Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Talks to Mark Donaldson about his choice of Survival (3/3)

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Talks to Mark Donaldson about his choice of Survival (3/3) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:00
  Welcome back to a hamster with a blunt pen knife theme Doctor Who
• 0:03
  Commentary podcast Mr. Mark Donaldson.
• 0:07
  I've got an immediate question that the audience it's on
• 0:11
  Tinderhooks to know your answer to.
• 0:14
  May I? Go ahead.
• 0:17
  Thank you If you if this was remade or rewritten by Rhoda
• 0:25
  Munroe for the new series, this story, this script.
• 0:29
  But when we're whittling it down to 45 minutes, we're putting in
• 0:33
  fantastic production value and smoothing out all these sort of
• 0:36
  rough edges. Which Doctor, and more
• 0:40
  importantly companion, would you give this story to and why?
• 0:45
  Interesting. I think
• 1:02
  really, Kiss. Kiss probably isn't it really.
• 1:07
  He's the doctor that's most like, oh, hello, no.
• 1:11
  No, go on, go on. And I can hear.
• 1:15
  Oh, there we go. I, I think it is Capaldi.
• 1:17
  I think it's he's the, he's the one that's going to most, I
• 1:20
  think like McCoy, maybe. I mean, I don't know, People say
• 1:23
  Smith because he's kind of similarly a bit manipulative, a
• 1:27
  bit kind of, but you couldn't see Matt Smith doing this story.
• 1:32
  But which companion? Wow, that's the question.
• 1:36
  Because it's either Clara or Bill.
• 1:37
  Isn't it awesome? Bill just for the lesbian.
• 1:40
  I think Bill's definitely a better fit for it.
• 1:44
  And also just, I think, yeah, I think definitely Bill, because
• 1:47
  you could relocate it to the kind of, you know, the
• 1:50
  university or whatever. And I, I love the idea of that.
• 1:55
  I don't want to see it actually. I was about to say, well, it
• 1:57
  would be terrible, wouldn't it? Because you would have to lose
• 1:59
  things. But I do kind of want to see the
• 2:02
  12th Doctor versus his own, you know, Harrison, that would be
• 2:08
  that would be really interesting.
• 2:10
  Well, I suppose you get that in the Caretaker because.
• 2:12
  It would be. Wouldn't it on the planet?
• 2:16
  Yeah, that would be a bit weird. I.
• 2:20
  Mean that would be great. Maybe the 13th doctrine, yes,
• 2:30
  take on it as well with Saturday 1:00.
• 2:32
  Yeah, that would work really well, I think.
• 2:37
  Oh, did I lose you? I've lost you.
• 2:45
  Speedy weather was absolutely fine all the way through.
• 2:48
  Past episode say again, start from maybe the 30th doctrine.
• 2:53
  Yes, that's such a great point. Oh.
• 3:01
  Yeah, I think, I think the 13th Autry Yas would be quite a good
• 3:03
  version of it as well, because you'd have, I think Sasha Dewan
• 3:07
  as the master on the cheetah planet would be sublime.
• 3:11
  I think he would be really, he would properly go for that, I
• 3:16
  think, because he already is quite animalistic and cruel.
• 3:22
  Yeah. So that would be really great.
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  And then obviously you could go broke with the lesbian subtext.
• 3:28
  There would be no subtext, it would just be all lesbian.
• 3:31
  We'll finally realise what that mattress was all about in the
• 3:34
  Halloween apocalypse. Yes, you absolutely would.
• 3:37
  Actually, no. This would be the end of series
• 3:39
  12, and then the mattress just appears at the beginning of the
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  flux. Yeah, because they've, you know,
• 3:45
  they've worked through some things.
• 3:46
  Heavy scissoring going on down there, yeah.
• 3:50
  Well, this isn't no. Anyway, on that note, shall we
• 3:54
  go and watch part three? We're coming back to Earth now,
• 3:58
  aren't we? And we're going to meet the
• 3:59
  Jackie Tyler prototype, that fabulous lady that goes flipping
• 4:03
  cats. Excellent.
• 4:06
  Comes in. All right, so let's go in 321.
• 4:15
  Boom, straight into that thing. Lovely.
• 4:20
  It did get me very excited, this thing when I was a kid, my very.
• 4:24
  First option was. Battlefield, you know, so it's
• 4:26
  the first one I heard, I ever heard.
• 4:27
  Right. God, I still I I have a weird
• 4:33
  memory of battlefields in that I remember, I distinctly remember
• 4:37
  watching part four of Battlefield through a doorway in
• 4:42
  a like a hotel bar. So when it was nice weather in,
• 4:49
  in like the summer, my parents would sometimes be with their
• 4:51
  friends and, and their kids and we'd all go to this like hotel,
• 4:55
  which had like a really big beer garden and like a children's
• 4:57
  play area. And we'd all like, you know,
• 4:59
  play around while my parents just had beers and chatted to
• 5:02
  their friends. And I remember walk wandering
• 5:04
  into the the hotel because I could, I heard that the Kath
• 5:08
  McCulloch Doctor Who theme Chin. So it must have been when I was
• 5:11
  like 6 or well, 9293. So yes, 6/7 and sort of peering
• 5:19
  around the door and seeing Bessie on the telly and this guy
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  at the bar going. I can come in and watch it if
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  you want some. And I ran away.
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  Well I watched it on my not on my With my Sister Battlefield
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  episode 2 and I honestly I wasn't ready aged nine years old
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  to watch that end of episode where she's underwater and I
• 5:40
  genuinely thought she had expired and my mum tells.
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  Me. She almost did.
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  Tolerable. Can you imagine a nine year old
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  being scared of that now? It just would never happen,
• 5:50
  would it? These. 9 year olds that are
• 5:51
  brought up on SAW and. That kind of weird woofshing
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  green thing. I feel like nine was a a younger
• 5:58
  9 back then. Yeah, yeah, surely it.
• 6:02
  Was a more innocent time. I mean, kids today, Jesus
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  Christ, the stuff they've, the stuff they've lived through
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  before they're even well. Don't start saying kids today
• 6:12
  please. Oh, here we go.
• 6:16
  Now look running. Through running through the
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  desert now. That does look a bit like a
• 6:20
  quarry there now. Yeah.
• 6:23
  But then I think it's because it's just the worst that kind of
• 6:26
  I guess softens the effects work.
• 6:27
  So you kind of see it more as a. Can I ask your personal
• 6:32
  question? Yeah.
• 6:34
  It's so field with beautiful if you fancy ball.
• 6:41
  Yeah, I'm in this. I think she is.
• 6:45
  I think. You could be right.
• 6:48
  I've always kind of like people. Oh, yeah, You know, used to be
• 6:51
  quite fancy. Sophie Alden.
• 6:52
  I could never quite see it, but like, yeah, in Survival, yeah, I
• 6:55
  can see it. A bit of ghost light, but not in
• 6:58
  cursive. Fenrick.
• 7:00
  I asked for the reason that when I bought the Dragon Fire Target
• 7:04
  novel, well, Sophie Orton on the front of that, and I think a
• 7:09
  sort of whatever, I wasn't seven years old.
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  That was the prettiest person I'd ever seen in my entire life.
• 7:15
  And I used to try and sketch out.
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  I think I've got it somewhere. Oh wow.
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  Her face and that cover, So how I ended up the way I did, I have
• 7:24
  no idea. She was a bit of a tomboy mine.
• 7:27
  Well, she does have quite a chisels there.
• 7:29
  And apparently she had hairy on this she dare I will say that
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  Anthony Amy's contacts a second ago when he had a massive close
• 7:38
  up, they definitely look like yellow contacts.
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  Yes. I bet Alan Waring was
• 7:46
  frustrating at times. I was like, oh, I've got a
• 7:49
  vision of this and this is what we can do.
• 8:02
  I've had see this. As well, this kind of closeness
• 8:05
  between the two of them, it's, you know, it's, it's all there.
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  I don't know how people can't see it.
• 8:12
  Well, Luke Malloy couldn't see it, could he?
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  He said it was all bullshit. You know, when I was a younger
• 8:20
  man, I used to have older men leaning into me like that going,
• 8:23
  you know, you're like me. Right.
• 8:25
  Yeah. Come and see.
• 8:29
  Anyway, enough of that. Yes, this, this I really like
• 8:36
  where she basically says comedy and.
• 8:40
  And she is definitely succumbing to it all.
• 8:43
  Yeah. Why should they ride horses?
• 8:48
  Because it looks cool. Oh, fair, yeah.
• 8:51
  I mean anyone who gives me that reason for anything.
• 8:54
  And I think also it looks way better than those costumes, you
• 8:59
  know what I mean? Just running around, just
• 9:03
  scaring people. It gives them some speed.
• 9:06
  Yes, yeah. And it also gives you that that
• 9:09
  kind of quite nice shot at the start of part one where like the
• 9:12
  guy falls down on the road and he's like looking up at
• 9:14
  something. That was pretty nasty there.
• 9:16
  Shot through the glass, the grass.
• 9:18
  Did you see the the cheating? Yeah, tearing off a hunk of
• 9:22
  meek. I do wonder if J&T was watching
• 9:29
  these rushes going too much. Not sure that that although I
• 9:33
  think. Probably he was probably
• 9:34
  watching the rushes, although actually, yeah, I think, I think
• 9:39
  probably it wouldn't be the rushes to be the edit when
• 9:41
  they're getting ready for broadcasting that fuck it, we're
• 9:44
  not we're not coming back next week.
• 9:45
  So do. You know what's so sad is when I
• 9:48
  read the J and TS production Diaries, you know, the Richard
• 9:51
  Molesworth one, He'd stay. He kept going into that office.
• 9:56
  Yeah. What, three years or so after
• 10:00
  production ended with no job to work on, just doing little bits
• 10:04
  of sort of tie in merchandise before they finally just left a
• 10:08
  letter on his desk saying your services are no.
• 10:11
  Longer really, it's really shit like the way he was treated is I
• 10:17
  I, it's it's mad to me like how that is kind of allowed to just
• 10:20
  I'll just keep him working and then we'll just eventually kind
• 10:24
  of. I mean, it would never happen
• 10:25
  now, would it? They wouldn't salary somebody
• 10:27
  that's. You know.
• 10:28
  Just doing Daleks, the early years.
• 10:31
  That's their years output. Oh, this is that bit.
• 10:35
  Watch Mccoy's face. I see always that could burn
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  Suns. Because don't worry, he's we're
• 10:45
  going home. He's so.
• 10:51
  Good look there. Yeah, that is good.
• 10:55
  You come after us, you're dead, mate.
• 10:58
  Although I mean, if we're taking the lesbian some types on board
• 11:00
  then that makes the doctor slightly homophobic.
• 11:03
  Well, I don't surprise me. You know, it's a very
• 11:06
  heterosexual show. Yeah, you know.
• 11:13
  This is where I'll lose it a bit.
• 11:15
  Somebody sees. Sure.
• 11:16
  I can see, I can see it because I think he's, I think Inlee's
• 11:21
  doing some great work. But yeah, that whole like I'm,
• 11:28
  I'm playing a character under mental control.
• 11:33
  Acting is always just. Trust.
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  Me rock. Trust.
• 11:38
  Me, yeah. What I do like though is when we
• 11:44
  go to the the youth centre again.
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  And. How the group of lads are turned
• 11:52
  into a pack of wild animals. That is so good.
• 11:56
  And it's it's so explicit in the books because they effectively
• 12:00
  in the book, the reason why they kill Patterson and then they
• 12:04
  kill Derek is they're leaving a trail of bodies to take them to
• 12:08
  the hill where the motorcycle is.
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  I do wonder if some of this was in the script and.
• 12:14
  Yeah, it is. I wouldn't be surprised because
• 12:18
  there was something earlier that jumps help me but it's gone
• 12:21
  there, but from part one made me think that something had been
• 12:26
  kind of taken out. Oh, talking about homophobia is
• 12:29
  that line in a second here. What's your game?
• 12:31
  Then oh, this is yeah, but that's brilliant.
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  Is what that kind of because he's so like?
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  I just feel like Ronan Monroe is trying to push as much as you
• 12:44
  can. You don't give a toss here.
• 12:46
  What's your game then? Just, you know, the line with
• 12:50
  the finger. Yeah, and also just this stuff
• 12:54
  where he's just said, oh, I must have, I must have and had had a
• 13:03
  moment, but that's OK It's perfectly, you know, perfectly.
• 13:08
  Trying to rationalize the whole thing.
• 13:10
  Yeah. But then I love then when he
• 13:14
  goes into the youth centre he's like, right lads, let's go, I
• 13:17
  don't know, part like a curtain and there's Midge standing there
• 13:20
  waiting to kill. Him because that's it as well.
• 13:23
  It's like that kind of thing. We're like that's where he can
• 13:25
  be in control again. So like that's how he'll he'll
• 13:28
  recover, but obviously he never gets that chance.
• 13:31
  See, there's another difference here.
• 13:32
  I know I'm banging on about the book a lot, but there are a lot
• 13:35
  of differences, she says here. So this is where she comes to
• 13:37
  the conclusion. Yeah.
• 13:39
  Well, why'd you bring us back here, dumper?
• 13:40
  The universe. This is my home.
• 13:42
  And she touches the TARDIS. Yeah.
• 13:45
  In the book, we go back to Shreela again at the end, and
• 13:49
  Shreela goes, are you glad you came home?
• 13:52
  And she goes, yeah, are you ever going to come back?
• 13:54
  And she just goes, no, I don't think so.
• 13:56
  And then the last scene is them on the hill where she goes.
• 13:59
  Let's go back to the TARDIS. That's my Yeah, right, Yeah.
• 14:03
  And they do, you know what they do?
• 14:04
  They they use the motorbikes and they put Cara's body on it and
• 14:09
  she does her funeral pyre. Oh yes, that's really.
• 14:14
  Great. It's really, really great.
• 14:16
  Again, you wouldn't be doing that. 730 on BBC One coming.
• 14:21
  Up the budget to prefer. A little girl Mark I've.
• 14:26
  Got my. Car, I mean I've.
• 14:31
  I cannot blame this production. Children actors in the 80s.
• 14:35
  Oh yeah, it's just a nightmare to Rango this.
• 14:38
  I mean, what's his name? Warren.
• 14:43
  What's the guy's name that plays Midge?
• 14:44
  Will Barson. Will yeah, Will Barton, right.
• 14:48
  He he's not great at the whole like under control the maths a
• 14:51
  bit, but I think he's really good.
• 14:53
  Just like he does come across as this kind of just exactly what a
• 14:57
  kind of teenage boy would think a man like, you know, like a
• 15:02
  cool man is, you know, in the 80s.
• 15:06
  He's got his kind of leather sleeves, he's got his big
• 15:08
  sunglasses on. He's got a shirt and tie and
• 15:11
  he's like, yeah, I've made it. You know, I'm a proper, I'm a
• 15:14
  proper man. And I'm going to tell you guys
• 15:17
  you know how. To literally I'm the leader of
• 15:20
  the pack. Yeah, and now I've got my pack.
• 15:23
  But the other trouble with it is it's so dated, isn't it?
• 15:26
  Like it's so 89 the way he even. Just had a period piece.
• 15:31
  It's just a period piece. It's fine.
• 15:33
  Oh. You look at these flats.
• 15:35
  Oh dear. Do.
• 15:37
  You know, did you ever read the the novel Damaged Goods by Rusty
• 15:42
  Davis? I've never actually read the
• 15:44
  novel, no. I've just heard the big finish.
• 15:47
  Second, this miserable concrete block called the quadrant.
• 15:51
  It looked just like that, but again, it's like, imagine this
• 15:57
  in Colin Baker's time that that urban setting.
• 16:00
  He just wouldn't. And imagine, also imagine, like,
• 16:03
  fine, it's not very good, but could you imagine Colin Baker in
• 16:07
  that flat with that little girl trying to be kind of quiet and
• 16:11
  sympathy? Absolutely no way.
• 16:13
  Speak up child, Come on. Oh, Perry, get rid of her.
• 16:18
  Batman. Batman.
• 16:22
  Actually, I want to see that now, no.
• 16:24
  But you just couldn't put Colin Baker's absurd clown coat.
• 16:29
  In an urban. Setting it just took control.
• 16:31
  You get his head kicked in. It looks weird in Attack of the
• 16:35
  Sidemen. Do you remember when they're
• 16:36
  running up and down those streets?
• 16:38
  I mean if you saw if. You saw that man running down
• 16:40
  the street, you'd be in the other direction, right?
• 16:44
  Oh, he's very cool. Here he goes.
• 16:46
  Do you hear what I'm saying? Do you know what I'm talking
• 16:49
  about? I love that guy with his little
• 16:56
  blue baseball cap that's got the the sort of Peach just way up.
• 17:00
  Like nobody wears a hat like that.
• 17:02
  Ever the the hottest one in the pack, the one in the the grey
• 17:06
  tank top. Oh, he's.
• 17:08
  Beautiful. All right, Yeah.
• 17:09
  He tries to do some serious acting here, like it's sort of
• 17:12
  like shocks faces like. If I'm better paid, I'm going to
• 17:17
  do it, darling. OK.
• 17:21
  Oh yeah, look at Julian Holloway's face now.
• 17:24
  Yeah, that's proper. I know.
• 17:26
  I'm fucked. That's him.
• 17:28
  And in the book, they kick him to death.
• 17:30
  That's how it's described. He's kicked to death.
• 17:32
  And I think that's what they're showing here.
• 17:35
  But just. Yeah, but yeah.
• 17:43
  There's a there's a wonderful a wonderfully sort of.
• 17:46
  A. Cheap way of doing a special
• 17:47
  effects here. So they come running into the
• 17:49
  room and Ace's eyes have to turn yellow so they had to do a close
• 17:53
  up on Sophie with her eyes looking down and then she just
• 17:56
  looks up at this but never. Mind, yeah.
• 18:04
  Now I need to hear your reading on the on the motorbikes please.
• 18:10
  Yeah, can you hear my reading on the motorbike?
• 18:13
  Yes, please. Yes.
• 18:14
  What do you think about this dynamic, riveting Bonnie Tyler
• 18:18
  music video sequence? I remember when I when I first
• 18:24
  watched this as a kid, I thought it was like the coolest thing
• 18:26
  ever. And I thought the doctor landing
• 18:27
  in the mattresses was like really funny and, you know, and
• 18:30
  now I don't really get what it like why it has to be
• 18:37
  motorbikes, you know, I. Suppose because it can't be a
• 18:41
  scrap, can it? I guess because it's I, I think,
• 18:46
  I think there's a way that, you know, because obviously he's
• 18:48
  trying to get Ace, isn't he more than the doctor at this point?
• 18:51
  Because Ace is like, I'll, I'll get on the bike, I'll get him.
• 18:54
  And obviously the doctor kind of throws her off and, and that's
• 18:59
  maybe that's why it's more of a, it's because, you know, she's a
• 19:01
  cool 80s kid and like that'll, that'll seduce her into, you
• 19:05
  know, getting into the fight. But if you get the doctor
• 19:07
  involved. I mean, all anyone wanted to do
• 19:10
  in the 80s was being a music video where you're in slow
• 19:13
  motion on a bike with wind whipping at your hair.
• 19:17
  I mean, it does look kind of, I mean, it's completely
• 19:20
  unnecessary. Look at McCoy.
• 19:22
  He's loving it under the hero. But then the.
• 19:26
  Yeah, the and then. Do you remember what happens to
• 19:31
  Mitch in the book? No.
• 19:34
  Well, he comes out of this and he's not got a black face.
• 19:37
  All of his face is literally skin.
• 19:39
  From melting off Yeah, well, I get him would.
• 19:41
  Be and then of course the pack kick him to death as they like
• 19:47
  to do so they kick him, Derek and Patterson to death That so
• 19:52
  they are, I wonder. If that's hacker, one Ronan
• 19:54
  Monroe, as a predominantly a theatre writer, just just going,
• 20:00
  oh, that's an easy way to. To kill people on stage, you
• 20:03
  just have a a group of people just pretending to kick somebody
• 20:06
  to death. Maybe that's just in her head
• 20:08
  and that's why everybody in survival guides by being kicked
• 20:10
  to death. Mark, this is the bit I kept
• 20:12
  rewinding. It's the.
• 20:15
  The boys all coming to water and the music's going and she's
• 20:19
  like, help me. And I said I thought if my mum
• 20:23
  saw this she could see it's the best dramatic television ever.
• 20:29
  Is. No, she's good.
• 20:31
  I think she's good. She's.
• 20:32
  Really good and like I think as well like there there is
• 20:36
  something quite like there's proper stakes because even the
• 20:40
  bit were like the doctrine ace are running to save Patterson.
• 20:43
  What are they going to like, realistically?
• 20:45
  What could they possibly do if they had turned up on time like
• 20:50
  they're all? Animals, I think they would be
• 20:51
  kicked to death, Mark. Yeah, probably, probably.
• 20:54
  I mean, and of course in the book where the the group of lads
• 20:59
  have now murdered three people, them coming towards Ace is very.
• 21:05
  Threatening. Yeah.
• 21:06
  But even the implication on the TV version of this group of boys
• 21:10
  going after this one girl is pretty scary.
• 21:15
  But then they shit themselves when their when their cat and a
• 21:17
  horse turns up. What you would, wouldn't you?
• 21:19
  Look at her. Wow.
• 21:22
  What I love that this bit is where Cara gets off the horse
• 21:26
  and he's sort of the master's sort of cool and in control.
• 21:29
  He's like, you can't do anything to me.
• 21:31
  And she just goes, do you bleed? And then he steps back like, oh
• 21:36
  shit. Yeah.
• 21:41
  And I think it's due, correct me if I'm wrong because I don't
• 21:44
  know, a common complaint of like mid 80s is things all end in a
• 21:47
  bloodbath. But I think when your theme is
• 21:50
  survival of the fittest and the idea is that people are turning
• 21:54
  into wild animals, this is one time when it's OK to actually.
• 21:56
  End and you do actually care about the characters as well,
• 21:59
  which is a crucial thing like you care about Kara like because
• 22:03
  Ace cares about Kara she's. Odd because she hasn't really
• 22:07
  had much dialogue. No, true.
• 22:10
  But I think it's just all in the shorthand.
• 22:12
  It's all in that scene by the Breva.
• 22:14
  It's all in the kind of running together, the fact that she
• 22:16
  comes to save her. I mean this is very silly, but.
• 22:20
  Oh, the amount of times and I've been in that position over a bin
• 22:23
  bag, I'll tell you, it's lumber support, you know, poor McCoy, I
• 22:32
  mean. There's, I mean, we're, we're
• 22:33
  straying into Doctor Who, too hot for TV territory here.
• 22:36
  But there's like I cannot remember which one it is.
• 22:39
  Don't tell me. Then there's an old DWM comic
• 22:43
  strip where there's six. Doctor explains that he pooped
• 22:48
  the sofa there for some reason like.
• 22:52
  Oh, what an earlier talk. To help, yeah.
• 22:55
  Oh please, that's so spin off Doctor Who, isn't it?
• 22:59
  Probably written by Gary Russell.
• 23:04
  Oh, look. Now I I can't tell you my love
• 23:07
  for Lisa Baumann knows no bounds.
• 23:09
  Her Bernie Summerfield on audio is one of my favourites and
• 23:13
  she's a terrific director as well.
• 23:15
  It's a bit of a shame we don't see more of her because she is
• 23:18
  such a good actress. Yeah.
• 23:22
  Oh, this is great. So this is what I love about
• 23:25
  survival is that for all, especially during the 80s, all
• 23:31
  these kind of convoluted plans that the Master has to get one
• 23:36
  up on the Doctor, to kill the Doctor, to trap the Doctor.
• 23:39
  What I love about survival is that ultimately what this comes
• 23:42
  down to is it's primal. It's just two guys who are just
• 23:48
  kind of locked in this like eternal battle and ultimately
• 23:52
  the only way it's going to end is one of them just has to brain
• 23:55
  the other one with a rock. And I think it's the only story
• 24:00
  where you can actually have these two characters go here.
• 24:04
  Yeah, they try it in the TV movie and I don't think it
• 24:07
  works. It doesn't and also the 8th
• 24:11
  doctor is really apologetic about about the whole fight in
• 24:15
  that. But yeah, this it it's I mean,
• 24:19
  sure, it's the best of McCoy and and here they kind of roaming
• 24:21
  around, but. I didn't care like that shot.
• 24:23
  I was gripped. That shot on McCoy with its
• 24:26
  skull is. Great.
• 24:29
  I fucking love the explosions in the sky.
• 24:31
  I love the flames in the water. I like how the boulders split
• 24:35
  and fire comes spitting out. I think I think for once that
• 24:39
  all the production values works here.
• 24:41
  And just this last confrontation between the two of them, like if
• 24:45
  Doctor Who had had totally ended here.
• 24:49
  I think this is your raking back falls moment, you know, I think.
• 24:54
  This is why it feels quite satisfying as an indie.
• 24:56
  Yeah, go on McCoy, give it some. I recently got into a fight for
• 25:06
  the first time in about 25 years.
• 25:09
  Physical fight. Not deliberately, but I was
• 25:12
  MacArthur and I were coming home from a night out and I'd a guy
• 25:17
  had tried to skip the taxi queue and I just, I just kind of
• 25:19
  offhandedly went look at this cheeky cunt trying to try to
• 25:22
  skip the taxi queue, right? He did not like that.
• 25:26
  So anyway, so we ended up sort of scrapping a little bit until
• 25:28
  some bounces from a nearby pub kind of, you know, came and tore
• 25:31
  up. And in my head, I feel like I
• 25:35
  thought I was Jon Pertwee in that car park in the Green
• 25:38
  Death, you know, flipping, flipping fork over my shoulder.
• 25:41
  But in reality, I was Sylvester McCoy on my knees in Perryville,
• 25:45
  going If we fight animals, we die like.
• 25:49
  Animals you. Know I can see it.
• 25:50
  I can see it. Oh, I'm sure you were every bit
• 25:56
  pearly. I sort of sort of slap, you
• 25:59
  know, I'd be like, I'd be like Matt Smith in a fight, you know?
• 26:06
  I do like just to go back to I do think that final
• 26:09
  confrontation is, well, chef's kiss.
• 26:12
  It's brilliant. And I I don't even mind McCoy
• 26:15
  shouting in that scene. No, because it works.
• 26:18
  It's and I, I Yeah. And as this is a kind of like
• 26:23
  proper, everything's going to be all right.
• 26:25
  He's back. There's some lovely lines here
• 26:29
  as well. Place is different, but the hunt
• 26:31
  goes on. You didn't worry about the.
• 26:33
  Hunt that was a good, that was a good, that was a good sub S
• 26:35
  we're calling. Back.
• 26:36
  Yeah, when I'm not taking that piss, I can do it quite well.
• 26:39
  When he does eventually move on, I'll I'll off my surface.
• 26:42
  The big finish. Inappropriate.
• 26:51
  I've got a question for you though.
• 26:53
  Can you do the last speech without looking at the
• 26:56
  subtitles? Without looking at the
• 26:57
  subtitles. OK, Yeah, All right.
• 26:59
  OK. Hang on, I'll give you your cue.
• 27:02
  Home. Home.
• 27:03
  The TARDIS. Yes, the TARDIS.
• 27:06
  Go. There are worlds out there where
• 27:08
  the sky is burning with the seas of the Seas asleep and the river
• 27:13
  stream somewhere. Oh, no, no, it's people with the
• 27:16
  smoke and cities with the song. Yes, Somewhere, somewhere else.
• 27:21
  The tea is getting cold. Come on, Ace, we've got work to
• 27:24
  do. Well done, well done.
• 27:27
  It's. Lovely speech, isn't it?
• 27:30
  When they did that again for Tales of the TARDIS, I properly
• 27:35
  burst out crying. I had a few moments in those
• 27:38
  tales of the TARDIS. You know more.
• 27:40
  Far more than the 60 of specials.
• 27:44
  Yeah, yeah, definitely. You can see why it kind of came
• 27:48
  out of Russell T kind of looking at what they had going, oh, have
• 27:51
  we done enough to actually celebrate 60 years of Doctor
• 27:54
  Who? So yeah, I'm really glad they
• 27:57
  exist. It was interesting.
• 27:58
  I listened to my friend Richie does a podcast called I Hate
• 28:01
  Doctor Who in which he gets friends of his who don't like
• 28:05
  Doctor Who to watch Doctor Who as a kind of way to convince
• 28:08
  them that no, no, no, it's really good, you should watch it
• 28:10
  right. Oh.
• 28:11
  I see and it's previous. They did the Mind Robber
• 28:15
  recently and one of his mates was talking about how he'd
• 28:18
  watched the tales of the TARDIS thing for the Mind Robber, he
• 28:21
  said. I had no, I'd barely had any
• 28:24
  idea who these characters were other than like they were Doctor
• 28:26
  Who companions. And he said, and even I was
• 28:29
  going a little bit and in my head I was going, if I, if I
• 28:33
  actually was into this, I'd be balling right now.
• 28:37
  And I think that's like quite a testament to how good those
• 28:40
  tales of tires are, that if you can see, if you're not a Doctor
• 28:44
  Who fan and you can see like, oh, I can see how much this
• 28:46
  means to people, job done do. You know what got me?
• 28:50
  And I'm not going to mention his name because I've been taking it
• 28:54
  in vain too much. He keeps telling me off.
• 28:56
  But somebody you and I both know said it it he thought this was
• 28:59
  the weakest one. But the one that moved me the
• 29:01
  most was the Vicky one, Just how Morgan O'Brien so effortlessly
• 29:06
  slipped back into that character.
• 29:08
  And and she's like, oh, Stephen. I was like, Oh my God, it's
• 29:13
  literally like she stepped away from the myth makers into this.
• 29:18
  So that really got me. And you know, the bit at the end
• 29:20
  of the the 6th Doctor one with him and Perry at the console
• 29:23
  slapping at each other's hands. And I was like, Oh my God,
• 29:26
  that's that's what we could have had.
• 29:28
  Yeah, so annoying. We do somewhere, somewhere in
• 29:32
  the multiverse. Yeah, just on audio, just like.
• 29:35
  Well, look, now we've extolled the virtues and the occasional
• 29:40
  problems of survival, but now we have to list our three fabulous
• 29:45
  things to recommend this story. I don't think this is going to
• 29:47
  be too difficult for. You no.
• 29:50
  So first up, I think this is a great conclusion to Doctor Who.
• 29:54
  It's purely by accident, of course it is.
• 29:56
  But I think there's something really interesting in what it
• 29:59
  says about young people. So in An Unearthly Child, we
• 30:04
  have two teachers who are concerned about a pupil and go
• 30:07
  out of their way to make sure that everything's OK in
• 30:11
  survival, which is 26 years later, we have teenagers going
• 30:16
  missing across the region. And no.
• 30:20
  And you don't give a toss, do you?
• 30:23
  You know, it's a really interesting kind of look at kind
• 30:26
  of how things have kind of degraded societally in 26 years
• 30:31
  of Doctor Who. So yeah, that's, that's I think
• 30:35
  a really interesting thing. If you want to kind of revisit
• 30:39
  survival in that context, I think it's really interesting to
• 30:42
  do that. You know.
• 30:44
  In A Lovely Child, when Ian and Barbara go to the junkyard,
• 30:49
  there's sort of an implication that the Doctor's holding Susan
• 30:52
  against his will, isn't there? A bit like he's a dirty old man.
• 30:56
  And it's a bit like the lion in Aliens of London, where the
• 31:00
  policeman asked Christopher Eccleston.
• 31:02
  What's interesting is we've got to this point now.
• 31:04
  Patterson doesn't ask that question at all, does he?
• 31:06
  No, he does. Hanging out with.
• 31:08
  This old man, what's what relationship is going on here?
• 31:12
  We've sort of forgotten all of that.
• 31:14
  Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah.
• 31:16
  I hadn't thought about that. But then I suppose Patterson,
• 31:19
  is, he kind of interacts with the doctor.
• 31:21
  He interacts with AC, barely attracts them together, does he?
• 31:24
  That's true. Yeah, that's right.
• 31:27
  Well, look, my first thing is, and I don't think there's anyone
• 31:32
  on the world that will disagree with me when I say this, I think
• 31:35
  it's one of the best scores for any Doctor Who story.
• 31:38
  Dominantly. Obviously we couldn't hear it
• 31:40
  whilst watching it, so we couldn't really enjoy it.
• 31:44
  But all of it the Spanish guitar as they're very slowly going
• 31:48
  across the desert and on the on the horse that sort of I'm going
• 31:52
  to do it. I'm so sorry.
• 31:54
  All of that the weed scratching when the kittlings, you know,
• 32:01
  that's sort of like it's like it's literally like nails on a
• 32:04
  blackboard. It's just a brilliantly
• 32:07
  atmospheric score and it it pushes the exhaustitism of the
• 32:11
  planet and the could sort of the the dreariness.
• 32:16
  There's a sort of like, aching loneliness sort of music in the
• 32:19
  first episode that really captures how dull.
• 32:23
  Their avail is. So I think it's a brilliant,
• 32:25
  brilliant piece of music. Yeah, definitely.
• 32:28
  I think my second thing has got to be Anthony Inley.
• 32:31
  I think it's it is his best performance since Lagopoulos
• 32:36
  probably. And it's he's menacing, he's
• 32:42
  bloodthirsty, he's kind of unpredictable, which is
• 32:47
  something that you could never say about the inlay master
• 32:51
  because he's always going to bloody show up in some weird
• 32:54
  disguise. But here, you know, the doctor
• 32:57
  is kind of struggling to keep up with him because he's this kind
• 33:00
  of wild animal. And also, I think it it's not
• 33:06
  this kind of convoluted plot. It's the master understanding
• 33:09
  that that if he gets the doctor, this planet, the doctor will
• 33:11
  help him get off the planet. And when that kind of doesn't
• 33:16
  work, he still that still rankles, you know, that he's
• 33:19
  kind of won. And then therefore it just comes
• 33:23
  down to a, you know, an absolute Lammy on the cheetah planet.
• 33:29
  And it's the only time you you could do that sort of big
• 33:32
  physical fight because it's not that show, but it works so
• 33:35
  brilliantly. Fish and you know, not to excel
• 33:38
  the music too much, but the music in that last scene that
• 33:41
  when the cheetahs vanish and the chorus comes in and then you've
• 33:45
  got loads of that scratching going on and that pianos go,
• 33:49
  it's, it's, it's apocalyptic, isn't it?
• 33:52
  It is. It is.
• 33:53
  Or as much as you can do on ABBC budget in 19. 89 on a fragile 8
• 33:57
  Oxy Cornish St. Well, hold on to your hats then,
• 34:00
  because my second thing is going to be of course.
• 34:03
  Sophie Aldrid as Ace, because I think there's a lot of merit
• 34:07
  here in what she's doing. I think she responds extremely
• 34:10
  well to the script that looks into her backgrounds and gives
• 34:14
  her just so much to do. I remember saying in a review I
• 34:19
  wrote ages ago, this feels more like it's Ace's show than the
• 34:23
  Doctors, because the focus on her in ghosts like Curse of
• 34:28
  Fenrik and Survival, that's never happened before really.
• 34:33
  I think a couple of times maybe Lela has had a few stories where
• 34:36
  she got quite a bit of focus, but not like this.
• 34:39
  Not like Ace falling in love, Ace going back home and meeting
• 34:43
  her friends, Ace confronting her fears from the past, Ace, you
• 34:47
  know, raging against racism, all of that stuff.
• 34:51
  We've we've never afforded the secondary character this much
• 34:57
  focus. And as a result, she's like a Co
• 35:01
  lead now. And I'd say in places it's
• 35:05
  almost ASO rather than doctor. And I don't object to that
• 35:08
  because they're doing interesting things.
• 35:10
  And there are times where I think she doesn't pull it off
• 35:13
  this season. And there are other times where
• 35:15
  I think she does. And I just think she does
• 35:17
  brilliantly here. And she and she just looks
• 35:19
  great. They they've just got the look
• 35:21
  of Ace as this sort of wild creature, just perfect in this.
• 35:25
  Yeah, definitely. So there.
• 35:27
  Stick that in your Pope and smoke it.
• 35:31
  So the third one, look, Sylvester McCoy is always great.
• 35:35
  I'm not going to choose Sylvester McCoy.
• 35:38
  I'm going to choose Julian Holloway because I think there's
• 35:42
  something really interesting in opening this series with
• 35:46
  Battlefield, where you bring back the Brigadier, but it's not
• 35:50
  the kind of blood and Thunder Brigadier is.
• 35:54
  He's mellowed, he's wandering a garden centre.
• 35:58
  He just kind of wants to live at a comfortable retirement.
• 36:00
  But first of all, he's got to get back in action and defeat
• 36:04
  these kind of weird Arthurian soldiers.
• 36:06
  But ultimately he's no longer that soldier that life is.
• 36:11
  He's left that kind of life behind.
• 36:13
  And then you get to survival where you've got Patterson who
• 36:18
  is still this this kind of military man.
• 36:21
  And he's not even he's not even proper army, you know, he's TA
• 36:26
  and he's still clinging on to that kind of old fashioned idea
• 36:31
  that that, you know, arguably the Brigadier used to kind of
• 36:33
  represent in Doctor Who. I think that's really smart.
• 36:37
  And I think, again, it's purely by accident, but I think Julian
• 36:41
  Holloway is excellent as this kind of outdated kind of sort of
• 36:46
  dinosaur figure that's still has a position where he can spite
• 36:51
  this nonsense about what it is to be, to be a proper man.
• 36:55
  You know, I think it's a great performance.
• 36:59
  I think he's very funny with Sylvester McCoy.
• 37:02
  He is. And I think, and I think the bit
• 37:06
  where he's holding hands with Derek says everything you need
• 37:11
  to say about that character and what what survival is trying to
• 37:15
  save for that character. Were you saying toxic
• 37:17
  masculinity? I'm saying perhaps repression
• 37:23
  and and he's perhaps closeted and is amping up his masculinity
• 37:30
  to somehow divert from from something else because he does
• 37:34
  surround himself with a lot of. Men in Great jokes and tank tops
• 37:41
  is exactly where I would be if I was in Peruvo.
• 37:44
  Well, actually that's sort of feed into my last choice then,
• 37:47
  and that's Rona Monroe, who I think dared to come into Doctor
• 37:53
  Who one just as a woman right for the show, which just wasn't
• 37:57
  dumb in the classic scenes. Very, very rarely.
• 38:00
  And it's. Still not done enough?
• 38:02
  No. No, although I did turn quite a
• 38:05
  bit during chipper's time, didn't it?
• 38:07
  There was a lot of women writing during chipper's time, but then
• 38:10
  everyone just slagged off all the scripts.
• 38:13
  You can't win. But what she did was she didn't
• 38:16
  say I'm going to do a Doctor Who run around.
• 38:18
  She said I'm going to write a sensual character piece where
• 38:24
  the main character is a planet, where you go to a planet that's
• 38:29
  a character that literally gets under your skin and turns you
• 38:33
  into a wild thing. And I've said it a million times
• 38:36
  in this country. It's just layers of storytelling
• 38:39
  and nuance and sensitivity and maturity that you just don't
• 38:44
  normally get in Doctor Who. And so the fact that we ended
• 38:47
  here on this script that was trying to do unique and original
• 38:52
  and really interesting things, certainly character wise,
• 38:56
  definitely concept wise, yeah, that's a great way to end the
• 39:00
  show on a fucking high. I don't think the ideas are
• 39:05
  realized as well as they could have been if there was a bigger
• 39:08
  budget or even if it was done like 10 years later.
• 39:12
  And I do think the book offers a more brutal and thorough reading
• 39:19
  of the themes. The fucking props for giving it
• 39:22
  a go. No, definitely I didn't.
• 39:25
  I mean the script is so lean like it.
• 39:29
  There's no nothing's wasted. Like you said in certain part
• 39:32
  one, everything sort of ties into the the central themes and
• 39:37
  that that's great writing. You know, there's no words
• 39:40
  wasted. There's no scenes wasted.
• 39:42
  Everything has has a role to play.
• 39:45
  It's interesting, she. Doesn't even go past the usual
• 39:48
  target page count like a lot of those Mccoy's books did.
• 39:52
  I think it hers, yeah. Because they all wrote overwrote
• 39:55
  their scripts, didn't they? But.
• 39:56
  It's like 130 pages or something like that, and yet you don't
• 39:59
  feel as if you need to expand it any further than that because
• 40:02
  there's loads added anyway. Yeah, it's interesting.
• 40:06
  When I, when I talked to her last week, it was she said it
• 40:10
  was like really interesting going back to Doctor Who in,
• 40:15
  well, I guess 2015 was it because I heard she was going
• 40:20
  back year like 8, like a year or so before they actually
• 40:24
  announced it. Because a friend of mine have
• 40:27
  been at a the Scottish National Theatre event where somebody is
• 40:31
  kind of, oh, she's, she's writing for Doctor Who again.
• 40:35
  So obviously that go back to me. But when she was, she was
• 40:38
  talking about writing years of light and kind of saying,
• 40:41
  apparently she kind of sat down and was like, right, how do I
• 40:43
  get the lesbian subtext in this time?
• 40:45
  And then she got the script for series 10 and was like, oh,
• 40:49
  Steven Moffat's created a lesbian character.
• 40:52
  Oh, great. Well, you know, I'm kind of
• 40:55
  saying like, isn't that quite incredible?
• 40:58
  Like in terms of like how far Doctor Who's going to come from
• 41:03
  1989 to 2018 when that 17 when that episode goes out.
• 41:09
  Trouble is so Mark, right? Is it survival yet?
• 41:11
  It's so subtle. It's barely perceptible unless
• 41:14
  you're really looking in the ends of light.
• 41:17
  You have that scene where Bill sits down with those Romans.
• 41:19
  She goes, you know, some people fancy men, some people fancy
• 41:22
  women. And then the Roman guy goes,
• 41:24
  well, yeah, I'm fucking him. You know what I'm like?
• 41:28
  What am I watching? The ABC Changeable Guide to gay
• 41:32
  Sex. Did you like ears of light?
• 41:39
  I like the target novelization a lot better.
• 41:42
  I haven't read that. So it's, it's a similar thing.
• 41:45
  It's actually expands on that quite a bit because I, I think
• 41:52
  ears of light, I, I think there's some really good stuff
• 41:55
  in there. But I think the the problem I
• 41:58
  have with the Ears of Light is it has to stop 10 minutes early
• 42:01
  so that you can set up the finale.
• 42:06
  It's it's like it doesn't kind of really get to breathe as a
• 42:09
  story. And that's kind of my main issue
• 42:11
  with it. Just don't remember a thing
• 42:13
  about it. Whereas I can't forget survival.
• 42:17
  You know, Black Cats going around beaming people onto
• 42:21
  planets and vicious fights and the Doctor and the Master
• 42:26
  scrabbling and the fight for the How can you forget that?
• 42:28
  It's like a load of Romans in a cave fighting something.
• 42:32
  I don't even know what they're fighting.
• 42:34
  It's also an interesting reflection of kind of her, her
• 42:37
  career's gone. Is that like she's writing
• 42:39
  survival and I think around that time she's writing a lot of
• 42:42
  contemporary theatre pieces. And then by the time she writes
• 42:46
  Theatres of Light, she's just finished writing the 1st 3 James
• 42:50
  plays, which were all about the history of Scotland.
• 42:53
  So you get the kind of legion of the 9th and and all that kind of
• 42:57
  stuff. So there there is a kind of
• 42:59
  interesting sort of parallel with her wider theatre work in
• 43:04
  both of those stories. Do that book from our book club.
• 43:07
  You know, I think that might be quite an interesting read.
• 43:09
  Yeah, it's it's worth, worth the read.
• 43:11
  It's really, really good. But I'm so pleased we did this
• 43:15
  because we got to redress the crimes that occurred in strictly
• 43:20
  government hamster. In fact, I've noticed something
• 43:23
  with you. You know, the first one you did
• 43:25
  was Kinder, which is a very layered Doctor Who story,
• 43:30
  unusually so, and that we've done another one.
• 43:33
  So the question is, what's the next layer classic Doctor we're
• 43:38
  going to do? Are there any more?
• 43:40
  It's interesting you say that because actually for me, Kinder
• 43:45
  and Survival were two of the earliest Doctor Who video
• 43:48
  purchases. So Survival was the first.
• 43:50
  I think Kinder wasn't much long after that.
• 43:52
  We're like, they must all be like this then.
• 43:55
  It's that's weird. That's something about my I
• 43:57
  always thought I just became pretentious, like through a
• 44:00
  university degree. But maybe I've always been
• 44:02
  pretentious. I don't, I don't know.
• 44:05
  I don't know what the next one. Is you write that pretentious?
• 44:07
  All right, you're writing articles about Star Trek.
• 44:09
  That's true. I'll probably do that.
• 44:11
  I might do a new series one. I feel like that that may be
• 44:14
  that may be. OK, well, send a smallest smile
• 44:16
  away. OK, because I need to do more of
• 44:18
  those. Maybe we should do something in
• 44:19
  the Steven Moffett era. You can tell me where I'm going
• 44:21
  wrong there. Maybe, yeah.
• 44:24
  Do you know? What I haven't done the
• 44:26
  Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang yet.
• 44:28
  I'm very surprised because I think everyone loves that one.
• 44:31
  Oh, that's interesting. All well enough in time in The
• 44:34
  Doctor Falls. Oh no, how are you speaking my
• 44:39
  language? Well, look, until then, thank
• 44:42
  you very much for your time. Thank you for having me on your
• 44:45
  podcast as well because I had an absolute blast doing that.
• 44:47
  Oh, it was it was an absolute hoot.
• 44:49
  And if anybody hasn't listened to it, yeah, in in the time MASH
• 44:53
  episode 3 just prepared. To be appalled.
• 44:57
  Yes, prepare for George to completely walk back everything
• 45:01
  he said in this podcast. The funniest thing was when Ben
• 45:05
  went I don't like the feelings you're making me have and I say
• 45:12
  something fucking arrogant like it's.
• 45:13
  Because I'm talking a lot of sense and you know it, yeah.
• 45:17
  Always great, seriously, But it's always a delight to talk to
• 45:21
  you. Thank you very much for your
• 45:22
  time. The same.
• 45:24
  Thank you.