Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Talks to James Lark about his choice of The Invasion (1/8)

Transcript

Talks to James Lark about his choice of The Invasion (1/8) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:33
  The. Welcome back to a Hamster with a
• 0:50
  Blunt Pen Knife, the Doctor Who Commentary podcast.
• 0:55
  I'm here today with a slightly sinister, a little bit camp
• 1:01
  security agent named Parker. No, named James Lark.
• 1:07
  Hello, James. Hello.
• 1:09
  That's a big bit of a clue there as to what we're talking about
• 1:12
  today. Would would that I were as as
• 1:14
  brilliant a character as Parker. I mean, piece of holiday, right?
• 1:18
  Oh, he's had quite a fair career in Doctor Who.
• 1:20
  He yes, yeah, yeah, many returns.
• 1:22
  Is this his first? Yes.
• 1:27
  Had he had he been inside costumes or something though?
• 1:30
  He's a Silurian voice and. Then.
• 1:32
  He's an ambassador and we're already doing the bloody
• 1:35
  commentary. How did we get here already?
• 1:37
  How are you today? I'm all right.
• 1:39
  I'm, I'm, I'm, yeah, I'm good. I'm on holiday now from the from
• 1:44
  the teaching. Very nice, enjoying this lovely
• 1:47
  weather we're having. Very much so.
• 1:50
  Can I see a load of Lego behind you there?
• 1:53
  That's that's yeah, some, some Lego there.
• 1:55
  That's. Absolutely Fabulous.
• 1:56
  Do you recognize? Do you recognize this one?
• 1:59
  It looks like a spooky castle. It's a nightmare before
• 2:01
  Christmas. It's a nightmare before
• 2:02
  Christmas. I haven't wasted my youth,
• 2:07
  James, even though I've given a big clue already.
• 2:09
  Please tell everybody what we're here to talk about today, at
• 2:12
  your request, may I add. At my request, we are going to
• 2:15
  be slogging our way through all 8 episodes of The Invasion.
• 2:21
  Well, it's never a slog. Were you and?
• 2:23
  And and not with. Not with this story either, I
• 2:26
  have to say. 4 hours of Patrick Troughton Cybermen, Kevin
• 2:31
  Stoney, Jamie Zoe pon Harper, Douglas Canfield.
• 2:37
  I mean well, the joys, the. Brigadier.
• 2:40
  Well, before we even head into episode 1, can I ask you the
• 2:43
  usual question then of how you first stumbled across this eight
• 2:46
  part classic? Oh, I first stumbled across this
• 2:50
  eight part classic in 1995. Not that was a chunky video, was
• 2:57
  it? That chunky video, I pre or so
• 3:00
  the chunky video came out, but it wasn't in my local branch of
• 3:05
  WH Smith's, which is where I went to go and just sort of
• 3:07
  gazed longingly at the videos. And the invasion had a bit of a
• 3:13
  mystique for me. I think the Doctor Who's a
• 3:18
  London iconography always worked really well for me.
• 3:22
  Maybe it was being a Cheltenham boy where London was just a
• 3:25
  little bit too far to get on the train and and have much to do
• 3:29
  with it. So the odd fleeting visit and
• 3:31
  the memories of having visited as a younger child meant that it
• 3:36
  was recognizable but had this exactly what it's meant to do
• 3:40
  it. It was thrilling.
• 3:41
  It was London, the centre of everything, Daleks on
• 3:44
  Westminster Bridge and that clip of the sidemen walking down the
• 3:49
  steps with some poles in the background.
• 3:53
  Obviously it was everywhere, like the images were were
• 3:55
  everywhere. They constantly reprinted.
• 3:58
  It had been reproduced in 30 years in the TARDIS, which had
• 4:03
  been a couple of years before. And also the Silver Nemesis DVD
• 4:07
  had come out with that documentary on and the
• 4:10
  documentary the the American documentary on Silver Nemesis
• 4:15
  included a clip from a program called Did You See, which had
• 4:19
  various Cybermen clips from the 10th Planet onwards.
• 4:23
  And so it had the clip of the Cybermen walking down the steps
• 4:27
  and I think some polls there was, it was perhaps the most
• 4:32
  potent image that London had to offer, I'm thinking because it
• 4:38
  was in Mary Poppins and and it was in Oliver.
• 4:44
  And it is a, it is a, an incredibly striking landmark.
• 4:48
  And wasn't it in a? Dalek Invasion of Earth, 2158,
• 4:51
  D. You do, you do you do glimpse it
• 4:55
  in the background of that. It's a, it's a slightly weird
• 4:58
  backdrop they have there because it's got some poles in the
• 5:00
  distance, but it's got other landmarks that are that are
• 5:02
  harder to identify. Slightly 2D as well, isn't it?
• 5:07
  I think there was, I think for me, there was a a real resonant
• 5:11
  and of course we're talking about a completely fictional
• 5:13
  London, partly because it's a London films very much in the
• 5:17
  past, or indeed in the case of Mary Poppins and Oliver in a
• 5:20
  studio so bearing no resemblance at all to the real thing.
• 5:23
  But also anything in a film, any location in a film is is
• 5:27
  idealized. And the way that London
• 5:30
  continues to be used in everything from the Mary Poppins
• 5:33
  sequel to Richard Curtis films, even when they're using places
• 5:37
  that I can actually walk to and touch these days when I work in
• 5:40
  the middle of London, they're filmed in such ways to give it
• 5:43
  this luster, this luster, this, this, this feeling of of London
• 5:50
  that it's the London of Dickens and the London of Shakespeare
• 5:53
  and the London of Doctor Who in the 1960s.
• 5:56
  And, and my heart would probably kind of beat faster at the
• 6:00
  thought of that. And when I went to London, even
• 6:02
  though it never measured up, never came close to measuring up
• 6:06
  to my expectations, there was something about being there and,
• 6:09
  and treading it along streets that might, just might have had
• 6:14
  a, a sideman coming out of a manhole or whatever.
• 6:18
  So the invasion, when it came out on video, it was, there was
• 6:22
  a sort of Holy Grail feeling to it.
• 6:26
  And 1995 was a, an interesting year for me.
• 6:31
  I was 15, I guess. And that's so it's just, it's
• 6:34
  traumatic, isn't it, being 15I? Mean I was also 15 in 95 so I
• 6:39
  feel your pain. I mean, if that 95 a year of
• 6:44
  great trauma. Do you want to share anything
• 6:48
  right now? OK, a bit of a bit of a
• 6:51
  digression. 1995 was the year that I got a girlfriend.
• 6:56
  Oh boy. Oh Jesus.
• 6:58
  Oh, you weren't out at this point then.
• 7:00
  Oh OK, this was the year I came at.
• 7:03
  Least of all to myself. Goodness me, no.
• 7:06
  And do you know why I wasn't out?
• 7:08
  Because it was a unthinkable in Cheltenham in the mid 90s B my
• 7:13
  my whole conception of romance, much like my conception of
• 7:17
  London. Was romanticized, yeah.
• 7:21
  Based on based on stuff I see on the telly.
• 7:24
  SO whenever I kind of had a crush on someone, it I it was a
• 7:28
  someone unattainable and B my response was to just gaze
• 7:34
  longingly and and fail to have any kind of contact with them at
• 7:37
  all. So to actually be in a situation
• 7:38
  where a a girl became attainable was weird enough, but of course
• 7:42
  the reality that that it involved kind of talking to her
• 7:46
  and and not just kind of gazing loggingly and and and
• 7:54
  fantasizing about this Jane Austen kind of reality that we
• 7:58
  would never have. It didn't go 15, and Mar 15 was
• 8:02
  so different, you know, I mean, I was at it at 15 and I was
• 8:06
  absolutely gagging. I mean, but I was from Crawley.
• 8:09
  I don't know where you were when you were 15.
• 8:11
  Goodness me my the the closest I came to being at it when I was
• 8:16
  15 was doing a physics science experiments at the same station
• 8:23
  as my very brief girlfriend. That was the closest we came to
• 8:29
  actually touching. So did you.
• 8:31
  Watch The Invasion to give her that chunky VHS.
• 8:33
  No, but there was a Doctor Who linked because she had UK gold,
• 8:37
  so for a very brief period. She was your dealer.
• 8:41
  Was my dealer and she would take Doctor Who for me.
• 8:44
  And when she realised it wasn't working, because I think, I
• 8:48
  think part of the problem was I, we'd been really good friends
• 8:50
  and right up until the point where she became my girlfriend,
• 8:52
  we used to talk a lot because she was not a romantic interest.
• 8:57
  Therefore I didn't have to go through the whole unattainable
• 8:59
  thing. The minute she became a
• 9:01
  girlfriend, I didn't know what to do with that.
• 9:02
  And I think that was disappointing for her because
• 9:04
  she quite liked it when I was kind of normal and talked to
• 9:07
  her. Which I didn't.
• 9:09
  Think it was possible to love you more, but here we are.
• 9:13
  Do you know how she she, she was too nice slash nasty to break up
• 9:20
  with me herself, Although she did eventually when she realized
• 9:24
  I was, I mean, I wasn't going to let go that, you know, in for a
• 9:27
  penny, in for a pound, however tragic and awful it felt I was.
• 9:31
  I was with her for life in my head.
• 9:34
  The first way she tried to get me to break up with her was she
• 9:39
  deliberately missed the 1st 15 minutes of battlefield.
• 9:45
  Deliberately, she would have been gone.
• 9:50
  Did you forgive that? I forgave her.
• 9:53
  Oh, James. Battlefield as well.
• 9:56
  I know, what are your favourites, right?
• 9:57
  I know I forgave her. What a what?
• 10:01
  What? I mean, what a weird child I
• 10:03
  was. But there's something quite
• 10:04
  romantic about that, isn't there?
• 10:06
  She she deliberately set the video 50 minutes later so I
• 10:11
  missed all the the first the setup it started did.
• 10:15
  She tell you it was, Philip wrote.
• 10:16
  No, I've worked that out. I've worked that out.
• 10:19
  It was. It was very clear the moment
• 10:21
  where she decided it wasn't. Working.
• 10:22
  They still annoy him, yeah. And you know, she knew what time
• 10:26
  to set the video for Greatest show in the Galaxy, didn't she?
• 10:28
  So. More like a total tramp as I do
• 10:35
  right now. Because at 15, when my
• 10:38
  girlfriend, Catherine Gregory tried to dump me because we was,
• 10:42
  she was trying to have it off with me and I kept doing up my
• 10:45
  belt really tight so she couldn't get down there.
• 10:47
  And then she realized that I was doing up my belt really tight.
• 10:50
  So we went on the school. You know, when you leave school,
• 10:53
  you go on like a Thames cruise. We went on that and she sort of
• 10:56
  dumped me there. She goes, well, you won't have
• 10:58
  it off with me. So I hope this is going to work.
• 11:01
  And then I came out two weeks later, that was mine.
• 11:05
  I mean, yours is so much nicer. Yeah, which is which is better?
• 11:09
  Which is more grounded in reality?
• 11:11
  Which is the healthier approach? I think not not recording the
• 11:16
  1st 15 minutes of Battlefield is that.
• 11:18
  It's the healthier lifestyle, I think.
• 11:21
  I remember, I mean, she'd already decided it wasn't
• 11:23
  working by this stage. But we had a Shakespeare day in
• 11:25
  school and we watched the Kenneth Branagh Much Ado About
• 11:28
  Nothing, and I sat desperately wanting to host.
• 11:31
  I sat next to her. She she was physically kind of
• 11:34
  thinking back about as far away as she could possibly be on the
• 11:37
  next chair to me and I was there going I really want to hold her
• 11:41
  hand. And why can't we be completely
• 11:43
  romantic like this couple here, like Kate Beckinsale?
• 11:47
  And did you? Watch the invasion and think,
• 11:49
  why can't we be like Isabel and Jimmy?
• 11:52
  Well, no, I so the invasion comes a little bit for we were
• 11:56
  still sort of passing notes at at this point.
• 11:59
  And again, this, this, this will tell you what kind of a a boy I
• 12:02
  was. I went into town.
• 12:04
  I'd ordered it before Christmas. It took ages to turn up and
• 12:07
  every week I'd go into town and go into WH Smith's and ask if my
• 12:11
  pre-order had turned up. No, it hadn't.
• 12:14
  They got there. I got sent a letter when it
• 12:16
  eventually turned up and I went into town and I wanted to buy
• 12:22
  not just the invasion, which I knew I had pre-ordered.
• 12:24
  So that was that was a definite I wanted to buy a Guilden
• 12:29
  Sullivan opera called patience. I was a very particular kind of
• 12:34
  teenager and I wanted to buy the soundtrack to Robin Hood, Prince
• 12:37
  of thieves. And one of the dreadful
• 12:40
  discoveries that day was how just how much CDs cost because I
• 12:47
  was just about, I had started to build up a collection of
• 12:50
  classical music, but I wasn't at all picky about the quality of
• 12:52
  the recording or anything like that.
• 12:54
  So I could go into the works and pick up 3 Vorjack symphonies for
• 12:57
  299. So the discovery that it was
• 13:00
  going to be more like 1399 to buy the Robin Hood soundtrack
• 13:04
  and this and Gilbert and Sullivan wasn't cheap because I,
• 13:06
  because I think it was still slightly within copyright or the
• 13:10
  Savoyards had I, I don't know what it there was.
• 13:13
  There was something which meant that only one group really
• 13:15
  produced recordings. And so they were all very
• 13:17
  expensive. And the Invasion was a bloody
• 13:19
  double VHS that was expensive as well so.
• 13:22
  Have that CD though, James, otherwise how was you going to
• 13:24
  have everything I'll do? I'll do it for you as your
• 13:27
  soundtrack whilst you fired your flaming arrow and rescued your
• 13:31
  girlfriend from the Sheriff. Won Nottingham.
• 13:33
  Well, I I've, I've I've ended up working out a solution which was
• 13:38
  partly through compromise and partly through theft.
• 13:45
  No, nothing awful do. You know what?
• 13:49
  I had no idea we were going here today, but this is already my
• 13:52
  favorite bit of podcasting of the year.
• 13:54
  Go on, they're all coming out now.
• 13:57
  My dad had given me a crisp £10 note to buy something for him
• 14:01
  because he knew I was going into town.
• 14:03
  The money that he had given me was his.
• 14:05
  I was to use it to buy something for him.
• 14:09
  I went on Bryan Adams, was he? Not a massive fan, no.
• 14:13
  And certainly by that stage he was, he was quite disapproving
• 14:16
  of the Doctor Who because he'd realized that I was spending
• 14:18
  quite a lot of money on it that I didn't really have.
• 14:21
  So this was a this was a risky strategy.
• 14:24
  I bought him the thing that he wanted, but there was quite a
• 14:27
  lot of change. And I realized that if I settled
• 14:30
  for the cassette of the Robin Hood Prince of Thieves
• 14:33
  soundtrack rather than the CD, and spent some of my daddy's
• 14:38
  money as well as my own, then I could have all three.
• 14:41
  The Doctor Who, the Guilden Sullivan, and the Robin Hood.
• 14:45
  And did you leave town with all three?
• 14:46
  I left town with all three and I had an awkward conversation with
• 14:50
  my father, but by golly it was worth it.
• 14:52
  What? What an exciting haul that was.
• 14:55
  Have you still got those cassettes?
• 14:57
  I've still got a few hanging about, you know.
• 14:59
  I've still got the CDs, still got the cassettes, still got the
• 15:01
  VHS and oh, have I? No, I think I've got rid of the
• 15:05
  VHS. I've got a cassette right in a
• 15:07
  box with a pencil still in it where I had to wind the thing
• 15:11
  back in. You know all the tape.
• 15:14
  Oh, those were the days. Well I've I I dugout my my 1995
• 15:19
  diary to see because obviously the invasion.
• 15:22
  This was months of waiting and I was quite excited to see what I
• 15:26
  have have written in my diary about the invasion.
• 15:29
  We're not talking about that, are we?
• 15:30
  I mean, I'm having so much fun in learning about.
• 15:32
  Your child. I mean, I wasn't talking about
• 15:34
  here. So here we go.
• 15:40
  January the 21st age of day from 1993 onwards.
• 15:45
  Oh. My word, now we've just got to
• 15:47
  make you absolutely famous, and then that could be worth a mint.
• 15:50
  There is a During lockdown, I produced a series of YouTube
• 15:54
  videos called My Teenage Diaries and.
• 15:59
  No, you didn't. I absolutely did.
• 16:05
  I did and I took my 1993 diary and I the idea was to sort of
• 16:10
  film it in a kind of cinematic way with a a voice over.
• 16:15
  So the kind of inherent childishness of the actual prose
• 16:18
  was offset by this kind of artsy approach to the film.
• 16:23
  Excuse me, I'm just on YouTube right now having a look.
• 16:26
  Are they still there? Oh, yeah.
• 16:27
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 16:28
  Oh. My God, you know what I'm doing
• 16:30
  tonight? They're very good and a lot of a
• 16:35
  lot of people work on tenterhooks throughout lockdown.
• 16:38
  I released one a week and it was how.
• 16:40
  Many did you make. Oh well, they were quite this is
• 16:42
  the thing like everything I do, it's it was quite time consuming
• 16:46
  because you know for a 3 minute YouTube videos going to
• 16:51
  locations and oh. My God, I love all this.
• 16:58
  I don't know you at all before this call, do you know?
• 17:01
  Well, when you watch the online teenage Diaries, you'll feel
• 17:04
  like you definitely don't know me.
• 17:05
  Does the invasion get a mention? Not in those, because that's
• 17:08
  1993. There's a, there's a, there's,
• 17:14
  there's stuff about Daleks, the, the stuff about the invasion in
• 17:17
  my diary. It turns out it's quite
• 17:18
  disappointing. So look, I've written here,
• 17:21
  although it was wetish weather, I went into town and got the
• 17:23
  invasion. I saw patients on CD in our
• 17:27
  price. Do you remember our price?
• 17:29
  Yes, Oh yes. And work out.
• 17:31
  Shake down returned us on Tara's from an hour price I think.
• 17:35
  Worked out that if I used £2.01 of dad's money I'd be able to
• 17:41
  get it. I told dad.
• 17:44
  Oh you liar James Lark. I told dad I'd accidentally used
• 17:48
  it and he took it on the whole well.
• 17:54
  That's where it all began. You know if we.
• 17:57
  The light of. Crime.
• 17:57
  Yeah, yeah. When the Netflix documentary
• 18:00
  comes out. About you forget adolescents,
• 18:02
  that's what they need to be making a hard hitting
• 18:05
  documentary about a boy stealing £2.01 to buy a Doctor Who video.
• 18:10
  I love how you're so specific. As well with the 1 pence you
• 18:13
  know. The but the actual commentary on
• 18:17
  the invasion is disappointing. Oh no, go on.
• 18:21
  It says the invasion is quite good so far.
• 18:26
  Is that it? Yeah.
• 18:29
  No, no follow up. Well, there's a lot more about
• 18:32
  the girl who was going to become my girlfriend than than there is
• 18:35
  about the video. The next day I've written in the
• 18:38
  morning. I finished the invasion.
• 18:40
  The Cybermen aren't in it that much, but it's good.
• 18:44
  The actual invasion was a bit disappointing.
• 18:47
  Oh, but there was some excellent last There was an excellent last
• 18:51
  part with some good unit versus Cybermen fights.
• 18:56
  I spent the rest of the day designing a cover for my Daleks
• 18:58
  video and listening to Robin Hood and Patience.
• 19:01
  Now I think that I think what's happened here is because the
• 19:04
  other thing going back to my diary, I realized that it was,
• 19:07
  it was just a couple of weeks before that that Channel 4 had
• 19:10
  repeated the Dalek Invasion of Earth 2150 AD, the first time
• 19:16
  I'd watched that since my, my becoming a Doctor Who fan feel.
• 19:21
  Like you are more into Daleks at this point then than the
• 19:23
  Cyberman perhaps? I just, I think in my head that
• 19:27
  iconic shot of Saint Paul's was, was just a glimpse of what would
• 19:32
  be a London wide invasion of Cyberman.
• 19:35
  I think I was expecting something to rival 2150 AD.
• 19:40
  And obviously what you get is, is beautifully shot, iconic
• 19:43
  imagery that lasts about a minute.
• 19:46
  And that that is the invasion. That's, that's the where London
• 19:49
  comes into it. I think in the, in the months
• 19:52
  and years since. And I watched that video a lot.
• 19:55
  And I, and I can't emphasize enough the excitement of that
• 19:59
  double video and the excitement of Nicholas Courtney sitting in
• 20:02
  that room narrating the first episode, because that was
• 20:05
  missing. And I.
• 20:08
  I did keep going back to it and of course there is a a whole
• 20:10
  load of location footage and it's mostly not invasion
• 20:13
  footage. That was what what disappointed
• 20:15
  me the first time around. But all that stuff of them going
• 20:18
  down into the sewers and even just the London streets that
• 20:22
  Professor Watkins lives on. And it's beautifully shot and
• 20:26
  it's very evocative of a particularly of the late 60s and
• 20:29
  of London. So in the long run it didn't
• 20:32
  disappoint, but I sort of understand where first time
• 20:35
  around it didn't tick quite the box as I was expecting it to.
• 20:40
  I was a very disorganized 15 year old, right?
• 20:44
  And so before this came out. You were organized enough to
• 20:48
  tighten your belt though. That's.
• 20:50
  Well, yeah. Oh, she's a very good kisser.
• 20:52
  I will say that. She's one of the best kisses I
• 20:54
  ever had. Actually.
• 20:55
  I think sometimes, you know, when women walk past me, I can
• 20:57
  smell Katherine Gregory's perfume.
• 20:59
  I can still remember it. Anyway, sorry, I was a very
• 21:01
  disorganized child. And so.
• 21:03
  And I had my dealer, Darren McKay.
• 21:05
  Hello, Darren. I know you listen.
• 21:07
  And he would send me VHS copies where he got them from.
• 21:11
  You know, I think he had a source at the BBC.
• 21:13
  He sent me, you know, these very like fifth generation blank
• 21:18
  tapes with like the Silurians and things like this on it.
• 21:21
  And he sent me really bad copies of the event.
• 21:25
  But I didn't, I didn't notate any of the videos, right?
• 21:28
  They were all just blank tapes. Oh no, you didn't even put a no
• 21:33
  label them. No and so.
• 21:35
  Me designing covers for them. Now today, James, I'm this
• 21:38
  disorganised and and so I lost it.
• 21:43
  I couldn't find the bloody thing.
• 21:45
  So for about for about two years leading up to this coming out, I
• 21:48
  was so desperate for it to come out because I knew it was there
• 21:50
  in my. House somewhere on a blanket.
• 21:52
  And I would go through the stack of.
• 21:55
  Blank VHS tapes hoping that if I put it in I'd just get a glimpse
• 21:59
  of Patrick Trout in black and white and it was always
• 22:02
  something shit like 4 to Doomsday or something like that.
• 22:06
  Oh, they're so I have spent a a couple of years desperate to see
• 22:09
  this. So when it did come out, as I,
• 22:12
  you know, I love those chunky VHS, but Jesus, didn't they take
• 22:15
  up a lot of space on a shelf? Oh yeah, yeah.
• 22:17
  It's like that. The first Christopher Ricerson
• 22:19
  box set. Do you remember?
• 22:21
  It was. It was the size of an actual
• 22:22
  Tardis, wasn't it? That's enormous.
• 22:24
  They rethought that. So when I did see it in 95, ah,
• 22:29
  so excited, so excited. And and ever since I've just
• 22:32
  loved it. Stephen Puzzavinsky, who did the
• 22:36
  first commentary on this. He called those early sections
• 22:40
  spy fi and it's all sort of, you know, in vaguely yourself into
• 22:46
  bases and down in the sewers and industrial locations and Benton
• 22:52
  and his may as suspicious coppers and all of that stuff
• 22:55
  happening. And the music is doing kind of
• 22:59
  oh, it's like John Barry Ipcrest file mode, isn't it?
• 23:02
  It's the dolphin mode. And we're gonna have to have a
• 23:04
  good chat. Absolutely.
• 23:05
  But it's, but it's, it's setting up that kind of spy, exactly
• 23:09
  that spy fight. But I think I've like the
• 23:11
  conclusion I've drawn as an adult because as a child the
• 23:13
  sideman stuff was my favorite. So it's all the latter half of
• 23:16
  the story now. I think it's the atmosphere of
• 23:19
  the 1st 4 episodes that I love the best.
• 23:21
  I love that the Cybermen take 4 episodes to turn up, and that
• 23:26
  was easier to bear when the the 1st 4 episodes were missing half
• 23:31
  of. I think I would have found that
• 23:32
  immensely frustrating if they'd been all four episodes.
• 23:34
  But there were only two episodes without Cybermen and a bit of
• 23:37
  linking narration, so so that didn't bother me so much.
• 23:40
  But now I think that that's that that discipline of holding off
• 23:45
  the Cybermen in the knowledge that it's going to turn into a
• 23:48
  different kind of story at that point.
• 23:50
  So it is almost treated AS24 parters.
• 23:54
  Well, a payoff there is and. We will press.
• 23:56
  Play in a minute, folks. I promise.
• 23:59
  The payoff is you get all those fabulous guest characters in
• 24:01
  this, don't you? Absolutely.
• 24:03
  The wonderful villains. And but there's time to be with
• 24:06
  them and form relationships and do fun things with them before
• 24:10
  the shit hits the fan. So when the shit does hit the
• 24:12
  fan, we really like those people.
• 24:15
  Even even Vaughan. We love Vaughan.
• 24:17
  We do love for and and actually there's a huge strength in
• 24:21
  setting up a villain as good as form because the Cybermen going
• 24:25
  back over there trout and appearances.
• 24:28
  The Cybermen are not particularly effective monsters
• 24:32
  without a villain and the closest we get really is in tomb
• 24:36
  of the Sidemen and even he's a bit of a wet villain really.
• 24:38
  So Tobias Ford is one of this story's immense strengths
• 24:45
  because he's got all the things that side men don't have.
• 24:48
  He's got a sense of humor and he's got a sense of irony.
• 24:52
  And there's a real emotional dangerousness about him as well.
• 24:57
  None of none of that you get from the Simon.
• 24:59
  So he's a great foil for them. I've been watching Severance
• 25:03
  over the last couple of weeks, right?
• 25:05
  Everyone's talking about Severance.
• 25:06
  So I thought, Oh well, give it a go.
• 25:08
  And actually, I absolutely adore it.
• 25:10
  Patricia Arquette in that, right?
• 25:11
  She's given me massive Vaughan vibes in that she's really still
• 25:18
  and intense and in a way, and the camera just lingers on her
• 25:21
  the way it does on Kevin Stoney until she snaps and then she's
• 25:27
  terrifying. And he does that in this When he
• 25:30
  loses his shit, you pay attention.
• 25:33
  Yeah, yeah. And he and he controls that as
• 25:36
  well. He, he, he plays it as a man
• 25:38
  who's not going to lose his shit.
• 25:39
  And so when he does lose his shit, it's really shocking.
• 25:44
  Well, let's let's go and watch him.
• 25:46
  We're going to pressure that. Well, we probably should at some
• 25:49
  point tonight. I will say this before we go in
• 25:53
  now, I can only imagine the the tears that ran down the faces of
• 25:58
  Cosgrove Hall animators when they realized the two episodes
• 26:02
  that they were animating of the invasion.
• 26:04
  Only had one tiny thing. With the Cyberman.
• 26:08
  Because I'll tell you what, the animation is superb.
• 26:12
  Where's this on your list of animations?
• 26:16
  Where's this? Oh, what?
• 26:17
  This is my favorite. This is my favorite of all the
• 26:19
  animations with maybe the moon base and the 10th planet next, I
• 26:26
  think. But this is the I think this is
• 26:28
  the most stylised. It's the most.
• 26:30
  Beautiful. Why did they never get them
• 26:32
  back? Probably quite expensive.
• 26:35
  I guess so, I guess so. James, would you care to count
• 26:38
  us in I. Would I?
• 26:39
  Would. Oh.
• 26:41
  I loved all those stories about your childhood.
• 26:43
  Please, when we come back for the second-half, please will you
• 26:46
  just go for those Diaries and give me a few more?
• 26:51
  Well, I'll dig out some choice, some choice diary entries.
• 26:55
  But in the meantime, yeah, do do check out my My Teenage Diaries
• 26:59
  and on YouTube. This is more than a few Doctor
• 27:02
  Who references in those. The Hamster commentaries on my
• 27:06
  teenage Diaries coming soon. OK, well, we're going to stop.
• 27:11
  Stop. We're going to stop talking
• 27:12
  about my my misspent youth. Actually my my frankly rather
• 27:17
  boringly spent. Yeah, mine was misspent.
• 27:22
  You were just spending your dad's money.
• 27:24
  That's right, and we're going to watch episode 1 of The Invasion
• 27:28
  in 321. Go.
• 27:36
  Oh, James, it's such a delight talking to you.
• 27:38
  I can't even tell you. Oh.
• 27:39
  OK, right. Well, where are we then?
• 27:41
  We're we're in this fabulous title sequence.
• 27:44
  Do you like this one? Well, they've not animated it,
• 27:46
  have they? They do now, don't they, with
• 27:49
  the? Others they do animate the title
• 27:50
  sequences. It never bothered me that that
• 27:52
  it the title sequence was was as is.
• 27:55
  I never felt the the need to animate it.
• 27:57
  I always feel like this is like going down an intestinal track.
• 28:00
  You know this title. Yes, it does.
• 28:02
  It does have that look, but it's great, isn't it?
• 28:05
  It is. I mean, it's oh, here we go.
• 28:07
  The oh, the S, of course. The end of the mine, robber.
• 28:10
  Oh yes, all coming together. Was it all?
• 28:12
  A dream who knows the slightly the slightly too abrupt end to
• 28:19
  the mine robber. Hi.
• 28:21
  But it is nice to have the lead in here.
• 28:23
  I know. I'm glad.
• 28:24
  I'm glad that we have it, that all are we always?
• 28:26
  Doing this still, yeah we did dominate as to mine robber there
• 28:29
  was a lead in wasn't. It, yeah, there's, there's a
• 28:30
  real sense of continuity to all of these ending with this story,
• 28:34
  I guess. So here are you've got these
• 28:38
  beautiful illustrations of the three regulars.
• 28:41
  But then I just like the slightly blurred TARDIS
• 28:43
  background. So simple, really effective.
• 28:47
  And they're and they're caricatures, but they're, but
• 28:50
  they're really good caricatures. They've got the they they look
• 28:54
  more like. I think that looks more like
• 28:57
  Patrick Charlson than some of the more screen accurate
• 29:00
  attempts to animate him. You know, this is very funny
• 29:03
  that him mentioning, you know, the dark side of the moon, the
• 29:05
  missiles, all of this. I don't think we talk about this
• 29:07
  again for about 5 episodes. No, no one at.
• 29:11
  Any point goes. What was that all about?
• 29:13
  You know, it's a great opening. This a thing hanging in space,
• 29:16
  though? That's a That's a great opening,
• 29:18
  isn't it? They they learn a lesson from
• 29:21
  that as well. I mean how How many other
• 29:23
  doctors who stories start with a mysterious object?
• 29:26
  And we're literally opening the story with a missile about to
• 29:28
  blow up the TARDIS. So I mean, that's usually where
• 29:30
  we end the story, you know? And and the doctor sort of
• 29:37
  hammering at the console. I don't know what even he's
• 29:40
  using, but that's that's very Doctor Who, isn't it?
• 29:44
  Oh, and then yeah, with the cyber ship just.
• 29:46
  Going we get we get the cyber ship Game Pass.
• 29:48
  And you can't hear that on the soundtrack I.
• 29:50
  Can. Yeah.
• 29:51
  I don't know that it would have looked quite like that.
• 29:53
  Oh look, you don't get enough cows in Doctor Who.
• 29:56
  How many other cow scenes to get in Doctor?
• 29:58
  Who You certainly get image of the Fender.
• 30:00
  Image of the. Hello ladies.
• 30:03
  There might be some cows in Sharda.
• 30:06
  Oh, is there? I think that might be it.
• 30:09
  You know there's no cows new series at all.
• 30:12
  None at all. No cows.
• 30:13
  Not that I can think of, no. And we go to the country quite a
• 30:16
  bit. Yeah, given the obsession with
• 30:18
  pigs, you you'd have thought they'd be the odd cow if it's.
• 30:21
  Outrageous. Well, it's like more.
• 30:24
  Cows, please, but I'll tell you what is super refreshing about
• 30:29
  this is I love coming down to is it contemporary earth or as near
• 30:33
  as. It's as near, they're already
• 30:37
  doing the thing. And I don't know whether it's
• 30:40
  Derek Sherwin's choice, but they're already doing the thing
• 30:43
  that they try on and off to do throughout the Pertwee era,
• 30:47
  which is to suggest they're a few years ahead of the actual
• 30:50
  time. Because I think the whole, I
• 30:54
  think Vaughn's whole operation is an attempt to be just a
• 30:58
  little bit ahead of the curve, a little bit futuristic.
• 31:00
  It's they're talking about microchips and, you know, teeny
• 31:04
  tiny microchips, as if that's a, a very new thing and perhaps a a
• 31:09
  slightly science fiction idea. I mean, it kind of works well,
• 31:12
  doesn't it? Because it's a recognizable
• 31:14
  worth. But if there's anything that
• 31:16
  doesn't tally up with what's going on now, what, a couple of
• 31:18
  years in the future, that's fine.
• 31:20
  Coverage of the line. Yeah.
• 31:23
  But I, I love coming down to worth.
• 31:25
  I just, I don't know. I just like it when Doctor Who's
• 31:27
  in people's houses, you know, when we go to Isabel's house
• 31:30
  later on in this episode. I like this.
• 31:33
  Particular I like that and and as we know, there's nothing more
• 31:37
  scary than yet he's sitting on your back.
• 31:41
  Really. You're going to say that?
• 31:43
  Could you please do a John Perry accent?
• 31:45
  There's nothing more. That's as bad as my overall.
• 31:52
  Was there a massive. Close up of that cow on the
• 31:54
  scanner in the. Real.
• 31:56
  Well, I don't know. It's hard.
• 31:58
  Yeah, I don't know. I love it though.
• 32:00
  I love the invisible TARDIS. Why don't we get more like this?
• 32:03
  Why don't we get more unusual to the trout Nearer is full of odd
• 32:06
  TARDIS landings. It lands on its side, and it
• 32:09
  lands on the. I love it when they crawl out of
• 32:12
  it. It's so funny, isn't it?
• 32:14
  It's beautiful and and it's just such an A simple and obvious
• 32:18
  idea to have the the TARDIS is is briefly invisible because a
• 32:22
  circuit's gone wrong. Was that why I've never could
• 32:25
  quite figure out why? I think it was defensive or
• 32:28
  something. Like that?
• 32:28
  No, no, no. He's removed the circuit that
• 32:30
  that allows you to see it. Can I let you into a little
• 32:33
  secret? Because obviously animation
• 32:35
  didn't exist back when we had that chunky set.
• 32:37
  Yeah. So these two episodes I don't
• 32:40
  usually watch that much. I usually watch the live action
• 32:43
  stuff So one and four I'm a bit dense about.
• 32:47
  Do you not? I mean I since the animation
• 32:49
  came out these are my favorite 2 episode.
• 32:52
  I almost wish. Sorry Douglas, I almost wish
• 32:56
  doing the work but. I almost wish they could lose
• 32:59
  the rest of it so that Cosgrove Hall could, because it looks so
• 33:04
  good, though. Look at the light.
• 33:05
  Look at, look at the Moody way they've lit this.
• 33:08
  Look at the light coming in through the windows of that van
• 33:10
  and picking up just bits of their faces.
• 33:12
  As good as the direction is, you wouldn't have all these great
• 33:16
  silhouette shots, would you? Or Noaric Noising that they're
• 33:19
  doing. Yeah, it is wonderful.
• 33:22
  And this is so simple as well. So the first person they meet is
• 33:26
  this UNIT operative who's who's basically trying to get out of
• 33:29
  Vaughan's, Vaughan's laboratories.
• 33:33
  And that leads them straight into finding the Brigadier in
• 33:36
  Episode 2. But I know what you're saying
• 33:39
  because this none of this was talked about in Nicholas
• 33:42
  Courtney's narration. It's it's really a very brief,
• 33:46
  it's a sort of John Nathan Turkey on Turner on the back of
• 33:50
  a fact packet job, isn't it? And it doesn't really fill in
• 33:54
  very much story detail at all. I'd never even read.
• 33:57
  I never even knew what the what the cliffhanger moment was.
• 34:01
  It wasn't clear from well, Courtney ended on the
• 34:05
  cliffhanger that Jamie and the Doctor have followed.
• 34:08
  But actually the cliffhanger is the reveal of the cyber
• 34:10
  controller thing. The pacing of 60s Doctor Who,
• 34:14
  like the individual episodes, means that I don't know, you
• 34:17
  remember when they did that thing in the Ice Warriors with
• 34:20
  the 2 missing episodes where it was just on the screen and you
• 34:22
  just saw telly snaps and they covered the episodes in about 5
• 34:25
  minutes? The actual nuts and bolts of the
• 34:28
  plot. I can see why they can do that.
• 34:31
  They can do that. I think the difference is, and I
• 34:35
  do love that the Ice Warriors. So it's it's not a criticism,
• 34:39
  but I think the difference is that this is an episode that's
• 34:41
  doing a whole thing of its own. And yeah, it it turns out to be
• 34:45
  very much a side plot and not that important.
• 34:49
  So it can just be talked over very briefly and and and moved
• 34:54
  on from. But as a single stand alone
• 34:56
  episode, this is really pacey and really eventful and there's
• 35:00
  loads going on and it at the moment it just feels completely
• 35:04
  like they've gone into Avengers land, but kind of black and
• 35:08
  white Avengers on a Blackman Avengers.
• 35:11
  It's it's spying and it's. Walking into immediate suspense,
• 35:15
  isn't it immediate danger? There's men there with rifles
• 35:19
  and the place is bad news. That's what this guy is telling
• 35:21
  us. So we know basically where the
• 35:23
  baddies are straight away in this story.
• 35:29
  I love all of this. I love they're in the in the
• 35:31
  back of a lorry. It's it does feel, it feels
• 35:36
  down, grounded and gritty, and must have felt extraordinarily
• 35:40
  grounded after five weeks of The Mind Robber.
• 35:44
  Well, and five weeks of The Dominators and six episodes of
• 35:48
  The Wheel in Space. But I think Derek Sherwin, what
• 35:53
  I mean, I've heard Derek's showing on interviews and I
• 35:56
  would like to discuss him because I think he does come
• 35:58
  across as a bit pompous and arrogant.
• 36:01
  But I also think he can write a very good script and and his
• 36:05
  instincts to bring Doctor Who down to Earth.
• 36:07
  What's the quote he says? I've had enough of Jilly's
• 36:10
  wobbling in space. Let's come down to Earth and
• 36:14
  have the dangers here all around us in recognisable places.
• 36:17
  It was a brilliant instinct. I think it might have saved the
• 36:20
  show. Yeah, I know.
• 36:22
  I think it almost certainly did save the show.
• 36:25
  And he's quite right. And looking at the Dominators,
• 36:28
  and of course there are, yeah, Fraser, Gregory's who love it
• 36:33
  and. You don't listen to those people
• 36:35
  though. It's, it's, it's, it's lovely
• 36:37
  that it can be loved, but it is not a great production.
• 36:40
  And it does look stupid and, and it looks stupid in a way that it
• 36:46
  might not be so ostentatiously sort of just creaky looking if
• 36:54
  that was three years earlier. But they're still kind of the,
• 36:58
  the costuming, the, the decisions they're making, even
• 37:01
  the way they're filming in a quarry.
• 37:03
  It just feels, it feels like a a they're still doing the same
• 37:07
  things they were doing when Hartnell was around and they
• 37:09
  failed to move on. It it feels very 50s, isn't it?
• 37:12
  The domination, the gleaming cities of dolkies?
• 37:16
  It's a very sort of backwards look to looking forwards and
• 37:20
  this feels bang up to date. It's like we've gone a decade.
• 37:23
  Exactly. Within two stories.
• 37:26
  It's a little bit like the war machines, where with the war
• 37:28
  machine, the war machines, you kind of go, oh, Doctor Who has
• 37:31
  finally noticed that there's a different kind of television
• 37:34
  that has started since Doctor Who began.
• 37:37
  And yet, as a blueprint for what's to come in the following
• 37:41
  year, I don't think there's much in purchase time that feels like
• 37:46
  this. This does feel distinctly late
• 37:49
  60s. It does.
• 37:53
  Do you think that Season 7 has got a kind of, this is the
• 37:57
  blueprint for those long stories where think of the Ambassadors
• 38:02
  of Death and how many side plots there are there and how how big
• 38:06
  the cast is and how they managed to kind of keep the the length
• 38:10
  of it going by in quite a pacey way by just following up every
• 38:17
  side plot with this level of detail?
• 38:20
  But I do think in seven, all those seven partners, you could
• 38:24
  you could lose a couple of episodes of every story and it
• 38:27
  wouldn't harm it so much. I wouldn't lose anything from
• 38:30
  this story. I think it's well paced and and
• 38:34
  you know, you basically if you were cutting this down, you'd
• 38:37
  lose all the character stuff. And that's some of my favorite
• 38:39
  bits. Yeah.
• 38:41
  Now we're off to visit Professor Travers, I believe.
• 38:46
  How would that have worked? I wonder?
• 38:48
  I, I, I'm not sure that it's a, a bad thing that he was
• 38:51
  unavailable, because I feel like Travis comes from a slightly
• 38:54
  different type of story as well. Travis as as he appears in the
• 38:59
  Web of fear certainly is is a bit of a caricature, A lovable
• 39:06
  caricature, but I'm not sure. I'm not, I, I've struggled to
• 39:10
  see Trav. I struggled to see Travis
• 39:13
  fitting into this world where you've got to actually believe
• 39:17
  that he can be locked in a backroom and tortured, which is
• 39:20
  what happens to Watkins very, very disturbingly.
• 39:23
  I just, I feel like Travis might have felt a bit too kind of
• 39:26
  indestructible, a bit too much of a kind of a cardboard cut out
• 39:29
  to be properly tortured. Yeah, even in the moments where
• 39:33
  Travis is in danger in Web of Fear, there's an element of
• 39:37
  comedy to his performance. Although saying that, I've
• 39:40
  watched for Strictly, I've watched Robot this week.
• 39:43
  I can't believe that's Eddie Burnham in this Professor
• 39:46
  Kettlewell. Yes, it's two very different
• 39:48
  performances. It really is.
• 39:51
  It really is. It's a bit like, you know,
• 39:52
  what's his face? Sorenson and Professor Marius a
• 39:55
  couple of seasons apart. And what do you think of Isabel
• 39:59
  Watkins? Oh, I love her.
• 40:01
  Here comes my Dolly soldier. Hey.
• 40:04
  James, are you stinking rich? I love her.
• 40:08
  I mean, this is this is who I think Polly could have been if
• 40:15
  if they didn't lose the sort of swinging 60s this about her in
• 40:20
  her after her first story. Polly's a bit sensible though,
• 40:23
  isn't she? Yeah, and she's also a bit,
• 40:26
  she's a bit of an upper class Preak as well.
• 40:28
  She is a bit of an upper class Preak I I didn't love Isabel at
• 40:33
  first. Why?
• 40:35
  Because she's, because she's annoying, because.
• 40:38
  She's. Oh yeah, she's but only only in
• 40:43
  a way that a teenage boy with weird ideas about romance would
• 40:47
  find annoying. In that she's at her house,
• 40:50
  right? And I saw her writing on the
• 40:51
  walls, offering me sandwiches and telling me to pose up in a
• 40:54
  fever boa. I would ask her to marry me
• 40:57
  there and then. And there again we have the
• 41:00
  difference between 15 year olds you and 15 year old me, because
• 41:02
  I'd be like, you've written on the wall.
• 41:05
  Are you insane? Oh, don't come to my house,
• 41:08
  James Flynn. But she's headstrong.
• 41:13
  She's great. I mean, she's perfect companion
• 41:15
  material. And she's perfect.
• 41:16
  She's perfect with Zoe because Zoe is a little bit too much of
• 41:19
  A goodie too she. Brings the fun out of Zoe.
• 41:22
  Really does. And so she's the one who's gonna
• 41:24
  drag them down the sewers and actually bring that out of Zoe
• 41:27
  to be a little bit naughty. Let's talk this computer into
• 41:29
  self destructing that. Gorgeous moment in episode 2
• 41:33
  where she's sort of posing. With the boa and she says to
• 41:35
  God, I'm having so much fun in the fact and that's not the time
• 41:39
  we've seen to this point. And it puts Jamie in a
• 41:43
  different, in an interesting position as well, because
• 41:48
  without Isabel, Jamie is always the alpha male.
• 41:52
  He's very much being the kind of protective, the headstrong, the
• 41:56
  slightly less adept, the slightly less intellectual.
• 42:00
  But Isabel, completely unbalanced, is not.
• 42:02
  And suddenly Jamie is the one forced to be a little bit
• 42:05
  sensible and a little bit cautious, which is really funny.
• 42:08
  It is and you know it would. Throughout this story there is a
• 42:12
  weird reversal in that in the first half of the story it's
• 42:15
  very Jamie heavy and we lose Zoe for an episode or two when she's
• 42:20
  in those containers. second-half of the story is very Zoe heavy
• 42:24
  and we lose Jamie for almost the entire last episode.
• 42:28
  I think he tag he's in a scene out at the end.
• 42:29
  Isn't he in the field? It's.
• 42:31
  Definitely a Fraser Heinz week off, isn't it?
• 42:33
  But because you've got Isabelle there, you don't notice Zoe
• 42:37
  being miss. Oh, no, she's with her, isn't
• 42:39
  she? No, my argument's out the
• 42:41
  window. But you don't miss Jamie being
• 42:43
  missing. You don't miss Jamie because
• 42:44
  Jimmy. And you've got the Brigadier and
• 42:46
  you've got Isabelle. And oh, look at Zoe.
• 42:49
  She looks like Mary Tam in the Rebus operation.
• 42:51
  Oh, lovely. So is this these the exteriors?
• 42:58
  Is it photographs? And it looks to me like they
• 43:02
  must have taken photographs. Slightly.
• 43:04
  Yeah, slightly blurred photos, slightly treated.
• 43:08
  I think it works, yeah. Trust me, I'll watch the Savages
• 43:12
  this week with some very cartoony rocks.
• 43:16
  Blurred photographs works. I'd rather have, I'd rather
• 43:20
  because it's because it's not trying to be photorealistic,
• 43:23
  it's not trying to be literal. It's I'm pleased to know you
• 43:26
  know that in the near future we still are using a sophisticated
• 43:30
  spinning real technology. That's an answer, phone.
• 43:36
  It's a massive answer phone. I love that those.
• 43:41
  Spent. I mean, do you think the BBC?
• 43:42
  Just had one computer, I think 1 computer and it was in doom
• 43:46
  watch and. It was in everything.
• 43:49
  Though what it has predicted entirely accurately is how
• 43:54
  replacing a human being with an artificial intelligence is an
• 44:01
  absolute disaster for any kind of public relations and any kind
• 44:05
  of sense. Because how many conversations
• 44:08
  do you have? Like when you phone up to book a
• 44:10
  restaurant. These days you have this
• 44:11
  conversation. Yeah, and I love the doctors
• 44:15
  react. Oh, you stupid machine.
• 44:16
  You know he. Gets really angry, doesn't.
• 44:18
  That's me on the phone. I basically quote this this
• 44:20
  scene every time I'm I'm talking to my bank or.
• 44:23
  Do you attempt to use Algol on those phone calls to sort of
• 44:27
  make the machine blow up? Oh, constantly.
• 44:29
  I'm constantly having to change banks because because I get
• 44:32
  kicked out when my Algol blows up Their answer machine.
• 44:36
  I could just see you on the phone to the swanky restaurant
• 44:38
  index. 465. Oh dear, the restaurant has gone
• 44:42
  up. So what are they trying to do?
• 44:44
  I've lost the plot already. They're trying to find out.
• 44:48
  They're trying to find out where Watkins is, and Watkins was
• 44:51
  doing some work for I. This is this is the back story
• 44:54
  that we never knew existed and which it turns out, doesn't
• 44:57
  matter that much, but Watkins was doing some work for IE and
• 45:02
  he's gone missing. So.
• 45:06
  Oh, and with that and that, he'd been followed by Sergeant
• 45:08
  Benton. I mean, that's that is kind of
• 45:11
  so neat, isn't it? Using the continuity from the
• 45:13
  web affair already established, we're going to see Travers know
• 45:16
  Watkins is saying there. Meet his daughter.
• 45:18
  He's gone missing. Go and find where he is.
• 45:21
  That we don't know. Benton wasn't in Web Affair, was
• 45:24
  he? No, he's a very sinister fellow
• 45:26
  in the first couple of episodes here.
• 45:28
  Yeah, exactly. I mean.
• 45:32
  Sinister, except for when he opens his mouth and talks and.
• 45:34
  Well, yes, yeah. In fact, you know what?
• 45:37
  He's he's, he was saying it on the Matthew Sweet interview on
• 45:42
  the Season 7 Blu-ray about how much you can hear his accent
• 45:45
  when he says it's you. Really.
• 45:46
  Can you can and you can hear the lack of experience speaking.
• 45:51
  He he he goes on a real learning curve.
• 45:55
  Levine, I think. And although he looks he's
• 45:59
  clearly a physical actor. He's someone who's been Yeti and
• 46:02
  he's presumably being booked to be a Cyberman as well as a a
• 46:07
  human being in this and and he holds himself very well, but the
• 46:12
  but the vocal technique is not there.
• 46:14
  I I won't labour the point about John Levine too much because
• 46:17
  I've discussed it ad nauseam on Hamster.
• 46:20
  What's the sad truth I think about him is, is when he left
• 46:22
  Doctor Who, He never left Doctor Who.
• 46:24
  He's still there now. I should be keeping a tally,
• 46:29
  shouldn't I? I'm going to say it every time.
• 46:34
  Gosh that is a gorgeous shot. Look at that with their sunlight
• 46:38
  coming in through the window. And I love this set.
• 46:41
  I love. And again, it's it's it's very
• 46:44
  Avengers, isn't it? You can go Packer.
• 46:47
  I was perfectly convinced, you know, when I first saw this.
• 46:50
  Thank you, Packer. That's a cyber planner.
• 46:53
  You know, with all of the the fluid going through all the
• 46:56
  stuff and that looking like that crazy dozer thing in frackle
• 47:00
  rock, all those sort of weird twisted plastics.
• 47:03
  I was convinced I was never going to see anything cooler
• 47:06
  than that in this reveal at the end of this episode.
• 47:08
  It's great and I love the voice. And I love the it's, it's just
• 47:20
  odd enough, isn't it? The, the blinds and the, the
• 47:23
  three TV screens that that show exactly the same thing.
• 47:26
  It's, it's, it's just slightly off kilter and slightly
• 47:31
  futuristic, but but a little bit art Deco.
• 47:35
  It's it really does become bring to mind the kind of the sets
• 47:38
  from the Blackman series of The Avengers where they were doing
• 47:41
  just slightly quirky things to to show that we're in a a, a
• 47:45
  heightened world and a world that's Aufait with the latest in
• 47:50
  interior design. What I love as well as You've
• 47:54
  got a writer here who's got a lot of nerve.
• 47:57
  Derek Sherwin, you've got a script editor who's got a lot of
• 48:01
  nerve. That's terror sticks, right?
• 48:02
  Who'll cover it with a line. And later on they're like, oh
• 48:04
  God, we can't afford another set for the other IE place.
• 48:08
  Well, don't worry, use the same set.
• 48:10
  I'll cover it with a line. Uniformity.
• 48:12
  We all like the design of the rooms to be the same wherever we
• 48:15
  go around the world. I think it's great.
• 48:23
  Disposable transistor radios. That must have felt again as an
• 48:27
  idea. It's, it's we've, we've finally
• 48:30
  arrived there, pretty much. I mean, transistor radios, maybe
• 48:33
  not so much, but it's the kind of thing that is virtually
• 48:36
  disposable now, isn't it? How many?
• 48:39
  How many MPs going around with those those things now, just
• 48:42
  blaring out music all the time? Do you remember the Ghetto
• 48:44
  Blasters? I I I do indeed remember the
• 48:48
  ghetto blasters. Did you have one?
• 48:51
  No, I'm. Not even an eye.
• 48:53
  I'm honest. I did have AI did have one of
• 48:57
  those radios so where you know, you just press play and record
• 49:00
  and when your favorite song comes on the radio have to run
• 49:02
  in. Oh, I have to tell those.
• 49:04
  And press play and. Record as soon as you can.
• 49:07
  Hacker I am. I'm going to keep it tally.
• 49:11
  I yeah, I think the age when I would have thought it was
• 49:14
  actually trendy to hold a a ghetto blaster onto my shoulder
• 49:20
  ace style. I was just that little bit too
• 49:24
  young and would have been listening to Jason Donovan and
• 49:26
  Kylie Minogue. So probably reputationally, it's
• 49:29
  a good thing that I didn't. And I.
• 49:30
  Really like as well that the technology in this is sometimes
• 49:35
  in Doctor Who they just go too far and it's very pony and it
• 49:38
  dates horribly, but it's just radios and circuits and it's
• 49:42
  just simple things that actually we can buy into and all these
• 49:46
  years later, don't go, Oh dear, you know, what were they?
• 49:49
  Thinking the Vibro chair. You know, I can't believe I've
• 49:57
  got Ken Mossu an advert for the Vibro Chair.
• 50:02
  That was glorious. Glorious.
• 50:05
  Oh look now, Vaughan Sinister looking out the window.
• 50:08
  The way that 4 looks in there, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 50:11
  The shadow of no, you don't get that in the original, but that's
• 50:15
  again, that thing where he looks out over London and you can tell
• 50:21
  he's thinking he's going to own it one day.
• 50:23
  I love that and and that. Is.
• 50:26
  The kind of image that that was to die for when, when London
• 50:30
  was, you know, represented that in my head we get this.
• 50:34
  Cyber Planner. It's like cartoon porn for me.
• 50:37
  It looks absolutely gorgeous. Looks better as a cartoon
• 50:41
  though, doesn't it? I know I love the real thing as
• 50:44
  well. The one time I don't really like
• 50:46
  it is when it all droops over. When it's just, it looks
• 50:50
  terrible then, although it blows up really great.
• 50:53
  I mean, you're right, that flu boy.
• 50:55
  Sheila Dunn was a computer voice there.
• 50:58
  Sheila Dunn is Douglas Camfield's wife.
• 51:00
  Douglas Camfield's wife. She played.
• 51:03
  Annoying. Petra, she did, yeah, in, in
• 51:06
  Inferno, wonderfully. Marseille.
• 51:10
  Well, look, we didn't have a chance of really talk about
• 51:12
  Douglas Camfield in episode 1. That's because he didn't do a
• 51:14
  lot of work there, but. Hooray for Cosgrove Hall,
• 51:18
  though. What, what, what a stylish bit
• 51:20
  of animation that is. And I am pleased.
• 51:23
  Well, no, I'm not pleased. Episode 4's missing, of course
• 51:25
  I'm not. But I am pleased we get to enjoy
• 51:28
  some more animation later on tonight.
• 51:31
  I just really would love to have seen that helicopter rescue.
• 51:33
  Yeah. There's a load of stuff in
• 51:36
  episode 4 that I would really like to that feels like.
• 51:40
  James, that look great. Yeah, and it's Cam Field doing
• 51:44
  what he does really well, isn't it?
• 51:45
  And again, pacing wise, it's it's very cleverly written.
• 51:49
  So episode 4 feels like a final episode in a lot of ways.
• 51:53
  You have that that journey towards episode 4 and then it
• 51:56
  kind of restarts for another journey towards episode 8, which
• 52:00
  in which we get a lot of great Cam field stuff.
• 52:03
  And I don't want to get to this, you know, because the end of
• 52:05
  Episode 4 is that when he comes out of the cocoon.
• 52:07
  It is. It is.
• 52:08
  What's going on with side men, you know, in, in the 60s,
• 52:11
  they're coming out of eggs, they're coming out of cocoons,
• 52:13
  they're coming out of honeycomb. Honeycomb, What's going on?
• 52:16
  They're they're sort of being birthed quite a lot.
• 52:19
  Of birthing and they can't decide on what they want to be
• 52:22
  birthed out of but they're but they're.
• 52:23
  Well, no, it's come on, a monster just tearing out or
• 52:26
  something. It's always a great moment,
• 52:28
  isn't? It it's a great yeah.
• 52:29
  And they do it again in the 80s, so.
• 52:31
  Maybe not Destiny in the Dark episode 1 when he takes a bit of
• 52:34
  the wall with him, but. I was thinking you're the
• 52:36
  Cyberman. I was thinking of Earth shock.
• 52:38
  Ohh, out the silos. Yes, silos.
• 52:41
  Well look, we're not watching Earth.
• 52:42
  What? We're watching The Invasion and
• 52:44
  so should we go and watch episode 2?
• 52:46
  I think we should. Let's do.
• 52:48
  It.