Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Strictly Come Hamster - Series One (featuring Michael Storm & Denise Sutton)

Transcript

Strictly Come Hamster - Series One (featuring Michael Storm & Denise Sutton) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:35
  2 words. Excellent bottom.
• 0:41
  Welcome back to. Thank you very much by the way.
• 0:44
  Welcome. Come hamster, my name is Joe
• 0:48
  Ford of the excellent bottom and it is my delight today to to be
• 0:55
  talking about series one of Doctor Who.
• 0:58
  I'm here with my fabulous Co host, Mr. Rod Brown.
• 1:01
  Hello, Rod. Hello, Joe.
• 1:03
  How are you doing? I wasn't actually, I wasn't
• 1:06
  directing the excellent bottom necessarily to you, but you.
• 1:08
  Know completely a couple of weeks ago.
• 1:10
  Well, that's true. That's how I bent over to grab
• 1:12
  that book I saw, yeah. You saw OK, let's let's move
• 1:15
  swiftly on. So you are absolutely right,
• 1:20
  Joe. We are in series one, which is
• 1:22
  slightly ironic because last episode, of course, we looked at
• 1:25
  season one. And so now we've lost a queen.
• 1:29
  We've lost Jacqueline Hill, but we've crowned a new queen in her
• 1:32
  place. Camille Kajuri has come along,
• 1:35
  even though she's more at home in pink Primark joggers than she
• 1:39
  is in a comfy cardy. And we've swapped good old safe,
• 1:43
  reliable Ian for less reassuring Mickey, who I can't imagine
• 1:47
  fighting an Aztec warrior who'll probably be cowering in the
• 1:49
  corner. And of course he's possibly a
• 1:52
  little less wholesome than the wonderful William Russell.
• 1:55
  But let's move on swiftly from that.
• 1:57
  And we've ditched poor old underserved Caroline Ford, your
• 2:01
  favorite Joe, for the brilliantly developed and
• 2:04
  wonderfully played Rose, a character who's easily the
• 2:07
  equivalent of a doctor. And finally, we've swapped Chris
• 2:10
  Waite and the Carolers for Britney Spears and soft sell.
• 2:14
  So let's get into it and help us sort out.
• 2:17
  Here we go, our blonde fell fotch Pasamir de Slavine from
• 2:20
  our mighty dregrafest of the holy Hadro, Jurassic Maxim
• 2:23
  Roden. Oh.
• 2:24
  Bravo. Thank you.
• 2:27
  Did that take you? He's been practicing all day.
• 2:30
  I've. Been practicing since two, 2005.
• 2:34
  We are joined by two very special guests.
• 2:36
  They're going to help us decide which store is picking up the
• 2:39
  location glitter ball and which is going to be forced to have
• 2:42
  dinner with Joe in bondage. So let's welcome our two guests.
• 2:47
  Denise, would you like to introduce yourself?
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  Hi, my name is Denise Sutton. I live in Norway, but I am a
• 2:55
  lifelong Doctor Who fan and it's my second time podcasting with
• 3:01
  Joe and the first time with you guys, Rod and Michael.
• 3:04
  So hello and thank you for inviting me back.
• 3:07
  Hello. Denise Well.
• 3:09
  Can I ask you so with the new episodes, how are you getting
• 3:12
  older those? Well.
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  That's a story to be told with the new series.
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  I'd been living in Norway for three years by the time the
• 3:21
  series came back, and I just thought, oh, OK, then I suppose
• 3:26
  I'm going to have to wait for the DVDs.
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  Because that was prior to iPlayer, of course, and you're
• 3:32
  not supposed to watch iPlayer from outside of the UK.
• 3:35
  Oh Hun. And so in.
• 3:40
  Sorry. I yeah, absolutely.
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  So I did have to wait for the DVDs initially.
• 3:46
  And now, of course, it's on Disney Plus, so I can watch it
• 3:50
  legally for the first time in a long, long time without having
• 3:55
  to buy DVDs and Blu rays. And it's got the extra added
• 3:59
  attraction of Norwegian subtitles, which I feel what
• 4:02
  everybody wants. I feel quite sorry for the
• 4:07
  person who has to do this because it must be a bit of a
• 4:10
  brain scrambler for them. Oh I'm glad you can get him
• 4:15
  though, and legally too. And, well, yes.
• 4:19
  Introduce our 2nd guest for tonight and find out if he's
• 4:21
  legal. Hello, I'm Michael Storm and I'm
• 4:25
  very happy to be invited to appear on my second favorite web
• 4:28
  destination, Word Hamster in the title.
• 4:31
  Your second favorite with the word hamster in it?
• 4:34
  What's? Your.
• 4:38
  First, I don't think he is legal.
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  You know Rob. It doesn't sound like it, does
• 4:42
  it? Yeah, I think we better
• 4:44
  definitely move quite swiftly on on that one.
• 4:48
  So before we get into the stories, let's just have a quick
• 4:50
  run around we. This is no doubt going to be a
• 4:52
  fairly lengthy podcast because we've got 10 stories to go
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  through. So come on guys, just give us
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  one sentence. Your feelings about series one.
• 5:02
  Let's start with one sentence. One sentence.
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  OK, OK. Michael, go for it.
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  An exciting reboot. Oh, a short sentence.
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  Excellent, Denise. OK, well if you saw The Devil's
• 5:17
  Chord, which I'm sure you did, which ended with music being
• 5:20
  reintroduced to the world after having been absent for 40 years,
• 5:26
  this is a pure explosion of Doctor Who onto our screens
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  after us not having had very much of it for 16 years.
• 5:36
  So it's like that. Oh.
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  Nice, Joe. So really hard to do in a
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  sentence. I'll I'll, I'll maybe two or
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  three. I think it's an all bets are off
• 5:47
  season because a formula hadn't been created yet.
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  So I love going back to one where they were feeling their
• 5:54
  way in and just trying everything to see what worked.
• 5:57
  And fortunately everything worked because they basically
• 6:00
  repeat the formula for 2-3 and four.
• 6:02
  But yeah, really, really exciting.
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  My first new Doctor Who to be watched, sort of.
• 6:09
  I'm watching it when it's aired. And, ah, just two brilliant
• 6:13
  leads. I really love this year.
• 6:16
  Fabulous. And I will say it's a bold,
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  confident, very assured given that none of the team had kind
• 6:23
  of worked on a program of this size and stature or even content
• 6:26
  before. But I would say as far as the
• 6:29
  leads are concerned, one definitely outshines the other.
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  And for me, Billy Piper consistently overshadows
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  Christopher Eccleston, who is not my favorite doctor, I have
• 6:40
  to say. I think he overplays and
• 6:43
  overhands it horribly in places. But no doubt we will get to that
• 6:48
  as we progress. But yay to Billy.
• 6:51
  To Christopher. Sorry guys, he started already.
• 6:56
  So before we dip into it, shall we go to our overview comments
• 7:00
  as to be read out by our glorious guests?
• 7:03
  All right, so we're starting off with Hap.
• 7:07
  It's back. Hooray, Chris.
• 7:09
  Chris Eccleston is the doctor. He could do steel, but can he do
• 7:13
  the light touches so well, should that be?
• 7:16
  Can he do the light touches? Billy Piper, Are you taking the
• 7:19
  Mick? Pop star Billy Piper Oh, this is
• 7:22
  a mess. Then I watched Rose and realised
• 7:24
  I knew diddly squat about making TV.
• 7:26
  It was superb. I.
• 7:28
  Don't think that was an uncommon opinion as well.
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  And Lucy McCall said Chris Eccleston absolutely was the
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  doctor from the first run for your life.
• 7:38
  Yes. On Michael.
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  OK Sihart, the joy of having the show you back quickly turned
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  into the show of the into the joy of the show being brilliant.
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  Eccleston and Piper are magnificent.
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  Leeds, a series that kind of plays it safe.
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  We'll try things out. It won't do again.
• 7:53
  A brave and bold new beginning. I think he's got a spot on
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  there. And James Lark says it sets out
• 8:00
  to encapsulate the breadth and brilliance of Doctor Who, even
• 8:03
  if it's the only series they get to make one of the strongest
• 8:07
  series to date. Superb entertainment I'm.
• 8:09
  Noticing a positive a positive theme here very.
• 8:13
  Much so. OK, Tom Newsom RTD takes the
• 8:17
  best bits from the 70s TV home comic strips, books, as well as
• 8:21
  from American shows and movies. But ultimately, it feels like
• 8:24
  how Doctor Who has always been in his head and TV has only just
• 8:28
  caught up with it. And Rob Valentine says I enjoyed
• 8:32
  the whole series on broadcast, but I do remember the surge of
• 8:35
  relief I felt when the empty child came along, that
• 8:38
  Ecclestone was getting one indisputable stone cold
• 8:42
  masterpiece before he left. It's stunning with faint praise,
• 8:46
  a little bit me feels. That that's just you, Rod.
• 8:49
  That's just you. David Lancaster, a privilege to
• 8:54
  see my favorite class of children I ever taught, 7 year
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  olds in the city Birmingham, truly multicultural, fall in
• 9:00
  love with my favorite TV show in real time.
• 9:02
  I mean, I've tried them weeks before with Remembrance of the
• 9:05
  Daleks. Magic times.
• 9:07
  Isn't there something Ofsted would say about that these days?
• 9:10
  Yeah, they'll probably say well done, well done.
• 9:13
  Though yes, exactly. And Greg Campbell says despite
• 9:19
  being showrunner, RTD was easily the poorest writer this season.
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  And to be honest, this would tend to be the case going
• 9:27
  forward. Oh.
• 9:29
  My jaw just hit the floor. I think I can see where he's
• 9:36
  coming from there. Oh, OK.
• 9:39
  Well, it's a Broadchurch, as we know.
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  We'll get there. We'll get there.
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  David Gillespie Pratt on 1st broadcast.
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  I was disappointed with Rose and actively disliked the end of the
• 9:50
  world. This was not my Doctor Who, but
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  like a good fan I kept watching. World War Three was where it
• 9:57
  really clicked into place and by the end of the series I was well
• 10:00
  and truly hunts. Do you know what World War Three
• 10:03
  was where it really clicked into place for me as well?
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  I mean, we'll get there later on, but that's an interesting
• 10:08
  parallel. Oh dear.
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  And the fabulously named Shade Nightingale Ecclestone is what
• 10:15
  makes this season work. He should have been in more The
• 10:18
  relationship between the Doctor and Rose was more paternal and I
• 10:21
  preferred it that way. But the best episodes were
• 10:24
  written by writers other than Davies, so.
• 10:27
  Second comment to that effect. Yeah.
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  OK, there you go, Cozy Joe. I found Eccleston's doctor
• 10:35
  refreshing, menacing, reserved, thoughtful, and very mysterious.
• 10:39
  He is the War Doctor. He chooses life of all quite
• 10:42
  over the death of his own. He is considered the last of his
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  gun for a good reason. It's a shame he left.
• 10:48
  And Ross says, can still remember the excitement of this
• 10:51
  coming back and the weird, uneasy disappointment after
• 10:54
  seeing the burping bin and fasting aliens.
• 10:57
  Oh, get over it. But by the cliffhanger of Bad
• 11:01
  Wolf, I was obsessed. Yes, that was my mother.
• 11:04
  She rang me up after Bad Wolf and said what do you think is
• 11:06
  going to happen? Also, what is going on?
• 11:08
  What is? Happening.
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  Fabulous. So we will return to listeners
• 11:13
  comments later on in the episode, but for now, let's dive
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  into the first of our stories. Denise, pick a story of your
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  choice and tell us why you're going to recommend it or why
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  you're going to ditch it. OK, well I will pick one, I
• 11:28
  think, from the middle of my choices.
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  Let's go for Father's Day, yes? So something about this story
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  gets me every single time. I mean, I lost my father first
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  because he wandered off when I was about 13 and because he died
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  before I ever got to see him again.
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  So this is a very poignant story for me.
• 12:00
  But yeah, there is a lot of good stuff in there.
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  I I love the idea that the Doctor actually gives Rose
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  commissioned to go back and do this despite the inherent risks
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  that he trusts her, but sadly his trust is misplaced.
• 12:19
  That makes it very, very strong. And then there's some genuine
• 12:25
  cringe moments like when her father starts flirting with her,
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  not realising who she is. I'm not sure if that would pass
• 12:33
  the censor in these days, but the Jackie and Pete having
• 12:38
  arguments, that was very, very true.
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  It was somewhat let down, I think by the when they're
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  basically under siege in the church.
• 12:49
  Some of the scenes are a little bit dull, but there's some
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  fabulous ideas. And Pete Tyler is an absolutely
• 12:57
  inspired creation, you know, because he really thinks things
• 13:01
  through. He thinks in unusual ways.
• 13:03
  He's he's a one off and it was brilliant that we got to see
• 13:06
  more of him in Season 2. So, yeah, there's some beautiful
• 13:12
  moments in this. There's a conversation with the
• 13:14
  bride and groom about, you know, they're just normal people with
• 13:17
  normal lives. It's not important if they live
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  or die. Of course that's not true.
• 13:21
  The doctor doesn't think that's true at all.
• 13:24
  And you know, at the end when he says who are my love?
• 13:30
  And she says, Oh, my daddy. I mean, gets me every single
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  time. It's not my favorite story of
• 13:38
  the season, but there is so much to love in there.
• 13:44
  Fabulous. Should we go to the comments?
• 13:47
  Connor Patrick Jackson says. The story closest to my heart.
• 13:50
  Paul Connell captured so well the pain of grief and the
• 13:53
  realization of your parents are as fallible as you are.
• 13:57
  Phil Cartwright says one of the best and most underrated
• 14:00
  episodes of New Who Really character driven and hits all
• 14:03
  the emotional beats really well. And good old James H you can
• 14:08
  all. You can always rely on James H
• 14:11
  James H says Christ this is awful.
• 14:14
  Small Slade on Small Slade on. Thicker than Jackie's make up.
• 14:18
  Incoherent plot. Not that it matters, because the
• 14:21
  rules set in this one get abandoned almost instantly.
• 14:24
  I remember sitting through this and hoping for A twist at the
• 14:27
  end that never came. Been it.
• 14:31
  Big Orange Michael says the most Buffy like episode of the series
• 14:35
  and I mean that as a compliment. The Doctor's anger at Rose
• 14:38
  trying to go back in time to say her dad is nicely done.
• 14:41
  Like much of RTD Zero, it values the emotion of the story over
• 14:45
  the internal logic. But I don't mind it here because
• 14:47
  it works. Keep it.
• 14:49
  Jason Thompson so showed the Doctor Who could now do
• 14:51
  emotional drama in the way that it really had never done before.
• 14:54
  Sean Dingwell is one of the highlights of the season.
• 14:57
  Watching his realisation that Roses, his daughter all grown up
• 15:00
  and he has to sacrifice himself is heart wrenching.
• 15:03
  I can't watch this without welling up at least a little.
• 15:07
  Ross says more fantastic Tyler family performances, although
• 15:10
  introducing the Reap the Reapers, who in theory should
• 15:14
  turn up all the time in the show annoys my stupid brain no end.
• 15:18
  Could have done the story without them.
• 15:20
  Daniel Ramsley says tugs the heartstrings very effectively.
• 15:23
  Dingwall is especially good Piper in the emotional
• 15:25
  powerhouse, and there's an unsettling sense of wrongness.
• 15:29
  But I go back and forth on it. Sometimes the melodrama can feel
• 15:32
  a bit too much like a blunt instrument.
• 15:35
  Ian Winston Yes, the monsters don't make much sense, but it
• 15:38
  makes me cry every time. And the top three of the series
• 15:41
  for me. Daniel, Knight says, feels
• 15:43
  better off. Perhaps this would have been
• 15:45
  better if it'd been earlier in the run, as Rose's actions seem
• 15:48
  at odds with the length of time she's been with the Doctor.
• 15:51
  The 80s fashions are quite authentic, but it's not that
• 15:53
  memorable as a story. Jack Coyer A strange and bold
• 15:57
  choice for an introduction series, as it's one of the least
• 16:01
  Doctor Whoish stories in the show's history.
• 16:03
  Maybe that's the point, though. Trying something new feels like
• 16:06
  a short trip. Or Sapphire and Steel, the
• 16:08
  Doctor's recklessness in taking Rose.
• 16:10
  Here is is a fascinating character beat which will
• 16:13
  eventually lead to Capote's Doctor realising that he has a
• 16:16
  duty of care for those he takes on as passengers.
• 16:19
  And finally Andy Parkinson says OK so I know this is a popular
• 16:23
  one but I can't stand it. Not sure if it's the treaty
• 16:26
  sentimentality or the weird idea of the reapers.
• 16:29
  Maybe I'm just dead inside, but this is the only one I'd been.
• 16:34
  So Michael, are you dead inside or are you agreeing with Denise?
• 16:39
  I am definitely The Walking Dead.
• 16:41
  I'm going to bend this one, then I'll go to set fire to it, and
• 16:44
  then I'll go to salt the earth, of which it is well.
• 16:46
  Oh wow. Strong, strong sentiments.
• 16:50
  Please tell us why. As the people who say the
• 16:55
  sentiment is gone to is over the top, it's up ridiculous, secure
• 16:58
  in levels. The internal plot logic doesn't
• 17:01
  work. Why are the Reapers here and we
• 17:05
  never see them at any time again?
• 17:07
  Why does the Doctor think this is a good idea?
• 17:10
  Go. I know I'll go and let.
• 17:12
  I'll go and let Rose watch her dad get run over twice, 03 times
• 17:17
  in fact, at the end. So.
• 17:21
  He did mention that the Reapers are there because the Time Lords
• 17:25
  aren't there anymore. And so they're, they're able to
• 17:28
  breakthrough because usually the Time Lords would prevent this
• 17:31
  kind of thing happening. And yes, he did.
• 17:34
  He did trust Rose more than he thought, more than he probably
• 17:39
  should have done, because the idea was that she was just to go
• 17:42
  to him and comfort him as he died, which she eventually got
• 17:46
  to do. But of course, I mean, would any
• 17:49
  of us do anything different in that situation?
• 17:52
  And that's why you had that scene in the middle, right?
• 17:54
  Where he's really angry because he thought she would behave
• 17:56
  better. And why can the Reapers go for
• 18:00
  the youngest youngest first? Sure, they'd want all the time
• 18:03
  energy from the older people, so they'll be going for the oldies
• 18:06
  first. Navigate a Society of wild
• 18:08
  fellow children running around. Suppose.
• 18:11
  I suppose we're all three days and I just think Murray Gold
• 18:17
  goes over the top on the fiddles.
• 18:21
  And I don't think the Reapers even by 2005 standard CGI is not
• 18:26
  look great. Yeah, good thing is I did like
• 18:28
  the characterization of Pete Tyler because it's nice to have
• 18:33
  a sort of mind Dell boy sort of figure in the series because
• 18:37
  it's the sort of character usually gets of a van.
• 18:40
  Maybe say glitz let. Me just get to.
• 18:46
  That church. You're not putting this round to
• 18:50
  round two, right? Just to be absolutely safe.
• 18:54
  Yeah, maybe I need to be a little more specific.
• 18:59
  Joe, what do you feel about it? You've heard my episode on this.
• 19:03
  You know how I feel about it. And unfortunately, oh, I love
• 19:07
  Denise so much. I don't want to disagree with
• 19:09
  her, but I do agree entirely with Michael and in fact, almost
• 19:12
  on every single point. And I love the emotion of the
• 19:17
  Rusty Davis era. I love that it's character LED
• 19:19
  and emotion LED. And that is best.
• 19:22
  And we do get it at its best this year.
• 19:24
  I think it's wonderful, but this is too much for me.
• 19:28
  I can feel the cogs going, the strings of the music and the
• 19:32
  plot. Everything is trying so hard to
• 19:35
  make me feel and I don't like. It's a reason why I don't really
• 19:40
  chime with the characterization in the Muffet era is I just feel
• 19:43
  like I'm being manipulated rather than just being absorbed
• 19:46
  into the story. So all the emotion is overplayed
• 19:49
  for me. It's like a soap opera taken to
• 19:51
  10. There's there are great things
• 19:54
  in this. I do.
• 19:55
  It's got a weird sort of washed out look to it which really does
• 19:58
  remind me of the past. And.
• 20:01
  The monsters are a creepy idea. I think you're right Michael.
• 20:04
  The CGI isn't there yet for them.
• 20:07
  But no, this is actually my least favorite of the season so
• 20:11
  I am going to kick Father's Day out.
• 20:13
  I'm afraid it doesn't really work for me on any level.
• 20:16
  So Father's Day is going to be the first one to fall, which is
• 20:20
  quite surprising given how it's reputable.
• 20:23
  I was going to put it through, I mean, Denise, I'm with you.
• 20:25
  I was going to put this through. These two heartless bastards
• 20:28
  that we've got on this podcast just have got no joy or heart in
• 20:32
  their soul whatsoever. I was putting this through and
• 20:36
  I'll, I'll be very brief. I've, I've picked 3 scenes, I
• 20:39
  think. I think it's a very clever
• 20:40
  script and there's a lot more going on to Joe.
• 20:43
  You say you can see the the cogs working.
• 20:46
  I think. I think it's under valued for
• 20:50
  what it does. There are three scenes in
• 20:52
  particular, and they're all between Pete and Rose, and
• 20:55
  they're all just the two of them in the church.
• 20:57
  And they each take the story forward in a very naturalistic
• 21:02
  way because they're dealing with, you know, ridiculous
• 21:04
  concepts here in a way and asking Pete to recognize that's
• 21:07
  his daughter and to commit suicide at the end.
• 21:09
  So it's a big ask within a 45 minute format.
• 21:12
  But those three scenes, each of them progressed that.
• 21:15
  And I think they do it in a very clever, organic way.
• 21:20
  The first one is when Pete puts the clues together and realises
• 21:23
  who Rose is. And I won't go through all the
• 21:25
  rationale because he's he's worked it out from everything
• 21:28
  he's seen in the car. And I particularly like the fact
• 21:30
  that he says he can recognise both himself and Jackie in her
• 21:33
  actions. I think that's a lovely
• 21:35
  shorthand way of getting us there.
• 21:38
  And Rose Declaration. Yeah.
• 21:39
  Denise, I'm with you. When she says dad, my dad, my
• 21:42
  daddy. I mean, each time there are
• 21:44
  three exclamations. And each time he gets more
• 21:47
  personal and more intimate. And I think it's just whatever
• 21:50
  small details like that that really work for me.
• 21:53
  Sean, Derek Dingwell is brilliant in kind of selling
• 21:55
  that what could be a preposterous scene, selling it,
• 21:58
  making it seem logical and credible.
• 22:01
  Then the second scene, Peter coming to terms with who she is
• 22:04
  and he's worrying about silly things like has he gone grey or
• 22:07
  has he gone bald? Typical kind of man type things
• 22:10
  that we would worry about. That's the first thing he's
• 22:12
  going to think about. But Rose doesn't answer either
• 22:15
  of those. So he realizes there's something
• 22:17
  darker going on there. And that bridges the 1st and the
• 22:19
  3rd scene. And then the third scene is when
• 22:22
  he starts asking Rose where he is, why she came back to 1987
• 22:26
  and where he is. And I love the fact that Rose
• 22:30
  lies to him and she she knows, She tells him, oh, you used to
• 22:34
  read us bedtime stories every night and you were always there
• 22:37
  for me and mum. And you took some countryside
• 22:40
  picnics every week. And she's lying not only for
• 22:45
  herself, but she's also lying to help him, to make it softer and
• 22:48
  kinder for him. I think that's a lovely
• 22:51
  emotional beat. But he wins because actually he
• 22:53
  realises that's not who he is. And I think that makes him feel
• 22:57
  more credible and more sympathetic to us as an audience
• 23:00
  because he knows his flaws and his weaknesses.
• 23:03
  But it's out. I think it's a lovely script.
• 23:05
  I'm not sure if, you know, I'm not sure if it's because I
• 23:08
  didn't have a great relationship with my dad, so maybe there's
• 23:11
  some bias towards it so. My dad.
• 23:13
  My dad. Yeah, well.
• 23:15
  Join the club. Michael, are you in the club?
• 23:19
  Yeah, I've got a fairly stronger relationship with my father, so.
• 23:23
  Okay, 3:00 to 1:00. For hate, it's not for that
• 23:25
  reason, but I always say the scene that really gets grinds in
• 23:30
  my gears and it's the same Paul Cornell that wrote for The New
• 23:34
  Adventures where I just think it's just so overplayed the
• 23:36
  emotion. It's the two, Denise, you
• 23:38
  mentioned it, the two talking about the two people meeting
• 23:42
  down that dark alley on a rainy night and oh, you're the two
• 23:46
  most special people in the world.
• 23:47
  It's just so on the nose. It's so obvious.
• 23:52
  Yeah, some of the worst, yeah, the worst excesses of some is
• 23:55
  that NA is in pure for and concentrate here.
• 23:58
  But that's what he wanted, right?
• 23:59
  That's why I brought in Cornell so, and there's there's fans of
• 24:02
  that too. So anyway, it's gone so.
• 24:05
  Bye bye. This is one of the big
• 24:08
  differences between the classic season and the new season,
• 24:13
  particularly in the early episodes, because there was this
• 24:15
  element of family and soap opera which we didn't have before.
• 24:20
  And yeah, on this episode, arguably it was a little bit
• 24:24
  thick, but you know, the start of Aliens of London as well.
• 24:31
  That's pure bloody EastEnders right there, you know?
• 24:35
  We don't get that, Denise. We.
• 24:36
  Love you, love that I'm. Sort of contrary.
• 24:42
  Right. Let's move to Michael.
• 24:44
  Michael, pick your first story. First story is going to be The
• 24:47
  Unquiet Dead and I'm going to keep it and this is probably
• 24:53
  going to tell more about me, but it's got much more of a
• 24:57
  traditional classic who feel about it from the outset.
• 25:00
  We've got our we've got our Victorian Victorian London
• 25:04
  setting which will eventually become rather grating and know
• 25:06
  who the setting it the time seems to have three settings at
• 25:10
  the. Moment.
• 25:13
  But from the outset, we've got a great use because we don't have
• 25:17
  a cliffhangers anymore. Greatest uses the teaser
• 25:20
  sequence as a cliffhanger and what we have there is what would
• 25:23
  be a part one cliffhanger of the dead body walking through the
• 25:26
  street and groaning. I think it was.
• 25:30
  I like Simon Callow as Dickens, while the character is scraps a
• 25:36
  little bit and the Naughty Book of Charles Dickens just he's
• 25:39
  simplified of it for the screen because he had 45 bits.
• 25:42
  It can't go into the complexities, but he gives it
• 25:44
  with lots of vigor, lots of character, and you could.
• 25:48
  And he rationalizes things out of the way, plotting right
• 25:51
  towards such as noticing the different gas pressures when
• 25:56
  these gel throw around and talking of the gel while I was
• 26:00
  what I was watching, re watching it the sit the theatre scene,
• 26:03
  which is another reason to keep. I know that I was looking at the
• 26:06
  way the gulf was moving around the theatre and it reminded me
• 26:10
  of a book I saw in the in the school library when I was in
• 26:13
  good to say year four. So that would have been around
• 26:16
  19/19/1991. It was called Blue Misty
• 26:18
  Monsters and it was a sort of, and it was a cover illustration
• 26:24
  was of a sort of old fashioned sort of say, Edwardian,
• 26:27
  Victorian St. with a guy with a chap with his fish and chips, a
• 26:31
  flat cap scarf with like race like beasts surrounding him.
• 26:36
  And then I sort of looked up a little bit into that.
• 26:40
  And what I noticed was that at first my memory was it was a
• 26:46
  poetry, but it's not. It's actually a story, and it's
• 26:50
  about beings from the world who are gaseous, trying to get used
• 26:54
  to walking around inorganic hosts.
• 26:58
  Oh, I. Wonder.
• 26:59
  If. He read that so so I wonder if
• 27:01
  Michael, I wonder if he just read it had read it always aware
• 27:04
  of it. So I couldn't find the
• 27:06
  publication dates unfortunately. So it might be beyond to after
• 27:11
  his school days or. Sounds very sounds a bit a
• 27:14
  little bit too close for comfort.
• 27:17
  He does yes and I said and here we have wonderful about knew who
• 27:22
  treads for the first time where it was.
• 27:24
  We have character with cyanic abilities with this, which and
• 27:28
  here is a good way of getting moving the pot along to so we
• 27:32
  could get from A to B quicker. But it's not intrusive here
• 27:35
  where we have it's a bit more subtle where she knows that Rose
• 27:39
  has lost her father and she gets images of present day London and
• 27:44
  they have that lovely old trope of of Victorian England's
• 27:48
  thinking. Oh my God, all modern people are
• 27:49
  naked, which will which will come back next year as well.
• 27:53
  And I just think it's it's quite subtly played here and all
• 27:57
  right, can I can't think of her name now, but she plays him much
• 28:01
  better than she would do with Gwen in in torch words, Eve
• 28:05
  Miles. That's it is.
• 28:07
  And a quite light Mr. Snead, who unfortunately, I do keep
• 28:10
  thinking there's the landlord in the green, green grass.
• 28:12
  No, it's not the landlord. He's the farmer, isn't it?
• 28:15
  Isn't? The welshest character that's
• 28:17
  ever appeared on T Don't look at me like it's my fault.
• 28:21
  Have you have you watched the Green Death recently, Joe?
• 28:24
  Yeah, All right, Shut up. If there were some floors is
• 28:31
  thinking about it is the idea of the girls pretend pretending to
• 28:36
  be refugees is perhaps a little on the nose considering the news
• 28:39
  at the moment. I know Matt Larry had a proper
• 28:42
  rant about this at the time on the Beast House website, but
• 28:45
  it's also a similar plot to Flip Flop, one of the Big Finish
• 28:48
  audios. Yeah, which is it was a Johnny
• 28:52
  Morris one, was it? And I seem to think that had her
• 28:55
  flick in it. It was evil asylum seekers
• 28:58
  coming to our planet and basically taking rights of
• 29:01
  everybody else and but claiming that they were victims at the
• 29:04
  same time. But I think that that was
• 29:06
  pointedly darkly satirical flip flop, whereas I think the
• 29:10
  unquieted is probably accidental.
• 29:13
  Yeah, so. Accidentally prescient?
• 29:15
  Yes. Yes.
• 29:16
  Yes, tie me wimey. Indeed.
• 29:22
  Fabulous. Shall we go to the comments?
• 29:25
  So Steve Maller says I love ghost stories and the setting
• 29:27
  here is excellent. Simon Callow is perfect as
• 29:30
  Dickens, the role he's played on stage many times.
• 29:33
  You also have Rose's first experience of time travel and
• 29:36
  the Doctor confronting a problem of his own making and
• 29:38
  overcompensating with disastrous effects.
• 29:41
  And the final conversation between the Doctor and Dickens
• 29:43
  is lovely, poignant and heartbreaking when you find out
• 29:46
  what happened to him. Daniel Ruinsley says most
• 29:50
  traditional all the historicals, which just leaves more space for
• 29:53
  the acting. It's a remarkably quiet story,
• 29:55
  with Gatis bringing ghost stories, spookiness and Pyramids
• 29:58
  of Mars morality debate. Love Piper and Miles in this
• 30:02
  Dickens fanboy doc and that, well, Schumer.
• 30:05
  James H says the start of the celebrity historicals.
• 30:08
  We get an Uber British figure that the Doctor worships even
• 30:11
  though he was seriously dubious in terms of being a huge racist.
• 30:15
  Looks lovely and said we can do scares.
• 30:17
  But Bennett, he's having a good start to the series, isn't he,
• 30:21
  James? H.
• 30:22
  Exactly what happened with Churchill wasn't it exactly
• 30:25
  another fan of a big racist Mick Menace?
• 30:27
  Mick Menace? I'm not sure how you say it
• 30:29
  shows the potential more full time historical companion seeing
• 30:32
  our modern day mentality through the eyes of an innocent and just
• 30:35
  happy to survive. Tom Newsom says unlike the rest
• 30:38
  of the series, it feels a bit watered down considering the
• 30:41
  Victorian themes, but the zombies are great.
• 30:44
  Ross Amazing just what I want Doctor Who to be.
• 30:47
  Always prefer time travel to space travel.
• 30:49
  Scary, funny, atmospheric. Doctor has alien morals.
• 30:54
  Morals. Doctor has alien morals that the
• 30:56
  companion's questions. Jack Coyus is a fun romp and
• 30:59
  intriguing morality tale that has such an important task on
• 31:02
  it's hands as the first historical many young fans will
• 31:05
  have seen the Gauth remind us of.
• 31:07
  The damage of the Time War and conflict between Rose and the
• 31:09
  Doctor on how to deal with them is one that will be shared by
• 31:12
  the viewers. Daniel Night, Mark Gatiss's best
• 31:15
  script, aided by wonderfully reserved and touching
• 31:18
  performances by Simon Callow and Eve Miles the girl for well
• 31:21
  realized, but the resolution seems rust, showing the
• 31:24
  limitations of the 45 minute format.
• 31:26
  Jason Thompson says. I love the scene of Dickens
• 31:28
  coming to terms with the fact that the real world is stranger
• 31:31
  than he thought and the Doctor apologizing to him.
• 31:34
  All dumb, dark and blackly funny.
• 31:36
  Beautifully shot. Wonderful location work, full of
• 31:39
  leaked gentleman references. Mark Gates's best script for the
• 31:42
  series by a country mile. Ian Winston says taught mini
• 31:45
  classic with callow amazing as Dickens and testament to RT DS
• 31:49
  plan. This is welcome darkness between
• 31:51
  the sugar rush of the End of the World and the Slovene 2 parter.
• 31:55
  And finally, Big Orange Michael. Who is Big Orange Michael?
• 32:00
  He's big and he's orange and he's called Michael.
• 32:02
  Oh, fair enough, fair enough. I think he's the tango man.
• 32:06
  He always comments on this in many ways.
• 32:09
  The first Christmas episode. Oh yeah, I agree with that.
• 32:12
  Eccleston is having fun as the Doctor here.
• 32:14
  Creepy in all the right ways. Keep it generally positive I
• 32:18
  think there. Generally positive.
• 32:19
  Denise, how do you feel about? Well I am also generally
• 32:24
  positive it rates very highly with me.
• 32:27
  Although on the rewatch I noticed a couple of things in
• 32:31
  the the lady in the coffin is clearly breathing quite a lot
• 32:36
  and they haven't screwed the door knocker on properly
• 32:39
  unfortunately. So they should have taken a
• 32:41
  Dremel to that. But.
• 32:43
  We we don't like loose knockers on this podcast I have.
• 32:46
  To say absolutely not, No, I I got the memo.
• 32:50
  Good. Sorry.
• 32:53
  Sorry about that, Denise. Hang on, but.
• 33:02
  Yes, it is a beautiful episode. There's some wonderful moments.
• 33:08
  I mean, I would argue that the moment when Rose comes into the
• 33:13
  console room dressed in her Victorian outfit and the Doctor
• 33:17
  looks at her and says, you look beautiful, that is the moment
• 33:21
  that he falls in love with her. If indeed a Time Lord doesn't
• 33:25
  fall in love with a human. And of course, then he has to
• 33:28
  say for a human, you know? But I think that moment is
• 33:32
  there. Obviously Simon Callow is
• 33:36
  flawless as Charles Dickens, and he's actually got quite a
• 33:41
  restrained performance. But he's completely, he's
• 33:44
  completely in control. And I love that.
• 33:47
  I love when the doctor tells him to shut up and then apologizes
• 33:51
  to him. And then when Charles Dickens is
• 33:54
  despairing because there's so much that he doesn't understand,
• 34:00
  that there's these things going on that he were beyond his
• 34:03
  comprehension or imagination, and the doctor says you're not
• 34:07
  wrong, there's just more to learn.
• 34:09
  And that is such a fantastic quote.
• 34:12
  And of course, yes, Eve Miles is brilliant and beautiful and
• 34:19
  perfect performance. Yeah, this one very highly with
• 34:24
  me. I would not Kick It Out.
• 34:27
  OK, so shall I jump in next one? Joe.
• 34:31
  There's loads to love. It's in this, isn't there?
• 34:33
  So Sneed and Gwyneth in particular, they kind of remind
• 34:35
  me of a Holmes double act. They're a bit like Forgan
• 34:38
  Scherner and they benefit from fantastic lines.
• 34:41
  Simon Callow, as everyone's already said, is brilliant as
• 34:44
  Dickens. I love the fact the Doctors his
• 34:46
  biggest fan, and he complaints then about the padding in Martin
• 34:49
  Chuzzlewick. Because, you know, have any fans
• 34:51
  ever complained about padding in narrative before?
• 34:54
  I'm sure that wouldn't happen. Eve Miles.
• 34:56
  As everyone said, she's absolutely heartbreaking as
• 34:58
  Gwyneth and you can see why she got a star vehicle for herself.
• 35:02
  But I am not going to put this one through.
• 35:05
  I'm throwing this one out and I'll tell you why.
• 35:07
  Three reasons. They go from the least egregious
• 35:09
  to the most egregious. So the least is probably the
• 35:14
  Doctor and Rose are just totally impotent in this.
• 35:16
  So it's left to Dickens and to Gwyneth to resolve the story.
• 35:20
  Doctor just basically prepared to die with Rose in that cellar.
• 35:22
  They just both lack agency. It's Dickens that works out how
• 35:26
  the Gulf can be brought out into the gas.
• 35:28
  It's Gwyneth that strikes the match, and the Doctor and Rose
• 35:31
  are just left. Oh, impotence is the best word
• 35:34
  for it. Hang on.
• 35:34
  That's the whole season, the whole point of this season.
• 35:38
  He he encourages other people because he doesn't feel as if he
• 35:43
  could make those choices anymore.
• 35:44
  I get that, but I think it's most on the nose here.
• 35:46
  The fact he just takes a hand that he's prepared to die with.
• 35:49
  He's not prepared to save Rose. Look at the end, you know,
• 35:52
  parting of the ways. He wants to keep Rose safe, put
• 35:55
  her in the TARDIS, get her out of danger.
• 35:57
  Here. He's happy for her.
• 35:58
  Just to die in a in a cellar in Wales.
• 36:00
  It does. It does feel a little bit too,
• 36:02
  he feels a bit too weak for me. He does nothing to save his
• 36:05
  companion who was Denise rightly just said he's declared his love
• 36:08
  for, but he's happy to wave goodbye to her.
• 36:11
  So that doesn't quite sit well for me.
• 36:13
  The second one, and I know it's a throw away line and people
• 36:15
  will shout at me but it doesn't sit comfortably on me.
• 36:19
  When Rose recovers from being chloroformed, she says and I'll
• 36:22
  quote the line and don't think I didn't feel your hands having a
• 36:26
  quick wander, you dirty old man. To Sneed.
• 36:29
  That is a little bit uncomfortable.
• 36:31
  Yes, I know, you know, it's 2005, it wasn't that long ago.
• 36:35
  It's a little bit uncomfortable and she plays it really angrily.
• 36:39
  She doesn't play it with humour, it's played with a bit of anger,
• 36:42
  so. That you, a fan of the Steven
• 36:44
  Moffett era, could possibly go after that line is baffling.
• 36:49
  Well, surely she should be delivering it really angrily.
• 36:53
  Yeah, but it's just them thrown away as a as a comedy line.
• 36:56
  There's no follow up to it at. All I mean, he's murdered, he's
• 36:58
  punished quite and then possessed.
• 37:04
  Yeah. He won't.
• 37:05
  He won't do it. Again.
• 37:08
  Well, no, but the issue still isn't really dealt with on the
• 37:10
  nose is that and then the third. Are they ever though?
• 37:14
  I mean, they certainly weren't 20 years ago, and they really
• 37:17
  are now. True.
• 37:19
  And then we're going to come to the Third Point, which Michael,
• 37:22
  you've already touched on, but for me sits uncomfortably.
• 37:25
  Joe, you've already mentioned this about as well.
• 37:27
  I think the imagery here is pretty clear and stark.
• 37:30
  The Gulf are definitely synonymous with migrants.
• 37:33
  We're talking about. Their lands have been ravaged by
• 37:35
  war. They're looking for safety.
• 37:37
  They're looking for sanctuary. The doctor is happy to help
• 37:40
  them. I love the parallel he makes
• 37:43
  with donor cards. I think that works really well.
• 37:46
  He's going to absolutely support the Gulf and help them on the
• 37:49
  way. Great, fantastic, completely on
• 37:51
  board. But then the Gulf turn out to be
• 37:54
  evil all along. It just feels lazy.
• 37:57
  It feels bigoted. It feels like it's just playing
• 38:00
  to the Daily Mail audience. And then it ends with the doctor
• 38:04
  shouting, send them back, send them back.
• 38:07
  I know that's language that we use now, but you know, that was
• 38:11
  still an issue 20 years ago. Russell knows what he's doing.
• 38:14
  We're about to talk. Or the next episode is Aliens of
• 38:17
  London and World War Three. He knows what he's doing with
• 38:21
  political analogies here. Russell's politics, though,
• 38:24
  because in years and years, you know, he told a heartbreaking
• 38:28
  story about asylum seekers being killed going across the sea.
• 38:33
  Absolutely. I think it's totally
• 38:34
  coincidental that that they came to the Earth seeking refuge and
• 38:39
  they turned out they're just a monster, I think.
• 38:41
  It's not. It's not just the case of them
• 38:43
  being evil though. It's that they said they were so
• 38:46
  few that there was hardly any of them, but then it turns out
• 38:49
  there's billions of them. And maybe that shows, you know,
• 38:53
  the true extent of the time war, that they've been frightened
• 38:56
  enough to behave in this terrible way.
• 38:59
  Yeah, I think you're you're making up stories so beyond what
• 39:02
  we see on the screen. Well, I think in the same breath
• 39:04
  you're finding a reading it doesn't exist.
• 39:07
  Might well be, might well, or it might just be a modern reading
• 39:10
  on what was something 20 years ago and maybe it's the language
• 39:13
  that's used. Sits uncomfortably now.
• 39:16
  Whereas 20 years ago I'd say shouting send them back, send
• 39:19
  them back. Given all the political rhetoric
• 39:21
  we hear at the moment, I just think for me sits very
• 39:24
  uncomfortably. Maybe they were ignorant to it.
• 39:28
  I think for me it feels like it was fairly clear.
• 39:31
  I will give them the benefit of the doubt and say they were
• 39:33
  ignorant to it at the time, but for me now watching it, it feels
• 39:37
  uncomfortable and it kind of takes me completely out of the
• 39:40
  episode. So for that reason I am chucking
• 39:43
  it out. What?
• 39:46
  Is this, I mean, there's there's 100 reasons why I would put
• 39:50
  through The Unquiet Dead. I think as a first step into
• 39:55
  history for Rose, that scene where she steps in the snow at
• 39:58
  the beginning, it just captures the magic of leaving the TARDIS
• 40:02
  better than practically any other scene I think in terms of
• 40:06
  taking the original remit of Doctor Who.
• 40:09
  And educating children about things that the amount of
• 40:12
  information we get about Dickens here is really responsible.
• 40:15
  In terms of the horror in this episode, I think it's properly
• 40:19
  scary in a way that the first two episodes on.
• 40:23
  So on all those levels, it works.
• 40:24
  But actually, the three reasons I want to put this through are I
• 40:28
  love the extended scene between Rose and Gwyneth in the pantry,
• 40:33
  where Rose is patronizing Gwyneth ever so slightly because
• 40:37
  she's from the future and she's from the past.
• 40:40
  And how Gwyneth turns the tables on her and literally says to
• 40:43
  her, you think I'm stupid? How the the sort of the balance
• 40:47
  of that scene plays out. It's just stunning and it shows.
• 40:50
  There is still room for an extended character scene in the
• 40:54
  new series. I absolutely love that moment.
• 40:57
  It's all about the performances and nothing about being showy,
• 41:00
  which the series has been until that point.
• 41:03
  I also adore the sequence where they're talking, the Doctor and
• 41:07
  Rose are talking about the girl coming through and taking over
• 41:10
  the bodies and using them because it's a really
• 41:14
  interesting morality debate where we get to see the Doctor,
• 41:18
  as Colin Baker always used to say, as a complete alien.
• 41:21
  You know, he's got complete alien values.
• 41:23
  And then Rose basically saying what we would all say is no,
• 41:26
  that's wrong, that's sick. Those are people's relatives.
• 41:29
  So interesting on ways to shows and series one does this again
• 41:33
  and again and again. It's looking at situations you
• 41:36
  would have had in the classic series, but thinking about them
• 41:39
  in ways that you never would have done.
• 41:41
  And Russell does this a lot in series one and it's.
• 41:44
  A pity they don't explore that bit more.
• 41:47
  It is, but there's there's a lot happening in this, so yeah.
• 41:50
  It reminds me of an episode of The Outer Limits called The
• 41:52
  Second Soul, which had a very similar theme and and had a
• 41:57
  pretty much the same reaction from people.
• 41:58
  Who found out? My my third reason is the bit
• 42:02
  where Sneed is killed, his neck is snapped and then he's
• 42:07
  possessed and all the zombies sort of come for the Doctor and
• 42:09
  Rose and it's after Rose and the end of the world where the
• 42:15
  deaths of characters will Reaver.
• 42:18
  We were hidden away from us like the fella in the mall that gets
• 42:21
  shot in the face. We don't see it.
• 42:23
  And I was starting to think, Oh, we not actually going to see
• 42:25
  people dying in Doctor Who anymore.
• 42:27
  Like has it been castrated a bit?
• 42:28
  And then when you heard the snapping of the neck and then
• 42:32
  him being possessed, I was like, oh, great, game on, you know,
• 42:36
  And by the end of the season, we're massacring hundreds of
• 42:39
  people. It's wonderful.
• 42:40
  A little bit sick dogs who fans. So I'm really pleased that
• 42:43
  horror and death are absolutely in the new series.
• 42:47
  So, yeah, I think this is great. Yeah, of course it's going
• 42:49
  through. OK, so on Quiet Dead goes
• 42:52
  through Joe, pick your first story.
• 42:56
  Yes please. I would like to absolutely put
• 43:00
  through Aliens of London and World War Three, which I think
• 43:03
  is sorely under represented and it's a story with so much
• 43:08
  substance. All people can see are farting
• 43:11
  aliens and they rather forget the point that that is the
• 43:14
  point. They're supposed to be political
• 43:16
  windbags. That is the joke.
• 43:18
  If you're complaining about the farting, then the joke is going
• 43:21
  over your head. 3 characters I want to focus on.
• 43:26
  One is Jackie Tyler, who was introduced in the first story as
• 43:29
  a bit of a joke, bit of a sitcom character.
• 43:33
  And the heartbreaking scene at the beginning of this where she
• 43:36
  says to Rose, you know, where were you?
• 43:39
  Please talk to me. Well, we've never done this
• 43:41
  before either. We touched on it very gently
• 43:43
  with Ace and Survival that she'd been away for a while and she'd
• 43:46
  been logged as a missing person, but that's it.
• 43:49
  That's as far as we went. So now we're actually seeing the
• 43:52
  emotional realm of the consequences of somebody
• 43:55
  choosing to go into the TARDIS and leave their family.
• 43:58
  And it's just riveting and the journey that Jackie goes on in
• 44:03
  just in this story alone, it means that that that approach
• 44:06
  was absolutely worthwhile. I love the scene where she
• 44:09
  basically calls him out. She calls in you, you know, the
• 44:12
  police. And that doesn't she to to get
• 44:14
  him done. And then by the end of the
• 44:15
  story, she is on board because she but she's making the doctor
• 44:20
  absolutely promise. Is my daughter going to be safe?
• 44:22
  I want you to make that promise to me with that scene.
• 44:27
  The the consequences for the rest of the season are that
• 44:30
  every time she's in danger, you're like, shit, He's going to
• 44:32
  have to go back and tell the bit in Dalek where we think she's
• 44:35
  dead. He's going to have to go back to
• 44:38
  Jackie and say, I'm really sorry I got her killed.
• 44:41
  It's just so it's so great. And then the heartbreaking last
• 44:45
  scene where she's on the power state and he goes, she goes,
• 44:48
  I'll just be 10 seconds. And she waits 10 seconds and
• 44:51
  then just says despondently 10 seconds and walks away.
• 44:55
  It's just so beautifully done. I never, until I watched this
• 44:58
  story, I never thought you could have such a riveting, a moving,
• 45:03
  emotional through line through Doctor Who.
• 45:06
  And at the end of this story, I was like, bring it.
• 45:08
  I want more of this. This is the Doctor Who I want to
• 45:10
  see. Now.
• 45:12
  The second character I want to focus on is Harriet Jones, who
• 45:17
  goes from being a rather meek politician who's trying to be
• 45:21
  noticed to the hero of the hour. And obviously in the first one,
• 45:26
  she's sort of figuring that something out, something is
• 45:28
  going wrong, and she's a bit mousy and a bit nervous.
• 45:31
  Come the second episode, she's the one that's like, you know,
• 45:34
  come on, we're going to hide under this desk.
• 45:37
  With you. Know old Blitz spirit.
• 45:38
  By the end of the story she's out there in Whitehall going,
• 45:42
  you know, Britain has been saved, you know, and of course
• 45:45
  she's going to go on to be the Prime Minister afterwards.
• 45:47
  She goes on an incredible character journey as well.
• 45:50
  That is Penelope Wilton, for God's sakes.
• 45:53
  We got Penelope Wilton in several episodes of Doctor Who.
• 45:57
  How lucky are we? And the third character is
• 46:01
  Mickey who I'm not sure if we love to talk about Mickey these
• 46:05
  days, but here we are. Really interesting scenes in the
• 46:10
  first episode where we learn that friends of Jackie's have
• 46:13
  been posting Mark through his door.
• 46:16
  Very on the nose, that is, and how Nikki was introduced in Rose
• 46:22
  and I think it's the worst thing about Rose is is misjudged
• 46:26
  performance. I don't think he's written
• 46:28
  particularly strongly And what the hell is going on with that
• 46:32
  auto? I've no idea.
• 46:34
  And how she doesn't notice that's not her boyfriend.
• 46:37
  But here he's entirely salvage and no, Clark grabs hold of it.
• 46:41
  The whole narrows it down sequence where they've got the
• 46:45
  Slovene attack in the house and he's there with the baseball
• 46:47
  bat, you know, ready to attack them when he's at the computer
• 46:51
  and he gets his hero moment and he gets to save the day.
• 46:54
  I think. I think it's just really well
• 46:56
  judged. There's like 100 other reasons
• 46:59
  you could recommend aliens under World War three, which I'm sure
• 47:03
  you guys will go into or not if you don't like it.
• 47:05
  The news reports making this global, bringing back UNIT
• 47:10
  aliens that aren't here to take over the world but turn it into
• 47:14
  a slag heap so they can sell it, just wonderful things.
• 47:17
  The fact that the spaceship coming down was a massive con.
• 47:20
  It's so many brilliant ideas in this, so well judged.
• 47:24
  But it's the character work that I love most of all.
• 47:27
  And I haven't even touched on the Doctor and Rose.
• 47:30
  I'll leave that to you guys, but I think every character beat in
• 47:33
  this absolutely sings. I absolutely want to put this
• 47:38
  through. I think it's a wonderful piece
• 47:39
  of Doctor Who, farting aliens and all.
• 47:44
  Let us go to the comments. Melvin Pennier says fandom does
• 47:48
  tend to sweep the Slovene under the carpet, and so has yet to
• 47:51
  fully reckon with the fact that their episodes comprise a full
• 47:54
  quarter of Eccleston's season and that therefore Margaret is
• 47:58
  his greatest original nemesis. That's wonderful, right?
• 48:01
  Good point. Good point.
• 48:03
  Jason Thompson I wasn't sure what to make of this on
• 48:05
  broadcast, was starting something Doctor Who should
• 48:08
  have. I wasn't keen on the Doctor's
• 48:09
  antagonism with Mickey either, but by the end I was sold on the
• 48:13
  whole thing. Mickey stepping up to save the
• 48:15
  world and the Doctor softening towards him was a satisfying
• 48:18
  conclusion. Also, the series gave us
• 48:20
  memorable alien design in its first original Manger Monster
• 48:24
  and deserves praise for that alone.
• 48:26
  Daniel Raumsley Says unfolds in three rooms and bokes direction
• 48:30
  struggles, but the drama and performances carry it through.
• 48:33
  Look past the farting Slovene and you'll find a startlingly
• 48:36
  angry piece of Bush era political satire fuming with
• 48:39
  contempt of Blair, New Labor and Iraq war lies.
• 48:43
  RTD blows up number 10. I mean, I didn't even mention
• 48:46
  the political angle. So much more to say.
• 48:49
  Daniel Knight. the Rose disappearance plot and the
• 48:51
  aliens arrival are particularly impressive.
• 48:54
  The Slovenian aren't that bad apart for some dodgy CGI.
• 48:57
  Shame it goes Ray Ray in World War three with some dodgy OTT
• 49:01
  acting. Apart from Annette, Bad lad,
• 49:03
  who's rather sinister. Ross says Jackie and Mickey
• 49:06
  versus the Slovene are the best bets.
• 49:08
  My kids still love the unzipping of their heads.
• 49:10
  These the type of gimmicks kids love.
• 49:13
  Andy Parkinson OK, so I'll miss it now I love the farting aliens
• 49:18
  because I'm still 12 years old. In my head, Doctor Who being
• 49:21
  silly and fun is just how it should be.
• 49:23
  James H Says lifts plot chunks from the leisure hive, throws in
• 49:27
  a model shop that they then bugger up totally, and creates a
• 49:30
  brilliant new character who they then bugger up later on.
• 49:33
  I'll forgive the childish humor as they still don't know their
• 49:36
  audience. Keep it.
• 49:38
  All done. A misstep.
• 49:39
  Just the wrong tone farting aliens really a bit CBBCA low
• 49:45
  point. Jack Coyer says iconic images of
• 49:47
  farting aliens, pigs in space suits and a post 911 destruction
• 49:51
  of Big Ben. Some greater character develops
• 49:53
  for Mickey and Jackie, who feel left behind from Rose.
• 49:56
  The image of the Doctor in the living room watching TV is a
• 49:59
  great encapsulation of the show's modern update.
• 50:03
  Big orange Michael. Easy to refer to it as the one
• 50:05
  with the flatulent aliens. Everyone's obsessed with the
• 50:07
  fallen. Oh wait, hang on.
• 50:09
  But there's more to that here. Some of the subplots about
• 50:12
  consequences of rose travelling time are more interesting than
• 50:15
  the alien invasion, the first swinger miss of the era.
• 50:19
  Reluctantly been it. And finally, a Tapalak says the
• 50:23
  nadir for me, although the series would get far worse in
• 50:27
  subsequent years. In the space of four episodes,
• 50:29
  RTD has managed to denigrate the Doctor from an aloof, engaging
• 50:33
  alien to a simpleton equivocating about saving the
• 50:36
  human race for a teenager he's just met.
• 50:39
  Awful. Oh that's such a terrible
• 50:42
  reading of this, but. That's bad, isn't?
• 50:44
  It OK to you all the same. Right, I am going to respond to
• 50:48
  you, Joe and farting aliens. Come on.
• 50:51
  Really. You love it, I.
• 50:53
  Love. It.
• 50:57
  OK, so the first reason for absolutely putting this through
• 51:01
  is I think we sometimes forget, but what this was doing at the
• 51:04
  time is this was giving the show new roots.
• 51:07
  We've been to the future, We've been to the past Doctor Who's
• 51:10
  now coming back down to earth and it's somewhere we've been
• 51:12
  before. I cease to forget now.
• 51:14
  But you know, go back to 2005, I don't think we necessarily knew
• 51:18
  that Roe, that Jackie and Mickey were coming back again and we
• 51:21
  were going to be revisiting the Powell estate.
• 51:24
  They could very easily have been one off characters for that
• 51:26
  first story. And instead what RTD is doing
• 51:29
  here and for the next two years, he's kind of establishing the
• 51:32
  powerless state and all those characters that come in and out
• 51:35
  of the doors. He's establishing that as our
• 51:37
  kind of base of operation. And that gives the series this
• 51:40
  sense of structure and coherence.
• 51:42
  It gives us extra characters to learn and love.
• 51:46
  And it's it's good for Rose as well because it not only
• 51:48
  develops how she's grown, but also those interactions with her
• 51:52
  characters back home help her grow even further.
• 51:55
  I think it's such a clever move. It's only really been done
• 51:57
  before. Would guess probably in the UNIT
• 51:59
  years where we had that constant base that the Doctor was coming
• 52:02
  back to in between flying off into space and series.
• 52:05
  But even there for you to meet family.
• 52:07
  Members and things, absolutely not.
• 52:09
  I think the one similarity though is you do get characters
• 52:12
  and Joe, you picked up on it quite a bit actually.
• 52:14
  You do get characters that go through arc and changes.
• 52:17
  So we talked about the breakdown we in The Three Doctors, how
• 52:20
  he's a bit of a comedy buffoon compared to Seven.
• 52:23
  And you picked on here exactly what I was going to say as well.
• 52:26
  Camille here is Jackie. She is so serious and so
• 52:29
  heartbreaking here. Sometimes later she does become
• 52:32
  a little bit of a comedy character, although, my God, I
• 52:35
  love her to death, don't get me wrong.
• 52:37
  But here she's just, you're absolutely right.
• 52:39
  I wrote down the lines exactly. What terrifies me is you still
• 52:42
  can't say what happened to you, Rose.
• 52:44
  What can be so bad you can't tell me?
• 52:47
  It's really on the nose. It's really devastating.
• 52:50
  And she plays it totally straight.
• 52:54
  And we get, you know, the Doctor watching Rolling News and the
• 52:56
  Tilers from room, you know, it's not a million miles away from
• 53:00
  the UNIT boys watching Devil's End in in the Demons or the
• 53:04
  Doctor reading about exploding volcanoes in the Time Monster.
• 53:07
  It's tying us to a location that we recognize and we empathize
• 53:11
  with and allows the story to unfold from there.
• 53:14
  And it gives us, yeah, it gives us a bit of a soap opera
• 53:16
  sensibility, but I think it does it brilliantly.
• 53:19
  And what I think is also interesting, because I'm making
• 53:21
  the parallels here with Eunice, is obviously we've got units in
• 53:25
  this story, but my God, they're completely faceless.
• 53:27
  And I mean, we don't empathize with them at all.
• 53:30
  Are they? They're incredibly bland because
• 53:32
  those are not the characters Russell wants to write about.
• 53:35
  He's writing about real characters back on the powerless
• 53:38
  day. And absolutely, I'm there for
• 53:40
  it. Second reason is the plot.
• 53:42
  Like you, Joe, I'm going to leave it to other people to
• 53:44
  expand. But, you know, absolutely
• 53:47
  there's much more than than farting aliens, you know, dig
• 53:49
  beneath the skin, if you'll excuse the pun.
• 53:51
  There's so much here that he's saying about capitalism, about
• 53:54
  world politics, about the abuse of power, about political
• 53:57
  deception. It's very, very clever.
• 54:00
  And on top of that, as again you've said rightly, Joe, it's a
• 54:03
  very clever plot. There's lots of twists and
• 54:06
  turns. People really write this off,
• 54:09
  but you look at the story beats as it goes along.
• 54:12
  It's a very clever, very well thought through story.
• 54:16
  Yes, the action is sometimes a little bit static.
• 54:19
  Someone in that comment said it's, it's set in three rooms.
• 54:21
  Fine. But you know what?
• 54:23
  I'm there for the drama. It unfolds beautifully.
• 54:25
  I'm absolutely there for it. And my last reason is this story
• 54:29
  gives us two fantastic female leads and it's really
• 54:33
  interesting that male Slovene are treated much more for
• 54:36
  laughs. Even Joe Green, who's our our
• 54:38
  new PM, he does get some sinister moments, but mostly
• 54:41
  he's in the background farting and instead it leaves it for a
• 54:45
  net battle. Who does that remind you of?
• 54:48
  I, I, I couldn't possibly comment so.
• 54:53
  And that Badland comes to the fore, doesn't she?
• 54:55
  And no wonder she got brought back again, because she's Mack
• 54:58
  Dixon here. The door closes on her and her
• 55:02
  her face just changes. Very dark, isn't?
• 55:05
  It she is stupendous in this. She just.
• 55:08
  Yeah. I mean, she handles all those
• 55:10
  dramatic scenes in part so where they're facing off against each
• 55:13
  other in the room. And I love those scenes.
• 55:16
  They're absolutely bursting with energy.
• 55:18
  And the other obviously female lead, Joe, you've already
• 55:21
  alluded to Penelope Wilson. She starts off ditzy, but then
• 55:24
  she's brave, she's funny, she's resourceful.
• 55:27
  Again, Russell is seeing these two female leads and thinking,
• 55:30
  God, we've got to get them back again.
• 55:32
  And he does. And good for him because they're
• 55:34
  both amazing and I love them when they return to.
• 55:36
  So absolutely, for me this is an easy showing.
• 55:41
  Michael Aliens of London, World War 3.
• 55:44
  Well, this is going to be an interesting one because I've
• 55:47
  listened to Joe. The point of Joe is making and
• 55:49
  I'll give you I agree with what particularly all the family
• 55:52
  stuff, the the drama about Rose returning and but I think I'm
• 55:57
  going to have to bin it. Michael, go on.
• 56:03
  I'm going to go into the politics side from the start.
• 56:07
  Apart from the awful massive weapons of disintegration,
• 56:09
  you're capable of being deployed in 45 seconds.
• 56:14
  He should. That should have been.
• 56:16
  Yeah. That's why Christopher Haight
• 56:17
  bid me At the moment I'm going. No, that should go.
• 56:21
  I'll never think Lord bid me. Come on.
• 56:22
  Now there's there's little it's something which will occur which
• 56:27
  will recur in in RTDS later. Who scripts is I I don't think
• 56:31
  he fully understands how report it works and Parliament works.
• 56:37
  They're talking about it. It's an emergency and that and
• 56:40
  that the parliament can't get back to down the streets or and
• 56:44
  parliament for a meeting. So why can't they just
• 56:46
  reconfigure it Chequers? Because it's Doctor Who.
• 56:52
  And I'm not quite sure that's exactly how the nearest MP who's
• 56:58
  of severe standing is how it would be handed down.
• 57:01
  So the internal structure of how the setup works.
• 57:03
  So why is the Sylvain guy decided to be the sugar man and
• 57:07
  not try and find a more a less egregious person like a back
• 57:11
  bet, like a backbencher like Harriet Jones who is coming to
• 57:15
  the 4th comes to the 4th horse. All the other elements is that
• 57:21
  this is probably. I should perhaps give him a bit
• 57:24
  of leeway because it is the first one in the Cam.
• 57:27
  It doesn't quite know what the tone is and they and the
• 57:30
  different tones jar. So there are bits which are
• 57:33
  very, very much CDDC and they're going, you know, go perhaps to
• 57:38
  the younger ends of the kid market.
• 57:39
  And then we've got the more serious political aspects and
• 57:42
  they don't seem to gel very well.
• 57:44
  They often contradict to the, the farting aliens are done over
• 57:48
  too, over the top. You know, it's OK, it's OK to
• 57:52
  get rid of them. We just get extended versions of
• 57:55
  it. We go, OK, we've got the point
• 57:57
  now. And when we first meet the
• 57:59
  Slovene in skin suits meeting in Downing St. and then they start
• 58:03
  doing that, laughing for so much, for so long expected Frank
• 58:08
  Drebin for police. And there's some awful, awful,
• 58:13
  awful CGI. The reveal of the Levine coming
• 58:17
  out of the Skinner suit is just iron it down the street.
• 58:20
  It's just terrible, even terrible, terrible, terrible.
• 58:26
  And I don't like the way they have to treat Nicky.
• 58:29
  I know it gets better, but it's still a bit dismissive and
• 58:34
  coming back to the drama scenes. So this I should, I shouldn't
• 58:36
  direct this one, this episode in particular, but it's handled so
• 58:40
  well about Rose disappearing for a year, for a year and how the
• 58:43
  Doctor rarely comes back to visit the consequences, which is
• 58:47
  a theme recurring through the season.
• 58:48
  But it makes me think, Oh my God, that a seed at the end of
• 58:52
  End of Time, which is supposed to be set.
• 58:53
  The staff this year says you're going to have a fantastic year,
• 58:56
  Rose. Yeah.
• 58:57
  But Jackie, you're going to have.
• 58:58
  You're fucking. Terrible.
• 58:59
  Yeah. She's drinking.
• 59:02
  She's. Gone.
• 59:02
  She's gone off drinking. And it's just so it just doesn't
• 59:11
  quite add up. And and as I say, it's just I
• 59:15
  don't think the tone quite works.
• 59:18
  Interesting. I'll take exception with the
• 59:21
  CBBC next to the politics, because I think what you're
• 59:24
  essentially saying is the show can't be silly and have a point.
• 59:28
  And I absolutely think there is space for both of those things
• 59:31
  within the same story. I think dogs who is a confident
• 59:34
  enough show to switch tones. I wonder with, and I'm not
• 59:38
  casting any shade on you, Michael, is if if it's that sort
• 59:42
  of the opinion of people that just don't like that silliness
• 59:46
  and that over the topness and that fun.
• 59:48
  But then I think it's worth remembering, you know, like
• 59:50
  there's six year olds watching this and six year olds find
• 59:53
  farting really funny. So that scene where they're I'm
• 59:56
  shaking my booty, Yeah, you know, I'm 40 plus.
• 59:59
  So that is a bit pure role. But for a six year old watching
• 1:00:02
  it, that's really fun, you know, And they can play that in their
• 1:00:05
  living room. Yeah, they've done it.
• 1:00:07
  I mean they get they get to the bounce on better race in the
• 1:00:10
  road. And I thought so a bit of
• 1:00:11
  shakes, a bit of a outline because it is interesting, but.
• 1:00:16
  He doesn't go there again though.
• 1:00:17
  He doesn't really go there again after the Selena comes out.
• 1:00:20
  We don't really do sort of toilet humour that much after
• 1:00:23
  serious one, so I. Think they do find their
• 1:00:25
  rightful place in The Sarah Jane Adventures, though.
• 1:00:28
  Oh. And it's joyful, Denise.
• 1:00:32
  So Denise, you have got the casting vote.
• 1:00:34
  Great responsibility. Well, it is my least favorite
• 1:00:40
  two parter of the season, I'm afraid.
• 1:00:44
  But it is impossible to hate it though, because like is so much
• 1:00:52
  good in here. There is so many amazing
• 1:00:56
  moments. I mean, yes, you know, when
• 1:01:00
  Doctor Who finished in 1989, I was 20, which means that I
• 1:01:04
  thought I was grown up, but I wasn't.
• 1:01:06
  And so when it came back, I was 36 where I thought I was grown
• 1:01:11
  up but I wasn't. Have the perspective to see, OK,
• 1:01:17
  what we want is for Doctor Who to be a success.
• 1:01:20
  And so we want it to appeal to a very broad audience and there
• 1:01:23
  has to be something in it for the old school fans.
• 1:01:28
  There has to be something in it to bring children in.
• 1:01:30
  There has to be something in it to bring in the young, beautiful
• 1:01:35
  people. It has to be something that's
• 1:01:36
  interesting for them as well. And I think Aliens of London has
• 1:01:42
  got all of that. It has got the creation of
• 1:01:45
  Harriet Jones, it has got the genuine trauma that Jackie and
• 1:01:50
  Mickey have been through over the last year because the Doctor
• 1:01:54
  made a tiny miscalculation. I love that Doctor smiles when
• 1:02:00
  he's got a barrage of guns in his face and then the next scene
• 1:02:05
  the soldiers are actually following him and obeying his
• 1:02:07
  orders rather than having blown his head off the pig alien.
• 1:02:14
  Although very, very silly, it's it's death and the Doctor's
• 1:02:19
  reaction reaction to it's death was straight back to the Marsh
• 1:02:23
  child in full circle. So that struck the board with
• 1:02:26
  me. The return of UNIT, although
• 1:02:29
  like you say, in a very sort of anonymous way.
• 1:02:34
  So it ticked a classic Doctor box without getting too
• 1:02:38
  complicated. And of course it was the first
• 1:02:42
  two parter of the new series, so it was the first hanger of the
• 1:02:46
  new series as well. So yeah, I wanted to hate the
• 1:02:53
  farting aliens, but I can't. But at the same time, I'm going
• 1:02:59
  to have to bin it. Oh.
• 1:03:01
  It's a knee. It's a roller coaster.
• 1:03:05
  You're playing me like an instrument to see knee so if it.
• 1:03:08
  Was out, then it was in, then it's out again.
• 1:03:11
  It's the hokey. Cokey.
• 1:03:14
  You know, guys, I did a spreadsheet for this quad cast
• 1:03:19
  #10 and spreadsheets don't lie, so I'm sorry, it's gonna have to
• 1:03:25
  go. I don't know.
• 1:03:27
  I don't know if I've ever been so unsure as to whether
• 1:03:31
  something's going or staying as I was then.
• 1:03:35
  So who did? Who invited these two?
• 1:03:37
  On it's just. Wrong on every.
• 1:03:40
  Level. Aliens are wrong.
• 1:03:43
  I've told you a million times, everyone's entitled to their
• 1:03:45
  opinion. Oh.
• 1:03:47
  Yeah. Matter how wrong they might be,
• 1:03:48
  all right. Right, let's bring some sanity
• 1:03:52
  back to proceedings. Let's.
• 1:03:55
  Eulogize about Dalek so great, great episode.
• 1:04:00
  Of course, I'm putting it through.
• 1:04:02
  So my first reason for putting through Dalek is the Dalek.
• 1:04:07
  So Yep, Rob Sherman, as I'm sure you will all talk about a great
• 1:04:11
  length. So I'm not going to talk about
• 1:04:12
  in too much detail, but yes, he takes every elements of the
• 1:04:15
  Daleks that have been laughed at or ridiculed or questioned in
• 1:04:18
  the past and he turns it on his head and utilizes it for
• 1:04:22
  something that's interesting, unique and new.
• 1:04:25
  I will leave you guys to talk about that.
• 1:04:27
  While I specifically want to talk about is the basic core
• 1:04:31
  dialect redesign. And look, we all know from
• 1:04:34
  Victory of the Dialects how badly wrong a dialect redesign
• 1:04:38
  can go, but this is just superb. The Bronze Dalek, it's just such
• 1:04:45
  a clever reinvention and it really re establishes the Daleks
• 1:04:49
  and the British consciousness and it means they're everywhere
• 1:04:52
  after this. They're in Toys-R-Us, they're in
• 1:04:53
  Woolworths, they're on magazine front covers, they are just
• 1:04:57
  bloody everywhere. Because what they did was they
• 1:04:59
  retained all those core elements and they retained the shape of
• 1:05:02
  the original. And what they gave it was they
• 1:05:04
  gave it stability, they gave it solidness and they gave it
• 1:05:08
  weight and it looks bloody glorious.
• 1:05:11
  But there's three other elements, particularly to these
• 1:05:14
  dialects, I think not necessarily always improves
• 1:05:17
  because I think the old had their had their place.
• 1:05:21
  But where I think makes it distinctive, three of them.
• 1:05:25
  The first one is the noise the Daleks now make every time they
• 1:05:28
  move, every time they turn their head.
• 1:05:30
  We have a defined noise for it. And they've now those noises are
• 1:05:34
  now synonymous with the Dalek. You hear like us old school fans
• 1:05:39
  know the sound of canine trundling down the corridor.
• 1:05:42
  We now know the noise of a Dalek coming into the room.
• 1:05:44
  We don't even have to see it. We know that noise of it coming
• 1:05:47
  down. Even now when I watch some of
• 1:05:49
  the older series and I see a Dalek coming towards, I almost
• 1:05:52
  kind of missed that sound a little bit.
• 1:05:54
  And of course, the big finish. God, they were godsend, weren't
• 1:05:56
  they? Because they gave movement to
• 1:05:58
  the dialects. So I think the noise is very
• 1:06:00
  subtle, but very clever. Secondly, the voice.
• 1:06:04
  I think Nick Briggs does get a lot of stick for lots of
• 1:06:07
  reasons, but here I think his dialect voice is stupendous.
• 1:06:10
  And I for once, don't, don't almost don't recognize him at
• 1:06:14
  the end because I think he's voiced particularly nuanced in
• 1:06:17
  those quieter scenes when he's the Dalek mutant.
• 1:06:19
  I suppose the Dalek. But he does a brilliant job.
• 1:06:22
  And again, if he hadn't been so good at recreating that Dalek
• 1:06:26
  voice, the toys wouldn't have sold as well as they did.
• 1:06:30
  And the third reason I love these Daleks is their stillness.
• 1:06:33
  So in the old days in classic who Daleks used to twitch a lot.
• 1:06:36
  Now I love that. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely
• 1:06:38
  love that. I love them constantly twitching
• 1:06:40
  and looking nervous and the ice stalks going basically so you
• 1:06:43
  knew which one was talking and to differentiate themselves from
• 1:06:46
  the the hollow shelled out props or the cardboard cut outs in the
• 1:06:49
  background. But that movement was was great
• 1:06:52
  for them here. But I think it works equally
• 1:06:55
  well in a different way. The stillness.
• 1:06:57
  Think of that scene when when Rose and the others run up the
• 1:07:00
  staircase to escape the Dalek. It's at the bottom of the
• 1:07:03
  stairs, it just turns its eye stalk and it just stays still
• 1:07:07
  whilst they're having all the narrative talking out it,
• 1:07:10
  mocking it, it's just completely still looking at it.
• 1:07:13
  And then it slowly starts to move and that stillness just
• 1:07:16
  creates a, it's really unsettling.
• 1:07:18
  It's that kind of uncanny valley feeling and it just makes them
• 1:07:22
  feel totally implacable. So I think the redesign of the
• 1:07:25
  Dalek is magnificent. My second reason is all the
• 1:07:30
  character parallels. There are so many parallels
• 1:07:33
  between the characters in this story that either highlight
• 1:07:36
  their differences or their similarities.
• 1:07:38
  So you've got the Doctor and the Dalek.
• 1:07:40
  They are both at this point, we believe them to be the last of
• 1:07:42
  their species. So that gives their kind of
• 1:07:44
  decisions and actions a lot of weight.
• 1:07:47
  So many characters in this are described as geniuses.
• 1:07:49
  So Adam declares himself to be a genius.
• 1:07:52
  Van Staten says how good he is. He describes the doctor as an
• 1:07:55
  expert. The dialects are described as a
• 1:07:57
  genius. We even get Davros referenced,
• 1:07:59
  although he's not name checked as a genius.
• 1:08:01
  But it's how they all use their genius.
• 1:08:04
  Well, I think Rob Schuman's really clever, easy setting up
• 1:08:07
  all these equals, but showing how they all react to situations
• 1:08:10
  differently. So take for example, Van Staten
• 1:08:13
  and Adam, their genius. How do they use it?
• 1:08:16
  We told they're both for the stars, but what they're actually
• 1:08:18
  doing, they're buried under the ground playing with toys.
• 1:08:21
  They're not looking outwards. Whereas the Doctor and the
• 1:08:24
  Dalek, they've both traveled galaxies, they're both looking
• 1:08:27
  outwards. And in some ways, as the script
• 1:08:29
  draws parallels to they're not that dissimilar in some ways.
• 1:08:33
  And this is the first time and it's not the last time, but it's
• 1:08:36
  the first time we get a great line of the Dalek telling the
• 1:08:39
  Doctor you would make a good Dalek.
• 1:08:41
  So again, we're drawing parallels between the
• 1:08:43
  characters. And it's also, there are
• 1:08:45
  parallels between how the characters are happy to evolve
• 1:08:48
  and change. So the dialects absorbed human
• 1:08:50
  DNA and it can't cope with it because it's it's disrupting its
• 1:08:54
  purity. So it's looking for death,
• 1:08:55
  whereas the Doctor at the end embraces and realizes that he
• 1:08:59
  needs to grow and change. So I think that all these
• 1:09:01
  parallels going on, it's a very, very, very, very clever script.
• 1:09:06
  And my third reason, which is really quick throwaway, who
• 1:09:08
  thought I would get emotional over a bit of stretch latex at
• 1:09:11
  the end, but I do, it really works.
• 1:09:14
  So yeah, absolutely Dalek is going through.
• 1:09:18
  Shall we go to the comments we've heard from this?
• 1:09:20
  Really strangely named Person First Joe.
• 1:09:23
  We've heard from a gentleman called Rob Sherman.
• 1:09:26
  I don't know if you've ever. Heard is that Rob Sherman coming
• 1:09:29
  to Strictly come hamster soon? That is Rob Sherman coming to
• 1:09:32
  Strictly come Hamster soon, but he commented on this episode
• 1:09:35
  called Garlic which is quite interesting and he says I don't
• 1:09:38
  think Dalek is a disaster as such, but you try telling that
• 1:09:41
  to all those Welsh accented security guards who didn't get
• 1:09:44
  home to their families for Christmas that year.
• 1:09:47
  Always a sick bastard. There.
• 1:09:49
  Sean Carlson Isn't that Marvin? From that is Marvin, yes.
• 1:09:52
  It's my favorite Dalek story and the best Eccleson story.
• 1:09:56
  James Larks has another high point which I rather
• 1:09:59
  underestimated at the time. The over egging of the staircase
• 1:10:01
  moment aside, it's an incredibly economical and tightly woven
• 1:10:05
  script, definitely concealing some really shocking themes with
• 1:10:08
  a mix of dark wit and masterful tension.
• 1:10:11
  The fact that the writer of Sherman's calibre contributed a
• 1:10:14
  gem like this and hasn't written for the TV series since is sheer
• 1:10:17
  insanity. Jack Coyer It's amazing what 11
• 1:10:21
  scarred killer who escaped from the Time War can do when he's
• 1:10:24
  trapped in a room with a Dalek. Eccleston Oh, I see what he did.
• 1:10:28
  Eccleston gives his first fantastic performance,
• 1:10:31
  physically imposing and mentally weak, ultimately learning to
• 1:10:34
  become a better person. Samuel Nicer Sublime, A perfect
• 1:10:38
  example of the 45 minute format with some brilliant moments.
• 1:10:41
  The perfect reinvention of the series most famous villains.
• 1:10:44
  Shame about Adam, who's a bit of a wet lettuce, both in character
• 1:10:47
  and performance. Big Orange Michael.
• 1:10:51
  A masterpiece. My favorite episode of Modern
• 1:10:53
  Who. Favorite.
• 1:10:54
  Wow. The script makes a single Dalek
• 1:10:56
  terrifying. And the real threat.
• 1:10:58
  Eccleston's performance is sensational.
• 1:11:01
  Every single aspect of this works.
• 1:11:02
  Keep it. Andy Parkinson's has a great
• 1:11:05
  look at how far the doctor has descended into madness.
• 1:11:08
  Ross fantastic opening but then too drawn out.
• 1:11:11
  The swiveling gum turret was cool and should have been
• 1:11:14
  adopted going forward. James H said great at the time,
• 1:11:17
  but one of those stories that needs to be brushed into the
• 1:11:19
  carpet now as it's set very much in the past.
• 1:11:22
  Eccleston delivers a truly stellar performance.
• 1:11:26
  Jason Thompson blew me away. The first one I rewatched more
• 1:11:29
  than once. I still get chills now every
• 1:11:31
  time I see the first scene with the Daleks light flashing in the
• 1:11:34
  dark. Eccleston shows a Doctor utterly
• 1:11:36
  terrified in a way. We've not seen it since
• 1:11:38
  Trouton's Dalek stories. Daleks had been joked about a
• 1:11:42
  lot in the wilderness years. This undoes all of that
• 1:11:45
  brilliantly. Ian Winston says now the kids
• 1:11:48
  are hooked. RTD reveals his cunning planner
• 1:11:50
  hits us with this perfect slice of modern Who.
• 1:11:53
  Funny, exciting and dark. The Doctor with a gun and our
• 1:11:56
  sympathy with a suicidal Dalek. This was the week who re
• 1:11:59
  cemented itself with the public. Finally, Steve Miller.
• 1:12:03
  I remember being disappointed originally because it was too
• 1:12:05
  light. Jubilee.
• 1:12:07
  Interesting. OK, Joe Dalek, yay or nay?
• 1:12:11
  I wasn't going to put this through because I think there
• 1:12:17
  are two versions of Dalek that are superior to the dialect that
• 1:12:22
  hits the screen and both of them are written by Robert Sherman.
• 1:12:27
  One is the target novelization, which is just one of the best
• 1:12:31
  Doctor Who books you are ever going to read.
• 1:12:34
  And what he does in that book is he tells the basic bullet points
• 1:12:38
  of the story, but does protracted scenes inside the
• 1:12:42
  heads of key characters and leans right back into their
• 1:12:47
  backstories and history to show how they got for this moment in
• 1:12:51
  this bunker. So Diana Goddard's story is
• 1:12:53
  gripping. The torturer of the Dalek.
• 1:12:56
  His back story is one of the most scariest things you're ever
• 1:12:59
  going to read in Doctor Who fiction.
• 1:13:02
  So it's a wonderful book, and I do think it is more captivating
• 1:13:05
  than the TV show. And Jubilee by Robert Sheerman
• 1:13:09
  is one of the best Big Finish Doctor stories you're ever, ever
• 1:13:13
  gonna listen to. And I think the reason it scores
• 1:13:16
  higher than Dalek for me is because it really leans into Rob
• 1:13:21
  Sheerman sick humor in a way that you never could.
• 1:13:25
  Yeah, it's. Far too macabre to have on TV.
• 1:13:27
  Oh. It's just glorious though.
• 1:13:30
  I'm sorry. I'd like him to see the dwarf
• 1:13:32
  scene. Though the dwarf scene, yeah,
• 1:13:34
  where the the fellow's got an army of Daleks and he has the
• 1:13:37
  Americans ship over dwarfs to to be inside him so he can play
• 1:13:41
  about with them. And this dwarf is too, too big
• 1:13:43
  to get inside the Daleks, so he chops his arm off and then
• 1:13:46
  shoves him in. I mean, it's horrible.
• 1:13:47
  There's a beer. An absolute savage commentary on
• 1:13:50
  consumerism where they go, well, we've given you garlic, garlic
• 1:13:55
  juice. You know, we boil down the Dalek
• 1:13:57
  mutant. We take the secreted juice that
• 1:14:00
  comes off him and it, you know, once we drink the Daleks, we
• 1:14:03
  have a bit of them. It's better than giving you
• 1:14:05
  garlic aid, they say, or garlic juice.
• 1:14:08
  And Doctor goes, what's that? And he goes, oh, it's just
• 1:14:10
  lemonade or juice. There was a picture of a picture
• 1:14:12
  of a Dalek slapped on it. Oh, it's just the most beautiful
• 1:14:16
  script and so well performed. They're both great stories.
• 1:14:20
  However, this is still one of the most perfect Doctor Who
• 1:14:25
  episodes you're ever going to watch.
• 1:14:27
  And just as an action piece, it's phenomenal.
• 1:14:31
  It's got 15 minutes where we establish everybody and then
• 1:14:34
  from that point, we're running. We're running from that Dalek
• 1:14:37
  because he's coming to kill you. And it's as scary as they've
• 1:14:41
  ever been. I really love the bit on the
• 1:14:43
  stairs. I don't think that goes on too
• 1:14:45
  long. It's it's a moment that's been
• 1:14:47
  earned right after all those gags.
• 1:14:50
  Amazing character work. The bit where the Doctor thinks
• 1:14:53
  that Rose is dead and he's furiously angry with Van Staten.
• 1:14:57
  It's one of Chris Reckerson's best moments on the on the
• 1:15:02
  levels of just making you excited, making you scared and
• 1:15:07
  making you feel feel for a Dalek.
• 1:15:09
  Are you mad by the end of this? I was so moved by that Dalek
• 1:15:13
  with the sunlight coming on him. But my final reason to put it
• 1:15:16
  through is I think Nick Briggs, who I am scathingly critical of,
• 1:15:21
  usually gives one of the best ever vocal performances of a
• 1:15:25
  monster we've ever heard in Doctor Who.
• 1:15:27
  It is a perfect performance. Yes, it's going through for me.
• 1:15:31
  Fantastic, Denise. Oh dear.
• 1:15:35
  Oh, and I'm not sure now with Denise which way she's going to
• 1:15:41
  go now. Well, you know, this is such a
• 1:15:48
  strong season. This was such a strong rebirth
• 1:15:52
  of the series that we all love that, you know, ranking these
• 1:15:57
  episodes is like ranking your favorite cats or your favorite
• 1:16:01
  children, if that's your inclination.
• 1:16:04
  And yeah, I'm afraid Dalek didn't rank very highly with me.
• 1:16:10
  I think the problem I have with it is that, you know, most of
• 1:16:14
  the humans, with one or two exceptions, are absolutely
• 1:16:19
  horrible, deeply unpleasant, immoral people, you know?
• 1:16:24
  And I'm not a big fan of that because you get enough of that
• 1:16:28
  in real life, don't you? To be fair, you know, Van Staten
• 1:16:32
  is horrible. Adam is a piece of work, you
• 1:16:37
  know, he really is. And the woman who takes over at
• 1:16:41
  the end? Well, yeah.
• 1:16:43
  I mean, we all know people like her, but yeah, that doesn't mean
• 1:16:49
  that there aren't some wonderful scenes, you know?
• 1:16:53
  I mean, I would put every episode through if I could, but
• 1:16:56
  that isn't how this works, so this one has to go.
• 1:17:00
  Can I ask where? It came on.
• 1:17:04
  Your spreadsheet. Where did it use?
• 1:17:05
  Where did it? Rank, it's number 90.
• 1:17:09
  No way. Right.
• 1:17:13
  Oh yeah, yeah. So obviously I am going to have
• 1:17:17
  to defend some stories that you guys think are a pile of poop.
• 1:17:23
  So. Now I know.
• 1:17:26
  There's a Now I know there's a spreadsheet I'm just going to
• 1:17:29
  ask for the rank on. Every time you.
• 1:17:30
  Talk. I mean, I, I like, I like the
• 1:17:39
  scene with the Doctor and the Dalek followed by the Rose and
• 1:17:44
  the Dalek. I love that at the end of the
• 1:17:47
  episode, the Doctor is the one with the big gun, the Dalek is
• 1:17:50
  showing mercy and roses the moral arbiter.
• 1:17:53
  I think that's really interesting.
• 1:17:56
  I've made a note that I should read the novelisation because I
• 1:18:00
  haven't done that, because that perhaps that's the perspective I
• 1:18:03
  need to get it up the ranks a little bit.
• 1:18:10
  I think Eccleston's performance is amazing.
• 1:18:13
  When he first encounters the Dalek, he goes from fear to
• 1:18:16
  gloating to anger to regret. I mean, not every person who has
• 1:18:22
  played the Doctor in either the classic or the modern era era
• 1:18:26
  has got the range of Eccleston really in that regard.
• 1:18:30
  And he was the 3rd perfect choice to play the first of the
• 1:18:34
  new series of Doctors. He really was.
• 1:18:40
  I'm glad they don't mess with the extermination effects
• 1:18:43
  because that was something I loved from in their classic era.
• 1:18:50
  I'm not a big fan of battle scenes.
• 1:18:52
  I'm the sort of person who when watching Lord of the Rings or
• 1:18:55
  something like that, I will take a quick nap during when the orcs
• 1:18:59
  are beating the crap out of some other people.
• 1:19:01
  So I. Was spending more.
• 1:19:02
  Of a night, I think that's more pretty much, yeah.
• 1:19:08
  And yeah, the the ending is very atmospheric with the water from
• 1:19:15
  the sprinkler system falling like rain on the Dalek.
• 1:19:18
  I think that's that's lovely. There is a lot of beauty in
• 1:19:20
  there. Like you say, the new design of
• 1:19:23
  the Dalek is wonderful and I don't really see it being
• 1:19:27
  bettered. Yeah.
• 1:19:30
  But this is a strong and brilliant series and we can't
• 1:19:37
  take them all with us. And for me, Dalek is OUT.
• 1:19:41
  There was there was one thing you said there today.
• 1:19:43
  It's about how the sort of the characters are quite ugly in
• 1:19:47
  this and it is true. It's like, why would you root
• 1:19:50
  for any of them to survive? Let it kill them, right?
• 1:19:56
  I mean, there's a, there's a young female soldier who
• 1:19:59
  sacrifices herself to save Rose and Adam, you know?
• 1:20:02
  But all the rest of them? I'm glad they're not my
• 1:20:04
  colleagues. We've all worked with people
• 1:20:08
  like that. If you have.
• 1:20:11
  Michael, it's one apiece. You've got the deciding vote.
• 1:20:14
  That. Power could set you up above the
• 1:20:18
  gods. Well, I'll start start off at a
• 1:20:25
  point and I'll let you see if you can figure where I'm going.
• 1:20:28
  OK, I'm going to talk about Adam.
• 1:20:31
  Oh, it's. Going.
• 1:20:34
  It's going, yeah. I was watching Bruno.
• 1:20:39
  What's his favorite? Bruno Langley.
• 1:20:40
  And as you can, I've seen wooden tops do better performances than
• 1:20:44
  you. And on the paper he should be a
• 1:20:48
  precocious, the precocious brat who's basically he's Outrick.
• 1:20:52
  He thinks he's Bertie Big bollocks.
• 1:20:53
  He's got this position where he's examining these alien
• 1:20:57
  artifacts and he thinks he's God and he's everything and he's
• 1:21:01
  going places, but he just comes across as just an annoying git.
• 1:21:05
  He comes across as one of those, one of those kids you haven't,
• 1:21:08
  you know who? It's a girl who knew that little
• 1:21:11
  bit about something and would always shove it in your head.
• 1:21:14
  You do know about this. Yes, I do know that.
• 1:21:17
  I think that was. Me actually, and it would be,
• 1:21:22
  but it'd be something like, look how clever I am about this.
• 1:21:25
  But and it'd be something really, I know how to use an
• 1:21:29
  adverb ever so perfectly. And he just, he doesn't feel
• 1:21:33
  like doesn't it's not sympathetic.
• 1:21:35
  There's no chemistry between him and Rose, which really gets the
• 1:21:39
  problem of Chris Tengstall calling him his boyfriend to not
• 1:21:42
  really work, not even ironically.
• 1:21:45
  I mean, if there was some sort of negative chemistry, there's
• 1:21:47
  just no chemistry. It's a solid it's a solid-state
• 1:21:51
  when the Dalek self destructs and it's a complete
• 1:21:54
  vaporization. I thinking well sure there
• 1:21:57
  should be some kind of debris, even if it's just a bit of bit
• 1:22:00
  of dust and the thoughts about stealing the DNA from a time
• 1:22:05
  traveller to to rebuild to rebuild itself and particularly
• 1:22:10
  from Rose well, that's Rose is quite a new travel.
• 1:22:14
  So I she thought so quite good that she actually falls for it.
• 1:22:17
  She seems dive even at this point, but you think could build
• 1:22:20
  up in later episodes as to why she doesn't know what's silly
• 1:22:22
  mistakes. It's and it builds up to come to
• 1:22:26
  at the time and watching you. I thought, well, that's a bit of
• 1:22:29
  a bit of a non sequent or about it doing the quasi mass thing in
• 1:22:33
  reverse and hating itself because of the IT discovers the
• 1:22:36
  dialect within itself and destroys itself as opposed to
• 1:22:39
  being the mutants, which discovers the human within
• 1:22:41
  itself to turn it back to normal.
• 1:22:43
  But this is definitely going. In or do you know what?
• 1:22:47
  I knew it because only Rod would do that many negatives without
• 1:22:51
  saying something's being bent. It takes all the best bit, gets
• 1:22:57
  Jubilee billets the story on, gets all the best bits, gets rid
• 1:23:01
  of some of the extended padding bits perhaps could have been
• 1:23:03
  trimmed down from 20 production. That's a different, but that's a
• 1:23:07
  different story. That's a different Bob Gaston.
• 1:23:09
  We've got one of the Britain, we've got that brilliant Dalek
• 1:23:12
  reveal with a slow build up. And what really is that
• 1:23:16
  Christian Eccles is absolutely terrified of that Dalek.
• 1:23:20
  And it's only where the moments when he has the deaths of the
• 1:23:22
  dialects moment where he has realized I'm not dead, I should
• 1:23:26
  be dead. It's guns not working.
• 1:23:28
  And then we get that full fury of rage of the doctor being
• 1:23:32
  very, very UN doctor like. And this is I think this is
• 1:23:37
  echoes of the war Doctor we did not see on screen and that spite
• 1:23:42
  and it's you know, throughout the episode, you get this
• 1:23:43
  feeling that this that the 9th doctor is is suffering some
• 1:23:47
  forsome severe former psychosis. And this will pick up again in
• 1:23:51
  farm's day. It's shown a little bit in in
• 1:23:53
  long game. And of course it culminates in
• 1:23:55
  the involved in babbles. I think of the ways the
• 1:23:58
  direction is absolutely excellent.
• 1:24:00
  Dalek gets to do lots and lots and lots and lots of killing,
• 1:24:04
  which they haven't been able to do since haven't done since
• 1:24:06
  resurrection. The Daleks.
• 1:24:08
  No Daleks kill, all right? And of course, and Denise was
• 1:24:16
  saying about that all unlikable characters.
• 1:24:19
  This is like Sabidism. Sabidism, but only only with
• 1:24:23
  more depth and thought of character and not just a lot of
• 1:24:26
  clunky, clunky macho dialogue nonsense.
• 1:24:29
  Although I can believe you've. Read the.
• 1:24:31
  Book. All of those characters get a
• 1:24:34
  million more shades in that book, so it just goes to show in
• 1:24:36
  45 minutes. You have to take so much out
• 1:24:40
  just to tell the story. But it's but he's got he's got
• 1:24:43
  this dialogue. He's got so spot on it like
• 1:24:46
  Sabre. He's writes his characters like
• 1:24:47
  Sabre done properly. I mean, I believe I can believe
• 1:24:52
  that I'm the torturer and he's just comes across as not, you
• 1:24:55
  know, he's an absolutely nasty piece of work.
• 1:24:57
  My only one regret is that they didn't do that bit from Jubilee
• 1:25:01
  where he where he that executioner torturer purse.
• 1:25:06
  He found your optic nerve. We're going to slice it open.
• 1:25:10
  It's such a pity that line didn't get through, but I don't
• 1:25:13
  think that would have passed the sensor.
• 1:25:14
  And there was, as you see throughout series, series one,
• 1:25:19
  you can see that how they're figuring out how far they can
• 1:25:22
  push it, that they can get away with it was.
• 1:25:24
  A close. Enough shade here though, wasn't
• 1:25:25
  it? Because just the Darla being in
• 1:25:27
  chains was being questioned. Yes, and and and because we have
• 1:25:32
  the drilling as well and and Van Staten is a very believable and
• 1:25:37
  I love how they expanded in the book as well and it makes sense,
• 1:25:41
  makes it makes much more 3 dimensional.
• 1:25:43
  So yeah, yeah, I think. Makes more sense in 2024 than it
• 1:25:47
  did in 2000. And five, yeah.
• 1:25:51
  Definitely it's bit as a build it builds it up a lot better.
• 1:25:53
  We get a bit of back story here, but but even even all the actors
• 1:25:57
  give it 100% except Adam and the only thing and and then there's
• 1:26:02
  what the best scene has got to be the opening scene where he's
• 1:26:06
  where he sees the cyber head in the museum and that little touch
• 1:26:09
  of pathos as he just almost sadly reaches out and touches
• 1:26:14
  the case and sets all the alarms off.
• 1:26:16
  And that is just showing that you see a full range of Eccles
• 1:26:19
  down in this episode. So it's definitely staying it's.
• 1:26:22
  What we would do in the museum, right We can I.
• 1:26:24
  Was going to say show me he's a Doctor Who fan.
• 1:26:26
  Look at you. You're from Revenge of the
• 1:26:29
  Cyberman. Fabulous.
• 1:26:33
  So Dalek goes through. Thank goodness.
• 1:26:34
  I had a vision that Dalek was going to go out.
• 1:26:38
  So it's two a piece. Should we go to our second and
• 1:26:41
  final lot of listener comments? Michael and Denise, if you're
• 1:26:46
  queued up and ready to go, let's start with Denise this time.
• 1:26:51
  Go for it. OK, Oscar Groucho says the only
• 1:26:56
  reimagining the show needed No fringe continuity, just back to
• 1:27:01
  basics, accessible in a way that which has arguably never been to
• 1:27:05
  such an extent since the journey out of darkness and a coming of
• 1:27:09
  age. Sorry for Rose.
• 1:27:12
  Sorry coming of age story for Rose.
• 1:27:14
  Masterful storytelling. I don't disagree with a single
• 1:27:18
  word he just said there. OK Mark Duddick, I see this here
• 1:27:23
  through rose tinted glasses so refuse to see any pulls.
• 1:27:26
  First full full series I saw on transmission.
• 1:27:29
  Having spent my childhood bringing the show back into
• 1:27:31
  existence, can still remember when and where I saw each
• 1:27:34
  episode. Absolutely fantastic.
• 1:27:39
  And PlayStation Game 187 says I am glad they rebooted it and
• 1:27:45
  they did it really very, very well.
• 1:27:46
  They got us so much right and not much wrong.
• 1:27:50
  Great casting and performances all round.
• 1:27:54
  I just wish we had a bit more of Ace than the 7th Doctor, but it
• 1:27:58
  wasn't meant to be. No, please.
• 1:28:03
  Ring them back now, we won't take less.
• 1:28:07
  No, no, no, no, no. Sorry, sorry.
• 1:28:12
  Sorry, just pair Ace and Adric up together.
• 1:28:16
  Oh oh. Please no.
• 1:28:17
  Ace would last five. I think it would last five
• 1:28:21
  minutes. Actually it might be worth.
• 1:28:22
  Seeing actually what she could do.
• 1:28:24
  I thought exactly. Sorry I.
• 1:28:27
  Accidentally left that cab of Nitro 9 in your bedroom.
• 1:28:33
  Dan Hollingsworth sets a template for the new era with a
• 1:28:36
  great mix of times and places. Actual scary Daleks, parting
• 1:28:40
  green weirdos who infiltrate Downing Streets, bring your
• 1:28:43
  Doctor Who into the mainstream with appearances from
• 1:28:45
  recognisable people and concerts may have had some older fans
• 1:28:49
  grown but it got them not to be talking.
• 1:28:52
  That's fair enough. And Pete Lambert.
• 1:28:55
  Hello Pete. Hard to remember what an
• 1:28:58
  absolute roller coaster ride it was as it zoomed about exploring
• 1:29:03
  all the different styles it could use.
• 1:29:04
  Now, however, I only take the best was, in retrospect, a red
• 1:29:09
  flag for misjudgments ahead. John Arnold from cult show to
• 1:29:14
  national obsession in three months.
• 1:29:16
  Mind blowing to see the show on billboard and work colleagues
• 1:29:19
  who have no previous interesting frantically Googling to try and
• 1:29:23
  find out what was going to happen in the parting of the
• 1:29:25
  ways. And Jana almond tricol almond
• 1:29:32
  trout. So I don't know.
• 1:29:35
  I apologize guys, I live in Norway.
• 1:29:38
  The best place to start in the entirety of Doctor Who.
• 1:29:42
  All the stories are brilliant and it does such a good job at
• 1:29:45
  giving you everything you need to know.
• 1:29:47
  Makes you feel confident in your knowledge and then ends with an
• 1:29:50
  Oh and one more thing, there's always A twist at the end.
• 1:29:59
  Charlie Barnes The Martin era gets off to a flying start and
• 1:30:02
  this season has a murderers row of writers who grew up on the
• 1:30:05
  show, excelled in the world of this year and had the chance to
• 1:30:08
  write for the show proper and they all bought their A game.
• 1:30:13
  The Herald of Creation says we've predicted viewings.
• 1:30:16
  The episodes show cracks in plotting and performance, but
• 1:30:21
  Ecclestone is magnetic and covers up the cracks with sheer
• 1:30:25
  force of will. Luke Sims Jenkins I don't like
• 1:30:28
  Rose so it's not an era I revisit.
• 1:30:31
  I love Dalek though. And Hazel says banger after
• 1:30:36
  banger and I won't hear any different.
• 1:30:38
  Sounds like a song, didn't it? That's time after time.
• 1:30:44
  And finally, Steve Mellor at the time, I hope people would see
• 1:30:47
  it. I hope people would see it what
• 1:30:49
  we fans you all along. And thankfully they did.
• 1:30:52
  It was incredible, incredible to see our little show back on the
• 1:30:55
  telly. Fabulous.
• 1:30:58
  OK, so first round down, let's go into the second round.
• 1:31:02
  Michael Storm, pick your second story to champion or condemn.
• 1:31:07
  OK, I'm going to go for the long game and I am going to bid it
• 1:31:16
  now. This is a this is one I've
• 1:31:19
  always been very changeable 1 so I might change my mind by the
• 1:31:22
  end of the end of my arguments. But but it's better than its
• 1:31:26
  reputation. But and it's looks quite good,
• 1:31:29
  but it just doesn't seem to hang well, hang together well.
• 1:31:33
  And one of the I think the biggest problem is that wooden
• 1:31:36
  top who's driving part of the plots.
• 1:31:40
  It's we all seem to have a few. It's probably a bit mean to to
• 1:31:43
  talk about costumes, but it's second and greatest greatest
• 1:31:47
  bountiful human empire and there's people wearing top shot
• 1:31:50
  things 2005. That's what good I recognized
• 1:31:54
  one of the outfits that my partner at the time was wearing.
• 1:32:00
  And how does the Jagger fest actually work?
• 1:32:04
  I mean, it's it's supposed to be cold.
• 1:32:07
  Surely all the excess heat should be from all the
• 1:32:10
  generators of the cold, not keep it cold, not coming from the
• 1:32:13
  Jagger fest itself. How does it, you know, how can
• 1:32:16
  it control everything that what it just seems to do is sit on
• 1:32:18
  the sit on the wall, sit on the ceiling like a bit of mold in a
• 1:32:21
  in a dirty old man's bathroom, making the noises of a dirty old
• 1:32:26
  man in the bathroom. And it's the Suki.
• 1:32:32
  It's could be seen as a criticism on the Fox News sort
• 1:32:36
  style broadcasting and GBBS, as I like to call it, of yeah, just
• 1:32:41
  of just this one stream of information.
• 1:32:43
  But it just falls a bit flat. It feels like some of the worst
• 1:32:47
  excesses of the 1980s in in the set design lighting.
• 1:32:52
  And we get some wasted guest stars in small world 2 scene
• 1:32:56
  roles. And I think and it's just a
• 1:32:59
  waste. And it's just, it's not.
• 1:33:02
  It's when it comes to the final scene when Adam is returned back
• 1:33:07
  to his forest and his mum comes in and says oh, it's just been
• 1:33:11
  like that. Actually, I haven't heard people
• 1:33:14
  clear. Their fingers for ages.
• 1:33:18
  It doesn't seem like a natural thing to do and I didn't feel
• 1:33:21
  that's. Why?
• 1:33:22
  Ever. It's not expediency.
• 1:33:27
  Yeah, and it could. So he sent Adam back with this
• 1:33:31
  big garage on his bed, said, oh, well, you've got to live a very
• 1:33:34
  quiet life. So even if he just sits down and
• 1:33:37
  opens fish and chip shop or, you know, work or stack shells and
• 1:33:41
  Tesco, what happens if he gets hit by a bus, has a heart
• 1:33:44
  attack, needs to go and have an MRI scan and they find this big
• 1:33:47
  garage in his head, they're going to think, what the hell is
• 1:33:52
  that again? Well, let's go and have a look
• 1:33:53
  at this. Let's take it to you.
• 1:33:55
  Is he going to get abducted by units or Torchwood or the Forge
• 1:33:59
  or? We can only hope it's.
• 1:34:02
  Dissected somewhere along the way.
• 1:34:04
  Or are they going to pick you up and make an army of clones of
• 1:34:06
  Adam to to attack them? All.
• 1:34:11
  How terrifying would that be had it just logical is if you could
• 1:34:15
  move technology forward so fast it would fall apart, and that
• 1:34:20
  perhaps could have been something which could have been
• 1:34:21
  picked up on, but then we'd have to reuse his Adam.
• 1:34:24
  But it just doesn't quite hang up.
• 1:34:26
  However, there are some good points.
• 1:34:28
  I think Simon Pegg is very good as the editor and I do like the
• 1:34:32
  initial scene where these where we get the market storm they set
• 1:34:36
  out and they're just drinking and they're drinking beef
• 1:34:38
  flavored swoosh puppies. And and this yes, it's it does
• 1:34:45
  have that sort of demolition man fifth element's edge about
• 1:34:48
  elements feel about it at that point, but it's and I like quite
• 1:34:54
  and lady plays Tasker. She she's very good, but Suki's
• 1:34:57
  a bit wooden and I had some of the visuals ago because it's
• 1:35:02
  well, I said it's well directed. It's a shame that Brian Grant
• 1:35:05
  wasn't brought back to do any more.
• 1:35:07
  Perhaps he ever ran a bit so in the studio.
• 1:35:10
  But it's, you know, I can say it just doesn't look SIP for me.
• 1:35:14
  Marvellous. And that can I, can I just be
• 1:35:16
  clear, Michael, because you've you've talked about it in the
• 1:35:18
  last two. Do you like Bruno Langley?
• 1:35:20
  Because I'm really not quite getting.
• 1:35:23
  It. You.
• 1:35:24
  Either hate him or you've got a bit of a Bruno Langley fetish.
• 1:35:27
  I'm not quite sure. Can't quite work it out at the
• 1:35:30
  moment. I'm not sure anyone likes Bruno
• 1:35:32
  Langley. Too much anymore.
• 1:35:36
  Shall we go to the comments? James Matthews says this is a
• 1:35:39
  work of art. A work of art.
• 1:35:43
  Both a compelling story and a cutthroat political commentary
• 1:35:47
  which still holds water, more so in 2024.
• 1:35:51
  James, were you commenting on the long game?
• 1:35:56
  Ross says the quite the reverse. It feels quite dated and waste 2
• 1:36:00
  great guest stars who could have been arguably fantastic doctors.
• 1:36:04
  Oh, who's that Tamsin? Grey Peg and Tamsin Greg, I
• 1:36:08
  guess, yeah. Great way to save money on sets.
• 1:36:11
  Gareth Bowley says great a story that stands on its own.
• 1:36:15
  Adam is a good twist of a character.
• 1:36:17
  Close your ears, Michael. And one that should be
• 1:36:20
  revisited. What the fuck?
• 1:36:24
  Jason Thompson, It didn't really grab me.
• 1:36:26
  Simon Pegg is excellent, but overall I found it unsatisfying.
• 1:36:30
  One I can happily skip. Daniel Nice is a bit of a
• 1:36:33
  filler. I didn't like it at first.
• 1:36:35
  As a as a prologue to the season finale, it's OK.
• 1:36:38
  It does have Tasmin, Greg and Anna Maxwell Martin so it can't
• 1:36:41
  be all bad. Yeah, Anna Maxwell Martin.
• 1:36:44
  You know, I've seen her do amazing work elsewhere.
• 1:36:47
  So she's. Very young here, doesn't she?
• 1:36:49
  I don't know what happened here. Big orange Michael Pluses, you
• 1:36:52
  get Simon Pegg and it sets up the end of second season arc
• 1:36:55
  minuses. It's not as engaging as Dalek
• 1:36:58
  bid it. Ian Winston Says mostly exists
• 1:37:01
  as a setup for the finale, but it's OK under you.
• 1:37:04
  Simon Pegg overuse Bruno Langley, but the latter's exit
• 1:37:08
  gets sweeter with each passing year.
• 1:37:11
  Tom Newsom, Adam doesn't really work apart from creating another
• 1:37:14
  Adric. Don't write off the rest.
• 1:37:16
  The Doctor has some great goofy moments.
• 1:37:18
  Do you hear that, Rod? Wait, goofy moments?
• 1:37:21
  No, no, no, no, Jack Coyer says. It's fine.
• 1:37:25
  That's about it. Some interesting commentary on
• 1:37:28
  the insidiousness of the media, which RTD is still ruminating on
• 1:37:31
  as recently as the Giggle. It's a shame, then that its
• 1:37:33
  focus is how unsuitable one of the TARDIS crew is.
• 1:37:37
  You find yourself shouting at the TV.
• 1:37:39
  Well, get him out of the way so I can watch the people I'm
• 1:37:41
  supposed to be interested in. Daniel Rawnsley after Dalek, it
• 1:37:45
  can't help but feel subpar. RTD should have stuck to his
• 1:37:48
  original pitch of telling it from Adam's point of view.
• 1:37:50
  Oh Michael. But the ideas have aged well.
• 1:37:54
  A dirty capitalistic dystopia where misinformation is king.
• 1:37:58
  It'll never catch on. Simon Pegg is a fun baddie and
• 1:38:02
  that ending? Wow, James H says finally.
• 1:38:06
  Nowhere near as bad as his reputation and interesting
• 1:38:09
  monster design and a neat baddie keep.
• 1:38:11
  It he's a contrary bugger. Isn't he just?
• 1:38:14
  But how contrary will he be? Denise, has Michael convinced
• 1:38:19
  you of the poorness of the long game, or are you giving it a
• 1:38:22
  pass? Well, well, you know, you go
• 1:38:27
  into the long game and it kicks off with the Doctor doing
• 1:38:31
  exactly the same thing as Rose and Adam, as Van Stockton was
• 1:38:34
  doing in Dalek, trying to Chuck them together.
• 1:38:38
  I mean, yes, she's giving Rose a few sort of clues as to where
• 1:38:44
  they are and what's going on so she can impress her date.
• 1:38:48
  But then, you know, he's Adam and we've already seen what he's
• 1:38:53
  like, so why is he doing this to her?
• 1:38:55
  Is he angry because he's in love with her?
• 1:38:57
  I don't know. But anyway, that struck a wrong
• 1:39:01
  note with me. I love Anna Maxwell Martin, she
• 1:39:05
  has done some brilliant work. Like you say, she is her own
• 1:39:10
  worst critic, though I think she's sometimes very hard on
• 1:39:13
  herself with some of the roles that she's played.
• 1:39:16
  As a lifelong vegetarian, the idea of a beef slush puppy makes
• 1:39:21
  me cringe to the depths of my soul.
• 1:39:25
  I mean, you know, so you think something that shade of pink
• 1:39:29
  would probably be like strawberries and cream or
• 1:39:32
  something, but no. Sorry, Denise, hang on, Can you
• 1:39:34
  cancel that order then? Please.
• 1:39:36
  Thank you. Simon Pegg is great but like
• 1:39:42
  they say, underused and Tasmin Gregg is always a delight to
• 1:39:47
  watch. I love her voice, it's so
• 1:39:49
  distinctive. Frozen vomit.
• 1:39:53
  Didn't expect to see that in Doctor Who, but there you go.
• 1:39:58
  And a big knob on the ceiling in charge of everything.
• 1:40:02
  Now that is a more familiar concert.
• 1:40:05
  Yeah. Everywhere.
• 1:40:09
  Yeah, the, the, the ending is a bit silly.
• 1:40:12
  There's a good, good political message.
• 1:40:15
  Quite prescient as a lot of these were turning out to be on
• 1:40:18
  the rewatch. But yeah, I'm going to bin it
• 1:40:22
  because Adam mainly just. Adam.
• 1:40:28
  Just Adam. Well.
• 1:40:31
  You know, like I say, it's a fabulously strong season, and
• 1:40:38
  this one just loses points because of the nasty dynamic
• 1:40:47
  between the Doctor and Adam and the.
• 1:40:53
  I mean, the ideas are interesting, but at the end of
• 1:40:57
  the day, yeah, it loses so many points because of this one
• 1:41:02
  character who messes it up. And it's a good object lesson.
• 1:41:06
  I suppose that's a morale of like, OK, younglings, don't go
• 1:41:10
  to Thailand and get a load of tattoos because you might regret
• 1:41:13
  it when you come back home and have to get a job kind of thing.
• 1:41:17
  But yeah, out of a strong and strong strong season.
• 1:41:23
  No, I've been in this one. You kept saying that, Denise.
• 1:41:26
  Do you keep chucking them out? Was that's because we've both
• 1:41:29
  done all the ones that actually Denise was that was that 8th on
• 1:41:32
  your spreadsheet then? It was yes, yes.
• 1:41:38
  I'm starting. To get the hang of this now
• 1:41:39
  aren't I We're. Filling in the spreadsheet.
• 1:41:42
  Joe, do you want to go next? Yeah, I'm so on the fence for
• 1:41:45
  this. I don't really know what way to
• 1:41:48
  go. Where does it give you the
• 1:41:49
  calling vote? Oh, sorry, Denise.
• 1:41:53
  Well, you know, I'm highlighting the bits as we talk about them,
• 1:41:57
  so. Yeah, I just, I like there's,
• 1:42:00
  there's the things I don't like about this.
• 1:42:02
  It's mostly the the plot. I don't like the the Jagger
• 1:42:08
  Jagger Fest. I don't understand the Jagger.
• 1:42:10
  I don't understand how the Jagger fest has this much
• 1:42:13
  control when, as Michael said, it's just an enormous bit of poo
• 1:42:17
  stuck to the ceiling with teeth screaming his edge off in a
• 1:42:20
  nonsense. What actually is it?
• 1:42:22
  I. Don't know.
• 1:42:23
  It doesn't exhibit any intelligence at all, and yet it
• 1:42:25
  seems to be corrupting the the future history of humanity in a
• 1:42:29
  very profound way. So I don't think some.
• 1:42:32
  Kind of dark mutants, which has failed or something like that.
• 1:42:35
  So the interest said well. They do say.
• 1:42:37
  They've got rid of. That so who knows?
• 1:42:39
  They said right, OK, you could go over there.
• 1:42:43
  But if it was a. Massive.
• 1:42:44
  You're a good sacrament. It would it would sound like a
• 1:42:47
  Dalek, right? Like, I don't know, I don't
• 1:42:49
  think any of that really works. And what really doesn't work is
• 1:42:53
  that hilarious moment. Where is it Suki her her true
• 1:42:58
  identity is revealed and the music's like Kev McCulloch disco
• 1:43:03
  music down that down. And she's going around.
• 1:43:05
  It's just like Battlefield all over again.
• 1:43:07
  It's so camp it's ridiculous. And in a garden centre as well.
• 1:43:11
  Yeah, and you know, I don't like Adam, but I do like the idea of
• 1:43:14
  highlighting a companion making all the wrong moves, which then
• 1:43:18
  highlights that Rose generally makes all the right moves.
• 1:43:22
  That's the conclusion this episode draws.
• 1:43:24
  So then we step into Father's Day and she does an almighty
• 1:43:27
  fuck up and the Doctor's pissed because he's made the decisions
• 1:43:30
  he has here. So in terms of the season, I get
• 1:43:33
  all of that, but I do I love the idea of the media manipulating
• 1:43:40
  the political system and how xenophobia is rife because hello
• 1:43:46
  Brexit, you know, and this is way pre Brexit, isn't it?
• 1:43:50
  So it's again another really prescient story.
• 1:43:52
  So I love all of that. I love the fact that Rusty Davis
• 1:43:55
  probably knew people would consider this to be one of the
• 1:43:59
  weaker episodes of the season. And yet it is one of the most
• 1:44:02
  important episodes of the season, because the title tells
• 1:44:06
  you everything you need to know, but you don't realize until Bad
• 1:44:09
  Wolf and Partner the ways that this is a long game, this
• 1:44:12
  setting is important. The Jack Fest is in, but all of
• 1:44:14
  it is part of the this big jigsaw puzzle of the season and
• 1:44:18
  I think that's really, really clever.
• 1:44:20
  I actually like the direction as well.
• 1:44:21
  I think this has some really great lighting when we go up to
• 1:44:25
  the to the top level and all of the ice is about and it's that
• 1:44:28
  sort of icy lighting that they do as well.
• 1:44:30
  There's a a long sequence where Suki's wandering around and it's
• 1:44:35
  a great horror sequence which climaxes before those courses at
• 1:44:39
  the banks being revealed. So there is a lot to this I
• 1:44:42
  like. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:44:45
  I am going to. I love this season.
• 1:44:48
  I'm going to put it through. Do you know what?
• 1:44:50
  It could have gone either way, but I I want to put this one
• 1:44:52
  through. OK, so I've got the deciding
• 1:44:54
  vote. Well, I'm going to show my hand
• 1:44:56
  pretty quickly on this one. I just find this pretty much as
• 1:45:00
  dull and generic as Doctor Who could possibly get.
• 1:45:04
  I just don't like this one. Sorry.
• 1:45:07
  At first race I find out a real throwback.
• 1:45:09
  I mean, Russell says he wrote this back in the 80s and I kind
• 1:45:12
  of believe that because it feels like season 24, but it would
• 1:45:16
  have been the worst story of season 24.
• 1:45:17
  But it's got loads of similarities.
• 1:45:19
  So all those frozen corpses just remind me of Kane's frozen army.
• 1:45:23
  And you've got the Jaguar fest being melted by heat like Kane.
• 1:45:27
  And then the the, the platform 5.
• 1:45:30
  It's not platform 5, sorry. The station.
• 1:45:33
  It's a bit like Paradise Towers, isn't it?
• 1:45:35
  Because you've got the continual hunt to get up to the top of the
• 1:45:39
  of the tower. And then it's also a little bit
• 1:45:41
  of time in the Rani as well where you've got a giant brain
• 1:45:44
  here you've got what is it? It's a prolapsed arse by the
• 1:45:47
  look. Of it on the ceiling.
• 1:45:49
  So you've got all these kind of season 24 feet, but I'm going to
• 1:45:54
  say it's done without the wit, the humour or possibly even the
• 1:45:57
  intelligence of Season 24. Oh, evil news corporations.
• 1:46:02
  Wow, the editor is a banker, so he's a money man.
• 1:46:06
  Because they're not evil capitalists.
• 1:46:08
  It's all very, very on the nose and it's all tell not show.
• 1:46:11
  We don't see any of this. The only bit we see is on one
• 1:46:15
  news station is for the face of Bo is pregnant.
• 1:46:17
  We don't get to see any of the news output, so therefore I
• 1:46:21
  don't feel any. It just feels better than empty
• 1:46:23
  run round, then the gascaster horribly wasted.
• 1:46:26
  Simon Pegg, The problem with Simon Pegg's character, I feel
• 1:46:29
  he's got no one to talk to, no one to bounce off because he's
• 1:46:32
  just surrounded by a load of frozen corpses.
• 1:46:34
  So I lose some of his performance just because he's
• 1:46:37
  got, he's got nothing to play off.
• 1:46:39
  He's he's playing to a no audience at all.
• 1:46:42
  Thompson. Gregg.
• 1:46:43
  But he knows how to do it. He knows how to.
• 1:46:46
  He does, but wouldn't it have been better if he'd had someone
• 1:46:48
  to play and bounce off? I think he would have just
• 1:46:50
  given. A lot when he goes gotcha.
• 1:46:53
  Yeah, he knows how to play a. Doctor he does absolutely Tom's
• 1:46:57
  and Greg I love her enough things.
• 1:46:58
  She was doing great work at this time still does.
• 1:47:01
  But I just find a waste that she gets awful lines when she does
• 1:47:05
  that that will do nicely line when Adam offers a credit bar.
• 1:47:09
  I mean aping American Express Crikey, spitting image was
• 1:47:12
  lampooning that back in the 80s and we're you know, we're still
• 1:47:15
  doing that now. It's just it's a bit torturous.
• 1:47:18
  This does not feel very Russell to me.
• 1:47:20
  And then Maxwell Martin plays it with such wide eyed innocence.
• 1:47:24
  It's no shock when she turns out to be someone she's not.
• 1:47:27
  And the lesson about Bruno Langley to save Paul Michael's
• 1:47:30
  blood pressure. So I think I think the guest
• 1:47:33
  cast are wasted and there's just three little bits as well.
• 1:47:36
  I had to highlight that just irritate me and bring me out of
• 1:47:39
  it. There's an alarm that goes off
• 1:47:40
  both in the main concourse and also up on floor 500 and it's
• 1:47:44
  bloody roses alarm clock from the first episode keeps going
• 1:47:48
  off. It totally drags me out on.
• 1:47:50
  It music every time I. That's some really weird music.
• 1:47:54
  All about. And if you know it's Adam, at
• 1:47:56
  the beginning, he stood in the TARDIS prop waiting to be called
• 1:47:59
  out. You can see him just stood there
• 1:48:01
  really obviously in the camera line waiting to be called.
• 1:48:04
  Takes me out of there. And that final joke you've
• 1:48:07
  already guys mentioned the click of the fingers and then the long
• 1:48:11
  slow hold on the mother's face. It's the Wi-Fi family all over
• 1:48:15
  again. So no, for me it's out.
• 1:48:19
  So I'm sorry, long game is heading.
• 1:48:21
  For I mean I was on the fence so it was almost a four way.
• 1:48:24
  Man, so bye bye long game Denise over to you for your next
• 1:48:31
  choice. Well, shall we talk about the
• 1:48:36
  end of the world? Oh.
• 1:48:37
  Please. Yeah, so I mean, for me, I love
• 1:48:45
  the choice of music. I love that they think that the
• 1:48:48
  Duke Pops isn't all those little moments like that where they get
• 1:48:53
  things so very wrong. The opening lines of Tainted
• 1:48:57
  Love, sometimes I feel I want to run away.
• 1:49:00
  That's. And you look at Rosie's face and
• 1:49:02
  that is exactly how she is feeling as the song is being
• 1:49:06
  played. That is brilliant.
• 1:49:10
  The conversation with the plumber, that was interesting.
• 1:49:15
  I mean, yeah, I can. I can see that.
• 1:49:18
  The future would conceivably be like that.
• 1:49:22
  The Roses indignation that the TARDIS is getting inside her
• 1:49:25
  brain without her permission and she sounds like her mum when she
• 1:49:30
  gets cross in this one. That is so good.
• 1:49:33
  And the Doctor refusing to say who he is, the last human.
• 1:49:41
  The for me, you know, Doctor Who only just come back here is the
• 1:49:51
  end of the world. The very second episode.
• 1:49:54
  You know, there was things about Rose I didn't like.
• 1:49:57
  And then you get to the end of the world, and it's like the
• 1:50:02
  celestial toy maker saying, well, that's all right, then.
• 1:50:06
  Only about the sarcasm. Because for me, it was like,
• 1:50:10
  yeah, this is Doctor Who. It's still Doctor Who.
• 1:50:14
  They haven't done anything stupid with it.
• 1:50:16
  This is going to be wonderful. I'm really, really happy.
• 1:50:20
  You know, I expect to be shot down in flames.
• 1:50:24
  But seriously, I do not have a bad word to say about this
• 1:50:29
  episode. So yeah, love it to bits.
• 1:50:34
  It makes me very happy. Fabulous.
• 1:50:36
  Let's go to the comments. I think you'll find you're not
• 1:50:39
  alone, Denise. Michael Donahue said Rose was a
• 1:50:41
  good relaunch, but it was end of the world that sealed it for me.
• 1:50:44
  Seeing all the camp craziness and the ray of aliens made me
• 1:50:48
  realize I was going to love the series.
• 1:50:50
  Jack Coyer taking pinches of Douglas Adams humor and
• 1:50:54
  sprinkling sprinkling them throughout a fairly standard
• 1:50:57
  agathetricity. Who done it?
• 1:50:58
  I love the scene where Rose rings Jackie.
• 1:51:00
  Such a great mix of ordinary and extraordinary.
• 1:51:04
  The makeup and prosthetics have rarely been better.
• 1:51:06
  I'm not sure about that. And proves that BB.
• 1:51:09
  CBB. C1 Prime time is ready for
• 1:51:11
  outspace weirdness, and for the first time, but not the last,
• 1:51:14
  Christopher Eckerson has his has had his day.
• 1:51:18
  Christopher Reckerson has his day ruined by a huge fan.
• 1:51:23
  And you just. Ruined Jack's jokes there, I
• 1:51:26
  always do. Daniel Raumsley says breaks the
• 1:51:29
  budget, but Oh my God I'm glad they did.
• 1:51:32
  The first dizzying high of series one, forever teetering
• 1:51:35
  between domestic and galactic, ridiculous and sublime,
• 1:51:38
  Overcrowded CGI wizardry and alien mednagery.
• 1:51:42
  Wouldn't work without such gloriously intimate moments
• 1:51:45
  between Rose and the Doctor. Cassandra is RT DS most rageous
• 1:51:48
  creation and that toxic needle drop is one of the best moments
• 1:51:53
  ever. Yes.
• 1:51:54
  Daniel Knight, cloriously daft and a visual feast.
• 1:51:57
  The plot is a bit thin and the bit with the fans makes no
• 1:52:00
  sense, so I've got that one right.
• 1:52:02
  Cassandra's a great villain, though, voiced perfectly by Zoe
• 1:52:04
  Wanamaker. And who'd have thought we'd hear
• 1:52:06
  Britney Spears and Doctor Who? James H says the new team
• 1:52:10
  determined to show that we can do monsters.
• 1:52:13
  A magnificent villainous, but the start of pop culture
• 1:52:15
  references that don't date well. Keep it, if only for the CGI
• 1:52:19
  robot spider injury. When it bumps into the camera
• 1:52:22
  it's so great. Andy Park is not a classic, but
• 1:52:26
  Zoe Wanamaker is brilliant as Cassandra.
• 1:52:28
  Billy and Chris are excellent. I hated the Doctor slowing down
• 1:52:31
  time to get to the inexplicably placed off switch, which I still
• 1:52:35
  think is rubbish, but otherwise it's a totally watchable story.
• 1:52:39
  Dick Orange Michael said second episodes are hard to build on
• 1:52:41
  the premise and world whilst reinforcing the central
• 1:52:44
  character on premise. Somehow RTD manages to do both
• 1:52:47
  and tell a solid story with some cool visual effects to show off
• 1:52:51
  the new digital effects age. Keep it.
• 1:52:54
  Jason Thompson throws more aliens at us than the show has
• 1:52:56
  ever done before and combines that with ludicrous Flash Gordon
• 1:53:00
  S concepts such as walkways with no safety rails and giant fans
• 1:53:04
  between our hero and the critical switch.
• 1:53:06
  Looks like that bit in Galaxy Quest, isn't it?
• 1:53:09
  Who the hell put those massive chompers in the middle of the
• 1:53:11
  ship? It also gives us an effect
• 1:53:14
  spectacular to show. Wobbly spaceships on wires are
• 1:53:17
  firmly a thing of the past. Paul Dunn says shows they can do
• 1:53:20
  monsters and aliens. A really good story.
• 1:53:23
  An ultimate comment, Ian Winston found it too silly on
• 1:53:26
  transmission, but it's grown on me since.
• 1:53:28
  Surprisingly dark, too. Rose musing that everybody she's
• 1:53:31
  known has been dead for 5 billion years.
• 1:53:34
  And finally, and very succinctly, Ross just says
• 1:53:37
  boring. Oh, Ross.
• 1:53:40
  Oh, sorry, Ross. Michael Storm boring.
• 1:53:43
  Or do you love it like Denise? Well, on initial broadcast I
• 1:53:50
  thought it was a bit tweezed, but looking over re watching it
• 1:53:54
  for this so it can actually it's quite good.
• 1:53:56
  So I'm going to keep it. But having said all that, I'm
• 1:54:01
  going to go through some of the things which I don't think first
• 1:54:06
  of all, first, as I'm sure everyone is going to mention,
• 1:54:08
  it's the bloody fans. It's why is it is that switch at
• 1:54:14
  the end of that walkway when The thing is 10 sticks could have
• 1:54:18
  fixed that with a line. And also I'm going to take
• 1:54:21
  ladies Sandra. So what we have is our first
• 1:54:25
  trans character in the series, or at least acknowledged trans
• 1:54:30
  character and their and their villain.
• 1:54:34
  And this might be a retrospect, assuming of course, that when
• 1:54:37
  she says, oh, when I was a little boy, she wasn't joking
• 1:54:40
  because her dad used to make more frequent joke, but there
• 1:54:42
  was a little girl. So she's assuming she's not
• 1:54:45
  joking. But he doesn't look like the the
• 1:54:48
  sort who would be making that joke.
• 1:54:50
  And it's a little bit, I know he's going for that sort of
• 1:54:55
  Brazil and plastic surgery thing, but it seems a bit a bit
• 1:55:02
  uncomfortable now, shall we say. And some some of the CGI spider
• 1:55:08
  bits don't look quite well, don't look that good.
• 1:55:11
  However, the positive point which I'll get is Christopher
• 1:55:16
  Eccleston. He gets it, gets it all.
• 1:55:18
  He gets his bouncy fun moments when he's having great fun doing
• 1:55:21
  the goofiness when introducing the new aliens.
• 1:55:24
  And he's simply Piper does the right level of look when spat on
• 1:55:30
  by the boxer volume. He gets to the he gets to do
• 1:55:35
  goofy, he gets to do serious and gets goes into Sherlock mode
• 1:55:39
  when he figures out who's behind it all.
• 1:55:43
  He gets to do good emotional vets when talking to talking to
• 1:55:46
  Jabe. And that relationship is very
• 1:55:47
  interesting and could bring a totally new meaning to the term
• 1:55:50
  of tree shagger. I think it's.
• 1:55:54
  Hug they're. Actually, Mike, you know, each
• 1:55:57
  to their own. And but it's but that's that's
• 1:56:01
  good. And of course, then we get the
• 1:56:02
  big reveal at the end about Gallifrey.
• 1:56:05
  And although not named and all these people go and he gets it
• 1:56:08
  just right. He's not he's not going, oh,
• 1:56:11
  worries me. He's gets the pitch just right.
• 1:56:14
  It's it's like talking to Jane has forced it forced it out of
• 1:56:18
  him a little bit. And some of the excessive
• 1:56:20
  goofiness we see in Rose has been turned down as a
• 1:56:23
  consequence. And and so James, very good
• 1:56:26
  character, very well realized as well.
• 1:56:29
  And so it's a pity we don't see more of the effect of of her
• 1:56:36
  burning up. But I'm not quite sure the
• 1:56:38
  science works there because the boiling point of combustible
• 1:56:41
  levels for wording, I'd probably be a nitpick there.
• 1:56:45
  And the search of aliens is mostly is mostly well realized.
• 1:56:50
  And the only really, really stonking the awful ones are the
• 1:56:52
  ones that proved to be fake anyway, so I wonder if that is
• 1:56:56
  not RTG making a nice little nod on the joke to us all.
• 1:57:00
  So yeah, so keeping it. Fabulous.
• 1:57:03
  I'm also going to be keeping end of the world and there's loads
• 1:57:06
  of first, says Rose's first trip off world.
• 1:57:09
  It's the first mention that the Doctors, the last of the Time
• 1:57:11
  Lords, it's the first time we see him cry.
• 1:57:14
  And I think it's probably Doctor Who's first joke about premature
• 1:57:17
  ejaculation when Cassandra says oh, at least it'll be quick.
• 1:57:21
  Just like my 5th husband. So.
• 1:57:25
  There's plenty of lovely camp humorous so, but my serious
• 1:57:28
  first reason, the first one is Billie Piper.
• 1:57:31
  I think, as I said at the top of this, I think she's consistent
• 1:57:34
  in this series. It's funny, Michael, you saying
• 1:57:38
  particularly about Christopher. I do not buy him when he's
• 1:57:41
  gurning and he's making the faces and doing the comedy
• 1:57:44
  stick. I just don't buy him.
• 1:57:46
  I find him uncomfortable. Absolutely.
• 1:57:48
  When he does the serious stuff, he's brilliant.
• 1:57:51
  And you know, few can top him on that.
• 1:57:53
  About the serious, goofy, lighter moments, I just find it
• 1:57:57
  awkward. And unfortunately, there's a lot
• 1:57:59
  of them in this episode. But nevertheless, Billy is
• 1:58:02
  always consistent. She's always the top of her
• 1:58:04
  game. She's just got a naturalness and
• 1:58:06
  a warmth to her. Denise, you mentioned that scene
• 1:58:08
  with Ruffalo, the maintenance worker, who she's got an instant
• 1:58:11
  rapport and instant chemistry with, and she's showing respect
• 1:58:14
  and concern. The other thing I love, she's
• 1:58:18
  asked to play so many tonal shifts in this episode from line
• 1:58:22
  to line, and I don't think Billy ever drops a line.
• 1:58:26
  So think of the final scene when we're back in Cardiff.
• 1:58:29
  The doctor's telling her that life with him is really
• 1:58:31
  dangerous and asks if she wants to go home and really, really
• 1:58:35
  plays the fact. You can see that kind of
• 1:58:37
  internal conflict in her mind, whether to stay or go.
• 1:58:40
  And then she just gets distracted by the smell of chips
• 1:58:42
  and she's off. That's really hard to go from
• 1:58:44
  that kind of heightened emotion just to something really down
• 1:58:47
  to. Earth Russell, though, isn't it?
• 1:58:49
  That's distilled. Russell Oh it is, but she plays
• 1:58:52
  it brilliantly. Oh, the writing's superb, but
• 1:58:54
  Billy plays it so well. You could play that really the.
• 1:58:57
  Last great time war too. Yeah, can.
• 1:59:00
  You chips. Can you smell chips?
• 1:59:01
  That is Russell, isn't it? It is.
• 1:59:04
  But you know, what if if Billy wasn't as good an actress as she
• 1:59:07
  is, that could feel quite awkward and quite uncomfortable.
• 1:59:10
  And she gets a lot of these tonal shifts.
• 1:59:12
  Think again about the scene where where the Doctor's talking
• 1:59:15
  to Jabe and James asked whether Rose is his concubine or his
• 1:59:19
  prostitute. And she gets obviously
• 1:59:21
  unsurprisingly, really offended. But then she can slip straight
• 1:59:24
  into kind of teasing him straight away about saying get
• 1:59:27
  home before midnight. She can just do those shifts
• 1:59:30
  that I think a lesser skilled actor it would he didn't quite
• 1:59:33
  play very well. It's.
• 1:59:35
  Joking. The same scene, quick word with
• 1:59:37
  Michael Jackson. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:59:40
  Awkward. That hasn't aged terribly well
• 1:59:41
  like that. But I think like like I said in
• 1:59:45
  the series 21, I think Camille Kajuri is the heart of Series 2,
• 1:59:49
  where Rose of a character has become more arrogant and more
• 1:59:53
  cocky. I think Billy is the heart of
• 1:59:55
  this first season and I think she delivers in spades
• 1:59:58
  throughout. So this is my one big chance to
• 2:00:00
  to call out Billy. I think she's amazing.
• 2:00:02
  Second thing to recommend is the aliens.
• 2:00:05
  Not all of them are terribly convincing, are they?
• 2:00:07
  Let's be honest, there are a few too many static heads on people
• 2:00:11
  walking in, but the main the main ones work superbly.
• 2:00:16
  Face of Bow. Great idea, great creation.
• 2:00:19
  No wonder he became a big toy. The spiders.
• 2:00:21
  I think the CGI with the spiders still stands up incredibly well,
• 2:00:25
  as does the CGI on Cassandra. I absolutely love the fact that
• 2:00:29
  you can always see through Cassandra what's behind us.
• 2:00:32
  You can see the technicians behind were moisturizing and
• 2:00:35
  call out for giving us an instantly rememberable line in
• 2:00:38
  in moisturize Me, which people still quote to this day.
• 2:00:42
  So yeah, I think her CGI is absolutely spot on.
• 2:00:45
  And Jabe Jabe's just makeup, but again, brilliant makeup,
• 2:00:48
  brilliantly played by Yasmin Bannerman.
• 2:00:51
  So yeah, great to the aliens. And lastly, the pop music.
• 2:00:54
  Denise, you called out Tainted Love.
• 2:00:55
  I was also going to call out the the appropriateness of the
• 2:00:58
  wording of of Tainted Love, but you know, the classic basic
• 2:01:02
  ballad Toxic also comes in and it's like it was written for it.
• 2:01:06
  So yeah, she plays. That.
• 2:01:08
  Song doesn't she? Cassandra plays toxic.
• 2:01:11
  It almost is revealing her character.
• 2:01:13
  Absolutely, absolutely. So yeah, it's definitely going
• 2:01:16
  through for me. Well, pretty much everything's
• 2:01:19
  been said, so I'll just say hurrah for the return of the
• 2:01:23
  Graham Williams era to Doctor Who.
• 2:01:25
  Huge ideas told with. And I'm not joking when I say
• 2:01:29
  this because I do think Graham Williams did have a good stab
• 2:01:32
  visual ambition, loads of great comedy and brilliant characters.
• 2:01:37
  And after that, sort of very, I feel like the first episode is
• 2:01:41
  almost like a tribute to Andrew Cartmells latter day 7th Doctor
• 2:01:45
  era. And now we're doing so we're
• 2:01:46
  doing all the different styles of classic who.
• 2:01:49
  Next week we're kind of doing a hitch Cliff horror, you know,
• 2:01:52
  all the things that worked in the past.
• 2:01:53
  So I really like the fact that, you know, for a long time, the
• 2:01:57
  Graham Williams era was considered the butt of the joke
• 2:02:00
  of Doctor Who. And here as we step into space
• 2:02:03
  for the first time in the new series, it's been celebrated in
• 2:02:06
  all of its glory. But also nobody has mentioned
• 2:02:09
  EUR Lynn. So welcome EUR Lynn to Doctor
• 2:02:12
  Who who would deliver 1 amazingly directed episode after
• 2:02:17
  another bar time. We're in series 2-3 and four.
• 2:02:19
  He's just astonishing. And to hand, you know, to a
• 2:02:23
  first time Doctor Who director script this ambitious and for
• 2:02:27
  him to pull it off the the emotion in the script, the
• 2:02:31
  comedy in the script, the wackiness of it, you know,
• 2:02:34
  action sequences. It's everything's in it.
• 2:02:36
  Tons of CGI that he's got to try and work out.
• 2:02:40
  He just delivers it all perfectly.
• 2:02:41
  No wonder he kept coming back. And weirdly enough, the the shot
• 2:02:47
  that I want to highlight is probably the most mundane shot
• 2:02:51
  of the entire episode. It's when we cut to Rose Phone
• 2:02:54
  and Jackie and he shoots Jackie through a washing machine
• 2:02:59
  looking out into her kitchen. Now, there's no fucking need for
• 2:03:03
  him to do that at all. He could have just done a long
• 2:03:05
  shot in the kitchen, but just to make that scene a bit more
• 2:03:08
  interesting, he does that and he does that all the time.
• 2:03:11
  He's always looking for the most interesting ways to shoot.
• 2:03:14
  I call him the Michael Ferguson of the new series.
• 2:03:17
  Maybe think of a director called Peter Hammond who did a lot of
• 2:03:21
  the videotape Avengers. And you know, if he and he just
• 2:03:24
  shoot through something and say, no, we're in the bank and he and
• 2:03:27
  he'd just be a grill with some cash on it.
• 2:03:29
  But it works and it may be diverse.
• 2:03:31
  This is another one, like you said, Michael, which has huge
• 2:03:34
  tonal shifts throughout. And I think it's all just gauged
• 2:03:38
  absolutely brilliantly. And this was when I realized
• 2:03:40
  that just how confident Ross T Davis's vision for Doctor Who
• 2:03:44
  is, you know, mad comedy and then some really serious
• 2:03:48
  emotional moments that land. And how I got so excited when
• 2:03:53
  they mentioned a time war at the end of this, because I was
• 2:03:55
  convinced as a massive fan of BBC books, my God.
• 2:03:58
  When the AP Doctor destroyed Gallifrey and the ancestor sell,
• 2:04:02
  they're bringing it into the new series.
• 2:04:04
  And then immediately Rusty Davis wrote in the next DWM, no, we're
• 2:04:07
  not doing that. We're doing our own Time War.
• 2:04:09
  I was like, oh, bugger it. For a second I thought it was
• 2:04:13
  tying it all together. So it's so like a fan, but just
• 2:04:17
  a very quiet character moment to reveal that huge canvas that
• 2:04:21
  this story, this overall story is taking place on Billy Piper
• 2:04:25
  and Christopher Eckleston. Rod, I think you're wrong.
• 2:04:28
  I think Eckleston plays those lighter moments.
• 2:04:30
  But I like seeing that side of him, frankly, because I know he
• 2:04:33
  can do the serious stuff. I think you're right.
• 2:04:35
  He he's awkward. I don't think he's comfortable
• 2:04:38
  playing yet at this point, but come the second-half of the
• 2:04:40
  season, I think he gets there and he's really comfortable
• 2:04:43
  playing. The comedy.
• 2:04:44
  It's just amazing. It's fucking brilliant.
• 2:04:46
  The end of the world. It's absolutely Oh my
• 2:04:48
  spreadsheet, it's #9. Fabulous.
• 2:04:53
  OK, so I am going to go for the next choice and I am going to
• 2:04:57
  pick Boomtown and unfortunately Boomtown is going in the bin.
• 2:05:05
  So my the first reason for binning Boomtown is it's such a
• 2:05:11
  bloody contrived set up isn't it?
• 2:05:13
  I know Doctor Who relies on lots of coincidence and lots of
• 2:05:17
  contrivances, but you know what? We're in a modern day setting
• 2:05:20
  here and there's just too much. Are we really going to swallow
• 2:05:24
  that? Cardiff County Council has
• 2:05:26
  agreed to demolish Cardiff Castle to build a nuclear power
• 2:05:30
  station right in the heart of the capital city.
• 2:05:33
  Yes. That's where we're heading.
• 2:05:35
  Are we really going to believe that the woman who is
• 2:05:38
  spearheading this brave new world has never had her
• 2:05:41
  photograph taken or her name mentioned in print until one
• 2:05:44
  finally escapes out? Are we really going to believe
• 2:05:48
  that building a nuclear power station has got such obvious
• 2:05:51
  flaws that no one's ever questioned there?
• 2:05:54
  And are we really going to believe that their explosion
• 2:05:56
  from that is going to allow Margaret to surfboard off the
• 2:05:59
  planet on a 12 by 12 tile? No, sorry, there's just too
• 2:06:04
  much. It's just too contrived.
• 2:06:07
  I appreciate that that's there to set up the moral debate,
• 2:06:10
  which I'll come to in a minute, but it just lacks too much
• 2:06:13
  credibility and common sense for me.
• 2:06:15
  I'd I'd just find it too ludicrous.
• 2:06:17
  And whilst we're talking of contrivances, the whole business
• 2:06:21
  with Margaret not killing Kathy at the beginning when Kathy
• 2:06:24
  clearly threatens her plans, I just don't buy that she doesn't
• 2:06:28
  kill her because Kathy mentions there's a boyfriend.
• 2:06:31
  Now that doesn't ring true clearly that's just there to set
• 2:06:35
  up the argument later on in the episode that she can be good at
• 2:06:38
  times, but it makes no sense now.
• 2:06:41
  You could have sold that again, rewriting history.
• 2:06:43
  You could have sold it because in World War 3 Margaret is
• 2:06:46
  killing from a distance. But we saw in the opening scene
• 2:06:50
  of this episode Margaret kills someone in cold blood.
• 2:06:53
  So we can't say oh she likes to kill but only when she can't see
• 2:06:56
  the whites of their eyes. She happily kills that guy at
• 2:06:59
  the beginning. So just not to kill Kathy
• 2:07:02
  because she mentions a boyfriend is just too weak.
• 2:07:05
  Two points. She's also pregnant.
• 2:07:07
  She says she's with yeah. But she's already made-up her
• 2:07:09
  mind. She's already made-up her mind
• 2:07:11
  by the time she mentions the boyfriend.
• 2:07:13
  Two, that scene is set up for the amazing moment later on
• 2:07:18
  where he says to Margaret, that's how you live with
• 2:07:22
  yourself because every now and again you do something kind.
• 2:07:25
  And that is such a a profound point to make about terrible
• 2:07:30
  things that people do and how they find excuses for it.
• 2:07:33
  I think it's vital, that scene. But it just comes from nowhere.
• 2:07:39
  I don't, I don't find it believable.
• 2:07:41
  I don't find there's enough grounding in there.
• 2:07:43
  Maybe she'd mentioned the pregnancy for, but it's just
• 2:07:45
  mentions a boyfriend and Margaret Gibbs in.
• 2:07:47
  It just doesn't ring true to the character they've established.
• 2:07:50
  It feels like it's purposely contrived to make a point later
• 2:07:54
  on as opposed to an organic bit of plotting.
• 2:07:57
  So it doesn't work for me. Second reason is I don't think
• 2:08:00
  this really fulfils its pitch. So this is kind of labeled at
• 2:08:03
  the one where the Doctor faces a moral quandary and asked to
• 2:08:06
  confront his own ethics and approach.
• 2:08:08
  And it's basically about the death sentence, isn't it?
• 2:08:11
  Does the Doctor agree? Does he condone it?
• 2:08:14
  We spend an awful lot of time at the beginning with Jack and
• 2:08:17
  Mickey and Rose and seeing Margaret's plan develop.
• 2:08:19
  We don't get there for a long time.
• 2:08:20
  So this quandary that really the whole episode is is based around
• 2:08:24
  is contained in just two scenes. The first one's in the TARDIS
• 2:08:27
  when Margaret says you're very quick to soak your hands in my
• 2:08:31
  blood, which makes you better than me.
• 2:08:33
  Exactly how? And obviously that is begging a
• 2:08:36
  link to the time War, which we talked about plenty of this
• 2:08:40
  series, but it just doesn't it doesn't land.
• 2:08:42
  We don't go there. So it feels again, it feels like
• 2:08:45
  it's not quite fulfilling. It's hard to go there.
• 2:08:48
  And then we go obviously to the scene in the diner.
• 2:08:51
  We start off with a lot of broad comedy, which again, if Joe's
• 2:08:55
  pulling faces at me, hence. The point you come after those
• 2:08:58
  scenes at the table. I'm not going to mention the
• 2:09:01
  comedy. I just find it tonally jarring
• 2:09:05
  when this is the meat and potatoes of the episode where
• 2:09:07
  we're supposed to get to the moral debate and we spend a lot
• 2:09:10
  of time doing some comedy shtick.
• 2:09:13
  It doesn't quite work for me. But then when we do get to those
• 2:09:15
  meaty discussions, the doctor is just very one note.
• 2:09:18
  He refuses to be drawn for most of it, and he basically is just
• 2:09:21
  saying, well, basically, I didn't make the rules.
• 2:09:23
  He's giving up. We don't get to the debate.
• 2:09:25
  Yes, we do have that conversation, Joe, that you
• 2:09:26
  talked about about why she spared Kathy, but we don't get
• 2:09:30
  to the heart of the subject about the deficits, which
• 2:09:33
  basically is what this story is all about.
• 2:09:35
  We don't get that. And maybe probably this isn't
• 2:09:38
  the right forum to have that debate, but we've set up this
• 2:09:41
  episode to have that debate, and then we don't get there because
• 2:09:44
  they just get distracted by the rift opening and we move away.
• 2:09:48
  And I just feel that if you're going to put that much emphasis
• 2:09:51
  into setting that up, it needs to be paid off to some degree.
• 2:09:56
  I think, I think there's enough of the conversation there
• 2:09:59
  because a lot of it is actually focused on the doctor and about
• 2:10:02
  how the doctor usually doesn't have to deal with consequences.
• 2:10:05
  And that's more the focus, I think, than what's going to
• 2:10:07
  happen with Margaret Levine. I think it ducks the answer
• 2:10:12
  because then the big jeopardy thing hits.
• 2:10:14
  And so the doctor doesn't have to make the decision.
• 2:10:17
  And that's where the drama is. And that's a bit unfortunate.
• 2:10:20
  Yeah. And that's to me where it lets
• 2:10:22
  it down because we don't get, we don't get the payoff, we don't
• 2:10:25
  get the satisfactions that we raise the questions.
• 2:10:28
  It's just we're going to get some sort of moral debate and
• 2:10:31
  then it skips it. So to me, as a result of that,
• 2:10:34
  it just feels empty. And then the third reason, which
• 2:10:37
  is a bit of a mean reason, but bloody hell, it does look a
• 2:10:40
  little bit cheap, doesn't it? After a series which has been
• 2:10:42
  bold and extraordinary and daring, this just feels a little
• 2:10:46
  bit cheap wandering around Cardiff.
• 2:10:48
  So yeah, sorry guys, this one for me is out.
• 2:10:53
  Should we go to the comments? James Lark?
• 2:10:55
  James Lark, what a as you're always extolling, Joe, a very
• 2:10:59
  intelligent man, agrees completely with me and says I do
• 2:11:03
  think it's wonderful the fans have started to reappraise
• 2:11:05
  Boomtown, even to the point of claiming it as a series
• 2:11:08
  highlight. It obviously isn't, It's a
• 2:11:10
  flimsy plot on a string of crap jokes which looks every inch the
• 2:11:14
  money saving exercise it is. But by continuing in the
• 2:11:17
  glorious fan tradition of calling a genuine turd and
• 2:11:21
  unsung gem, these contrary buggers are assuring there will
• 2:11:24
  always be a place in the universe for the fair, hers, the
• 2:11:27
  kill, the moons, even the underworlds.
• 2:11:29
  God bless them all. Oh what a fucking idiot he is.
• 2:11:35
  Worse of the series because of its pacing with the overall
• 2:11:38
  narrative. It has some wonderful moments
• 2:11:40
  though. Great character work.
• 2:11:42
  Ian Winston says my least revisited of the series.
• 2:11:45
  I can see where you're going with this, Joe, but more
• 2:11:47
  Margaret is great and her bittersweet ending is great.
• 2:11:50
  When are we going to find out how she turned out?
• 2:11:52
  Is that a plug for some cutaway comics, do we think?
• 2:11:57
  Big orange Michael Easy to overlook in between the two
• 2:12:00
  giant two parters, but still imminently quotable and fun.
• 2:12:06
  Keep it. Jakakoya said pleased to see the
• 2:12:09
  most solo doctor is assembling himself a unique team who each
• 2:12:13
  have something to contribute to solving their problems, and that
• 2:12:16
  Badland makes a triumphant return.
• 2:12:18
  The back and forth between her and Eccleston in the heart of
• 2:12:20
  this story, an intriguing moral conundrum that never gets on
• 2:12:23
  said that gets the issues this doctor has been carrying with
• 2:12:26
  him. The sublimely intelligent Daniel
• 2:12:29
  Knight says the unexpected highlight with the return of the
• 2:12:33
  wonderful Annette Badland. A very clever and witty script.
• 2:12:37
  The dinner scene between the Doctor and Margaret is sublime
• 2:12:40
  but the inter time and space high five moment is total
• 2:12:43
  cringe. Jason Thompson says better in
• 2:12:45
  concept than execution and failed to hold my attention at
• 2:12:48
  the time. Rose treat's Mickey dreadfully,
• 2:12:51
  though she does at least seem to realise that the ending is
• 2:12:53
  almost a literal Deus Ex machina, but of course turns out
• 2:12:57
  to feed into the season climax. I'm reluctant to Bennett though,
• 2:13:01
  both for she's climbing out of the window, isn't she?
• 2:13:04
  And having the first first actor from classic Who to appear in
• 2:13:07
  New Who? William Thomas.
• 2:13:09
  Oh, what was he in? Oh plus, does anyone know?
• 2:13:15
  Not me, sorry. Not the top of me, I'm.
• 2:13:18
  Sorry William Thomas, I'm sure it was a great performers.
• 2:13:21
  Daniel Rosley The wonderful Daniel Rosley most underrated of
• 2:13:26
  series one. RCD ends the episode early,
• 2:13:29
  admires us in murky morality as the dies with a monster who
• 2:13:33
  wonders if he hasn't become one himself.
• 2:13:36
  A spectacular showcase for Eccleston and Badland, while
• 2:13:39
  Rose Mickey subplot remind us of how flawed these two can be.
• 2:13:44
  James H says the show's first use of magic concrete as time
• 2:13:47
  scale is getting muddier, but a very interesting, if flawed,
• 2:13:50
  character piece. Keep it even if only for the
• 2:13:53
  bondage line. Sparky Bar.
• 2:13:55
  I've been through series one and it's Boom Town that's really
• 2:13:58
  stuck out for the quality of characterisation, writing and
• 2:14:02
  performances. And the excellent Ross, very
• 2:14:06
  insightful, Ross says. Like a boring Sarah Jane
• 2:14:09
  adventure. Yes, a lot much of this season
• 2:14:11
  is he? No, to be very awesome.
• 2:14:14
  Joe, over to you. I'm guessing that you're not
• 2:14:16
  going to agree with me on this one.
• 2:14:17
  Not at all, no. In fact, when I first watched
• 2:14:19
  this, this was the one where that really stood out as being
• 2:14:22
  something a bit different and not far from state from anything
• 2:14:25
  that we've had before. Because we've never had as plot
• 2:14:28
  light story as this before, where we're just having what my
• 2:14:32
  dear friend Nathan possibly tends to call hang time.
• 2:14:36
  And I love hang time when it's with characters that I love.
• 2:14:39
  And I think you've got a series of regulars here in the Doctor,
• 2:14:43
  Jack, who's fitted in perfectly already, and Rose and Mickey and
• 2:14:48
  just just hanging with them in the cafe is enough to sell this
• 2:14:52
  on me. I just love it.
• 2:14:53
  I love how how comfortable is. But then you get those wonderful
• 2:14:56
  comic sequences of the Doctor going into Margaret's, Levine's
• 2:15:00
  office, climbing out of the window and then running away and
• 2:15:03
  being being back and running away and being, I mean, it's
• 2:15:06
  like a fucking French pass in it.
• 2:15:08
  It's absolutely glorious. And Joe Ahern, who I'm so used
• 2:15:11
  to doing very serious stuff this season, does the comedy just
• 2:15:15
  perfectly. This is a season that really
• 2:15:17
  gets it's comedy right. I think it gets a bit dodgier
• 2:15:20
  the more we go into RTD era, but I think it's absolutely spot on
• 2:15:23
  here. Adore, Eccleston and Badland,
• 2:15:26
  anything they do together is absolutely gold.
• 2:15:28
  I love the scene in the restaurant.
• 2:15:30
  I think the comedy, you know, with the dart and the breath and
• 2:15:34
  all of that, it's just so perfectly timed.
• 2:15:37
  It's absolutely gorgeous. I I really like the Badland at
• 2:15:42
  the end of the story as well after her amazingly
• 2:15:46
  melodramatic, you know, surfs up boys as you know as her colors
• 2:15:51
  are revealed that she says thank you when she realizes she's
• 2:15:54
  going to be regressed by the TARDIS.
• 2:15:56
  So there's like a moment of redemption just before she's
• 2:15:59
  redeemed. I really love that.
• 2:16:01
  And I really like the Rose and Mickey subplot one, because it
• 2:16:06
  is just like EastEnders bolted onto the edge of a Doctor Who
• 2:16:09
  story. And I think there's a place for
• 2:16:11
  that when And it truly highlights just how badly Mickey
• 2:16:14
  is being treated. I love the bit where he turns
• 2:16:17
  around and has a goer and says, you know, you treated me like I
• 2:16:20
  was nothing because we've been thinking that since the
• 2:16:22
  beginning of the season. It's a it's a good emotional
• 2:16:25
  payoff. And yeah, she isn't treating him
• 2:16:28
  very well at the end. Like, I think we're supposed to
• 2:16:30
  sympathize with her when she goes running and he's railing
• 2:16:33
  afterward. We're supposed to think he's a
• 2:16:35
  bastard. I actually think no, Rose, for
• 2:16:37
  God's sakes, you're stringing this guy along.
• 2:16:40
  Look at what you're doing. I never would have thought that
• 2:16:43
  this sort of soap operatics would work for me and Doctor
• 2:16:47
  Who, but Rusty Davis is just too good of a write out to not make
• 2:16:51
  this scene. Yeah, it's absolutely unique,
• 2:16:54
  this. I think it's all about the
• 2:16:56
  acting. I don't think it looks cheap.
• 2:16:58
  I think it's a really good tourist video for Cardiff.
• 2:17:01
  I think it shows off Cardiff as a really rather stylish place to
• 2:17:05
  visit. I go on to do a lot more with it
• 2:17:07
  when we go into Torchwood. I love this.
• 2:17:10
  I as soon as we hit Rusty Davis has this habit that as soon as
• 2:17:16
  you hear the 2nd 2 parter in his seasons, it's a straight run of
• 2:17:22
  gold. It happens in one, it happens in
• 2:17:24
  three, and it happens in four. And as much as Moffett tried, he
• 2:17:30
  never quite managed to get it right in the tail end of his
• 2:17:33
  season. Something always went horribly
• 2:17:35
  wrong. And this is like somebody said
• 2:17:38
  here, this is a a wonderful, thoughtful, emotional palette
• 2:17:43
  cleanser between two enormous stories.
• 2:17:46
  I just love it. Yeah, I.
• 2:17:48
  Want to put it through? Marvellous, Michael.
• 2:17:51
  OK, well this is another changeable one for me and I was
• 2:17:56
  leaning towards keep keeping it in.
• 2:17:58
  And then I listened to your very thoughtful and concise
• 2:18:01
  dissertation on the base. I listened to some of their
• 2:18:05
  comments and then I listened to Joe and I started swinging back.
• 2:18:11
  I'm swinging both ways at the moment.
• 2:18:14
  Usually. How usually?
• 2:18:15
  Happens. To people on this podcast.
• 2:18:19
  OK, I'll do the things I do like about it is like that.
• 2:18:22
  We have what we had essentially do with party episode.
• 2:18:25
  The part of the episode is Doctor Who does my dinner with
• 2:18:27
  Andre. And that's that's an interesting
• 2:18:31
  point, which hasn't been done before.
• 2:18:33
  And yeah, we'll go into some of the slapstick bits in the in the
• 2:18:38
  in the comedy with the in the restaurant with Margaret Savine
• 2:18:40
  tried different ways to kill him.
• 2:18:41
  Doesn't don't really work, I must say.
• 2:18:44
  So yeah, there's dinner in bondage.
• 2:18:46
  That's a good that's a good line.
• 2:18:47
  And what I'm going to go back with Joey say is the
• 2:18:49
  relationship between Rose and Mickey.
• 2:18:53
  Yeah, Mickey's bang on the money as well.
• 2:18:56
  He's been he's been an absolute. See you next Tuesday to him and
• 2:19:00
  and yeah so and like you said like she says that was it Trisha
• 2:19:03
  or whatever her name was. He says well at least she's
• 2:19:05
  there and she is like using this little toy boy and his error.
• 2:19:10
  It's a little errand putting my passport just in case he gets
• 2:19:13
  stuck in 21st century if I need to get back to England.
• 2:19:18
  OK, actually she's thinking logically, perhaps building up
• 2:19:21
  on events and father say what if the doctor does abandoned her?
• 2:19:25
  Well, another thing I do like is I like how we've got people.
• 2:19:28
  We've got essentially our new targets group and they've got
• 2:19:32
  instant chemistry. There's the doctor.
• 2:19:35
  Doctors both been cheeky and thoughtful and they do, but
• 2:19:40
  there's a little bit of bleeding of Mickey.
• 2:19:42
  But they then seem to decide they were going to team up and
• 2:19:45
  make for the Captain Jack a bit, which is which is quite good
• 2:19:48
  because he gives us good as he gets and he feels a little and
• 2:19:50
  he tasted off the tastes like like water on the duck's back.
• 2:19:55
  And I could say the I think it's a multipath and the Holy Grail.
• 2:20:00
  It makes me think of with the teleport, the three times makes
• 2:20:03
  me think of John, please ring up the hill.
• 2:20:04
  You're attacking the guards or you just see from each person's
• 2:20:08
  point of view multiple times until they get back to the face.
• 2:20:12
  And but I think the ultimate problem, I think, is that we've
• 2:20:16
  got this talk about the debate and Margaret Blair and Margaret
• 2:20:21
  says well. You're to live in the royal,
• 2:20:24
  you're to live in the law, you're my executioners.
• 2:20:27
  And then the decision, the Doctor's decision, which is
• 2:20:30
  clearly to take her back, is overridden by the TARDIS.
• 2:20:33
  So is this the time to say I've always taken you where you need
• 2:20:36
  to go? And we have a revision of a
• 2:20:39
  return to the Leisure Hive ending of a of baby Pangol.
• 2:20:43
  And we have our principal. They'll return to an infant so
• 2:20:46
  they can grow up again, grow up again and have a new life.
• 2:20:50
  And whereas I think in this case, because it's clearly she's
• 2:20:52
  reverting back to a primordial form, I'm not sure it would work
• 2:20:56
  the same with leisure. So.
• 2:20:58
  Michael, if you're on the fence, yeah, I could just quote one
• 2:21:02
  exchange which might sell it for you.
• 2:21:04
  Are you ready? What did I ever do to you?
• 2:21:07
  You try to destroy me and this entire planet.
• 2:21:10
  Apart from that, I mean, come on, it's so funny.
• 2:21:15
  Yes, I think I go. I go to say I have sweet watch
• 2:21:18
  Joe now. So yes, I go to keep it.
• 2:21:22
  Come on, Denise. Let's make it free for free.
• 2:21:25
  But it's going. Through now anyway.
• 2:21:28
  Well, it is so so it doesn't really matter so much that I
• 2:21:35
  mean, I really look forward to seeing this again.
• 2:21:38
  I've got fond memories of this story.
• 2:21:40
  It is very funny. Annette Badlands with
• 2:21:44
  Christopher Eccleston. She is funny.
• 2:21:47
  She is brilliant. It's great to see such a strong
• 2:21:51
  older lady character who is capable of being naughty and
• 2:21:56
  flirtatious and evil and doing all of the things that she does.
• 2:22:01
  That is great because, you know, there aren't many good parts for
• 2:22:06
  older women, unfortunately. I mean, yes, I take the point
• 2:22:11
  that the moral dilemma at the heart of it isn't the conclusion
• 2:22:17
  isn't reached, but then hopefully it will get people
• 2:22:20
  thinking on the nature of revenge, mercy and the death
• 2:22:26
  penalty. Because these are questions that
• 2:22:29
  people have to figure out for themselves, see where they stand
• 2:22:32
  on these things because they are relevant to life and they are
• 2:22:36
  massive subjects. They're covered in Shakespeare.
• 2:22:38
  They're covered in Greek drama, they've been covered since the
• 2:22:42
  end of time, so it's a big thing to put into a single 45 minute
• 2:22:47
  episode. So yeah, I like it, I enjoy
• 2:22:53
  watching it, but because it's part of a series with a lot of
• 2:22:59
  good other things in it, it's fallen on the bin side for me,
• 2:23:05
  I'm afraid. Well said Denise.
• 2:23:07
  Is it 7th? On your spreadsheet, Sorry, is
• 2:23:11
  it 7th? On your spreadsheet it is.
• 2:23:13
  Yes, see, I'm guessing everyone now.
• 2:23:15
  Have you noticed and we've done 10987, we're going in the
• 2:23:19
  reverse order of Denise's. Pressure.
• 2:23:22
  Well, it's going through anyway because Joe and Michael voted it
• 2:23:25
  through. So Boomtown goes through, right?
• 2:23:29
  We're down to the last three. Joe, you've got a choice.
• 2:23:32
  I can't believe some of these are left.
• 2:23:33
  The last we've got Rose, we've got Empty Child, Doctor Dunces
• 2:23:36
  and Bad Wolf partying of the way.
• 2:23:37
  Some real big hitters. I'm going to leave the two big
• 2:23:40
  two partners to. Our I'd better.
• 2:23:42
  Go and get myself some. Forlix because it's going to be
• 2:23:44
  an all nighter voice. No, I'm going to leave the.
• 2:23:49
  Biggies to Denise and Michael so I'm going to tackle Rose and I
• 2:23:55
  would like to bin Rose if I may because whilst I think it does
• 2:24:01
  several things extremely well, especially introducing Doctor
• 2:24:06
  Who so succinctly in 45 minutes to a new audience, the mystery
• 2:24:12
  of the Doctor and how that's unpeeled the TARDIS and what it
• 2:24:16
  does you know introducing Rose to everybody.
• 2:24:20
  I when I first experienced this story, it was that pirate copy
• 2:24:26
  that was doing the rounds on the Internet right and I downloaded
• 2:24:30
  the file but for some reason I couldn't play the video.
• 2:24:32
  It's a bit like talking to Denise right now.
• 2:24:33
  I couldn't see it but I could hear it and unlike Denise who I
• 2:24:38
  love listening to I didn't like the sound of what I was hearing
• 2:24:42
  at all I thought what is this EastEnders claptrap this car be
• 2:24:45
  the new Doctor who. Now, admittedly, when I finally
• 2:24:48
  got to see it, it kind of did make sense a bit more.
• 2:24:52
  I think the direction is really off.
• 2:24:54
  Poor Keith Bowick is way out of his depth in this.
• 2:24:58
  And everything really, from the location work to the pacing to
• 2:25:05
  the action at the end, everything.
• 2:25:07
  If you'd have given it to any one of the other directors this
• 2:25:10
  year, Joe Ahern, Euroslyn, I think it would have been
• 2:25:14
  absolute gold. But you know, they're finding
• 2:25:16
  their feet, so I cut them some slack.
• 2:25:20
  What I really don't like about this is oddly what I do like
• 2:25:25
  about most of the rest of Russell's time is I don't like
• 2:25:27
  how the Doctor Who of it. So the Auton invasion, which
• 2:25:31
  would always be the highlight, right?
• 2:25:33
  This was the classic Doctor Who story.
• 2:25:35
  That would absolutely be the highlight.
• 2:25:37
  Just how it sort of shunted off into a terrible little subplot
• 2:25:40
  at the end and that dreadful anti plastic conclusion, it just
• 2:25:47
  feels like no, you know, we've got to do this because it's
• 2:25:49
  Doctor Who, so we've got to have monsters and we've got to defeat
• 2:25:51
  them at the end. It all feels very tired and half
• 2:25:54
  hearted and that's a weird note to start the series on.
• 2:26:00
  I do like that it's character focused.
• 2:26:01
  I do think that Eccleston and Piper, whilst feeling their way
• 2:26:05
  into the roles, are good together on the screen.
• 2:26:09
  I, it's just, it feels uneasy for me, this, it doesn't feel
• 2:26:14
  like in compare and contrast to something like Partners in Crime
• 2:26:17
  when they were running and that's just got pizzazz and
• 2:26:21
  great comedy and confidence and searing performances, you know,
• 2:26:27
  and quality direction. Compare that to this and this is
• 2:26:31
  a bit limp and half hearted. So yeah, it, it does what it
• 2:26:35
  sets out to do, but it is execution.
• 2:26:38
  I think it fails. OK, let's go to the comments.
• 2:26:43
  Daniel Raumsley disagrees with you, Jones says.
• 2:26:46
  There's a long conversation with her.
• 2:26:48
  I know, perfect gateway drug into new who.
• 2:26:52
  Effects and comedy are hit and miss at times, Mickey
• 2:26:54
  especially, and the Auton invasion feels like an
• 2:26:56
  afterthought. But it's such a fast, propulsive
• 2:26:59
  piece of work I never get bored. Piper and Eccleston connect
• 2:27:03
  instantly. Daniel Knight.
• 2:27:05
  Good to focus on Billie Piper just as an Unearthly Child focus
• 2:27:08
  on Ian and Barbara. The autumn plot feels slight and
• 2:27:11
  was was resolved far too easily. Anti plastic indeed.
• 2:27:14
  Thank you Daniel, he's so smart. But visually it's a strong
• 2:27:18
  opener. Visually, Daniel Fast.
• 2:27:20
  Paced and fun. Oh, you're so hypocrite, Jack
• 2:27:25
  Coyer says. The shot of Rose discovering the
• 2:27:27
  TARDIS being bigger on the inside.
• 2:27:29
  Such a wonderful magic trick to pull off cribbing for an
• 2:27:32
  unearthly child in the best way. Billy Piper gives Rose a real
• 2:27:35
  relatability. This is her big chance to ground
• 2:27:38
  this character before the Doctor starts moving to the limelight,
• 2:27:41
  and she takes it. Dan Hollingsworth, a great
• 2:27:44
  opener, some of the old Doctor Who elements but simpler and
• 2:27:46
  faster. Follows on nicely from survival
• 2:27:49
  with the real life setting. It was great to have a well
• 2:27:51
  drawn companion. Let's ignore alt on Mickey and
• 2:27:54
  the hungry bin. Oh, that alt on Mickey?
• 2:27:59
  Jason Thompson says making the everyday scary is what the show
• 2:28:02
  does best. And we still have armies of
• 2:28:03
  windshield window dummies in shops, so the idea works just as
• 2:28:07
  well in 2005 as it did in 1970. Eccleston nails the Doctor right
• 2:28:12
  off the bat and Billy Piper is superb as Rose.
• 2:28:15
  Big Orange, Michael says, takes a huge page from spearheading
• 2:28:19
  introducing a new audience to the show while making sure old
• 2:28:22
  school fans aren't excluded. Excuse me, I just said I was.
• 2:28:27
  Eccleston is fantastic from the word go though it makes though
• 2:28:30
  it takes us a while to get to know his doctor.
• 2:28:32
  Keep it. James H There's an adrenaline
• 2:28:34
  rush of a story, one rather awful scene and shockingly bad
• 2:28:37
  visual continuity, but I can forgive it.
• 2:28:40
  That's keep it for sure. John Arnold Imperfect but
• 2:28:43
  gripping, moving ridiculously fast and drawing on contemporary
• 2:28:47
  drama and light entertainment to re establish the series for a
• 2:28:50
  mass audience. Few other episodes in the show's
• 2:28:52
  history have achieved their aims so well.
• 2:28:55
  Andy Parkinson said after the slight disappointment of the TV
• 2:28:58
  movie. I was really nervous when I sat
• 2:29:00
  down to watch this. I didn't have worried.
• 2:29:02
  As soon as Nine grabbed Rose's hand and said run, I punched the
• 2:29:06
  air with delight. Mark Dodic RTD never does a
• 2:29:09
  heavyweight opener, but Rose provides a straightforward way
• 2:29:12
  to draw in viewers old and new and neat amalgam of traditional
• 2:29:16
  and the modern. And Ross says, bit of a shock on
• 2:29:19
  1st viewing but fantastic when you know what to expect.
• 2:29:22
  Rose and Jackie are funny and real, but what the hell was Rose
• 2:29:25
  doing with Mickey? No wonder she jumped in the
• 2:29:28
  TARDIS. Oh, and they're very beautifully
• 2:29:31
  smart. Jared Style says rubbish.
• 2:29:34
  The acting sells it, but everything else degrades it.
• 2:29:37
  It took itself too seriously considering the overly goofy
• 2:29:39
  effects and plot points. Shows show newcomers the 11th
• 2:29:44
  hour first. Well, OK, I'm going to respond
• 2:29:48
  to Joe. And in the words of the doctor,
• 2:29:50
  Maya respectfully suggests to you that you shunt.
• 2:29:53
  Off because please, you don't like boom time but you like this
• 2:29:57
  bullshit I. Really like Rose.
• 2:30:01
  Yeah, because it delivers what it's supposed to do.
• 2:30:03
  It delivers a great, solid introduction to New Who.
• 2:30:07
  Yes, some of the effects of shonky.
• 2:30:09
  Yes. Some of the direction is
• 2:30:11
  lacklustre. Yes, some of the performances
• 2:30:14
  are off. And Oh my God, yes.
• 2:30:17
  Auton Mickey sitting in that restaurant looks terrible, even
• 2:30:20
  though Bill is not making eye contact with him.
• 2:30:23
  I can't forgive the fact that she can't see that that plastic
• 2:30:26
  buffoon isn't her boyfriend. But nevertheless, I think
• 2:30:30
  there's lots going on here. I think so.
• 2:30:33
  My first reason is I think it's a great beginning and it's a bit
• 2:30:35
  like the caveman episode in Unearthly Child.
• 2:30:38
  The plot isn't going to win any awards, but it effortlessly
• 2:30:42
  does. What it's trying to do is set up
• 2:30:44
  a new template for the show, which means we're still watching
• 2:30:46
  it 19 years later. So as simple as that, for my
• 2:30:49
  first reason, I'm going to leave Michael and Denise to go into
• 2:30:53
  some of the details because there's some fantastic speeches
• 2:30:55
  that we get and there's some lovely screen writing.
• 2:30:58
  I'm going to pick on a couple of auditors for my other two
• 2:31:01
  reasons. The first one is the music,
• 2:31:03
  because I'm not going to get another chance to talk about
• 2:31:05
  Murray. You must be crazy the music in
• 2:31:07
  this. I am going to talk about Murray.
• 2:31:13
  Back. I am gonna highlight Murray here
• 2:31:18
  and some of the people in the comments were saying they were
• 2:31:21
  nervous before sitting down. I was nervous before sitting
• 2:31:23
  down, saying what they gonna do with the theme music.
• 2:31:26
  It's so integral to doctor. Will they land it?
• 2:31:28
  Will it remind me of dealer Derbyshire?
• 2:31:30
  It's gonna have the wrong grain of theme, and it does.
• 2:31:32
  I think the Murray Gold rendition of that opening theme
• 2:31:37
  is magnificent. I mean, plumbing, like you
• 2:31:40
  couldn't move in 2000 and five, 2006 for hearing that theme
• 2:31:43
  everywhere. It absolutely captures Doctor
• 2:31:45
  and I think he does a brilliant job.
• 2:31:47
  And yeah, I do like the music in the rest of the episode.
• 2:31:50
  I love. You quite like a gay disco, so I
• 2:31:53
  get. I do quite like a gay disco, and
• 2:31:55
  I love a bit of Kef McCulloch, so put.
• 2:31:56
  The fusion of those two things is Murray's score in this first
• 2:32:00
  episode. I love that montage at the
• 2:32:02
  beginning. Look how important music is to
• 2:32:04
  to the So The Stars show, which is very different to what we had
• 2:32:07
  in Doctor before. The opening couple of minutes
• 2:32:09
  are just silence. It's just a montage of of Roses
• 2:32:13
  and Mickey's life together with Murray's goal just pumping out.
• 2:32:17
  I love it. And even the fact when Rose goes
• 2:32:19
  into Henrix the music is still playing.
• 2:32:22
  But at that point it's background music in the shop,
• 2:32:24
  and when she comes back out the shop, it's playing at full beat.
• 2:32:27
  Again, just to show. It's as bad as lift music, yeah.
• 2:32:31
  I knew as the words were coming out of my mouth, I thought, I'm
• 2:32:34
  giving him an in here. I love it.
• 2:32:38
  It's loud and bombastic and it just sets the tone and it's
• 2:32:41
  playing right the way to the moment when she descends on the
• 2:32:44
  lift and the bell for the lift hits basement and then it just
• 2:32:48
  completely cuts dead and we're into a creepy silence.
• 2:32:51
  And I just think they use the music really well.
• 2:32:53
  I love that bombastic theme. When it comes back again, when
• 2:32:56
  the Doctor and Rose take them, you know, walk hand or run hand
• 2:32:59
  in hand across Westminster Bridge, I think it's glorious.
• 2:33:02
  That's said to me, Doctor Who is absolutely back.
• 2:33:04
  It's full of life, energy and pace.
• 2:33:07
  The final reason I'm going to pick on it is the production
• 2:33:11
  design. Now, I think there is so much
• 2:33:14
  care and effort being taken here.
• 2:33:16
  That just shows what the commitment to the show is.
• 2:33:18
  And I'm not just talking about the big sets like the TARDIS,
• 2:33:21
  but there's just lots of little details here though when you
• 2:33:25
  watch it through a few times. I'm not excusing Keith Boag's
• 2:33:28
  direction in this, but they're just little examples of
• 2:33:31
  production design that show me how much they're caring about
• 2:33:34
  what they're doing. About that electric pink bedroom
• 2:33:36
  that she's got. Let's let's move on from it.
• 2:33:40
  Well, that's very Jackie, to be fair, though, isn't it?
• 2:33:42
  But it's very Jackie. The first one is a really small
• 2:33:47
  thing, the nameplate on Wilson's office door.
• 2:33:50
  When Rose goes down to the basement, he's the store
• 2:33:52
  electrician. We never see him, but he's got a
• 2:33:54
  nameplate that gives him the title CEO.
• 2:33:58
  Obviously he's just having a joke at his expense.
• 2:34:00
  He wants to be seen as the chief executive.
• 2:34:03
  But you know what? What other show will give you
• 2:34:05
  that kind of character detail in just a name play?
• 2:34:08
  They're giving this a lot of thought.
• 2:34:09
  They didn't need to do stuff like that.
• 2:34:11
  So much thought has gone into this.
• 2:34:12
  When we come into the Tilers flat, what do you see in the
• 2:34:15
  hallway? You see all the paint stripes
• 2:34:17
  where we're supposed to think they've stripped back the the
• 2:34:19
  paint and they're looking like new colours to paint the walls,
• 2:34:22
  I thought. They should just finish painting
• 2:34:24
  it when they shot it. So cynical.
• 2:34:27
  How can you? How can you forgive the things
• 2:34:29
  you forgive? Stephen Moffett you criticise.
• 2:34:32
  How dare you? I just think it's really
• 2:34:34
  thoughtful. When Rose bends down to the cat
• 2:34:36
  flap, you see the front door key on the bit of string where
• 2:34:39
  presumably they've pulled it through that it's just little.
• 2:34:41
  Details like that. I keep doing this but that's
• 2:34:44
  dreadful backdrop when they open the door, which is supposed to
• 2:34:47
  be outside, it's. So awful.
• 2:34:50
  Come back, Barry, let's with your CSO.
• 2:34:53
  Yeah, it's a little bit terror of the Autumns at that moment
• 2:34:55
  just now. But yeah, I just think there is
• 2:34:58
  so much good in the production design.
• 2:35:00
  The rooms look busy and cluttered and lived in.
• 2:35:02
  I just think it's endemic of a show that's trying really hard.
• 2:35:06
  So sod you, Joe Ford. I'm putting it through.
• 2:35:09
  Denise, come on. Come to my.
• 2:35:11
  Come to my support please. Oh, it's going to be higher than
• 2:35:14
  because we've done 10/9, 8:00 and 7:00 so far.
• 2:35:17
  So so the. Lowest it can be is 6.
• 2:35:19
  But it depends where she draws a line for throwing out.
• 2:35:21
  Find out. Well, Rose, yes, I mean, what an
• 2:35:27
  opening sequence with the music, with Rosie's life.
• 2:35:33
  I mean, I still maintain that she was a bit scruffily dressed
• 2:35:36
  to be working in a posh department store because she
• 2:35:42
  just goes up, goes to work in AT shirt, hoodie and a pair of
• 2:35:45
  jeans. I think they want to put her in
• 2:35:47
  a designer skirt and some heels or something like that, you
• 2:35:51
  know, especially if she's working in the fashion rooms.
• 2:35:53
  But anyway, it comes in handy because she has to run a lot
• 2:35:57
  later. So she had been.
• 2:35:58
  Wearing the tight. Skirt and the heels and she
• 2:36:01
  probably wouldn't have survived past the end of the episode.
• 2:36:06
  I think it was a genius choice of aliens to bring back because
• 2:36:10
  they've got the spookiness and it's a concept that hasn't
• 2:36:14
  really dated because like you say, we still have shop window
• 2:36:17
  dummies. And so the old school fans would
• 2:36:22
  see it and recognize it and know what they were dealing with at
• 2:36:25
  once. And at the same time, it's still
• 2:36:28
  something that could freak out new, younger viewers.
• 2:36:31
  I was noticing that one of the dummies in the basement and I've
• 2:36:34
  never noticed this before. One of them has got moob.
• 2:36:39
  Did you notice that? It's got what?
• 2:36:41
  Sorry. Got Moobs?
• 2:36:44
  One of them. Finally, I can't I can buy into.
• 2:36:51
  No, I've not noticed that. I was just like, OK, what's
• 2:36:55
  going on with that one? It's not a lady, dummy.
• 2:36:59
  OK then. They they had a bit of over
• 2:37:02
  excessive plastic that day. That's the.
• 2:37:04
  Detail that Rod was talking about.
• 2:37:06
  Exactly, that's the one I should have.
• 2:37:08
  Can I add that to my description?
• 2:37:10
  The moves on the autumn were fantastic.
• 2:37:15
  And then there's the character of Clive, of course, who is
• 2:37:18
  basically us or Box Moulder or anybody who's, you know, got
• 2:37:25
  into the Internet in the years between the show finishing and
• 2:37:28
  the show starting up again. Rose herself not afraid to
• 2:37:32
  challenge the Doctor. She asks intelligent questions
• 2:37:38
  and she saves the day and you know, because it's her who
• 2:37:42
  manages to fling the anti plastic into the nestines pot at
• 2:37:46
  the end. And you know that funny, stupid
• 2:37:51
  moment where the Doctor hasn't figured out the London Eye?
• 2:37:54
  It's the, it's the antenna that's broadcasting.
• 2:38:00
  Yeah. So there are some great moments.
• 2:38:03
  There are, of course. Yeah.
• 2:38:05
  The horrendous plastic Mickey and the belching bin again.
• 2:38:10
  Yes. You have to think, yeah, you've
• 2:38:12
  got a drawer in the 5-6 year olds.
• 2:38:14
  You've got to build a future audience with some broad strokes
• 2:38:17
  of comedy. Yeah, but I love Rose.
• 2:38:22
  It makes me happy. I would like to push it through,
• 2:38:25
  please. Thank you very much.
• 2:38:26
  Yay. Excellent.
• 2:38:28
  And Joe, I was just realizing when Denise was talking about
• 2:38:31
  Clive there, I can't believe when I was extolling the the
• 2:38:35
  benefits of the production design that you didn't pick up
• 2:38:38
  the most terrible Photoshopping or pictures of Christopher
• 2:38:42
  Ecclestone into pictures of the assassination of Kennedy, which
• 2:38:46
  is possibly the worst Photoshopping ever.
• 2:38:49
  I can't. Believe that part of your
• 2:38:52
  argument was that you know the extreme amounts of detail in
• 2:38:56
  this production when that fucking altar Mickey is in it
• 2:38:59
  like unbelievable. Michael, please, you've got the
• 2:39:03
  You're the decider here. Right.
• 2:39:08
  Oh, no, wait. It's.
• 2:39:09
  Going it's going through it through sorry, go it through
• 2:39:12
  it's 22 pluses, it's coming. Through Well, yeah, you might
• 2:39:15
  get a clean sweep. Well, yeah, well, it's one of
• 2:39:22
  those I was on the fence of again.
• 2:39:24
  And my first thing, one of the first things that strikes me is
• 2:39:27
  why is Rose's bedroom looked like it's been designed by by a
• 2:39:31
  set designer who's gone down right.
• 2:39:33
  I'll read the teenage boys naughty book, naughty book
• 2:39:36
  descriptions of girls bedrooms. And to draw it from that,
• 2:39:41
  there's that montage at the start which makes me fit, which
• 2:39:44
  reminded me of an Alfred Hitchcock film called Rich and
• 2:39:46
  Strange, which establishes the mundanity of every day of of
• 2:39:49
  this couple's everyday life. And that's the best bit of that
• 2:39:52
  film. And unfortunately,
• 2:39:54
  unfortunately, that's not the best bit of Rose that opening
• 2:39:57
  shot. However, this is going to this
• 2:40:01
  is going to be a bit it just. But while I was talking about
• 2:40:11
  how we tried to Eccleston's goofing in other episodes, all
• 2:40:14
  that. The business with the plastic
• 2:40:15
  arm is just oh, it's sub Chuckle brothers.
• 2:40:20
  It's that you know, it's that that painful to watch plastic
• 2:40:25
  Mickey, considering you're in 1970.
• 2:40:29
  They did the facsimiles so well by just rubbing Vaseline all
• 2:40:32
  over you Buryden and various actors.
• 2:40:36
  How is it we've got it? We've in 2005.
• 2:40:41
  We've got the most obviously plastic design.
• 2:40:45
  She doesn't even comment that he's completely lost the ability
• 2:40:48
  to learn how to drive. Unless of course every time he
• 2:40:50
  goes to the puppy has a skin full and still insists on
• 2:40:53
  driving home so she just thinks that's how he drives.
• 2:40:55
  Or the ability to talk. Sugar, sugar, sweetheart,
• 2:40:58
  darling. He's he's unhealthy obsession
• 2:41:02
  with pizza and you just there's. Nothing unhealthy about pizza
• 2:41:07
  all. Right, it's a night today.
• 2:41:12
  And the just two convenience anti plastic, the first solution
• 2:41:17
  to the nesting. The direction is just diabolical
• 2:41:26
  at this point. I did particularly warm to to
• 2:41:28
  Jackie. I think she's a bit I won't say
• 2:41:31
  condescending, but when she's when she's getting oh, it's
• 2:41:33
  giving you airs and graces. Hang on, surely, surely putting
• 2:41:37
  her in the getting her in the more marketplace to work is
• 2:41:40
  better for Rose to give her more opportunity.
• 2:41:42
  So that seems a bit seems a bit seems a bit off to what we like
• 2:41:46
  to see the character develop on so but oh, it just and to say
• 2:41:52
  it's Vicky's not very well characterized here.
• 2:41:54
  He just seems like a neglectful boyfriend.
• 2:41:56
  So why are they together? Ian Knowles not doing a very
• 2:42:00
  good performance here, so he could say it's quite early in
• 2:42:03
  the season in production. And I said what the roses
• 2:42:10
  reveal, the tiles interior, that's good, but there's just
• 2:42:13
  too much of it for a season launch and not just a season
• 2:42:17
  like a complete relaunch. It needs to needs to be on the
• 2:42:20
  board and it's just not. OK, but it's going through
• 2:42:24
  anyway if. That's what we're doing,
• 2:42:26
  Convenient and easy resolutions. I just so happened to have a
• 2:42:29
  vial of anti rolts here. OK, on to the biggies.
• 2:42:38
  Right. We are left with the two.
• 2:42:39
  Well, are they or are they not? We don't know how how it's going
• 2:42:42
  to go. We know they're not in Denise's
• 2:42:44
  bottom yet, but I could have worded that a little bit more.
• 2:42:48
  Alec. Nothing.
• 2:42:49
  But. Hey, it's getting on.
• 2:42:51
  Denise, let's turn to you. Pick your story from Empty
• 2:42:54
  Child, Doctor Dances, or Bad Wolf, Parting of the Wild.
• 2:42:58
  Gosh. OK, well shall we talk about the
• 2:43:01
  empty child and the doctor dances?
• 2:43:04
  Go for it please. I mean, I am not the biggest fan
• 2:43:10
  of Steven Moffett, but this is the exception that proves the
• 2:43:17
  rule. Because I absolutely love these
• 2:43:22
  two stories. It is like the Kensian
• 2:43:26
  masterpiece with the range of characters the Atmos plays after
• 2:43:32
  dark in the blackout. It's absolutely superb.
• 2:43:40
  Rose asking the Doctor to give her some Spock, the conversation
• 2:43:48
  with the cat. All of these little moments that
• 2:43:51
  Heather from EastEnders is playing the butcher's wife, the
• 2:43:58
  character of Nancy. She's a brilliant creation.
• 2:44:02
  She could be in an E Nesbit novel.
• 2:44:04
  She is so, so good. And the children, the child
• 2:44:10
  actors performances, usually they can be very irritating, but
• 2:44:13
  they were all absolutely pitch perfect.
• 2:44:17
  Really nice little band of urchins, ordinary kids, the hint
• 2:44:24
  of the darkness of what happened to some of them when they were
• 2:44:26
  evacuated. But it didn't go too deeply into
• 2:44:30
  that. Richard Wilson playing Doctor
• 2:44:32
  Constantine, The doctor telling the empty child to go to its
• 2:44:39
  room. It's what a story.
• 2:44:47
  The Doctor blowing up weapons factories.
• 2:44:52
  Are you my mummy? And then there's this wonderful,
• 2:44:55
  wonderful moment when they're in the empty child's room where
• 2:44:58
  they were with all his drawings on the wall and everything, and
• 2:45:01
  they're all of his mummy. And it's like, are you my mummy?
• 2:45:06
  And Rose just asked the question, why doesn't he know?
• 2:45:10
  Why don't, why doesn't he know who his mummy is?
• 2:45:12
  And that was like to me that's, I mean, she'd done similar
• 2:45:16
  things before, but that is a ground breaking moment in Doctor
• 2:45:19
  Who where the companion isn't just wondering, however genius
• 2:45:24
  they are supposed to be, isn't just following the Doctor around
• 2:45:27
  saying, what's that Doctor? What's this Doctor?
• 2:45:30
  What should we do now, Doctor? She's someone who's actually
• 2:45:33
  getting to the heart of the problem.
• 2:45:36
  You know, why doesn't this kid know who his mummy is?
• 2:45:42
  The scene between Nancy and the butcher later on where she knows
• 2:45:47
  why he's got a little bit more than his family is entitled to
• 2:45:51
  on the Russian book. And there it is.
• 2:45:53
  There's the sweat on your brow that is such a moment.
• 2:45:59
  He's had some extra sausage from the butcher.
• 2:46:02
  Quite. Literally.
• 2:46:03
  Quite literally. And everybody lives in the end,
• 2:46:10
  and there's this old lady who's going to have to explain her the
• 2:46:14
  quantity of leg she has for the rest of her life.
• 2:46:20
  It is, you know, a happy ending. They even managed to rescue
• 2:46:24
  Captain Jack. The doctor's happy.
• 2:46:27
  The Doctor feels some relief from redemption through getting
• 2:46:32
  through this story. I think it is fabulous.
• 2:46:36
  Brilliant. Let us go to the comments.
• 2:46:39
  Service Kids 74 says by far and away the best two episodes of
• 2:46:43
  Eccleston's tenure. All the right ingredients for a
• 2:46:45
  classic Who story and beautifully acted.
• 2:46:48
  Garrett Bowley says worst story here.
• 2:46:51
  Nothing much happens in two entire episodes.
• 2:46:54
  The start of the reset switch storytelling that were plague
• 2:46:57
  later years. Crikey, quite a contentious
• 2:46:59
  comment from Gareth, Jack Coyer says one of the greatest Doctor
• 2:47:03
  Who stories of all time. Everybody lives as the perfect
• 2:47:05
  way to end this story after their darkest day.
• 2:47:08
  A brief moment of respite. The 9th Doctor gets to be warm,
• 2:47:11
  sincere and heroic, offset by the cunning and cheeky Captain
• 2:47:14
  Jack. He proves worthy of a place on
• 2:47:16
  the TARDIS and gives the Series A new breath of air as we hurtle
• 2:47:20
  to the finish. James Lark Sometimes it's all
• 2:47:23
  right to be obvious. This really is the best.
• 2:47:26
  Instantly iconic, it makes Doctor Who properly scary but
• 2:47:29
  with wit and thrills to spare. This nails the 45 minute format
• 2:47:33
  so many of these stories struggle with and gives us a
• 2:47:36
  belt in two parter. Harold of Creation says I didn't
• 2:47:39
  like this, but that probably stems from watching with my wife
• 2:47:42
  and daughter, and this one went a bit too far for family
• 2:47:45
  viewing. Andy Parkinson, just wow.
• 2:47:48
  Are You My Mummy? Was creepy as balls and in the
• 2:47:52
  best tradition of Doctor Who and must have had kids scurrying
• 2:47:56
  behind the sofa. Captain Jack was wonderfully
• 2:47:58
  camp on Oct. Possibly the best story in the
• 2:48:01
  first series. Jason Thompson says a real
• 2:48:03
  highlight of the entire run. Atmospheric.
• 2:48:06
  A creepy monster. A superb guest star in Florence
• 2:48:08
  Hoth as Nancy. A clever cliffhanger resolution
• 2:48:11
  that not only makes sense in the context of threat, but leads to
• 2:48:14
  further danger ahead. Keep it at all costs.
• 2:48:18
  James H Really everything Moffett is in this one.
• 2:48:21
  Crass sex jokes, Underage sexuality, internally
• 2:48:25
  inconsistent, but it's salvage by Richard Wilson's performance
• 2:48:29
  that shows just how good an actor he is.
• 2:48:30
  Shane Jack is completely rewritten after this bin.
• 2:48:34
  James H does like to be contentious.
• 2:48:36
  Big Orange, my big orange Michael says the debut of Steven
• 2:48:39
  Moffitt is a superlative 2 part story the straddles the line
• 2:48:43
  between modern and classic Who perfectly close to perfect.
• 2:48:46
  Keep it. Ian Winston.
• 2:48:48
  One of the best episodes in the show's history.
• 2:48:50
  An iconic monster, great dialogue, horror and just the
• 2:48:53
  most wonderful performance from Florence.
• 2:48:56
  Hoof, there it is, the sweat on your brow.
• 2:48:59
  Daniel Rawnsley says no sex, please, we're Doctor Who.
• 2:49:03
  Seriously, though, this is drenched in romance and sex,
• 2:49:06
  full of questions the show's never really asked before Jack
• 2:49:09
  and the Doctor tossing a banana around.
• 2:49:11
  It helps that it's also completely effing terrifying
• 2:49:14
  with that child's cry that scared the nation.
• 2:49:16
  Like it or not, it's Moffett's mission statement for Doctor
• 2:49:19
  Who. And, somewhat ambiguously, Tom
• 2:49:24
  Newsom ends with a sign of what the show will become.
• 2:49:27
  You. Could take that in whichever way
• 2:49:30
  you want. Let's go to Michael.
• 2:49:33
  So Denise loves it, Michael. Oh, this one's definitely going
• 2:49:37
  through. Without a shadow of a doubt.
• 2:49:41
  It's got, it's got oodles and oodles and oodles of atmosphere.
• 2:49:45
  It's it's doing exactly what RTD wanted to do when he was
• 2:49:49
  setting, setting up his visual statement.
• 2:49:52
  He's basing the Buffy templates is that we've got all those big
• 2:49:55
  iconic moments. So we've got Big Ben, we've got.
• 2:49:58
  So we've got, we've got like, yeah, the visual iconic.
• 2:50:02
  So we've got the set. Yeah.
• 2:50:03
  We've got Whit's London, got the air raid, got the barrage
• 2:50:07
  balloons. We have the world's longest one
• 2:50:09
  minute of a clock. Bobby's got we've got the gas
• 2:50:14
  masks. It's just so how we've got all
• 2:50:17
  that, we've got all the picture postcard images you want, which
• 2:50:20
  is where you wanted to put us the selling points, but it's got
• 2:50:24
  much more subjects to that. It's interesting how we have a
• 2:50:28
  story which would likely be in the 1980s EastEnders episode in
• 2:50:32
  regards to Nancy, but mixed into the 1940s atmosphere with the
• 2:50:37
  out with the added, with the added increased term prejudice
• 2:50:41
  towards a single to say an underage single mother who goes
• 2:50:46
  into hiding and leaving lies to her sibling lies, lies to her
• 2:50:49
  offspring. Captain Jack is at his best
• 2:50:53
  here. He's much better when he's The
• 2:50:55
  Tonight, when he's the conniving, slightly dangerous
• 2:50:58
  dubious con man rather than the rather than the big innuendo
• 2:51:03
  machine he becomes later on. And it's interesting how well
• 2:51:07
  that Eccleston and Barrowman perform on screen together.
• 2:51:11
  You wouldn't know those behind the screen tension of how we're
• 2:51:13
  annoyed Ecclestone was getting I was getting with John for
• 2:51:15
  getting a little Johnny out all the time and we'll send it.
• 2:51:22
  It's just it's it's got a brilliant cliffhanger and the
• 2:51:25
  resolution works. It works.
• 2:51:27
  It builds to it. It's built on the logic itself.
• 2:51:29
  And that's another Christopher HPP moments of Vine.
• 2:51:31
  I could see BB good. Oh yes, that works.
• 2:51:34
  Oh, that's that. This.
• 2:51:37
  Is the only Moffett resolution to a cliffhanger?
• 2:51:39
  I think he would ever say that so, but yeah.
• 2:51:42
  Yes, you're probably right there.
• 2:51:44
  But the transformation of Richard Wilson into the empty
• 2:51:47
  child is just, is still quite, it's still quite chilling.
• 2:51:52
  The air raid. Oh, well, it's the 2005
• 2:51:55
  equivalent of Perth we CSO. And so it's, yeah, that doesn't
• 2:52:01
  stand up very well. But that's, it's a little bit
• 2:52:04
  more difficult when you have to recreate something of an age
• 2:52:08
  rather than something Spacey. So I might give them a bit away.
• 2:52:10
  But yeah, it's going through. Brilliant.
• 2:52:13
  So, talking of big innuendo machines, Joe Ford.
• 2:52:17
  Hello, hello. I would like you to rewind the
• 2:52:20
  episode about 10 minutes and listen to everything that Denise
• 2:52:25
  said because essentially it was my perfect summation of these
• 2:52:30
  two parts. Like literally every single
• 2:52:33
  usually there's something I'll disagree with every single point
• 2:52:35
  that you made, Denise. It's exactly how I feel about
• 2:52:38
  this story. So to not labour the point more,
• 2:52:41
  I just want to talk about 3 individual moments that I love.
• 2:52:45
  One is just that, the sheer class and style.
• 2:52:49
  When we go down into that underground gentlemen's club and
• 2:52:52
  the atmosphere down there with a woman singing, it's just such a
• 2:52:57
  classy moment. I was like OK, we're in a sort
• 2:52:59
  of another level with these two-part now in terms of
• 2:53:02
  atmosphere. My second is the bit where the
• 2:53:08
  the full Vista of London is revealed when she's on the
• 2:53:11
  barrage balloon. And you know what?
• 2:53:12
  The CGI doesn't entirely hold up because it dates worse than
• 2:53:15
  anything, but it's like a beautifully painted it's like a
• 2:53:18
  romantic picture of London in the Blitz with the barrage
• 2:53:22
  balloons and the lights going up.
• 2:53:24
  It is just visually gorgeous. I don't think it even held up
• 2:53:28
  then, if I'm honest. But as an image, it is so
• 2:53:31
  potent. And the last one is I rat on
• 2:53:36
  Steven Moffett and his plotting all the time because I think.
• 2:53:39
  You don't, do you? He makes up the rules a lot
• 2:53:42
  later on, he makes his own rules and so we can just do anything
• 2:53:47
  and and that isn't playing fair with the audience.
• 2:53:50
  But with this story, it is so skillfully plotted that the
• 2:53:55
  answer that we needed has been staring us in the face from the
• 2:53:59
  beginning of the story. Are you my mummy?
• 2:54:02
  And the moment when we realize that an audience we've been so
• 2:54:06
  fucking stupid to not realize that as he comes through on the
• 2:54:10
  railroad, the plot just locks into place in the most sublime
• 2:54:15
  way you can imagine. I got chills from the plotting,
• 2:54:19
  let alone the emotions of the scene.
• 2:54:20
  I was like how has I played like this?
• 2:54:22
  And when she goes yes I am your mummy.
• 2:54:24
  I was like, of course you are. How did I not see it until?
• 2:54:28
  This Oh, that's a that's pure Terrance Dicks, that is.
• 2:54:31
  It's come on. Yes, but only once you've
• 2:54:33
  revealed. It.
• 2:54:34
  Now look if we've got a story where both bid Mead and Dicks
• 2:54:37
  will be on the same. Page.
• 2:54:39
  Something right, OK. It is.
• 2:54:43
  It's almost my favorite of the year.
• 2:54:45
  It is a brilliant Doctor Who story.
• 2:54:48
  It is absolutely one of Steven Muffet's best.
• 2:54:52
  Frankly, you should have given up, because he never did.
• 2:54:54
  He didn't do much better than this later on, and he certainly
• 2:54:57
  did a million times worse. So it is gorgeous.
• 2:55:01
  Yes, please. I love the way you always
• 2:55:03
  appraise Moffett with faint praise, Joe, a man who's find a
• 2:55:07
  negative to every. Positive.
• 2:55:09
  I have just given his plotting their highest appraisal you have
• 2:55:13
  possibly give it. You have laced with plenty of.
• 2:55:15
  Negatives. Well, of course I'm going to put
• 2:55:19
  this through. Who wouldn't put it through?
• 2:55:20
  You've all said everything I was expecting all to say about all
• 2:55:24
  the plotting, which is just superlative.
• 2:55:28
  I mean, it's just so you're right, Joe, this you watch this
• 2:55:31
  episode and it absolutely takes it up to another level and you
• 2:55:34
  really feel that this series is completely finding its stride at
• 2:55:38
  this point. I'm just going to pick on three
• 2:55:41
  quickly, just three kind of visual cues.
• 2:55:44
  The first one, the gas mask. I mean, what an inspired idea
• 2:55:48
  straight away. Obviously it sells the World War
• 2:55:50
  2 setting, but because those kind of solar size and the
• 2:55:54
  extended mouth, it kind of gives the wearer a real inhuman
• 2:55:57
  quality. But more than like a Cyberman
• 2:55:59
  with the mask, you never lose fact to the sight.
• 2:56:03
  There's a person underneath because you can see their
• 2:56:05
  everyday clothes underneath. So it's just such a clever idea
• 2:56:08
  and of course it leaves that brilliant transformation he
• 2:56:10
  talks about for Richard Wilson. But it's also a really
• 2:56:13
  disturbing image when when the doctor examines all the patients
• 2:56:17
  and realise the gas mask is is fused to their face, That's
• 2:56:20
  really disturbing and creates a real sense of claustrophobia in
• 2:56:24
  the viewer. Imagine having that welded to
• 2:56:26
  your face. And the other thing that gas
• 2:56:28
  mask does really cleverly is it hides the face.
• 2:56:31
  So when those zombie patients go to attack the Doctor, Rose and
• 2:56:35
  Jack, it's not they're not having to do zombie acting,
• 2:56:39
  which we get in like New Earth and Amy's Choice.
• 2:56:41
  It can look a bit comical when people are rolling their eyes
• 2:56:45
  because the face is covered. You get all the scares with none
• 2:56:48
  of the nonsense. So I think the gas mask
• 2:56:50
  absolutely inspired idea Joe and Michael both talks about.
• 2:56:54
  And Denise, the London skyline, it looks fabulous.
• 2:56:58
  It looks beautiful. Yes, Rose hanging about on a bit
• 2:57:00
  of string doesn't work. You're right, Joey didn't work
• 2:57:03
  at the time. But when you're surrounded by
• 2:57:04
  the rest of that Vista with the bombs, the zeppelins, the
• 2:57:07
  planes, that works for me. So I'm absolutely going to
• 2:57:10
  forgive the hanging out the Rose.
• 2:57:13
  I think Michael said it was picture postcard didn't.
• 2:57:15
  It it is absolutely. That's what you it is.
• 2:57:17
  Right it is. And what better picture perfect
• 2:57:19
  picture postcard for Doctor than having an invisible spaceship
• 2:57:23
  parked up against big band with the Doctor with with Rose and
• 2:57:26
  Jack dancing to Glenn Miller in front of big band eyes.
• 2:57:30
  Beautiful stuff, isn't it? And of course, the whole episode
• 2:57:32
  is set at night, so you've got that darkness, the sense of
• 2:57:35
  foreboding all the way through. And the last physical cue is
• 2:57:38
  Jack's costume and makeup. It's very clever.
• 2:57:41
  We know right from the off when we meet Jack, he's not
• 2:57:43
  everything he pretends to be. It's the fact that he looks like
• 2:57:46
  a, you know, 1940s matinee idol dressed up in his costume.
• 2:57:52
  It just, it ties in with the fact that he's a con artist and
• 2:57:55
  really kind of reinforces that he's not who he pretends to be.
• 2:57:59
  And I love the fact that, you know, he uses that look to
• 2:58:02
  romance Rose and she completely falls for it.
• 2:58:05
  But then as soon as his true intentions are revealed and we
• 2:58:08
  know he's a con artist, he's just dismissive of each scores.
• 2:58:11
  Like the flag girl. I mean, they don't come back to
• 2:58:14
  Jack in that way again, which is a shame afterwards.
• 2:58:17
  But I think the costuming and the makeup is just very subtle
• 2:58:20
  and very clever, tells you all you need to know about that
• 2:58:23
  character. So of course it's going through.
• 2:58:25
  You know, it's such AI think it's such a shame that Moffett
• 2:58:28
  didn't write for classic Who, because I think this is the
• 2:58:32
  closest he does to write in a classic dog story in terms of
• 2:58:36
  pace, in terms of how important the plot is as well as the
• 2:58:40
  character work. And I think after this, he's
• 2:58:44
  only writing new series episodes for for good or for real.
• 2:58:48
  He wrote some brilliant new series, episodes, roles, but
• 2:58:53
  this is one, this is his one sort of classic whose story and
• 2:58:58
  it's just perfect. Yeah, you can see this is a four
• 2:59:01
  party, couldn't you? Right.
• 2:59:03
  So we're left with Bad Wolf parting of the way.
• 2:59:05
  It's Michael. Take it away.
• 2:59:08
  Well having looked up have re watched it my thoughts are this
• 2:59:14
  one I am going to. Keep.
• 2:59:17
  But only just now there now you're probably going to say it
• 2:59:23
  could be really, really pedantic.
• 2:59:25
  Here is, But The thing is, while the concept of having the killer
• 2:59:32
  get the killer game station, a killer television studio is a
• 2:59:36
  fine idea if it's a bit old fashioned even by 2005.
• 2:59:41
  Yeah, In fact, it's been done in vengeance of Virus in a way.
• 2:59:45
  But The thing is, I think which is, is that just having
• 2:59:49
  contemporary shows gone space, he said.
• 2:59:52
  We have Big Brother in space, Weakest Link in space.
• 2:59:59
  It dates it and it's a bit too on the nose and I can't remember
• 3:00:05
  the one. Trinity and Suzanne, what's it?
• 3:00:07
  What's it called? Oh yes, that's the one, yes.
• 3:00:11
  Yes, it just feels like it just watch now.
• 3:00:13
  Oh, that just feels that dates the episode quite badly.
• 3:00:16
  Whereas if they're done sort of implied parodies it are they not
• 3:00:21
  work better and. Doesn't though.
• 3:00:26
  Doesn't any time you do real world references to adults who
• 3:00:30
  dates it? I think he probably should.
• 3:00:33
  Date it, you know that's what it was meant.
• 3:00:36
  Yeah, but the way of facts, but the fact it's supposed to be set
• 3:00:39
  so Woody Duddy years in the future, it just feels a bit It
• 3:00:43
  takes us out of it for me and other and the other reason is
• 3:00:51
  it's it is it gives us a trade which will get reused over and
• 3:00:54
  over again. We've got our first confed
• 3:00:57
  companion fake out death. It works better in this one, but
• 3:01:01
  it becomes to get they overused and again they go through the
• 3:01:05
  similar trope with a hint of Rose's death the next season.
• 3:01:09
  And those are my two quibbles against it.
• 3:01:11
  But otherwise, like I say, it's going, it's going in.
• 3:01:14
  The Daleks are later once again to be a credible threat.
• 3:01:17
  And that fight, the final, the assault of the Daleks from the
• 3:01:21
  telly station, reminds me of all those video games like Warcraft
• 3:01:24
  3, where you have to keep a character alive for 30 minutes
• 3:01:27
  and you just have to keep throwing everything you've got
• 3:01:30
  to keep to keep the bad guys from getting your enemy from
• 3:01:34
  getting your character. And that's exactly what it feels
• 3:01:36
  like. Doctor just trying to buy time
• 3:01:38
  for himself. And because the two six Mac and
• 3:01:42
  year ending is signposted before, it doesn't feel so bad.
• 3:01:46
  And there's also a consequence to it.
• 3:01:48
  We may get rid of all the dialects, but it kills the
• 3:01:51
  Doctor in the process. So it's comes it comes with the
• 3:01:55
  price. And I wonder how, if the Chris
• 3:01:57
  had stayed on for a second year, how the alternative ending would
• 3:02:01
  have, would have, would have panned out.
• 3:02:03
  Worth noting that the first episode of the new season was
• 3:02:06
  set in the hospital, so I wonder if that is an echo of an
• 3:02:08
  original plan. And so the Dalek Empire is well
• 3:02:12
  realized. And another quibble.
• 3:02:16
  Is this such a pity? It's not the dialect from Dalek
• 3:02:19
  finally gone absolutely insane on creating an army of dialect
• 3:02:23
  in his image to complete the gold metaphor.
• 3:02:28
  So I love, I love the visual of the of the telecontrol reminds
• 3:02:33
  me of the film metropolis, the of the robot woman.
• 3:02:38
  And it's just such a pity to reveal the diets was was exposed
• 3:02:41
  at the end of Boomtown. But yeah, I'm keeping this one
• 3:02:45
  in. Brilliant.
• 3:02:47
  Let's go to the final set of comments.
• 3:02:49
  Lucy McCall says. I remember being disappointed
• 3:02:51
  that Bad Wolf was Rose and the vortex energy could be
• 3:02:54
  transferred by snogging, but then I'm an old fogey and rest
• 3:02:58
  ignored. James Lark says an uneven
• 3:03:00
  finale. You could feel the game show
• 3:03:02
  nonsense aging badly even as it went out, and resolving the
• 3:03:06
  whole thing with magic is a cop out.
• 3:03:08
  But to comprehensively tie up so many emotional beats is an
• 3:03:11
  impressive feat, and it still packs a punch.
• 3:03:14
  The psychological journey makes sense even if the nuts and bolts
• 3:03:17
  don't and want a journey. Jason Thompson says I wasn't
• 3:03:20
  sold on reality shows as a threat, but if you've been this,
• 3:03:23
  you lose so much gold. A cracking cliffhanger.
• 3:03:26
  Linda with AYA palpable sense of rising threat.
• 3:03:30
  The silent exterminate from outside the window.
• 3:03:32
  Yes, I rolled my eye at the Doctor pulling the vortex energy
• 3:03:35
  out of Rose with a kiss, but Doctor Who never got the
• 3:03:38
  adrenaline going the way this episode did.
• 3:03:41
  Ian Winterton I hate the game show formats but the finale is
• 3:03:45
  amazing. They survived for me.
• 3:03:48
  The Doctor tricking Rose and Mickey and Jackie spelled in a
• 3:03:51
  very intriguing way. Getting back getting her back to
• 3:03:55
  the future is awesome. And Bad Wolf seems obvious now,
• 3:03:58
  but it was a great reveal the first time round.
• 3:04:00
  Only Downer. Goodbye to 9.
• 3:04:02
  Jack Coyer says one lonely, tortured God has been moping his
• 3:04:06
  way around the universe, convinced he must go it alone,
• 3:04:08
  only now to be bailed out by Doctor whose greatest strength,
• 3:04:12
  the power of friendship. It can bring you back from the
• 3:04:14
  brink of committing genocide or even death.
• 3:04:17
  There are, however, no easy solutions.
• 3:04:19
  Prices must be paid by Jack and the Doctor.
• 3:04:22
  Andy Parkinson a good romp over two episodes.
• 3:04:25
  The Doctor saving Rose by absorbing the vortex energy.
• 3:04:28
  It's a great finale to the Eccleston era.
• 3:04:30
  Daniel Rawnsley says the Daleks are back, the melodrama is out
• 3:04:33
  in full force and RTD marvellously pulls all story
• 3:04:37
  threads together with such panache I can only surrender his
• 3:04:40
  best spectacular finale. James H.
• 3:04:45
  Damn, I'm conflicted over this one.
• 3:04:48
  It's everything It should be on the Dalek side of things.
• 3:04:50
  Well, mostly everything. It should have been the last
• 3:04:53
  ever Dalek story, but the resolution is weird and the pop
• 3:04:56
  culture reference is awful. So bin one but keep two question
• 3:05:00
  mark. Yeah, sorry, James doesn't work
• 3:05:02
  like that. In for you, James, Sorry.
• 3:05:05
  Yeah, Daniel My says passing in the Ways is epic and dark, with
• 3:05:09
  so many fantastic moments. Barrowman is great in his
• 3:05:12
  rallying speech, The dialects haven't been this menacing since
• 3:05:14
  Genesis, and Linda's reaction to the exterminations on Floor Zero
• 3:05:18
  is so well done. Tom Neeson, One of the most
• 3:05:21
  exciting bits of TV ever and a lot more brutal than subsequent
• 3:05:25
  finales. A complete success.
• 3:05:27
  And the final comment from Ross who Joe you mentioned before
• 3:05:30
  wasn't enjoying things so much but he loves this so exciting.
• 3:05:33
  Amazing cliffhanger. Your reality TV stuff was great
• 3:05:37
  at the time, but it dates terribly now.
• 3:05:39
  But Linda Daleks hologram tieless, the rescue, the kiss,
• 3:05:43
  the sad goodbye, the Super exciting hello loveday
• 3:05:47
  Barcelona. So, Denise, yay or nay?
• 3:05:54
  Well, it's a big hell yeah from me, yes.
• 3:05:58
  Yes. Yes, I mean, it's a little
• 3:06:02
  glimpse back at what TV in the early 20th century was like in
• 3:06:08
  every possible way. Although of course we still do
• 3:06:11
  have the weakest link and but the others have seem to have
• 3:06:16
  gone by the by the controller of the TV station who hasn't been
• 3:06:21
  human for years. That makes a weird kind of
• 3:06:24
  sense. Yeah.
• 3:06:28
  So Duff Entertainment instead of news again.
• 3:06:31
  That all makes sense. Yeah.
• 3:06:35
  There it is. Very clever, bringing everything
• 3:06:38
  together. And I liked that they were back
• 3:06:41
  on Satellite 5, or Game Station, as it's now called.
• 3:06:44
  I mean, that's a hark back to the Arcane Space and Revenge of
• 3:06:48
  the Side of Men, You know, you reusing a few sets.
• 3:06:51
  And there's nothing wrong with that.
• 3:06:54
  I love the Doctor coming to get Rose from the Dalek ship.
• 3:06:58
  The Doctor is called the Oncoming Storm for the first
• 3:07:01
  time. Yeah.
• 3:07:05
  Captain Jack's goodbye. Marshalling the troops, sending
• 3:07:10
  Rose to safety. I mean, the scenes at home.
• 3:07:13
  What a shift change. But how wonderful are they?
• 3:07:16
  I mean, Rose trying to articulate what she's been
• 3:07:20
  through and what she's missing now and what she's thinking
• 3:07:23
  about. And of course, you know, the
• 3:07:25
  families thinking well, that, you know, aren't we good enough
• 3:07:29
  for you now? Isn't this life good enough for
• 3:07:31
  you anymore? And you can totally get that.
• 3:07:35
  You know, she doesn't want to hurt them.
• 3:07:37
  But no, she needs to be back out there in the stars.
• 3:07:40
  She needs to be out there saving the Doctor.
• 3:07:43
  And the fact that you can rip open the heart of the TARDIS if
• 3:07:48
  you have a big enough tow truck, that's a good thing.
• 3:07:53
  To. Know yeah, it's a perfect series
• 3:07:58
  finale. I loved Linda with AYI thought
• 3:08:01
  she was great. And yes, when she was narrating
• 3:08:05
  and reporting on the deaths of everybody in Floor Zero and and
• 3:08:11
  in the world as well in her own her own demise.
• 3:08:18
  I even love Rosie's smeary makeup as her eyes, as she's
• 3:08:23
  crying, as she used the bad Wolf and brings life and the final
• 3:08:28
  kiss and the regeneration sequence.
• 3:08:31
  I mean, they were pitch perfect. So well written.
• 3:08:35
  So yeah, absolutely. Yes, please.
• 3:08:39
  Let's put this in. Brilliant.
• 3:08:42
  I am also. Probably I'm not in.
• 3:08:45
  Good. I am also very unsurprisingly
• 3:08:48
  putting this one through. I noticed a theme with our
• 3:08:51
  listeners comments and also Michael has also picked up on it
• 3:08:54
  as well. And Denise, you references a lot
• 3:08:57
  of lot of insults towards the reality and game show.
• 3:09:00
  So I'm going to pick on Bad Wolf as an episode rather than the
• 3:09:04
  whole two parts because it's getting a bit of a kicking,
• 3:09:06
  whereas Parting of the Ways is getting all the praise.
• 3:09:08
  And I think Bad Wolf is just an equally good episode.
• 3:09:12
  I don't quite get the lambasting of the reality shows.
• 3:09:16
  Because the end of the day, in the last two years we've had a
• 3:09:18
  massive reboot of Big Brother, which is now big back on Sally.
• 3:09:22
  We've had a reboot of The Weakest Link.
• 3:09:24
  So two out of three ain't bad guys.
• 3:09:27
  And if, you know, they're rebooting them now in 2024,
• 3:09:31
  there's no reason why they won't just won't survive into the
• 3:09:33
  future. And I love all that kind of
• 3:09:36
  augmented reality. You know, it's almost like the
• 3:09:40
  mind right In the mind robbery in 1968, they were trading on
• 3:09:43
  stories going back to the 17th century.
• 3:09:45
  Here, Russell's giving us something that's completely up
• 3:09:47
  to date for 2005. And remember the time this was
• 3:09:50
  made, they thought this might be the one and only series of
• 3:09:53
  Doctor whoever for this new regeneration.
• 3:09:55
  So why not kind of trade on what's relevant now?
• 3:09:57
  Because it talks to the audience at that time.
• 3:10:00
  The other reason I think the game shows work really well is
• 3:10:02
  because it's actually doing what a criticism sized long game for
• 3:10:06
  a criticized long game with the news station for not showing and
• 3:10:10
  telling. It was just telling us here
• 3:10:12
  we're they're actually showing us the game shows.
• 3:10:15
  They're showing us the pulp that the that the world below is
• 3:10:18
  being fed upon and come on, this is just a lot of fun.
• 3:10:22
  Yes, Jack John Barrowman might be channelling pure John
• 3:10:25
  Barrowman will be standing there naked, pulling the gun out of
• 3:10:28
  his ass. But you know what?
• 3:10:30
  It's. Such a lot of fun.
• 3:10:32
  Who's going to criticize it for that?
• 3:10:34
  And it allows tension to be built.
• 3:10:36
  We love the fact the Doctor straight away is kind of
• 3:10:39
  querying what's going on. Rose just thinks it's a great
• 3:10:42
  big laugh. She's on Weakest Link with
• 3:10:44
  Android. She's treated probably like we
• 3:10:46
  were treated. She's just treating it as a big
• 3:10:48
  laugh until that first person gets vaporized and then suddenly
• 3:10:52
  all backs her off. Oh completely.
• 3:10:54
  Then she realises. Oh.
• 3:10:56
  Fuck, I'm in danger. She's laughing at Android.
• 3:10:59
  Why not? It's funny and you're right.
• 3:11:02
  He gives us Linda with AY the almost companion, far better
• 3:11:05
  than the lovely Adam, but I won't mention him because
• 3:11:07
  Michael's blood pressure might go.
• 3:11:09
  And and finally, it gives us one of the best lines when the
• 3:11:12
  Doctor shouts the end of the episode.
• 3:11:14
  I'm coming to get you Rose. That's a defining moment for the
• 3:11:17
  series. But remember, he's also quoting
• 3:11:19
  Davina McCall because that's what she always used to say when
• 3:11:22
  she used to go and collect the contestants.
• 3:11:23
  They're getting beat out of big. Yeah, exactly.
• 3:11:26
  So it plays that. So it's a double, double
• 3:11:29
  meaning. So I love the game shows this,
• 3:11:31
  it works really well. Second reason in Bad Wolf, I
• 3:11:34
  love the stuff on Floor 500. They're just regular people.
• 3:11:39
  They don't know what's going on any more than anybody else.
• 3:11:42
  I far prefer that rather than having kind of Dalek slaves or
• 3:11:46
  evil hypnotized people, they're just the ultimate kind of middle
• 3:11:49
  management. They're confused, they're
• 3:11:51
  bewildered, they're just following instructions, and
• 3:11:53
  they're totally inept. And Denise, you're right, the
• 3:11:55
  nod to the controller is definitely more than a nod to
• 3:11:59
  the BBC One controller. And isn't it interesting now
• 3:12:03
  that it's Bad Wolf, that's the corporation behind the
• 3:12:05
  programming again, president of what's coming along.
• 3:12:09
  And then my third reason, yes, of course, I'm going to slide in
• 3:12:11
  quickly. Final episode gives us
• 3:12:13
  everything we've ever wanted from Doctor.
• 3:12:15
  High action, millions of dialects, doctrine, companion,
• 3:12:18
  saving the day. It's magnificent.
• 3:12:20
  Of course it's going through. Josh over to.
• 3:12:23
  You add to what everyone said. I mean, once again, Michael
• 3:12:28
  Anthony, both of you articulated my thoughts brilliantly, so I'll
• 3:12:33
  lean into three moments again. 1 Russell T Davis is a total
• 3:12:37
  bastard when he wants to be, and he delivers US one of the most
• 3:12:41
  gorgeous characters in Linder and the Y And then murders are
• 3:12:45
  in the most spectacularly horrible way you could possibly
• 3:12:48
  imagine, and he loves doing this.
• 3:12:50
  He loves getting you close to people and then pull in the rug
• 3:12:54
  and that silent Dalek, you know, there's Daleks appear and then
• 3:12:57
  you hit just see the lights going on and you know what
• 3:13:00
  they're saying? Oh, it's just there's a suspense
• 3:13:04
  in that scene. There's so much suspense in
• 3:13:06
  that. Like Muffins said, Doctor Who
• 3:13:08
  doesn't really do suspense when he was talking about boom.
• 3:13:10
  But actually this is a brilliant suspense episode.
• 3:13:14
  So that's my number one. Rusty Davis is a bastard #2
• 3:13:18
  Rusty Davis will break your heart.
• 3:13:22
  I saw Dad shut up. That's how good the Doctor is.
• 3:13:26
  Those scenes between Jackie and Rose, oh God, they're just
• 3:13:30
  gorgeous, aren't they, Denise? The one you said about the cafe.
• 3:13:33
  That's how good the Doctor is. Bringing this down to real
• 3:13:37
  emotion in a way that the series has never really captured
• 3:13:40
  before, but heightened to such a level.
• 3:13:42
  I think those scenes are deliberately shot in a mundane
• 3:13:45
  way. The rotating chicken and things
• 3:13:47
  like that. But the emotion is every bit as
• 3:13:51
  operatic and a stand out as what's going on on Satellite 5.
• 3:13:55
  Those scenes are extraordinary and for sort of stripped back
• 3:13:59
  role acting, it's some of the best the show ever gave us.
• 3:14:03
  And then my third thing is Rusty Davis is going to do things that
• 3:14:07
  you don't always expect. He gives us a positive
• 3:14:10
  cliffhanger where the Daleks are shit scared because the Doctors
• 3:14:14
  come in for them. So suddenly the Doctor's the
• 3:14:16
  villain and the Daleks, we're rooting for the Daleks now.
• 3:14:19
  No, it's a wonderful cliffhanger.
• 3:14:20
  But then he offers up the rarest of thing, a positive
• 3:14:23
  regeneration as well, where he knows he's got to introduce this
• 3:14:26
  enormous concept to a whole new generation of kids that are
• 3:14:30
  watching the show. And so he has the Doctor's say
• 3:14:32
  to Rose, but really to the kids watching, it's all right, I'm
• 3:14:36
  going to be different, but it's it's OK.
• 3:14:39
  And I was magnificent, fantastic.
• 3:14:42
  And so were you. It's it's a wonderful
• 3:14:44
  regeneration. This is my favorite of the year.
• 3:14:48
  This is my favorite culmination of a season.
• 3:14:50
  This is certainly my favorite last episode that the new series
• 3:14:53
  has ever delivered. I think it just scores on every
• 3:14:56
  level you could possibly think it makes the Daleks in Dalek.
• 3:15:01
  It was a single Dalek, and look how hard that was to defeat.
• 3:15:04
  And now we're facing an entire army of the buggers, and that's
• 3:15:08
  terrifying, Michael. And I feel corrected to think of
• 3:15:11
  this is one of the rare stories where every character who is not
• 3:15:14
  a regular character is killed. And we do love that, right?
• 3:15:19
  Fangrok here it is maybe? Probably nearly everything
• 3:15:24
  written by Eric Saywood. Probably.
• 3:15:27
  No, it's I think this is perfect Doctor Who.
• 3:15:29
  For me, it's perfect Russell. Doctor Who and Russell is my
• 3:15:33
  favorite era of the show, so this is the absolute pinnacle
• 3:15:37
  for me. Fantastic, right?
• 3:15:41
  So we get to round two eventually.
• 3:15:43
  We've only lost three stories. We've lost Father's Day Went
• 3:15:47
  First, Aliens, London, World War Three and The Long Game.
• 3:15:51
  So we've got 7 stories left in the pot.
• 3:15:53
  Don't you worry guys. Round Two's usually about 5
• 3:15:55
  minutes. So let us spin the magic wheel.
• 3:15:59
  Cue the camp music Joe. Camp Sinister music a go.
• 3:16:04
  And we have Rose. Rose plays bad Wolves, Parting
• 3:16:11
  of the ways. Well, that's an easy one for me.
• 3:16:14
  Bad Wolf and part in other ways. Yeah, it's an easy one for me to
• 3:16:18
  say. Bad Wolf, Parting of the Ways,
• 3:16:19
  Michael. There's an easy choice for me,
• 3:16:22
  too. Bad wolf.
• 3:16:22
  Parting of the ways. And Denise?
• 3:16:25
  Yep, same with. Me.
• 3:16:27
  OK, so that that was a very simple, we don't like them when
• 3:16:30
  they're too easy. See you later, Rose, I said you
• 3:16:33
  were no good. OK, so second round we have the
• 3:16:38
  Unquiet Dead plays. The Empty Child Doctor Dancers
• 3:16:43
  was an easy one for me. Empty Child Doctor Dancers for
• 3:16:45
  numerous reasons which I won't reiterate, but Steven Moffett.
• 3:16:49
  Yay. Michael.
• 3:16:52
  Empty child doctor dancers. Denise.
• 3:16:55
  Yep, empty child doctor dances. And there's a four way again.
• 3:17:00
  My God, we've never been so in a cold.
• 3:17:02
  We have on what's going on. OK, so the unquiet dead is dead.
• 3:17:09
  We're very easily stripping these away.
• 3:17:12
  So the next round is End of the World Plays Empty Child Doctor
• 3:17:25
  dances. Oh.
• 3:17:27
  That is tougher for me. Denise, let's start with you.
• 3:17:31
  OK, well for me it's the empty child and the doctor dances.
• 3:17:36
  Michael. Empty child doctor dances.
• 3:17:40
  Joe, you said this was going to be hard for you, so you go next.
• 3:17:43
  I would choose, I would choose Rusty Davis any day.
• 3:17:49
  And I think it it, it plays with more tones, more confidently.
• 3:17:53
  End of the world. Wow.
• 3:17:56
  I do like to throw a curveball, but that is a curveball.
• 3:18:00
  I think a little bit too far. It's got to be empty child,
• 3:18:03
  empty dancers, doesn't it? It's a more whatever intricate
• 3:18:06
  plot, so sorry, end of the world.
• 3:18:08
  You have now just fallen. So we're down to four Dalek,
• 3:18:14
  Empty Child, Boom Town and Bad Wolf.
• 3:18:19
  That's the joy of the magic wheel.
• 3:18:21
  So we've got Bad Wolf, Parting of the ways.
• 3:18:25
  No against Empty Child Doctor Dance.
• 3:18:28
  I knew this was coming for. Me, it's bad Wolf fine.
• 3:18:31
  Otherwise, it's absolutely the pinnacle of the season.
• 3:18:35
  Michael. Empty child doctor dances.
• 3:18:43
  Denise. OK, well I'm going to have to go
• 3:18:47
  with the empty child and the doctor dances.
• 3:18:54
  I'm so torn on this one. I am so torn on this one.
• 3:18:59
  This is where I know where your allegiance truly is, Moffett or
• 3:19:02
  babies, it's. Going to be empty child doctors.
• 3:19:07
  I knew it. I can't believe Bad Wolf has
• 3:19:12
  fallen. It shouldn't have been in that
• 3:19:13
  position, but it's gone. Sorry, it has.
• 3:19:17
  Gone. So.
• 3:19:18
  That's how bad Rod is. She's a misquote.
• 3:19:22
  Blame it all on me. So we've got darling plays.
• 3:19:27
  Oh, for Christ's sake, Darling plays empty child.
• 3:19:30
  Doctor Dances. Boomtown.
• 3:19:32
  Is in the final What is going on?
• 3:19:35
  What is going on? Today's score you go first.
• 3:19:39
  OK, well for me it's got to be the empty child and the doctor
• 3:19:43
  dances. Yep, Michael.
• 3:19:46
  I'm going to have to go with the DS I'm afraid.
• 3:19:49
  Joe. Yeah, I was sort of on the fence
• 3:19:53
  with Dalek. So empty child Doctor dancers.
• 3:19:54
  For sure, and same for me as well.
• 3:19:56
  So it's a straight 4 for four. Sorry Dalek, you're out.
• 3:19:59
  So we are left, unbelievably, with the empty child Doctor
• 3:20:03
  dancers and the shit heap that is Boomtown.
• 3:20:08
  So I think I'll go first. I think it's probably going to
• 3:20:10
  be empty child Doctor dancers for me.
• 3:20:13
  Strangely enough, Denise. I will say and the doctor dance,
• 3:20:21
  which is. Number one on my spreadsheet we
• 3:20:26
  got. There in the end.
• 3:20:30
  Boom, that's good. Don't even put it here.
• 3:20:37
  It's just going to be empty child Doctor dances.
• 3:20:44
  I've got to go with the sort of superior character drama and the
• 3:20:48
  superior comedic story with the best production value.
• 3:20:52
  So it's got to be Boomtown. No, it's the empty child that
• 3:20:55
  Doctor dances. I figured we might end here.
• 3:20:58
  Yeah, we have, and what a superb winner.
• 3:21:02
  It was a shame to see Bad Wolf partying of the ways go, but
• 3:21:06
  hey, there's got to be a winner. Fantastic.
• 3:21:10
  So we have got the end. After the series one marathon,
• 3:21:15
  we've just got to say thank you to Michael and Denise.
• 3:21:19
  Would you like to direct people to your social media or would is
• 3:21:22
  there anything you'd like to promote either of you?
• 3:21:24
  Let's start with Michael. OK, you can find me on Twitter
• 3:21:29
  as at Samman Jazz. Will you hear me talk?
• 3:21:33
  Hear me talk about jazz, Doctor Who crime stories and if you and
• 3:21:38
  I should be towards the end of the month on my own, my own
• 3:21:41
  podcast will be starting which is Side Rat Storm which is
• 3:21:45
  charting my journey into Phantom.
• 3:21:47
  Oh, sounds very intriguing. Excellent.
• 3:21:50
  And so, Denise, where can people find you or is there anything
• 3:21:52
  you'd like to promote? OK, well I am most regularly
• 3:21:58
  heard on the Track One podcasts with the amazing Mark McManus
• 3:22:03
  and Psy and Peter and all those other wonderful guys.
• 3:22:08
  And sometimes I'm on Doctor Who literature podcasts as well with
• 3:22:12
  the amazing Jason. I'm on Twitter as at Cup of Tea
• 3:22:18
  69 and I'm on Mastodon and Blue Sky as Denisery.
• 3:22:25
  But I'm not the most active social media Bunny these days,
• 3:22:30
  so don't expect great things from me if you do follow me.
• 3:22:33
  Not a problem. Everyone do go and check out
• 3:22:35
  Trap one. All of those, including you,
• 3:22:38
  Denise, all of those fabulous people.
• 3:22:40
  I mean, as much as I loathe people to say to go and listen
• 3:22:43
  to something else, but go and listen to that one.
• 3:22:46
  The best people are on track one.
• 3:22:49
  Fabulous. So Denise, Michael, thank you so
• 3:22:51
  much for your contribution tonight.
• 3:22:53
  It's been. Very nice to be here.
• 3:22:55
  Through this series Joe next episode we are going to be doing
• 3:22:58
  series season season 10 jumper with penultimate.
• 3:23:04
  Season 10, we've done that. We've recorded it, but we we're
• 3:23:08
  not, we're not telling the macho you're revealing the magic.
• 3:23:13
  Season 10, you say? I can't wait.
• 3:23:15
  To do that one. Won't that be new and
• 3:23:17
  refreshing? Oh my God, had a great year too.
• 3:23:20
  I I wonder how that's going to end out.
• 3:23:22
  Are you really looking forward to that one, Joe?
• 3:23:24
  Very much so. Thank you.
• 3:23:25
  I sound like I'm auto Mickey though.
• 3:23:27
  Don't. I pizza.
• 3:23:30
  You know I'll keep all that in, right?
• 3:23:32
  Oh. Absolutely, of course you.
• 3:23:33
  Are. So yeah, the surprise that we've
• 3:23:36
  no idea how it's going to land Season 10 will be our next
• 3:23:39
  podcast. So that's it for tonight.
• 3:23:42
  And all that Joe and I need to say is thank you for listening
• 3:23:45
  and until next time. Listening.
• 3:23:51
  Good night everyone. Good.
• 3:23:53
  Night. The
• 3:24:33
  the.