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Strictly Come Hamster - Tenth Doctor Special · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:00
  It was the thought of your mother being on her own.
• 0:02
  Oh, my God. Did you win the election?
• 0:05
  Landslide majority. If I might interrupt.
• 0:09
  Yes. Sorry.
• 0:10
  Hello, Ray fella. Who exactly are you?
• 0:14
  Well, that's the question. I don't mind to know who you
• 0:17
  are. I don't know.
• 0:22
  See, that's the thing. I'm a doctor.
• 0:23
  But beyond that, I I just don't know.
• 0:26
  I literally do not know who I am.
• 0:29
  It's all untested. Am I funny?
• 0:31
  Am I sarcastic? Sexy.
• 0:34
  Wild, misery, life and soul, right-handed, left-handed, A
• 0:38
  gambler, a fighter, a coward, a traitor, a liar, a nervous
• 0:42
  wreck? I mean, judging by the evidence,
• 0:43
  I've certainly got a goal. And how am I going to react when
• 0:48
  I see this? A great big threatening butt on
• 0:55
  the right. Big threatening button which
• 0:58
  must not be pressed under any circumstances.
• 0:59
  Am I right? Let me guess, it's some sort of
• 1:02
  control matrix? Hold on, what's?
• 1:04
  Feeding it and. What have we got here?
• 1:08
  Blood. Definitely blood.
• 1:11
  Human blood. A positive with just a dash of
• 1:13
  iron. But that means blood control.
• 1:18
  Blood control. Oh, I haven't seen blood control
• 1:22
  for years. You're controlling all the air
• 1:25
  positives. Which leaves us with a great big
• 1:27
  stinking problem. Because I really don't know who
• 1:32
  I am. I don't know when to stop.
• 1:35
  So if I see a great big threatening button which should
• 1:38
  never ever ever be pressed, then I just want to do this.
• 2:18
  Welcome back to Strictly Come Hamster, the Doctor Who
• 2:23
  Championship podcast for starring.
• 2:25
  Me. David Tenter, right?
• 2:29
  That's quite enough of that. But hello everybody.
• 2:32
  My name is Daniel Walmsley and welcome back to a very special
• 2:36
  edition of Strictly Cum Hamster. A journey's end of sorts as we
• 2:40
  are here once again fighting tooth and claw in order to
• 2:43
  decide on the best, or at least our favorite Doctor Who story
• 2:47
  from David Tennant's run as the 10th Doctor.
• 2:51
  To be clear, the 10th Doctor numero deis OK, and my, what a
• 2:57
  journey it's been. It's kind of a cliche by now to
• 3:00
  say that under the stewardship of showrunner Russell C Davies,
• 3:03
  Tennant embodied arguably one of the more human incarnations of
• 3:07
  the Doctor with his charming good looks, scruffy brown hair,
• 3:11
  geeky glasses and converse, wide toothy grins, affable bonomi and
• 3:17
  a stripy suit. Mate of boyfriend material and
• 3:20
  glancing and glancing at today's selection of winners and runners
• 3:24
  up, well, it's tough to disagree.
• 3:27
  After all, what could be more human nature than stories about
• 3:31
  subbing as a subbing as a physics teacher, getting stuck
• 3:34
  in traffic picking fights with strangers on a bus, going on
• 3:37
  jolleys in overpriced tourist traps like Pompeii or the Empire
• 3:40
  State Building, and being so filled with dread at the
• 3:43
  prospect of settling down and getting a mortgage that it has
• 3:46
  you questioning your own beliefs?
• 3:48
  I mean, if it were me, I'd be wondering if my life took a left
• 3:51
  turn somewhere and what the world would be like if I never
• 3:54
  existed. But as a familiar face once
• 3:58
  said, you are not alone. Stowing away with me tonight on
• 4:03
  this voyage of the damned, full of love and monsters are some
• 4:07
  very special partners in crime. Here to determine the best or
• 4:11
  our favorite story of the tenant era from now until the end of
• 4:16
  time. So first up, once again lending
• 4:20
  his unimpeached name to this fucking nonsense.
• 4:23
  Pardon me, the strictly cum hamster format, Mr. Toby
• 4:27
  Haddock. Toby, welcome back.
• 4:29
  Thanks for having me. Excellent introduction,
• 4:33
  unimpeached so far. I just want to say one thing to
• 4:38
  you, all right, Jacob Dudman, you've got nothing to worry
• 4:41
  about, all right? Oh, everyone's a critic, Joe.
• 4:45
  Oh God. Wait till you hear mine.
• 4:48
  Well, Next up, he's the other rambling half of the Mills and
• 4:51
  Ford Hamster book Club dynamic duo here to talk some proper
• 4:55
  Doctor Who. It's Mr. Michael Mills.
• 4:58
  Hello again, Michael. Hello, how dare you I I'm a fan
• 5:01
  of the wilderness years. They this is when they adapted
• 5:03
  Doctor Who for TV to great success.
• 5:05
  I always thought they should. Great.
• 5:09
  And also joining us is someone with their very own not so
• 5:12
  silent library of Doctor Who literature and in his own words,
• 5:16
  a complete slut for Lisa Baumann.
• 5:18
  It's the strictly veteran from Series 4, Mr. Kieran Pell.
• 5:22
  Hello and lovely to be back to talk about the David 10 years of
• 5:25
  Doctor Who. Aren't we all sluts for Lisa
• 5:28
  Baumann? I mean, I'm because mine's
• 5:32
  already been written down in stone.
• 5:34
  Oh, fair enough, fair enough. Oh, she's wonderful.
• 5:37
  Well, and last but not least, Joe Ford.
• 5:40
  Oh, hello. It's a delight to be here.
• 5:44
  Thank you for having me. I don't know, I keep saying that
• 5:46
  when it's my podcast, but thank you.
• 5:48
  Yes, well, we've got we've gone full blown meta crisis tonight
• 5:51
  because Joe siphoned off all his excess energy into a handy spare
• 5:54
  receptacle so we can share hosting duties.
• 5:58
  Just don't be surprised if he's the one who ends up snogging
• 6:00
  someone on a beach and I'm the one who gets left out in the
• 6:03
  rain all alone. I, I on all of you.
• 6:06
  All right. So Joe, do you want to do the
• 6:10
  only amount of work you're going to do tonight?
• 6:12
  Is it and explain everyone how it's going to work.
• 6:14
  We say Co host, but basically you're hosting.
• 6:16
  I'm putting my feet up. What?
• 6:18
  Yes, what we doing? Well, we are determining the the
• 6:23
  best or our favorite of the David Tennan era based on a
• 6:27
  selection of winners and runners up.
• 6:30
  So quick reminder on how this works.
• 6:33
  We'll each talk about the era. Then we choose a runner up that
• 6:36
  we want to champion and that one will go through to the finale
• 6:40
  with the winners. And then we'll discuss the
• 6:43
  actor, in this case David Tennant, and then the character,
• 6:48
  in this case, the 10th Doctor, The 10th Doctor, to be clear,
• 6:53
  and and then finally decide on a winner.
• 6:56
  A winner. So that is the ultimate best
• 6:59
  10th Doctor story of all time. It's going to be a dog, I can
• 7:03
  assure you. Well, before we before we go any
• 7:07
  further, little word challenge for each of you.
• 7:10
  How would you sum up the 10th Doctor in one word?
• 7:16
  Let's go to Toby. Oh God.
• 7:21
  How would jutting? Oh.
• 7:27
  Chucks, Chucks. He chucks, doesn't he?
• 7:30
  He chucks across the cat across the screen.
• 7:33
  Yeah, with his leads, with his chin.
• 7:36
  He does. Or his nose.
• 7:38
  Yeah, Or his teeth. Or just his whole body
• 7:40
  sometimes. Yeah, he chucks, he chucks, he
• 7:43
  chucks his way across the universe.
• 7:45
  Some doctors amble, some doctors race, some doctors this doctor,
• 7:49
  some doctors shamble. And this, this doctor chucks,
• 7:54
  some doctors glitter, this doctor juts.
• 7:58
  Seeing as you put me under pressure and I've only had half
• 8:00
  of my tea and I've just found a whole bag, I was.
• 8:03
  I've been wondering all day what happened to the dried mango I'd
• 8:05
  got to get me through the day. I must have met it on some
• 8:08
  previous occasion. Anyway, that's not important.
• 8:10
  Love dried mango? But at least it's accounted for
• 8:13
  anyway, sorry. Brilliant.
• 8:15
  OK. Thank you, Michael.
• 8:19
  Domineering. Like a bit of domineering
• 8:25
  Kieran. Definitive.
• 8:29
  Oh. Definitive, Joe.
• 8:32
  There's only one word that springs to mind.
• 8:34
  Sorry everybody cunt. But.
• 8:39
  But that's why. That's why I love him.
• 8:43
  The word you're looking for is domineering, Joe.
• 8:47
  This is hamster, remember. Well, my word was going to be
• 8:51
  vainglorious, but again, that is also a compliment from me.
• 8:58
  Those sort of passive words. There was those sort of strong
• 9:01
  words, aren't they? He's quite a strong doctor,
• 9:04
  isn't? He he's what?
• 9:04
  You can't miss him. Right.
• 9:10
  So, well, I suppose we'll get to to talk about the era if
• 9:15
  everyone's ready. Let's go first to well, let's go
• 9:22
  around again. Toby, what are your thoughts on
• 9:24
  the 10th Doctor era? The 10th Doctor.
• 9:28
  Well, I mean, I mean, I've been looking back nostalgically to
• 9:32
  this era, which shocks me slightly because you can't
• 9:35
  really be nostalgic about something that only happened
• 9:37
  three or four months ago. And then I look at Kieran, who
• 9:40
  I've not met before and he's a fully functioning adult with
• 9:43
  lots of hair, including some on his chinny chin, chin.
• 9:45
  And yet he wasn't born or was barely born when the episodes
• 9:49
  we're talking about. Ron and I, I don't think I've
• 9:51
  done anything in between School Reunion and now.
• 9:53
  I was watching School reunion earlier going, but no, nothing's
• 9:56
  changed. And of course, a lot of water
• 9:59
  has gone under the bridge. The school pupils in School
• 10:02
  Reunion who were teenagers then and now in there are now as old
• 10:06
  as I was when I was watching it. So it's but it took me back to a
• 10:12
  time when everything that Doctor Who touched turned to gold.
• 10:17
  It just seemed like because Christopher Eccles going to come
• 10:22
  back and it had come and it had been successful.
• 10:24
  But then we'd have the stutter of, you know, the lead actor
• 10:27
  leaving. It was like, oh, dear fault.
• 10:29
  Was it a false dawn? Have we had all we're going to
• 10:30
  get? And then it somehow managed to
• 10:33
  that managed to sort of propel it into the stratosphere and it
• 10:38
  just seemed like everybody was talking about and claiming to
• 10:42
  love is like everybody had been claimed to go to bed with the
• 10:47
  person that I knew had lost their virginity with me.
• 10:50
  Do you know what I mean? It's it was, I'm not sure that
• 10:52
  metaphor went anywhere. Let's not get into that.
• 10:55
  But you know what, everybody was suddenly going Doctor Who's
• 10:59
  brilliant, isn't it? I was going, I knew this all the
• 11:02
  time. Suddenly my and and and it just
• 11:05
  seemed to get better and better and the and the tenant era, I
• 11:08
  think was superb. Even though he's not
• 11:11
  particularly his interpretation of the Doctor is was a surprise
• 11:15
  to me. But we're going to talk about
• 11:17
  the Doctor anyway. But and I certainly think the
• 11:20
  era did that. I mean, it was comforting that
• 11:24
  as a Doctor Who fan, I mean, I still remember texting friends
• 11:27
  of mine to go, well, that's ridiculous about stories I now
• 11:30
  love. I mean, I was furious with last
• 11:32
  of the Time Lords for some reason.
• 11:33
  I love it now. So I, I still, I, I, I better
• 11:37
  not get too many rose tinted spectacles on because I spent
• 11:41
  plenty of time being furious and going.
• 11:44
  But it just seemed it was so exciting.
• 11:47
  I, I poured over every trailer over and over again.
• 11:50
  Every next time trailer was rewound and looked at and and it
• 11:54
  just seemed that every week the story was a headline grabber.
• 11:58
  I think there's a T Davis has an aptitude for being a salesman.
• 12:03
  And it just seemed, oh, this is the one with and I remember the
• 12:07
  red button and there was a button commentary and then there
• 12:09
  was a different commentary on the DVD and there was a red
• 12:12
  button preview that showed the bits of tooth and chloramere and
• 12:15
  other bits. And it just looked like it was
• 12:16
  going to be amazing. And it just seemed to be that
• 12:18
  every week there was thing And I, it's an era I look back on
• 12:22
  very fondly, but actually haven't revisited that much
• 12:27
  recently. Because I think if I so much
• 12:29
  knew who to, to, to, to, to create a gap between me and old
• 12:35
  who, which I would, I'd kind of saturated when I knew who came
• 12:37
  back, it came about that I've, I've fallen in love with loads
• 12:42
  of classic coup that I was indifferent about because of,
• 12:44
  because of the time difference. So now I'm, I'm looking back
• 12:47
  nostalgically on this stuff and, and discovering loads of it
• 12:50
  again. And some of the things that
• 12:51
  headline at the time now maybe seem to wane a little because
• 12:57
  they don't have first night sort of appeal.
• 13:00
  But I think and and we all know there are, there are aspects of
• 13:03
  Russell T Davis, shall we say, energetic approach to
• 13:08
  storytelling. That means that sometimes you
• 13:11
  know he'll pass go without explaining why or how, but but
• 13:16
  you know. What you're talking about?
• 13:17
  There's there's so much quality on display here that it the
• 13:24
  stories are very rarely dull. Some of them I would have said
• 13:28
  back in the day, none of them were dull.
• 13:30
  Even the misfires, it was like there's very rarely a boring
• 13:34
  episode that I won't want to go back and watch again and again
• 13:36
  again. There are a few more now sort of
• 13:39
  planet of fire types if you like, than the perhaps were back
• 13:44
  in the day, But I think there's still a massive hit rate and
• 13:46
  looking at the stories that didn't make it through, you
• 13:50
  know, like this, this tooth and claw.
• 13:52
  There's the the season finales love of monsters, but there's
• 13:56
  there's there's some absolute bangers that didn't make it
• 14:00
  through. So and we'll get anyway we'll
• 14:04
  get to some of that. Yeah, you can remonstrate with
• 14:05
  Joel. Only one can win but but 13.
• 14:10
  But there's, it's a, it's a really strong era.
• 14:13
  It was a great time to be alive. I'm grateful to the era because
• 14:17
  it made talking about Doctor Who not be unfashionable.
• 14:21
  And I, I, I felt like, you know, that suddenly I, I, I'd been a
• 14:26
  one eyed man all my life and suddenly everyone was living in
• 14:30
  the Kingdom of the blind and it was wonderful.
• 14:32
  So yeah, I'm very fond of it, even though I'm aware that there
• 14:35
  are faults, but I love it. Well, thank you very much,
• 14:40
  Michael. Yeah, I mean, I, I'd echo a lot
• 14:43
  of what Toby said. Go back to it now.
• 14:46
  It's got that odd thing of being sort of about what, 1820 years
• 14:49
  old, which is an awkward time for anything.
• 14:52
  It feels wrong. But at the same time it's it's
• 14:55
  not new anymore, but it's not really old enough to have just
• 14:58
  become old TV yet. And so there is a slight
• 15:02
  awkwardness sometimes, you know, some of it looks a bit dated.
• 15:04
  I realise I'm pulling at a bit of a thread there when we're
• 15:07
  talking about Doctor Who, but it's fascinating to look back at
• 15:11
  this time, which as Toby said, suddenly feels like such a
• 15:14
  different time where it's such a different place for Doctor Who
• 15:17
  to be at this time when its future is would be more
• 15:20
  uncertain than it's been since 2003.
• 15:23
  That day I went into school and never went, hey, you like Doctor
• 15:25
  Who, It's coming back. And I said, no, it's not They
• 15:27
  son runs that story every other week and Oh no, you stop, stop
• 15:30
  saying it. When I got home and it was on
• 15:31
  the BBC website and went, oh Christ, it's actually true.
• 15:35
  It's coming back. But that time when it was, it
• 15:38
  was, it was Doctor Who and it's, and it's absolutely zenith, I
• 15:41
  think in terms of its popular popularity in the 21st century.
• 15:44
  It's it's centrality to British popular culture.
• 15:47
  And especially for, you know, kids as well.
• 15:50
  That was the unbelievable thing. Doctor Who hadn't just come back
• 15:52
  as some sort of, you know, Randall and Hopko deceased style
• 15:56
  bit of fun for the adults. Like actual kids were sitting
• 15:58
  down at their Saturday tea times to watch this walls of stuff in
• 16:01
  Toys-R-Us. I remember seeing it Doctor Who
• 16:04
  adventures, actual kids comic on the shelves and it was Doctor
• 16:08
  Who and the the absolute impossibility of that, if you if
• 16:12
  you had been a Doctor Who fan five years earlier is is, I
• 16:15
  think, almost difficult to remember now.
• 16:17
  Like I was AI was a fan of the wilderness years.
• 16:19
  That's why most of the time on this podcast, I'm talking about
• 16:21
  books from the 90s, right? The idea this thing that it was
• 16:25
  really weird for a teenager to have got into as Toby said was
• 16:29
  suddenly back and everyone was saying it was it was really
• 16:31
  popular. But also looking back at it now,
• 16:35
  there's such a sort of freshness to it, brand new and ancient, to
• 16:39
  quote someone who wrote for Doctor Who, this idea that you
• 16:43
  look at episodes like School Reunion and it's the first time.
• 16:50
  It's like it's the first time we've seen that.
• 16:51
  It's like a blank page in some ancient book that we can
• 16:55
  reintroduce a companion. It's the first time the audience
• 16:58
  has been asked to consider that. There's so much freedom there,
• 17:01
  so much, so much map still to be re explored.
• 17:04
  It made me really quite, quite nostalgic for it, for all of
• 17:08
  the, you know, ageing graphics and things that still weren't
• 17:11
  being shot to be in HD as it may be.
• 17:16
  Yeah, it was a little bit bittersweet where we are now to
• 17:19
  look back at this time when the classrooms were full of kids
• 17:23
  being taught about the Great Depression with the references
• 17:26
  to Daleks in Manhattan that been on the Saturday before.
• 17:31
  I do wonder if, perhaps, and I don't want to be too down on the
• 17:35
  current era, but Michael, we've just done a strictly, well, we
• 17:37
  were very kind about a lot of Series 1.
• 17:39
  I do wonder if we were thinking that the second golden age was
• 17:43
  coming and if maybe we missed the mark a bit.
• 17:47
  Anyway, that's for another day. Kieran.
• 17:51
  This in from my, in my opinion, this is kind of like there's
• 17:57
  pure like peak of like just how much you pervaded all throughout
• 18:02
  culture at this time. You know, I couldn't go a single
• 18:05
  day without someone talking about doctor an adult talking
• 18:07
  about Doctor Who to me or someone at school talking about
• 18:09
  Doctor Who to me. Like, I was finishing up an
• 18:13
  assignment in the university library a couple weeks ago and
• 18:15
  people were talking about the Lazarus experiments and people
• 18:17
  that you wouldn't think would ever be talking about Doctor
• 18:20
  Who. Very, very trendy looking people
• 18:21
  talking about the Lazarus experiment all these years after
• 18:24
  it's happened. Or, you know, when I was a
• 18:26
  little kid going into a place like Toys-R-Us at this massive
• 18:29
  display of Doctor Who toys, you get Sonic screwdrivers, Dalek
• 18:33
  heads, Cyberman heads, TARDIS interiors, classic figures.
• 18:38
  At a certain point they started reaching out to you could get
• 18:40
  Toby unpossessed. You could get was it?
• 18:44
  What's the Cassandra called again?
• 18:46
  Destroyed. Destroyed the.
• 18:49
  Nan from Lantern with a face coat over you could get
• 18:53
  anything. The merchandising was in full
• 18:55
  swing and sold by the bucket loads.
• 18:57
  But I'm I'm wait, I'm pretty sure we still have a trash do
• 19:01
  we? Or a zombie?
• 19:02
  We do now, yeah. There's a hand puppet one that's
• 19:06
  great. Never mind.
• 19:08
  Yeah. But yeah, you could go like 5
• 19:12
  feet without bumping into something related to Doctor Who
• 19:15
  with David Tennant's face plastered over it.
• 19:17
  All that taxi cab logo do. You remember the frubs?
• 19:21
  I do. I had the fruits.
• 19:22
  It was great. Those are the best fruits ever
• 19:24
  with you doing on it. Yeah, give me that.
• 19:26
  I was working, I was working in the supermarket and I was
• 19:29
  putting those out on the shelves and thinking this is weird, this
• 19:32
  is straight. I'm they, they're going to
• 19:34
  change the medication. I'm going to wake up in about 5
• 19:36
  minutes. As a suggestion to how
• 19:38
  popularity's waned, I'm working in a supermarket now and I am
• 19:41
  not putting out Doctor Who fruits on the shelf.
• 19:44
  I mean, if we kept going, we would have had like people
• 19:47
  handing out morphine with Levine or something.
• 19:51
  It'd be great. Yeah, you walk into like a
• 19:53
  hospital ward and there's a Sontaran on the garbs or
• 19:58
  whatever. But we'll get into that point by
• 20:01
  the end of this area, you know? Something like the end of the
• 20:04
  Stolen Earth where David Tennant is going to regenerate.
• 20:07
  That was all the talk at school that week you could.
• 20:09
  So what is going to happen next week on Doctor Who?
• 20:12
  Everywhere, not just your school.
• 20:13
  Everywhere, everywhere, every kid.
• 20:18
  And I don't think it's really hit that high since I mean, of
• 20:21
  course you get things like the 50th and the 60th, but it's just
• 20:25
  not hit that consistent of it was pure Saturday night, like
• 20:29
  prime time television. It was sensual television.
• 20:32
  To watch. All right.
• 20:34
  Well, thank you for that, Joe. Is it the only era of New Who
• 20:39
  that sort of grew in viewing figures as it went along?
• 20:42
  It started well with sort of 10 million, and it ended I think on
• 20:46
  13. If you look at every other era,
• 20:49
  the ratings decline as they go along.
• 20:52
  It was a juggernaut wasn't it? I think you've only got to read
• 20:56
  The Writer's Tale to see just how much they were juggling at
• 20:59
  the time. I mean there was 2 spin offs as
• 21:01
  well coming out exactly the same time of a really consistent
• 21:05
  quality and something like series 4 at the same time they
• 21:08
  were juggling all those plates. You just have to watch that
• 21:12
  documentary that just came out to see what sort of an empire it
• 21:14
  was. Honestly, RTD One is my single
• 21:19
  favorite period of Doctor Who ever, and it's the only period
• 21:24
  of the new series that sits high amongst the classic series,
• 21:28
  which is where my love is for Doctor Who.
• 21:30
  Really. I just think it is consistently
• 21:33
  excellent. You like you say it was on
• 21:36
  everybody's face. My mum, for fuck's sake, my mum
• 21:38
  was ringing me up at the end of Doomsday.
• 21:41
  This is the woman that used to say to me, if I have to listen
• 21:44
  to that fucking theme tune one more time, she's ringing me up
• 21:47
  in tears going Rose Tyler's gone.
• 21:50
  She's like in an alternative universe.
• 21:52
  I'm like, mum, do you even know what an alternative universe is?
• 21:55
  She didn't. It was just an amazing time and
• 22:00
  it was an amazing time in my life as well.
• 22:03
  And when Doctor Who is amazing and your life is amazing,
• 22:09
  there's nothing bad. Sound very sad, but that's the
• 22:11
  best part. Yeah, that's the best time in my
• 22:13
  life. I love it.
• 22:14
  I love it. Well, I don't know how to follow
• 22:16
  that. I'll just say that I, I, I, I
• 22:20
  completely agree. I love, I love this era.
• 22:22
  I owe so much to those first four years of of RTD one, which
• 22:27
  after the after the Peter Cushing movie were my gate year
• 22:31
  into the show, both old money and modern money and kind of me
• 22:35
  shaped me into the Doctor Who fan I am today, I guess.
• 22:39
  And it's funny because I think every year afterward, it just
• 22:43
  got bigger, more exciting, more confident, more comfortable with
• 22:47
  itself, with, you know, great characters, lots of fun and
• 22:52
  colour and heart and emotion. And it's like they found a
• 22:55
  formula and they stuck with that formula and they just kind of
• 22:58
  fine-tuned it and perfected it because and I applaud them for
• 23:01
  that because I, you know, formulas work.
• 23:03
  And if you and if you stick with a formula, it works.
• 23:08
  And given that they're not being represented on this call, I've
• 23:11
  got to say, I genuinely think this is the first time that a
• 23:15
  creative managed to capture a generation of girls, and that
• 23:20
  hasn't gone away since. And who rather that, right?
• 23:27
  I mean, that's right. I can see why they're watching.
• 23:32
  Well, that's our thoughts. Shall we hear the thoughts of
• 23:35
  the listeners? Can we?
• 23:37
  Just go first. Yes, go for it.
• 23:39
  OK, Cy Heart says. Those heady days.
• 23:42
  Oh, sorry, no. Who?
• 23:44
  Oh, sorry, you're. Doing it?
• 23:47
  Who's Cy Heart? It's all me when you're going to
• 23:49
  do that sort of thing, Cy Heart says.
• 23:51
  Those heady days when the show topped the charts, when
• 23:53
  everybody watched and chatted and loved it.
• 23:55
  Amazing. Daniel Knight, The other Daniel,
• 23:59
  a golden age of Doctor Who. His era has a high hit rate of
• 24:03
  stories, especially series 4, and his chemistry with Catherine
• 24:06
  Tate is legendary. Ding Dong Longdon Calling.
• 24:11
  Probably my least favorite lead actor of New Who, and yet he has
• 24:16
  some of the very finest stories ever made under his belt.
• 24:19
  Blink, Silence in the Library at Midnight, to name but a few.
• 24:22
  But that. But that's just Doctor Who
• 24:23
  through and through, isn't it? Dave Rennie, the second golden
• 24:28
  age of who with the public Ten, is fun to be around but needs a
• 24:32
  slap sometimes. James Corey Smith simply says
• 24:36
  the plus and of H. And if you haven't read James
• 24:40
  Corey Smith's Psychic Paper newsletter, you should
• 24:43
  definitely go and do that. John Arnold.
• 24:47
  He might have cut Harriet Jones's golden age off early,
• 24:50
  but this stands with Dalek Mania in the mid 70s as one of the
• 24:53
  show's great peaks of popularity, and tenants an
• 24:57
  absolutely integral part of that.
• 25:00
  Joe Llewellyn says I think the 10th Doctor is great.
• 25:02
  Three solid series and specials contain some of the best stories
• 25:06
  of New Who, Impossible Planet, Satan Pitt remains my favorite
• 25:10
  story outside of series 5 to 10, Five to 10.
• 25:13
  Joe Llewellyn Speechless. I don't think any other Martin
• 25:19
  Dr. could have played. Thank you School Reunion the way
• 25:22
  you did it made it work. I bought a beautiful box set of
• 25:25
  all of David Tennant's DVDs. I joked that it was the 27 disc
• 25:29
  prequel to The 11th Hour, but it's really a golden era of the
• 25:34
  show, hitting new heights with a very popular Doctor.
• 25:37
  Far more awesome stories than duds.
• 25:39
  So. There's nemesis.
• 25:41
  Michael Storm. Overall for me the 10th Doctor
• 25:45
  era as a whole is my least favorite of you.
• 25:48
  Who bet you never saw that one coming with the character never
• 25:52
  quite getting the pay off the arrogance sword needed to make a
• 25:55
  satisfying conclusion. Some great individual episodes
• 25:59
  in the era though. Oh, Michael Storm, what
• 26:02
  nonsense. You speak spider emoji.
• 26:04
  As for the best story, that's a toughie, but I'll tell you his
• 26:08
  best performance. The doctor pretended to be John
• 26:10
  Smith in the Family of Blood. Tom Newsom, the era is great,
• 26:16
  but he's never been one of my favorite doctors when there's so
• 26:18
  much competition. And finally, Ed says midnight
• 26:23
  stinks. Oh, Ed, Fairly good in
• 26:26
  everything else. Midnight stinks fairly good in
• 26:29
  everything. Else it fucking won the episode.
• 26:31
  Oh, sorry, I'm, I'm repeating myself.
• 26:36
  Right. So shall we get into the runners
• 26:40
  up then? What are they again?
• 26:42
  I've forgotten. OK, so to give you a reminder,
• 26:46
  OK, I've bought my little book here.
• 26:48
  So the runners are are The Impossible Planet and the Satan
• 26:52
  Pit, Daleks in Manhattan and Evolution of the Daleks Turn
• 26:57
  Left and Partners in Crime. Toby, you look like you've just
• 27:03
  coughed up something. I mean, mention of human nature
• 27:05
  and family of blood, which we're not going to talk about tonight.
• 27:08
  And yet, Daleks in Manhattan, Daleks in Manhattan is here.
• 27:12
  Roger. We're still part of the show
• 27:14
  then, all right? Just to be a flaw in the system.
• 27:19
  But take it away, Toby. Go on.
• 27:20
  What? So what am I to do?
• 27:21
  I'm to I'm to champion one of the runners up.
• 27:24
  Anyone you like, just select one.
• 27:27
  Well, I, I will obviously not choose Daleks in Manhattan.
• 27:31
  Evolution of the Daleks. I like, I like, I like partners
• 27:35
  in crime, but it's to me a very sort of Buffy season opener,
• 27:39
  slightly atypical. I was I was pleased.
• 27:41
  I liked to hear you all talking about it.
• 27:43
  So for me it's a it's a tussle between turn left and the
• 27:46
  impossible fan in the Satan pit. And I'm still testing.
• 27:49
  I I do really like turn left and it contains one of my favorite
• 27:52
  scenes in the whole of Doctor Who.
• 27:54
  And it's the scene where Bernard Cribbins and Joseph Long tacitly
• 27:59
  acknowledged to each other that that he's fucked, but without
• 28:04
  letting on and do the salute. I just think that's
• 28:07
  extraordinary. And I think they're both amazing
• 28:09
  in it. And I think it just it gets me
• 28:12
  every time. I think it's a grade, but I
• 28:17
  slightly, I always get I I do have an issue with you're going
• 28:23
  to die, meaning you're not actually going to die.
• 28:26
  And this happens a lot with this era.
• 28:29
  And, and to me, it's a everybody lives.
• 28:34
  But if you say everybody lives and everybody lives, that's
• 28:36
  fine. If you say you're going to die,
• 28:38
  which means somebody's crossed your name out on a list or
• 28:42
  you're not actually going to die, it's.
• 28:45
  Die. She does well.
• 28:49
  In the story, she does she. Does, but, but she doesn't,
• 28:52
  because it facilitates, because it stops that world existing, so
• 28:57
  she doesn't really die. Because Donald dies.
• 28:59
  Existed, yeah, but but that never I know it's.
• 29:04
  If you're thinking of stepping in front of a lorry, be very
• 29:06
  sure that an alternative universe is going to pop into
• 29:09
  existence where you. Still, I'm well, I'll tell you
• 29:13
  what you are. I'm prepared to be, I'm prepared
• 29:16
  to be convinced on this, but I, I suspect everyone else is going
• 29:19
  to choose turn left. So let me take you back to a hot
• 29:22
  summer's day when I returned early from a BBQ here in
• 29:26
  Chorlton because the sun was out and people having a barbecue.
• 29:30
  And I said, I'm afraid I've got to go because I have to go home
• 29:33
  and watch Doctor Who. And I bought a Tangle Twister
• 29:35
  ice cream on the way home. Thought this I I'm looking
• 29:39
  forward to this episode, but it doesn't seem like a Tangle
• 29:41
  Twister kind of episode to me from what I've seen, because I'd
• 29:44
  seen the preview on totally Doctor Who, which do you
• 29:47
  remember that it wasn't just that we had doctor, we had spin
• 29:49
  off shows, we had behind the scenes shows we had children's
• 29:52
  regular and I'd seen the clip of what?
• 29:55
  Well, I'd already got excited that Gabriel Wolf was back
• 29:57
  playing the the the voice of the baddie.
• 30:01
  And who'd have thought that would have happened again?
• 30:05
  Again do. You think that he'd wind UPS
• 30:07
  going Toby? Well, no, that was A and I, and
• 30:12
  I'm not choosing it because this is one of only a handful of
• 30:16
  Doctor Who stories that that has a Toby in it, but that I think
• 30:21
  that scene is absolutely extraordinary.
• 30:24
  And I think it's Doctor Who being proper scary.
• 30:27
  And I love Doctor Who being proper scary.
• 30:30
  As a grown up watching a children's program, you have to
• 30:32
  kind of dial things down a little bit and go, you know,
• 30:35
  people don't never die in too gruesome a way or things are
• 30:39
  suggested or the emotions are slightly filtered to be not as
• 30:43
  perhaps complex as they might be for in a as you see them in an
• 30:46
  adult drama or whatever. And yet if if you do it
• 30:51
  artfully, you can actually do do all of those things in a way
• 30:55
  that is suitable, albeit scary for children, but then also can
• 30:58
  hit adults square on. And I think the impossible
• 31:01
  planet is a is a magnificent episode.
• 31:03
  I was slightly disappointed with Satan Pitt at the time because,
• 31:06
  you know, he did the cliffhanger was a cheat.
• 31:09
  The cliffhanger was I'm coming out of, oh, no, it's just the
• 31:12
  cameraman. It's not the monster, it's just
• 31:14
  the cameraman. And and I I wasn't wild about
• 31:19
  the the bit where he's hanging in the darkness, But but I think
• 31:21
  that's because I was expecting bangs and flashes and scares
• 31:25
  and, and alien. You know, it's like the alien
• 31:26
  movies really when they're all going through the tunnels.
• 31:30
  And I love that and I love somebody getting cut off and
• 31:32
  sacrificing themselves. Mr. Jefferson, Danny Webb, who's
• 31:35
  also in Alien 3, which is not like anyway, let's not get into
• 31:38
  that. I love Danny Web as an actor.
• 31:39
  He's very good. I was really pleased to see him
• 31:41
  in it. I, I, I love a bass under siege.
• 31:44
  This is a bass under siege. But I actually, I do now really
• 31:48
  appreciate the doctor's sort of philosophical chats and poor old
• 31:51
  Ida being up there and, and saying about a mum and all of
• 31:55
  that and, and, and now and now I really value that in a way that
• 31:58
  I felt at the time that the story had maybe dropped the
• 32:01
  ball. And actually, that's what the
• 32:02
  story is all about. I I anything that invokes the
• 32:06
  devil reminds me of, you know, the demons and of Queita Mass
• 32:08
  and the pit and anything that could have invoked the
• 32:10
  supernatural in sci-fi storytelling allows me to have
• 32:13
  my cake and eat it because I always find ghosts and demons
• 32:17
  scarier than spacious ships and aliens.
• 32:20
  So it does all that sort of slightly Nigel Neely stuff.
• 32:25
  It also has something that can annoy me.
• 32:28
  It's got which it's because obviously the director's gone,
• 32:32
  right? Well, we've got these speaking
• 32:34
  parts, but let's, let's have a couple of extras in as well who
• 32:37
  we can kill off at various points.
• 32:40
  But they have that torturous scene where everyone is
• 32:42
  introduced. They go, this is Mr. Jefferson,
• 32:45
  this is Toby's head, this is Ida.
• 32:47
  And then they never go and this is Bill and this is Jane.
• 32:50
  Yeah, this is this is NS Guard One and NS Guard 2 and I.
• 32:56
  And they don't even get mentioned when he does the list
• 32:58
  of the dead at the end, the OOD get billed.
• 33:02
  And all it would have taken would be like Trevors bought the
• 33:05
  farm, you know, or whatever. And and I I also it's it's we
• 33:11
  I'm sure we will talk about Dave David Tennant.
• 33:13
  And I know there are people who find this TARDIS team a little
• 33:16
  bit self satisfied and I understand.
• 33:19
  Not me, Toby and I, and I think Russell did sort of retcon that
• 33:23
  site. He said, Oh no, that was
• 33:24
  deliberate. That was to show them they got
• 33:26
  it coming. I'm I'm all right, but I'm not
• 33:30
  sure. And the bit where he goes, I
• 33:33
  want to hug you and he goes. Like human beings, you are.
• 33:37
  Yes. It's going to give you a hug.
• 33:41
  Yeah. But he makes a noise at one
• 33:43
  point when it cut, when he's finished the hug, I think he
• 33:46
  doesn't go. Yeah.
• 33:47
  And I would if I'd watched that. In the end, I said, can you can
• 33:50
  you get rid of that noise I make, please?
• 33:52
  Because that's. That's a bad noise.
• 33:54
  Strange noises, Yeah. But I, I, I remember it being so
• 33:59
  terrifying at the time. It felt like Doctor Who was
• 34:02
  doing all the stuff I was desperate for it to do when I
• 34:05
  was younger. And I can imagine watching this
• 34:07
  as a kid and being absolutely gobsmacked by it.
• 34:11
  The, I think the only, the only disappointment I had at the time
• 34:14
  was that the sun was blazing down and I'd got melted tangle
• 34:17
  twister on my thumb. Because I think it's, I just
• 34:21
  think it's a really good. And the ood are brilliant.
• 34:23
  And when the oodles start speaking in unison and all all
• 34:26
  of that stuff. And yeah, I just think it's it's
• 34:31
  terrific, scary, exciting, thoughtful, keeps you guessing
• 34:36
  breakneck pace. It's really, you know, the pace
• 34:38
  of the direction. David Tennant deserves a lot of
• 34:40
  credit for that. Actually, in every episode that
• 34:42
  he's in, he's at a breakneck speed.
• 34:45
  And that just really drives it and drives it and drives it.
• 34:48
  And I don't think he's appreciated enough for that,
• 34:51
  that that these stories do not hang around and they're told
• 34:54
  with economy as well. And that just makes them seem
• 34:57
  like a breathless ride. But they're not facile and
• 34:59
  they're not empty. And I think this story is, is
• 35:01
  emblematic of that. And it's nice to have a 2 parter
• 35:04
  too. So yeah, I, I, I think it's a
• 35:07
  great story, the, the impossible planet and the Satan Pit.
• 35:10
  And I think any final would be blessed to have it amongst its
• 35:14
  number. Well, that's one vote for that.
• 35:17
  Yeah, you know that scene where Toby Z is standing outside in
• 35:20
  all the winds and he's sort of beckoning for the window to
• 35:24
  smash and smiling away at what's the girl's name?
• 35:27
  Scooty, Minister. Scooty Yeah.
• 35:29
  I mean, it's a bit of a conundrum because that is both
• 35:31
  the most scariest moment in all of Doctor Who to that point and
• 35:35
  the sexiest as well. It's such a conundrum watching
• 35:37
  that episode. Yes, OK, Michael.
• 35:44
  Yeah, I I love the impossible planet and the Satan, but I
• 35:47
  think they're absolutely terrific.
• 35:49
  Yes, true. It is the original get out of
• 35:52
  there Jefferson story and it would it would beget many, many
• 35:57
  lesser stories, but this original 1 is just terrific.
• 36:02
  I mean, God bless Russell T Davis and the rest of BBC Wales
• 36:06
  for saying to those little kiddies who are sat down at
• 36:08
  Saturday tea time, imagine the terror of your God was real.
• 36:13
  I've I've moaned in the past on this podcast that Doctor Who
• 36:20
  won't let itself do. It's got so tied up in sort of
• 36:23
  genre conventions that it won't just let itself do genre.
• 36:26
  Sometimes it won't let itself be a full bodied horror.
• 36:29
  The, the idea that, you know, every mythology was originally
• 36:33
  an alien, had some alien origin was, was brilliant when Nigel
• 36:37
  Neal did it. But it's, it's just become,
• 36:40
  it's, it's been, it's been run out to the point where it's just
• 36:43
  being dragged along the road. And it, it died 30 years ago at
• 36:46
  this stage. And I think what is what is it?
• 36:48
  The heart of the brilliance this episode is the horror lies in
• 36:52
  the fact that there is apparently ambiguity, but
• 36:55
  actually there's no ambiguity. That thing about, you know, the
• 36:57
  we said the 10th Doctor was domineering, he's vainglorious,
• 37:01
  He's what Joe said. And and he turns up like that in
• 37:06
  the Impossible Planet. I was all these episodes, the
• 37:08
  Impossible Planet was the one where I was getting the most
• 37:10
  annoyed at the Doctor because he just walks in like a toxic
• 37:13
  masculine asshole. And everyone just sort of goes,
• 37:15
  Oh yeah. And then they just start
• 37:17
  introducing themselves because, oh, it's fine that he's turned
• 37:20
  up because there he is. You know, it's it's it's more
• 37:22
  work than arguing with him, isn't it?
• 37:24
  And yet you then get the reversal in the Satan pit where
• 37:27
  that fact that in in all of these episodes, he turns up and
• 37:29
  he's a bit, it can get a bit tiresome, but he's seen
• 37:32
  everything before. If I was Rose, I'd be a bit fed
• 37:34
  up with my boyfriend who just keeps going.
• 37:36
  Oh, yeah. Paris is the Eiffel Tower in it?
• 37:38
  Yeah. Do you know it was built by
• 37:39
  Gustav I fall. He didn't like it, actually.
• 37:41
  And he wasn't really sure about how it affected his legacies.
• 37:43
  I said, shut up. Could we just Paris?
• 37:47
  And there's a bit of that in some of these episodes.
• 37:48
  And he does that here. And yet.
• 37:51
  And yet, that becomes the problem.
• 37:52
  You go through the cliffhanger into the second episode, and
• 37:55
  suddenly the Doctor is pedaling in thin air.
• 37:57
  Both literally, but the whole way through.
• 38:00
  He is constantly fighting for ambiguity.
• 38:03
  He is constantly fighting. No, no, There's a rational
• 38:05
  explanation for this in a way that sort of, I think prefigures
• 38:09
  a lot of what we've seen in RTD 2 as well, with things like 73
• 38:12
  Yards and the Well and the whole dark fantasy elements of it.
• 38:16
  Beyond Beyond the universe, Michael.
• 38:18
  Beyond the universe before time, What does that mean?
• 38:21
  Before time, You know, it's the Doctor is constantly saying we
• 38:24
  need to find the truth of this, but the truth is being told to
• 38:26
  him. This happened before time.
• 38:28
  You want me to turn around and say he's sitting there going,
• 38:31
  Oh, maybe it's the inspiration for the car LED God of War or
• 38:34
  the demons or the rest of it. No, it's the devil.
• 38:37
  It's the actual devil. The fear of the horror lies in
• 38:40
  the possibility that there is no deeper explanation.
• 38:43
  There is no sort of Doctor Who standard pseudo rationalisation
• 38:47
  of everything that goes on. And the Doctor knows that.
• 38:50
  He just doesn't want to know. And the terror is the simplicity
• 38:53
  and clarity of those stations. Like the bit where the the
• 38:56
  terrific scene where the beast names them all.
• 38:58
  You know, virgin, did your wife, did your wife ever forgive you?
• 39:05
  That line. And the, and, and the little
• 39:08
  girl who's still running from daddy.
• 39:11
  And then when they're, when the Doctors go, well, he's just
• 39:13
  being a very clever psychologist.
• 39:14
  That's my, that's my David Tennant impression, ladies and
• 39:17
  gentlemen, you can take that one off the list.
• 39:19
  Well done. And the Doctor says it's just a
• 39:24
  very clever psychology. He's just, you know, he's called
• 39:26
  reading you. And then Ida just says, how did
• 39:28
  he know about my father? And he then he goes, he isn't
• 39:31
  that he? And he says what?
• 39:32
  Well, why is his explanation better than mine?
• 39:34
  And he doesn't answer it because he hasn't got, he hasn't got an
• 39:38
  explanation for it at all. And.
• 39:41
  And there's that bit at the end, Michael, Where?
• 39:43
  Where? Rose asked him, what do you
• 39:44
  think it was, really? And he just says, I think we
• 39:47
  beat it. That's good enough for me.
• 39:48
  Yeah, he doesn't. He doesn't answer.
• 39:50
  Yeah, it is, it is absolute. I mean, hey guys, they did Event
• 39:54
  Horizon for kids that, you know, that's worth applause apart from
• 39:57
  everything else, right. And I would, I would agree with
• 40:00
  with Toby that those scenes between David Tennant and and
• 40:03
  Claire Rushbrook are the absolute highlight.
• 40:05
  They're they're the hearts of the episode.
• 40:06
  They're the sort of. Humanity that it brings it down
• 40:09
  to and the way in which it problematizes.
• 40:13
  Some of Russell C Davis's approach is sort of self
• 40:15
  reflective, that idea that they're not colonists anymore,
• 40:17
  They're always pioneers on the frontier and they've gone to
• 40:21
  this incredibly dangerous place. And the doctor saying, oh, it's
• 40:23
  so brilliant. And in the second episode they
• 40:25
  go, yeah, there was a reason it was so hard to get here and
• 40:28
  maybe you shouldn't have come. And those little moments of
• 40:31
  humanity between the two of them, especially in contrast to
• 40:34
  to, you know, we've had school reunion, we'll come on to school
• 40:36
  reunion, the ex girlfriends and the current girlfriends.
• 40:39
  And he's actually just having a, a 10th Doctor Who's all bluster
• 40:42
  and bravado and swagger and Willy waving.
• 40:45
  Having a conversation with a mature woman who is not sexually
• 40:48
  interested in him is is really quite, quite revealing.
• 40:52
  Well. There's that bit where he says,
• 40:54
  you know, no turning back. That's almost as bad as this is
• 40:56
  the best Christmas, Wolf, that's ever going to have.
• 40:58
  I just like, are you finished? And he's.
• 41:00
  Yeah, yeah, Quite finished. Yeah, he's.
• 41:03
  She's brilliantly unimpressed by him.
• 41:05
  I mean, I think it's fantastic with now playing husband and
• 41:07
  wife and rivals. I think it's a very fitting.
• 41:09
  I'm very pleased that that's happened.
• 41:11
  So yeah, I'm ABS at big vote for me.
• 41:14
  You say that about the Willy waving and the attraction
• 41:16
  between the Doctor and Rose, but that scene where they're talking
• 41:20
  about you're gonna have to get a mortgage, that's so awkward
• 41:24
  between them, that scene because they're, they're used to saving
• 41:26
  the universe and having grandstanding adventures and now
• 41:28
  they're talking about settling down.
• 41:30
  Are they? It's it's like the stories they
• 41:32
  used to tell about Tom Baker meeting Elizabeth Slayden
• 41:34
  outside of the BBC studios. They have no way of
• 41:38
  communicating outside of saving the universe.
• 41:41
  And I think it does really interesting things with 10 and
• 41:44
  and Rose in that episode, yeah. And.
• 41:48
  And Doomsday, Doomsday isn't here for some reason, so we
• 41:51
  won't get to discuss it. But for me, I do think the most
• 41:53
  heartbreaking line in in the whole 10th Doctor Rose
• 41:57
  relationship is Tell Rose. Oh, she knows.
• 42:01
  And then he essentially he's going off to us.
• 42:03
  He thinks he's probably going to die at that point.
• 42:06
  Think of my mother on the phone. Although, Michael, you should
• 42:10
  have done the whole line. You know, Mr. Jefferson, do you
• 42:13
  think your wife ever forgave you?
• 42:14
  Or let me tell you something she never did.
• 42:17
  Oh, it's such a wonderful line. The soldier haunted by the eyes
• 42:23
  of his wife. It's only really beaten by the
• 42:25
  waters of Mars and you never could forgive me, could you?
• 42:29
  Adelaide? Boom.
• 42:30
  And he's gone. When they drop a line like that
• 42:32
  and you just want to know what the hell they're talking about,
• 42:35
  Yeah, chippers take note. So Kieran, are you going
• 42:40
  Impossible Planet or are you going for another one?
• 42:42
  I thought everyone was going to go turn left, but yeah, I'm
• 42:44
  going for the. Impossible.
• 42:47
  Oh well, talk about what we say then, Daniel.
• 42:49
  Go through. So my experience with this, what
• 42:52
  I understand is that yeah, like Toby said, this was broadcast on
• 42:55
  a nice sunny day outside and it was all fine and glorious
• 43:00
  watching Saturday night tea time.
• 43:01
  Doctor Who where your slave races taken over by the devil
• 43:06
  and they all go fucking bonkers. But for me I watched a lot of
• 43:11
  series 2 on reruns on a channel called W or whatever it used to
• 43:15
  be called. Is anyone of remember these?
• 43:19
  Yeah, what was it short for watch or something as well The.
• 43:21
  UK. TV family, wasn't it?
• 43:22
  Yeah. That's right.
• 43:24
  And watch Doctor. Who for some.
• 43:25
  Reason it was this this two parter and another one I can't
• 43:29
  remember, they would only show it past a watershed.
• 43:32
  So at like 9/30, 10:00-ish. So whenever this would come on
• 43:37
  for me being about 6 or 7, it would always be way past my
• 43:41
  bedtime and it'd be because maybe maybe my parents are out
• 43:45
  and half cared babysitter was just going out for a fag or
• 43:50
  something else. I was left to watch this.
• 43:54
  So it was absolutely mortifying. As Michael said, this is not
• 43:57
  some Doctor Who alien race. This is the devil.
• 44:01
  This is was a Satan, Lucifer, Belial, whatever 1 whatever name
• 44:06
  you want to come up with, this is who he is and I guess stands
• 44:11
  out from the rest of series 2 for me, because you've got the
• 44:14
  idiots Lantern when they're on the scooters going about or
• 44:16
  canine and school reunion. The clockwork things in go in
• 44:22
  the fireplace and this is the one where they've got guns and
• 44:25
  as the red eyed ood and slavery and black holes and going mad
• 44:30
  and losing the TARDIS and it is fucking terrifying.
• 44:34
  And like Toby said, Gabriel Wolf and that sinister voice, I did
• 44:42
  that entire scene where he's don't turn around.
• 44:46
  If you turn around, you're dead. And I want to note that there's
• 44:53
  a in that scene where Toby is reaching out where Scooty is
• 44:57
  behind the glass, There's like a lovely violin score, like very
• 45:01
  subtle, quite eerie, but quite soothing at the same time as
• 45:05
  when the Scooty is like dead floating above the habitation. 3
• 45:09
  I think was what it's called. Yeah, such a startling image.
• 45:12
  It's great they. Went to they put her in a water
• 45:15
  tank for fuck's sake. They didn't throw her in away
• 45:19
  and then just put her in space. I mean, amazing.
• 45:23
  I do think going back to now, the markings on Toby and his red
• 45:27
  eyes are quite silly, but at the time it's terrifying at
• 45:30
  something's like invading you and taking you over.
• 45:32
  You don't have any. It's.
• 45:34
  Very Japanese horror movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 45:38
  Everything else I've wanted to say about this has already been
• 45:41
  said, but I will leave off that everyone's fear is a scared,
• 45:45
  unconfident captain, a lost girl, she's going to die in
• 45:48
  battle, the soldiers wanted by the eyes of his wife, and worst
• 45:51
  of all, a virgin. Many of the audience can
• 45:57
  sympathize with that. Don't worry.
• 45:59
  Of those 4. All right, Joe, which one are
• 46:03
  you going to go with? What don't really matter now,
• 46:05
  does it? Three of them I put through.
• 46:06
  Do you think Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit is just about
• 46:09
  the best fusion of Classic and New Who?
• 46:13
  Oh yes, new. Who?
• 46:14
  Definitely. That's one last point.
• 46:16
  Enough like a classic Doctor Who story.
• 46:18
  It is so classic Doctor Who with, yeah, as Michael said, the
• 46:21
  base Jefferson, just surname soldiers getting disposed of
• 46:25
  left and right. Oh, sorry, Joe, I've cut you
• 46:27
  off. That's right.
• 46:28
  I'll do it all the time. Maybe Silence in the Library and
• 46:31
  Forests of the Dead might be the second contender there as well.
• 46:34
  Or that one in the underwater basin Muffets era.
• 46:36
  But no one remembers that. Under.
• 46:39
  The leg. Yeah, that one do.
• 46:41
  You remember any of the characters in that one?
• 46:43
  That shows you how good the characters are in in Impossible
• 46:47
  Planet anyway. They were surely all called
• 46:49
  things like Kincaid and. Yes, one was called Jeffy.
• 46:54
  And Weaver and Larson. I just, I just remember 1 was
• 46:59
  death. That's it.
• 47:00
  That's all I remember about those people anyway.
• 47:02
  I was going to choose Turn left, but it isn't going to go
• 47:05
  through. And I mostly was going to choose
• 47:06
  it because I think the greatest, one of the greatest weapons of
• 47:09
  R2D1 and the Tenant era is Graham Harper, who is very sad
• 47:15
  that he left us at the end of that era.
• 47:17
  So I think he would have done astonishing things with Moffat's
• 47:19
  material. But Selavy and he actually
• 47:23
  manages to get some great laughs out of that very bleak drama and
• 47:28
  turn left. For example, Leeds, or my
• 47:32
  favorite is when she lands at the end and goes, it's something
• 47:36
  cool when she's not in the right place.
• 47:39
  Or the Vera Duckworth line. I mean, it's very funny, this
• 47:43
  story for such a fatalistic piece of television, it is very
• 47:46
  funny. But he also provides us with
• 47:48
  some of the most devastating moments we've ever, ever seen in
• 47:52
  Doctor Who, the work camp scene, like you said, Toby, Sylvia's
• 47:56
  breakdown that her in front of the camera just dead faced.
• 48:00
  Jacqueline King's fantastic. It is terrifying, isn't it?
• 48:04
  But it still leaves room for moments of triumph.
• 48:06
  And that's Donna's grandstanding speech when she's going to go
• 48:09
  off and, you know, RIP another universe into existence.
• 48:13
  And then tragedy as well at the end with Donna's eventual
• 48:16
  suicide, which leads round to my second reason, which is
• 48:19
  Catherine Tay. I think it is one of the most
• 48:22
  accomplished performances in the show's history and I don't say
• 48:25
  that lightly. I remember RTD said in his DWM
• 48:31
  page that he used to do that. That was the one moment of
• 48:34
  acting in a read through that gave him like goosebumps head to
• 48:37
  toe. When she gave that speech at the
• 48:38
  end, that sort of triumphant speech and they realized she's
• 48:41
  going to die. She's so good she convinces that
• 48:45
  that God awful plastic rucksack is the most terrifying life form
• 48:49
  in the universe and when she's there, you know going you liar.
• 48:54
  She is so compelling. If I have to listen to one more
• 48:58
  sea shanty, she's hilarious as well.
• 49:01
  But that the line that kills me every time is that scream of
• 49:06
  where are you going at the end of that scene?
• 49:10
  It is terrific. It's a finger in the face,
• 49:13
  frankly, of all of her doubters and hand to go that episode
• 49:17
  basically including me. Who said Catherine Tate, Are you
• 49:22
  sure? For a whole season?
• 49:24
  Colour me impressed. And then the last reason is I
• 49:26
  love the fact that it uses so much continuity tied into this
• 49:32
  story and it it actually makes a point of taking the running
• 49:37
  story of New Who and literally turning it into an iconic series
• 49:43
  of events in order and then twist all of them into sort of
• 49:48
  dark, devastated, perverted versions of them in a really,
• 49:52
  really interesting way. It's my single favorite New Who
• 49:55
  episode. Unfortunately it's not going
• 49:57
  through, but fuck it is good. Aphran Tate gave me so much
• 50:02
  goodwill from series 4 and especially Turn Left that I went
• 50:05
  to the cinemas and watched the Nan movie and paid real money to
• 50:08
  sit and view that with my eyes. So I think you were the only
• 50:12
  person to do that the. Cinema was empty.
• 50:15
  I probably was. My cinema was cheering.
• 50:20
  And just to show you how good Harper is, you know about a bit
• 50:22
  where Rose takes Donna into the TARDIS and it's sort of dead and
• 50:27
  the lighting in the TARDIS that sort of melancholic.
• 50:31
  It's just gorgeous. It looks gorgeous as well.
• 50:34
  That bit where she's she's kind of gaping like a goldfish and
• 50:37
  then the funniest man when she closes her mouth.
• 50:40
  Oh, and of course, the ending. The cliffhanger.
• 50:42
  Come on. Bad zoom.
• 50:44
  Zoom, zoom. Yeah, Come on.
• 50:46
  Is anyone going to change their minds?
• 50:49
  Well, I I mean I only chose I I chose the impossible plan at the
• 50:52
  same pit because I assumed everyone else would just chose.
• 50:56
  It, I mean, Toby, if you did change your mind, it puts Daniel
• 50:58
  in a bit of a quandary. No second referendum.
• 51:04
  Well, I was going to drag us back to the impossible.
• 51:09
  Fair enough, at least I feel Don't feel bad about having
• 51:13
  administered the bullet to the heads then.
• 51:15
  Yes, well, I mean I am going to give a bit of this is going to
• 51:19
  be quite an maybe an unpopular opinion, especially nowadays,
• 51:23
  but I, I love the 10th doctrine Rose and I grew up with them.
• 51:29
  I love their interplay together. I love how self satisfied and
• 51:33
  arrogant and breezily overconfident they are.
• 51:36
  I love how much fun they're having in each story.
• 51:39
  I I just love it. Is there any other way to
• 51:41
  GoDaddy O? Straight from the fridge, man.
• 51:46
  Well, I mean, there's two reasons for the first reason is
• 51:49
  is because in some strange way there there are slightly, they
• 51:52
  feel like a slightly idealized version of people and couples
• 51:56
  I've actually met in real life who are just completely and
• 52:02
  often insufferably in love with each.
• 52:04
  Other We all know that couple, Daniel.
• 52:06
  Yeah, I mean, and Tennant and Piper, I mean, you could say
• 52:09
  it's an unhealthy relationship, but for me it's not as quite as
• 52:14
  sort of toxic as a TARDIS team like maybe Coleman and Capaldi
• 52:17
  where there is also a chemistry there.
• 52:20
  But it's I, I'm actually in this in with, with Tennant and Rose.
• 52:24
  I feel like I'm actually having fun.
• 52:26
  I feel like I'm being invited along for the ride.
• 52:28
  It's not a game of sort of 1 upsmanship.
• 52:31
  I feel like I'm actually being included, even though they're
• 52:34
  sort of so, you know, smug. And which is why that ending in
• 52:39
  in Doomsday is such a gut punch because they're they're
• 52:42
  cataclysmically sort of torn apart.
• 52:44
  But this is something that is foreshadowed and signposted in
• 52:48
  every single story, like narratively, emotionally,
• 52:51
  visually, even. They keep getting separated,
• 52:54
  they keep getting put in danger, they keep getting driven apart
• 52:57
  and they just carry on like this sort of free spirited doe eyed
• 53:00
  couple who treat the universes as their playground and they
• 53:04
  think they're completely indestructible while all around
• 53:07
  them, these sort of really lonely, damaged people.
• 53:10
  So Jackie, Linda, Sarah Jane, they're all suffer and even
• 53:15
  Queen Victoria calls them out of for it in in tooth and claw.
• 53:18
  You know, you're, you're not taking this seriously, you're
• 53:20
  having too much fun. And they just don't take a hint.
• 53:25
  And secondly, the reason I love them so much is because it's
• 53:28
  Doctor Who in series 2 is doing something it's never really done
• 53:31
  before and it won't ever really do again in the same way, which
• 53:34
  is to to tell a love story. And it's it's romantic with a
• 53:38
  sort of capital R. The whole thrust of that second
• 53:41
  series is all about the tragedy of how the Doctor can't fall in
• 53:46
  love because look what happens. And just on a personal level, I
• 53:51
  think the reason it connects with me is I don't think I've
• 53:55
  ever, I've truly been in love. I haven't found that special
• 53:59
  someone yet and I haven't met them yet.
• 54:02
  And who knows if I ever will. And just watching those two on
• 54:05
  screen today and having adventures and sort of loving
• 54:08
  life and being genuinely smitten with each other, but never
• 54:11
  actually saying it out loud. I'm like, yeah, it's not going
• 54:16
  to last. It's not exactly healthy but I'm
• 54:19
  happy for them. While.
• 54:21
  They're we love you, Daniel. And so just in this episode,
• 54:25
  very briefly that I mean, the one of the best scenes in series
• 54:28
  2 is that that scene in the canteen with, with David and
• 54:32
  Billy where they just sit down and they have this very awkward
• 54:35
  conversation about their future together with that massive black
• 54:39
  hole hanging over their heads, literally.
• 54:42
  And I just think they're completely extraordinary in that
• 54:46
  scene because sort of tenant is very quite performatively
• 54:49
  horrified, you know, me living in the house.
• 54:52
  With doors and windows. With doors and window carpets.
• 54:56
  Whereas Billy as as Rose, who's adapted very quickly to this new
• 55:00
  world, you know, the, the food, the she's tries, she tries,
• 55:03
  makes friends with the ood. And she has this sort of
• 55:07
  incredible wisdom about her in that scene where and that, yeah,
• 55:10
  that singsong delivery of you'd have to get a mortgage, which is
• 55:14
  simultaneously kind of playful but also a bit sad and also full
• 55:18
  of affection. And just like the way when she
• 55:21
  says, yeah, start with you, that's not so bad.
• 55:23
  And he goes, yeah. And she's.
• 55:24
  Yes, a little bit too quickly, you know that's.
• 55:27
  Just brilliant. You can't look each other in the
• 55:29
  eye though. They can't, Yeah, they're,
• 55:30
  they're sort of looking else yeah, they, they, they can't
• 55:33
  sort of meet each other's eyes. Yeah.
• 55:35
  This thing would be unthinkable in Classico, wouldn't it?
• 55:40
  Yes, well, that it's just the thing that what you know, you
• 55:42
  can't really imagine sort of happening. 7th Doctor and Male.
• 55:46
  You can't imagine that, can you? I can't imagine Sylvester McCoy
• 55:49
  of anyone. Well, Kieran love has never been
• 55:53
  known for its rationality. So and yeah.
• 55:59
  And so, and it kind of ties into that idea of faith which Michael
• 56:03
  and Toby have talked about, of being explored in in this
• 56:06
  episode. And I, I mean, just that, that
• 56:10
  scene with Tennant monologuing in that cave in front of the
• 56:13
  beast. And it, I read about it, it was
• 56:15
  very last minute. They had about 15 minutes to do
• 56:17
  it in. They stood 10 in right in front
• 56:19
  of a massive green screen. And he just nailed it in about
• 56:22
  one or two takes. And and he's just acting his
• 56:25
  heart out. And not many actors could sell a
• 56:27
  cheesy line. Like, if I believe in one thing,
• 56:31
  just one thing, I believe in her.
• 56:33
  And you're like, yes. So yes, he doesn't name anyone.
• 56:37
  He could be talking about male, you know.
• 56:42
  Or Amelia Rumford. Yeah, or dodo demands.
• 56:47
  I believe in dodo. Anyway, I'm a I'm a complete
• 56:51
  romantic, so put it. It's a worthy winner to go
• 56:55
  through to the final. Oh, I'm sorry, your favorite
• 56:57
  episode of of Well Here has not gone through Joe.
• 57:00
  Have you seen this format? You've seen what dog shit gets
• 57:02
  through usually. Yeah, yes, in in in some ways
• 57:05
  it's karma. Some of the episodes I've had to
• 57:09
  yell at whilst trying to run. Yeah, sorry about that.
• 57:14
  So that's, that's the, I think that's the runners up, isn't it?
• 57:19
  Right. So.
• 57:21
  All the partners in crime are the Daleks who partying.
• 57:23
  Get a look in. I would I would like to say a
• 57:26
  small word in the defence of Daleks of Manhattan and
• 57:30
  evolution. 2 elderly H What I would say is a Daleks is
• 57:35
  universal monsters. Yes, I said good big tick, but
• 57:39
  but also that story I mentioned earlier is is true.
• 57:41
  When this went out, I was in I was just finishing sixth form
• 57:43
  and for some reason I had to go and see one of my teachers just
• 57:46
  before I left and I went in. He was teaching history class of
• 57:50
  it must be year sevens and they were doing the Great Depression.
• 57:54
  And while I was waiting to ask him a question, I could just
• 57:56
  hear this little kid start off with a teaching assistant in the
• 57:58
  corner and teaching assistant saying to him, do you remember
• 58:02
  Doctor Who? Did you watch Doctor Who on
• 58:04
  Saturday with the Daleks in New York?
• 58:06
  And he going yes, yes, yes, and she went, well, that was the
• 58:08
  Great Depression. That was the Hoovervilles and
• 58:10
  pointing at the textbook and the thing and him going and just
• 58:13
  that little moment has stuck with me for all these years.
• 58:16
  And for that I've got a lot of affection.
• 58:18
  That is brilliant. Yeah, and it's a fantastic
• 58:20
  location and period setting. And obviously, you know, the one
• 58:24
  hasn't went to well. Indeed.
• 58:27
  It's it's it's a novel setting for a for a Doctor Who story.
• 58:30
  The the fact that this is one that I immediately looked at and
• 58:34
  went, Nah, I'm not putting that through.
• 58:37
  And yet it has the many things to recommend it that it has is a
• 58:41
  sign that it's a strong era. Andrew Garfield and.
• 58:47
  Oh, very, very tasty. And that Dalek that looks around
• 58:49
  before it speaks to it's mate and all of that.
• 58:52
  You know, there's a lot to recommend it there absolutely as
• 58:56
  a sign I think of how how strong the era is as.
• 59:00
  A sort of alternative stories to Michael's I had my ex husband's
• 59:04
  niece staying with us when the first episode went out and she
• 59:09
  absolutely she was glued to it and then at the end of it she
• 59:13
  was laughing. I read off.
• 59:14
  You know, when the the Dalek human hybrid comes climbing and
• 59:18
  she went, he's got a load of willies on his face.
• 59:22
  That's all she said about the Cliff.
• 59:25
  Yeah. Wiggle as well, aren't they?
• 59:27
  They've got a little bit of movement.
• 59:29
  It does kind of fall apart when he he comes out, really.
• 59:32
  I'll be so interested you when Dalek when you get around to
• 59:38
  that two parter for happy times and places because I when I went
• 59:41
  back and watched it years later, I was so surprised at how
• 59:44
  enjoyable it was. All those accents, Mr. Diagoras.
• 59:50
  It's the depression, sweetie. Yeah, make break.
• 59:52
  But the show goes on. They're just obsessed with
• 59:55
  bloody pigs in RTD one, aren't they?
• 59:58
  Yeah, oh, there's someone needs to write an essay about that.
• 1:00:00
  That gorgeous man from Desperate Housewives, they turned him into
• 1:00:03
  a pig. It.
• 1:00:05
  Goes to show. Anyway, so that didn't go.
• 1:00:09
  That's not that's not going through.
• 1:00:11
  So moving on to the first slot of the listens comments about
• 1:00:17
  David Tennant. OK Monks is I love the 10th
• 1:00:22
  Doctor, I grew up with him so of course I do.
• 1:00:24
  Exploring Doctor Who more thoroughly, especially classic.
• 1:00:27
  He is so very human in comparison to most Doctors.
• 1:00:31
  I suspect that's why he's a non super fan favorite whereas super
• 1:00:34
  fans tend to prefer other incarnations.
• 1:00:37
  That is true isn't it? That's true.
• 1:00:40
  David Gillespie Pratt There's a degree of tenant fatigue and
• 1:00:43
  it's easy to make digs and the crime against Doctor Who being
• 1:00:46
  really popular and successful. We fans are a strange bunch.
• 1:00:51
  Tenant is the only actor to have come close to dethroning Tom
• 1:00:54
  Baker as the quintessential Dr. The 10 I'd.
• 1:00:58
  Make the case that he has. Potentially, Yeah, the 10th
• 1:01:02
  Doctor can be a bit of a smug git sometimes, but he's But he's
• 1:01:05
  also got bags of charm. He may he might not be my
• 1:01:08
  favorite Doctor Who, but I can see why he is for a lot of
• 1:01:11
  people. OK, put your nappies on
• 1:01:14
  everybody, Paul Quinn says. Watching his first opinion, his
• 1:01:19
  first appearance and first season, it's shocking how callow
• 1:01:22
  looking he is, but watching the next two seasons it's noticeable
• 1:01:25
  how quickly he aged. All the stories about the
• 1:01:28
  demanding nature of the role are clearly true, hampered with that
• 1:01:31
  horrible Chim Chimney Cherry accent which he sometimes
• 1:01:35
  struggles to control, and required to be squeaky and
• 1:01:38
  excitable in a way that can make you want to eat your own face.
• 1:01:41
  But when given a decent script that let's him balance drama and
• 1:01:45
  lightness, Moffits in particularly, he's the
• 1:01:48
  definitive Dr. of the modern era, the Tom Baker of the
• 1:01:51
  revival. Such a cliche.
• 1:01:52
  Maybe not the best actor. The right actor in place for the
• 1:01:55
  right moment. We shall not see his like again.
• 1:02:01
  Andrew Tovell, who's very In Sync with my parents here.
• 1:02:04
  Too shouty, Yeah. I liked him much better when he
• 1:02:08
  came back as 14. As Matt Mahmoud says, I'll say
• 1:02:13
  this, he's the best, finest actor to ever play the Doctor.
• 1:02:16
  Trout and Capaldi are his closest competitors with some of
• 1:02:19
  the best writing any Doctor has ever had on the show.
• 1:02:22
  The most complex and multi layered tape on the character
• 1:02:25
  we've ever seen and the most satisfying character I can
• 1:02:27
  development too. The best actor to ever play the
• 1:02:30
  role also just happened to get the best writing.
• 1:02:32
  We got really lucky. Charlie Barnes, the man who
• 1:02:37
  defined the modern era. Oh, forget my Tim Latimer on
• 1:02:41
  He's like fire and ice and rage. He's like night and the storm in
• 1:02:45
  the heart of the sun. He's ancient and forever.
• 1:02:47
  He burns at the centre of time and can see the turn of the
• 1:02:50
  universe. And he's wonderful, funny,
• 1:02:53
  dashing, sexy, fast talking, vulnerable, geeky, arrogant,
• 1:02:57
  ruthless and sassy. So iconic he was brought back.
• 1:03:00
  Trench coats, pinstripe suits, brainy specks, All Stars and
• 1:03:03
  spiky haircuts are cool. Take note.
• 1:03:06
  Matt Smith star than. Charlie Barnes, Zoe Feba boa who
• 1:03:10
  gives comments on Strictly now. By all accounts favorite modern
• 1:03:13
  Doctor for a time and still probably the most accessible for
• 1:03:16
  audience and not just in popularity terms.
• 1:03:19
  Tennant makes it looks easy as if he's having the time of his
• 1:03:22
  life, but underneath acting chops are definitely in use.
• 1:03:25
  Never against his return as long as it's in moderation.
• 1:03:29
  Joe's nemesis returns Michael Storm, the 10th Doctor is a
• 1:03:32
  curious beast for me. After initially liking him, I
• 1:03:35
  soon began to find him irritating and giving off vibes
• 1:03:38
  of series one. Series 1 OK.
• 1:03:44
  No Series 1 Arnold J Rimmer. Oh, right.
• 1:03:47
  Oh. I thought that was one of the
• 1:03:48
  contributors. No, that's that's a character.
• 1:03:52
  That's a character. From Red Dear Okay, while his
• 1:03:55
  arrogance and smugglers do become plot points later in the
• 1:03:57
  run Midnight, it does make him rather hard to watch, especially
• 1:04:01
  when the writing isn't particularly strong.
• 1:04:03
  However, the era provides us with the underrated Martha Jones
• 1:04:07
  The underrated Martha Jones. However, he doesn't live up to
• 1:04:10
  debut mission statement of no second chances as barely an
• 1:04:13
  episode in, he's rehabilitating the bitchy trampoline Michael.
• 1:04:18
  If you rewatch that scene, she's actually dying so there's no
• 1:04:21
  reason to. OK, I'll turn on my intellectual
• 1:04:24
  specs. Oscar Groucho says it's David
• 1:04:26
  Tennant's interpretation of the role that has evolved in
• 1:04:29
  retrospect. Season 2 is winsome variant of
• 1:04:32
  his Casanova, the cheekiness balancing the mawkish melodrama
• 1:04:36
  from Freamer's introduction. He elects to play the role with
• 1:04:38
  darker Hughes. The hubris of the role,
• 1:04:40
  tempering the histrionics is his golden year 2008, whilst his
• 1:04:45
  leading ladies bring up different facets of David
• 1:04:48
  Tennant. It is his final year of Post
• 1:04:50
  Hamlet specials that I find this incarnation sings.
• 1:04:53
  The Waters of Mars is a perfect Doctor Who committed to film,
• 1:04:57
  and his End of Time dynamic with Cribbins is peerless, the
• 1:05:01
  Beckett of Doctor Who. Peter old Tennant undoubtedly
• 1:05:07
  made new who all doctors after him are measured against him.
• 1:05:10
  Once he and RTD bowed out, it was never quite the same. 10 out
• 1:05:14
  of 10, see what you did there. Rose and 10 was a delightful
• 1:05:18
  love story with such a tragic ending.
• 1:05:20
  Martha and 10 is the reverse unrequited love story superbly
• 1:05:24
  acted by Ajman. The Tennant and Tate partnership
• 1:05:27
  was absolutely wonderful and gave us some of the best ever.
• 1:05:30
  Who? It's great to see how they have
• 1:05:32
  continued their acting relationship beyond who their
• 1:05:34
  Benedict and Beatrice is. A triumph.
• 1:05:36
  Oh, there's a recommendation. Matt Dennis Best thing to ever
• 1:05:39
  happen to modern Who. There's a theme here, too many
• 1:05:42
  iconic stories and moments to mention, but we must count
• 1:05:45
  ourselves lucky that one of the greatest British actors in a
• 1:05:47
  generation played the Doctor exactly the right time and still
• 1:05:51
  gives the show the love years later.
• 1:05:53
  Spider emoji. I was the right age for Tom
• 1:05:57
  Baker as the Doctor. I never thought anyone would
• 1:05:59
  take top spot from him and for a long while from the mid
• 1:06:02
  naughties, David did. He is a beautiful human being
• 1:06:05
  inside and out, An exceptional actor.
• 1:06:08
  We were lucky to have him. And finally, Daniel Knight, as
• 1:06:12
  he's my wife's favorite, I'm contractually obliged to say
• 1:06:15
  he's the best doctor of the modern era.
• 1:06:18
  Sexy and sassy enough to attract the general public, but we've
• 1:06:21
  enough of that essential doctrines, copyright terrorist
• 1:06:23
  fix to keep most of the fans happy.
• 1:06:26
  There are times where he's unlikable.
• 1:06:27
  His smugness with Rose. The horrible way he treats
• 1:06:30
  Martha. But his era has a high hit rate
• 1:06:33
  of stories, especially series 4 and his chemistry of Captain
• 1:06:37
  Tate is. Legendary Gareth Boneley,
• 1:06:40
  committed and consistent. A good ambassador for the of the
• 1:06:44
  show. Well, that's very succinct,
• 1:06:45
  Gareth. Thank you.
• 1:06:47
  We like succinct. Thanks for your patience, guys.
• 1:06:50
  Lucy McCall. I liked him more at the time
• 1:06:52
  than I do in retrospect, and even at the time, I didn't watch
• 1:06:55
  all the episodes. Oh, Lucy.
• 1:06:57
  They're so sad. They're really good.
• 1:06:59
  If you need any recommendations, Lucy, just let us know The
• 1:07:03
  brilliant and correct Nathan Bottomley.
• 1:07:06
  He's not my favorite Doctor and not the best actor ever in the
• 1:07:09
  role, but every time I go back and watch one of his episodes,
• 1:07:13
  I'm always shocked by how effortlessly great he is as the
• 1:07:16
  Doctor. A smart, charming, funny and
• 1:07:19
  compassionate man who is one of the best ambassadors the show
• 1:07:23
  has ever had. We were lucky to have him.
• 1:07:26
  Bravo, Chris, Curtis says. I think he was a big part in the
• 1:07:30
  show's successful comeback. People ever found him attractive
• 1:07:34
  and watched or thought if the Doctor can be played by a fan
• 1:07:37
  then I could be the Doctor too and oh hang on, I'm going to
• 1:07:41
  start that again, people. People either found him
• 1:07:43
  attractive and watched or thought if the Doctor played was
• 1:07:47
  played by a fan then I too could be the Doctor and watched.
• 1:07:51
  There's a lot to like about him. He brought energy and passion.
• 1:07:54
  I felt he wasn't doctorish enough for me.
• 1:07:56
  I don't even know what that means.
• 1:07:59
  More intergalactic puppy, likable, enjoyed running and
• 1:08:03
  seeing new things. There was never enough bite or
• 1:08:06
  darkness about the character. Too much.
• 1:08:08
  The friend who is the life of the party.
• 1:08:11
  The life of the party. Michael looks appalled by that
• 1:08:14
  comment. We have a sleepy bird.
• 1:08:19
  He's insufferable but that's the point.
• 1:08:22
  People think he's so charming and suave and that's his
• 1:08:25
  character. No, he's meant to be a twat that
• 1:08:27
  you disagree with sometimes. Doctor Philip Boys.
• 1:08:31
  David Tennant seems like a lovely guy, but the 10th Doctor
• 1:08:34
  is unbearable and gets worse as he goes along, and I think he
• 1:08:39
  permanently distorts the character, sets a new baseline,
• 1:08:43
  and all subsequent Doctors except Capaldi have to some
• 1:08:46
  extent been David Tennant impressions.
• 1:08:48
  Yeah, we've heard that a few times tonight, Doctor Philip
• 1:08:50
  Boys. Peter Boyle, The thing that made
• 1:08:53
  David Tennant's Doctor so brilliant is that he's just
• 1:08:56
  effortlessly confident right from the new teeth.
• 1:09:00
  He was just the Doctor straight away and that never left.
• 1:09:03
  You can also tell he just loved it.
• 1:09:06
  All the moments we loved as fans, he loved as a fan.
• 1:09:10
  Sigh, heart. Who everyone's Everyone's
• 1:09:15
  shaking their. Heads, but it's a bit of a
• 1:09:16
  mystery. Really, it's got a bright future
• 1:09:18
  ahead of him. I'm going to call him.
• 1:09:20
  Sigh, Incognito says, undeniably the most popular Doctor since
• 1:09:25
  Tom Tennant redefines who and what the Doctor is for several
• 1:09:28
  generations, and that Doctor isn't always likable, but
• 1:09:31
  Tennant's performance always is. I think that's a perfect
• 1:09:35
  description. Tom Newsome.
• 1:09:38
  He's heroic. Possibly too heroic at times,
• 1:09:41
  but also a knob. Deliberately so.
• 1:09:44
  David Tennant plays him so well. There's a lot of him in it.
• 1:09:47
  Also that Tom Baconess bit more trendy.
• 1:09:51
  Kieran, I could see you not in there when he said also a knob.
• 1:09:55
  Anthony Carroll says his absolute confidence in the role
• 1:09:58
  is what brings the show into the confidence of the public.
• 1:10:02
  Despite how arrogant and absorbed he could get, Tennant
• 1:10:04
  forged a character that was fun and dangerous, which is exactly
• 1:10:07
  what kids like me at the time wanted.
• 1:10:10
  Oh, have you seen Anthony Carroll, Daniel?
• 1:10:12
  I'm a very attractive man, yeah. Dave Rennie, 10, is a doctor
• 1:10:19
  healed after the parting the ways and ready to explore the
• 1:10:22
  universe again with a with a zest for life.
• 1:10:25
  Hence his arrogance. However, the time war still
• 1:10:28
  comes back to haunt him as tragedy after tragedy happens to
• 1:10:31
  him. David Tennant is living the
• 1:10:33
  dream, playing the part and you can see the influences from
• 1:10:36
  watching Tom and Peter as a kid. He's commanding yet vulnerable
• 1:10:40
  and in real life he seems just a really nice bloke.
• 1:10:43
  The public love him BA bad lots and it's clear why.
• 1:10:47
  Carolyn Arnold says ha ha, the whole Arnold.
• 1:10:51
  Clan again? Oh, is that the whole family?
• 1:10:53
  John's wife, Oh my God. Wife, husband, son, anyone else?
• 1:10:58
  Can we wheel in the Arnold grandmother as well?
• 1:11:01
  Come along now. Hard to watch some of the pre
• 1:11:04
  donor stories without wanting to punch him.
• 1:11:07
  Rude. Oh Toby, you spilt you see
• 1:11:09
  there? I'm a bit shocked Martha
• 1:11:12
  deserved better, but on the other hand work wonders for my
• 1:11:15
  hormones. As we like to remind Eddie, we
• 1:11:17
  can pinpoint when exactly he was conceived.
• 1:11:21
  See, we can all embarrass each other in this family.
• 1:11:25
  And then Eddie commented afterwards.
• 1:11:27
  We don't talk about this. Well, you know, I think you
• 1:11:33
  know, the night that blink went out, that's this is what John
• 1:11:36
  said in a previous episode. That's when they fucked and
• 1:11:40
  conceived Eddie. John Arnold Frankly, if I'd
• 1:11:48
  regenerated into David Tennant, I'd run around the universe
• 1:11:51
  having the best time ever too. He takes half a season or so to
• 1:11:54
  work out what he wants to do with the role, but once he does,
• 1:11:57
  he's an absolute natural with enough genuine charm to make
• 1:12:00
  even the cockiest moments endearing.
• 1:12:03
  Character wise, it's often missed that the series
• 1:12:05
  undermines this Doctor's hubris from the start.
• 1:12:08
  Pride coming before a fall is the whole point.
• 1:12:11
  That pride might irritate in individual episodes, but in the
• 1:12:14
  bigger picture of the era it absolutely works as a tragic
• 1:12:17
  character flaw. All that said, I preferred him
• 1:12:20
  as the 14th Doctor. I thought that whole quote was a
• 1:12:23
  prelude for his last sentence there.
• 1:12:25
  You know, people. Pete says the temp Doctor is so
• 1:12:28
  often hit by outside stuff that has made him lovestruck or
• 1:12:32
  arrogant or giddy or terrified or whatever that I think the
• 1:12:35
  Impossible Planet 2 parter might be our best look at David
• 1:12:38
  Tennant giving us big pure temp Doctor.
• 1:12:41
  Also I've always wondered, can that accent be placed?
• 1:12:46
  No, James Hadwin Bennett, 10, is much more believable once you
• 1:12:52
  treat him as using cockiness to massively overcompensate for his
• 1:12:55
  inability to be around young women he becomes obnoxious with.
• 1:12:59
  Rose seriously screws up the relationship with Martha, but
• 1:13:02
  Donna thankfully slaps him into shape and it's very easy to see
• 1:13:07
  why RTD took him down the Time Lord Victorious route to show
• 1:13:10
  what happens with no companion to control him.
• 1:13:14
  Never could work out if that was also a parallel of Tennant's
• 1:13:17
  popularity spiralling out of control as well.
• 1:13:20
  Left at the right time though, Any more of him and I think it
• 1:13:22
  would have gone too far. And that's for me to decide.
• 1:13:27
  What episode's that from? Waters of Mars.
• 1:13:30
  Oh, of course, I just see that, you know those crash zooms on
• 1:13:35
  that article. Jack Koya very last comment here
• 1:13:41
  says a bold, brash, confident version of the character who
• 1:13:45
  takes the cockiness that has been present for the entirety of
• 1:13:48
  the series and puts it under a microscope so iconic even the
• 1:13:53
  Master decides to be more like him when he regenerates.
• 1:13:59
  Well, thanks for your patience everyone.
• 1:14:01
  We got through it. Oh look, they're all asleep.
• 1:14:04
  Sorry, guys. Oh, not that the Comets were
• 1:14:07
  boring. OK, so Toby, your take on the on
• 1:14:15
  David Tennant? Well, he's an undoubtedly superb
• 1:14:20
  actor. And I think he does a lot, you
• 1:14:25
  know, a lot of, I mean, whenever, when I think of
• 1:14:27
  something like the doctor's daughter, you know, and that,
• 1:14:29
  that scene in the cell where he mocks her observation about war,
• 1:14:36
  you know, you, you really get the sense of somebody who's been
• 1:14:39
  through it. And he can evoke, he can evoke
• 1:14:41
  that because I need, I really need my doctor to, to, to be
• 1:14:45
  somebody who suggests ancient wisdom.
• 1:14:48
  No matter what age the doctor looks.
• 1:14:51
  I, I, I sort of need somebody who's slightly detached from
• 1:14:54
  this. You see, I don't, I don't, I
• 1:14:57
  don't need the doctor to be my friend and I don't need to
• 1:14:59
  identify with the doctor. The doctor is a wizard that
• 1:15:01
  opens all sorts of exciting cupboards and the, the needs to
• 1:15:06
  be a, a, a, a certain detachment.
• 1:15:08
  I I find this idea of trying to humanize the doctor as in our
• 1:15:13
  eyes, to make the character more accessible, to be an odd take on
• 1:15:18
  a character that that that's not what they're for.
• 1:15:21
  So tenant's an interesting one because he's comparatively
• 1:15:24
  young, but I think when he does the sort of battle scarred, he's
• 1:15:28
  very good. I do understand people who find
• 1:15:33
  that dynamic that they have a little bit smug.
• 1:15:36
  It's, it's, but it's funny, isn't it?
• 1:15:38
  When there's a story that you like, you gloss over, it's it,
• 1:15:42
  it's inconsistencies or the bits that don't quite work because
• 1:15:45
  you go, well, I just like the story.
• 1:15:47
  It's, it's so hard for me to be objective about Tennant in terms
• 1:15:51
  of interpretation of the role. I think I prefer a sort of more
• 1:16:01
  traditionally eccentric bumbling.
• 1:16:05
  You know, my, my, my two favorite classic Doctors are
• 1:16:07
  Patrick Trout and Tom Baker, both both split between humour
• 1:16:12
  and darkness so brilliantly and so effortlessly.
• 1:16:20
  Tennant can do that and he can do the darkness, but I think his
• 1:16:23
  style of humour, that sort of attacking, jutting, energetic
• 1:16:27
  and I love the way I think he drives episodes like no other,
• 1:16:31
  apart from maybe Davison, who I also think and I, I know he's
• 1:16:34
  quite similar to him, how he'll go out of the door one way and
• 1:16:37
  then come the other. And that sort of stuff is just
• 1:16:39
  important for driving the episodes.
• 1:16:40
  And I think David Tennant is a master at, especially when this
• 1:16:43
  stuff is all done completely out of order and at different days
• 1:16:46
  and different times and nights. He knows exactly the energy
• 1:16:49
  levels he is at when he enters a scene and when he leaves a scene
• 1:16:52
  and he makes that look easy. And it's not.
• 1:16:55
  He's a consumer actor, He's a brilliant actor.
• 1:16:57
  He is the heart of the show. However, I, I do prefer sort of
• 1:17:03
  Matt Matt Smith's sort of dotty eccentric take or, or, or even
• 1:17:08
  Capaldi when he's not, you know, when he's not being the arch
• 1:17:12
  wanker that, that, that they, they went for at the, the at the
• 1:17:16
  beginning. I, you know, I think Capaldi has
• 1:17:19
  great Doctor ish nooks and crannies to him and, and, and
• 1:17:26
  the sort of his style of his dry, sardonic humor or, or Matt
• 1:17:30
  Smith's sort of Matt Smith is so alien, you know, those bits that
• 1:17:35
  he does that come completely out of left field.
• 1:17:37
  I think David Tennant is perhaps more human and, and maybe that's
• 1:17:41
  why he's so popular. And yet Tom Baker is from
• 1:17:44
  another planet and he's the, he's the sort of Tennant
• 1:17:46
  equivalent of the, of the classic series.
• 1:17:48
  I think Doctor Who needed David Tennant.
• 1:17:50
  I think David Tennant has earned his place as as the definitive
• 1:17:55
  Dr. in many people's eyes. And maybe it's because I'm a
• 1:17:59
  wanker fan in the same way that I'm sure if I spoke to a fan of
• 1:18:02
  The Beatles and, and I said, oh, I really like that famous
• 1:18:05
  Beatles song. And they went.
• 1:18:07
  Actually, I think you'll find the Best Song as well you've
• 1:18:09
  never heard of. Because I'm a proper fan.
• 1:18:12
  Can you confirm or deny you're a fan of The Beatles?
• 1:18:16
  I don't know if I do have a actually, do I have a favorite
• 1:18:19
  Beatles? Can I say the Stones instead?
• 1:18:20
  I like painting it back. There we are.
• 1:18:22
  Oh, that's my this is this is this is the edgy take.
• 1:18:25
  Actually, I prefer the Stones to The Beatles.
• 1:18:28
  I don't. I don't prefer Matt Smith, Yeah.
• 1:18:30
  I don't know if I do prefer the Stones to The Beatles, but I
• 1:18:32
  don't know if I have a favorite Beatles song.
• 1:18:35
  I was pasted. Oh, it has to be a ticket drive
• 1:18:39
  because it was on the Chase, that's how much.
• 1:18:41
  Yes, well done. But anyone think less of me if I
• 1:18:44
  said let it be? No, let it be, Let it be.
• 1:18:49
  So I don't know if part of it I'm psychoanalysing myself is,
• 1:18:53
  is a reaction to the fact that everybody likes David.
• 1:18:56
  But no, I, I was quite surprised when he started and he was all
• 1:18:59
  and I thought, oh, I, I thought he would be a bit.
• 1:19:03
  More. I, I thought he would be a bit,
• 1:19:06
  I thought he would be a bit more sort of, you know, standard sort
• 1:19:11
  of eccentric. And I could see why he, he
• 1:19:13
  decided not to do that. But the, the sort of Mockney
• 1:19:16
  Barry boy thing did take me by surprise and, and, and he never
• 1:19:19
  sort of moved away from that. And it's, it's not what I
• 1:19:22
  imagined a doctor, his doctor would be like.
• 1:19:26
  So just personal taste, even though I don't think he puts a
• 1:19:29
  foot wrong personal taste wise. I think I have doctors I enjoy
• 1:19:35
  the interpretation of more and that sit more comfortably with
• 1:19:38
  me and certainly with my sense of humor, although he does do
• 1:19:41
  some of the funny stuff very, very well.
• 1:19:44
  Maybe I'm a bit a drier sense of humor, slightly battier sense of
• 1:19:48
  humor, but I cannot deny he's the most important on screen
• 1:19:55
  figure of, of, of 21st century Who.
• 1:19:57
  And also my experiences of him as a person have always been
• 1:20:01
  amazing. He doesn't let you down.
• 1:20:02
  He's, he's a very nice, decent, generous man.
• 1:20:05
  And so, yeah, he's, I mean, he, he, he is, he is extraordinary.
• 1:20:13
  And what an achievement he made. And he had everybody talking
• 1:20:16
  about him and Doctor Who. And to many he is still Doctor
• 1:20:20
  Who. And I'm, you know, I'm not
• 1:20:21
  surprised. The first the first doctor to
• 1:20:25
  take the show to the number one most watched programme of the
• 1:20:30
  week, wasn't he? We got nearly there before, but
• 1:20:33
  he was the first one that did it.
• 1:20:35
  Michael, what's your favorite Beatles song?
• 1:20:39
  The continuing story of Bungalow Bill?
• 1:20:41
  I don't know. But what are your bits on the
• 1:20:44
  10th Doctor? That bit and there's always A
• 1:20:46
  twist at the ends. We're not 4 fools from
• 1:20:48
  Liverpool. Just like, just like The Beatles
• 1:20:50
  used to sing. Well, it's, it's interesting to
• 1:20:54
  mention The Beatles maybe think there's that, there's that graph
• 1:20:57
  that does the line, does the rounds online.
• 1:20:59
  Isn't there of people who know a little bit if you, how much you
• 1:21:04
  know about music versus how much you like The Beatles?
• 1:21:06
  And people who know a little bit about music think The Beatles
• 1:21:09
  are amazing. The people who know a lot about
• 1:21:12
  music, yeah. Think all The Beatles are
• 1:21:15
  rubbish. And then the people who know
• 1:21:17
  everything about music, like, oh, no, no, The Beatles are
• 1:21:19
  amazing. And I wonder if there's a bit of
• 1:21:21
  that with David Tennant. He isn't my favorite of the new
• 1:21:25
  series, Doctors or Doctors in general.
• 1:21:26
  But in terms of recognizing the importance of him to the history
• 1:21:31
  of Doctor Who, this whole era, we should say there's a reason
• 1:21:34
  that he and Catherine Tate were the two that came back for the
• 1:21:36
  60th back in. Those of us who were sentient
• 1:21:41
  when Doctor Who came back to TV will recall that during the
• 1:21:44
  wilderness years, if it was on, you know, I love the 70s or it's
• 1:21:47
  only TV, but I like it. And they talked about Doctor
• 1:21:50
  Who. They meant Tom Baker, maybe
• 1:21:52
  occasionally John Pertwee, but they meant Tom Baker.
• 1:21:54
  And in the same way, now that when people who aren't watching
• 1:21:57
  Doctor Who anymore talk about Doctor Who, they're thinking of
• 1:22:00
  these days, the glory days as they'd have it, and they're
• 1:22:02
  thinking of David Tennant. Michael, one time I talked to
• 1:22:07
  someone about classic Doctor Who.
• 1:22:09
  I mentioned classic and they thought I was referring to David
• 1:22:11
  Tennant. But there we go.
• 1:22:15
  Yeah, well, I had a bloke around the other day mending the
• 1:22:17
  washing machine and I he said, oh, you like you noticed in the
• 1:22:20
  house and he said, oh, you like you like Doctor Who then?
• 1:22:23
  And I said, Oh yeah, but you know, I like it all go, I go way
• 1:22:27
  back. He said me too mate.
• 1:22:28
  I love, I loved it in the olden days up.
• 1:22:30
  I loved that the the kid with the gas mask.
• 1:22:35
  Oh dear. Well, but I but I mean a fake.
• 1:22:39
  Fan get out of my house. But this is the thing and I
• 1:22:43
  think sometimes when I watch this back, David Hennen back in
• 1:22:47
  the 10th Doctor and him in that role, I feel a certain
• 1:22:50
  uncomfortableness sometimes. And I was trying to auto
• 1:22:55
  ethnographize and I was trying to think, where's that?
• 1:22:57
  What was the source of that pain, Michael?
• 1:22:59
  I was remembering that when this came out, I wasn't a child
• 1:23:01
  anymore. I'm very unfortunate.
• 1:23:03
  When I was exactly the right age for Doctor Who, they put the TV
• 1:23:06
  movie out. So, you know, that didn't really
• 1:23:08
  work out for Michael. And by the time it came back, I
• 1:23:11
  was probably a little bit too old to watch it as a kid
• 1:23:13
  anymore. Didn't mean I couldn't still
• 1:23:15
  love it, but I was I was a student during this year during
• 1:23:19
  this year and I've got to say David Tennant coming in and
• 1:23:23
  suddenly being a sort of geek hero.
• 1:23:26
  There were a lot of us who just happened to acquire long coats
• 1:23:30
  around that time, you know, and and maybe started wearing casual
• 1:23:35
  suits. And I think there's a lot of
• 1:23:38
  destruction of the archives going as well as many of us try
• 1:23:40
  to purge that from the early years of Facebook, many.
• 1:23:44
  Converse were bought. Met.
• 1:23:46
  Oh, I wore those out, don't you worry.
• 1:23:50
  And if I come to terms with my younger self, if I forgive my
• 1:23:54
  inner child, I can't realize that actually.
• 1:23:58
  Do you know what? It was bloody brilliant having
• 1:23:59
  him as the doctor Christopher Ox to come back and was brilliant
• 1:24:01
  in some ways, possibly I actually prefer his performance.
• 1:24:04
  But in terms of what he was, he was this geek hero.
• 1:24:07
  It was the height of geek chic as the fashion trends of the
• 1:24:10
  time. And suddenly he was he was
• 1:24:11
  wearing specky glasses. He got he got all high pitched
• 1:24:15
  when he got excited just. Like we all did.
• 1:24:17
  At the time as. Well.
• 1:24:20
  Just like Davison. And it was so brilliant to have
• 1:24:24
  to have that hero for those of us who were never going to be
• 1:24:28
  Han Solo or Luke Skywalker or James Bond.
• 1:24:31
  But you could maybe be David Tennant as Doctor Who, right?
• 1:24:35
  And he was he, he, he was, he was brilliant and wonderful that
• 1:24:40
  he was a fan coming in. And yet his performance is not
• 1:24:43
  at all fanish. I forget who said it at the
• 1:24:47
  time. He's the only Doctor Who fan
• 1:24:48
  who's ever played Doctor Who without holding their lapels.
• 1:24:55
  Instead, he said it attacks it with this, with this energy, but
• 1:24:59
  there's also offset with this, this weariness, which I think in
• 1:25:02
  some of the writing was maybe a bit laboured towards the end.
• 1:25:05
  But he could do those moments of just when he stops, he looks so
• 1:25:09
  tired. And I know they'd come back to
• 1:25:11
  that more with the 14th Doctor, but he could play that.
• 1:25:13
  He could play that so well. So I think there will always be
• 1:25:18
  part of me that just, you know, the 17 year old, the 18 year old
• 1:25:21
  me had this late childhood hero of Doctor Who and David, I think
• 1:25:27
  that's exactly consciously what David Tennant was going for.
• 1:25:30
  Not 17 year olds, but to give kids that hero.
• 1:25:34
  Wow. Well, Speaking of kids, Kieran.
• 1:25:38
  Would you like to? Mark was at the hammer on the
• 1:25:39
  head. Who was my hero growing up?
• 1:25:42
  I wanted to be Doctor Who I've I've found this image up and I
• 1:25:46
  will be posting it online for you listeners to look at.
• 1:25:51
  But there is my old like Halloween costume when I was a
• 1:25:54
  little kid. I I I wore exactly that out in
• 1:25:59
  Cardiff a few times when I around 2008.
• 1:26:02
  It's the it's the Smith and Jones costume.
• 1:26:04
  If anybody wore the blue. SIM I also had.
• 1:26:08
  I went through a stage where I wore Converse and I hated them
• 1:26:11
  because they fucking suck. But they're terrible on your
• 1:26:14
  feet and you have to time out. And I have very long coats that
• 1:26:19
  I'm not going to go and fetch. But because of David Tennant, it
• 1:26:23
  is shaped how I look at things, how I react to things, how I
• 1:26:27
  talk to people. And I said the word definitive
• 1:26:31
  earlier as my one word for describing him as the Doctor.
• 1:26:35
  And. I think he is.
• 1:26:37
  Every Doctor that's come afterwards has been defined by
• 1:26:41
  David Tennant. You know, you could like Jodie
• 1:26:43
  Whittaker, you could see so much David Tennant in that or, or
• 1:26:47
  shoot, you get where I could see a lot of David Tennant in that.
• 1:26:49
  I imagine with Billy Piper, if she is the 16th Doctor, we'll
• 1:26:53
  have a lot of David Tennant there as well.
• 1:26:55
  And that's just how Doctor Who is going to be played from now
• 1:26:58
  on. I think that's like how in the
• 1:27:01
  classic series everyone looks back to Tom Baker and how they
• 1:27:04
  can do it from that or John Pertwee.
• 1:27:07
  And that's only the beginning of David Tennant's career.
• 1:27:10
  You know, he goes off and he's got all these great shows like
• 1:27:11
  Good Omens or one thing I caught him in was like a three-part
• 1:27:17
  series where he played Dennis Nielsen and he was bloody
• 1:27:19
  terrifying. So he's got the range just to do
• 1:27:21
  whatever. He did a musical series.
• 1:27:24
  He was fantastic in that. Casanova as well, or if you
• 1:27:28
  would even go before Doctor Who. He plays that Stasi general and
• 1:27:34
  called it's. I forget what he's called.
• 1:27:36
  Boy, well, that is niche. A big finish.
• 1:27:38
  Yeah, Commander. Guide so ever he's called or the
• 1:27:41
  Brigadier and that unbound 1 so he's just got the range to do
• 1:27:44
  whatever he wants and there's the doctor he just hits his nail
• 1:27:46
  running redefines what it is to be Doctor Who and how Doctor Who
• 1:27:49
  acts and there's I don't think you'll be able to leave the show
• 1:27:54
  in five years time we'll look back on this and he's been on it
• 1:27:56
  five more times there's three different doctors so don't dig
• 1:28:00
  brilliant definitive I will say again.
• 1:28:03
  When you say it affects how you talk to people, do you mean you
• 1:28:06
  over pronounce all your vows? For a while I did no, but just
• 1:28:10
  like like a confidence, just go and talk to people and just
• 1:28:14
  throw yourself into a situation. Whenever I was in a hospital or
• 1:28:18
  an office, I just always sprinted down the corridors.
• 1:28:21
  I just so badly wanted to be Davidson.
• 1:28:22
  Coates Tailor slap in. Yeah.
• 1:28:26
  Well, Joe, you said he always wants to David Tennant.
• 1:28:29
  Well. Since we are doing a little bit
• 1:28:30
  of comparisons, I will say I'll find Matt Smith a little bit too
• 1:28:33
  self consciously Willy Wonka, and Peter Capaldi is a bit too
• 1:28:37
  grumpy really to to truly make his mark with the public.
• 1:28:41
  At least David Tennant's 10th Doctor is my favorite Doctor of
• 1:28:46
  the new series, possibly my favorite Doctor of all time as
• 1:28:50
  an actor. I think he's the only man that
• 1:28:51
  can rattle off techno Babble quicker than Tom Baker and with
• 1:28:55
  even more conviction, and that's a vital part of the role.
• 1:28:59
  Yeah, that's true. And I think he was immediately
• 1:29:02
  qualified to play the Doctor because he opened the doors to
• 1:29:05
  new worlds, and he just sold that that was exactly where he
• 1:29:08
  was. And with utter conviction, I
• 1:29:11
  always went wherever he went. And I believed where I was, not
• 1:29:14
  because of the set dressing or the music, just because of how
• 1:29:17
  David Tennant reacted within those settings.
• 1:29:20
  But beyond that conviction, we know he was a hard worker.
• 1:29:23
  He's a decent man. He was generous to his Co
• 1:29:26
  workers. He was willing to give himself
• 1:29:28
  completely to the show when it rocketed to the stratosphere.
• 1:29:31
  A champion for Doctor Who, a staggering acting talent, and
• 1:29:34
  pretty much a stroke of genius to cast the one man who wanted
• 1:29:38
  the role more than anything in the world.
• 1:29:40
  Because he was a Doctor Who fan, so he was always going to commit
• 1:29:44
  100%. I think he sells drama, comedy,
• 1:29:47
  intimacy, anger, sadness, wit, furious action.
• 1:29:51
  I think as an actor he's the full package.
• 1:29:53
  David Tennant and he gave it all as a Doctor.
• 1:29:56
  I go back to my one word. He was a total cunt wasn't he?
• 1:30:00
  Like self absorbed, overly confident, obnoxiously self
• 1:30:04
  opinionated and I'm not listening.
• 1:30:07
  Had to be the biggest presence in the room.
• 1:30:09
  No wonder I love him. That's me in a Doctor Who story.
• 1:30:13
  Wonderful, but he can also be subtle and brooding and
• 1:30:18
  terrifying and silly and hilarious and frequently iconic.
• 1:30:23
  There's so many iconic 10th Doctor moments as a character.
• 1:30:27
  I think he's the full package as well.
• 1:30:29
  I just I. On.
• 1:30:30
  Form, I don't think he can be beaten.
• 1:30:33
  The performance is where he's at.
• 1:30:35
  His absolute best. Waters of Mars, human nature,
• 1:30:38
  midnight. He cannot be topped.
• 1:30:42
  I think what you say about technobabble, and also, I mean,
• 1:30:45
  you could add to that, you know, exposition and, you know,
• 1:30:49
  getting us from plot point A to plot point B.
• 1:30:52
  He doesn't hang around, but he lets it all sit as well.
• 1:30:54
  It's not like you're sitting and all right, give us the, you
• 1:30:59
  know, he, he keeps, he keeps the energy up.
• 1:31:02
  And it's and, and you know, it's something to be said for having
• 1:31:05
  a classically trained actor who's very good at Shakespeare
• 1:31:08
  that that can handle some of that really big, potentially
• 1:31:13
  impenetrable stuff, whether it be techno level or plot
• 1:31:16
  explanations and actually make it all land and seem to mean
• 1:31:21
  something. He.
• 1:31:22
  Knows, right? He knows if he delivers it fast
• 1:31:25
  enough, the audience will just go oh right, yes, yes, what he
• 1:31:29
  said. Speaking of Shakespeare, if you
• 1:31:31
  watch like the 2009, 2010 version of Hamlet where David
• 1:31:36
  Tennant plays Hamlet, he's just off of playing Doctor Who.
• 1:31:39
  So it's just the 10th Doctor in a Shakespeare play.
• 1:31:42
  It's brilliant. I saw it on I saw it on Stage
• 1:31:45
  Love. You know.
• 1:31:48
  That bit in, I just think there's so many comparisons
• 1:31:51
  between Tennant and Tom Baker, even though it give completely
• 1:31:53
  different performances. But do you remember that bit in
• 1:31:56
  Stones of Blood? He's talking to Amelia Rumford
• 1:31:59
  and then he suddenly just goes brilliant.
• 1:32:03
  And there's a bit in Unicorn on the Wasp where he's talking to
• 1:32:05
  Agatha Christie and David Tennant just goes maiden.
• 1:32:08
  Oh my God, He's got those ticks where you just pay attention to
• 1:32:12
  him. He's the one you look at all the
• 1:32:14
  time. Just like Tom Baker, he commands
• 1:32:17
  the room. The scene that we're talking
• 1:32:19
  about in the Satan pit where he's basically doing a massive
• 1:32:22
  speech to camera for however long it is, 5 minutes or so,
• 1:32:26
  where he just explains the plot, sets things up, gives the sides,
• 1:32:30
  works things out, talks about where it's going.
• 1:32:32
  I mean, that's, that's theatre right there.
• 1:32:34
  There's a theatre performance. And yeah, he does it also,
• 1:32:36
  obviously having conversations with himself the whole way
• 1:32:39
  through, throwing things back and forth.
• 1:32:42
  He's I. Think.
• 1:32:45
  So many other actors, you would just be aware that, as you said,
• 1:32:48
  I'm just having the plot explained to me now.
• 1:32:50
  Thank you very much. I am all caught up.
• 1:32:53
  And now you can go and blow the man from casualty out into a
• 1:32:57
  black hole or what have you. It's, it's, I think we have to
• 1:33:01
  sometimes stop and realise how good he is at some of what he's
• 1:33:05
  doing in the in those scenes because he just makes it all
• 1:33:08
  look effortless. We'll talk about midnight in a
• 1:33:10
  minute. But you know, he was handed a
• 1:33:11
  script where he basically said, right, so Leslie Sharp's going
• 1:33:14
  to steal your voice, OK? And then she's going to make you
• 1:33:16
  say things like the midnight sky and all this nonsense.
• 1:33:19
  But at the same time, you're saying all that bullshit you've
• 1:33:22
  got to present to the audience that you're absolutely in total
• 1:33:26
  fear that you're about to be murdered and thrown outside of
• 1:33:29
  it. Right?
• 1:33:29
  Go. I mean, I wouldn't know where to
• 1:33:31
  start. Go.
• 1:33:34
  That's very true. No, no, well I mean just off the
• 1:33:37
  back of that. I mean, the the best description
• 1:33:38
  I ever read of David Tennants 10th Doctor was very much a man
• 1:33:43
  of action leaping into the fray like a slightly demented Errol
• 1:33:47
  Flynn, which which really sums him up.
• 1:33:50
  I mean, he, again, he isn't my favorite Doctor, although there
• 1:33:54
  are some days where I do think, well, maybe he is because I keep
• 1:33:58
  going back to him and he's kind of a.
• 1:33:59
  Go stop to do that, Daniel. You know, every now and again
• 1:34:02
  you go. I think he might be my favorite.
• 1:34:04
  He's a go to comfort doctor for me.
• 1:34:06
  I mean, he's the one I'm most familiar with.
• 1:34:07
  I can immediately click with him.
• 1:34:10
  And, you know, when he goes big and shouty and with the
• 1:34:13
  grandstanding and the showboating and the chewing the
• 1:34:15
  scenery, I'm very forgiving of that because I, I mean, well,
• 1:34:19
  because other doctors have done that too.
• 1:34:21
  But also it appeals to the kind of inner child in me we
• 1:34:24
  mentioned in a child like, oh, yeah, the Doctor's angry now.
• 1:34:27
  Oh, he's panicked. Oh, he's happy.
• 1:34:29
  So it's all these great big theatrical gestures.
• 1:34:32
  He's a very theatrical actor, David Tennant.
• 1:34:35
  And I think we take him for granted a little bit because he
• 1:34:37
  is often seen as the, the popular, recognizable face of,
• 1:34:42
  of the modern show. And I think there was at the
• 1:34:46
  time, and maybe there still is a little bit of resentment because
• 1:34:50
  how dare such a young boyish presence could take on the role
• 1:34:55
  of the doctor. And especially when it got a lot
• 1:34:57
  of female fans into the show, a lot of women.
• 1:35:01
  My friend, actually, Elodie, she started watching the show just
• 1:35:05
  because of David, innit. And then she it opened this
• 1:35:07
  whole world up to her where she went immediately back into the
• 1:35:10
  classic series and watched it all from the beginning before
• 1:35:13
  she got onto the the other doctors.
• 1:35:15
  Wow, Yeah. Is he the only modern Doctor Who
• 1:35:21
  has been a star as that character, as in other actors
• 1:35:25
  have become famous from playing that role?
• 1:35:26
  But David Tennant as Doctor Who was like Tom Baker's Doctor Who
• 1:35:30
  when there's the Radio Times front cover of him and Kylie
• 1:35:33
  Minogue. That's that's two stars
• 1:35:35
  alongside it. It's not the show.
• 1:35:37
  It's David Tennants, Doctor Who is here.
• 1:35:40
  You know, he he could turn on the lights in Trafalgar Square.
• 1:35:42
  I don't think ever did, but you could have done.
• 1:35:44
  Like Matt Smith was certainly popular, but he had, like he had
• 1:35:47
  an army of popular people around him, Amy, Rory, River, whereas
• 1:35:52
  it was David Tennant, wasn't it? But if Matt Smith, if Matt Smith
• 1:35:55
  had done Macbeth 2/3 of the way through his run it.
• 1:35:58
  Wouldn't be sure. It wouldn't be reported on BBC
• 1:36:02
  News in the way that that Hamlet actually was like it.
• 1:36:06
  Was. Could he get wibbly wobbly
• 1:36:08
  timey? Why me in there somewhere?
• 1:36:12
  Like. Laughing his hands about it
• 1:36:13
  would be great. Well, just one final point about
• 1:36:16
  Tennant's performance is, is that I think an under
• 1:36:18
  underappreciated factor is not just how he's cheeky and
• 1:36:22
  charming or the the dark avenging Angel or whatever, but
• 1:36:25
  also how he lets us see the the Doctor's sort of quick to
• 1:36:29
  Quicksilver intelligence. There's a lovely moment in the
• 1:36:32
  Lazarus experiment where he he rattles off the techno bubble
• 1:36:36
  we've been talking about to to Martha's sister Tish and and she
• 1:36:41
  goes, oh, he's a science geek. I should have known.
• 1:36:44
  And and he's kind of non flustered.
• 1:36:45
  He's like, oh, science geek, what's that?
• 1:36:47
  And and Martha says, well, it's because you're so obsessively
• 1:36:50
  enthusiastic about it. And he goes, oh, nice.
• 1:36:52
  He's so sort of flattered and innocent about it.
• 1:36:55
  And I think that's the kind of character trait that sometimes
• 1:36:57
  gets overlooked. And it's also a bit of a
• 1:37:00
  character flaw because he he knows he's clever and he kind of
• 1:37:03
  Lords it over everyone else sometimes, which is why he has
• 1:37:06
  that Davison thing of putting on the the brainy specs to make
• 1:37:10
  himself look smart. But that library scene in tooth
• 1:37:14
  and claw where he kind of slams on those clever glasses and goes
• 1:37:18
  books best weapons in the world. That was the moment for me when
• 1:37:21
  Tennant became the doctor, where it was this great sort of
• 1:37:24
  knowledge is power message for the kids.
• 1:37:27
  And I was watching it with my cousins at the time and we were
• 1:37:30
  we were just so into it at that time.
• 1:37:32
  We were like, Oh yes, the the new Doctor has arrived, you
• 1:37:36
  know? It's oh, sorry, I'm going to
• 1:37:38
  stop, interrupt. It's not a moment that's
• 1:37:40
  celebrated, but I think his performance in the last scene of
• 1:37:44
  Gridlock is one of the most understatedly beautiful bits of
• 1:37:48
  acting in Doctor Who. He's gorgeous in that scene.
• 1:37:50
  He can bring it down as well. Well, speaking gridlock, that
• 1:37:55
  was one of the winners in the selection that we're going to
• 1:37:59
  talk. About.
• 1:38:00
  Next so the winners of of of past 10 and Strictly's have been
• 1:38:06
  Gridlock, School Reunion, Midnight and the Fires of
• 1:38:12
  Pompeii and. We've also got the.
• 1:38:17
  Impossible planning on the Satan thing.
• 1:38:19
  We spent 45 minutes talking about.
• 1:38:20
  That Yes, yes, yes. OK, All right.
• 1:38:24
  So Toby, choose what? Am I choosing just one?
• 1:38:29
  You've got to choose a winner. You've.
• 1:38:30
  Got to select a winner. This is horrible and of course I
• 1:38:34
  can't do anything tactical because I don't know what you're
• 1:38:37
  all going to vote for. So I have to be honest, this is
• 1:38:40
  terrible. I actually apart from 1.
• 1:38:45
  I don't mind who wins this now really apart.
• 1:38:49
  From 1:00. Yeah, apart from 1:00.
• 1:38:51
  And it's not not to diss the one, I just don't think it's as
• 1:38:53
  good as the others. I think, I think the others are
• 1:38:56
  all fabulous. One I think is a slight
• 1:39:02
  underdog, but therefore I wouldn't mind if it won because
• 1:39:05
  I I think it's got so much that's brilliant about it
• 1:39:09
  without having any obvious sort of headline grabs.
• 1:39:12
  So gridlock, I think is is is is a beautiful sort of it's sort of
• 1:39:18
  I know it's got the face of bow at the end and and those bits,
• 1:39:20
  but but just as a sort of stand alone episode that I think is is
• 1:39:23
  more than the sum of its parts. I think there's there's some
• 1:39:26
  amazing things about gridlock. School reunion is an obvious
• 1:39:31
  favorite for me for a number of reasons.
• 1:39:33
  I I hadn't particularly been bothered about it happening.
• 1:39:37
  I thought the newspapers were being daft and they'd just gone
• 1:39:40
  right. They've done the Daleks, they're
• 1:39:42
  doing the Cybermen. What's next?
• 1:39:44
  Oh, do you remember when they brought Sarah Jane and Ken or
• 1:39:45
  I've looked, yeah, that'll be next.
• 1:39:47
  And we'll just run a story about that.
• 1:39:49
  I certainly didn't think the show would do it.
• 1:39:50
  I thought. And if they did, it would be
• 1:39:52
  like, well, that's that's not going to be sometimes Star Trek
• 1:39:55
  The Next Generation would do that, wouldn't they?
• 1:39:56
  When they bring back some old Klingons or something and you
• 1:39:58
  go, well, this isn't it's fine. It's not quite delivered what
• 1:40:01
  it's promised or and school reunion.
• 1:40:05
  Is not only marvellous in the way, even though it's it's an
• 1:40:09
  awkward fit. I think you know, they redefine
• 1:40:11
  what Sarah Jane was in order to tell that story about Billie,
• 1:40:15
  Billie Piper Rose being what she must what she must face when you
• 1:40:19
  know she's redundant. And the doctors think about I
• 1:40:21
  can, you can travel with me your whole life, but I can't travel
• 1:40:24
  with you for yours, which I mean, anyone that's had a that's
• 1:40:27
  had a dog will know the tragedy of that.
• 1:40:31
  But I think I think school reunion means so much to me.
• 1:40:34
  It was important. I I remember watching it with my
• 1:40:37
  son and we both both being sad about canine and it becomes an
• 1:40:40
  important part of my, I'll say my Doctor Who scarf show,
• 1:40:43
  without which I wouldn't be here now and certainly wouldn't be
• 1:40:46
  doing any of the things that I'm doing.
• 1:40:48
  And it's, you know, wasn't only an important part of the show
• 1:40:50
  when I was writing it, but it's an important part of the show,
• 1:40:53
  actually in the show. But it's also take you can't
• 1:40:57
  take Sarah Jane and canine out of it because they are
• 1:41:01
  emblematic of it. But actually the story itself
• 1:41:03
  serves that. It's not just like a bee plot.
• 1:41:05
  The whole thing with the school and Anthony Head's brilliant
• 1:41:08
  headmaster and it's got chips in it and everything it all, it all
• 1:41:12
  works and all that Crillota and stuff is beautiful and stuff
• 1:41:15
  without Sarah that that that swimming pool scene with with
• 1:41:18
  Anthony Head is phenomenal. He's got a brilliant line where
• 1:41:20
  he talks to the Doctor about being for you behave like such a
• 1:41:23
  radical, but all you want to do is preserve the old order, which
• 1:41:27
  really gets to the nub of what the Doctor is about and I think
• 1:41:30
  is really thought thoughtful and intelligent.
• 1:41:32
  I think Toby Whithouse is a great writer.
• 1:41:34
  I think James Swartz is a brilliant director.
• 1:41:35
  I love the way the walls wobble when the Krillitanes hit the
• 1:41:38
  walls and I love the way you see them change sometimes in shadow
• 1:41:43
  or just behind glass, whatever. So it's got a lot going on
• 1:41:46
  there. Fires of Pompeii is the one I
• 1:41:49
  would drop, not because it does anything wrong.
• 1:41:51
  And I think Catherine Tate is amazing in it.
• 1:41:53
  I I think that's a really interesting period.
• 1:41:54
  It's a really handsome production.
• 1:41:57
  I I think the cast is better on paper than naturality.
• 1:41:59
  But Peter Peter Capaldi is amazing, but he's he's not that
• 1:42:03
  interesting a character. Phil Davis I really like as an
• 1:42:05
  actor, but I actually find him quite red faced and one note in
• 1:42:09
  it and it doesn't quite so just but you know, the central
• 1:42:13
  dilemma I think is an intelligent use of an historical
• 1:42:16
  event. It's obviously a really hugely
• 1:42:18
  attractive production. Doctor Who seemed to do no and
• 1:42:21
  and so it's a sign of the quality of the era rather than a
• 1:42:24
  problem that I have with Fires of Pompeii.
• 1:42:26
  That's an easy one to drop, even though there's much to recommend
• 1:42:29
  it. We've I've talked about the
• 1:42:32
  state and put the impossible planet it and it might suffer in
• 1:42:35
  this round from over familiarity because we've already conjured
• 1:42:39
  it, because everything everybody else has said has made me go,
• 1:42:41
  Oh, I think I should vote for that instead.
• 1:42:44
  And again, a sign of how much quality is bouncing around and
• 1:42:47
  how much 1 can. There's so much here depending
• 1:42:49
  on what mood you're in, and I might prefer one of these
• 1:42:51
  stories better on another day than another day.
• 1:42:54
  Midnight was, I mean, Midnight was on when I was touring my one
• 1:42:58
  man show and stupidly it was on when I was on stage.
• 1:43:02
  And there's a lovely chap called Chris Cassell.
• 1:43:04
  I was, I was in Kirkcudi. And there's a lovely chap called
• 1:43:09
  Chris Cassell who is, is, is a, is a, is a, is a Doctor Who
• 1:43:13
  father. No, but he's also brilliant at,
• 1:43:15
  at, at, at things. And he he very sweetly.
• 1:43:20
  I don't think he came to see the show, you know, but he turned up
• 1:43:23
  afterwards to meet me in the bar and brought because there was
• 1:43:26
  no, I couldn't, you know, to do iPlayer in those days from
• 1:43:28
  hotel. You had to spend money or have a
• 1:43:30
  thing to plug in. And it was a, so he brought a
• 1:43:32
  disc and I watched it on a disc that he'd done for me that
• 1:43:35
  night. And I remember thinking, oh,
• 1:43:37
  this is an odd fish. And I was watching it on a
• 1:43:40
  laptop in a hotel bedroom and thinking, oh, this is, this is,
• 1:43:43
  this is slightly strange. It's like a, it's like a
• 1:43:45
  slightly left field episode. And my wife at the time didn't,
• 1:43:51
  I remember her saying, oh, I didn't think much of it tonight.
• 1:43:54
  And that's not why we're not together anymore, but but fair
• 1:43:59
  enough. But as time has gone by, I mean,
• 1:44:04
  I I did like it at the time, but it wasn't what I expected of a
• 1:44:07
  Doctor Who story. So I thought it was a slightly
• 1:44:09
  anonymous 1, you know, a slightly weird left field one
• 1:44:13
  that wouldn't that would always be interesting, but never as
• 1:44:16
  time has gone on. Midnight, I think is a stunning
• 1:44:18
  achievement and that you've alluded to it already.
• 1:44:21
  The the fact that when he says because I'm clever and we used
• 1:44:26
  to doctor coming in and going, aren't I clever and everyone
• 1:44:28
  going, Oh well, he is a bit strange, but yes, he is the
• 1:44:31
  cleverest person in the room. And of course we see this now in
• 1:44:34
  modern discourse where actually there's a rejection of the
• 1:44:40
  intellectual elites because they haven't played a very clever
• 1:44:43
  game actually, and they have seemed a bit smug and full of
• 1:44:47
  themselves. And you have to win hearts and
• 1:44:49
  minds. You can't just stroll in and go
• 1:44:51
  aren't either dogs bollocks because people will go screw
• 1:44:53
  you. Who the hell do you think you
• 1:44:54
  are? And I think that gets to AI.
• 1:44:57
  I've never but over the moon, when writers feel that they need
• 1:45:01
  to teach the Doctor a lesson, I'm not really interested in
• 1:45:03
  that. The Doctor's better than all of
• 1:45:04
  us. And that's, again, that's the
• 1:45:05
  wizard thing and the magical thing.
• 1:45:07
  And. And I I won't dig too deep into
• 1:45:10
  that, but I but actually getting to the heart of some of the
• 1:45:13
  contradictions of his character and showing how sometimes the
• 1:45:17
  things that we look at as being his great advantages and
• 1:45:21
  suddenly going yeah, but in this adventure, it's going to be a
• 1:45:23
  massive disadvantage. And I did admire Russell when I,
• 1:45:27
  I spoke to him about it and I said just as a sort of tagline,
• 1:45:29
  I said, oh, it's Doctor Who on the planet of the Daily Mail
• 1:45:31
  people. And, and he instead of going,
• 1:45:33
  yeah, those awful people, he went.
• 1:45:35
  Well, actually it's, he sort of pushed back very gently and
• 1:45:37
  slightly. Well, no, but you can see where
• 1:45:39
  they're coming from because he misjudges them and he doesn't
• 1:45:41
  play the room. And, and, and as far as they're
• 1:45:43
  concerned, and, and, and, and it's very true is that even
• 1:45:46
  though all of those people at certain points are terrible,
• 1:45:50
  they've also got a point at at every point.
• 1:45:53
  And they're also right to misjudge him.
• 1:45:54
  And they're also within their own little space.
• 1:45:58
  They are true to themselves. And again, that is really,
• 1:46:02
  really good writing. It's also very good on a
• 1:46:04
  technical level because, and it must have been murder to, to
• 1:46:07
  play that because stuck in one set and having to do the same
• 1:46:11
  stuff over and over again. I, I think that would have been
• 1:46:13
  hard to do and I suspect your, your, your tempers would fray
• 1:46:17
  under those circumstances. And I which probably helps with
• 1:46:21
  the, but I think it's a really technically, even though it
• 1:46:25
  doesn't look it because it's just people in a place, I think
• 1:46:28
  it's a technically extraordinary achievement as an episode.
• 1:46:31
  So which one to choose? Which one to choose?
• 1:46:34
  My heart. Well, my heart, probably my big
• 1:46:40
  fat beating heart, goes with School Reunion.
• 1:46:43
  My emotional, sympathetic and sort of generous sort of heart
• 1:46:52
  or disposition goes to Gridlock just because I think it's got a
• 1:46:56
  harder job and I think it deserves.
• 1:47:00
  I'm probably not doing what you want, Joe.
• 1:47:02
  I'm supposed to just be choosing 3.
• 1:47:03
  Go on. It's fine I think.
• 1:47:06
  Gridlock. Never tell you to shut up, you
• 1:47:07
  know? I think Gridlock has one of the
• 1:47:09
  great moments in Doctor and again, it is a sign of and I and
• 1:47:12
  I, I fear these days that we expect from our writing, looking
• 1:47:18
  at modern discourse that people want modern writing to to just
• 1:47:22
  be an act in confirmation bias and to say the people you like
• 1:47:25
  are good because they say and do this.
• 1:47:27
  And the people you don't like are good because they bad
• 1:47:29
  because they say and do this. In good writing, the people that
• 1:47:33
  you that you like sometimes say things you don't want and the
• 1:47:38
  people who, who embody your views are also, you know, have
• 1:47:43
  cautionary elements about them. And it makes you go away and it
• 1:47:46
  makes you reflect and it makes you see that perhaps, you know,
• 1:47:50
  the certainties that you have in life are worth aren't
• 1:47:53
  necessarily watertight. And, and that's where reality
• 1:47:56
  lies somewhere in the cracks between certainties and
• 1:47:59
  absolutes and realities. And I love that scene in
• 1:48:03
  gridlock where they watch the where they sing the the the old
• 1:48:07
  rugged cross. I'm not a religious person at
• 1:48:09
  all. And again, it's very easy as a
• 1:48:10
  writer, and I've done it with comedy to sort of go her
• 1:48:13
  religion idiot. And it became the new
• 1:48:15
  rock'n'roll to say religion's stupid.
• 1:48:17
  And Russell T Davis is not a religious person, but what he
• 1:48:20
  does there. And, and actually, I think as
• 1:48:22
  I've got older, I respect religion because it humbles you
• 1:48:26
  a bit. If if you are not the most
• 1:48:27
  important thing in the universe, you might actually be more
• 1:48:30
  generously spirited and community minded so much as we
• 1:48:33
  clever, clever people might go, oh, just believing in God,
• 1:48:36
  though that's silly. Actually, it might have a
• 1:48:39
  cohesive purpose about society, even though I can't bring myself
• 1:48:42
  to logically believe in it. I certainly wouldn't dismiss
• 1:48:45
  other people's religions, just just in a sort of Dawkinsy way.
• 1:48:50
  And I love what Russell T Davis does when he shows, when he
• 1:48:53
  shows them singing. It's very moving because that
• 1:48:55
  music is brilliant. And, and, and there's a reason
• 1:48:57
  that religious music survives and serves the purpose of
• 1:49:00
  ceremony and community and all of that.
• 1:49:02
  But it serves as a brilliant metaphor because it shows two
• 1:49:05
  things being true at once. It shows a community united and
• 1:49:12
  strong, and they've got each other, and it keeps them alive
• 1:49:17
  and it keeps them nourished and it keeps them safe, but it also
• 1:49:21
  stops them moving. It is the, IT is their source of
• 1:49:25
  comfort, and it is the, and it is their source of inertia.
• 1:49:29
  And one of those things is good, and one of those things is bad.
• 1:49:32
  And those two things can both happen at exactly the same time.
• 1:49:35
  And I think that is phenomenally good writing.
• 1:49:38
  And it's also brilliantly played because they're all just
• 1:49:40
  watching a thing and they cry and you get all sad and your
• 1:49:42
  tears well up. But it is serving 2 purposes at
• 1:49:45
  the same time. And that is extremely
• 1:49:47
  sophisticated writing and. Also the macro in it as well.
• 1:49:51
  Well, and it's funny because I love the macro, but it's it's
• 1:49:58
  really odd because it slightly misses a trick.
• 1:50:00
  I think there because the macro are just there.
• 1:50:02
  And I remember punching this out and one of my ex, his friends
• 1:50:05
  was watching with me and we said it background and she was
• 1:50:08
  absolutely baffled. And I thought, I've now got to
• 1:50:11
  I've now got to explain to her why I'm excited that these
• 1:50:14
  particular crabs happened to be crabs that were in 4 episodes
• 1:50:17
  that have never been seen since 1967.
• 1:50:20
  And actually they're not like the ones in the story anyway,
• 1:50:23
  because you've got Sally Calypso, the weather person.
• 1:50:25
  So there's a little bit bit of propaganda and mind games going
• 1:50:28
  on and yet these Macra don't do that.
• 1:50:30
  And I thought that was a that was an odd little bit of two
• 1:50:33
  things that could have linked together that didn't, which is
• 1:50:36
  sometimes a frustration of of Russell T Davis's some writing.
• 1:50:40
  Sometimes you go, Oh, if you'd actually had another look at
• 1:50:42
  that, you that could have. But I love the whole Judge Dredd
• 1:50:45
  2000 AD kind of vibe to it. I love the world that it
• 1:50:48
  creates. I think it's witty.
• 1:50:50
  I think it's and it's again, lots of action.
• 1:50:52
  It drives. It drives for a story that's
• 1:50:54
  about people being stuck. It doesn't stop David Tennant
• 1:50:56
  moving down the levels. It's, it's brilliant.
• 1:50:59
  But I, I, I think in terms of quality TV, the nothing being
• 1:51:08
  quite like it, the fact that probably in my heart of hearts,
• 1:51:11
  I like Doctor Who being scary in a way it never quite was for me
• 1:51:15
  when I was a kid. And I, I had so many people say
• 1:51:18
  that Doctor Who was scary and I, I loved it and I was thrilled by
• 1:51:20
  it, but I was never I, I, I think and I, and to make scary
• 1:51:25
  out of nothing but my favorite things, which are words and
• 1:51:30
  actors and, and, and that moment where in fact it hasn't even got
• 1:51:35
  words when Leslie Sharp turns round.
• 1:51:36
  Oh. Boy.
• 1:51:38
  And you just go, oh, you know, you've got nothing there apart
• 1:51:40
  from a woman and a light and you've just made it
• 1:51:45
  extraordinary. And and that conceived of going.
• 1:51:48
  I'm going to do a story where somebody repeating what somebody
• 1:51:53
  says is that's all we're doing. It's phenomenal.
• 1:52:00
  It's there's nothing like it. I want to stop and go and watch
• 1:52:03
  it now, just talking about it all absolutely phenomenal
• 1:52:06
  actors, every single one of those actors and every single
• 1:52:09
  one of those characters you sympathize with.
• 1:52:11
  And then you go, oh, you're being an asshole.
• 1:52:13
  They they all do it very, very well.
• 1:52:15
  That as I say, that clever thing of, of actually the doctor
• 1:52:18
  suddenly being his own worst enemy.
• 1:52:20
  But at the heart of it, what's the threat?
• 1:52:24
  Is it a big giant vegetable monster?
• 1:52:26
  Is it a big scary hordes of robots?
• 1:52:28
  Is it a childhood thing turned Askew and shown through a
• 1:52:34
  different lens? No, it's just somebody saying,
• 1:52:36
  some saying what you say and gradually taking your That's
• 1:52:41
  such a brilliant concept and it's so brilliantly done.
• 1:52:46
  And I think there's nothing quite like it in a strong field.
• 1:52:50
  I think today and I, I think going into this, I probably
• 1:52:53
  thought I was going to go with School Reunion because it means
• 1:52:58
  so much to me. But I think today as the clock
• 1:53:02
  ticks towards it, I'm going to choose.
• 1:53:05
  I'm going to choose midnight. But it's a strong field.
• 1:53:10
  This is the longest my camp music is going to have to go
• 1:53:13
  ever in this love section. Thank you for that.
• 1:53:17
  Michael, follow that. Yeah, I mean, I agree it's a
• 1:53:22
  strong field. And actually, for all that I
• 1:53:24
  want it on the record that human nature and family of blood
• 1:53:27
  should be in here. And Simonson Library and Forrest
• 1:53:29
  of the Dead should be in here. A Blink should be in here.
• 1:53:32
  I've tried with all of them, Michael.
• 1:53:34
  All right, You need to take it out with rods.
• 1:53:36
  It's easy to blame the Ansian regime.
• 1:53:39
  I I'd like that we have this sort of not obvious selection of
• 1:53:45
  differently characteristic episodes.
• 1:53:46
  I I think it's a nice little mixed bag and I'd agree with
• 1:53:49
  Toby that I think any of them would on a different day be a
• 1:53:51
  worthy winner for all sorts of reasons.
• 1:53:55
  I'm I'm not going to vote for Gridlock, but I do love it as
• 1:53:57
  well. I I bloody love 2000 Adi.
• 1:54:00
  Don't think it's just got Judge Dredd vibes.
• 1:54:01
  I think it is gloriously ripped off of Judge Dredd with
• 1:54:08
  absolutely no shame whatsoever. Sally Calypso is just Swifty
• 1:54:11
  Frisco from the ballad of Halo Jones.
• 1:54:13
  New York is just mega city one and he goes all the way to the
• 1:54:16
  bottom and who's he find that actually Max normal from Judge
• 1:54:19
  Dredd. He's not even any other name.
• 1:54:20
  He's just met Max. How they were not sued I have no
• 1:54:24
  idea. It's it's it's almost candy.
• 1:54:27
  If as many people had read 2000 AD as had bought a a bunch of
• 1:54:31
  licorice, all sorts, it would have been the candy Man all over
• 1:54:34
  again. I mean, this is no great
• 1:54:36
  comment, Michael, but I had no idea, obviously.
• 1:54:38
  Naturally I did, and I only watched Doctor Who, but maybe
• 1:54:41
  the execs are a bit like me. Well, this is this is, This is
• 1:54:45
  why we have the hamster Book Club so that I can educate you
• 1:54:47
  on this sort of thing. We'll get, we'll get there.
• 1:54:49
  We'll get there. We'll do Burning Heart by Dave
• 1:54:51
  Stone someday. I, I loved the last scene.
• 1:54:55
  I loved the line. I lied to you because I liked
• 1:54:58
  it. I just think that's a wonderful
• 1:55:01
  line. And Travis Oliver, Chris Quedge
• 1:55:03
  for a certain horny part of the Doctor Who found him down as.
• 1:55:07
  Happy, Who did he play? Sorry, Michael, who did he?
• 1:55:10
  Play Travis Oliver. He plays the male hijacker in
• 1:55:13
  Gridlock and was oh, Milo. Milo, of course it's called
• 1:55:17
  Milo. That's such a Russell T Davis
• 1:55:19
  2007 name for a character, isn't it?
• 1:55:21
  Milo. There's two.
• 1:55:23
  In the line up, there's one in School Reunion as well.
• 1:55:25
  That's right. And there's one in the Space
• 1:55:28
  Pirates. There with.
• 1:55:30
  The Milo Clancy. Spare me enough slice bread.
• 1:55:36
  Sorry, Michael. There with Lenora Critchlow as
• 1:55:39
  well, of course. He was a wonderful actor and was
• 1:55:41
  very much at her zenith around that time.
• 1:55:43
  But I but I'm not voting for Gridlock.
• 1:55:44
  I just wanted to give it a good reference.
• 1:55:46
  Also, School Reunion, I'm not voting for it, but I just wanted
• 1:55:50
  to acknowledge that I've had a, a process of healing with school
• 1:55:53
  reunion because at the time it was on, there was a part of me
• 1:55:56
  that was, and this is not going to reflect well on me.
• 1:55:57
  There was a part of me that was slightly resentful and had my
• 1:56:00
  heckles up, heckles up against it because I, I, I became a
• 1:56:03
  Doctor Who fan at a time when all the people who edited Doctor
• 1:56:07
  Who magazine and told you what was the right and wrong opinion
• 1:56:10
  to have rule from the set all watched it in the 70s.
• 1:56:13
  And they all wanted you to believe that Sarah Jane Smith
• 1:56:15
  was the most important thing that ever been in Doctor Who.
• 1:56:17
  And if you said anything nice about Ace, you were clearly a
• 1:56:20
  child. I mean, I was clearly a child,
• 1:56:22
  but you know, clearly I was. A child bang on, Michael.
• 1:56:26
  And so I think it was a part of me that was a bit, oh God, we're
• 1:56:28
  getting an episode about how important Sarah Jane Smith was.
• 1:56:30
  Oh, bloody hell. It would be would.
• 1:56:32
  But I have pursued. And I do think it's wonderful.
• 1:56:39
  I think it's I think it's worked because it's it's not just that
• 1:56:42
  thing of of bringing back a companion because it's nice to
• 1:56:45
  have them back. And we want to show the world.
• 1:56:47
  Actually, Tegan and Ace were great and Owen Mel's great.
• 1:56:52
  We can get Bonnie Langford to do it.
• 1:56:54
  It's it's important that it fills the an important beat in
• 1:56:59
  the story of the doctrine rose at that point of what does
• 1:57:01
  actually happen at the end of of all of this.
• 1:57:05
  And it's interesting. I think it's only recently been
• 1:57:07
  discussed on blue sky, which I wasn't aware of previously, that
• 1:57:09
  apparently there were some discussions at the time that
• 1:57:12
  what if Elizabeth Slayton said no.
• 1:57:15
  And apparently the, as I said it, the idea was that they, they
• 1:57:18
  would have invented a companion and they'd have cast some sort
• 1:57:22
  of guest star to do it instead. That's my understanding.
• 1:57:24
  Because the point was that it was the they've got some guest
• 1:57:27
  star in and go, oh, there we go. Oh.
• 1:57:30
  They could have asked April Walker.
• 1:57:32
  Sorry. And that's how they found her to
• 1:57:37
  interview her for the invasion of the dinosaurs.
• 1:57:41
  Yeah. And because the point is the the
• 1:57:44
  the beat is the beat in the story of of the doctor and rose
• 1:57:48
  at that point, right, It's it's the ex-girlfriend and I just
• 1:57:52
  love the dialogue is wonderful in that story.
• 1:57:55
  So I hadn't really appreciated as well.
• 1:57:56
  Anthony Head's performance is fantastic.
• 1:57:58
  But some of the lines in there, your your your people were
• 1:58:02
  peaceful to the point of indolence is just the best line
• 1:58:05
  of the time was in there. And the doctor, the doctor when
• 1:58:07
  he just looked in and said, I used to have so much mercy.
• 1:58:11
  Always any line in Doctor Who gone harder.
• 1:58:13
  I mean, come on, that's just fantastic.
• 1:58:15
  So old and, and also I just want to give it a mention because an
• 1:58:19
  honorable mention because what we said all the way through this
• 1:58:22
  episode about this being Doctor Who's imperial phase.
• 1:58:25
  Doctor Who being at the height of popular culture is actually
• 1:58:27
  being the most exciting kids show on TV.
• 1:58:30
  This is the one that's got the kids in it.
• 1:58:32
  This is the one where they're in the school.
• 1:58:33
  This is the one where they're eating chips.
• 1:58:36
  But we can't watch it now. Let's go.
• 1:58:38
  Go on. Everybody there could be a
• 1:58:40
  revolution. We could do it all again.
• 1:58:42
  And it it's the one that for me just absolutely perfectly
• 1:58:46
  captures that feeling most 100%. But also if anyone's knees
• 1:58:51
  weren't quite hurting yet, happy slapping hoodies with as bows
• 1:58:54
  and ringtones. Oh, it's like, it's like, it's
• 1:58:57
  like Shakespeare live from Shakespeare.
• 1:59:00
  Now, if we can pass that one, but I am, I am going to be
• 1:59:03
  voting for The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit today.
• 1:59:07
  I think there is something about it that I I can't quite put my
• 1:59:11
  hand on it. And this is entirely a personal
• 1:59:13
  feeling. There's something about it.
• 1:59:15
  The one I think about it seems to reach towards my personal
• 1:59:18
  ideal version of Doctor Who. It's the same feeling I get when
• 1:59:21
  I watch a really good McCoy or read the Battlefield
• 1:59:24
  novelization or most recently when I watched the story in the
• 1:59:27
  Engine, that I think there's something that I love about
• 1:59:30
  Doctor Who when it gets it right.
• 1:59:31
  And it's bloody hard to do of this idea of the Doctor as being
• 1:59:35
  a sort of rational hero in an irrational universe.
• 1:59:38
  And the time and space are huge and vast and the the
• 1:59:41
  unknowability and the depths of the depths of space, the
• 1:59:46
  universe and time are captured. And there are no bit.
• 1:59:49
  And there are more things out there.
• 1:59:50
  And there are gods and darkness and forces of which we cannot
• 1:59:55
  comprehend and which, you know, the Time Lords built bollocks
• 1:59:59
  against this irrationality. And I love that.
• 2:00:02
  And I think this is the story of this era that really captures
• 2:00:07
  that for me. Doctor Who goes up against the
• 2:00:09
  devil and doesn't have an answer for him.
• 2:00:11
  So I'm I'm going to be voting for for the Impossible Planet
• 2:00:14
  and the Satan Pit. Rather vote Sir.
• 2:00:16
  Hey, that's the vote for that one.
• 2:00:18
  Kieran, which one are you going for?
• 2:00:22
  Well, my first thought was to go straight for Midnight because
• 2:00:27
  everything that Toby has said really, but that'll be a bit too
• 2:00:31
  obvious because I gave too much love to it in the series. 4B1
• 2:00:36
  Gridlock again is a pretty good episode.
• 2:00:40
  I feel like I get a bit bored watching it because we're just,
• 2:00:43
  we're just like fucking car for about most of this episode and I
• 2:00:48
  just want to see something does. That bring back memories Kieran
• 2:00:51
  like car rides and stuff. Them being exceededly long and
• 2:00:56
  dull, yeah, but no. I do love Gridlock, but I'm
• 2:01:00
  going to have to go for School Reunion I think.
• 2:01:04
  It is because it just. Like Anthony Stewart has is so
• 2:01:08
  ridiculous. Like there's lines of poor
• 2:01:12
  child, poor feeling. Child.
• 2:01:19
  It's just as Michael said as well, Happy slapping hoodies
• 2:01:23
  without bows and ringtones. There's just so many quotable
• 2:01:26
  lines with it. I'm so old, I used to have so
• 2:01:29
  much mercy. Or one of the Carillitaine oil
• 2:01:31
  spilled in one of the school dinner ladies and she gets set
• 2:01:35
  on fire in the background. Your screen is fine.
• 2:01:37
  She does that, of course, also reintroducing continuity to
• 2:01:41
  Doctor Who alter. Modern Doctor Who, I guess we
• 2:01:44
  call it, for lack of a better term, with canine and Sarah Jane
• 2:01:51
  again, the most iconic or most memorable or fondly looked upon,
• 2:01:56
  just like elements of classic Doctor Who.
• 2:02:02
  And I like that Sarah is refuses to turn down joining the TARDIS
• 2:02:05
  at the end. Like there's sort of a there's,
• 2:02:09
  there's more to life than travelling to the Doctor, which
• 2:02:12
  I think Sarah gives to Rose that early on to set up for Doomsday
• 2:02:15
  when she's forced to leave him. You know, there's, I think I
• 2:02:19
  know the line down here. Some things are worth getting
• 2:02:22
  your heart broken for. And she leaves, you get some
• 2:02:25
  brand new canine and all that stuff.
• 2:02:29
  It also sets up Mickey leaving in the Simon 2 parter on the tin
• 2:02:33
  dog and Sarah lovingly Pats him on the back afterwards.
• 2:02:40
  His solution of unplugging a single socket and freeing all
• 2:02:44
  the kids from the school is that simple.
• 2:02:46
  The completely stupid thing of yes, we're going to get kids,
• 2:02:48
  we're going to feed them chips and they're going to solve the
• 2:02:50
  base code to the universe. We can build whatever we want.
• 2:02:53
  From That's Doctor Who Kieran. Exactly.
• 2:02:56
  It is ridiculous. There's a nice little this time,
• 2:03:02
  I realized. I know Russell loves to use
• 2:03:04
  music, and everyone goes to Russell loves to use music that
• 2:03:07
  when Mickey and Rose are talking while she's eating chips in the
• 2:03:10
  background, you can hear Love Will Tear Us Apart by joining us
• 2:03:13
  faintly in the back. I never picked up on that before
• 2:03:15
  now. What else have I got here?
• 2:03:19
  Just some strange notes that. Kenny blew up the school and
• 2:03:23
  he'll go. Yeah, which makes me think that
• 2:03:26
  Kenny must have spent a lot of the rest, the rest of his youth
• 2:03:29
  and some kind of juvenile detention center.
• 2:03:31
  There's no one else to blame. That kid would have been decked
• 2:03:35
  in Moscow. I'm I can imagine he comes back
• 2:03:39
  in an IDW comic like Adam and tries to get revenge on the
• 2:03:41
  Doctor for blaming Arsenal on him or just one one ridiculous
• 2:03:46
  thing that looked on this time. So one black teacher has just
• 2:03:49
  transformed into a black krill attain.
• 2:03:51
  So which makes me think is although krill attain like
• 2:03:54
  change a lot of different societies.
• 2:03:56
  Is there like race politics in like with the krill attains?
• 2:03:59
  I don't know. It's just some bizarre.
• 2:04:02
  Easy questions we come to. Yes, you thought.
• 2:04:04
  About this too hard, Kieran. But I was just hilarious.
• 2:04:08
  It's it's seemingly completely low stakes and the base code of
• 2:04:12
  the universe. At the same time, it's in a
• 2:04:15
  school, so it's just relatable to any kid watching it.
• 2:04:17
  You know, you, you wish, you secretly wish that your teachers
• 2:04:20
  were aliens and they slept in school at night.
• 2:04:25
  But as soon as this call's over, I'm going to have and eat some
• 2:04:27
  chips. So school reunions going
• 2:04:28
  through. OK.
• 2:04:30
  Good story. They are not making it easy.
• 2:04:32
  For us, No, they're not, are they?
• 2:04:34
  There's one for each, I think, Joe.
• 2:04:39
  Well, four of these episodes make me cry, and Doctor Who and
• 2:04:42
  television very, very rarely makes me cry, and one of them
• 2:04:47
  doesn't. I cry at Catherine Tate's
• 2:04:52
  performance at the end of The Fires of Pompeii because it is
• 2:04:57
  both restrained and madly over the top.
• 2:05:00
  And you just, I you can't not be moved by her.
• 2:05:03
  I always shed a tear when Ida says in the impossible planet of
• 2:05:08
  the second pier, the evil that men do.
• 2:05:11
  Yeah. Because that brings back many
• 2:05:14
  memories of my father. So that makes me cry.
• 2:05:18
  Why else on that is to get our made school reunion Come on.
• 2:05:21
  I cry happy tears in that one when the TARDIS disappears and
• 2:05:24
  Kane I was waiting there for her and she's like he replaced you
• 2:05:28
  with a brand new model. She goes and off they go into
• 2:05:31
  the sunset together. Oh so wonderful.
• 2:05:34
  What episodes of our missed out now so.
• 2:05:37
  Midnight and. Midnight and the Impossible
• 2:05:40
  Planet in The Satan Pit and Gridlock.
• 2:05:43
  Gridlock. Thank you, Toby Gridlock.
• 2:05:44
  It is the old rocky cross. The song moment, I mean it is
• 2:05:48
  like you said, I mean the song itself is beautiful, but
• 2:05:52
  everybody, the bit where the 2 old ladies grab each other, I
• 2:05:56
  mean it's just so, so sad. And that's sort of the thing I
• 2:06:00
  expected I would get more of in RTD 2, where these moments where
• 2:06:03
  this cold hard exterior would be freckled and I would well up a
• 2:06:09
  bit more. And I do.
• 2:06:11
  I almost want to choose School Reunion just for the line.
• 2:06:15
  Does he still stroke bits of the TARDIS?
• 2:06:17
  Which is still one of my favorite lines ever.
• 2:06:21
  But I am going to choose the episode that doesn't make me
• 2:06:24
  cry. But it's midnight and it just.
• 2:06:28
  I watched it for the second-half of the Strictly episode and it
• 2:06:32
  still makes me, my guts churn. And it is that genuinely
• 2:06:37
  palpable feeling of losing the room and the paranoia growing
• 2:06:42
  and you've lost control. And I've been in that situation
• 2:06:45
  many times. I work with the public and I've
• 2:06:48
  seen a room get nasty and it's, it's unpleasant.
• 2:06:53
  And Alice Trout, man, she went from the doctor's daughter to
• 2:06:56
  this. She captures it so beautifully.
• 2:06:59
  But I, you know, weirdly enough, I primarily want to vote for
• 2:07:03
  Midnight, not just for tenants. Astounding performance in that.
• 2:07:07
  I mean, how did he do that? That small point bit with all
• 2:07:10
  the numbers. Sqrt Π.
• 2:07:12
  It's Lindsay Coulson as Vow. Just an absolute monster and the
• 2:07:19
  waste. There.
• 2:07:20
  I knew it was there, Yeah. It'll be you next.
• 2:07:23
  She's horrible and I've known so many vows in my life and she
• 2:07:28
  captures that beautifully. Midnight is a one off in The
• 2:07:33
  Who, in Doctor Who in TV. We don't do 20 minute scenes in
• 2:07:38
  television anymore. You just don't do it and you're
• 2:07:40
  never bored. Well, John Arl's son is, but
• 2:07:44
  nobody else is bored. So yes, a second vote for
• 2:07:47
  Midnight please. Impeccably scripted, acted and
• 2:07:51
  directed. Wow.
• 2:07:54
  Well, I mean, yeah, I've got the last wait.
• 2:07:59
  So we've got 2 for Midnight School Reunion, and Mike, we
• 2:08:02
  voted for Impossible Planet. That's right.
• 2:08:04
  Yeah, Yeah, yeah. So how does this work, Joe?
• 2:08:07
  Well, if, if we choose the standstill, if it's too old,
• 2:08:09
  then we've got to twist someone's arm, right?
• 2:08:14
  One's got to win this. One's got to win this.
• 2:08:17
  I mean, I, I, I don't really have I, I.
• 2:08:20
  If anyone wants to hear what I have to say about Midnight, you
• 2:08:22
  could go and listen to the Series 4B.
• 2:08:26
  Oh. Where I just went on forever
• 2:08:29
  about it. I mean, I don't, you know, it's
• 2:08:31
  it's spooky, it's harrowing, it's incredibly well acted.
• 2:08:35
  I do like that. Yeah.
• 2:08:37
  Russell. Russell T Davies actually does
• 2:08:39
  spend an awful lot of time exploring, especially in Series
• 2:08:42
  4. But in, in, in his whole, his
• 2:08:44
  whole time as showrunner, whether the, whether
• 2:08:47
  television's beloved Doctor Who is all that great of a guy or
• 2:08:51
  not, you know, he's, he's very courageous, he's very morally
• 2:08:54
  upstanding. He's also a giant hypocrite.
• 2:08:56
  He's also, he can be just as alienating and disturbing as, as
• 2:09:00
  any monster because of his sort of staggering arrogance and, and
• 2:09:05
  those unwavering principles and all that grandstanding.
• 2:09:10
  But I also made the point in the in the series 4 strictly that it
• 2:09:13
  actually also celebrates and not just deconstructs what what
• 2:09:16
  Doctor Who is all about. I think I'm going to have to go
• 2:09:21
  for School Reunion because sorry to be a bit of a film nerd
• 2:09:27
  because, but I wanted to give another shout out to director
• 2:09:30
  James Horse, who He's not an especially stylish TV director,
• 2:09:35
  but he's more of a sort of work my Workman, like Journeyman, if
• 2:09:39
  you like, but just for covering the whole of that first
• 2:09:43
  production block of Series 2, which was the Christmas
• 2:09:45
  Invasion, New Earth and especially School Reunion, which
• 2:09:49
  had all sorts of problems with, you know, budget overrunning and
• 2:09:53
  somehow making it all work. There's a sort of slightly
• 2:09:56
  ramshackle quality to it, which which I really like.
• 2:10:00
  It feels kind of soldiered on and sort of stitched together
• 2:10:03
  with the crew coming off all these sorts of quick fixes for
• 2:10:07
  various shooting hurdles. So that swimming pool scene that
• 2:10:11
  we love between the doctor and Anthony Head, which was
• 2:10:15
  initially meant to be in the school gymnasium until they
• 2:10:17
  decided, oh, that doesn't quite work, so they put it in the
• 2:10:19
  swimming pool. Not in the swimming pool, sorry,
• 2:10:23
  around the swimming pool. That would have been
• 2:10:25
  interesting. But.
• 2:10:27
  It was peaceful. Well, because, but that also
• 2:10:35
  caused the problems because the lapping of the swimming pool
• 2:10:37
  water meant they had to sort of overdub the actors lines all put
• 2:10:42
  in ADR after the fact. And also for Anthony Heads, when
• 2:10:47
  he does that, that fantastic line when he goes forget the
• 2:10:51
  shooty dog thing. No, Daniel, you bad dog.
• 2:10:56
  Bad dog. But that line has a whole sort
• 2:11:00
  of history around it where he originally said get the shooty
• 2:11:03
  dog thing, which is just a kind of slightly prosaic attack line.
• 2:11:08
  And we kind of get it because the crediting's already
• 2:11:11
  attacking. We can see it on the screen, so
• 2:11:13
  it's not nearly as effective. And there's this just wonderful
• 2:11:16
  anecdote about how the ADR sound.
• 2:11:19
  People had to sort of scramble and find a through and go back
• 2:11:23
  through every word of Anthony Head's dialogue and find a four
• 2:11:28
  for forget and lifted out, change the pitch, graft it onto
• 2:11:32
  the get, which is why you have that moment where he says forget
• 2:11:36
  and it immediate on the on the get.
• 2:11:38
  It cuts back to him as he says it because the four is from
• 2:11:42
  somewhere else and it's not actually on his face when he
• 2:11:44
  says it. And just just that they were
• 2:11:47
  able to do that and to make and still make the episode so funny
• 2:11:52
  and exciting and nostalgic and emotional, I think.
• 2:11:55
  And and with when they layer over that, that that Murray Gold
• 2:11:59
  choir, you know, Murray get Murray Gold gets a lot of H for
• 2:12:03
  his choirs, But I love that one so much.
• 2:12:05
  It makes everything so. Sort of propulsive.
• 2:12:08
  And as soon as that choir starts out for the last third of the
• 2:12:11
  episode, you know, if you're if you were already enjoying it
• 2:12:14
  before, you know, you're straight to the finish with that
• 2:12:16
  one shooty dog thing. Or, as we now call it, Empire of
• 2:12:21
  Death. It's also that perfect fusion of
• 2:12:26
  Doctor Who and. Buffy, you remember.
• 2:12:27
  When he said that, yeah, we were very Buffy.
• 2:12:29
  Bring a bit of Buffy to Doctor Who he finds that he the hybrid
• 2:12:33
  of the two it. Works like gangbusters.
• 2:12:35
  Yeah, yeah. And I think it's also maybe just
• 2:12:38
  again, my my affection for for series 2 because.
• 2:12:41
  It's tenants first year and you always find that a doctor's
• 2:12:43
  first year is, it tends to be the most exciting because
• 2:12:47
  they're still sort of feeling the roll out a little bit.
• 2:12:50
  They're they're working out the kinks, they're trying stuff they
• 2:12:53
  might never do again. So we talked about his line from
• 2:12:56
  the the, the impossible planet. And because Tennant himself
• 2:13:01
  started out as this fresh faced fan of the show, you can just
• 2:13:05
  feel the enthusiasm he has when he's playing the Doctor.
• 2:13:09
  And it's such an ambitious kind of generous series to give an
• 2:13:13
  actor. I think Series 2, they throw
• 2:13:15
  everything at him. They give him these pages and
• 2:13:17
  pages of dialogue, whether he's running his mouth on the sicker
• 2:13:19
  Act ship or monologuing in that cave in the Satan bit or hopping
• 2:13:23
  about like a mad rabbit in front of the cyber controller.
• 2:13:26
  They give him a quarry. They give him an Elvis quiff,
• 2:13:29
  they even let him use his Scottish accent for a little
• 2:13:31
  bit. And the best gift of all, they
• 2:13:33
  he meets Sarah Jane, which is a fanboy's dream come true.
• 2:13:38
  So I wasn't originally going to go for a school reunion, but I
• 2:13:42
  watched it this morning and just that final scene where he says
• 2:13:46
  goodbye and it's not the goodbye My Sarah Jane line which which
• 2:13:51
  got me, although it is a brilliant line.
• 2:13:53
  It's when he says I I didn't ask you, you know, have you, Was
• 2:13:59
  there anyone else? And she says, well, there was
• 2:14:01
  this one guy. I travelled him with him for a
• 2:14:04
  while, but he was a tough act to follow.
• 2:14:08
  Harry Sullivan. What an imbecile.
• 2:14:14
  So yes. My.
• 2:14:15
  Vote is for school reunion. Yes, with apologies to midnight,
• 2:14:21
  do you know what the? Worms for turning.
• 2:14:25
  Because. I've just remembered a scene in
• 2:14:28
  School Reunion that breaks my heart, and it broke my heart
• 2:14:32
  when I first watched it. And it breaks my heart more now
• 2:14:36
  that we've lost Elizabeth Slayden.
• 2:14:37
  And that's the point where she, it's almost like she's talking
• 2:14:40
  to us and says pain and loss defines us as much as anything
• 2:14:44
  else. And you have to experience these
• 2:14:46
  things. And I know it's utterly
• 2:14:49
  coincidental and the fact that she died is a tragic loss, but
• 2:14:54
  it is. It's so moving.
• 2:14:57
  I did. They just gauged the emotion in
• 2:14:59
  that episode so delicately, so perfectly.
• 2:15:02
  And there's so much going on. I'm going to sorry, midnight.
• 2:15:06
  Fuck off. I'm going for school reunion.
• 2:15:09
  Oh, so that's three the school reunion.
• 2:15:13
  So that means it has the. Majority Do you know what
• 2:15:18
  though? This frightens me if School
• 2:15:20
  Reunion has won the. 10th Doctor's best.
• 2:15:23
  It's best story. It's going up against the
• 2:15:25
  fucking Pandora car opens on The Big Bang.
• 2:15:28
  It doesn't have a hope. Well, some things are worth
• 2:15:33
  getting your heart broken for. It's dark, but I haven't ever
• 2:15:44
  thanked you for that time. And like I said.
• 2:15:47
  I wouldn't have missed it for the world.
• 2:15:49
  Something to tell the grandkids. I think it'd be someone else's
• 2:15:53
  grandkids now. Right.
• 2:15:55
  Yes. Sorry I didn't get a chance to
• 2:15:58
  ask. You haven't.
• 2:16:00
  There hasn't been anyone, you know.
• 2:16:03
  Well, there was this one guy. I travelled with him for a.
• 2:16:07
  While. But he was a tough act to
• 2:16:11
  follow. Goodbye, Doctor.
• 2:16:14
  Oh, it's not good. You say it.
• 2:16:16
  Please. This time, say it.
• 2:16:20
  Goodbye, my Sarah Jane. You're blown up the master
• 2:17:04
  rebuild to me. My systems are much improved
• 2:17:06
  with new. Flexible hyperlink facilities.
• 2:17:09
  He replaced you with a brand new model.
• 2:17:11
  Affirmative. Yeah, he does that.
• 2:17:16
  Come on, you home got work to do.
• 2:17:19
  Affirmative. Michael, you originally had the
• 2:17:29
  casting vote. What would you have gone for out
• 2:17:31
  of the two? I would have gone for School
• 2:17:35
  Reunion out of two Head head heart.
• 2:17:38
  I know that Midnight is is the better story in every
• 2:17:41
  intelligent way, but it's school reunion.
• 2:17:43
  Come on, guys, if we don't like School reunion, we're not Doctor
• 2:17:47
  Who fans, right? Yeah, I've no, I've I've no
• 2:17:49
  argument, even though I. It's just.
• 2:17:51
  In fact, actually what you were saying, Daniel, slightly.
• 2:17:53
  Reinforce it for me because there wasn't this other guy, she
• 2:17:56
  wasn't in love with the Doctor. And that to me is maybe the
• 2:17:59
  thing that held me back is that we have to accept an untruth in
• 2:18:03
  order for it to to work, is that Sarah was in a relationship with
• 2:18:07
  the Doctor, which she wasn't. But it's such a good episode.
• 2:18:12
  I kind of live with that. And and I didn't even mention
• 2:18:15
  that the scene where she first meets him and that last scene,
• 2:18:18
  they get me every single time in the climax.
• 2:18:23
  You know the bit that gets me is when she says say it this time,
• 2:18:27
  please say. It absolutely and he goes bring
• 2:18:32
  all the energy. Down and he goes.
• 2:18:34
  Goodbye. Yeah, sorry for repeating.
• 2:18:37
  Myself, Michael, but the single best use of continuity.
• 2:18:40
  In any scene is Sarah and Rose's.
• 2:18:42
  Bitch, the lockless monster. Seriously it's so great it's not
• 2:18:52
  working. Give it to me.
• 2:18:56
  Used to work first time in my. Day.
• 2:18:58
  Well, things were a lot simpler. Back then Rose.
• 2:19:01
  Can I give you a bit of advice? I've got a feeling you're about
• 2:19:04
  to. I know how intense a
• 2:19:05
  relationship with the doctor can be, and I don't want you to feel
• 2:19:08
  I'm intruding. I don't feel threatened by you,
• 2:19:10
  if that's what you mean. Right.
• 2:19:11
  Good. Because I'm not interested in
• 2:19:13
  picking up where we left off. No, with the big sad eyes and
• 2:19:16
  the robot dog. What else were you doing last
• 2:19:18
  night? I'm just saying how hard it was
• 2:19:20
  adjusting to life back on Earth. The thing is, when you two met,
• 2:19:24
  they'd only just got rid of rationing.
• 2:19:26
  No wonder all that space stuff was a bit too much for you.
• 2:19:29
  I had no problem with space stuff.
• 2:19:31
  I saw things you wouldn't believe.
• 2:19:33
  Try me. Mummies.
• 2:19:34
  I've met ghosts, robots, lots of robots.
• 2:19:36
  Slovene in Downing St. Daleks met the Emperor.
• 2:19:40
  Antimatter monsters, Gasma zombies, real living dinosaurs,
• 2:19:43
  Real living werewolf thief. Loch Ness Monster.
• 2:19:46
  Seriously. Listen to us.
• 2:19:54
  It's like me and my mate Shereen.
• 2:19:57
  The only time we fell out was over.
• 2:19:58
  A man and we're arguing over the doctor with you.
• 2:20:07
  Did he do that thing where he'd explain something at like 90
• 2:20:10
  mph? And you'd go what?
• 2:20:11
  And he'd look at you like he just dribbled on your shirt all
• 2:20:14
  the time. Does he still stroke bits of the
• 2:20:18
  target? It does.
• 2:20:20
  I'm like, do you? Two want to be alone.
• 2:20:24
  How's it going? What listen I need to?
• 2:20:29
  Find out what's programmed inside this.
• 2:20:32
  What? Stop it and and.
• 2:20:37
  The word Aberdeen. It's made even more such when
• 2:20:43
  you think Elizabeth Slayton. Tell us.
• 2:20:45
  The first scene she did was a running scene, wasn't she?
• 2:20:48
  And she hurt herself really badly for the rest of the shoot.
• 2:20:51
  She was in serious pain. And she still delivered that.
• 2:20:55
  Oh, she was magic. It was there.
• 2:21:00
  We have it. Can't believe.
• 2:21:01
  Scoring as our votes for the best and our.
• 2:21:06
  Favorite 10th. Doctor story, although I am very
• 2:21:09
  pleased. There was a lot of love there
• 2:21:11
  for the impossible Satan pitch. Well, I I'd.
• 2:21:14
  Like to apologise to turn left as well because I, I, I, I feel
• 2:21:17
  I could have been a stronger. Advocate for that, but I'm glad
• 2:21:20
  it was moot in the end and that it wasn't my fault.
• 2:21:22
  If it had made it through then sorry I I thought that might win
• 2:21:26
  because I obviously I've listened to all the previous.
• 2:21:28
  Installments of. This And I thought, and I loved
• 2:21:32
  listening to everybody eulogising turn left.
• 2:21:38
  I thought turn left might might. Win I.
• 2:21:42
  Think it's It's worth noting that perhaps the Dalek 2 parts
• 2:21:46
  are aside, which is. Fun.
• 2:21:48
  There are some serious bangers in this era and loads to get
• 2:21:53
  through. Indeed.
• 2:21:54
  Indeed. OK.
• 2:21:56
  So that will that lead so. Well, what can I say?
• 2:22:01
  But thank you, all of you. Thank you gentlemen.
• 2:22:04
  Before we go, is there? Is there anything you would like
• 2:22:08
  to plug or where can we find you on the socials?
• 2:22:15
  Dare I dangle this in front of Joe?
• 2:22:18
  I hear you've been wrestling with some cocks.
• 2:22:22
  I mean my CV. Is getting a search engine's
• 2:22:24
  nightmare I've. Already displayed my bottom on a
• 2:22:27
  number of occasions, actually on a in a in a number of different
• 2:22:33
  places and, and a number of different forms.
• 2:22:36
  So if, if there weren't already a surfeit of bottoms on my CV,
• 2:22:40
  I've now added a cock and I will be getting my cock out.
• 2:22:45
  This is the play Cock by Mike Bartlett, which I'm as we speak,
• 2:22:49
  I'm mid tour. I mean a little bit of a break,
• 2:22:52
  but it will be in London in July at the the nominative
• 2:22:55
  determinism in action at the Cockpit Theatre.
• 2:22:59
  And then it's Shakespeare N Play House in Prescott, just just at
• 2:23:04
  the end of I'm presuming this is out before July.
• 2:23:07
  Is it Joe? This will be out next week.
• 2:23:09
  Oh yeah. So we open July the 8th in
• 2:23:12
  London. And July the 17th.
• 2:23:14
  In Shakespeare N so and all I need now having shown my bottom
• 2:23:21
  about and and and and eminently about to display my cock,
• 2:23:27
  somebody needs to write a play called balls and I'll have got
• 2:23:31
  the whole I've got the whole shabbag.
• 2:23:33
  But as a who connection because it is written by Mike Bartlett,
• 2:23:37
  who wrote knock knock. He can only write things that
• 2:23:39
  either are cock right rhyme with cock.
• 2:23:43
  So knock, knock and cock. And so yeah, so there is a there
• 2:23:48
  is a Doctor Who connection with with with my cock and do do
• 2:23:54
  comes here aside from all the other, which we could say
• 2:23:56
  indeed, aside from all the other.
• 2:23:59
  You know you can at times. Find my podcasts.
• 2:24:02
  And all of that. Which I've mentioned on these
• 2:24:04
  many times before. I do call this the Doctor Who
• 2:24:07
  Commentary podcast, but Toby is the.
• 2:24:10
  Infinitely Superior 1, so please do check that out.
• 2:24:14
  Oh, and also my book on the quota math experiment, which is
• 2:24:17
  still available from. 10 acre films and is a labour of love
• 2:24:22
  and I'm very proud of it and it seems to have gone down very
• 2:24:23
  well. Wonderful.
• 2:24:26
  You just forced me to put in the quota.
• 2:24:27
  Math music once again, thank you very much.
• 2:24:30
  Wonderful, Michael. Where can people find you?
• 2:24:36
  Nowhere near SO. So, so impressive or worthwhile,
• 2:24:39
  But you can find me back here. Quite regularly on the Hamster
• 2:24:43
  Book Club, talking about proper Doctor Who in its tatty
• 2:24:47
  paperback form. There's lots of lots of old
• 2:24:50
  episodes to go and listen to, including a very silly election
• 2:24:53
  special on the Dying Days, but coming up soon.
• 2:24:56
  We've got a couple of James Goss books coming up.
• 2:24:59
  We're going to do the Cabinet of Light from the Telos novellas.
• 2:25:02
  You talk about weird versions of the Doctor.
• 2:25:04
  Well, we're going to go and at some point we're threatening.
• 2:25:07
  We're going to do The Pit at some point.
• 2:25:10
  That's right. Apparently, infamously the worst
• 2:25:14
  Doctor Who story in any medium. Ever so.
• 2:25:17
  Wow, that was that was until the Dalek generation came out.
• 2:25:21
  But it's a close second. Thank you, Kieran again.
• 2:25:28
  You could find me I guess sometimes.
• 2:25:31
  On this foot club sometimes on Strictly, mainly this podcast
• 2:25:34
  because I'm too lazy to do it myself or to write any things
• 2:25:38
  online. You can find me on Blue Sky at
• 2:25:42
  left-handed Dalek and on Instagram under the same name.
• 2:25:47
  I don't know why you'd want to though, But if you'd like.
• 2:25:49
  Because you're wonderful, that's why, Yeah.
• 2:25:54
  It's got nothing to plug. Oh, OK.
• 2:26:01
  Me. Well, I'm on Blue Sky and
• 2:26:04
  Twitter, and under the same handle, Daniel under score
• 2:26:08
  Rawnsley. That's RAWNSLEY, which is my
• 2:26:13
  telephone voice. And well, Speaking of David
• 2:26:17
  Tennant and James Hawes, I wrote a target style novelization of
• 2:26:24
  the prequel to Gridlock, New Earth, which is entitled A New
• 2:26:30
  Earth, a Doctor Who audio adventure released as a series
• 2:26:33
  of audio book style recordings. And if you weren't frightened
• 2:26:37
  away by my David Tennant impression at the top of this
• 2:26:41
  episode, then go and check that out.
• 2:26:44
  Yeah. Of all the episodes of the era
• 2:26:47
  you could have chosen, I mean, I love you for it.
• 2:26:50
  I mean that what makes me cry as well.
• 2:26:51
  You know when she goes at the end.
• 2:26:53
  You are so beautiful, oh boy. That's one of the.
• 2:26:57
  Best scenes he ever wrote. Anyway.
• 2:26:59
  Some some things are worth getting your heart.
• 2:27:01
  Broken for Joe. People know where I am.
• 2:27:05
  Jesus Christ. This is my podcast.
• 2:27:07
  I'm here. There you go.
• 2:27:11
  Well, thank you. Well, thank you everyone.
• 2:27:13
  Thank you again for your time and oh boy.
• 2:27:17
  Is anyone else going to do it? You know how we all things as
• 2:27:20
  long as we don't? Say Allen Z, let's say no.
• 2:27:22
  Let's end on that, shall we? OK.
• 2:27:25
  All right then. 3. 2/1. The.
• 2:28:27
  The.