Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Talks to Jason Thompson about his choice of The Sea Devils (5/6)

Transcript

Talks to Jason Thompson about his choice of The Sea Devils (5/6) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:23
  None. Hamster with a blunt pen.
• 0:34
  Knife for doing quicker, quicker, quicker welcome.
• 0:41
  Back. No, it's not going to work that.
• 0:43
  Was good do that I. Can't I can't?
• 0:47
  Welcome Back to A Hamster with a Blunt Pen Knife, the Doctor Who
• 0:52
  Commentary Podcast. I haven't actually mentioned
• 0:57
  that I'm Jason Thompson in any of the introductions that I've
• 1:00
  done, but you know, you all know me by now.
• 1:01
  You've heard me waffling on enough on these things.
• 1:04
  And of course, I'm here with the absolutely wonderful Joe Ford to
• 1:08
  do episode five of the Sea Devils.
• 1:12
  The Sea Devils, how was that? That was not bad.
• 1:17
  You know there was a Bernie Summerfield audio called Bernie
• 1:21
  Summerfield and the Poison Sees featuring the Sea Devils.
• 1:25
  Oh goodness, that a fucking word.
• 1:26
  They were saying that that was a write off that I couldn't get
• 1:30
  the plot at all. And also, you know, as the Sea
• 1:35
  Devils have featured in two subsequent Doctor Who classics,
• 1:40
  Warriors of the Deep and Legend of the Sea Devils.
• 1:46
  I think you're playing fast and loose with the definition of
• 1:48
  classic there, Joe. Yeah, I frequently do.
• 1:54
  Do you rate either of those two sequels to this?
• 1:59
  No, neither. No.
• 2:02
  Warriors of the Deep is actually to give it its credit.
• 2:07
  Warriors of the Deep is a decent story.
• 2:08
  Let that let down by the execution.
• 2:14
  You know the the obviously unfinished Merca, the mattress
• 2:19
  doors, the the doctor, Solow's really bizarre karate kicking
• 2:27
  and things like. That I love that bit.
• 2:30
  But it's a decent, solid story, I think.
• 2:32
  I don't. It's.
• 2:33
  Well structured. Yeah, and the fact that they
• 2:36
  made the Silurians New master, that they're grinning all the
• 2:38
  time just does not work. And and even those samurai sort
• 2:42
  of costumes. And the Sea Devil Samurai
• 2:44
  costumes. Weird.
• 2:45
  You know what they look like? They look like they belong on
• 2:47
  RuPaul's track race for those enormous sort of shoulder pads
• 2:49
  sticking out. Shoulder pads.
• 2:51
  But. That's what I was saying earlier
• 2:52
  about how great the Sea Devil gun design is in the Sea Devils
• 2:56
  here. That weird thing that they hold
• 2:59
  up and they tried to make something that looked a bit like
• 3:02
  it for Wars the Deep, but it still had a normal gun handle.
• 3:05
  So it just kind of it just looks cheap and shite.
• 3:10
  The annoying thing about our stories is it had the potential
• 3:12
  to be amazing. It it really did.
• 3:15
  If they turned the lights down, brought in Graham Harper, it
• 3:18
  could have been amazing. Yeah, absolutely.
• 3:20
  It could have been great, but it was and.
• 3:22
  Waited until after that fucking election.
• 3:25
  But it was a mess, so it didn't come off real and Legend of the
• 3:29
  Sea Devils. There once was a ship.
• 3:33
  I'll tell you this. Remember that.
• 3:35
  Yes. I think, I think that might be
• 3:37
  the only time in Doctor Who history where the trailer is was
• 3:43
  better than the finished product.
• 3:46
  Oh, the finished product, it was a mess.
• 3:48
  I mean, yeah, you some of it you can, you can kind of understand
• 3:53
  because obviously they've made it in lockdown conditions with
• 3:56
  social distancing. And you and you can see that
• 3:58
  that's the case when you have all these great big empty spaces
• 4:01
  with like three people in and they have to make up a reason
• 4:06
  why there's no crew on a ship because they can't fill it with
• 4:09
  people because of the. Lockdown The Joy of Eve with Eve
• 4:13
  of the Daleks, which I just think is extraordinarily good,
• 4:17
  was they. They used the pandemic to their
• 4:20
  advantage. A very small location, a few
• 4:24
  characters, well done, well acted, well written.
• 4:28
  Legends of the season. They were going for like a
• 4:30
  Hollywood blockbuster where they could only have four people.
• 4:32
  In it, they could only have a small cast, and it didn't.
• 4:37
  The Sea Devils weren't really recognisable as the Sea Devils I
• 4:41
  do. Think they were well?
• 4:41
  Realised they were well. Realised certainly and I like
• 4:45
  the fact that they didn't diverge the design too much from
• 4:47
  what we were familiar with. I think you know for me, when
• 4:52
  they when they redesigned the Sontarans in series four, they
• 4:55
  looked a bit like he man figures so much preferred the Sontarans
• 4:59
  in. Flux slugs, they looked.
• 5:01
  Superb I. Wanted to ride a horse.
• 5:05
  But Legend of the Sea Devils, It's like suddenly the Sea
• 5:08
  Devils are awakened, have magical powers.
• 5:11
  Yeah. Oh, that one That jumps like a
• 5:14
  Super Mario. Yeah, exactly.
• 5:15
  That. Was very old.
• 5:17
  But I felt the biggest disappointment in Legend of the
• 5:19
  Sea Devils was that they made a big thing about, oh, Madam
• 5:22
  Ching, pirate queen. Yeah, it's kind of irrelevant,
• 5:25
  wasn't. It, and it was nothing to do
• 5:27
  with her being who that character it didn't have.
• 5:29
  To be. She was a.
• 5:30
  Madam St. Mother, wasn't she?
• 5:32
  It's. Just there was nothing in there
• 5:34
  that made it her. It was.
• 5:36
  Like, what's annoying about that is they've done such sterling
• 5:40
  work with Rosa Parks, Ada Lovelace, you know, oh God help
• 5:46
  me out, Not Florence Nightingale.
• 5:49
  Mary Seacole. Thank you and all you know in
• 5:52
  previous historicals it should have been great.
• 5:54
  It should have been. And yeah, so Legend of the Sea
• 5:58
  Devils. No mess.
• 5:59
  I was excited by the return of the Sea Devils in the trailer,
• 6:02
  but then it just didn't live up to anything.
• 6:06
  But I think part of the issue there might be related to the
• 6:09
  fact that, as we said earlier on, the Sea Devils are basically
• 6:12
  just the Silurians. And the main plot of the
• 6:17
  Silurians and Sea Devils is that they're former occupants of
• 6:22
  Earth and they want the Earth back.
• 6:25
  If you go away from that plot, which is really what Legend of
• 6:29
  the Sea Devils did, because it had some kind of weird magic
• 6:32
  Mcguffin in it which made no sense.
• 6:35
  In two time periods it's like. Very odd.
• 6:38
  Why? Why is it the Sea Devils?
• 6:41
  By all accounts as well, it lost 10 minutes so it was butchered
• 6:45
  in the editing suite to pick the time slot that they wanted to
• 6:48
  put it out. I can well believe it and the
• 6:49
  cutting was was so distracting. Well, you know, right at the
• 6:54
  beginning they arrived at the village and immediately sprung a
• 6:59
  trap on the scene that they hadn't.
• 7:00
  You can tell there's there's been a few.
• 7:03
  Something's been taken out. And there's a bit on the ship
• 7:06
  where the just before the fight starts and suddenly they're in
• 7:09
  the fight and I was like something goes and again I want
• 7:12
  to highlight that against Eve of the Daleks where in execution as
• 7:17
  well, that was seamlessly done. Eve of the Daleks was was
• 7:21
  excellent, yeah. It's almost a shame.
• 7:23
  I wish it could have gone from flux to Eve to power and she
• 7:27
  would have gone out with a 123 punch.
• 7:29
  Yeah, that would have been good. But Legend of the Sea Devils?
• 7:32
  Kind of. Well, shall we watch the
• 7:35
  superior sea devil adventure then?
• 7:38
  Let's do that. Let's get into episode 5.
• 7:41
  Okey Dokey. Well, I'll.
• 7:43
  Oh, oh, you're going to count the same.
• 7:47
  Let's go. Oh no.
• 7:49
  I sound like I'm having a stroke, so I'm not folks.
• 7:54
  I'm not. Oh no.
• 7:55
  What have I done this time? Oh, Jesus Christ.
• 7:58
  Why are we on now? Eighties, 25 dead, Catchy
• 8:01
  Choruses, Joe. I don't watch this, alright, you
• 8:06
  sat on the. TV remote, didn't you?
• 8:07
  Oh, no. How do I take it back?
• 8:09
  Oh, I don't have to do it. Hang on.
• 8:10
  There you go. Sorry, folks, please, Please be
• 8:13
  patient with us. What song was that?
• 8:21
  I wasn't paying enough for. Can you have the remotes please?
• 8:25
  Want them anywhere near me anymore?
• 8:26
  Sit on the damn things. You've already sat on the
• 8:28
  chocolates and ruined them. Oh.
• 8:30
  Yeah. We had, we had a packet of
• 8:33
  Maltesers folks, which I was going to enjoy.
• 8:36
  They were all Jason's. And he sat on them and instead
• 8:40
  of which we now have a solid block of chocolate with some
• 8:43
  multi bits. Here, I hate to tell you this,
• 8:45
  you know, but if you do end up eating those, you will have to
• 8:48
  eat something that's basically come out of my ass because I was
• 8:51
  sitting on it for 2 1/2 episodes.
• 8:53
  I'm going to leave them in your fridge.
• 8:54
  OK, fair enough. They're all yours.
• 8:56
  I will just take you with the Pringles.
• 8:59
  Now look here, but it no, I'm not going to go there.
• 9:03
  Back to the diving. Bell Back to the diving bell.
• 9:06
  Unsurprisingly, the Doctor is not in it.
• 9:09
  That's right, a heads down to the seabed in No, no, it's not
• 9:14
  seabed. It's into the.
• 9:15
  They do say seabed. Well, it does seem to suggest
• 9:18
  that the silurium base is underneath the seabed, doesn't
• 9:22
  it? Because that's where you see the
• 9:24
  thing come down into the set. I can't remember.
• 9:27
  We'll find out. And it's got eyes on it, I think
• 9:29
  as well. It's very odd.
• 9:31
  Michael Bryant's so proud of it. He goes, look at this, you don't
• 9:34
  see that on other TV shows. Oh no, there's a bloody reason
• 9:37
  for that. Here we are in the sea devil
• 9:40
  base. Yeah, look, see.
• 9:41
  Yeah, it's coming in. So that.
• 9:43
  So the implication because the doctor was on the seabed.
• 9:45
  Is the base is under the seabed? Or it's picked it up and then
• 9:51
  just plopped it back down again. What do you think about these
• 9:54
  fabulous string vests? But the Sea Devils are they.
• 9:58
  Liking them actually, I think quite a striking visual.
• 10:01
  Terrance takes things, they're hilarious, he goes.
• 10:04
  What is it about this season and the alien creatures being given
• 10:09
  hilarious clothing? The penis in a cloak?
• 10:12
  The Sea Devils. Apparently the Sea Devils did
• 10:14
  look quite phallic before they were because the idea was they
• 10:19
  were going to be naked. And apparently Barry less the
• 10:23
  the head of drama was like, you cannot put those things on at
• 10:28
  5:35 on a Saturday afternoon. Oh look is here.
• 10:32
  Here's Mr. Walker. Parliamentary Private secretary,
• 10:37
  one in a long line of officious government types.
• 10:43
  Yes. He's he's less officious, he's
• 10:46
  more offensive, isn't he? Yeah, I remember when we were at
• 10:50
  the BFI with Katie Manning saying she was getting genuinely
• 10:52
  cross watching him because he's such an ass.
• 10:55
  The the trouble is, is there is a parallel to modern day racist
• 11:03
  politicians. Oh yeah, absolutely.
• 11:07
  The the, the shit that he comes out with In the next two
• 11:10
  episodes, we're not going to be overrun by a lot of lizards.
• 11:14
  It's not too dissimilar to We're going to stop those boats coming
• 11:18
  in. But I've heard in the last
• 11:19
  couple of examples, Sorry to get political here, but this
• 11:21
  country's gone to the bloody dogs.
• 11:23
  Oh, sorry, I'm going to shut up now.
• 11:27
  Yeah, and here we are just rehashing the plot.
• 11:30
  Big catastrophe, which didn't happen.
• 11:33
  Mankind took over. Tough shit.
• 11:36
  It's their planet now. That and that was all sort of
• 11:42
  filtered into the Silurian slowly, wasn't it?
• 11:45
  With, do you remember you had like the the ape that you just
• 11:48
  saw the planet before the great continental shift and all of
• 11:51
  that. Nowadays we, you know, we've
• 11:53
  done all that. We can just do it in one big ex
• 11:55
  exhibition dump in episode five. Yeah.
• 12:01
  Do you have my nan had a string vest a bit like that.
• 12:04
  That's the thing. It's like my Nan's trying to
• 12:08
  take over the world. It was going to happen
• 12:12
  eventually. I like the neck.
• 12:13
  Look at the pronounced neck they've got.
• 12:16
  Is that is that where the eyes are?
• 12:18
  That's where the guy's head is. Yeah, well then I think that's
• 12:23
  pretty good because the mouth's. Moving, yeah, which is more than
• 12:27
  the the Siderians managed. They had to kind of wave their
• 12:30
  heads around. But like you said earlier,
• 12:33
  because you had, what was it the the scientist, the oldest
• 12:37
  scientist in the style areas, and you had the young hot head
• 12:40
  and then you had the scientist's assistant, there was another one
• 12:42
  as well, wasn't there? So they can have dialogue scenes
• 12:45
  where they were sort of discussing whether they should
• 12:47
  or shouldn't ally themselves with mankind or wipe them out.
• 12:52
  Here, all of that ambiguity is gone, and it's just no, we're
• 12:56
  going to wipe them out. Yeah, there's a little bit of
• 12:59
  headway being made here as the Sea Devil agrees to consider
• 13:03
  what the Doctor has said. The bit I do like is when the
• 13:08
  doctor, like, convinces him and he goes, no, we're not going to
• 13:11
  do it and he touches his head, doesn't he like oh here he is,
• 13:18
  So what? What is the idea behind Walker
• 13:23
  and all this food and drink? Just that he's just a pig,
• 13:26
  basically. Basically, yeah, it's just a.
• 13:32
  Look how many sugars he puts in his tea.
• 13:34
  Very secure in his war. We're war.
• 13:37
  We're going to have to kill people, kill things.
• 13:40
  Give me more toasts. Tom Baker tells the story right
• 13:45
  in his Big Finish interview that he did with Nick Briggs about
• 13:49
  when he was on stage once and they were doing this sort of
• 13:51
  prestige production. He's thought, no, I'm going to
• 13:54
  go for a laugh. So is he had to see where he had
• 13:56
  to put sugar in his tea and he put 15 sugars in.
• 14:01
  And no, they were just laughing their heads off.
• 14:03
  By the time he got to like 10, the audience were in absolute
• 14:07
  hysterics and the other actors got really angry that he was.
• 14:11
  I mean, you believe it even though, wouldn't you?
• 14:17
  Murder always is, my dear. It's very black and white.
• 14:24
  This isn't it. She she's there wide eyedness
• 14:28
  and that's murder and and he's the sort of the nasty
• 14:33
  politician. Yeah, nice bit of stock footage
• 14:36
  of the boats. I mean, do you what?
• 14:38
  And cut in with cut. In with the actors playing,
• 14:40
  yeah, Commanders on a boat that's probably more at the at
• 14:45
  the docks. Again, a bit like what they did
• 14:47
  with Carnival of Monsters, just shooting it in angles that don't
• 14:50
  give away too much. This is the episode where where
• 14:54
  they've put in all of the shots of the artillery firing the
• 14:58
  stock shots. It looks great.
• 15:00
  It does. You see all the torpedoes going
• 15:02
  in the tubes and all of that for for a second.
• 15:05
  I think when I first watched it, I was like, wow, they've
• 15:06
  actually filmed, you know, they fired off a load of missiles for
• 15:10
  Doctor Who, I mean, in dramatic terms, him being able to get
• 15:17
  through to them at the same time that Walker orders them to war,
• 15:23
  that's effective. It is, and it leads to probably
• 15:26
  one of my favourite lines in the whole, certainly in this series.
• 15:30
  I know what you're going to say in the whole.
• 15:32
  Series. I'll do it when we get to it.
• 15:34
  Oh, OK. Will you be very, very though?
• 15:38
  Yeah, absolutely. OK.
• 15:42
  That's a great way of doing lines like that, don't he?
• 15:44
  He does. Do you remember this one?
• 15:48
  Styles didn't do that bore. Styles didn't kill them.
• 15:52
  Destroy the conference and start the war you did.
• 15:55
  Yourselves. Oh, and the other one I love is
• 15:59
  I think you're fine Captain Yates.
• 16:00
  This is the worst day's work the world has seen for many, many
• 16:05
  years. He he captures those moments.
• 16:11
  He does. Brilliantly.
• 16:14
  And here he is, the Sea Devils. Yep, we should probably make
• 16:16
  peace. And you know, there's plenty of
• 16:18
  the earth to go around, which is, you know, the whole It's all
• 16:22
  about the argument about immigration, isn't it?
• 16:25
  It's like there's plenty of bloody space.
• 16:27
  Just make these use of it. Almost more relevant now than it
• 16:30
  was then. Almost.
• 16:33
  This stock footage does look a bit washed out, but yeah, it's
• 16:35
  great to see all the the hardware going in the torpedoes.
• 16:40
  And you know what? Given what's going on overseas
• 16:42
  at the moment, this is a bit close to home, isn't it A?
• 16:47
  Little bit. It is an imperfect world, Jason
• 16:51
  I. Think we can certainly say that.
• 16:56
  So clever with the location work.
• 16:58
  So, so clever. I'm convinced to be done.
• 17:02
  Yeah, it is very nicely done. And do you know what?
• 17:05
  I do think we need Walker at this point.
• 17:10
  Even though he is a prat. I love it.
• 17:12
  During episode 6 when the Sea Devil comes in, he grabs his
• 17:15
  face and goes. He's a coward as well.
• 17:22
  They're like, oh look, his eyes really bloodshot.
• 17:26
  Too many sandwiches. I I believe Walker more than
• 17:31
  Chin. Yeah, Chin was a bit comical.
• 17:33
  He he's like a cartoon character, isn't.
• 17:35
  He he's a caricature of such a character.
• 17:37
  Walker is very much more believable, and you do get the
• 17:41
  feeling Captain Hart would prefer not to do this, but he's
• 17:45
  confined by his own position and authority and everything else.
• 17:49
  He has to do what he's being ordered to by the Ministry so
• 17:52
  and here we go, all the depth charges going off.
• 17:56
  Oh, it looks fabulous. I mean, it's terrifying, but it
• 18:00
  looks great. I mean, this feels like a big
• 18:02
  budget movie now. It.
• 18:04
  Does this? Isn't Doctor Who on the TV?
• 18:06
  This isn't the Horns of Nimon clomping around terrible.
• 18:09
  Sites. This is the kind of thing that
• 18:11
  that Jon Pertwee would be directly involved.
• 18:14
  In in the when. He was in the Navy.
• 18:17
  Although I do like the way that he described his choice of going
• 18:20
  into the Navy. Is it because you're a long way
• 18:22
  from the enemy and they might miss?
• 18:26
  I mean, that's a fantastic story.
• 18:27
  We came so close to not having him at all because he was on HMS
• 18:30
  Hood and only transferred off it just before it went against the
• 18:34
  Bismarck and got sunk. So.
• 18:38
  It's it's so was that. There's the fact that, you know,
• 18:42
  when he got the part, like he almost won it, didn't he?
• 18:47
  Like, how do I do this? I don't.
• 18:50
  I do think there is something and there's an obvious thing to
• 18:53
  say. I do think it's glorious.
• 18:54
  I feel the same about Hartlaw and Trouten as well, that these
• 18:59
  incredible men, people are watching their work decades
• 19:05
  after they've passed, you know, and admiring them.
• 19:08
  Yeah, definitely. It's coming a form of
• 19:11
  immortality. I don't think it's going to go
• 19:13
  away. No.
• 19:14
  And it's not just people who watched it when it was on or you
• 19:17
  know, people who come to as as I said.
• 19:19
  Something like Josh Snares, who absolutely loves William Hartle
• 19:23
  stuff. Yeah, you know, he's quite a
• 19:25
  young bloke. Yeah, you know, as we were
• 19:27
  saying when we were out early, one of the great things about
• 19:30
  Doctor Who is that every era is bringing in new fans.
• 19:34
  You see loads of people on Twitter saying, you know, I came
• 19:36
  to it with the woman who fell to Earth.
• 19:39
  OK, so you've only seen one Doctor, but that's enough to
• 19:43
  make them want to go back and look and they're looking at
• 19:45
  these classic stories and doing actually, these are really good.
• 19:48
  You've got all of that to explore over here that that role
• 19:51
  did look a bit polystyre in it it.
• 19:53
  Was polystyrene. But you know and the fact that
• 19:56
  this stuff from the 1960s and 70s is getting new fans and you
• 20:01
  know, you, you keep hearing people say you know, television
• 20:04
  now is much more fast-paced. Young people won't appreciate
• 20:07
  the black and white stuff and everything else.
• 20:09
  Absolute bollocks. You know, you go to these BFI
• 20:12
  screenings, you BFI, you see the age range of people that.
• 20:15
  Little who girls there. I know she loves the stuff.
• 20:18
  She. Loves the stuff.
• 20:19
  She's She has one tiny tiny. Tiny Time Lord, who's not so
• 20:23
  tiny these days, but that's what I mean.
• 20:25
  That's one of my favourite, actually, memories of Time with
• 20:29
  Katie Manning when we were at Devil's End.
• 20:31
  Little Who girl and the tiny Time Lord Cooper and Rachel were
• 20:33
  dressed up as the 3rd Doctor and Joe in the Demons.
• 20:37
  And they were. Everyone loved their cosplays,
• 20:39
  and they were posing for photographs on the pathway to
• 20:42
  the church. And so many people were taking
• 20:44
  photographs of these two that at the end of the path waiting to
• 20:48
  get in to the thing that we'd all paid money for was Katie
• 20:51
  Manning. She couldn't get in.
• 20:54
  She had to wait because people were photographing these two.
• 20:57
  Kids, it's a good thing. She loves them.
• 20:59
  She loves the pair that. Was great and I was just.
• 21:02
  I was looking at and realising she stood at the end of the path
• 21:05
  thinking we've all paid money to come and see her, but she's got
• 21:08
  to wait for these guys. We'll call them minor
• 21:12
  celebrities, get it? This I like as well.
• 21:16
  When they start to play on, they start to get the measure of
• 21:18
  Walker and they start and he's like, would you want it said,
• 21:23
  You unnecessarily endangered the lives of naval personnel, At
• 21:26
  which point he's like, OK, maybe not.
• 21:29
  Yeah, no. Everyone's characterised as
• 21:31
  being smart. The sea devils are characterised
• 21:34
  as being as smart because they're like, right, send up
• 21:36
  what looks like bodies, so it looks like we've been killed.
• 21:40
  Although that's the masters idea.
• 21:43
  Oh well, he's very smart, isn't he?
• 21:45
  But. Yeah, let them think.
• 21:47
  That they're Lucy Mccowack and see exactly what you see in
• 21:50
  Roger Delgado. He is smouldering, can hypnotize
• 21:55
  me any day. Oh, I love this.
• 21:57
  Yeah, love playing patter cake. But just like I said earlier,
• 22:04
  the Master is more sort of bolted on to the story now
• 22:08
  rather than an integral part of it, I think.
• 22:11
  Yeah, I think so. But that's OK.
• 22:14
  That's OK Jaguar. I think I used to lament this
• 22:18
  set in the past. I actually think it's because
• 22:20
  clearly they've spent a lot of money on this story.
• 22:23
  They run out of it now, and they're just using sort of black
• 22:25
  drapes to decorate the set. But who's to fucking say that's
• 22:29
  not what I see. Base Sea Devil's base looks
• 22:31
  like. Well, yeah, he comes through the
• 22:35
  whole. Hello, gentlemen.
• 22:39
  Would would you mind just stepping back for a moment?
• 22:44
  Please the lion's greatest Why isn't that dramatic lighting?
• 22:49
  Here we go. And actually, I should hope you
• 22:54
  gave this cliffhanger a good rating because you get your
• 22:58
  line, which you're going to quote later, and then it leads
• 23:01
  straight into a Sea Devils pouring out of the sea,
• 23:05
  attacking the base. Oh, it's fabulous.
• 23:08
  I can remember watching that cliffhanger and being very upset
• 23:11
  that I had to wait for the next. One, I mean, that's an
• 23:15
  indication of how good a cliffhanger is, isn't it?
• 23:17
  He's. Was Andrasani one of those
• 23:20
  repeats? Yes, it was.
• 23:22
  Because I can remember watching episode one, I've been desperate
• 23:25
  to see the second episode. Like, how the fuck are they
• 23:28
  going to get out of that? And it was a cheap but it was a
• 23:33
  clever one. Yeah.
• 23:35
  Oh, this is great. They're playing, they're playing
• 23:38
  cards on the submarine and they all just deck that Sea Devil.
• 23:45
  You know how they do it, the old trick?
• 23:47
  Yeah, I will. But these are just incidental
• 23:54
  characters. But they get their moment.
• 23:57
  They do. What's he writing down?
• 24:01
  Pretend to be ill. Presumably they're sending a
• 24:05
  Morse code message to create a diversion or something like
• 24:08
  that. It's the way we play it and by
• 24:16
  Roy. Consequences.
• 24:18
  Isn't that the one way you get a man and a woman?
• 24:22
  It's name what they did and what the consequence was.
• 24:25
  Yeah. Risque for Doctor Who?
• 24:31
  Oh oh shit. So what's he What's Donald
• 24:37
  Thompson's name? Ridgeway.
• 24:41
  I think Ridgeway, who's been shown as being quite a
• 24:44
  thoughtful blow as he just killed to see the.
• 24:46
  Devil where and just casually tossed the gun back to his first
• 24:49
  officer without even looking, just threw it over his shoulder.
• 24:53
  Oh, the guard has arrived. It wasn't realizes something
• 24:57
  wrong and presses the alarm. You remember what I said about
• 24:59
  the sound effects? This is a great alarm, yeah.
• 25:07
  Oh, this is really clever as well, because I can tell you how
• 25:10
  they've done this. They use tinsel, but they blur
• 25:14
  it out to make it look like a falsehood, and it really works.
• 25:17
  They should have used that same fucking blurry filter in the
• 25:20
  time lash. Yeah, they do.
• 25:22
  They do for the DVD release. Look, that's really clever it.
• 25:26
  Is it's very. Simple, simple and effective.
• 25:32
  We've stopped moving. Oh dear.
• 25:36
  Listen, I do like it when it comes tumbling out of that hole,
• 25:39
  if you're pardon what I'm just saying.
• 25:41
  There, I'll pardon anything you say, Joe.
• 25:45
  Thank you very much. A lot of people give me a free
• 25:47
  pass. Oh look, we're negative now.
• 25:53
  Yeah, for some weird reason. I mean this is basically padding
• 26:04
  as well isn't it? Because they could have just
• 26:06
  backed away and gone. Instead they have this whole
• 26:09
  pointless bit with the force field and trying to escape
• 26:11
  because they need a couple of extra minutes of runtime.
• 26:14
  But like all the padding that we've talked about in this, it's
• 26:18
  all been sort of tense sequences.
• 26:20
  It's it's been the sword fight. It's been the sea devil coming
• 26:24
  through the door, you know. Now it's a force field that's
• 26:28
  keeping the submarine in. I mean, imagine that child
• 26:30
  watching this. My God, how are they going to
• 26:31
  escape? It's not, you know, Mrs.
• 26:33
  Remington in a limo. It's not Mrs. Remington in a
• 26:35
  limo or the Doctrine Ace laying back in a field waiting for
• 26:38
  things in the plot to move to where they need to be.
• 26:41
  You know, walking around Windsor Castle, avoiding the Queen and
• 26:44
  things like that. Now they don't get me wrong,
• 26:45
  that has charms of its own it. Does, but I think that's the
• 26:50
  thing about Silver Nemesis that gets me is that you've got
• 26:53
  you've got a three episode story which is packed with Cybermen,
• 26:56
  Nazis, Lady Paineful and Richard, the whole still Nemesis
• 27:01
  statue thing, and still they find time for a comedy subplot
• 27:05
  in every episode. It's just there's not a lot
• 27:10
  going on there. I did love doing the commentary
• 27:12
  on that one, though I did laugh a lot.
• 27:14
  I do. I enjoy Silver Nemesis.
• 27:16
  It was that fun. Naughty Matt Michael doing that
• 27:18
  one. But yeah, now these are this is
• 27:22
  that Doctor Who doing the same story over and over again.
• 27:25
  It's what, you know, a lot of people criticise this as being
• 27:28
  basically just a rehash of the Silurians, but you know, that's
• 27:31
  what Doctor Who does. It's got.
• 27:33
  The same. It's got the same themes as the
• 27:34
  Silurians, but the the pacing of it, the execution of it, the
• 27:39
  master part of it, it's really nothing like the Silurians at
• 27:44
  all. No, it's using the same basic
• 27:47
  premise, but that's about. It there's a there's a sort of
• 27:50
  clinical this to the Silurians. There's a seriousness to it.
• 27:55
  It isn't very funny. I think I respect it a lot.
• 27:59
  I think it's really interesting to watch and it's got some
• 28:02
  fantastic characters in it. Doctor Lawrence is an amazing
• 28:05
  character. This is more fun to watch.
• 28:10
  Oh, why do I always think he's dead?
• 28:18
  Oh, here we go. Are you ready for this?
• 28:20
  An all out attack. Come on, you got you got to do
• 28:24
  them all. I'm the idiot you've just been
• 28:28
  talking about, like. That absolutely splendid lunch,
• 28:38
  old man. Oh yeah, why the Queen?
• 28:47
  'S enemies. That's a great line.
• 28:49
  What is it? He says.
• 28:50
  Don't you know your national anthem?
• 28:51
  Come found, their politics frustrate.
• 28:53
  They're navish tricks. Yeah, Arthur believes he's in
• 29:05
  the right. Doesn't he say we're not going
• 29:06
  to hand the world over to a lot of lizards?
• 29:09
  What? Mr. Parliamentary Private
• 29:10
  Secretary is that you have not destroyed, you have just made
• 29:15
  them angry. Very, very angry.
• 29:20
  Fuck me, Pearl. He looks like he's gonna fucking
• 29:22
  bop him on the nose, doesn't he? Yeah, I think that's a great
• 29:25
  confrontation. Will they come out of the city?
• 29:29
  Yeah, see, now look this. Now they genuinely look as if
• 29:32
  they're coming out of the water. Well, that one's having a bit of
• 29:34
  trouble at the front there. But the rest of it, Oh, that's
• 29:37
  it. Hand on the face there.
• 29:39
  There is the indication. If you're touched by a sea
• 29:42
  devil, that's it. You did.
• 29:43
  Yeah, I figure they've got like a bit like a jellyfish, you
• 29:48
  know? Yeah.
• 29:49
  Something along those lines. Well, it feels like there's a
• 29:51
  lot of them now. It does.
• 29:53
  And because they've been shot from different angles, yeah,
• 29:56
  different locations. And angles and everything.
• 29:59
  Yeah, they're bringing the fight to them.
• 30:06
  And guess what? They're angry.
• 30:08
  Very, very angry. That's Sir, is tantamount to
• 30:13
  murder. There we go.
• 30:15
  Not going to hand over the world to a lot of lizards, You.
• 30:18
  Know the other scene I love it is from Claws of Axos.
• 30:21
  It's what is it? I have a duty to my country.
• 30:24
  Not to the world. That's a brilliant line.
• 30:28
  And. Here we go again.
• 30:30
  This is this is an ongoing theme throughout, with people
• 30:32
  manipulating other characters, and the Doctor convinces Walker
• 30:36
  that actually, would you? Wouldn't you rather be known as
• 30:39
  the man who made peace rather than starting a war?
• 30:42
  What kind of peacemaker they'd call you?
• 30:45
  Or would you prefer to be the man who started a full scale
• 30:48
  war? He's Gray, I heard, on the
• 30:53
  Behind the Sofas, Sarah Tutton, Janet Fielding and Peter
• 30:56
  Davidson, who can be extremely critical about Doctor Who
• 31:00
  criticizing Pertwee for being too serious.
• 31:04
  But he gets those moments perfect that he he puts across
• 31:09
  the severity of the situation. Yes.
• 31:14
  In a way that I would argue Davison doesn't, Yeah, he can
• 31:18
  sound a little relaxed, sometimes a little.
• 31:21
  Bit or a bit frantic do. You remember this line?
• 31:26
  Don't you understand? It'll be the end of me as a Time
• 31:29
  Lord. Oh.
• 31:35
  That's a better cliffhanger. Cut to the Doctor's face, to the
• 31:38
  gun. Pan around to the face.
• 31:40
  Yeah, brilliant end on the monster.
• 31:43
  End on the monster. That was marvellous, that
• 31:45
  episode. You know it.
• 31:47
  Was yeah, I really enjoyed. That after, I feel like we had a
• 31:49
  little bit of a blip towards the end of four and five.
• 31:53
  You know, we've got this fucking asshole Walker in here now.
• 31:55
  So I'm swearing a lot now. I'm like, you know why it's
• 31:59
  bringing up my politics a bit? This it's it's staring something
• 32:02
  up at me. Yeah, Malcolm Hulk.
• 32:04
  Political. Surely you jest.
• 32:06
  Nah, Nah. I really want to read the book
• 32:08
  now, you know, and see how far he went with Walker.
• 32:11
  Yeah, but obviously, you know, Doctor Who being political is a
• 32:12
  very modern phenomenon. Only recently happened.
• 32:15
  Of course, yes. I mean this.
• 32:18
  He just I I despair sometimes when I see people think say
• 32:21
  things like that. It was hilarious when Star Trek
• 32:24
  Discovery came on and started doing a you know, the first
• 32:28
  episode was very much informed by current politics and
• 32:31
  everything and after episode one came out bunch of people on
• 32:35
  social media. When did Star Trek get all
• 32:37
  social justice and political and a whole bunch of people
• 32:40
  underneath going 1966? Did you see far Beyond the
• 32:44
  stars? You know I.
• 32:46
  See. Let that be your last
• 32:47
  battlefield. Yeah, exactly.
• 32:50
  I think that's about racism. It's very subtle, the high
• 32:52
  ground about terrorism. I was going to say that that one
• 32:55
  was banned from BBC. We didn't see that until many
• 32:58
  years after it. Was originally you literally
• 33:00
  could watch, yeah that sequence at the end of Orphan 55 where
• 33:04
  she's talking straight to the camera and then watch Pearl we
• 33:06
  going it's not the the the poisons it's it's human greed.
• 33:11
  It's human greed. It's literally the same thing
• 33:13
  and but people refuse to acknowledge it because they
• 33:16
  don't like Jada Whittaker and they do like John Purway.
• 33:18
  There's a lot of that and there's also, I think, a failure
• 33:21
  to recognise the context because you you're coming at this from,
• 33:26
  you know, years and years and years later and everyone's going
• 33:28
  God, why are they just doing it? So, so currently political, it's
• 33:32
  all about the current politics. It's all about Current Politics
• 33:35
  19. Stupid argument. 1974 The
• 33:39
  Monster of Peladon. The Miners of Peladon go on
• 33:42
  strike in 1974. It's Finley Veiled, isn't it
• 33:46
  you? Know there's a fucking miners
• 33:47
  strike in the UK in the 1970s and we do a miners strike in
• 33:51
  Doctor Who in 1974. Every time we bring up politics,
• 33:54
  it's always something that's current.
• 33:57
  Yeah. I mean, look at look at the
• 33:59
  sound of drums. You get a Tony Blair esque
• 34:01
  character raining bombs down on the world.
• 34:04
  I mean, there's nothing subtle in that at all.
• 34:07
  Well. That I mean that that's the
• 34:09
  thing. I mean, you know, people are
• 34:10
  saying, oh, but Doctor Who used to be subtle.
• 34:13
  Hang on, Aliens of London or World War Three?
• 34:17
  Massive weapons of destruction capable of being deployed in 45
• 34:20
  seconds. If you think that is subtle, you
• 34:23
  have something seriously wrong with you.
• 34:25
  Sorry. It just does.
• 34:27
  Blow up down the street though, which I do love.
• 34:32
  I really like that a bit. Wow, something's awakening both
• 34:35
  of us now. But it it just goes to show that
• 34:39
  again, he's he's kind of injecting another level into
• 34:41
  this. I'm not sure if it's as
• 34:44
  sophisticated as it was in the Silurians.
• 34:48
  No, I don't think it is and I think this is a this is working
• 34:51
  on a much broader canvas I think than than the Silurians was.
• 34:58
  The Silurians is very layered and and and deep and Malcolm
• 35:03
  Hulk's politics are shining through.
• 35:05
  I mean the other thing of course is that they've mentioned
• 35:07
  nuclear bombs, which is immediately a kind of yeah and
• 35:11
  was very much more. But within the public?
• 35:15
  Consciousness in the 70s than it is now, to a degree.
• 35:17
  I want to labour the point and, you know, we'll have this in a
• 35:21
  second, but the sort of rhetoric that the the slurs that Walker
• 35:26
  is saying here, which is not subtle at all, this is the sort
• 35:31
  of language being deployed today now to provoke something in
• 35:36
  people to to make to to to gain favour politically.
• 35:41
  So I think actually this has aged better than, you know, it's
• 35:44
  very Trumpian, isn't it? Walker's very Trumpian.
• 35:48
  Yeah, destroy the Queen's enemies.
• 35:51
  Don't you know your national anthem?
• 35:52
  People objected to that Chris Noff character, but I just
• 35:55
  thought, no, that's that's the exactly the sort of person that
• 35:59
  a huge number of people in America are listening to right
• 36:02
  now. You know, like.
• 36:04
  Oh, don't even get me started. Let's go into episodes, OK?