Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Talks to the delightful Mark Donaldson about his choice of Kinda (1/4)

Transcript

Talks to the delightful Mark Donaldson about his choice of Kinda (1/4) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:33
  Hamster with a blump. Pen, knife and do it quicker,
• 0:39
  quicker, quicker. Welcome back to Hamster with a
• 0:41
  Blump and Knife, the Doctor Who Commentary Podcast.
• 0:45
  I'm here today with a hamster virgin, but certainly not a
• 0:50
  podcasting virgin. Mr. Mark Donaldson from On The
• 0:55
  Time Lash. Hello.
• 0:58
  Hello, I can confirm I've never had a hamster anywhere near me.
• 1:02
  Are you sure I was going to start this, You know, by saying
• 1:06
  to you just some terrible quote from Kinder, like we haven't
• 1:10
  been introduced half the way, or I was also going to go down the
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  route of you will agree to be me, this side of madness or the
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  other? That's that's good.
• 1:21
  Thank you very much. Well, that's a big clue as to
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  what we're talking about today. Why don't you let everybody
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  know? Yeah, well we're talking about
• 1:30
  Kinder because it's even though I think if anybody listening to
• 1:35
  this listens to On the time, Lash knows two things.
• 1:38
  One that I'm not a big fan of Peter Davison's era of Doctor
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  Who, but also that I bloody love Kinder.
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  So I thought it'd be quite a fun thing to pick for hopefully my
• 1:49
  first and not last appearance on Hamster with one pen knife.
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  And also there's a big purple snake in it.
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  And giving the way things given the direction recent episodes
• 2:01
  have gone and I thought you know.
• 2:03
  You don't want to stop throwing things like Big Pig Snake at me.
• 2:09
  Before we go in, can I please? I adore your podcast.
• 2:15
  I actually found it this year through a mutual friend of ours,
• 2:21
  Dylan Reese. Oh, yes.
• 2:23
  Yes, who could not have raved enough about your podcast And I
• 2:27
  was excruciating. Tooth pain and so and.
• 2:32
  You put us on. I had a miserable time, right?
• 2:35
  And it lasted a week. And at the beginning of that
• 2:37
  week, I just need to listen. I need to, I need a distraction
• 2:40
  from this. And I put on the episode that
• 2:42
  Dylan did with you. I can't remember which one it
• 2:44
  was now, but I absolutely, I was howling with laughter.
• 2:47
  I love the critique. I love the format as well that
• 2:50
  you had pairing up. A new series and a classic
• 2:53
  series story. So even though I've just done
• 2:57
  it, there anyone who might not have ever discovered on the time
• 3:01
  lapse, Do you want to just tell people about that?
• 3:04
  Yeah, so myself and Ben Verth, we've been doing on the time
• 3:09
  last night since 2014, which yeah, it must be because we
• 3:15
  decided to do it at the 50th Anniversary convention at the
• 3:20
  Excel Center. Like the night afterwards we
• 3:23
  were in the pub and Ben was like, do you want to do a Doctor
• 3:27
  Who podcasts? And I've just been kind of doing
• 3:30
  like a film podcast with a man and I was like, yeah, that
• 3:32
  sounds great, let's do that. So we started in 2014 and
• 3:36
  basically the idea is, as you say, we pair a new series
• 3:39
  episode with a classic series episode that shares something.
• 3:43
  Sometimes it's a very good. Connection.
• 3:46
  Other times it's incredibly tenuous, but also the key thing
• 3:50
  is that we go from basically from Chris Friston to Jodie
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  Whisker in order, but then we kind of move around the kind of
• 3:57
  the cannon, as it were. So yeah, and we we do it with a
• 4:03
  drink in hand. We generally try and theme the
• 4:07
  drinks around the episodes, which again can lead to some
• 4:11
  very tenuous decisions. There's been a lot of tenants,
• 4:15
  lager and there's been a lot of cider, man, over the past nine
• 4:19
  years. But the most tenuous thing that
• 4:23
  you do is use that bloody pole and you you choose the story
• 4:27
  before the one and the one after the one you're talking about and
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  then you try and make a box set out of it.
• 4:32
  And some of the things that come out of that, I just laugh my
• 4:36
  head off When you got like a quiz in there as well, you
• 4:39
  someone's first. Yes, we've got our friends.
• 4:43
  The digestial filmmaker who is our kind of spiritual sort of
• 4:49
  the spiritual third part in the the open time last trio, because
• 4:53
  he's a very good friend of ours from the days of the Edinburgh
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  Opt tour group. So yeah, he sends us various
• 4:59
  quizzes and challenges and things like that to do as well.
• 5:03
  So yeah, So it kind of breaks up a bit and we just, we've always
• 5:07
  tried to kind of for anybody listening that remembers the
• 5:09
  1990s. We try and recap to the spirit,
• 5:13
  those kind of pub groups for it. Be a bit of a chat, but Doctor
• 5:15
  Who? A bit of a quiz or some daftness
• 5:19
  and and a lot of booze, really. Occasionally you go on a
• 5:23
  fabulous run. You know, the episode I was
• 5:27
  listening to the other day, I think I may have messaged you
• 5:29
  and said, my God, you are making a.
• 5:33
  The yeah, was it the whole thing about the unit data, the new
• 5:37
  unit data? Yeah, that was it.
• 5:41
  Where I said there was a sort of sickness, there's a sickness in
• 5:43
  Doctor Who Found them which prevents people from enjoying a
• 5:48
  story or taking a story in its own merits because it doesn't
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  make sense with you. I have this week locked horns
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  with Ian Levine and his cronies over there, there.
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  You know how the fact they cannot enjoy these animations?
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  Because they are not, precisely. To the detail of the original
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  episode, it is very, very bizarre.
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  But you know, I have to say, you were in the bath with me at that
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  point, and I was there and I was sort of clapping like a madman,
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  and my grass came running and going, what's going on?
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  You've got to hear this. I'm going to.
• 6:17
  Rewind all this. I was like, there, he's saying
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  it there. That's the problem with fandom
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  right now it. Really is.
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  I mean, the whole animated reconstruction thing is bananas
• 6:28
  because. Ultimately, what they're
• 6:31
  complaining about is it's not accurate to how I remember it in
• 6:36
  my head, because the episodes don't exist, right?
• 6:41
  So how can you truly know? How can you truly reconstruct
• 6:46
  the thing? But you know Bunny and Levine
• 6:49
  100 quids on Facebook for a reconstruction of the massacre
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  of which barely anything telesnaps.
• 6:56
  Anything like that actually exists beyond the soundtrack,
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  so. I was nine years old when I
• 7:01
  first saw Doctor Who, and it was Battlefield Episode 2, and in my
• 7:04
  head, my memory of that is that that terrible snake that's
• 7:08
  zapping around Sylvester McCoy was throwing.
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  It was the most terrifying thing.
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  If I was doing an animation of that, it would be incredible.
• 7:16
  That certainly wouldn't reflect what's on the screen.
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  I think there's definitely some. There's definitely some
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  experiment I think that they should do where it is just
• 7:26
  reconstructing Dr. but purely from memory.
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  Rather than anything else, just ask a child about a Doctor Who
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  episode, get them to recurrent a Doctor Who episode, then animate
• 7:38
  it. I think you're.
• 7:39
  Not great. I've got a diseased mind.
• 7:41
  Or I say, you know, you don't want to watch that, but I just
• 7:44
  want to say thank you because your podcast is incredible.
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  I binged it after that. I just listened to every single
• 7:49
  episode this year. That's that's, yeah, that's a
• 7:53
  lot. 9 years, nine years worth of podcasts.
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  I mean, we did take quite a long break at one point.
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  So yeah, but. I've had a whole bunch of you in
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  my. This year and it's been
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  delighted. Thank you.
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  And actually just one more question about it.
• 8:04
  If you were asking this question to other podcasters and they
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  never asked me because I'm the host here, so happy days if you
• 8:14
  could recommend one episode. So if no one had ever heard of
• 8:18
  God, you know, and let's go on the assumption there's at least
• 8:20
  going to be one person listen that hasn't what would you say
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  this is a this is a brilliant episode of On the Time Lash.
• 8:27
  This this should be you're in I. Think do you know I think
• 8:35
  because I can only kind of go more recent ones because I mean
• 8:39
  I love Red and Fringe one. It was really early one we did
• 8:42
  but it's not really kind of the format of on the timeline.
• 8:45
  But I think it's quite a good Doctor Who podcast.
• 8:47
  We went out during the Edinburgh Fringe and interviewed a bunch
• 8:50
  of Doctor actors and Doctor Who fans that were kind of
• 8:53
  performing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival that.
• 8:56
  There was a lot of fun. So we just spoke with Kate
• 8:58
  Manning and public borkevey from the cursive Henrik.
• 9:02
  That was good. But in terms of the actual
• 9:04
  format of the show, I think the episode we did recently with
• 9:07
  Luke Malloy from Gallifrey and obviously friend of this podcast
• 9:12
  where we talked about what's it called now that not even the
• 9:17
  Dallas revolution of. The revolution, yeah.
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  And. About John Barrowman in there,
• 9:22
  just again, I was punching the air.
• 9:25
  There's a big long John Barrowman section, for want of a
• 9:28
  better word. So that's because I think it's
• 9:32
  really funny and I think it benefits from the fact that it's
• 9:34
  the first time Ben and I have recorded the podcast in the same
• 9:37
  room together for a very long time.
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  So I think that kind of opened up a bit again and I think it's
• 9:44
  quite a nice atmosphere and we got a lot of, we got a lot of
• 9:48
  comments from people saying how much they enjoyed it.
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  Or how shocked they were by the explicit content in one
• 9:55
  particular section. But it's Luke Malloy.
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  What do you expect? He comes on this thing as a
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  straight man, you know, and flirts his way silly.
• 10:03
  I mean, you don't listen to anything absolutely disgusting.
• 10:06
  I mean, I would just like to throw in as well any of the
• 10:09
  episodes covering the 13 Doctors era.
• 10:13
  I think a bit of a revelation because I know you guys had a
• 10:16
  slightly cold reaction to that error initially and you've gone
• 10:19
  back and sort of found hidden gems as you've gone through.
• 10:24
  Yeah, it's just been so satisfying to listen to, but.
• 10:27
  We I made a real because I do a lot of, although I suppose this
• 10:32
  was kind of just before I was kind of doing that full time,
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  but because I do a lot of kind of writing for.
• 10:38
  Websites that produce a lot of clickbait or websites that have
• 10:41
  a particular type of audience. I was like, look, Ben, I don't
• 10:44
  want to be doing like loads of just really negative stuff.
• 10:49
  Like let's try and approach this.
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  And I think we always would have anyway.
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  But there was definitely a kind of conscious effort.
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  But then actually after like one or two episodes, it was really
• 10:59
  easy. There was no need to kind of be
• 11:02
  like, Oh no, no, I must focus on the positives because there's
• 11:05
  loads of. Lots of great stuff in the
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  Geordie work career that gets unfairly overlooked and I would
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  say. One last recommended I cannot
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  remember which new series episode it was paired with, but
• 11:16
  when you talked about four to Doomsday, ah Jesus Christ, I
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  have to change my underwear, I was snarling with laughter.
• 11:24
  It's terrible, that story and. It's pretty bad.
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  Yeah, you took no prisoners that day.
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  Didn't. You.
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  Also, the episode that we did where we did the Witch Finders
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  and the demons is really good because there's an that view
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  with Joy Wilkinson in it, who was really lovely and sort of
• 11:40
  gave us her time. And what was Jesus Christ?
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  Well, I promise you we'll talk about Kinder at some point, but
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  this is just too interesting her talking about the writers room
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  and how they allocated and how they had to like pitch for.
• 11:54
  I didn't know any of that because I think some error is it
• 11:58
  has been shielded. Behind the scenes compared to
• 12:01
  like Rossi, Davis and Moffett to some extent.
• 12:05
  So that was a really valuable peek into what was going on.
• 12:08
  It was really interesting and it was actually because it took a
• 12:11
  lot, loads of convincing, but a little bit of convincing because
• 12:15
  I kind of got and in with her through a Film Festival I was
• 12:18
  working with and we got talking and I think she was a little bit
• 12:23
  reluctant I guess because the the tenor.
• 12:28
  And the sort of tone of a lot of kind of Doctor Who podcasts and
• 12:30
  stuff like that. But yeah, she was really up for
• 12:32
  it. And yeah, absolutely.
• 12:33
  There was so much stuff that I had no idea about in terms of
• 12:37
  how that writer's room worked or didn't work, depending on.
• 12:42
  Your point of view? Yeah.
• 12:44
  Well then my last thing is just a request really is if you are a
• 12:49
  clickbaiter creator, then when these episodes come out, you go
• 12:53
  to town, baby. All right.
• 12:55
  Get on Twitter the most salacious episodes of Hamster of
• 12:59
  Blood Paint Knife yet. All right, I'll see what I can
• 13:04
  take. All right, let's turn our
• 13:06
  attention towards Season 19, Peter Davidson and Kinder.
• 13:10
  Now. We'll talk about Kinder more
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  when we go into the episode. You don't really like the 5th
• 13:15
  Doctor. Yeah, so I.
• 13:19
  And so there's no interview with Steve Moffatt, who says that
• 13:22
  Peter Davison's the best actor to have ever played Doctor Who.
• 13:26
  So this is like pre new series and I do think he's possibly
• 13:31
  right. However, I think what Peter
• 13:34
  Davison's really good at is kind of like middle class
• 13:40
  exasperation and bemusement. He's great at those things and I
• 13:46
  think that doesn't always make for a good doctor.
• 13:50
  Because you don't want a kind of baffled and exasperated Dr.
• 13:54
  That's kind of the job of the the companions, certainly in
• 13:57
  classic Doctor, to be the kind of baffled and exasperated and
• 14:01
  confused ones. So I don't always feel that
• 14:04
  Davison gets as much presence, I think in some of the stories and
• 14:10
  I think also just I don't think a lot of the stories are all
• 14:13
  that engaging and yet. You've got stuff like this.
• 14:17
  You've got stuff like snake dance, enlightenment, it it's a
• 14:23
  it's an era where there's some really, I think some of the most
• 14:27
  experimental Doctor Who you probably get until maybe Julie
• 14:31
  Whitaker and Chris Chibnall, arguably.
• 14:35
  But it kind of it. It feels like it kind of comes
• 14:38
  out in spite of everything else that's going on, rather than
• 14:44
  it's like kind of a weird fluke. That that these things come out.
• 14:48
  Well, the behind the scenes of this one is, you know,
• 14:51
  commissioned. Three script editors.
• 14:54
  Going for Anthony Rue and then finally in the hands of I can
• 14:58
  never say his name right? Is it Saward or Sayward I?
• 15:00
  Think it's Saywards. It's Saywards, right?
• 15:03
  Only in the hands of Sayward. So that's that's sort of, yeah.
• 15:06
  But you're right, there's three creatives there that that's gone
• 15:09
  through. And interestingly, the three
• 15:12
  you've chosen there are sort of the three offbeat.
• 15:15
  Stories from the Davidson here, aren't they?
• 15:18
  Kinder, Snake, Dance and enlightenment.
• 15:20
  Yeah, I think, you know, there's there's something I kind of
• 15:24
  realized recently that I really like Doctor Who when it's weird,
• 15:29
  you know, it's that thing of like the mind dropper was one of
• 15:34
  the very first Doctor Who's overwatched.
• 15:36
  And that I think that made a real impression of me.
• 15:39
  And I think that's why I like stuff like Kinder, why I like
• 15:42
  stuff like Enlightenment and Snake Dance.
• 15:44
  Because. Yeah, you can do alien invasion
• 15:47
  stories, you can do spaced operas on a bunch of other
• 15:50
  shows. But I don't know, There's just
• 15:51
  something about more cerebral Doctor Who.
• 15:54
  It's almost baffling that this rub shoulders with the
• 15:57
  visitation and for to doomsday, isn't it?
• 16:00
  Yeah. That's a weird run of episodes
• 16:04
  in terms of tone, but it's an who's, an anthology show at the
• 16:07
  end of the day, so of course it it has these kind of weird peaks
• 16:10
  and troughs. I think there's there's
• 16:12
  definitely a sort of like a fresh new beginning approach.
• 16:15
  In season 19. So they're almost like trying to
• 16:18
  explore everything that the show can do, maybe accidentally.
• 16:22
  I don't know if there was that much thought.
• 16:23
  Oh, let's let's do a historical, let's do a pure historical,
• 16:27
  Let's do something off the let's do an action movie, you know?
• 16:31
  But it does make for interesting viewing.
• 16:35
  It really does. It really does.
• 16:36
  And I think, I do think the targets are overcrowded.
• 16:38
  But I think one of the reasons I like this is that it actually
• 16:41
  gives Adric and Tegan stuff to do and kind of just.
• 16:45
  Gets rid of this, but that's kind of fine because you get
• 16:48
  nervous use and then a trade off.
• 16:50
  Between Todd and this, I knew exactly who I was in my Doctor
• 16:53
  Who story. I'm confused with how we didn't
• 16:55
  chip all three of them off. Just grab around and say let's
• 16:58
  go real. Isn't it between those?
• 17:03
  Two, it's the greatest doctor and companion relationship that
• 17:06
  we never got. It's maddening.
• 17:10
  And then Big Finish brought Never skews in, but not as
• 17:12
  Todd's. I was furious.
• 17:15
  I was furious. Alongside Tom Baker, I've no is.
• 17:20
  Of course, neither have I. Neither have I.
• 17:24
  And a lot of people compare it to Polly.
• 17:28
  What's the name from the The Awakening?
• 17:31
  Jane Hampton. The.
• 17:33
  Other live birds, Yeah, but I just know.
• 17:35
  Of course. Catch on this.
• 17:38
  No, not at all, because I think. I feel she's a bit more in all
• 17:42
  of the doctor, whereas I think Todd is kind of confused and
• 17:46
  exasperated with the doctor, but also kind of.
• 17:49
  I think Todd's kind of what Tegan was kind of supposed to
• 17:52
  be, but doesn't always get a chance to be, which is the
• 17:55
  person that can kind of just tell the doctor when they're
• 17:58
  being an idiot or being, like, overly confusing in the right
• 18:02
  position. But it's so much subtler in both
• 18:05
  performance and characterization, isn't it that?
• 18:09
  It's sort of less jarring, and so Paedad doesn't have to go to
• 18:12
  that squeaky voiced sort of exasperation that you were just
• 18:16
  talking about. Yeah.
• 18:18
  It's two adults sharing a screen rather than two children.
• 18:24
  Yeah. And that's I've been, we'll come
• 18:26
  to that I guess in the commentary.
• 18:27
  But yeah, I always find that fifth thought to an average
• 18:30
  relationship quite lying. Whereas I don't find Adric as
• 18:35
  annoying with Tom Baker, even though Tom Baker likes Matthew
• 18:38
  Waterhouse annoying. I think, I think Waterhouse is
• 18:41
  slightly in awe of Tom Baker. So he behaves and he sort of and
• 18:45
  then suddenly he's the oldest regular in the series.
• 18:49
  So he's like, right, It's my I'm going to behave our I'm going to
• 18:53
  tell Richard told how to act. Yeah.
• 18:55
  Or did he? Or did he a movie?
• 18:59
  Yeah. Okay.
• 19:01
  Well, if you're ready to go, we'll skip into episode one.
• 19:06
  Great. In 54321 Off We Go, can I ask,
• 19:16
  is this the first commentary that you've done as a podcast?
• 19:20
  Yeah. Okay.
• 19:22
  Let's see how this goes then. Oh God.
• 19:27
  Okay. Well, I want to start then, by
• 19:28
  asking you about Peter Grimwade. Oh, OK.
• 19:33
  All right. And and how you think he fares
• 19:36
  in this story. Because as I was watching this
• 19:38
  this morning, I was very aware of just how stylish the
• 19:42
  direction was. It is.
• 19:45
  I mean, it's a studio band drama, but I think there's a
• 19:49
  thing in the behind the scenes documentary isn't there, where
• 19:51
  they talk about Grim Wade's sort of directing from the studio
• 19:55
  floor rather than the gallery. You know, and I think that makes
• 20:00
  a lot of difference because I think he he's very and obviously
• 20:06
  they do rehearsals and he's already figured out in his head
• 20:08
  kind of how it's going to go. But I think there's definitely
• 20:11
  more of a kind of fluidity in kind of being there with the
• 20:14
  actors rather than being in the rear, interestingly.
• 20:19
  But what I hear, he pissed a lot of people off, didn't they?
• 20:23
  Because he was a very director and he wanted, you know, to get
• 20:26
  the shots right. Yeah, he does.
• 20:29
  And I think that's fair enough. Like it's, you know, it's kind
• 20:34
  of rare in classic Doctor Who that you have directors that
• 20:39
  actually want to do something good rather than kind of just
• 20:42
  turn the lights on, point the camera, put the camera away, you
• 20:46
  know, turn the lights off at 11:00 or whenever it was the
• 20:48
  sprinklers came on. He's a proper sort of directors
• 20:53
  director. Which I don't think necessarily
• 20:57
  fits in all that well at the BBC at this stage in its history.
• 21:02
  The crying shame he never got to do that Dalek story, wasn't it,
• 21:05
  in season 20? Yeah, I think that would have
• 21:08
  been really interesting. They kind of see how he directs
• 21:10
  the dots. I mean, I don't, you know, as a
• 21:12
  scriptwriter, he's not great, but that's fine.
• 21:14
  You know, not everybody said, you know, a writer, director,
• 21:19
  but living in body of overambitious.
• 21:23
  Yes. But actually well he's gone now.
• 21:27
  I'll talk about Peter Grimwood and Simon in a minute but at the
• 21:30
  moment you know we've got but is this the last outing for the
• 21:33
  Soviet St. driver before it gets blown up in the next serial.
• 21:38
  Yeah. To I mean and there's
• 21:40
  necessarily been packed off out of the story which is great
• 21:44
  because I'm not I have to say and I apologize to anybody who
• 21:51
  a. Maybe a fan, but I just have
• 21:53
  never been a great fan of Nissa. I just find it quite an insipid
• 22:00
  kind of character. There's just nothing kind of
• 22:03
  tour, except for when the sort of script remembers that.
• 22:09
  Oh yeah, the master killed her dad.
• 22:11
  That's a huge. Imagine that in modern Doctor
• 22:13
  Who, you know you just wouldn't. The Doctor's greatest enemy has
• 22:17
  murdered your father. Yeah, you'd have.
• 22:20
  You'd have the Nissa revenge story, wouldn't you?
• 22:22
  You know, going off. Absolutely, but you don't get
• 22:26
  she kind of gets a bit Aussie with him in a Castle Valva and I
• 22:33
  think that's it. I mean, she only says, but then
• 22:35
  she just go that face. I think so, yeah.
• 22:37
  I hate it and that's it. That's all we ever.
• 22:42
  And also, you know, her whole planet as well.
• 22:44
  It's not just her dad's, do you not think?
• 22:47
  That's her whole planet. Indicative of what they were
• 22:49
  doing with the companions at this point, though, where they
• 22:52
  were sort of caricatures rather than characters.
• 22:55
  Because obviously, Tegan's lost her on Andres lost his brother,
• 22:58
  Nisha's lost her father. And we're kind of having jolly
• 23:02
  events. She's in time and space, and no
• 23:03
  one seems to care about that. And then they lose Adric and
• 23:06
  nobody seems to care about that at 2 1/2 minutes, you know?
• 23:11
  But what I think what's interesting about Kinder is that
• 23:14
  it does actually try to give the companions.
• 23:18
  Fair enough. Not every single one, but it
• 23:20
  does give Tegan, even though she does kind of get written out for
• 23:23
  the majority of part three. It gives her a really
• 23:26
  interesting story, and it gives Patrick quite an interesting
• 23:30
  story as well in terms of how he kind of works with Hindel.
• 23:34
  But we'll get to that when it comes.
• 23:36
  I wonder if Christopher Bailey one.
• 23:39
  I wonder. I know because I watched
• 23:40
  documentary this morning if he was looking at Janet Fielding's
• 23:43
  performance in this and that's why he rose her up in Snake
• 23:46
  Dance. I was like, look how good she is
• 23:49
  in this role. We only gave her one scene.
• 23:53
  Yeah, and also apparently she was a lot more sexy in the in
• 23:58
  the rehearsals as well. See that, Mark?
• 24:01
  Yeah, I was thinking they must have some of the, some of the
• 24:03
  footage, you know, because the Blu rays, now they've got all
• 24:06
  these kind of. You know all the studio footage
• 24:08
  for, like, a lot of the stories and you're thinking, oh, finally
• 24:10
  we're going to get an answer to the Richard Todd's Matthew Watt
• 24:13
  house anecdote. But we also don't get we all
• 24:17
  still get sexy Tegan and and yet they've got, you know, about 400
• 24:23
  hours of footage of season 24 being filmed.
• 24:26
  Yes, they got they got better, I think.
• 24:29
  I think Levine squirt it away somewhere, didn't he?
• 24:32
  He's the one that gave it all back.
• 24:33
  To the yeah. So obviously we've got Richard
• 24:43
  Todd's and their excuse here. And there's a there's a note
• 24:46
  they kind of make in the documentary of how you stacked
• 24:51
  this guest cast it. You know, you've got Simon Rice,
• 24:55
  who I I don't think was huge at the time, but he was certainly
• 24:58
  on his way to kind of big things.
• 25:00
  You got Richard Todd, who's like worked with Alfred Hitchcock and
• 25:05
  some big. Big directors and and Neris
• 25:08
  Hughes who's like really well known from like the Liver Birds
• 25:10
  and and it does you do get a sense that it's the the script
• 25:17
  has kind of drawn people in in a way that maybe Doctor Who
• 25:20
  doesn't always do it this period.
• 25:22
  I mean obviously there's still the cachet.
• 25:25
  Doctor Who still has a kind of certain cachet at this point,
• 25:28
  but I do wonder if it's the kind of, if it's this Christopher
• 25:31
  Bailey script that's kind of attracted people as well.
• 25:33
  Well, Mary Hughes talks about the script, doesn't she?
• 25:36
  In the commentary and and about how impressed she was and sort
• 25:39
  of how lyrical it was and how thoughtful it was and not at all
• 25:42
  what she was expecting from a Doctor Who script.
• 25:46
  But I think this is one of those times as well where they brought
• 25:48
  in sort of good prestige actors and giving them the right parts
• 25:53
  as well. Yes, yeah, absolutely.
• 25:56
  I mean, Richard, Todd is great. And I guess it's kind of playing
• 26:00
  on that, kind of. Dan Buster's role that he would
• 26:03
  have had to kind of make him another military man, but I
• 26:05
  think he's he's great as it kind of goes on, kind of subverting
• 26:09
  that because the whole story, well, the whole story of the
• 26:13
  Dome is very much about kind of how the military and sort of
• 26:18
  that kind of military order kind of infantilizes young men and
• 26:23
  kind of makes them incapable of sort of having a kind of
• 26:26
  independent life once they kind of come out of that.
• 26:29
  Where did you go? It doesn't really smart stuff
• 26:33
  with that Hindle once Richard Todd characters is a basically
• 26:38
  is a child isn't he? Yeah, Mommy, Mommy put the
• 26:41
  lights on. Yeah.
• 26:43
  And he starts building like a model town.
• 26:45
  And yeah, it's there's so much. This is the thing it's going to
• 26:49
  be. So it's such a dense thing in
• 26:52
  the commentary and I guess that's why Peter Davis and Janet
• 26:55
  Fielding just spend most of it. Sort of joking with each other
• 26:58
  about Matthew Whitehouse. You were 10 years behind of
• 27:01
  America in terms of how it was shot.
• 27:04
  And you know, I I sent you a message, didn't I, Early stage
• 27:06
  saying like they don't have the money to realize this the way it
• 27:11
  probably should have been. But I do think Grimwade shoots
• 27:14
  it as if they do, you know, so he, he shoots in a really
• 27:18
  sophisticated way. He's not.
• 27:19
  He's not just doing a Peter Moffett Point and shoot.
• 27:24
  No, I mean the cameras, the cameras moving there.
• 27:27
  Like it's moving with the with the Doctor and address.
• 27:30
  It's moving with the kind of the Walker.
• 27:33
  What, you don't often see a moving camera in Doctor Who.
• 27:37
  I don't know why, Like, who is younger?
• 27:39
  I just couldn't get over the production values of this story.
• 27:43
  And I think that's something you go through in sort of your late
• 27:46
  teens, maybe mid teens with Doctor Who, where it's gone from
• 27:50
  being all magic to being all a bit embarrassing and you don't
• 27:53
  want your mom to because the special effect looks terrible.
• 27:56
  And but I was looking at this now I'm like, no, these sets are
• 28:00
  good. They're not sympathetically lit,
• 28:02
  but like the the forest is sort of dense with plants.
• 28:06
  The Dome is clearly functional and then you can see all the
• 28:11
  forest outside. So it's suggesting an inside and
• 28:13
  out. But there's a lot of thought to
• 28:15
  how it looks. Definitely.
• 28:17
  It's a really believable world, and I know there's kind of a few
• 28:21
  criticisms of the jungle sort of being a set, and fine, fair
• 28:26
  enough. And I think yes, you could have
• 28:28
  shot it in a Botanic Garden and they've gone back to the studio
• 28:33
  to do the Dome stuff. But I think actually kind of
• 28:35
  having it all constructed together kind of gives it much
• 28:40
  more of a continuity. I think it was so that when
• 28:43
  they're kind of moving in and out of it, it, it works a lot
• 28:45
  there urgency, artifice of the of the forest.
• 28:50
  It gives it like a feel of like a play.
• 28:54
  Yeah, so it feels a bit eyebrow automatically.
• 28:57
  Yeah, and I mean that that was Bailey's background, wasn't it
• 29:00
  was kind of theater. He's kind of come from from fear
• 29:04
  and a theology. Was it Come remember, was he
• 29:07
  doing a theater degree with like a little bit of a sideline in
• 29:09
  theology or was it the other way around?
• 29:11
  I can't remember how did he get this assignment then, if that's
• 29:16
  that's the path he was taking. I think if I remember rightly it
• 29:19
  was kind of Christopher H bid meets kind of open door policy
• 29:23
  when he took over in Tom's last series.
• 29:27
  I think is how we kind of barely got in in the 1st place because
• 29:31
  and then it kind of goes through bid meet and and they wrote and
• 29:34
  and I say would never kind of get what we get which I think is
• 29:39
  a masterpiece But and you can you can tell with the dialogue
• 29:44
  as well because as I was watching as I was going my God,
• 29:48
  there's a thesis in that line. You know, like there were so
• 29:51
  many lines where I was like you could just explore that line in
• 29:55
  a, you know, and they're all just throwing them away one
• 29:57
  after. I'll try and point them out.
• 29:59
  Some of them went as we oh, boy. Even just the ideas as well.
• 30:02
  Like it's obviously it's a thing that that people say a lot about
• 30:06
  Stephen Moffatt and Douglas Adams in that they.
• 30:11
  Will basically just throw out ideas for Doctor Who stories.
• 30:15
  That's kind of throw away gags or sort of little teases and
• 30:19
  things like that. And it's the same here.
• 30:21
  You could do a whole Doctor Who of Tegan in this kind of dream
• 30:25
  world that she's just kind of fallen into, but that's just a
• 30:28
  small part of the whole thing. I want to see that story now.
• 30:35
  I just, well, I just I think that's some of the scariest
• 30:38
  scenes in the 80s in that and I know this I I'm, I'm clever
• 30:43
  enough to get what it's referencing so maybe you can
• 30:47
  bring some of that to this. What the caravan means, what
• 30:51
  Anna Wing from EastEnders is up to.
• 30:53
  Yes, it's weird. So but we'll get I need to see
• 30:58
  it again But yeah it's there was definitely I think there's kind
• 31:01
  of like a dream sort of logic. To it.
• 31:05
  I think possibly that you could kind of go into the stuff that
• 31:10
  really fond of mosque and we're nowhere near it yet is always
• 31:13
  where they're questioning our identity and which takers which
• 31:16
  and you know don't think about 10 of you and all that.
• 31:20
  I thought that was really scary. Yeah, it's really scary and this
• 31:24
  pink. Sorry.
• 31:24
  I'm just sort of distracted by the pink slop that Matthew wore.
• 31:28
  Houses. It's just what is that yogurt?
• 31:32
  I think, I think it's just, yeah, I think it's just
• 31:34
  strawberry. Yoga just put on a black light
• 31:37
  to look futuristic and sort of space rashing.
• 31:40
  Why did I do that with space food?
• 31:43
  You know, just have a chop, you know, I mean.
• 31:49
  Here we are. I mean, during these scenes,
• 31:53
  there were shoes on the commentary.
• 31:54
  It's going look at how this is lit.
• 31:55
  You're saying it's all over lit Peter and Janet, but this is
• 31:59
  very. I think it works.
• 32:02
  It definitely works in those in the Dome because that's kind of
• 32:06
  what it is. Now this I subscribe to Matthew
• 32:08
  Warthouse's idea that the chess game is Tegan kind of processing
• 32:15
  the game. She's just kind of played with
• 32:16
  that trick and those are essentially kind of Tegan and
• 32:19
  that trick. Yeah, that makes.
• 32:21
  Sense I know she's she's got a more optimistic view of
• 32:24
  Patrick's lifespan then if that is the case.
• 32:30
  But I kind of like that that kind of idea that she sees them
• 32:34
  playing chess because she's just been playing chess before she
• 32:37
  falls asleep. I know you've ever seen Matthew
• 32:39
  Waterhouse at a convention, but he is a small bloke.
• 32:44
  The last convention, his talk was the most interesting of the
• 32:50
  weekend because he just had a reading on Doctor Who and it
• 32:54
  wasn't just sort of anecdotes about the actors and things like
• 32:57
  that, you know, He talked about the stories as well.
• 33:01
  Yeah, I think he does have a kind of understanding of because
• 33:04
  I think he, you know, he was a fan.
• 33:05
  So he does have that. But he also has a very sort of,
• 33:08
  I think, kind of literary. But he's, you know, he's written
• 33:10
  plays, he's written poetry and books and things like that.
• 33:15
  He knows his stuff. He is also very funny as well.
• 33:18
  Have you read Blue Box Boy? I've known it's one of those
• 33:22
  books I've always kind of meant to, and then I always get put
• 33:24
  off by the whole third person thing.
• 33:26
  It's. It's so weird.
• 33:28
  I'll do a commentary one day just talking about myself in the
• 33:31
  third person the whole time, but as of how toxic it could have
• 33:37
  been on set. Yeah I can imagine.
• 33:40
  I can't imagine so Reg Hollands from the bill has just turned up
• 33:46
  obviously as as Dhaka or I think he's his name's ever spoken on
• 33:51
  screen and I I never really. I thought much of this before in
• 33:59
  kind of we. If we take the idea that the
• 34:01
  chess game is Tegan and Adric, does that then make the Jeff
• 34:06
  Stewart Retro, this Ducker character, the Doctor, a kind of
• 34:12
  because he's kind of offering this kind of experience, this,
• 34:18
  you know, Ducker Dr. I don't know.
• 34:21
  So essentially the Mara using the figures in her life.
• 34:27
  It's so kind of get her to agree to this packs.
• 34:29
  Yes. Yeah, that makes.
• 34:31
  Sense. That's kind of the reading that
• 34:33
  I am now going to take from it. But because he's kind of
• 34:37
  doctorish in a way, he's got like a little flowing cocktail
• 34:42
  thing. He's got the kind of boats.
• 34:44
  I just remember Reg from the bill being this very feckless
• 34:48
  character, so I never made the connection that this was him.
• 34:52
  And neither did I for years. So I I used to watch the film
• 34:55
  quite a lot as a kid because my parents used to watch it.
• 34:59
  So. And obviously this has Jack
• 35:01
  Meadows, you know, DCI Jack Meadows, very recognizably DCI
• 35:05
  Jack Meadows. And then it's like, Oh yeah,
• 35:08
  Retrollers is in it as well. And for years I couldn't figure
• 35:11
  out, I said, oh, is he one of the kinder?
• 35:14
  Is he like, is he just in the backgrounds?
• 35:17
  No, he's he's the Mara, essentially.
• 35:19
  And it's such a. It's such a completely different
• 35:23
  performance. I like how he bares his fangs a
• 35:27
  bit like a snake as well. He's vicious with her.
• 35:32
  Yeah, and the fact that he's alone in a dark space, I can
• 35:37
  imagine like a six year old watching this.
• 35:41
  Yeah. Just the kind of pink, the sort
• 35:43
  of pink teeth and the sort of pink sort of eyeshadow he's got
• 35:46
  on as well, which is a brilliant indication, isn't it?
• 35:49
  Because when she's taken over, obviously the camera pulls out
• 35:51
  and she's got the same makeup on her face, yeah.
• 35:54
  And it's such a great sort of, you know, Doctor Who budget
• 35:58
  solution that actually really works and is quite evocative.
• 36:04
  Well, I would say with science fiction or genre TV you're in a
• 36:08
  lot of trouble when you're asking your regular characters
• 36:10
  to behave possessed, because nine times out of 10 is
• 36:14
  interminable and she does a brilliant job in this.
• 36:18
  And it's like. Yeah, she really does.
• 36:21
  The thing that baffles me is I was asking myself, well, where
• 36:24
  the fuck was this Janet filled in the rest of the season, You
• 36:27
  know, loving it. Playing the normal Tegan.
• 36:31
  But then I think it's she doesn't get the material.
• 36:35
  I I I do think there's a real sort of case to be made that a
• 36:40
  lot of the problems with with any Doctor Who that's that's
• 36:44
  maybe subpar or any performance that's subpar.
• 36:47
  A lot of the time it's maybe down to the scripts or maybe
• 36:51
  down to. Just.
• 36:53
  The fact that it was kind of a treadmill, I mean, I guess it
• 36:56
  kind of is still probably a treadmill today, I bet.
• 36:59
  I'm sure Doctor Who's incredibly difficult to make, you know even
• 37:03
  that now is there's more money and there's a bigger team, yes.
• 37:07
  Exactly. A lot of the issues was what?
• 37:09
  You're right. And I think sausage factory,
• 37:11
  back then what? They were just churning them out
• 37:13
  one after another. Yeah, absolutely.
• 37:15
  And also I think there's more of a kind of because TV has
• 37:19
  definitely become a kind of writer's medium, and I think
• 37:24
  that's kind of reflected in modern Doctor Who we get.
• 37:27
  Doctor T Davis's Dr. You get Stephen Moffat's Doctor Who.
• 37:30
  It's not just Doctor Who executive produced by this
• 37:34
  person and this is who's writing it this week.
• 37:37
  Well, let's just say fuck, JNT won't be on the typewriter, OK?
• 37:40
  You've seen Dimensions in Time, right?
• 37:44
  Well, exactly. Love it.
• 37:46
  That sequence there where Hindal tears up the laboratory, that's
• 37:50
  a very adult scene. That's an adult having like a
• 37:54
  serious breakdown in front of. Yeah.
• 37:57
  It's there's some properly and I think you know I I I was
• 38:01
  probably too old because I think the 1st when I have first seen
• 38:04
  this I think it was probably about 11 or 12.
• 38:06
  But I can imagine, like if you're like a six or seven-year
• 38:10
  old watching Doctor Who and you see a grown man just absolutely
• 38:16
  lose his shit in that laboratory, like it must be
• 38:21
  quite unnerving and quite scary. Because there is no kind of.
• 38:26
  Sci-fi explanation for it. It's just a man having a break
• 38:29
  day I and I think that's. What's so great about this?
• 38:33
  Again and again, as I've done these commentaries when I was
• 38:35
  watching Doctor Who growing up, so as I was getting those Vhs's
• 38:38
  in the sort of the early 90s when they were coming out, it
• 38:42
  was never the monsters that frightened me.
• 38:45
  It was always either adults in a situation of peril like
• 38:51
  something like chillac in case of Androzani when he knew he was
• 38:54
  going to die and he screaming his head off that really scared
• 38:56
  me or adults behaving in a a sinister way.
• 39:01
  So the villains usually Harrison Chase, Scorby and people like
• 39:05
  that, you know it was never really the monster.
• 39:08
  So that really affected me as a kid.
• 39:11
  Yeah, he's yeah, he's terrifying.
• 39:14
  He is terrifying because he is so unpredictable and then so.
• 39:17
  And duck is kind of terrifying in a different way, like kind of
• 39:20
  more like he is the kind of he is the snake in the garden.
• 39:24
  And I know this is kind of more of a Buddhist tale, but
• 39:27
  obviously a lot of religion kind of draws from very similar kind
• 39:32
  of influences and and that that is what he is.
• 39:36
  But I love that kind of slightly sort of seductive, tempting kind
• 39:41
  of thing that he has. I don't think it's any
• 39:43
  coincidence at all that she's up a tree dropping apples.
• 39:47
  No. And there's a snake involved as
• 39:49
  well. You know it's not it's it's not
• 39:51
  a thing. But but also there's there's
• 39:54
  also the kind of reading of it where because Christopher Bailey
• 39:58
  talks about this in the documentary where it's like
• 40:01
  there's no such thing as sort of demons and devils and Buddhists
• 40:04
  religion. It's all what's kind of going on
• 40:07
  inside of you. And it's it was kind of doubts
• 40:10
  and sort of prejudices and anger and and things like that, that
• 40:14
  kind of and how they manifest. And I think that's a really.
• 40:18
  So then you've kind of got the additional thing of, well, how
• 40:20
  powerful is the Mara and how powerful is actually the Mara
• 40:24
  latching on somebody that has sort of insecurity or loss you.
• 40:28
  Can have those anxieties, then? Could he actually done nothing
• 40:32
  to feed on? Yeah, it's not the first time
• 40:34
  we've been here, is it? We here was before in Planet the
• 40:37
  Spiders, yeah. Producer that flirted with
• 40:41
  Buddhism was talking about what was going on inside.
• 40:43
  Was the Doctor then? Yeah.
• 40:47
  Yeah. I mean, I guess this would have
• 40:49
  come in because there was a period where obviously nobody
• 40:53
  people weren't. People could not believe that a
• 40:56
  writer of a Doctor Who serial wouldn't show up to conventions
• 41:00
  or be interviewed by Doctor Who magazine.
• 41:02
  So there was a whole conspiracy theory about.
• 41:04
  There was a whole conspiracy theory about who Christopher
• 41:09
  Bailey really was, because surely by now he would have.
• 41:13
  He would have come and done a convention.
• 41:15
  He would have come and sat in a in a church hole and talked
• 41:18
  about Kinder. So I.
• 41:19
  Believe President Bailey was running up that hill.
• 41:22
  You know he was he was Kate Bush.
• 41:25
  He was Tom Stoppard and I think he was Barry Let at sort of
• 41:29
  various different points and then when he relaxed.
• 41:32
  He's a very unassuming man, you know, who was a bit
• 41:36
  disappointed. With the production.
• 41:38
  Yeah, baby. He's just uncomfortable talking
• 41:40
  about his work. I know you in this Matthew
• 41:43
  Jacobs documentary, Doctor. Did you see how he was treated
• 41:47
  by those American fans on that sofa?
• 41:49
  I love that though, because it has one of my all time favorite
• 41:54
  sort of sort of documentary host responses, which is when he
• 41:58
  turns around to one of those Americans he goes and This is
• 42:00
  why you were persecuted in the playgrounds.
• 42:05
  They're horrible to him, aren't they?
• 42:06
  No wonder you like Yeah, Why would you?
• 42:11
  But it's the same. So yeah, it's funny.
• 42:13
  I'm virtual. That's thrown on actors that
• 42:17
  just say, look, Doctor was just a role I did, you know, in in a
• 42:21
  very long career. And fine, I'll talk about it.
• 42:24
  But it's not the only thing I want to talk about.
• 42:26
  I know, and there was all those people throwing the dummy.
• 42:29
  I know this is doctor related, but I suppose kind of is those
• 42:32
  people getting furious that the actress thinks Snow White never
• 42:36
  really like Snow White as a kid. It's like, good, maybe she'll do
• 42:39
  something interesting with it. Do you remember when Jody Whitka
• 42:42
  didn't want to watch Doctor Who before she took the power?
• 42:49
  Oh, bloody oh, we're nearly at the end of episode one.
• 42:51
  We're nearly there. He's got the power of life and
• 42:53
  death over all of y'all what? Do you think about that
• 42:55
  cliffhanger? I love it because it it's kind
• 43:01
  of campy Doctor Who cliffhanger, but also there is a real kind of
• 43:06
  unnerving menace to it. It's like it's it's Hindle kind
• 43:11
  of finally getting kind of control.
• 43:16
  But also Hindle trying to impress God.
• 43:21
  I forgot his name. Richard Tots character.
• 43:24
  Sanders. Sanders.
• 43:26
  Yes, thank you. He looks at Colonel Sanders.
• 43:28
  How do I not remember? His name is, but it's he's so
• 43:33
  he's kind of lamping himself up. He's this kind of masculine guy.
• 43:36
  He's got a gun, he's got two guys that are going to follow
• 43:39
  him around and he's in charge tonight.
• 43:42
  I think it's a very different type of Doctor Who perfanger,
• 43:45
  but it's really good one. The weird thing for me is it
• 43:48
  absolutely shows me the difference between watching
• 43:50
  Doctor Who is a child and watching it as an adult.
• 43:53
  Because as a child, I thought I was the lamest cliffhanger ever.
• 43:57
  Where's the monsters? Where's the moment of jeopardy?
• 43:59
  Why isn't the Doctor about to be killed, you know?
• 44:02
  But as an adult, I'll just watch him have a physical breakdown in
• 44:07
  that room. And now he's suggesting that a
• 44:11
  dangerous fate is to come, and as an adult, that terrifying.
• 44:17
  I watched this during lockdown, which was maybe a mistake, or
• 44:21
  maybe the best way to possibly watch it.
• 44:24
  And yeah, it's that. It's that end of part three of
• 44:28
  Horrifying Rock. We've locked the thing inside
• 44:31
  with us, like that's essentially what it is.
• 44:33
  It's just less sort of monster heavy.
• 44:36
  It's still just as unnerving. I've come to the conclusion now.
• 44:39
  You know, those cliffhangers. There are moments of jeopardy
• 44:42
  and sometimes that can be done brilliantly.
• 44:43
  Well, you know, remember, it's one and things like that.
• 44:47
  The Daleks one, yeah. The less interesting ones and
• 44:53
  the sort of the ones where it's a suggestion or where it's like
• 44:56
  a hinge in the plot going another direction and things
• 44:59
  like that, they're the more they're the more interesting
• 45:02
  ones. Yeah, I definitely agree.
• 45:06
  Well, Speaking of cliffhangers, we're we're long past the, yeah.
• 45:10
  Well, look, we've got to skip on into episode 2, but thank you
• 45:13
  very much. Thank you very much.
• 45:16
  Let's. Go.