving season 16 in a
• 3:02:25
  certain courtesy right up the factor.
• 3:02:30
  But so so I, you know, I, I approached this one because it,
• 3:02:36
  it was hard for me, you know, stones blood on you is a sort of
• 3:02:41
  personal one that I thought I'd get away with because I knew
• 3:02:43
  everybody else would love it. Arm again factor I think was it
• 3:02:47
  was an obvious 1 to consign. And this one was the one I was
• 3:02:49
  sort of teaching on the edge of and, and maybe hoping that
• 3:02:52
  somebody would sort of push me over because it's a, it's a
• 3:02:55
  funny one. I remember it so well from my
• 3:02:57
  childhood. And the, and the headlines are
• 3:02:59
  obviously Douglas Adams, the wit, the imagination, the
• 3:03:03
  brilliance there, the, the new sort of life he injects into
• 3:03:06
  Doctor Who and, and, and the illustriousness that he brings
• 3:03:09
  with him. But also it's all appropriate
• 3:03:12
  for Doctor Who, But it's sort of turned up to 11, if you like,
• 3:03:15
  which is, which it's, it's, you know, somebody who's almost too
• 3:03:18
  good for Doctor Who. And yet Doctor Who is so good
• 3:03:20
  that it it it, it, it, it's better than him in a way because
• 3:03:25
  he can't, he's not quite disciplined enough to make it
• 3:03:29
  work. And yet that injection of genius
• 3:03:32
  makes it kind of compelling. But also that weirdly, what
• 3:03:36
  doesn't work about this is what is is not is not Adams's
• 3:03:40
  limitless imagination. It's the very fact that Doctor
• 3:03:42
  Who has to be a little bit sort of home grown and prosaic.
• 3:03:45
  So you get the headlines of Adams's wit.
• 3:03:48
  Bruce Purchase is brilliant, over the top performance.
• 3:03:51
  And then you watch it and there's lots and lots of extras
• 3:03:55
  walking on hills. And.
• 3:03:58
  And, and you know, the chief mentee ad Bernard Finch looks
• 3:04:01
  very good. He's a very attractive man and
• 3:04:03
  he's got the good makeup and the hair slicked back.
• 3:04:05
  But the others are just sort of whoever they could get with and
• 3:04:09
  the makeup doesn't look as good. And, and they're very pretty
• 3:04:12
  Welsh Hills, you know, but thank God there's so many of them.
• 3:04:16
  And the battle scenes have been alluded to.
• 3:04:17
  Have there ever been I love the guards costumes, but have there
• 3:04:21
  ever been worse shots than those guards?
• 3:04:25
  I know Star Wars, you know, you know, Pennant Pennant Pennant
• 3:04:29
  Roberts. I mean, talking about worst
• 3:04:31
  shots in a Pennant Roberts production.
• 3:04:33
  These these are of a different, different kind and and of of the
• 3:04:38
  actors. I mean, David Sibley, who plays
• 3:04:40
  Predix is a is a is a fine act, still working to this day.
• 3:04:42
  And he's done loads and he's and he's he's very good in a Blake
• 3:04:45
  seven that he's in and and I like David Warwick actually, but
• 3:04:49
  Ralph Michael, an urbane, charismatic, charming, precise,
• 3:04:54
  delicate film actor from the 1950s who has so many
• 3:04:59
  illustrious credits to his name. He's fucking awful in this.
• 3:05:03
  He's I mean, again, he does that thing of going, I think this
• 3:05:06
  pretty. He doesn't bit what David Harris
• 3:05:08
  does in Armageddon Factor. I think this program's a bit
• 3:05:11
  daft. So I shall signal that in my
• 3:05:14
  performance. And you go just don't do that.
• 3:05:17
  If you want to be funny. There are different ways of
• 3:05:19
  being funny and, and actually a lot of the stuff outside of the
• 3:05:25
  the pirate vessel is, is a bit sort of the, the, the, the
• 3:05:29
  planet's characters aren't particularly well written.
• 3:05:31
  I think David Warwick does his best, but he, you know, he has
• 3:05:33
  that those lines like Bandaginus 5 with every fibre of my being
• 3:05:37
  you will be avenged. And he gives it a good stab.
• 3:05:40
  I like David Warwick, he's a good actor.
• 3:05:41
  Literally what they're mocking in Galaxy Quest.
• 3:05:44
  Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. But, and the fact, and you know,
• 3:05:50
  stories like kinder where when I was a kid, the headline was, oh,
• 3:05:53
  it's the one with the shit snake.
• 3:05:54
  And you go, Oh, that's not very good.
• 3:05:55
  And then actually, when you go back to watch it, it's, it's an
• 3:05:58
  embarrassment of riches and you and you, you take away the
• 3:06:01
  headline and you get to the meat of the story and it's so
• 3:06:04
  rewarding. I actually think the pirate
• 3:06:05
  planet is almost the opposite. When you go away from the
• 3:06:07
  headline, which is Douglas Adams and, and the pirate captain and
• 3:06:11
  a lot of it, a lot of it sort of falls away a little bit.
• 3:06:15
  As I say, particularly with the with the indigenous population,
• 3:06:17
  although I do like the idea of a planet that's so rich,
• 3:06:20
  everyone's a bit laissez faire about, you know, Jules just
• 3:06:25
  being cast aside and all that. You mean well, Yeah, that's so.
• 3:06:31
  No, it's in the script, all right.
• 3:06:34
  I've read the script and the script says the crowd chants in
• 3:06:38
  a disinterested manner because they're so used to this
• 3:06:42
  happening. Yeah, OK, fair enough.
• 3:06:46
  But anyway, I and I want to read, I think rescue poor old
• 3:06:58
  Bruce. Purchase from what Douglas Adams
• 3:07:01
  I think unfairly did to him in interviews where he'd say that
• 3:07:05
  the right the you know the wrong way to play a Doctor Who
• 3:07:08
  villains of the kind that we wrote was to play it big and
• 3:07:11
  play it for last Bruce purchase has no choice.
• 3:07:13
  The whole point of the pirate captive is that that bluster is
• 3:07:16
  covering for something else. And I don't know why Douglas
• 3:07:18
  Adams said that in that those, those couple of interviews.
• 3:07:21
  And then of course they would choose the A clip of Bruce
• 3:07:23
  purchase. Bruce purchase is doing
• 3:07:25
  absolutely everything that he should.
• 3:07:27
  And he also has some wonderfully quiet and threatening moments.
• 3:07:30
  But the bluster is there as a cover for the fact that he's
• 3:07:34
  working sort of subconsciously to to cover up for that.
• 3:07:37
  And I, I think it's really entertaining, of course, when
• 3:07:39
  he's doing all the blue blistering Barnacle stuff.
• 3:07:42
  But then when he has those moments of quiet menace and, and
• 3:07:46
  that scene where Mr. Fibuli dies, which is so touching and I
• 3:07:49
  love Doctor Who that it can make you really sad under the most
• 3:07:52
  ridiculous circumstances. And Mr. Fibuli is a very silly
• 3:07:55
  character. But again, he's beautifully
• 3:07:57
  played by Andrew Robertson and I think that relationship is
• 3:08:01
  superb. And the Tom Baker, what's it
• 3:08:05
  for? Scene with purchase is
• 3:08:07
  brilliant. The idea of Queen Xanxia being
• 3:08:09
  held in stasis, this sort of intergalactic Miss Haversham,
• 3:08:12
  who's got this nursery avatar who who is a completely
• 3:08:17
  unexpected villain, I think. I think, and again, that's
• 3:08:20
  testament to the fact that purchase is such a presence.
• 3:08:23
  You never once think, oh, well, he's just a puppet.
• 3:08:25
  He's not really the main villain.
• 3:08:27
  So I think that that all works really well.
• 3:08:29
  And Doctor Who can stand those sorts of characters.
• 3:08:32
  It's exactly what you want from a villain, really.
• 3:08:34
  You'd much rather have somebody who's giving it a load of heft
• 3:08:37
  and welly, so long as it's not stupid, which I don't think it
• 3:08:40
  ever is. I don't think he's ever sending
• 3:08:42
  it up. He's he's it's all of that
• 3:08:45
  bluster is there for a reason. I'll put it through Toby, you
• 3:08:48
  know, it makes sense you 10 things there.
• 3:08:51
  I know I am. I am going to put it through.
• 3:08:53
  But I was just I was just trying to be an interesting podcaster.
• 3:08:57
  Always are regardless. So I but I and I remember, as I
• 3:09:01
  say, I remember it well from my from my youth.
• 3:09:04
  It really stuck it I, I, I, I, I do think it is, I do think when
• 3:09:11
  you watch it, it, it, it does a lot of things that you forget it
• 3:09:14
  does. And you go, oh, I remember I'd
• 3:09:16
  forgotten about that bit. That isn't very good.
• 3:09:17
  And the mine is very, you know, it's also sort of Spacey.
• 3:09:21
  And then you go, it's, it's just an actual mine.
• 3:09:23
  You know, it's, it's a, there's a, there's a slight dissonance
• 3:09:25
  there of the, of the, of the imagery where that, that is very
• 3:09:29
  sort of prosaic in 20. What do you want the?
• 3:09:30
  Luc Herscher effect. Blue rocks in the mine.
• 3:09:34
  Ohh. Yeah, I want a concrete tunnel
• 3:09:36
  with pink tinsel, but no, I I no, I will.
• 3:09:42
  It's it's it's it's a landmark in so many ways.
• 3:09:45
  It's ambitious. It's funny, it's bonkers and
• 3:09:49
  it's and the bits that don't work are where it's where it's
• 3:09:52
  just a sort of bit prosaic and straightforward.
• 3:09:54
  But Yep, I will. I will happily watch it.
• 3:09:56
  Very entertaining. The pirate planet will stay out
• 3:10:00
  of the bin. You don't think that the scene,
• 3:10:03
  the scene where the captain is stroking his power and he goes,
• 3:10:07
  we're surrounded by incompetence.
• 3:10:09
  You're not you ever related more to a character.
• 3:10:13
  I love Bruce Purchase. I think he's a he's a terrific
• 3:10:16
  actor and he was a fine classical actor, Royal
• 3:10:18
  Shakespeare Company actor. He was he was an excellent
• 3:10:20
  actor. And you I, I always maintain
• 3:10:22
  that if that, that, you know, if you actors who excel at
• 3:10:25
  Shakespeare, always excel at Doctor Who because it's it's the
• 3:10:28
  same job. It's making stuff that people
• 3:10:31
  might not understand or that is or that is about stuff that we
• 3:10:34
  can't possibly quite contain within human thought and, and,
• 3:10:38
  and make it palatable and entertaining.
• 3:10:40
  And. Yeah, so I yeah, he's great.
• 3:10:42
  Because nobody, bizarrely, even four of us have spoken about the
• 3:10:46
  story. Nobody has really talked at any
• 3:10:49
  length about that incredible scene in part three with all the
• 3:10:53
  planets around. And Tom's anger.
• 3:10:56
  Yeah, it's brilliant. The bit where he comes and
• 3:11:00
  what's it for? And he's almost like
• 3:11:02
  embarrassingly angry. Yeah.
• 3:11:05
  Because he just can't understand the scale of the slaughter
• 3:11:09
  that's going on. Yeah, it's one of, it's one of
• 3:11:11
  my favorite Doctor Who seems that it's terrific.
• 3:11:13
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 3:11:14
  Wonderful. The mummified remains of
• 3:11:17
  planets. It's very good.
• 3:11:20
  Yeah. He can barely get it out.
• 3:11:21
  Yeah. You know.
• 3:11:22
  Yeah. All right.
• 3:11:24
  Well, that is is actually the end of Round 1.
• 3:11:29
  And so in a minute, we're going to do Round 2.
• 3:11:31
  Which will be equally. Long, I think it's.
• 3:11:33
  Probably no. So so now essentially the whole
• 3:11:38
  thing just comes down to chance. In a minute, I'm going to pair
• 3:11:42
  up the five remaining stories and we're just going to vote on
• 3:11:48
  what whether it goes, which one wins out of each pair.
• 3:11:52
  Is that right? Because I make that up to be
• 3:11:54
  suggesting that this isn't a highly structured, it is a
• 3:11:56
  critical analysis of things. Now it's all just random crap.
• 3:12:00
  But before we do round two, we have two more listener comments.
• 3:12:06
  So Toby, can you read Carey Art's coins?
• 3:12:11
  Yes. Carey Art lies in the fact that
• 3:12:15
  it is here. And he says it's my favorite 4th
• 3:12:20
  Doctor season. For all that you can see the
• 3:12:23
  budget's constraints, it has for all that you can see the budget
• 3:12:26
  constraints. It has so many ideas and it's
• 3:12:29
  just plain fun. Unlike the Hinchcliffe era, you
• 3:12:32
  never feel that they keep revisiting the same ideas.
• 3:12:35
  And its worst story is Crowell, mainly because it lacks a
• 3:12:38
  charismatic villain. We've already talked about that,
• 3:12:42
  yeah. And finally, son of big well
• 3:12:46
  OMG, the perfect season saying I just popped the microphone, I
• 3:12:52
  apologise. Run of flawless stories right up
• 3:12:55
  until that turgid finale, we've all been.
• 3:12:58
  Leave it alone. A joyful adventure into space
• 3:13:02
  and time with fun if inconsequential arc.
• 3:13:06
  Maybe Baker ramps up the humor but still keeping an edge to his
• 3:13:10
  performance. Pair that with Mary Tammers
• 3:13:13
  Romana and the series is dynamite.
• 3:13:17
  All right, so this is round two and what I'm going to do is just
• 3:13:23
  pair off the stories at random and to show how and then we
• 3:13:31
  have. No, this is round two.
• 3:13:33
  This is the. Thing, this is the thing.
• 3:13:34
  So I'm going to say story versus story.
• 3:13:37
  And then we vote on, oh, you've got a randomizer there.
• 3:13:40
  Die. That's very appropriate given
• 3:13:43
  the end. Of this all right, here goes so
• 3:13:47
  oh wait. Three roll.
• 3:13:51
  Five, the power of crawl versus the Pyro.
• 3:13:59
  I think I know where Toby's going.
• 3:14:01
  OK, so I'm Joe. You're first.
• 3:14:07
  I I would like to. I love the power of crawl, but
• 3:14:10
  the pirate. No, you're not allowed to talk
• 3:14:11
  about them now. I'm so sorry.
• 3:14:13
  You just say the pirate crawl or the type.
• 3:14:15
  Pirate planet. The pirate planet, Please.
• 3:14:19
  You're there to mock me. Mine's The Pirate Planet, Toby.
• 3:14:28
  Come on my cab mute. I'm sorry to vote for power of
• 3:14:31
  crawl because I think it's great and it deserves well, this is
• 3:14:35
  this is how I voted in every fucking general election,
• 3:14:39
  knowing it won't go through, but feeling like I've done my bit,
• 3:14:42
  even though actually if, if I was responsible for the wrong
• 3:14:47
  result, I'd feel. But I'll, I'll, I'll say the
• 3:14:49
  power of crawl just just to be nice.
• 3:14:52
  OK, great. So, appropriately, this is your
• 3:14:54
  vote for the Green Party. Which was?
• 3:14:59
  Do you know who named the Green Party?
• 3:15:02
  No. The Green Party in this country
• 3:15:04
  used to be called the Ecology Party, and that's but all its
• 3:15:08
  European counterparts. Well, sorry, I'm not doing what
• 3:15:11
  you said, which is just say to say the name.
• 3:15:14
  Of the. Story All its European
• 3:15:17
  counterparts were called the Green Party.
• 3:15:18
  So at a meeting of the Ecology Party, it was suggested that it
• 3:15:22
  rename itself to align with its European counterparts, and that
• 3:15:25
  came at the suggestion of an actor by the name of John
• 3:15:28
  Abeneri. No.
• 3:15:30
  Oh. My God.
• 3:15:32
  That's a fact. Wow.
• 3:15:34
  How did we tie that together? How did Toby tie that together?
• 3:15:41
  Is it unbelievable? And unfortunately, I'm going
• 3:15:44
  with the Pirate planet, so goodbye power.
• 3:15:46
  Of crawl. OK, All right.
• 3:15:48
  Our next match up is not the Armageddon factor.
• 3:15:54
  I need a four sided dice. I could get one the Rebus
• 3:15:56
  operation and the Pirate planet. This is super difficult.
• 3:16:01
  No, it's not the Rebus operation.
• 3:16:04
  I'm going to vote for the Rebus operation.
• 3:16:06
  Toby Rebus operation and it gone.
• 3:16:10
  Yeah, Pirate Planet. It deserves it because it is
• 3:16:15
  truly great. Only one can win, you know, but
• 3:16:18
  only one can win. Yeah, this is the.
• 3:16:21
  That's what I said. OK, so that no wait, we've got
• 3:16:27
  some more left. My God, re roll not 6, not 6,
• 3:16:35
  three. The stones of blood versus the
• 3:16:41
  stones of blood. That's not going to work.
• 3:16:44
  The stones of blood versus the stones of blood.
• 3:16:49
  I keep wrong thing. Stones of blood versus the
• 3:16:51
  asteroids of Tara. Next time I shall not be so
• 3:16:57
  lenient. The androids of Tara.
• 3:17:00
  I'm going to vote for The androids of Tara.
• 3:17:03
  I'm going to vote for the androids of Tara.
• 3:17:05
  You astound me. And urine.
• 3:17:09
  Fuck it, stones of blood doesn't matter.
• 3:17:13
  Done all right. So this this is a tremendous.
• 3:17:18
  Oh. God, because our final vote is
• 3:17:21
  on the Rebus operation and the Androids of Tara.
• 3:17:25
  Now don't you stop playing. This is what you say never
• 3:17:29
  happened. The two best stories, yes, but
• 3:17:33
  now it's happened. I want to go to bed with both of
• 3:17:35
  them. It's and it's a tie, no?
• 3:17:40
  No, we need a winner. OK, so can we give a reason for
• 3:17:45
  this one? Come on, It's the finale.
• 3:17:48
  Yeah, it's the finale. Oh, OK.
• 3:17:52
  So I want to hear from Toby. I I think it has slightly fewer
• 3:18:00
  creases, is slightly more consistent and despite what I
• 3:18:03
  said earlier is probably direction edges it and yet
• 3:18:12
  there's so much, they're so different.
• 3:18:13
  About the other one. Now I got, I think on that if
• 3:18:16
  you, if you pointed a gun to my head and said the beginning of
• 3:18:19
  this, which is the best story, I would say the androids of Tara,
• 3:18:25
  brilliant yarn. Yeah, I mean, I'm going to go
• 3:18:33
  purely off how I felt watching them this time around because it
• 3:18:37
  has switched back and forth a lot.
• 3:18:41
  And I watched this one on a Sunday afternoon and there's
• 3:18:45
  probably no better Sunday afternoon Doctor Who's story to
• 3:18:48
  watch. So I will go Andrew's Tower.
• 3:18:51
  Unfortunately, it went out on a Saturday night.
• 3:18:55
  I could be determined in this, couldn't I?
• 3:18:57
  Fuck, I just don't. It's the reverse operation.
• 3:19:00
  And I said that the Android Tatara is like a truly unique
• 3:19:02
  Doctor Who 3 bosses as well, Right?
• 3:19:06
  Like, that's sort of high story and gorgeous snow.
• 3:19:09
  It's OK. Fantastic.
• 3:19:11
  Yeah, it's fantastic. Guest actors are just amazing.
• 3:19:17
  I'm regretting my decision already.
• 3:19:20
  Wish everywhere I go because I'm even choosing for sunshine or
• 3:19:23
  snow. I've just remembered Binro, you
• 3:19:25
  know? Oh, Binro.
• 3:19:27
  Yes. And the graph and the seeker
• 3:19:29
  normia as well. You know what's his name till?
• 3:19:34
  Lawyer. He's the original jab of the
• 3:19:37
  hunt. Yeah, Tom Baker so convincingly
• 3:19:42
  being drunk and falling over at the end of Episode 1.
• 3:19:44
  I mean, like, he's done it all. He's like, no, no, no, no, wait,
• 3:19:48
  wait, wait. Because it's the Andrew of the
• 3:19:49
  Tara. Because it's the only story ever
• 3:19:53
  in Doctor Who that ends on a fabulous wedding that the doctor
• 3:19:58
  runs in and goes stop this wedding.
• 3:19:59
  And then as a massive sword fire, it's it's just great.
• 3:20:03
  The address is sorry. Yeah.
• 3:20:04
  Yeah. It was always going to be
• 3:20:06
  Andrew's affair because that was what he's going to vote for as
• 3:20:08
  well. But I do think the reverse
• 3:20:09
  operation is a brilliant thing. And it's better directed than
• 3:20:14
  the reverse operation now, isn't it?
• 3:20:16
  Yeah. Oh, yeah.
• 3:20:16
  Yeah, for sure. And it looks better.
• 3:20:19
  Well, no, I've done anyway. I'm all right.
• 3:20:24
  Well, that is. Look, I would have been happy
• 3:20:27
  with either outcome. I think.
• 3:20:29
  I mean, any of the six would have been a rot.
• 3:20:31
  I don't know about that. But certainly, certainly those
• 3:20:34
  two are clearly the best. And may my bones rot for voting
• 3:20:42
  for the David Fisher one over the Bob Holmes 1.
• 3:20:45
  He truly though, I just want to say Williams truly learned
• 3:20:49
  lessons from 15. Yeah.
• 3:20:51
  And I think, like, the overall production standard of those
• 3:20:55
  first four stories because it is so up and down in 15.
• 3:20:59
  Yeah. And what, however cheap you
• 3:21:01
  think Armageddon factories, it isn't as cheap as Underworld or
• 3:21:04
  parts of the Invasion of fucking Time in that hospital.
• 3:21:08
  So he's learned so many lessons. He's pulled in a great script
• 3:21:11
  editor in Anthony Reed, who's so well read, so suddenly Doctor
• 3:21:15
  Who's kind of literate and really witty in a way it's never
• 3:21:18
  been before. I don't know.
• 3:21:20
  My opinion from the start of the episode stands.
• 3:21:22
  I just think it is. Toby, you said it's unique.
• 3:21:25
  Yeah. It's a unique season.
• 3:21:26
  There's nothing else quite like it.
• 3:21:27
  That could be why it's my favorite season.
• 3:21:29
  I just think it's glorious this year.
• 3:21:32
  All right, I think we're going to wind this up.
• 3:21:35
  So let me finish by asking everyone if they have anything
• 3:21:40
  that they want to plug or where people can find them online.
• 3:21:44
  Toby Well, I have a series of podcasts called Toby Haydocks
• 3:21:48
  Time Travels. There are commentaries where I'm
• 3:21:50
  ployingly optimistic about Doctor Who stories and watch
• 3:21:55
  them and try to find a positive thing to say about every single
• 3:21:59
  episode. Actually, with a special guest
• 3:22:02
  helping me along. I do these deep dives called Too
• 3:22:05
  Much Information where I tell you everything you want to know
• 3:22:07
  and probably quite a lot you didn't about every single
• 3:22:10
  installment of Doctor Who. But out of snail's pace.
• 3:22:12
  I'm on the Aztecs at the moment and and there's also called
• 3:22:19
  Indefinable Magic, which are whimsical essays about a certain
• 3:22:23
  aspect of Doctor Who that I think are quite, quite fun.
• 3:22:26
  I work quite hard on those and they they try to be sort of
• 3:22:30
  trivial and witty and entertaining and just different,
• 3:22:35
  I think, from anything else in the real world.
• 3:22:38
  I'm popping up reading bits of The Wind in the Willows on
• 3:22:42
  opening lines on Radio 4IN November in a, in a, in an
• 3:22:46
  installment that bizarrely and by total coincidence, unites me
• 3:22:51
  with an actor I worked with 25 years ago who also has a Doctor
• 3:22:56
  Who connection called David Goodison, AKA Davros, who's an
• 3:23:00
  who's an expert on The Wind in the Willows.
• 3:23:01
  We both ended up on this program having been at a Doctor Who
• 3:23:04
  convention together about six weeks ago.
• 3:23:05
  And there's no reason to know that we would be united quite so
• 3:23:09
  soon. And I also, I think if you look
• 3:23:11
  very hard, we'll pop up in the next Alan Partridge Serious.
• 3:23:15
  And I'm a comedian who does a regular show in Manchester every
• 3:23:20
  Tuesday night and that's probably more than enough.
• 3:23:23
  I'm all over social media except for only fans.
• 3:23:27
  I'm going to wait to unleash that when you least suspect it.
• 3:23:32
  And if you thought, if you thought Power of Crow was a
• 3:23:34
  sausage fest, good. You know you're going to open
• 3:23:38
  with a Nazi blowjob. Absolutely.
• 3:23:42
  Yeah, yeah, I'll precious the Nazi.
• 3:23:44
  I'm. Yelling.
• 3:23:48
  I don't have nearly that much going on, but.
• 3:23:50
  I want to show it. Like last time, I'm going to
• 3:23:55
  plug the animated short film that I wrote and designed and
• 3:23:59
  scored, and it was directed by my good friend Josh Hicks.
• 3:24:01
  It's called Spectre of the Bear. It's on BBC iPlayer, stars Craig
• 3:24:06
  Roberts and Bill Nye. It's a conspiracy comedy about
• 3:24:09
  crisps. Spectre of the Bear on iPlayer.
• 3:24:11
  There you go. Wow, that's brilliant.
• 3:24:14
  And you can find us on untitledstartrekproject@untitledstartrekproject.com
• 3:24:21
  as we watch random episodes of the now 963 episodes of Star
• 3:24:28
  Trek that exist across. Since you can't be through now,
• 3:24:32
  we're getting up towards 20%. We don't just cover the duets.
• 3:24:38
  And in Far Beyond the Stars, no, no, no, Sub Rosa is in there as
• 3:24:41
  well. That's all the shit and you can.
• 3:24:47
  I have a podcast called Flights for Entirety and another one
• 3:24:50
  called 500 Year Diary that can be found at Flights for
• 3:24:54
  entirety.com and 500 Year diary.com where we talk about.
• 3:24:57
  Doctor Who? Stories.
• 3:24:58
  Which is a thing that happens and has even in one episode
• 3:25:02
  involved. Toby Haydo about.
• 3:25:06
  Startling Barbara Bane. Startling.
• 3:25:10
  Barbara Bane where we watch where we drink, eat a fabulous
• 3:25:15
  meal, and then watch an episode of Space 1999.
• 3:25:19
  Which is the thing. I don't want to be the only
• 3:25:22
  person who's not plugging something on this, even though
• 3:25:24
  you're listening to my podcast right now.
• 3:25:27
  But Strictly is winding down now, and we've only got, what,
• 3:25:31
  1-2 more seasons to go and then 10 more Doctor episodes and then
• 3:25:36
  the grand finale where we choose genuinely the worst Doctor Who
• 3:25:41
  story as our favorite. But then a new panel show
• 3:25:45
  emerges from the ashes like a phoenix.
• 3:25:48
  And what's it called? It's named by from my other half
• 3:25:51
  who likes to pretend that he's not kinky but really is hamster
• 3:25:55
  bait. It will be gold.
• 3:25:57
  And this will be like the Strictly format, but a lot
• 3:26:01
  shorter and with a lot less work that you need to put in with
• 3:26:06
  sort of contentious topics under scrutiny with four guests
• 3:26:11
  battling it out, starting with the The big question.
• 3:26:16
  Look at all your faces when I say this.
• 3:26:18
  Should time travel never be covered in Doctor Home?
• 3:26:23
  There's lots to talk about. Yeah, 90 minute episode, same
• 3:26:26
  format. It's going to be a lot of fun.
• 3:26:28
  So that will be coming. In the new year.
• 3:26:31
  Brilliant. Your X-Files podcast is good
• 3:26:34
  too. Yes.
• 3:26:35
  Of. Course.
• 3:26:36
  Thank you. So that's some part of hamster,
• 3:26:38
  isn't it? So if you if you're listening to
• 3:26:41
  this, that will be on your feed at some point, you know, Asian
• 3:26:45
  yo. And Morris, you know, he's done
• 3:26:46
  a couple of these now. He's particularly good.
• 3:26:48
  I, you know, he's very good. Yeah.
• 3:26:50
  I really enjoyed listening to those.
• 3:26:51
  I think I'm great too. Can it was.
• 3:26:53
  I mean, you're consistently excellent.
• 3:26:55
  Well, yeah, only done one. I could form out on the next
• 3:26:59
  one. All right, so so that's all the
• 3:27:02
  time we have for and we will see you next time.
• 3:27:06
  Joe, how do we end this? How do we see ourselves out in
• 3:27:08
  an appropriately season 16 sort of away Next time I will not be
• 3:27:14
  so lenient, but what we actually say is keep listening, just
• 3:27:19
  count us in and we'll sort of try and show you how it's done.
• 3:27:22
  All right, OK, 543. 2. 1. Keep listening.
• 3:27:33
  I'm surrounded by incompetence. The.