Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Talks to Steven B & Jack Coyer about their choice of Human Nature (1/2)

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Talks to Steven B & Jack Coyer about their choice of Human Nature (1/2) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:33
  Hamster with a blunt pen knife for doing quicker.
• 0:37
  Welcome back to Our Hamster with a Blunt Pen Knife, the Doctor
• 0:40
  Who Commentary Podcast. I have assembled two of the most
• 0:47
  frighteningly intellectual men that you're ever going to find
• 0:51
  to discuss an all time Doctor Who classic.
• 0:55
  Yes, I'm saying it from the off. It is a classic, an accepted
• 0:58
  classic. Human Nature and the Family of
• 1:00
  blood by Paul Connell from series 3 of the the new series.
• 1:05
  Who are these devastatingly bright people, I hear you ask?
• 1:10
  Well, that's a good question. First off, we have the
• 1:14
  deliriously gorgeous Mr. Stephen B Hello, Stephen.
• 1:18
  Hello, Joe. That's very kind of you.
• 1:21
  I mean, do you agree with my assessment?
• 1:23
  I think it's very kind of you. I meant about human nature.
• 1:27
  Don't be too existable. No, absolutely, Human Nature is
• 1:32
  an all time classic and I think it has got a strong source
• 1:35
  material. But my goodness, the episode
• 1:38
  itself, The two party is top tier.
• 1:40
  Doctor Who? And the man I have discovered
• 1:44
  since doing the Time Lash 2 parter with him with the most
• 1:48
  acidic wit and put downs in all of Doctor Who podcasting, Mister
• 1:53
  Jack Koya. Hello, Jack.
• 1:56
  Hello, yes, this is unfortunately better than time
• 2:00
  Lash. So you might not get as many put
• 2:03
  downs. There's not quite as much to put
• 2:06
  down, but we'll we'll get into it when we get into it.
• 2:10
  I mean, I did notice a fair amount of sort of that disregard
• 2:14
  from you that, you know, the Thai monster time lash, You
• 2:19
  know, you were like Joe. You just seem to be saving me
• 2:21
  all the dregs here. What's going on?
• 2:23
  I should hope you're happy now. Well, I mean we did have to be 1
• 2:28
  of the Virgin New Adventures to get to this point.
• 2:31
  So you know, it's not not quite finished with the dreads yet,
• 2:34
  but well. Well, we're, we're doing the pit
• 2:39
  next, all right, And you've just bloody well enjoyed it.
• 2:42
  No, we're not. No, thank God.
• 2:46
  Fellas, before we go into human nature, can I ask you both
• 2:50
  please to give me your overall thoughts on Series 3 and just
• 2:56
  sort of some opening thoughts on this story to sort of kick us
• 3:01
  into the episode? Let's go in reverse.
• 3:03
  Let's go to Jack first. Sure.
• 3:05
  So she was 311 year old Jack. So this is sort of pretty.
• 3:11
  I mean, the Russell T babysitter starts when I'm nine and then by
• 3:15
  the time human the 11th hour comes around, I'm 14.
• 3:20
  So that sort of period that my wife was pretty good.
• 3:23
  It's the sort of Doctor Who target range, isn't it?
• 3:26
  Maybe for for children with that period.
• 3:29
  And I think the Russell T babysitter fits quite nicely
• 3:32
  into that. Series 3.
• 3:37
  Potentially my least favorite, but Russell C Davies initial
• 3:43
  period. How?
• 3:45
  Come. I think the episodes that come
• 3:47
  before this, a lot of them are largely to blame.
• 3:51
  Obviously before this we've had 42, which is not great.
• 3:55
  And then I think before that, didn't we have a break?
• 3:58
  It's the break before 42 or after 42 I think.
• 4:03
  It was after I think. This was this.
• 4:06
  Was right. So obviously there would be a
• 4:09
  pension plan of an 11 year old. You're going right.
• 4:13
  We just had no week with no doctor and then the week before
• 4:17
  that you almost wish there was no doctor and then, you know,
• 4:22
  going before that with him. But ever if it's Devon, which is
• 4:27
  OK, you know, the dollar to parcel, which I probably have
• 4:29
  more problems now, might be a bit of time.
• 4:31
  Oh. No, Jack, go back and watch it
• 4:33
  again. Go.
• 4:34
  Back and watch that. Again, it's.
• 4:36
  Fabulous. I, I did for certainly comments.
• 4:40
  So you know, it's a bit of a slower start than the average
• 4:43
  RTV series. I think probably, obviously we
• 4:46
  know that we're sort of barreling towards the end of the
• 4:49
  series after this, but obviously didn't know that at the time.
• 4:55
  And I think series 3 is, you know, growing up and we're
• 5:00
  watching these over the years, you start to get more than I've
• 5:03
  been of what they're doing throughout the whole year.
• 5:07
  And maybe at the start watching it at the time, you might not
• 5:11
  understand these things, but it was the first year of Doctor Who
• 5:14
  sort of picking up similar elements in the stories and like
• 5:19
  running themes throughout the year, which obviously is
• 5:24
  important as to why this story is set in this time period.
• 5:29
  So we have a lot of stories that deal with themes of adaptation,
• 5:35
  both biomultical and sort of social cultural.
• 5:40
  And these themes are sort of leading to obviously we have a
• 5:45
  times of what hit them in the FOB watching this story, which
• 5:48
  obviously leads to the end of the series, which is, you know,
• 5:51
  a little clue into that. But if you watch this series in
• 5:55
  order, we've got stuff like Anne Reed's character in Smith and
• 6:01
  Jones, who becomes more human by ingesting their DNA so she can
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  be in disguise. Or when these you doom turn up
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  and you've got the Amy and creatures in 42 who are becoming
• 6:13
  a bit more human. The Daleks, evolution of the
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  Daleks is perhaps a little code word there.
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  Professor Lazius was discovering the essence of humanity by by
• 6:26
  becoming, you know, a different kind of human because he's
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  changing the ageing process. So what does it mean to be human
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  from that angle? You've got some gridlock,
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  obviously looking at adaptation from a more cultural standpoint.
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  You've obviously got the the macro and the sort of people
• 6:46
  sent why the Mac was so simplified in that story.
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  And it's more along the rhymes that they've devolved rather
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  than rather than they're just monsters, you know.
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  And you've obviously got the evolution of that story, the
• 7:00
  feelings with faith, whether it be first or more Christian, sort
• 7:06
  of Abraham religions or just faith in, you know, belief in
• 7:09
  the community and the other people in the cars.
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  So I think throughout this series there's there's been
• 7:15
  those themes and story beats and obviously we'll get those in the
• 7:20
  upcoming stories. Obviously the angels in Blencoe,
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  they're defeated because of their biology because the TARDIS
• 7:28
  disappears and the angels all mucking each other.
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  So it's their biology and their failure to adapt that to them
• 7:36
  and defeats them in the end. And then obviously you've got
• 7:39
  the utopia of a future kind and they're sort of changing from
• 7:44
  humanity and obviously they're quite good test wave and they
• 7:48
  all become the top of them in the finale.
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  So you've sort of obviously 11 years old.
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  I couldn't quite put all those things into words or quantify
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  them, but going throughout the years, you sort of notice these
• 8:03
  things and you can make these connections.
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  And yeah, I think human nature really fits into this.
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  And we're going to go in and talk about human nature, why
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  this story has to be made in this time period.
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  And I think that's the big factor that that that anchors
• 8:23
  this story in this particular point of his history.
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  And yeah, you know, human Nature is one of the most celebrated
• 8:31
  stories even amongst people who might not be that big on the new
• 8:36
  series. You know, they will often, even,
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  they will often hold this up as one of the greatest stories in
• 8:41
  the history. And yeah, I mean, I was really
• 8:44
  surprised that no one's done it on this podcast yet.
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  And so I thought it was kind of my push, my, my impetus to to
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  get you guys on to talk about it because those are the sort of
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  things that we're going to be talking, I want us to be talking
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  about while we're doing it. But yeah, that's, that's my
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  very, very long start of the 10. Stephen, what are you thinking
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  about? Seriously.
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  Just to say though, someone almost did do Human Nature and
• 9:11
  family of blood, but through pure ineptitudes on my part, I
• 9:18
  neglected to turn up to that recording.
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  They had a very bad, very bad reaction to it on social media
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  and that recording was never going to happen after that.
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  So thank goodness, because here we are.
• 9:31
  Listen, if you're looking for pure ineptitude, you know with.
• 9:39
  That's not a nice thing to say about Stephen.
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  Oh, I wasn't saying that about Stephen.
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  I know, I know. But anything I can say after
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  that is pure ineptitude. Jack's really just outlined
• 9:50
  perfectly a lot of the thematic conservative series 3.
• 9:54
  I do think that there isn't a a difficult second album or third
• 10:00
  album or fourth album or fifth album or whatever you want to
• 10:02
  call it during the original RTD run of Doctor Who from 2005 to
• 10:07
  basically 2000 and well, 10 actually, New Year's Day wasn't
• 10:11
  it? That's when it was all sort of
• 10:12
  wrapped up and and we said goodbye to the 10th Doctor.
• 10:17
  So, so this isn't, there isn't a series that I can pick out that
• 10:21
  it's weak, you know, in comparison to the others, but we
• 10:23
  do tend to grade to a bell curve, I guess.
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  And perhaps Jack's comment that season 3 or series 3 rather is
• 10:29
  the weakest of the lot might sort of be informed by that.
• 10:34
  It's really interesting to see basically from this episode on,
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  right. So we're at episode 8 of series
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  3. It's just banger after banger
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  and, you know, sort of reaches to a climax right at the end
• 10:45
  there. So this is kind of like the the
• 10:49
  beginning of what Alex Ferguson may have called squeaky bum time
• 10:53
  in terms of the football analogy, where things had really
• 10:56
  started to get tense and interesting and very, very sort
• 11:00
  of full attention. I guess this is also a period of
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  time that coincides in my life with, you know, one of the
• 11:09
  happiest times in my life. So there's just again, just this
• 11:12
  glorious shame that comes from re watching episodes like this
• 11:16
  and, and remembering what I was doing when I was watching it for
• 11:18
  the first time. So on a personal level, there's
• 11:21
  a, there's a great fondness for this year as well.
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  And in particular for this series, 2007.
• 11:26
  I think, you know, it's still one of those sort of greatest
• 11:27
  years of my life for for many, many reasons.
• 11:30
  And you know, part of that and one of those many reasons is
• 11:32
  definitely the chance, the chance to to sit down and watch
• 11:35
  Doctor Who will be a month later on Australian television, but
• 11:40
  just be absolutely raped by what we're seeing.
• 11:42
  And, and a part of me just sort of pinching myself to sort of
• 11:46
  say is, is this Doctor Who? Is this is this the same show
• 11:50
  that I was championing in the 90s as a as a sort of errant
• 11:54
  child reading target novelization?
• 11:56
  So people who just didn't want to know anything about it and
• 11:59
  hurrah on on proving rights will be attending this too late.
• 12:03
  But Doctor Who is the best show on television that you know.
• 12:06
  We all know that. It's just nice that sometimes
• 12:09
  that it produces something that everybody else agrees with us at
• 12:12
  the same time. It's not often that happens.
• 12:15
  I mean, I, I agree with you because Series 4 was my year
• 12:20
  where my personal life was on fire and Doctor Who was on fire
• 12:24
  for me. And when those two things align,
• 12:29
  it's something only a Doctor Who fan can appreciate.
• 12:31
  God, it's just the best feeling in the world.
• 12:34
  You know, when Doctor Who's great and your life is great, it
• 12:37
  says something really there. It hasn't happened since.
• 12:40
  But no, no, I'm joking. I'm joking.
• 12:42
  But the thing I realized about Series 3 when I did it for the
• 12:46
  Strictly episode on that was just how confident this all
• 12:50
  felt. Even the Duffers have got a
• 12:52
  sense of confidence and energy. Tenant knows what he's doing at
• 12:57
  this point. Free Mergeman beams off the
• 13:00
  screen from every single scene. The production values are great.
• 13:04
  I think there's wit in the right.
• 13:06
  I don't know. There was just, it was just
• 13:08
  remarkably competent television on a regular basis.
• 13:13
  And I don't think Doctor Who is remarkably competent television
• 13:16
  on a regular basis. So they were definitely doing
• 13:19
  something right here. But I think you're both right.
• 13:22
  This is the turning point for the season.
• 13:24
  This is where we go from a Goodyear to a great year.
• 13:28
  And I think Davis does it better than any other showrunner.
• 13:32
  Fight me if you want, but the second-half of a season.
• 13:36
  And so I'm talking Human Nature, Family of Blood, Utopia, Sound
• 13:40
  of Dramas. I'm talking Silence in the
• 13:44
  Library, Forest of the Dead, Turn Left, Midnight, the Stolen
• 13:47
  Earth. You know, he does, he he does.
• 13:50
  He hits a a pivot point in the season and then it's all Sprint
• 13:54
  to the finale and and the material was fantastic.
• 13:58
  Look at every other season going forward.
• 14:01
  There's a duffer in there somewhere, including,
• 14:05
  unfortunately, RCD too. So here we go.
• 14:09
  He's obviously learned some lessons.
• 14:11
  Well, should we go and watch this thing and see why everybody
• 14:15
  finds this such a such a beauty? Let's do it And one more thing
• 14:21
  just briefly before we go in, because obviously we are going
• 14:24
  to do the standards hamster with the last thing of isn't this
• 14:28
  great? Isn't that great, which is
• 14:30
  obviously what we've come here for, for being sort of
• 14:32
  entertaining and witty. If we can commentary on on the
• 14:36
  events of the story. But one of the things that we've
• 14:39
  been talking about, which we'll obviously get into more as we go
• 14:43
  on, is this is this as an adaptation of the book.
• 14:48
  Obviously we've had the star beef now and we've had other,
• 14:53
  you know, the Rodger and the story and all this sort of
• 14:59
  thing. But this is one of the most
• 15:01
  direct. This was one text and now it's
• 15:05
  another direct sort of translations.
• 15:09
  And I think what we're going to try and do as we go along is
• 15:13
  talk about how and why this is what's being done, you know,
• 15:21
  rather than just, oh, it's got the 10th Doctor and Martha in it
• 15:25
  instead of the 7th Doctor and Benny, you know, well, that's
• 15:29
  that's A1 Mark answer. But maybe we can try and poke it
• 15:33
  a little bit more. OK, Well, you know that point,
• 15:37
  Jack. Yeah.
• 15:38
  That point that it's a 10th Doctor's story rather than a 7th
• 15:42
  Doctor's story. That's a big thing.
• 15:45
  I yeah, I don't think this this is an adaptation.
• 15:48
  Then it's a completely different story because it's 2 completely
• 15:51
  different doctors. The emphasis on the 2, on the 2
• 15:55
  main characters in the book and in the TV show, it's so
• 15:58
  different, their characters. Are.
• 16:00
  Completely different directions. Yeah.
• 16:02
  And we'll get more into why that is and if we can a little bit
• 16:07
  of, you know, sort of if people are willing to listen to sort of
• 16:11
  under undergraduate ramblings about, you know, graduate why
• 16:18
  that is. Well, I have penalty graduate.
• 16:23
  I wasn't even undergraduate, was under undergraduate.
• 16:28
  Yeah, I'm, I'm the. I'm the janitor of the
• 16:32
  university. But my point there, obviously
• 16:35
  I'll get into it more maybe in the second episode, but my
• 16:39
  university, but we was in in sort of film and and television
• 16:43
  as a sort of, oh, I'm not a sort of English mixture type analysis
• 16:48
  of film and television. And in part of that, we did a
• 16:51
  module on on adaptations, you know, and that sort of stranded
• 16:57
  theory is something that we might touch on a little bit as
• 17:01
  we came into it, sort of what makes this not only great Doctor
• 17:05
  Who, but great Doctor Who on television, and what steps are
• 17:10
  being taken by Paul Cornell, RTP, Murray Kelt of Palmer,
• 17:15
  David Tennant, so on and so forth.
• 17:18
  But that are changing it and and why is this being done?
• 17:22
  But yeah, we'll get more into that as we.
• 17:25
  Interesting choices they make, Jack.
• 17:27
  Yeah, Which as you say, well, someone counted as in them.
• 17:32
  James, just before we do, I wonder whether I've got the
• 17:34
  right input going into my Audacity.
• 17:36
  So can I just really quickly pause my track and just double
• 17:41
  check because I feel as though my waveforms are far too small
• 17:45
  for what should be a microphone that's an inch from my face.
• 17:48
  So apologies, let me let me do this now.
• 17:50
  So sorry, Joe, for this, you're going to have to do in advance.
• 17:54
  So I'll I'll I'll pause that and I'll now save that so it
• 17:59
  doesn't, it doesn't disappear on me before I redo.
• 18:05
  This I can do it now Jack, you know I can remove squiggly lines
• 18:09
  from a graph. Yeah, well, this clearly minds
• 18:13
  us talking, so obviously be careful not to make too many of
• 18:16
  them, otherwise, you know. You keep that up, I'll remove
• 18:20
  them all. All right.
• 18:23
  OK. I wouldn't.
• 18:26
  Sorry, sorry, sorry. Let me do this.
• 18:29
  OK now bastard. You did ignore my I don't know
• 18:36
  how microphone. But oh, it did.
• 18:39
  It did. So let me do this again.
• 18:41
  So I'm going to set this up so that it is OK I'm OK.
• 18:51
  I think it's because I plugged in my microphone after I opened
• 18:55
  up Audacity. So let me now restart Audacity
• 19:01
  after having saved that intro. So this is going to the intro is
• 19:04
  going to sound shit on my end. I'm sorry, Joe.
• 19:09
  I'm not too bad at this whole editing malarkey now, I've
• 19:12
  learnt the hard way. It was painful getting there,
• 19:15
  but I. Think it sounds great these
• 19:18
  days. The I mean, you think about how
• 19:21
  awful my Castro Valva. I'm so sorry.
• 19:25
  About that was my first. Was that the first ever podcast
• 19:30
  recorded in the submarine? It was and from 500 meters below
• 19:35
  sea level I'm sure of it. OK, so I am now double checking
• 19:38
  my wire forms. My recording device.
• 19:42
  Fuck, it's still reverting to my microphone.
• 19:46
  Inbuilt microphone recording device.
• 19:48
  Yeti Yeti. OK, please work this time.
• 19:53
  Oh Jesus Christ is working. OK, one second I am going to
• 19:57
  turn the game down a little so I don't deafen you guys, and I
• 20:02
  normally do this beforehand, so I'm going to sound like a bit of
• 20:04
  an idiot talking into a microphone.
• 20:05
  OK, that's looking good. Sorry.
• 20:09
  OK, excuse me. I'm ready to start recording now
• 20:16
  and I will do that right now. Thank God do that introduction
• 20:20
  again, have we? No.
• 20:22
  I'll, I'll. Include that as a separate file.
• 20:25
  You'll cut to us and you'll be like, so I mean, what do you
• 20:28
  think of this human Mexico? Wow, they were unusually
• 20:35
  succinct. Join us next week.
• 20:40
  No. Well, I mean you're cut, you're
• 20:41
  both coming through really clearly my end.
• 20:43
  So if if my end's a better copy for that first bit, I'll just
• 20:47
  use that. Oh yeah, OK, sure.
• 20:49
  Yeah, sorry, Steven, want to do the countdown for the episode
• 20:54
  just to see if that. Yeah, yeah.
• 20:55
  Let let me do it. Yeah, I will do that.
• 20:57
  This question. OK.
• 21:01
  So I'm going to start from three if we're ready, ready.
• 21:05
  OK, I am also go. I'm going to just this up.
• 21:11
  OK, gentlemen, let's go in 321 and play.
• 21:19
  I mean, talk about sprinting into the episode.
• 21:22
  Yeah, so we're immediately breaking in format from the
• 21:25
  original story by leaping into What if you were the best?
• 21:29
  Hey, we're an action television show, so let's just leap in for
• 21:34
  the basic premise of the episode.
• 21:37
  But it is doing what a new adventure does all the time, and
• 21:41
  that is starting halfway through the story.
• 21:45
  The New Adventures did that all the time and expected you to
• 21:47
  catch up very quickly. Yeah, well, to be so human
• 21:53
  nature of a book kind of follows on from the stuff that's come
• 21:56
  before it with Denise's motivations and the doctor's
• 21:58
  motivations for becoming a human.
• 22:01
  And this is obviously an team adventure which is going to lead
• 22:06
  directly into a weird sort of zoom out effect because we
• 22:11
  realise this is a dream again, we're immediately playing with
• 22:15
  the television sort of narrative, narrative voice.
• 22:20
  Or did any of that happen? Did any of Doctor Who happened?
• 22:24
  Was it all this dream that some bloke called John Smith had?
• 22:29
  You know, where the book can't do that?
• 22:31
  Yeah. Well, I was just going to say,
• 22:33
  this is like ATV trope, right? This is a real trick of does
• 22:37
  your favorite television show actually exist?
• 22:38
  The answer to which is always no because it's a television show.
• 22:41
  But obviously in terms of the television show itself, it's
• 22:45
  almost as though it's underpinning or undermining
• 22:47
  rather the the pretense of the show itself, right?
• 22:50
  In fact, the show that you've been watching all these years
• 22:52
  and in fact decades of Doctor Who has never existed.
• 22:55
  He's a school teacher in 1913 on Monday, the 10th of November.
• 22:59
  And you know, we, we're smart enough as audiences, even as, as
• 23:02
  7 year olds, as Jack would have been when this was on 7/8.
• 23:05
  Jack sometime around then where you sort of think 11, OK, so
• 23:10
  even smarter where you sort of think, well, obviously this is a
• 23:12
  trick. This is a narrative trick and I
• 23:14
  want to find out what's going on.
• 23:16
  It's a, it's a bit of a, a, a cliche, I guess.
• 23:20
  One of the cliches though, Joe, that he doesn't dive into in
• 23:25
  terms of the Virgin You adventures is that we get the
• 23:28
  doctor from the start. We don't have to wait 50 pages
• 23:30
  for him to show up. He's right here and.
• 23:32
  Then he's taken away. Yes, well, wish you and Nathan
• 23:36
  Bottomley would stop telling me that television shows aren't
• 23:39
  real. You know, I find it very good
• 23:40
  stuff. I've devoted my life to this
• 23:42
  stuff. Thank you very much.
• 23:48
  I'm pleased you 2 just both said something very intelligent there
• 23:51
  about the start of the episode because I'm going to chip in and
• 23:53
  say the amount of men I know that get excited at the thought
• 23:56
  of free Rajman in a maid's costume is, well, manifest.
• 24:00
  There are a lot of men who've it's a problem.
• 24:03
  It is. I don't know if they're on this
• 24:06
  call, those men, but there's a few of them.
• 24:09
  Human nature. It's a great title, isn't it?
• 24:12
  That is a great title. It is, I mean, do we want to
• 24:17
  sort of go into perhaps the significance of that all that
• 24:20
  will that come through do you think chances?
• 24:22
  Please no. Please do.
• 24:25
  Well, I mean, I just sort of think that it sort of stems
• 24:28
  from, I think one of the main motivations in telling a story
• 24:32
  like this, which is if when you take the Doctor out of Doctor
• 24:35
  Who, what does it say about the character, the central
• 24:38
  character? What does it say also about the
• 24:40
  audience as well? So I think there's a kind of
• 24:44
  examination of what we as the audience, as humans would be
• 24:48
  like without a without a hero like this, I think.
• 24:52
  And also what would the doctor be like if he was a human And,
• 24:56
  you know, like, like all humans, there are aspects to him that
• 25:00
  are noble and summoning and profound, and there are aspects
• 25:04
  to him that we'll see later on that perhaps.
• 25:06
  Yeah, Go. And beat that.
• 25:08
  Child over there, that's the one that I was thinking of, Joe
• 25:10
  Absolutely. Yes.
• 25:11
  And the callous, careless, casual nature of that as well.
• 25:14
  And we've already seen a little bit of that with the 7th doctor
• 25:18
  and the 10th Doctor, that difference in the brief
• 25:21
  schoolmaster seeing where John Smith actually becomes a
• 25:24
  teacher. Obviously the second time David
• 25:26
  Emma has been the teacher of the school union, of course, which
• 25:29
  we're supposed to remember from the year before, which is a very
• 25:33
  different presentation there of the doctor as a teacher.
• 25:37
  But obviously the 7th doctor in the book is a lot more
• 25:41
  rebellious as a as a teacher within this system and more
• 25:47
  different here. He's obviously the canteen of
• 25:50
  the story of Boudicca and his view of history is maybe a lot
• 25:54
  more. You see the doctor coming
• 25:56
  through a bit more in that with here.
• 25:59
  The 10th Doctor is completely John Smith at this point in the
• 26:03
  story and is fitting into this boarding school environment,
• 26:09
  which is perhaps a comment on the different attitudes that the
• 26:13
  the show would take to this version of the character.
• 26:17
  Well, the other maybe less interesting, but I, I, I think
• 26:22
  it's really interesting is if you take the Doctor out of the
• 26:25
  actor as well, you get to see just how great an actor David
• 26:29
  Tennant is. We're so used to his quirks as
• 26:32
  the Doctor now. You almost take him for granted
• 26:34
  as the Doctor and he comes along and plays this role and it
• 26:37
  really makes you sit up and pay. I think every time the Doctor,
• 26:41
  an actor playing the Doctor isn't playing the Doctor, you
• 26:44
  really get to see what they can do.
• 26:46
  Is Patrick Trout and Salamander. It's William Hartner was the
• 26:50
  Abbott of AMBWAZ. Yeah, Ark of Infinity or the
• 26:54
  Place Tom. Baker is make loss.
• 26:58
  I'm not. In Ark of in Ark of Infinity, in
• 27:02
  Ark of Sympathy you get 2 doctors not being the doctor
• 27:05
  which is even more important you.
• 27:07
  Cannot take your eyes off Colin in that story, can you?
• 27:10
  Yeah, Commander Max dilemma the. Other major difference, though,
• 27:16
  is the relationship between John Smith and Nurse Redfern is so
• 27:21
  different in the book, because in the book the Doctor is played
• 27:23
  by Sylvester McCoy. Technically, yeah.
• 27:26
  And he's not sexy in any way, shape or form.
• 27:28
  And on TV he's played by David Tennant, and he is pure
• 27:32
  charisma. And just the emphasis in the
• 27:34
  romance is so different. Yeah, and Paul Cornell's
• 27:37
  attitude towards Jonas, perhaps it's a little bit patronizing.
• 27:41
  He's like, oh, this this comely, this homely mates and who's, you
• 27:45
  know, a four year old spinster hanging out with Sebastian
• 27:49
  McCoy. Yeah.
• 27:52
  Do you think, are we meant to think of Hugh Grant, who's
• 27:55
  obviously 2007 when it's sort of coming to the end of Hugh Grant
• 28:01
  ROM com store? That's kind of when his Ron come
• 28:05
  here is starting to fade and I'm thinking maybe the tenants got a
• 28:09
  little bit of a plumbing mess in his John Smith voice that isn't
• 28:12
  quite there in the doctor's voice, but we.
• 28:16
  Want he is doing that sort of awkward stuttering, isn't he?
• 28:20
  On the stairs and all of that? Yeah, it does feel like.
• 28:23
  He. Yeah, and that's the cultural
• 28:25
  image for the audience at home at least.
• 28:27
  I think he's definitely someone that they're thinking of.
• 28:30
  Obviously we know now, but she can't.
• 28:33
  Obviously the fans will hope you remember the Comic Relief you
• 28:38
  grant Doctor, which is very and for the audience at home,
• 28:43
  they'll just have that image before British ROM com you know,
• 28:47
  awkwardness in mind. Can we get out of the way very
• 28:51
  quickly just how staggeringly good Jessica Hynes is in this
• 28:57
  story? Like, she takes that role and
• 29:00
  runs with it, doesn't she? She doesn't have to be this
• 29:03
  good. I think it's also just the way
• 29:07
  that she's given these pieces of gold throughout the course of
• 29:10
  the script and she delivers that each and every single one of
• 29:12
  them. It is a perfect casting.
• 29:15
  I think she imbues, I think the character that we we probably
• 29:20
  get from Cornell new adventure to a degree, not to the same
• 29:25
  extent perhaps as Jack has mentioned, but there's a kind of
• 29:28
  this is harsh to say, but dowdiness there, but certainly
• 29:31
  just sort of like a reserved Edwardian Edwardian at this
• 29:35
  stage. It would be, I guess, you know,
• 29:39
  very much, it's less than 100 years before the screening of
• 29:42
  this episode. But the values and the entire
• 29:45
  social stratification, I guess so changes the way that people
• 29:51
  behave and, and particularly, you know, the great sort of
• 29:54
  emancipation of of of women in that decade to follow, you know,
• 29:59
  is a huge contrast here. She plays all of that so
• 30:02
  superbly, I think. Are we supposed to like Joan?
• 30:07
  That's because she is pointedly racist at times in this story.
• 30:12
  Yeah, I think we are, because obviously that romance wouldn't
• 30:16
  work otherwise are. We supposed to think, well, OK,
• 30:19
  it's it's. Yeah, she's not.
• 30:21
  So she's. Flawed.
• 30:22
  Yeah, she if she was bloody, you know, Limpy Pepper Beam from Don
• 30:26
  Bubble, then obviously the the romance wouldn't.
• 30:29
  And that's not speaking to the quality of being episodes.
• 30:33
  I'm only saying if that character was in this story, it
• 30:36
  was obviously not that sympathy isn't there at all.
• 30:41
  But this is a really interesting bit.
• 30:42
  But we've just talked all over the journal of Impossible thing.
• 30:48
  Now, obviously in the book we have diary passages, you know,
• 30:52
  fan wank text Co written by Stephen Moffat.
• 30:56
  Literally that's not a joke Co written by Stephen Moffat that
• 31:00
  talks about and then the Doctor went to castaway and got him an
• 31:04
  old magic box and told blah blah blah.
• 31:07
  But here we have a specific reference to not only Doctor
• 31:11
  Who's history and Canon, but knew Who having its own
• 31:16
  individual Canon in quotes that we can refer to from the last 2
• 31:21
  1/2 years, Orton's and Slaveen and the mocks about whom you
• 31:27
  know was in that book. So it's this really interesting
• 31:30
  idea of Doctor Who, the global cult pop culture franchise,
• 31:37
  having a complete Canon and a complete list of cultural
• 31:42
  signifiers, but also each particular era having its own
• 31:47
  specific cultural signifiers. And specifically canonizing Paul
• 31:53
  McGann as the 8th Doctor, because I remember that was the
• 31:56
  thing everyone took from that sequence was Oh my God the TV
• 31:59
  set. The new series is acknowledging
• 32:01
  that Paul McGann was the 8th Doctor.
• 32:04
  I I was stunned to learn this because I came to fandom not
• 32:06
  quite 10 years ago I would say, and sort of lived in my own
• 32:09
  bubble in the meantime. The idea that Paul McGann was
• 32:11
  ever questioned as a potential economical Dr. is is crazy to
• 32:16
  me, but also the concept of Canon.
• 32:17
  I think we should probably get into that later on anyway.
• 32:21
  But you know, Taryn Dicks said something along the lines of
• 32:23
  Canon is just basically what I can remember when I'm writing
• 32:26
  the stories the the next stories to tell.
• 32:28
  I think that's the the healthiest way of sort of
• 32:30
  approaching it. But you're right, there's an
• 32:31
  acknowledgement there when you had Sarah Jane Smith in last
• 32:35
  season. So we kind of get that bridge
• 32:38
  that's basically says, look, yes, knew who at the time knew
• 32:43
  who is an extension or continuation of of the classic
• 32:46
  era of Doctor Who 1963 to 1989 and inclusive 1996.
• 32:50
  And perhaps also the wilderness takes in the meantime, TVA on
• 32:52
  that. And that maybe is an important
• 32:57
  moment in Doctor Who to sort of have a kind of peace accord
• 33:01
  between the new and the old that maybe was gently ignored as a as
• 33:09
  a standing policy prior to this point.
• 33:14
  I I think that I can sense to Russell's hand in this script
• 33:20
  and we know he admitted in his own book that he did a top to
• 33:24
  toe rewrite on this and he he wrote a lot of the dialogue in
• 33:28
  this. But in how characters like
• 33:30
  what's his character's name? Jenny?
• 33:31
  Is it Jenny Arthur's friend? How they're so quickly vividly
• 33:36
  characterized. I'll know who these people are
• 33:39
  in their first scene. Some doc true story.
• 33:41
  Don't know who the characters are after I've watched the
• 33:43
  entire episode, but he just gets to the point with these
• 33:46
  characters. Yeah, and they all have sort of
• 33:49
  points in the novel that a reference like Jenny could be
• 33:53
  taken slightly for Merkle if a Constance and Alexander in the
• 33:58
  novel that my companions friends that you meet, you sort of stock
• 34:02
  pieces on the Doctor Who chess board that we have to move to
• 34:06
  make the stories work. But I'm going to take it from
• 34:09
  the novel today. You know he didn't make it from
• 34:13
  the novel Reverend Nathan Bottomley, yes.
• 34:18
  Also the Bursa Stephen Moffat, Who's.
• 34:23
  He's related to Nathan Bottomley, the blacksmith.
• 34:26
  Oh. I was in the blacksmith, Nathan.
• 34:33
  I forgot what you do for a living.
• 34:34
  I apologise. There's a reference also to a
• 34:39
  Bursa who's at the pub, which is obviously the.
• 34:42
  Moffat. Mr. Moffat in in the book as
• 34:45
  well. I just want to go back to what
• 34:47
  you said before about Joe, about the sort of thumbnail sketch
• 34:50
  that that Russell provides around particularly Jenny and,
• 34:53
  and Martha. And the relationship between the
• 34:55
  two of them I think happens right from the start.
• 34:57
  You know, we see the two of them scrubbing the floors and there's
• 35:01
  an immediate and a much more powerful, I guess, engagement
• 35:05
  with what it means to be not male, not white and not upper
• 35:11
  class in this society, which is very, very different, I think
• 35:15
  from what we saw in the Shakespeare code earlier this
• 35:18
  this season where it was kind of whitewashed almost here.
• 35:21
  I guess you could call it that, but it really.
• 35:23
  Just walk around and act as if you own actually.
• 35:26
  You'll be fine. Oh.
• 35:28
  My goodness, yeah, that's really problematic.
• 35:31
  Have another go Gareth, thank you.
• 35:36
  But, you know, just the way that the those issues of race, gender
• 35:39
  in class are really sort of, I guess addressed as much as
• 35:44
  possibly can, you know, can be in in 90 odd minutes of of
• 35:47
  television in a way that we don't really get to see with
• 35:52
  companions prior to this. So I think that's super
• 35:54
  important. And, you know, we'll see it
• 35:55
  again. We see it in particular things
• 35:57
  like thin eyes where the Doctor punches a racist because he's
• 36:01
  horrible to to build. But this is this is that first
• 36:05
  time I think where particularly through the character of Martha,
• 36:08
  we sort of engage with those wider, you know, post colonial
• 36:13
  and post gender and yeah, but. I wanted to, I wanted to ask you
• 36:19
  both about that and given that you've brought it up now the
• 36:22
  whole it's not, it doesn't dominate the racism angle here,
• 36:27
  but it's absolutely here to provide some context and and
• 36:31
  some historical detail. What's your preference then?
• 36:34
  Is it here where it's there, but it doesn't take over the story?
• 36:38
  Is it Rosa where that is the story?
• 36:41
  Is it dot and bubble where it's hiding a lesson by disguising it
• 36:46
  for a bit and then giving you the twist at the end?
• 36:49
  Where do you fall with all of this?
• 36:52
  How much? Do you like?
• 36:55
  Oh, thank you. Thank you, Jack.
• 36:59
  But now just to jump on that question, I think it's it's
• 37:03
  where the system, even the story, you can't talk Martha
• 37:09
  into 1913, particularly on her own without the Doctor there
• 37:13
  without addressing his concerns, obviously, particularly in the
• 37:17
  quite elitist and patriarchal and conservative in all aspects
• 37:26
  British public school of that system at that time.
• 37:30
  I think it would just be worthless to not mention it at
• 37:34
  all. So yeah, I prefer stuff and
• 37:37
  mention films like that. Obviously you don't want it
• 37:41
  might be a bit demoralizing for what you should forget was 15
• 37:45
  doctors be you know, they should be abused every single time they
• 37:48
  go back in history. It might be a bit for the
• 37:50
  viewer, might be a bit like I'll know another another story where
• 37:54
  they shall be in Word with the doctors for 45 minutes.
• 37:57
  But you know, I think it's important to so in that up and
• 38:03
  to introduce that. It might sound a little bit odd,
• 38:07
  but introduce that threat. But but if would be real if this
• 38:12
  were a real scenario? I mean, there's enough there
• 38:15
  isn't there, to show just how intolerable it would be for
• 38:19
  Martha if she was staying. The the line that gets me is the
• 38:22
  one about her hands when she's cleaning the floor.
• 38:24
  It's just disgusting. But also, you know, Joan's
• 38:28
  saying, certainly not one of your colour, the headmaster says
• 38:31
  at one point, you know, keep your keep her under control and
• 38:35
  there's just lots of microaggressions throughout the
• 38:37
  entire story. Yeah, and there's some sort of
• 38:41
  1990s anti misogyny stuff with beneath, you know, Oh my God,
• 38:48
  you've got a short haircut and trousers on, you know, which is
• 38:53
  sort of very reminiscent, probably a lot of art to that
• 38:58
  period. But yeah, so that that is there
• 39:02
  in the novel as well. But you might say this adds an
• 39:05
  extra dimension to it, that if this were Rose Tyler or Donna
• 39:09
  Noble or Amy Pond or whatever, just wouldn't wouldn't be there.
• 39:14
  There is there is so much substance to this story, so
• 39:16
  we're going to end up talking a lot about that.
• 39:19
  I'm every now and again going to bring us back to the production,
• 39:22
  which is just brilliant. Charles Palmer's direction is
• 39:26
  superb, but also Murray Gold's music.
• 39:28
  There's there's a scene here where it the music's been
• 39:31
  whistled as she goes and now did they use the whistling in the
• 39:35
  story? I can't remember if they did or
• 39:36
  not. It's really gorgeous, though,
• 39:39
  the score for this throughout. I just I just want to make a
• 39:43
  point about how how brilliant this production is.
• 39:46
  It's a good, it's a terrific script, but they threw
• 39:49
  everything on the screen as well.
• 39:52
  Yeah, and it's really different kind of music from Molly Gold,
• 39:55
  obviously in the Family Blood episode, the Doctor Who music in
• 40:00
  Club Stop. What's coming back?
• 40:04
  And we'll talk more about that when it comes back and what
• 40:06
  impact that has on us as audiences.
• 40:09
  But here I think it's a really nice and very different job from
• 40:13
  him. I think Murray is someone who,
• 40:15
  because he's on the show for so long, gets maybe a bit of Flack
• 40:18
  to get him into a pestive stuff a little bit too much.
• 40:22
  But when he. Goes out there is Dudley, isn't
• 40:25
  it, Jack? Yeah, but when he goes out there
• 40:28
  and changes, he knows how to. He knows what music is going to
• 40:35
  work for this story, and he knows that this story cannot
• 40:39
  just be the whole time. So it's not.
• 40:44
  Great as that is, I mean, this is great, right?
• 40:48
  These flashbacks to the start again, the economy in the
• 40:50
  writing, it's telling you everything you need to know.
• 40:55
  Yeah, and again, that's part of the television adaptation
• 40:58
  process. I mean, the novel itself has a
• 41:01
  few moments of flashback, which obviously don't.
• 41:04
  They're my isolated paragraphs that don't really work as well
• 41:08
  in the mobilisation. But there is an attempt at that,
• 41:12
  a sort of, you know, touch the bio data pods touch for watch
• 41:17
  and the sort of flashes of the Doctor and the time travelling
• 41:22
  made to come from. But I think being on television,
• 41:25
  those transitions are a lot smoother and create a lot more
• 41:31
  They they unfold the drama in a way that viewers can put that
• 41:35
  story together for. Themselves.
• 41:37
  Does anybody know what came first, putting human nature into
• 41:41
  the story? And Rusty Davis going, oh, the
• 41:44
  watch, that's brilliant. I'll have that for Utopia.
• 41:47
  Or he wrote Utopia and went, right, I'll add it to human
• 41:50
  nature. This is a good way of segue.
• 41:52
  And you know, so as soon as you see that watch of Utopia, you're
• 41:55
  like, Oh my word, there's a Time Lord in there.
• 41:59
  It's such a great question because it is the great
• 42:01
  Macguffin of this series, right? And it is instantaneously
• 42:05
  recognizable for what it is in Utopia.
• 42:07
  The moment we see it, we know that.
• 42:09
  Oh my, my God, and we it's not that we know that it's a time
• 42:13
  warp. We know it's the master because
• 42:14
  who else could possibly be right?
• 42:16
  And so it's absolutely critical again, as a visual shorthand and
• 42:19
  just that again, economy of storytelling, as you say, Joe,
• 42:22
  but you know, it's it's it's new who constructing its own, you
• 42:25
  know, iconography and mythology as well, which is super, super
• 42:28
  great. I, I wonder, I, I think that
• 42:33
  Russell probably had it in mind from the start and backward
• 42:37
  mapped it to this story. Otherwise, the symbol of the
• 42:42
  cricket ball, I think is entirely up for the 10th Doctor
• 42:45
  as it is for the for the 7th doctor because we're nerds and
• 42:48
  we know it Harkins back to the 5th Doctor and what that means
• 42:52
  as well. But the, the, the watch also the
• 42:56
  watch, as you know, an analogy for Time Lords time.
• 42:59
  It's in the it's in the name, right?
• 43:02
  It is super clever and I think it's, I think it's one of those
• 43:05
  moments of like pure, excuse me, pure genius that Russell
• 43:09
  stumbles upon. It's inspired, isn't?
• 43:11
  It yeah, I think it's it's one of those things that not only
• 43:14
  makes it great television because it's a visual image
• 43:17
  right. You say Stephen of you get an
• 43:20
  actor and a watch is like a physical motion that you click
• 43:24
  the the bit on the watch to get the little door to open up.
• 43:30
  But particularly, like you say, we're post TV movie, that
• 43:36
  fucking movie had clocks, all those clock clocks, time, time,
• 43:42
  time. It's about time, you know, 1999,
• 43:46
  you know The Time Machine, you know, and I think the book is
• 43:51
  obviously pre 1996. So maybe now in the Doctor Who
• 43:56
  found them, you know, we have Stephen Moffat doing, you know,
• 43:59
  the 11th hour, the clock is striking 12.
• 44:02
  All of this stuff. Now we have that knowledge of
• 44:06
  that, that logo for a show about time travel of time clocks,
• 44:13
  clock faces, you know, but they just didn't have, Paul Cornell
• 44:18
  just didn't have that visual grammar in 1995.
• 44:22
  I was still obsessed with the. Chess, Jack.
• 44:26
  With the new adventures, they were looking back to the McCaw
• 44:28
  era, playing chess on desert sands.
• 44:31
  But the the the genius thing is, is that Utopia also acknowledges
• 44:36
  the success of human nature because this so successfully
• 44:40
  gives the watch weight and you know, it's an important Time
• 44:45
  Lord inside the watch. The second that's brandished in
• 44:47
  Utopia, you don't need an explanation.
• 44:50
  It's all already there and what you've seen.
• 44:52
  It's so clever and there's a bit where Tim holds it later when it
• 44:57
  says you are not here, just on screen.
• 44:59
  Now you are not alone sometimes. We talk about the mythology,
• 45:04
  look at all those monsters that we've had in the new series,
• 45:07
  just there. Flash, flash, flash.
• 45:09
  Exactly. It's the Canon of the new Who.
• 45:12
  Obviously we all know now it's all one show.
• 45:15
  Of course it is. You know we have bloody Sasha.
• 45:18
  The one. Talk about Auntie Vanessa.
• 45:21
  No, it's all one. Shooty Cat while talking about
• 45:25
  Adric. Yeah, talk about the celestial
• 45:28
  toy, you know, but it's nice to see that knew who is settled
• 45:35
  enough. Like you say, Stephen, this is
• 45:37
  one of the big pop culture institutions at the moment.
• 45:41
  It's settled enough to have his own Canon that we can make
• 45:45
  reference to. Were the scarecrows in the book?
• 45:49
  No, what you need to know about the book Fearless now is that
• 45:52
  the villains are absolutely terrible and things were being
• 45:56
  unfunny. Awful.
• 45:57
  And is it titles? No, there could be really,
• 46:01
  really catchy reverting your inventive name of Orbitard to
• 46:05
  have very stupid names like Serif and Athevia and August.
• 46:12
  You know, names that are so bad they're sort of sticking your
• 46:15
  memory by accident. Jack, do they have like, do they
• 46:19
  have like jerseys or super cool dialogue?
• 46:22
  That's what I remember. Yeah, and they used the the old
• 46:26
  Battlestar Galactica thing. We can't say fuck because we're
• 46:30
  in a children's box, so we're going to say clock.
• 46:35
  And hey, we want to. Let's talk about how we want to
• 46:39
  molest Bernie Somerfield, because that'll be fun for this
• 46:42
  show. Yeah, I just remember the
• 46:43
  villains being the big dragon factor of the book.
• 46:46
  This that's the big change in this, you know, Russell T
• 46:49
  Davies, who gave us, you know, the nightmare child and the army
• 46:53
  maybe words and all of this all quick, snappy, one word.
• 46:59
  Here's your thing. You know the family of blood.
• 47:02
  They are father and mother and sister and of mine, you know,
• 47:08
  just quit. You hear that?
• 47:10
  Then he goes. Just imagine that their
• 47:12
  tribesmen from the Dark Continent, they're literally
• 47:15
  teaching these kids to be racist.
• 47:18
  It's terrible. And this is another separation
• 47:23
  of the two doctors. Is that the seventh stop that
• 47:26
  John Smith refuses to give Latimer that beef him in typical
• 47:31
  seventh stop for fashion. He swaps the slipper for a pimp
• 47:35
  fluffy slipper because because we can imagine the 7th not to
• 47:40
  sort of pulling that out of his sleeve and stuff like that.
• 47:44
  Here the 10th doctor just goes, yeah, right.
• 47:46
  And that's a. Change.
• 47:47
  So that's a deliberate change, that Russell.
• 47:50
  'S made. Yeah, definitely.
• 47:52
  Again, it's the difference of the characters, it's the
• 47:55
  acknowledgement that this show is a massive Canon but but you
• 47:59
  know not not you know each Doctor can have their own
• 48:04
  different responses to situations whilst maintaining
• 48:07
  the core of the character that stuck for so long.
• 48:11
  I. Think, I think it's also super
• 48:15
  important in the way that again, going back to human nature as as
• 48:18
  a title, it examines what the difference would be.
• 48:21
  If you take the Doctor out of the Doctor Who story and replace
• 48:24
  him with an entirely fallible, an entirely human protagonist.
• 48:32
  I think that's super important. I think this again, we'll
• 48:34
  probably look at this in the next part, but you know, the
• 48:36
  theme of examining what the Doctor is in Doctor Who and the
• 48:41
  function of that that character, not just within the narrative,
• 48:46
  but for the audience as well in wider world is, is something
• 48:49
  that I think is is really carefully examined, obviously
• 48:53
  here on television. But I think it's also there very
• 48:55
  much and probably a key motivating factor for for the
• 48:59
  novel as well by Paul Cornell, where I think he wanted to
• 49:02
  explore those questions around the doctor by taking the Doctor
• 49:07
  out of the narrative. And he does something very
• 49:08
  similar, I think, in Father's Day.
• 49:13
  This whole sequence with the cricket ball and the piano and
• 49:17
  now this is absolutely harking back to Davidson, isn't it?
• 49:22
  Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's just the little
• 49:24
  village that sort of along the way from Cranley Holt, you know,
• 49:28
  that it is that kind of early 20th century England that that
• 49:32
  it's harking back to. And there's a, there's a kind of
• 49:35
  stereotype, I guess, of, of, you know, small human acts of
• 49:40
  decency, I guess that is synonymous with that era for,
• 49:45
  for, you know, a number of reasons I think that are sort of
• 49:48
  born out of the, the cultural text of the time.
• 49:51
  And that I think imbues the, the, the image of the Edwardian
• 49:54
  cricketer of Davison as the doctor as well.
• 49:57
  You know, and I've mentioned this before as well, the, the
• 49:59
  social metaphor of cricket as one of decency and in particular
• 50:04
  English decency is super critical as well.
• 50:07
  I think, you know, when you talk about cricket, there is all of
• 50:10
  those kinds of preconceptions around, you know, the spirit and
• 50:15
  the ethos of the game. I think, you know, there's AI
• 50:17
  think it's the preamble to the to the constitution or the the
• 50:20
  rules of cricket, which says something along the lines of
• 50:23
  that the game should be played not only within the letter of
• 50:26
  the law, but also within it's spirit.
• 50:29
  And again, you know, all of those things I think are hugely
• 50:32
  influential here in the use of cricket as a metaphor for, you
• 50:35
  know, I think the the doctor says himself, you know, human
• 50:38
  decency, everyday life can provide valor rather than just,
• 50:43
  you know, acts of war. So yeah, I think it's hugely
• 50:49
  inspired I guess by that, that era, and also by cricket and
• 50:53
  also by Davison's doctor. And it was perhaps also linking
• 50:57
  to the difference in the 2 John Smiths and the two Doctors
• 51:01
  indeed. And the nature of, you know, the
• 51:03
  big other big creative force on the story which would not
• 51:07
  mention yet the BBC, the British Broadcasting Corporation.
• 51:12
  This isn't a book from an independent publisher anymore.
• 51:16
  So I think the Doctor has come from being this international
• 51:20
  hero, this. Hero, if you like to a very
• 51:30
  specific British hero, might you say it would be an outfit.
• 51:36
  So it's very nationally Co different, you know, in his
• 51:40
  mannerisms. And I think that could be a sign
• 51:43
  from, you know, the British Broadcasting Corporation's
• 51:45
  biggest cultural export. You know, this is what we are
• 51:50
  and this is what it means. A good outstanding, you know,
• 51:54
  whether that be John Smith or the the Doctor himself, perhaps.
• 51:59
  I, I think you're right, Jack, there's a, there is a very
• 52:01
  conscious use of, you know, Britain's best values, I guess,
• 52:10
  through Doctor Who as a way to effectively use soft power on
• 52:14
  the international scene around what Britain is right.
• 52:17
  You know, it does that through the Premier League, but it also
• 52:19
  does that through the BBC as an institution.
• 52:21
  And at this time, Doctor Who, along with Top Gear is it's, you
• 52:25
  know, flagship show. But you know, this is also the,
• 52:28
  the, the broadcaster that, you know, has, has done so many of
• 52:33
  those historical, you know, Pride and Prejudice, we know as
• 52:36
  an example of that. But you know, that's kind of
• 52:39
  depiction of of England in in it's in a yesteryear, I guess
• 52:44
  that maybe never quite existed. But again, sort of presents it's
• 52:49
  it's best side, it's best face to to the world.
• 52:52
  I've. Got a question for you both.
• 52:56
  Does this work as a romance? It's very quick, isn't it?
• 53:02
  It's quite rough because obviously a lot of the romance
• 53:05
  is established just within the human nature.
• 53:07
  So because by the time I get the family blood, it's all basically
• 53:11
  on one night, isn't it really? It's all running around and
• 53:14
  getting to the climax. We're getting visions of
• 53:16
  marriage and children already. Obviously that's just the nature
• 53:21
  of the adaptation process, which is why I wanted to bring it up
• 53:25
  at the beginning. But you are just going to lose
• 53:27
  some stuff from that. I think it works well for what
• 53:31
  it is, and I think we get more important maybe the character of
• 53:34
  Joe and the character of John Meltdown, maybe more than their
• 53:39
  romance together. But yeah, you're always going to
• 53:44
  lose some bits. It's never going to be quite as
• 53:47
  in depth for an entire novel. But it is more as part of the
• 53:53
  viewing experience versus the reading experience.
• 53:57
  It's a lot more concentrated. You might go entire pages or
• 54:02
  even half the chapter before you get another German Joan bit.
• 54:07
  Because we're coming to Benny and we're coming to the
• 54:10
  Orbitides running around and we're coming to Alexander and,
• 54:14
  and Low Castle and everyone else, you know, here.
• 54:18
  We have a lot more concentrated screen time for them.
• 54:22
  So I think they've still had that impact.
• 54:24
  When the new series was going out, I was friends with a lot of
• 54:28
  women at the office. I worked at the watch Doctor Who
• 54:32
  and some of their favourites were the Girl in the Fireplace
• 54:34
  and Human Nature, because they absolutely could buy into the
• 54:38
  romance that was on the screen and and there was a bit of
• 54:42
  almost femininix inclusion there.
• 54:44
  By having those, what I think works with the romance here is
• 54:48
  the chemistry between the two actors that that and they're
• 54:51
  such, it's such a likable pairing that you want them to
• 54:54
  succeed. I think that's what you need in
• 54:56
  a romance story. I think there's there's
• 54:59
  certainly enough of it, but I wonder if you were to have a
• 55:04
  blank slate and this was a a different kind of romance where
• 55:09
  a school teacher and a school nurse fall in love, whether you
• 55:12
  actually cast these two. I didn't buy this from the
• 55:15
  start, but I also understood that I was meant to because they
• 55:18
  don't get together in the end. There is a sort of tragedy to
• 55:23
  that and they're not meant to stay together.
• 55:26
  And I, I, I wonder whether there's an intentionality on
• 55:29
  sort of sort of casting. I'm sorry, I've forgotten her
• 55:33
  name. I've written it down.
• 55:34
  Jessica Hines. Jessica Hines?
• 55:36
  Or is it Jessica Stevens? Of course she changed her name.
• 55:40
  Right, right, right. As a way to sort of like signal
• 55:44
  that I don't know, I, I kind of. So I didn't buy it the first
• 55:49
  time I saw it. Like I could absolutely buy
• 55:51
  Sophia Miles. Yeah, I could absolutely buy
• 55:53
  Sophia Miles and David Tennant and their chemistry I'm.
• 55:57
  The other way around, I'm less, I'm less sold on Sophia, Miles
• 56:00
  and Tennant, really. But but I I buy this.
• 56:04
  And absolutely in terms of the characters, the the slightly
• 56:08
  older lady that feels like life's left her behind and the
• 56:12
  lonely school teacher, I'm not. It's just a pairing.
• 56:15
  You're just desperate for them to be together.
• 56:17
  Yeah, maybe you're right. Yeah, I don't know.
• 56:20
  I I can only say the first time I sort of watched this, there
• 56:23
  was a acknowledgement on my part that the casting was meant to
• 56:26
  suggest that. And that the sort of the romance
• 56:29
  things that sort of awkward scenes with the books, you know,
• 56:31
  I appear to be carrying your books and all that earlier in
• 56:33
  the episode. It's also great.
• 56:35
  But then you add in those shades, her being racist to
• 56:38
  Martha, him letting the kid have a beating, it's so nuanced.
• 56:42
  It's just really interesting to watch those characters.
• 56:45
  I'm never quite sure if I like either of them, but I want to
• 56:48
  watch both. I'm engaged by both of them.
• 56:53
  Yeah. So this, yeah, this is a really
• 56:55
  good scene, which we don't get quite as much in the book, which
• 56:59
  is obviously Martha finding out that Jimmy's been, you know,
• 57:03
  replaced or killed. The weather is, and this is
• 57:06
  again, part of the reveal of television, that that television
• 57:10
  can do. What information does the
• 57:13
  audience have? Well, we can.
• 57:15
  And versus the characters we know in that Hitchcockian
• 57:19
  suspense way. Jimmy is, you know, the bomb
• 57:22
  under the table, I think, Well, we know that this character is
• 57:25
  in disguise and Martha doesn't. And that tension, obviously,
• 57:31
  again, it's part of that change for television.
• 57:33
  I think the script thing works very really well and I think in
• 57:37
  my plays it really well. We're.
• 57:38
  Changing the gear though as well, aren't we Jack?
• 57:40
  Because we're going from what has been a very naturalistically
• 57:44
  active Doctor Who for the most part to this point, and now
• 57:48
  suddenly we've got three Doctor Who villains coming in and fuck
• 57:51
  me, do they chew up the scenery in the second episode?
• 57:54
  I absolutely love the family and bloods.
• 58:01
  Yeah, that kind of traumatic irony I guess is more apparent,
• 58:03
  Jack, isn't it, when you're talking about the medium of
• 58:05
  television than you would about the medium of of a novel.
• 58:08
  I think because you can do so again, you know, through visual
• 58:12
  shorthands like we mentioned before with the watch.
• 58:16
  Yeah. And obviously that comes into
• 58:17
  play later would be scene where the Doctor finally revealed
• 58:22
  himself as being actually the Doctor.
• 58:24
  We'll get to that scene later. That has a great reversal, but
• 58:28
  you can't do in the book because it relies on the audience
• 58:32
  knowing less than than the character.
• 58:37
  What baffles me is, unless I think is a testament to Rusty
• 58:40
  Davis as a writer, is that you would imagine with the extra
• 58:43
  time in the novel that you would have more detailed characters in
• 58:48
  the book, that it would be more moving because you have more
• 58:50
  time to explore the relationships.
• 58:53
  I don't think that is the case. I think the TV version of this
• 58:58
  is the more powerful of the two. Yeah, I think again, it's that
• 59:04
  economy like you say. I just thought I would just have
• 59:07
  that great moment from a Favour line deliveries in the story
• 59:11
  when Martha goes, yeah, this is 1913 and the Doctor goes, yes,
• 59:18
  good Martha, yes you can. Read Yes, that's how you talk to
• 59:22
  me. Yes, but his his undertones were
• 59:27
  perhaps a little bit more different than mine.
• 59:30
  The. Undertone are also racist.
• 59:35
  Right. Cultural differences.
• 59:37
  Yeah, cultural differences. Jesus, if anyone ever spoke to
• 59:42
  me like that, this is a story. This is a podcast.
• 59:50
  Oh my God how Harry Lloyd's performers as son of mine.
• 59:53
  It's one of the all time great top 2 villain performances.
• 59:59
  Yeah, you. Cannot take your eyes off him.
• 1:00:03
  Oh, I feel sorry for this old man.
• 1:00:05
  This poor old man who gets shot in a minute.
• 1:00:08
  Spare a penny, Yeah. I didn't even spare you.
• 1:00:12
  I didn't. Even spare you boom I think.
• 1:00:15
  This intonation of delivery also is a little bit fruity in a way
• 1:00:19
  that villains were in classic, which I really quite enjoy as
• 1:00:22
  well. Yeah.
• 1:00:25
  And now, Steven, I was listening to a podcast the other day
• 1:00:28
  called We Need to Do a Podcast, and they had an episode where
• 1:00:33
  they talked to celebrity guest star Paul Cornell.
• 1:00:40
  And you asked him, Paul Cornell, what's your favorite story?
• 1:00:45
  And do you remember what story he said?
• 1:00:48
  I said Delta and the Bannerman. You said Delta and the
• 1:00:50
  bannerman, which is very rough for P babies, but it's also
• 1:00:54
  coincidentally very human nature.
• 1:00:56
  Well, then it's very human nature.
• 1:00:58
  It's just, you know, a bunch of aliens in disguise as humans who
• 1:01:02
  infiltrate a historical setting where there's an A loose alien
• 1:01:06
  who's had to hide in disguise as a human and may fall in love
• 1:01:10
  with another one suspect in human.
• 1:01:12
  And there's a bit of ball dance and and it's like, oh, OK, yes,
• 1:01:16
  you. Haven't thought about.
• 1:01:17
  This at all brilliant. Brilliant.
• 1:01:22
  I just think that's another really interesting example of
• 1:01:25
  how, you know, we can take the stories that we like and sort of
• 1:01:31
  transplant them into, well, I mean, this is going directly
• 1:01:35
  from one to the other, but we can all take these stories and
• 1:01:38
  go, Oh, well, this happens over here and that moves just like
• 1:01:42
  this bit and you know. It's just modification of
• 1:01:45
  alchemy, right? The creative process of taking
• 1:01:47
  source material and bringing it into something new and and
• 1:01:50
  possibly better. I think also Paul's, Paul
• 1:01:53
  Cornell's answer to that was largely motivated by the fact
• 1:01:57
  that Delta and the vitamin is kind of the first point since
• 1:02:00
  the Saywood period or after the Saywood period where we kind of
• 1:02:04
  get our show back and we kind of get the heart and the ethos of
• 1:02:07
  the doctor back in a way, though.
• 1:02:10
  Again, isn't it? It's.
• 1:02:11
  About and this is also, you know, the same thing, the
• 1:02:13
  preoccupation here around what does it mean to be human?
• 1:02:17
  I think is is absolutely critical.
• 1:02:20
  I am just wondering now though if they that flash forward
• 1:02:23
  sequence in Part 2 had Here's to the Future, it would actually be
• 1:02:28
  a better scene. Yeah, there's still a blast
• 1:02:33
  about in the M theme where Bill and the song just to get them to
• 1:02:37
  live them up a bit. Although it does go to show
• 1:02:40
  that, you know, you can sort of take the same elements, but
• 1:02:44
  tonally, I mean, this is doing something quite different, isn't
• 1:02:47
  it? The Tower of the Ballymen.
• 1:02:56
  This is a phenomenal cliffhanger.
• 1:03:00
  I remember being on tender hooks when it went on and I was just
• 1:03:03
  thinking about it the whole week.
• 1:03:06
  And I love it because it is a moment of jeopardy, but it's not
• 1:03:09
  your typical moment of jeopardy. Oh, you know, you, there's a
• 1:03:12
  sword at your neck or something like that.
• 1:03:14
  Having to make a choice between his lover and his best, right?
• 1:03:17
  And the line to deliver as well. Your choice.
• 1:03:18
  You know it's. Great.
• 1:03:22
  David Tennant, the Doctor does that exact same line where at
• 1:03:27
  the end of when he gives Martha the instructions in the TARDIS,
• 1:03:31
  because that's it, Martha, your choice, he does that same.
• 1:03:36
  I don't know, that's a deliberate callback, but it's
• 1:03:38
  the same line that he does. But yeah, you know what you're
• 1:03:41
  getting into. There is again another part of
• 1:03:45
  the adaptation for television is viewer reception and how to
• 1:03:50
  viewers take in this media. Books obviously, as you know,
• 1:03:54
  divided into these things called chapters.
• 1:03:57
  Chapters have their own little Cliff handles at the end of each
• 1:04:01
  part, and you can read a page a day, a chapter a day.
• 1:04:05
  You can read a book at whatever place you want to read it and
• 1:04:09
  take that information in at whatever speed you like.
• 1:04:13
  This we all in the UK, obviously it might be a bit different for
• 1:04:17
  you for even, but we in the UK sat down in June 2007 to watch
• 1:04:23
  45 minutes of Human Nature. Then seven days later we sat
• 1:04:28
  down again to watch Family of Blood.
• 1:04:30
  Obviously we're going to do things a little bit differently
• 1:04:32
  today by watching this, you know, 5 minutes after we watched
• 1:04:36
  the first one. But how, how do we feel it works
• 1:04:41
  to consume this story AS2 separate parts versus one large
• 1:04:47
  continuing part? Do we feel that there's any
• 1:04:49
  difference while we're watching it?
• 1:04:52
  I mean, how, how do you guys feel all these years later doing
• 1:04:55
  it, doing it like this? Is there a difference you think
• 1:04:58
  it's? So weird because the two
• 1:05:00
  episodes have two different titles so you're asked to accept
• 1:05:03
  them as two separate pieces rather than this Part 1 and this
• 1:05:06
  Part 2. This story more than others
• 1:05:10
  feels like a whole piece to me rather than two separate pieces
• 1:05:15
  because of its pacing I think. I think that's true too.
• 1:05:20
  Certainly the the production sort of doesn't fear off and you
• 1:05:24
  don't go into space or anything like that.
• 1:05:25
  So it does a sort of visual language that makes it obviously
• 1:05:28
  apparent that we are continuing the story from last week, which
• 1:05:31
  we don't always get, particularly the Moffat era,
• 1:05:33
  where the second part, obviously, that often takes us
• 1:05:36
  into into different spaces and even times.
• 1:05:38
  And, and there's a period that sort of elapses between the
• 1:05:40
  Cliff hanger of what we see at the, you know, the exposition of
• 1:05:44
  act one the following week. But there is, I think, an
• 1:05:48
  important difference. And I'll, I'll set this up at
• 1:05:51
  this point and maybe talk more about it in the in the next
• 1:05:53
  episode where Part 1 or human nature itself is really a
• 1:05:59
  question of why and what and how is the doctor here?
• 1:06:06
  And we sort of unravel that and come to come to terms with that
• 1:06:10
  and introduce the threat at the end of it here.
• 1:06:12
  I think in the second part, the question isn't so much, well,
• 1:06:16
  how did this happen? Why did this happen and how does
• 1:06:18
  this happen and how are we going to undo it?
• 1:06:20
  The question really, as the the threat mounts is what the fuck
• 1:06:24
  do we do when the doctor isn't there?
• 1:06:26
  And I think that provides a really nice, if not change in
• 1:06:31
  direction that's sort of speeding up in the, you know,
• 1:06:34
  velocity of the of the sort of tension that ratchets up over
• 1:06:37
  the the next 45 minutes, which I think is, is perhaps a little
• 1:06:40
  bit different. And obviously it needs to be
• 1:06:42
  because it's Part 2. Some of the conclusions that
• 1:06:45
  they reach in the second episodes take my breath away,
• 1:06:49
  and obviously we'll discuss them when we get there.
• 1:06:51
  But the conclusion that he was braver than you because he did
• 1:06:54
  it and he wasn't you, that just gets me every single time.
• 1:06:59
  Well, boys, I've got one last question for you before we out
• 1:07:02
  the first episode. And that is how's it been being
• 1:07:05
  on habits of a blood pen knife. Because it made you richer,
• 1:07:09
  wiser, better. Well, I mean, I didn't know.
• 1:07:13
  I didn't know you were able to make us rich, You know, I mean,
• 1:07:16
  we've both been on like 20 times combined and we're, I've.
• 1:07:20
  Yet to see a royalty check. I don't know about you, Jack.
• 1:07:23
  No. And I'm I would be accepted.
• 1:07:26
  We've got wife, but I don't know if we've done that either.
• 1:07:29
  You bitch. Richer with smart perhaps?
• 1:07:34
  Yeah, in the same way as like a witch, you know?
• 1:07:42
  What really struck me from that conversation there, and
• 1:07:46
  unsurprisingly because you guys are both, I said it facetiously
• 1:07:50
  at the start, but you're incredibly smart gentleman, is
• 1:07:53
  that this episode is working on different layers to a lot of,
• 1:07:59
  you know, standard Doctor Who episodes.
• 1:08:01
  Because most Doctor Who episodes you can find the odd idea to
• 1:08:04
  grasp hold of the odd character and spend the rest of the time
• 1:08:08
  going all the directions. Really nice in this part.
• 1:08:11
  Whereas we spent most of that episode talking about the
• 1:08:14
  themes, you know, the history and the like you said, Jack, the
• 1:08:19
  adaptation from book to TV. This is this is this has depths
• 1:08:25
  that a lot of other Doctor Who, it's justly lauded.
• 1:08:29
  I think that's what I'm trying to say.
• 1:08:32
  Yeah, I think it is. But obviously that's why you
• 1:08:35
  know, when I recommend it that we do this not only because I
• 1:08:39
  think it's great and we'll obviously get into the
• 1:08:42
  direction, the score, the performances will become at
• 1:08:45
  least at the end when we do our fabulous films about the story.
• 1:08:50
  But I like coming interviews with a sense of almost a mission
• 1:08:55
  statement and like, what do we want to say about these stories?
• 1:08:59
  And you know, the stories I pick on always the greatest ones.
• 1:09:03
  You know, I don't I don't know if even we are brave enough to
• 1:09:07
  claim that, you know, the time monster is actually the best,
• 1:09:10
  you know, the best of anything. But just that we have a sort of
• 1:09:15
  mission statement and a thesis of what do we like, what do we
• 1:09:20
  find interesting about Dicks and Letts and what of that can we
• 1:09:24
  find in this story? And I think we're kind of doing
• 1:09:28
  the same with with that. But because by understanding
• 1:09:33
  where this was and by understanding the novel, not,
• 1:09:36
  not to say that this is going to be a book club episode or
• 1:09:39
  anything, but by by understanding where we were and
• 1:09:43
  where, how we've got to what this this is as a as a new
• 1:09:48
  story, as a different piece of art.
• 1:09:51
  You know, we can maybe understand a little bit more
• 1:09:55
  about this time period of the show and and laud it for what it
• 1:09:59
  does well as a a slice of the grand, you know, pie that is
• 1:10:06
  obvious 60 years of history. I mean, don't worry about that.
• 1:10:09
  These sort of subsections of Hands of a Blunt Pen Knife are
• 1:10:12
  incredibly incestuous. Half the time when it's a target
• 1:10:15
  book being discussed on the book club, we head over to the TV
• 1:10:19
  version to make the comparisons. I think those are some of the
• 1:10:22
  more interesting ones. Well fellas, look, should we go
• 1:10:24
  and watch Part 2 and watch Doctor Who get married and have
• 1:10:28
  children and ultimately sacrifice his love life?
• 1:10:32
  Human nature or family of blood virtuous.