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Halloween Special! 73 Yards featuring Michael Mills · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:11
  You know what, I'm not complaining, but I say let's go
• 0:14
  away, let's go to New York, and you say no.
• 0:19
  So I keep thinking I don't want you to take this the wrong way,
• 0:22
  but I've got to ask. Is there someone else?
• 0:38
  It's just sometimes I get the impression you're not really
• 0:41
  listening, like drifting off thinking of something else.
• 0:46
  What like now, to be honest? See me sparkle, see me playing.
• 0:55
  The thing is, I know you've had a tough time.
• 0:59
  That whole thing with your mother is weird, OK?
• 1:01
  But it's hard for me sometimes. You.
• 1:04
  Know, thank you. And what's your take on this
• 1:07
  Roger Ack Williams? Well, no public school.
• 1:10
  For me, I've done hard work. I started off as a pizza
• 1:14
  delivery. Boy.
• 1:15
  I worked on a fruit. Stall in Swansea Market
• 1:18
  Hospital. Porter, the Steel Mills security
• 1:21
  guard. I was a Jack of all.
• 1:22
  Trades. Mad Jack.
• 1:24
  He used to call me. Mad Jack.
• 1:29
  Roger at William That's a bad example of the world's
• 1:31
  terrifying the most dangerous Prime Minister in history.
• 1:35
  Even in bed, it's like you're always a distance away.
• 1:40
  Semper. Distance is the word.
• 1:43
  Look, you were sweetie, and this was.
• 1:46
  This was nice. Yeah, but you were right.
• 1:48
  It was never It's going to work. And that is my fault, except for
• 1:54
  the bad thing, because that really was you.
• 1:58
  But it's taken me all this time to realize what I'm here to do.
• 2:04
  Which is what I'm. Going to save the world.
• 2:12
  See you. Come on, we've got work to do.
• 2:33
  Welcome back to a Hamster with a Blunt Pen Knife, The Doctor Who
• 2:36
  Commentary Podcast Halloween special.
• 2:43
  I am here today with somebody who I've sort of kind of done a
• 2:47
  Halloween special with a book on recently.
• 2:50
  It's Michael Mills. Hello, Michael.
• 2:53
  Hello, Joe. That's that's the murderous
• 2:57
  Michael Mills. You did that, you know, in
• 3:00
  vampire science, if you recall. I, I, I don't recall, like most
• 3:04
  people listen to this. I don't listen to the book club
• 3:05
  episodes. Who's that for?
• 3:07
  Well, exactly. I wondered who would.
• 3:09
  But people do, you know, it's quite nice.
• 3:12
  Michael, what are we here to talk about today?
• 3:15
  We're here to talk about the because it because it's
• 3:18
  Halloween, boys and girls. We're here to talk about the
• 3:20
  spookiest Doctor Who episode of recent years, the
• 3:24
  self-proclaimed piece of Welsh folk horror that is 73 yards by
• 3:29
  Russell Television. Terrifying Russell.
• 3:32
  Ah, bugger Russell. Terrifying Davis.
• 3:36
  Well done. Yeah.
• 3:38
  Do you know what? I don't really know much about
• 3:41
  Welsh folk horror. You know, you might have to
• 3:43
  educate me a little bit, as usual on this topic.
• 3:46
  I mean, have you read, watched, experience much of that?
• 3:51
  Well, I mean, I think we can get into this.
• 3:52
  I'm talking about this. We've watched the episode.
• 3:54
  But I think when you say Welsh folk horror, I mean, they're two
• 3:58
  separate terms. They're Welsh and folk horror.
• 4:01
  Thank you. I don't mean that as as opposed
• 4:04
  to, but but to say that there is a rich history of a subgenre.
• 4:07
  Like it's not like Southern Gothic or something like that
• 4:09
  where there's tons of this stuff, but there is actually
• 4:11
  there is a. Is there a subgenre though of of
• 4:14
  folk horror you know, set in Wales?
• 4:17
  I mean, yes, I mean, so the interesting thing about folk
• 4:19
  horror, let's dive straight into it, of course, which is that
• 4:22
  folk horror as a as a, as a label, as a genre label has only
• 4:27
  really been popular for about 14 years now.
• 4:32
  I think the term actually goes back further than people often
• 4:35
  think it was. It was used in, you know, sort
• 4:37
  of cinematic discussions before this, but was famously
• 4:42
  popularized by Mark Gatiss in ABBC 4 series.
• 4:47
  He did on horror and different genres of horror and he did one
• 4:52
  on folk horror and that popularized this term and
• 4:54
  popularized the idea of what this sub genre was of horror.
• 4:59
  And it really costs on really well because really quickly
• 5:02
  because I think a lot of people went Oh yeah, yeah.
• 5:05
  That sort of thing. It was a sort of type of of
• 5:08
  horror of film, of television program of story that everyone's
• 5:12
  a lot of people recognized, especially in a a British
• 5:15
  context. There have been efforts to sort
• 5:16
  of, you know, extend this act beyond the British Isles and to
• 5:19
  apply it to, you know, some stories that in America or other
• 5:21
  places. But it is at least in its
• 5:23
  original and sort of, I think the sort of Platonic ideal of it
• 5:26
  is very tied to, to Britain and and Ireland.
• 5:30
  And that's really where it came on.
• 5:33
  I mean, he, if you want to just it's, it's, it's a Trixie genre
• 5:37
  to describe what it actually means.
• 5:39
  And there's a lot of discussion about folk horror is what do we
• 5:42
  mean when we say folk horror? But that's kind of true of all
• 5:45
  genres. Right.
• 5:45
  Please nail it down for me. Well, OK, so the, the, the
• 5:49
  navigating point from this is there's, there's three main
• 5:53
  texts, the three things that everyone agrees are definitely
• 5:55
  folk horror and they are the films Blood on Satan's Claw, The
• 6:00
  Wicker Man and Witchfinder General.
• 6:04
  None of which I've seen. Oh, good, that's going to make
• 6:07
  this conversation so much simpler.
• 6:12
  But that's sort of the, you know, the main three states.
• 6:14
  But the way that any genre works is that first of all, it's very
• 6:18
  rarely is a, is a genre or a sub genre deliberately created.
• 6:22
  Sometimes happens, but not often.
• 6:23
  Generally what happens is there's a sort of people
• 6:26
  identify types of stories that are being told and they go, Oh
• 6:30
  yeah, they're all a bit alike. And then there's a bit of work
• 6:32
  working out. OK, what are the what are the
• 6:34
  conventions of that? What do they all have in common?
• 6:37
  What do we mean when we say folk horror or crime fiction or
• 6:42
  cyberpunk or any other label you may wish to to use?
• 6:45
  Eventually they get stamped with an official title, and from that
• 6:49
  point on you're a variation of that.
• 6:51
  Exactly. At that point the eventually the
• 6:53
  conventions are agreed on their lay down and then people start
• 6:56
  consciously producing folk horror.
• 6:57
  So we go from a place where like, you know, 15 years ago
• 6:59
  people didn't, wouldn't have recognised folk horror at all to
• 7:01
  the point where right now, if you go on Amazon, there are tons
• 7:04
  of books about anthologies of folk horror, classic folk
• 7:07
  horror, new folk horror for 2024.
• 7:11
  What do they involve? Well, if we're to to sort of
• 7:13
  nail down some of the main signifies that's generally
• 7:15
  agreed on, a rural aesthetic generally take place in the
• 7:19
  countryside. Ticking this off for 73 yards as
• 7:22
  we go tick. Yep, usually a British setting.
• 7:26
  Hunting. Yeah.
• 7:27
  Tick. Yeah.
• 7:27
  Usually about the the re emergence of ancient rituals or
• 7:36
  crimes or forces in a modern context.
• 7:40
  I mean tick a big tick there. And importantly, often to do
• 7:45
  with the way in which memories of these things have either been
• 7:47
  forgotten or, and this is where the folk comes in, forgotten by
• 7:51
  popular and official memory. Because something, and this will
• 7:54
  be very relevant in 73 yards because one of the things that
• 7:57
  folk horror is very interested in, one of the reasons it's
• 7:59
  particularly tied to Britain and Ireland is that they're
• 8:03
  countries that are geographically small, but in
• 8:07
  terms of their history, massive. Everywhere in this country has
• 8:11
  been lived on as a history that goes back farther than we can
• 8:15
  remember. And that this is England
• 8:18
  especially, but Wales and Scotland and Ireland as well
• 8:23
  sort of have this palimpsest, which is that it's a they are
• 8:27
  nations that have been in which the cultures have been shifted,
• 8:31
  have changed. You've had conflicting cultures,
• 8:34
  sometimes massively, you know, sort of overrun each other in in
• 8:38
  a very sudden way, such as with the normal conquest, where
• 8:40
  suddenly you get this whole sort of French influence coming in
• 8:42
  and displacing the Anglo Saxons before that, sometimes in a more
• 8:45
  gradual way, like how did the Anglo Saxons displace the
• 8:48
  Britons who lived there before them?
• 8:50
  What was the relationship of the Britons to the Celts before
• 8:52
  that? And hey, let's let's not forget
• 8:53
  the pop people in all of this. So this idea that there is
• 8:57
  buried beneath the layers of the earth, memories and cultures and
• 9:02
  things that happens of ways of living that maybe maybe in some
• 9:06
  places, maybe in some of those places that we don't pay
• 9:09
  attention to because that rural aesthetic is also to do with the
• 9:11
  fact that we don't pay attention to a lot of our country.
• 9:13
  We're a very urban centric country.
• 9:17
  So, you know, you can definitely trace this back to being, you
• 9:20
  know, post industrial revolutions, urbanization
• 9:22
  concerns. What if some of those ideas
• 9:26
  still persist in the places we're not looking?
• 9:29
  And what if they're still here? And what if that horror has not
• 9:33
  forgotten what has been done? Hello, welcome to.
• 9:37
  Really scary. Yeah, welcome to Strictly.
• 9:41
  Come. Welcome to have us on the knife.
• 9:43
  There will be knob jokes in a moment, I promise.
• 9:46
  No, I love it. I love learning from you.
• 9:49
  Do you? Do you imagine that it's sort of
• 9:51
  got out of vogue because it could be considered a little bit
• 9:53
  old fashioned, you know, like there was this sort of new wave
• 9:57
  of horror, wasn't there? Yeah, certainly in cinema we
• 9:59
  talked about the Blair Witch Project, you know, and all those
• 10:02
  sort of found footage horrors that came in.
• 10:05
  There was, you know, Final Destination, those sort of
• 10:08
  dealing with fate and and death as an actual concert.
• 10:11
  I don't know, I just feel as if we pushed away from all of this
• 10:14
  traditional horror for about 15 years or so and now all of a
• 10:19
  sudden people have just going, Oh yeah, that stuff's really
• 10:22
  scary. You know, we can we can still do
• 10:24
  that because some of this feels very traditional Doctor Who to
• 10:27
  me, because I think there are there is sort of moments of folk
• 10:30
  horror in the classic series. And other parts of this episode
• 10:35
  feel extremely modern and up to date and scary in a whole
• 10:39
  different way when dealing with, you know, areas of human nature
• 10:43
  which are absolutely terrifying. And the which is why I just find
• 10:47
  73 odds so impossible to define. And I kind of think that's the
• 10:53
  idea. Yeah, yeah, I think so.
• 10:55
  I think so. It's interesting to say, you
• 10:57
  know, it's been abandoned in 50 years because the folk, the
• 11:00
  other part of it, of course is, is folk culture, is folk rock,
• 11:07
  is folklore. And of course that was very in
• 11:08
  vogue in the 1970s. Interesting in the 1970s is
• 11:11
  that, you know, and all three of those films you mentioned, which
• 11:13
  find a General Wicker Man, Blood and Satan's cloth are all from
• 11:16
  the 1970s, as are a lot of the other sorts of pieces that get
• 11:22
  referred to a lot. So there's, you know, quite a
• 11:24
  few of the, you know, ghost story for Christmas sometimes
• 11:26
  get talks about in terms of folk horror, as does things like
• 11:29
  Children of the Stone Stones, maybe to a lesser extent, and.
• 11:33
  Like bizarrely frightening Children of the Stones, you
• 11:37
  know. Yeah.
• 11:39
  And this nine 70s is therefore one of those decades that is
• 11:44
  sort of associated with genre as actually is sort of turn of the
• 11:46
  last century, so late Victorian, early Edwardian.
• 11:49
  Because one of the other things about folklore and folk
• 11:53
  tradition is the way in which a lot of it is affected in sort of
• 11:58
  imagined remembrance of the past.
• 12:00
  And you can see that with, you know, sort of folk rock from the
• 12:02
  1970s. And that was definitely a lot of
• 12:04
  what was going on. So the famous things they say
• 12:06
  about most English traditions is that they only existed since the
• 12:10
  19th century. Because that's the point at
• 12:12
  which people became aware of the fact that we were becoming
• 12:15
  suddenly became very aware of the fact that the country was
• 12:17
  changing, that people were now living in cities, not living,
• 12:21
  not not living in the countryside anymore that were
• 12:23
  predominantly urban. And so they began to sort of
• 12:26
  reach back and try both catalogue these things that were
• 12:29
  in danger of being forgotten, but also sort of semi imagining
• 12:31
  them. So it's where things like Morris
• 12:33
  dancing come from or Mayday celebrations in the present
• 12:36
  form, or I think even, you know, in Welsh context, things like
• 12:38
  the Eisteddfod in its current form, they all come.
• 12:40
  They they have deeper meanings, but they are a sort of modern
• 12:44
  understanding. And that's also something that
• 12:46
  comes up in folk horror. Are our modern imaginings of
• 12:48
  these things actually, do we not recognize what they actually
• 12:51
  meant? Do we not recognize their power,
• 12:53
  their power, maybe even in terms of their history, but in terms
• 12:59
  of then saying in terms of saying, not being able to define
• 13:05
  it. I mean, that's really important
• 13:07
  in any sort of classic ghost story, right?
• 13:09
  It's not just that we we have the idea of sort of ghost
• 13:11
  stories almost like a crime novel, right?
• 13:13
  Oh, it was the murdered maid in the well, but actually it's.
• 13:17
  Scooby-doo pulling off of the mask.
• 13:19
  It's usually a bit of a disappointment.
• 13:22
  It was English imperialism all along.
• 13:25
  Yeah, very often. Well, can I ask you then, do you
• 13:28
  think because obviously Russell T Obis is absolutely leaning
• 13:32
  into this genre here for the atmosphere of it and all of
• 13:36
  that, but he's subverting it as well, isn't he?
• 13:39
  Like, for example, that sublime joke of the man with the
• 13:44
  pastries banging on the door, like, you know, and, and how
• 13:48
  that leads up to you thinking you're going to see something
• 13:50
  truly horrific. And then it lands, it lands on a
• 13:54
  very, very funny joke. So do you think he's he's also
• 13:57
  thought of turning it inside out a bit as well and see what makes
• 14:00
  it tick? Yeah, I think that's some of
• 14:02
  that. I mean, we sort of talked about
• 14:04
  Welsh folklore and I said there's two parts to that.
• 14:05
  We haven't talked about the Welsh bit yet.
• 14:08
  I absolutely need you for that, I'm afraid.
• 14:11
  I've only. Been to Wales once.
• 14:14
  Or by the end of the episode, it'll be twice, but you can't
• 14:16
  quite remember when the second time passed.
• 14:18
  Well done. And there is a, there is a,
• 14:22
  there is a tension in this episode between because he wants
• 14:25
  to tell this is a story, this is very much about Wales.
• 14:28
  And that's something I think we'll want to talk about.
• 14:30
  It is for the first time the story talked to about Wales and
• 14:34
  the Welsh and Welsh history and their relationship with the
• 14:36
  English. But there is therefore at the
• 14:38
  same time a kind of tension in that, as there is in any sort of
• 14:44
  cult culture that is, that often has to shape itself in
• 14:47
  opposition to a or in relationship to a dominant
• 14:50
  cultural force. You know, there's lots of
• 14:52
  discussions recently around things like the Tory leadership
• 14:55
  election where people say, is there such a people say, oh, we
• 14:58
  need people to be, need English people to be proud of their
• 15:00
  English identity. In the same way that the Welsh
• 15:02
  are proud of theirs and the Scottish are proud of theirs,
• 15:04
  the Irish are proud of theirs. And this is some discussions
• 15:06
  about is there such a thing as an English identity that is
• 15:08
  meaningfully separate from the British identity?
• 15:11
  You think, well, I, I say, I say this as a proud Welshman.
• 15:15
  I mean, not really. And that's because kind of, you
• 15:18
  know, take the win, guys, you know, So what are the British
• 15:25
  identity is largely Anglocentric.
• 15:27
  And therefore when you talk about Welsh identity, and I
• 15:31
  think it would be the same if you talk about Scottish identity
• 15:33
  and Irish identity, there is this sense of, well, what sets
• 15:35
  us apart? What makes us different, why is
• 15:38
  it different? Why is it important and why does
• 15:40
  it matter if we're going to say we're different to these people
• 15:42
  who we are at, you know, we share 98% of our cultural
• 15:46
  understanding and history with? Why do we have to set ourselves
• 15:49
  apart? And the danger then becomes that
• 15:53
  in doing that you have to you, you, you, you can't talk about
• 15:56
  it meaningfully in a modern context, completely separated
• 15:59
  because it does not exist separately.
• 16:01
  And some of the re emergence, certainly in Wales of the of
• 16:06
  Welsh national identity is very much is deliberately in
• 16:09
  opposition to a sense of it having been lost under that
• 16:12
  subsumes by an English identity. I think one thing that is
• 16:14
  different about when they're talking about Welsh identity,
• 16:17
  and this is important in the story from Scottish identity and
• 16:20
  Irish identity, is that quite deep seated paranoia about it
• 16:24
  being lost, about it being overlooked.
• 16:26
  Scotland has never worried that Scotland won't exist.
• 16:29
  Ireland, for all the terrible things that have been done to
• 16:31
  it, it it it it, it, it is an island.
• 16:34
  And this is not to, you know, denigrate any of any of their
• 16:36
  struggles or any of any of their history, but Wales almost,
• 16:40
  almost well, let me tell you about little story of shwell in
• 16:44
  the last Shwell in the last was the last contiguous Prince of
• 16:47
  King of Wales, Prince of Wales, and eventually, after many,
• 16:51
  much, much warring with the English, agreed to pay homage to
• 16:56
  fealty to the English King. So he would be, he and his
• 16:58
  family would be the Princess of Wales.
• 16:59
  They would rule Wales, but they would have fealty to the king of
• 17:03
  England. He would be their ruling.
• 17:05
  That was the way things sort of worked in medieval times.
• 17:07
  And, you know, Wales lost the match.
• 17:09
  But you know when I don't watch much football, but my
• 17:12
  understanding is if Rex and beat Charlton, Rex and doesn't like
• 17:17
  take over Charleston, they totally become Wrexham.
• 17:21
  Players, we're coming for you, all right?
• 17:27
  That was the agreement until until and I'm sorry to say
• 17:31
  trigger trigger warning here. This is this is one of these
• 17:34
  great English being English moments in history.
• 17:38
  This is this is this is on every list of Why does everyone hate
• 17:41
  the English till Shwellin died and his son continued to have
• 17:47
  disagreements with. I think it was Edward the 2nd
• 17:49
  and Edward the second basically wasn't happy with Wales just
• 17:52
  being this is this is historians will be throwing things at their
• 17:57
  own ears. So while they're unconscious or
• 17:59
  just carry there's. Too many historians listening to
• 18:02
  a hamster, a blood pen, knife, but you never know.
• 18:04
  Go on. Listeners, I clearly have a much
• 18:08
  higher view of your intellectual capacity than Joe does it.
• 18:11
  So you're raising IQ points by the second here.
• 18:14
  Go on. So here's my oversimplified
• 18:16
  Horrible Histories version of all of this.
• 18:18
  She went and died. Disagreements continued.
• 18:20
  Edward the Second of England decided, you know what, F the
• 18:22
  Welsh, I'm going to take all of them.
• 18:24
  I'm going to conquer them entirely because they just won't
• 18:26
  stay quiet. And after Clewen died, he took
• 18:31
  the title of the Prince of Wales and gave it to his own son.
• 18:35
  And that's such. Pricks, aren't we?
• 18:37
  And that is why genuinely to this day, the whole Prince of
• 18:40
  Wales title is, is is minor, minorly, but increasingly
• 18:44
  controversial within Wales because because of that history
• 18:47
  of it. Why they didn't know any of
• 18:50
  that? No, they don't teach Welsh
• 18:51
  history anywhere, including in Wales a lot of the time, and
• 18:54
  then for many, many as a point of principle for many centuries
• 18:57
  afterwards. And I think Henry the Eighth
• 19:00
  particularly crack down on this from any day onwards, Wales
• 19:03
  essentially became administratively a part of
• 19:05
  England. That's why Wales isn't on the
• 19:08
  isn't on the union flag because it was part of England in the
• 19:12
  same way there's a Cornwall is part of England culturally a bit
• 19:14
  different, but very much a part of it wasn't until I mean,
• 19:19
  spring out of the back end of the 19th century when the
• 19:21
  industrial revolution and coal mining and you know, the re
• 19:24
  emergence of the Welsh cultural national identity and the
• 19:26
  economic revive and all the rest of it Wasn't until then really
• 19:31
  that Wales began to be viewed as a separate nation again in the
• 19:34
  same way. And in fact, you know, you know,
• 19:36
  you know what I'm going to say, you know, a bloody brilliant
• 19:39
  flag. You know the you know the bad
• 19:40
  boy, You know the dragon. That's you got very excited in
• 19:47
  Liberation of the Daleks Oracle when a dragon appeared.
• 19:51
  Diane boy that only that only became the that was only
• 19:57
  officially adopted as the Welsh flag in the 1950s and I think
• 20:02
  that's when Cardiff only officially became the capital
• 20:04
  city of Wales as well or maybe a bit longer ago, but for a long
• 20:07
  time it was Europe's until until the break up of the Soviet Union
• 20:10
  was what Europe's youngest capital city.
• 20:13
  So there is deep within Welsh cultural entity that fear of
• 20:19
  being lost, of just not be, of not counting.
• 20:21
  That's where you know Abou Rahi the.
• 20:25
  The, the, you know, the big Welsh football rugby song is
• 20:28
  we're still here. You know, we're that as a, that
• 20:30
  as a national rallying cry, we're still here.
• 20:34
  We haven't gone. And so I think to come back to
• 20:37
  your point of, of Russell Davis subverting some of this folk
• 20:40
  horror stuff there, I think whenever, if that is your, if
• 20:44
  that is your basis, if that's your cultural basis and the pace
• 20:46
  you're coming from, the thing you have to be really careful
• 20:49
  about is on the one hand, making an argument for why you're
• 20:55
  different or why it's important and why that cultural identity
• 20:58
  is different, but also not, not caricaturing yourself, not not
• 21:04
  pretending that we're all still bars.
• 21:08
  You know, people have say, ah, wheels, land of song, every man
• 21:12
  a poet. Oh.
• 21:12
  I think that's a genuine thing. I don't.
• 21:15
  It is always say it's but you know.
• 21:17
  Go and watch the fucking green dev.
• 21:19
  It is definitely a thing. There is a perception of the
• 21:22
  Welsh. And it's a perception often put
• 21:25
  forward by the Welsh themselves. I said there's a proud version,
• 21:27
  you know. I think you know you was bloody
• 21:30
  Welsh. 2 years old babe. I speak for my whole, I speak
• 21:34
  for the entire Celtic brotherhood when I think I say
• 21:36
  self mythologization is the is the Celtic disease sometimes.
• 21:40
  And you know, if you were to sit here and say, oh, well, you
• 21:42
  know, we're all singers. We're all and us have, we always
• 21:45
  have the blood of the dragon running our veins.
• 21:46
  So you go, yeah, you go to Saint Mary's Street on in Cardiff on a
• 21:49
  Saturday night and tell me, tell me how much bardic tradition you
• 21:52
  see spewing out of Chippy Alley. Oh, so you speak from experience
• 21:56
  there. Oh, very much so.
• 21:58
  So I think that tension is here very much in that story is the
• 22:01
  is the the perception of Wales, the history of Wales and the
• 22:06
  reality that they're just people and they're not really that
• 22:09
  different. So there absolutely is and
• 22:12
  obviously we're going to talk about to be all of you.
• 22:15
  This episode does go by in a lick.
• 22:16
  I am pleased we're covering some of this stuff now because it it
• 22:19
  constantly transforms in a way very few Doctor Who I when I was
• 22:24
  watching this earlier with Mark, I said there's just no Doctor
• 22:27
  Who story like this. And that is a a God damn miracle
• 22:30
  60 years into this show that he absolutely has tapped into
• 22:34
  something totally unique. How how this transforms over
• 22:37
  sort of 50 minutes. But what you've made me think
• 22:41
  now is there's whole layers to that scene where she stumbles on
• 22:44
  that pub and goes in, you know, a white woman from London and
• 22:51
  they literally run rings around there and pretend that they're,
• 22:55
  you know, drowning in folk, you know, folk story and that's
• 23:00
  their entire existence and absolutely convince her of that.
• 23:04
  Do you think, do you think all of this is sort of in there in
• 23:07
  that scene? Oh, yeah, absolutely,
• 23:09
  absolutely. I mean, you know the the joke
• 23:12
  about the joke about yes, yes, you can pay on your phone.
• 23:16
  I mean, I love. Happy so much.
• 23:19
  It is. Shit, we're back in time.
• 23:21
  Oh no. But it is but but you know,
• 23:25
  people people to have some of this.
• 23:27
  I remember it was actually my sister going on a Girl Guides
• 23:32
  outing one time with some with some other girl guide groups
• 23:35
  from England who genuinely didn't realise that they used
• 23:39
  English money in Wales. You mean you have to pound as
• 23:42
  well? You people are sophisticated,
• 23:45
  you know. I've never knew.
• 23:47
  Or the IT was the first, first, first country in the UK to go
• 23:52
  fully digital. Get Mr. Digital here, you know,
• 23:55
  on the television. The welshest you've ever sounded
• 23:59
  on one of these calls, you know. It's coming, it's coming.
• 24:02
  Out. I like it.
• 24:03
  Oh thank you. Does John do you use to separate
• 24:07
  myself rather than being white guy #48 on this podcast?
• 24:10
  That boost for me totally by doing the entire rest of the
• 24:12
  call in in Welsh. Well I I wish my Welsh was
• 24:16
  strong enough. I've got tween coffee.
• 24:20
  Coffee. Oh, you just made that up.
• 24:23
  No, that's I like coffee. Twin Hoffy Coffee.
• 24:25
  Dwayne Hoffy Coffee as I like coffee.
• 24:27
  It's one of the first phrases they teach people because it
• 24:30
  rhymes. I shall remember that because I
• 24:32
  fucking love coffee. Oh, there you go.
• 24:33
  Oh, oh, tween them and Hoffy coffee.
• 24:36
  I've got two more questions for you before we go in and actually
• 24:39
  talk this as it's playing out. Number one is, do you think
• 24:42
  Russell T Davis was correct in putting out an official
• 24:49
  statement saying, I think this might be one of the best things
• 24:53
  I've ever written? I mean, correct is a difficult
• 24:56
  term. I think that's entirely.
• 24:58
  Do you agree? I see why he thinks that.
• 25:04
  I understand why, as a writer you would be very proud of this.
• 25:10
  My second question is this, and this was this really was like
• 25:14
  dominating my thoughts when I was watching it earlier because
• 25:17
  so, so much of this episode is, forgive me, just within your
• 25:23
  grasp, like about 73 yards away and you're you know, you're
• 25:29
  never going to know what that woman is saying to people and
• 25:34
  good because that's where the scares are.
• 25:36
  A lot of this episode is deliberately, deliberately
• 25:40
  slippery, you know, and that's rather the point.
• 25:44
  So does that Rend render a conversation about this episode
• 25:47
  moot? Because like, are we going to
• 25:50
  try and pin down this episode? No, no.
• 25:53
  And in fact, if anything, it means there was going to be, I
• 25:55
  would, I would imagine, more discussion about this episode of
• 25:58
  what it actually means than potentially any other episode of
• 26:02
  Doctor Who for many years, for years to come.
• 26:04
  I don't want to know. What I love about this episode
• 26:07
  is I don't know. That's what's scary about it.
• 26:11
  The unknown. And that is something in folk
• 26:15
  horror as well, and much more horror in general, which is that
• 26:18
  sense of something that, as you say, is just out of sight.
• 26:21
  That idea of something. The, the horror, the sense, the
• 26:26
  unsettling nature of the threat comes from its lack of
• 26:30
  definition, from the fact that it almost seems to make sense,
• 26:33
  but it doesn't quite. I mean, we get, you know, I can
• 26:36
  mention lots of ghost stories that I think are useful to, to,
• 26:39
  to talk about here. But you know, one of them is one
• 26:41
  of the most famous ghost stories, Mr. James's or whistle.
• 26:44
  And I'll come to you, my lad. And especially if you've seen
• 26:46
  the 1960s TV version of that just whistle and I'll come to
• 26:50
  you, which brilliantly captures that idea of of a man being
• 26:55
  pursued by something. Oh, and it's just out of sight
• 26:58
  or just lacking definition. And you don't know what's going
• 27:02
  to happen and you don't know why this thing is threatening.
• 27:04
  You don't know what this thing is that's following him.
• 27:06
  You don't know what will happen if it reaches him.
• 27:08
  Or you mentioned the Blair Witch Project.
• 27:10
  You know, that's entire, there's definitely you could, you know,
• 27:12
  we've said it has to, you know, it's a very it's a very British
• 27:15
  genre, but you could see how it might have played to, you know,
• 27:17
  New England's as well in in America.
• 27:20
  That is similarly, you know, name name to me, one scary thing
• 27:24
  that happens in The Blair Witch Project.
• 27:27
  The only the only thing that I think is scary is the hands on
• 27:31
  the tent. You know when there's the little
• 27:33
  kids hands on there, but you don't know what it is.
• 27:35
  But. You don't know who it is, you
• 27:36
  don't know why they're there. You don't know how.
• 27:38
  It so I can't define that scary moment, just that that is
• 27:41
  something. If you were experiencing it,
• 27:43
  you'd shit your pants. Yeah.
• 27:44
  And yet it's it's just, it's just off the edges of
• 27:47
  definition. It's just off the edges of
• 27:49
  understanding little children. Playing with my tent should be
• 27:51
  something that I should be able to.
• 27:53
  I should be able to understand this woman who I can just see
• 27:57
  over there gesturing to me. I should be able to understand
• 27:59
  what she wants. I should just be able to go and
• 28:01
  have a conversation. All these people who are being
• 28:03
  scared away, I should just be able to ask them what's going
• 28:05
  on. I should be able to work out
• 28:06
  what have they been told about me that I don't know, but it's
• 28:09
  just not there. Even when unit comes in with all
• 28:12
  of their training and all of their sophisticated technology,
• 28:15
  even then, even then we can't pin this thing down.
• 28:18
  And maybe it's because, and maybe within folk quarry, you
• 28:21
  might say, maybe that's because we've lost the cultural context
• 28:23
  of understanding this. You know, maybe this is, this is
• 28:26
  acting in ways in, in within my that are within still reflected
• 28:30
  within my perception and the culture in which I have grown up
• 28:33
  and come to understand the world.
• 28:35
  But they're older and I've lost the edges and I can't quite
• 28:38
  can't quite speak. It's like someone speaking to
• 28:40
  you in a foreign language where you're only catching every few
• 28:42
  words. But it keeps me thinking about
• 28:44
  the episode, and it keeps me shivering about it because,
• 28:48
  Yeah, but not just the nature of the threat, Right.
• 28:51
  That's not the only way this episode is slippery.
• 28:54
  I think narratively it's slippery because it just never
• 28:57
  goes in a direction you think it's going to go.
• 28:58
  Yeah, I think structurally it's slippery because it sort of has
• 29:02
  this huge circular loop. But even that's not explained in
• 29:05
  a way a good Steven Moffett script would be explained that,
• 29:09
  you know, everything. The plot would all lock into
• 29:11
  place in a big circle when you go, oh, how very satisfying.
• 29:14
  You're like, so was that that? Or was that that what's what?
• 29:18
  I don't know. You don't know anyway, You know,
• 29:21
  emotionally it's slippery because what on earth could that
• 29:24
  woman possibly say to Carla that would make her reject Ruby like
• 29:29
  that? And I just don't believe that
• 29:31
  that would ever happen, so. And.
• 29:33
  What is it? What is it?
• 29:35
  And yet, well, you don't believe that would ever happen.
• 29:37
  It doesn't feel like something that couldn't happen.
• 29:39
  No, exactly. It feels like that.
• 29:41
  It feels like there is something someone could say.
• 29:43
  My understanding of her reactions is just it's 73 yards
• 29:48
  out of my green. It's really clever.
• 29:51
  It's it's deliberately frustrating.
• 29:53
  And I saw a lot of reactions to this episode online from people.
• 29:57
  You know, there's the same people that go on Gallifrey base
• 30:01
  and don't want to talk about the episode.
• 30:02
  They only want to talk about where precisely it fits in the
• 30:05
  grand Canon of Doctor Who. Extremely angry because this
• 30:09
  episode refused to give them the answers they wanted.
• 30:13
  You know, it refused to make it all make sense.
• 30:16
  And so they said that that was a bad bit of Ryan.
• 30:19
  That was a really shitty Doctor Who episode, missing the fact
• 30:23
  that that was the point. There are there are a lot of
• 30:27
  people who want the final scene of this story to be the
• 30:31
  revelation that the woman is a time traveller from the 42nd
• 30:35
  century. But what this isn't, and I'll
• 30:37
  tell you a story that would be useful to compare and contrast
• 30:40
  this with, is Hyde, which is a ghost story that bails on the
• 30:43
  idea of being a ghost story. Yeah, it's, it's really great
• 30:47
  for about 2/3 and then you go, oh, that's what this was all
• 30:49
  about. OK.
• 30:51
  Because a ghost story can't reveal itself because it's
• 30:53
  dealing with the unknown and the motion, and the moment it gives
• 30:57
  you an answer, it loses its power.
• 30:59
  Well Michael, we could probably discuss this episode for hours
• 31:04
  and hours before talking about it whilst watching it.
• 31:06
  But shall we watch it? Oh go on, let's actually do it.
• 31:10
  My, my last point I would like to say before we go in is God,
• 31:13
  this is such a beautifully directed episode.
• 31:16
  And you know you how you said it sort of explores the Welsh
• 31:20
  Doctor Who in in a possibly it's fullest way.
• 31:24
  How Wales is shot in this, the scenes of the TARDIS on that
• 31:28
  Cliff top. It's some of the most beautiful
• 31:30
  imagery I've ever seen in Doctor Who.
• 31:33
  Area of outstanding natural beauty counters in in die tree.
• 31:44
  I can't believe this is only 47 minutes long.
• 31:47
  I mean, it's unbelievable how much he packs into this.
• 31:50
  Yeah, worth worth mentioning before we before we get in here,
• 31:52
  No title sequence. Yeah, now again, that's another
• 31:57
  thing people got angry about. But can I really?
• 31:59
  That's the point, right? Yeah, no, absolutely.
• 32:02
  I mean how? Rob Putin, you from the start.
• 32:05
  You, yeah, you can't let yet when the war machines as a title
• 32:10
  card, people bloody love it and it's all over the television
• 32:12
  companion. Nothing.
• 32:14
  If not fickle, Michael Mills. The war between the land and the
• 32:17
  sea. I noticed that that is
• 32:20
  absolutely going to be important, right?
• 32:22
  That's a seed. No.
• 32:23
  I'm telling you. We shall meet back here in a
• 32:27
  year's time. To do the entire 6 episode run
• 32:30
  of that spin off. Next Halloween, we shall meet
• 32:33
  again. OK, so we're talking about Roger
• 32:37
  app William now. I learnt a bit of Welsh there
• 32:39
  with the app. Yeah, well, this is important in
• 32:42
  terms of this thing of reaching back into the the the history of
• 32:45
  Wales. I don't know how web people who
• 32:49
  less familiar with Welsh history may not be web, but and the app
• 32:52
  is quite old fashioned. So that's how that's how Welsh
• 32:55
  kings used to be referred to. So they would have names like
• 32:57
  Cluellen app Griffith and it means son of so it'd be Cluellen
• 33:00
  son of Griffith. And people do sometimes still
• 33:03
  have it in their names. But I think generally the
• 33:05
  perception is that it's either a a bit of an old fashioned name,
• 33:08
  like having fits in your name or Vaughn or something like that,
• 33:11
  or it's also associated quite a lot with the Welsh language.
• 33:15
  So the actually the the leader of Plaid Gummere at the moment
• 33:18
  is Soron Affair Aldworth. So it's quite a, it's a very
• 33:22
  Welsh thing. It's a deliberately Welsh thing
• 33:24
  to have an app in your name that can mean both that and or or
• 33:28
  potentially be read as being a bit old fashioned, which is I
• 33:30
  think going to be important. Since the broadcast for this
• 33:32
  episode, all the apps have been dropped just because this
• 33:35
  particular app was a monster. I just want to say that that
• 33:39
  very simple thing of him stepping on the circle there,
• 33:42
  Yeah, it just feels really wrong, doesn't it?
• 33:46
  Again, it just feels mysterious and weird and like, like the
• 33:51
  shit has hit the found already and you don't quite understand
• 33:53
  how. And all he's done is step on a
• 33:55
  string. Yeah.
• 33:57
  And isn't it interesting though as well?
• 33:59
  That's, you know, I think it's very deliberate here for the
• 34:01
  scenes we're about to go into, that you have a, an English
• 34:05
  character arriving in Wales and the point's being made that she
• 34:09
  is English in Wales and the first thing that happens is
• 34:13
  destroy something like that. Feels quite pointed, doesn't it?
• 34:16
  Actually, I've got a few questions about other pointed
• 34:19
  remarks about the Welshness, but we'll get there.
• 34:22
  And this and the second thing she does is invest money in the
• 34:25
  local Welsh economy. So yes, thank you for that.
• 34:27
  It's not I, I won't be putting up with entirely anti English
• 34:30
  sentiment. No, please.
• 34:31
  This is one chance to do it. Please do.
• 34:34
  We're we're political again. Oh, man, that old woman.
• 34:42
  Did you ever see the confidential or whatever it's
• 34:44
  called these days Unleashed? And she actually took you
• 34:47
  through what she was doing? I was like, why did you do that?
• 34:50
  I don't want to know. You deliberately didn't do it in
• 34:54
  the episode. Why are you telling me in the
• 34:56
  Unleashed? There is no degree, there is no
• 34:59
  degree of explaining what's going on here that is going to
• 35:01
  make it better. That feels like it could be a
• 35:03
  very Moody painting, doesn't it? Her under the tree.
• 35:06
  Oh, it's brilliantly short. Some of the framing here is, you
• 35:09
  know, is is really, really nice and you kind of need that
• 35:12
  though. But that thing of the, the tree
• 35:14
  bent over like that in the wind again, it's just a bit wrong.
• 35:17
  It just feels like, you know, it's clearly natural, but nature
• 35:20
  off kilter. And you know, this is the same
• 35:23
  director as dot and Bubble. He doubled back those two and
• 35:27
  they're the two best episodes of the year, I swear.
• 35:30
  Yeah, no, I'd absolutely agree with you.
• 35:32
  Best, I keep saying, best favorite, my favourites.
• 35:34
  There we go. Is it very misty in Wales?
• 35:37
  You know, it's terribly misty there up on the cliffs.
• 35:41
  It can be all the mountains and the valleys.
• 35:43
  Do have you know meteorological effects?
• 35:46
  Can you please talk about Millie Gibson for a second?
• 35:51
  And just this is her first episode that she shot.
• 35:55
  Yes, I mean, she's she's, I mean, she's one of us.
• 35:57
  It's like this first episode, this is which is ridiculous,
• 36:00
  right? There was so much on her here.
• 36:03
  The first scene they gave Shooty Gatwa was the end of dot Bubble.
• 36:06
  Exactly. Yeah, they weren't they, they
• 36:08
  weren't eased in either of them here, were they?
• 36:11
  To carry the whole episode by herself and to have to go
• 36:14
  through so much, but also to I mean, it's probably the wonders
• 36:17
  if it helped her because that character, the character of Ruby
• 36:21
  here is obviously spoiler alert, has a whole lifetime within this
• 36:25
  one episode. So, you know, maybe that helped
• 36:26
  to understand her a bit more. But still to to be asked to do
• 36:30
  that when Doctor Who has done this in the past and many other
• 36:34
  shows do this as a matter of course, which is that when
• 36:36
  you're introducing new regulars, you shoot one of the episodes in
• 36:39
  the middle of the season first so they get a sense of the
• 36:42
  characters. That's what happened with Flesh
• 36:44
  and Stone and Time of the Angels were the first episodes of.
• 36:46
  The Season 19, you know, way back then.
• 36:49
  Yeah, even back then. So normally there's a, there is
• 36:52
  that awareness that no, we need to let them bed in, understand
• 36:55
  how to do this, and then we'll get from the stuff where it's
• 36:57
  important that they explain themselves to the audience.
• 36:59
  This is fantastic. And you know what?
• 37:01
  A What a validation of Russell D Davis's enthusiasm for Millie
• 37:07
  Gibson and watch what she can do and the different things you can
• 37:10
  handle. I mean, it's a reaction to
• 37:12
  what's happening, right? He's busy on the Barbie film.
• 37:15
  He's not available to shoot. He's got to write episode
• 37:18
  because the production starts at this point.
• 37:20
  So he sent us a whole episode around Ruby, Ruby, and it just
• 37:24
  happens to be a really fantastic episode.
• 37:27
  We have tons of development for her, but I don't think I don't
• 37:30
  think he would have written the Doctor out in his debut season
• 37:34
  this early if he had a choice. No, I don't think he would.
• 37:39
  And I mean, I think here it is. Here it's excusable, especially
• 37:43
  because the focus is so strongly on the companion.
• 37:48
  The issue structurally of course is that we then have other
• 37:51
  episodes that don't feature the Doctor much at all.
• 37:53
  And in an 8 episode series you've not got much room for
• 37:56
  that. So he's he's just missing for a
• 37:57
  lot of it. And I think the bigger issue is
• 37:59
  also that across the season, I don't think we get enough of a
• 38:03
  sense of the Doctor and Ruby's relationship.
• 38:07
  There's just not enough time with.
• 38:09
  Them together not not. Compared to what we were used to
• 38:11
  in RTD 113 episodes, yeah. Right.
• 38:14
  Oh, here we go. Here we go hang minutes.
• 38:16
  We're she's running, she's running off.
• 38:18
  We're about to we're about to run into something here that I
• 38:20
  think as we are more regularly to be heard talking to each
• 38:25
  other on the book club strand of this very same podcast.
• 38:28
  I feel there is an Easter egg here that we cannot let.
• 38:31
  Let's go past our notes is exclusive.
• 38:34
  Well, so she's going to go into the pub and when she gets into
• 38:37
  the pub, I want you to keep a close eye on the beer pumps.
• 38:40
  The beer pumps. OK, I will do.
• 38:42
  I will just say a quick note for Susan Twist there, who made her
• 38:46
  only appearance in the episode in a rather delightful little
• 38:49
  cameo. Yes, and I, I love, I love she's
• 38:53
  completely, you know, again a very well judged performance of
• 38:56
  English pensioner out hiking in Wales.
• 38:59
  Oh, and I'll go back and I'll have lots of photographs to show
• 39:01
  the grandchildren. That woman there the the
• 39:03
  bartender. She's that awful cannibal from
• 39:07
  the season 1 tortured episode. Oh, here we.
• 39:11
  Go. Oh, hang on.
• 39:12
  Oh, I missed it. What did it say?
• 39:13
  It says one of the one of them is Clanver Chiriog.
• 39:17
  What the hell does that mean? Clanver Chiriog Pale Ale, what
• 39:22
  Slavicario literally means and I I have gone to the the extent of
• 39:26
  translation. It means Anchi Kapoor Fitz
• 39:28
  crying or something exciting. It means Clara Oswald.
• 39:32
  No, it means OK Clavicario translates as the Church of Mary
• 39:38
  at the Fort of Kyrieog. Kyrieog being, as I'm sure
• 39:40
  you're aware, Joseph. It is a river and a valley in
• 39:44
  Wales, but more importantly, Fanba Kyog is the setting of the
• 39:48
  virgin new adventure Cat's Cradle Witch Mark, which is a
• 39:52
  folk Horror Story, so it's a genuine, honest to God virgin.
• 39:57
  That is the nichest fucking Easter egg I've ever heard,
• 40:00
  although it's very Russell to Davis.
• 40:03
  Well, you know what? One of the least popular new.
• 40:07
  I don't even know if it was him because I just suspect, you know
• 40:09
  the production. Production designers have access
• 40:11
  to TARDIS Wiki just like the rest of us.
• 40:13
  Scott Hancock would you might have just wrote on the script.
• 40:16
  That's a good point, Yeah. No, that's a good point
• 40:18
  actually. Yeah, sorry to go back to your
• 40:20
  point that I cut over. Yes, I do have a note for this
• 40:21
  pit that says meanwhile back in Torchwood.
• 40:24
  Yeah, she always packs the right cow, doesn't she?
• 40:27
  I do think every single actor is brilliantly chosen in this pub
• 40:33
  setting and they're, they're all given that very economic, Rusty
• 40:36
  Davis characterisation. Very, very.
• 40:38
  I've got a sense of who they all were.
• 40:40
  I I that's good. Basically.
• 40:42
  Not only did I grow up in Wales, I grew up in a small town in in
• 40:45
  rural Wales and I I. Familiar to you, then.
• 40:49
  Oh, I recognise every single one of these, even down to the one
• 40:51
  who's decided to be a bit of an emo.
• 40:54
  But because because the emos don't really exist in that part.
• 40:58
  Of Michael Mills. Oh God, no, no, no, no.
• 41:01
  It was nothing like cool enough for that.
• 41:03
  I was watching Doctor Who videos by myself.
• 41:05
  This was 2002. What was I doing?
• 41:07
  What's the actresses name at the boss?
• 41:08
  She's very well known. I've completely forgotten her
• 41:11
  name. Don't throw me under the bus.
• 41:13
  Don't. We don't.
• 41:13
  Sorry. Not all Welsh people know each
• 41:16
  other, Joe. She was in Jenny the Doctor's
• 41:19
  Daughter as an Android villain. You know, in the big Finnish
• 41:23
  audios. Of course she was.
• 41:24
  I've never listened. Sean Phillips.
• 41:26
  That's her name. I mean, you can throw that name
• 41:29
  at any middle-aged Welsh woman. There's a good chance it'll be.
• 41:32
  Right now you're doing the cliches.
• 41:36
  But actually one of the things I love about this, about this
• 41:38
  little setting as well is that is that thing of, and I'm sure
• 41:41
  that this won't just be it, this I think it's a small town thing.
• 41:43
  This isn't a Welsh thing, but that that thing that everyone
• 41:46
  knows everyone, even if you don't want them to.
• 41:50
  And it drove me everything. It's true.
• 41:52
  Is it? Lifting someone like that, it's,
• 41:54
  it's so true. Like these are the people you go
• 41:56
  to the pub with because they're the people who go to the pub.
• 41:58
  They're not the people you say who want to be there with me.
• 42:00
  Maybe you like them, maybe you don't, but they're just the
• 42:02
  people who are there. They're the only people in the
• 42:04
  town. Of course, we congregate
• 42:06
  together, shooting through the rainy window here of her,
• 42:12
  looking out of the the woman, I tell you, every shot is
• 42:16
  considered. You you could pause this at
• 42:18
  almost any point and and have something lovely.
• 42:20
  To look at even that woman's beret is perfect.
• 42:26
  The slight pretension of the tilt of that beret.
• 42:29
  Oh, but again, I, you know, you go to Hay on Wye, any of the
• 42:33
  pubs there, you'll find you'll find something like.
• 42:36
  That I love how that that those words sound simple distance.
• 42:40
  Simple Distance, which is a name that is so that is so picked
• 42:45
  over in this that you that you almost wonder if it was going to
• 42:51
  be the episode title at some point.
• 42:53
  Can I correct you on something? Sean Phillips?
• 42:54
  Sean Phillips is not the woman behind the bar.
• 42:57
  Oh, bugger it. Sean Phillips Sean Phillips is
• 42:59
  the woman in front of the. Bar that's all men.
• 43:03
  I thought no, but you said she was.
• 43:04
  She said she was the no that was.
• 43:06
  Me. It's before I mentioned her
• 43:07
  name. Good grief, we've come in that
• 43:10
  time. Anyway, yeah, Sean Williams,
• 43:12
  actual Welsh acting royalty and lovely to have the Red Doctor.
• 43:15
  It feels feels great. Take a look at her IMDb Michael.
• 43:18
  Mills Blimey, it's. Long she has worked.
• 43:22
  I also enjoyed the scene, something also recognised from a
• 43:26
  small town in in mid Wales, which is which is we rely very
• 43:29
  much on the tourist economy, but that doesn't mean we're going to
• 43:31
  be friendly to anyone who wants to make use of it.
• 43:33
  Yeah, So my other half was going, I don't like this scene
• 43:36
  because what, they're just all being so mean to her.
• 43:38
  I went, yeah, because she's come in talking about bloody
• 43:41
  witchcraft, so. This is the most, I assure you,
• 43:45
  this is the most interesting thing that will have happened in
• 43:47
  that town in the last three months.
• 43:49
  What her coming into the bowl? Some mad some mad English tour
• 43:52
  is turning up and just saying that she's she's she's raised
• 43:55
  the devil. I mean, they're going to be
• 43:57
  they're going to be telling all of their their cousins in London
• 44:01
  about this. But the.
• 44:02
  Way Sean Philips. She beautifully starts talking
• 44:05
  about Mad Jack and the camera. She's.
• 44:08
  Right in her face, in a really scary way.
• 44:11
  And the delivery, what she does perfectly here as well is she
• 44:15
  delivers it with all you know, with she delivers it with, with,
• 44:19
  with all that unnecessary drama, with all of that tread, with all
• 44:22
  of that import and that, but that also that lightness.
• 44:25
  And what that means is that when it's reversed and she's been
• 44:28
  taking the piss that whole time, it feels believable.
• 44:33
  She's not doing the thing that would be very easy to do, which
• 44:35
  is play it as evil, play it as real, play it as real, and then
• 44:37
  players. I was only joking.
• 44:39
  She doesn't like it's it. There's a through line there.
• 44:42
  It's a bit of string, child, you know, like, very understated.
• 44:47
  This whole thing about the picturesque castles.
• 44:49
  Yeah. And being steeped in blood.
• 44:51
  Yep, all true. All true.
• 44:54
  Well, yes. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's
• 44:56
  a, it's, it's, it, it's very, it's a whole story, but it is,
• 44:59
  it is true. So Wales has more castles per
• 45:02
  capita than any other country in the world.
• 45:04
  And that's, that's in large part because of the ongoing wars and
• 45:07
  the, the desire of the English crown to keep the Welsh down.
• 45:11
  Stop them coming across the border, stop them forming any
• 45:14
  sort of, you know, power base around because it's a very, it's
• 45:16
  a very long border as well. That's the other thing.
• 45:18
  And very mountainous. And I think geographically,
• 45:21
  often the Welsh had the advantage is of having these
• 45:23
  mountains that they could run away to and hide amongst.
• 45:26
  So yeah, that that's that's why they're all there.
• 45:28
  They're all there, either as, as you know, things of oppression,
• 45:34
  should we say not to load the wings, or equally for some
• 45:37
  English people to run and hide in from the murderous Welsh
• 45:40
  bastards who are on, you know. So are you, Michael?
• 45:44
  Anyone English has stopped listening about 15 minutes ago,
• 45:47
  all right. We've only got Welsh listeners
• 45:50
  now, all three of them. Here's the name for you that
• 45:54
  should come up If we're talking about Welsh for folk horror,
• 45:57
  Arthur Mackin, He was a he was a Welsh author of the late 19th,
• 46:01
  early 20th century horror writer, one of and I think often
• 46:05
  credited with with writing some of the first things that you
• 46:09
  would recognize as being modern horror horror stories in the in
• 46:13
  the. Folk horror.
• 46:15
  Things that you a lot that you would now say as being about
• 46:18
  folk horror. So he often they'd be about, you
• 46:21
  know, contemporary Welsh settings where ancient horrors
• 46:25
  lurk. They'd often be considered
• 46:27
  things about curious unknown rights and and beings.
• 46:31
  You also things like psycho geography.
• 46:34
  So that's, you know the effect of the geographical environment
• 46:37
  on the mind. His short story The White People
• 46:41
  is possibly one of the scariest short stories ever written.
• 46:44
  Stephen King certainly believes so.
• 46:46
  The list of people. He's one of those authors who,
• 46:49
  if you've never heard of him and never read him, you definitely
• 46:52
  know people who have been inspired by him and have read
• 46:54
  him. The list of people who who have
• 46:57
  listed Arthur Machen as an influence?
• 46:59
  HP Lovecraft, Stephen King, Georges Louis Bourge, Alan
• 47:03
  Moore, Aleister Crowley, this I so much of what we're seeing
• 47:08
  here and the Welsh folk horror. So to unify those, yes, it's a
• 47:11
  very Welsh form of horror. It is this idea that goes all
• 47:14
  the way back into sort of pre Anglo-Saxon British, you know,
• 47:18
  Celtic mythology, which is this idea that there is a world
• 47:22
  parallel to our own. And I don't mean it Doctor Who
• 47:25
  in the inferno. I mean this idea that there is a
• 47:28
  there is a magical other world that that exists alongside our
• 47:31
  own and that we may you. Look at me when you said that
• 47:33
  then. See.
• 47:34
  It's a zoom call. No, it's not.
• 47:37
  That's not the reason. This idea that there is a world
• 47:41
  that exists, just power to it. And this is very much here in 73
• 47:44
  yards with all of this, that there is a world in which the
• 47:46
  magical things exist that that you know, the little people
• 47:48
  bubble back is still an expression in in Welsh that
• 47:51
  means little people. Also, the Welsh Tourist Board
• 47:55
  are extremely pleased that all these petitioners shots of the
• 47:58
  TARDIS on top of the Cliff. I mean, I bet you Doctor Who
• 48:01
  fans have congregated there a few times since.
• 48:04
  Oh, I'm, I'm just waiting for, you know, visit wales.co.uk to
• 48:08
  come up at the bottom. Look if Allborn can trade on
• 48:14
  three weeks in the mid 1970s for 50 years all right, I.
• 48:18
  I hope that pub asked to hold on to that sign.
• 48:22
  Thank you. But yes.
• 48:23
  Let's go back to this because it is relevant to some three odds.
• 48:25
  This idea encounter mythology and which persists through
• 48:29
  writers like Arthur Machinist. This idea that that we exist in
• 48:32
  parallel to the magical and the unreal of the and the strange,
• 48:36
  and that this is a place of enticements, of mystery, of
• 48:41
  power, but also of great, great danger.
• 48:43
  And that it's something that if you were to ever come to know,
• 48:46
  to fully come to understand, you might yourself be lost into it
• 48:51
  forever. And they're the Doctor, not in
• 48:54
  this. One of the potential
• 48:57
  punishments, according to some, of standing in a fairy circle is
• 49:00
  to be rendered invisible and intangible.
• 49:02
  That idea of being in a world that one removed and, and the
• 49:06
  horror of that. And, you know, so maybe the
• 49:09
  Doctor is here the whole time. Maybe the Doctor is here the
• 49:12
  whole time, Ed, but he is trapped in that other world.
• 49:13
  He is trapped in this parallel magical reality that we can't
• 49:16
  quite get to or see or perceive are.
• 49:18
  You trying to give me and the listeners the willies tonight?
• 49:21
  This stuff is utterly terrifying.
• 49:23
  Oh no, I'm not going to sleep later, are they?
• 49:26
  And yet, is it terrifying? Is it terrifying?
• 49:27
  It's terrifying because, as we said, that whole thing of a
• 49:29
  palimpsest history and geography of these British Isles, which is
• 49:34
  that it's terrifying because we view it through the eyes and the
• 49:38
  cultural perceptions of the cultures that displaced our
• 49:42
  understanding of that. So this is ancient and strange
• 49:45
  and unknowable because we pushed out our understanding of these
• 49:48
  things. The the shots there of the woman
• 49:53
  when she's on the train and they've had to, they literally
• 49:56
  had to wait till the train stopped in various places and
• 50:00
  get that woman in the right place.
• 50:02
  The amount of effort that went into those 3 seconds.
• 50:05
  They show you it in the documentary.
• 50:07
  I mean, there's some effort put into this episode to really make
• 50:10
  it work because that's Creeper. She's constantly moving and so
• 50:14
  is the woman. There's your Disney money.
• 50:17
  Well, to be fair, yes, But it's not being used in ways that you
• 50:22
  think you're going to see. Like, I think I'm going to say
• 50:24
  his name in vain, but I love him dearly.
• 50:26
  Dylan Reece wants to see Flux style CGI landscapes and huge
• 50:31
  spaceships, and you know what I mean?
• 50:32
  Like that, Like you got in the Flux, but actually they're using
• 50:35
  the money in very specific ways, you know?
• 50:38
  Filming to. Frighten you?
• 50:41
  I mean, this is someone pointed this out to me who works in
• 50:43
  television. They said they said always be
• 50:46
  asking yourself how much did that filming permit cost to do
• 50:50
  that? And they gave an example of slow
• 50:52
  horses, which is on the it's things Apple TV, isn't it?
• 50:58
  And that's got deliberately down at heel aesthetic.
• 51:01
  And yet they shoot in Oxford Circus.
• 51:04
  Yeah, I I haven't a bit of an issue with this scene as well.
• 51:08
  And that is, and it's because of the condensed season again, the
• 51:12
  last time we saw Carla was in what Judge of Ruby Rd.
• 51:16
  Yeah. Where at the end of that time
• 51:19
  has changed. And she's being really rather
• 51:21
  horrendous about Ruby. Now.
• 51:24
  We catch up with her again, and within 2 seconds she's being
• 51:27
  really horrible to Ruby. I'm not getting a sense of this
• 51:30
  relationship. And I think that's what Rusty
• 51:33
  Davis is going for. And it's just, it is the
• 51:35
  unfortunate thing about this being episode, that being
• 51:38
  episode one, this being episode 5 of her run, and we've only got
• 51:41
  8 episodes this season. Yeah, I don't think we spend
• 51:44
  enough time with Carla to get enough of her, not for to.
• 51:48
  Hear not like, do you remember part in other ways.
• 51:51
  And that's how good the Doctor is in the cafe.
• 51:53
  We're so invested in them at that point.
• 51:56
  Yeah, and and but that it's a problem that carries the right
• 51:58
  through the series because then in the final two parter when you
• 52:01
  know, Carla's there and they're all saying how important she is.
• 52:02
  And she's like, is she? Is she?
• 52:04
  Is she? And she's such a great actress.
• 52:07
  Yeah, yeah. It's absolutely nothing to do
• 52:09
  with the performance the. Look on her face now when she
• 52:12
  looks at her out of the taxi. Look at that.
• 52:17
  Jeez Louise. Gosh, Billy Gibson is beautiful,
• 52:23
  isn't she? Well, do you know what I did
• 52:25
  realize I caught myself thinking this at some point during this
• 52:29
  run. And then I sort of went, Oh no,
• 52:31
  hang on a minute. And I went to math and said,
• 52:32
  Michael, she's literally young. She's literally young enough to
• 52:35
  be your daughter. And do you know what I didn't?
• 52:37
  I didn't work out the ending of the season from.
• 52:39
  Now on well, I'll say it because I'm a gay man, all right?
• 52:48
  Now, Oh my God. One of my favourite sequences
• 52:50
  coming up now where Rusty Davies, as ever, will put in a
• 52:53
  song if it absolutely suits it. And we do this big montage of
• 52:57
  Ruby's life, don't we? Three different boyfriends.
• 53:02
  The whole time she's distracted, she's looking at the Where's the
• 53:05
  woman all the time? Roger App Grillam is first
• 53:08
  thrown into the episode. It's one song.
• 53:11
  It's about 2 1/2 minutes, and we cover so much ground in that
• 53:15
  time. Beautifully done.
• 53:18
  Yeah, no, it, it, it, it's really nicely done.
• 53:21
  And it's a great song as well. Yeah, I I do slightly worry
• 53:30
  though that we do get a lot of streets that don't really look
• 53:33
  like London, but do look a lot like Cardiff.
• 53:36
  I. Mean that's just RTD who that's
• 53:39
  not. RTD two no.
• 53:43
  Mark, literally, because he lived in Cardiff, obviously for
• 53:46
  20 years, goes Cardiff, London, Cardiff, London as he's
• 53:51
  watching. The worst one is, the worst one
• 53:54
  is in Death in Heaven, where they're in front of Saint Paul's
• 53:58
  Cathedral that he turns around and he's just and he's, he's,
• 54:01
  he's just. Same bloody High Street from the
• 54:05
  end of the world, you know? Yeah.
• 54:08
  It's it's Queen St., which is the which is also, as we now
• 54:11
  know, the name of a tube station in Doctor Who.
• 54:14
  Oh, look, Michael, it's snowing. Whatever came of that?
• 54:19
  How do you feel about the snowing motif?
• 54:21
  Yeah, I liked it until the end, and then I just didn't
• 54:25
  understand it at all. Yeah, this happened.
• 54:29
  She's just a regular person. OK, so all of this weird stuff
• 54:34
  that happened just happened. Can I just say because you won't
• 54:37
  get it often on this podcast, Yay, it's Kate Leopard Stewart.
• 54:39
  I know Joe, every appearance she had this year, I just loved her.
• 54:44
  She brilliant. Who the hell is this person?
• 54:47
  It turns out Jemma Redgrave is a very good actress.
• 54:49
  No, it turns out she's funny and I didn't know it before this
• 54:53
  when she went, oh, I love Davina too.
• 54:55
  I was like, excuse me, you've never made me laugh before.
• 54:59
  I think there's. I think the problem is that
• 55:01
  she's often been written as battle exposition, hasn't she?
• 55:04
  Yes, my name is Kate Stewart, daughter to Brigadier Alice,
• 55:07
  according left, Bridge Stewart, leader of the United United.
• 55:10
  What are they called these days? Unified Intelligence Task Force,
• 55:13
  Yeah. All of that, you know.
• 55:15
  She froze down the cyber helmet. Oh please.
• 55:17
  And I'm here. I'm here to explain things and
• 55:20
  to provide plot mechanisms. Yes, and also you're the
• 55:23
  president of Earth and there's your plane.
• 55:24
  Let's go. That was very handy.
• 55:27
  Whereas here I think it's she's very skilfully used in this one
• 55:31
  because she's no in no way the focus of this episode, but we
• 55:34
  completely recognise her as a character from Doctor Who and.
• 55:39
  As they're allies to Ruby. Exactly and then also a little
• 55:42
  bit of a little bit of a klaxon here for an absolutely classic
• 55:45
  bit of Russell T Davis, right. Russell T Davis writing this
• 55:49
  timeline is suspended along your event, which is just a classic
• 55:54
  little Russell hand wave. Don't worry, don't worry, don't
• 55:56
  worry. I mean, it's here because he
• 55:58
  knows there are people on the Internet who were going to go
• 56:00
  well, why isn't it like turn left?
• 56:02
  And indeed there were people on the Internet who went well.
• 56:03
  Why isn't it like turn left? And we went well, because there
• 56:06
  was a line from Kate and Russell.
• 56:08
  Russell, bless him, is he's very much a vibes writer.
• 56:13
  He's, you know, he's not. He doesn't do the the Moffett
• 56:17
  plot mechanics. And a lot of the time that's
• 56:19
  absolutely fine because a lot of the time when he works, it
• 56:22
  doesn't matter. He understands what matters and
• 56:24
  what doesn't. Other times, the problem is he
• 56:27
  doesn't always make the judgement right.
• 56:29
  And so he does do that thing. And I know, yeah, I think this
• 56:34
  is interviews with other writers who are not fans of Rossity
• 56:36
  Davis really pulling him apart for this, that he will just hand
• 56:39
  wave stuff. He will just have a line to
• 56:41
  cover something. And again, sometimes that's
• 56:43
  fine. And actually, I think this
• 56:44
  timeline is suspended along your events is is sort of fine
• 56:48
  because most people aren't going to care, but it's there for
• 56:50
  people who do. But there's a lot of it in this
• 56:53
  season. And I think it really reaches a
• 56:55
  sort, as so many of them do. One of the problems with Empire
• 56:59
  of Death is that it ends on all of that.
• 57:02
  Like it's, it's, it's all those hand waves, like here, it
• 57:04
  doesn't matter. Oh, or we saw the arrival of a
• 57:06
  Sontaran. Kate's just said because Russell
• 57:09
  C Davis is a fan of Doctor Who magazine and he's read God's
• 57:13
  God's Walk Among Us. Well, the Joe, it pisses me off
• 57:16
  though, right, That there is that army of people waiting to
• 57:19
  pick this stuff apart and they enjoy doing that.
• 57:22
  And he knows that. And so he's having to put this
• 57:24
  stuff in. It's really annoying because he
• 57:27
  should just be able to write. Write.
• 57:30
  Yeah, he should. And like I say, here, here,
• 57:32
  here, I configure it. It's fun.
• 57:33
  It it is actually a problem when you're the resolution of your
• 57:37
  story. It doesn't doesn't work.
• 57:39
  It isn't emotionally satisfying. I think it's fine.
• 57:41
  I think Moffett cares less. I think Moffett.
• 57:44
  Moffett will generally try and tie everything up together, but
• 57:48
  if it doesn't, I don't think he gives a shit.
• 57:50
  I don't think he cared about the general audience.
• 57:53
  Sorry, the Doctor Who fans. No, but I think he believes that
• 57:56
  the plot mechanic, the the your plot should have a structure
• 58:01
  where he. Wouldn't he?
• 58:02
  I don't think he'd crowbar in an awkward line just to tick a box.
• 58:08
  I think maybe this is what I'm saying, man.
• 58:09
  I think maybe RTD just doesn't have the best judgement of it
• 58:12
  because I think sometimes he doesn't realize when you're just
• 58:15
  covering something off versus actually.
• 58:17
  One eye on the fans, Michael. Actually, you needed to provide
• 58:21
  a resolution here. Like, there is no way that
• 58:22
  Steven Moffett would have ended this season with just, oh, if we
• 58:25
  just toast to take back through the vortex, that'll undo
• 58:27
  everything that's happened, that it was fine, you know, which is
• 58:31
  very much the feeling. Two things I want to say, both
• 58:33
  of which are quite facetious. 1 is I've never seen Kate
• 58:36
  Lethbridge Stewart wear so much slap.
• 58:38
  I mean, she's got a lot of make up on her face right now and I'm
• 58:41
  not used to seeing it and #2 is how scary does she look at that
• 58:45
  close up? Oh, she goes and that's what
• 58:48
  that's what sells the end of it. That is not.
• 58:50
  Again, you could write this that it's just, oh, Kate, we all love
• 58:53
  Kate. Yes, we do you know she doesn't
• 58:57
  like Ruby anymore. You could just have that as
• 58:59
  being the resolution, but no, no, no, it's written and it's
• 59:01
  played to take it. If you've never seen a Kate
• 59:03
  Lethbridge Stewart story before, you were taken on an arc of
• 59:06
  here's the friendly woman who's got all the backup and she's
• 59:08
  going to come to help you. And it's not that she all the
• 59:10
  way through all of that to explain stuff to then when she
• 59:12
  turns around, bam, it hits because it has to work within
• 59:15
  that story. Now here we are.
• 59:18
  It's. The perfect way of doing it
• 59:19
  though I think of having a character that ticks a box for
• 59:23
  fans but works in the context of the episode.
• 59:26
  So the non fans it makes perfect sense as well.
• 59:28
  Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Here we go.
• 59:31
  Ruby's. Ruby's getting her montage.
• 59:33
  She's getting older now, her hair's getting longer.
• 59:35
  She suddenly starts wearing these enormous spectacles, which
• 59:38
  actually make her look even sexier.
• 59:41
  Well, here we are. So we get to we get to 30 and
• 59:45
  when she hits, this is where you're aware of how young Millie
• 59:47
  Gibson is. So the glass of wine has got
• 59:50
  bigger. You will note now she she's 30
• 59:54
  years. Old.
• 59:55
  Can I just say though, right? I am so pleased they didn't put
• 59:57
  her in fucking Latex. Because no, it's the right.
• 1:00:00
  Look shit. It's the right decision it.
• 1:00:02
  Never works. It never ever works and you just
• 1:00:06
  have to go with it. The story is telling you how old
• 1:00:08
  she is. Buy the cards.
• 1:00:10
  She's telling us. It's telling us that she's now
• 1:00:12
  40 because she's wearing glasses.
• 1:00:14
  She's acting like an old Nana. I mean, Michael, how old are
• 1:00:18
  you? Come on, be honest with me.
• 1:00:22
  I'll be honest with you what I am.
• 1:00:24
  I am at time of recording. I am 35 years old.
• 1:00:27
  I know you still look about 28. You know, like some people age
• 1:00:30
  very gracefully. Thank you.
• 1:00:33
  I do. I do actually think here that
• 1:00:35
  just that decision of not as you say, not putting the latex on
• 1:00:38
  and not doing not doing too much with her hair, just you know,
• 1:00:41
  giving her the glasses is fair enough.
• 1:00:42
  It's a shorthand, but getting dressing her differently is
• 1:00:45
  fine. One of the things that's
• 1:00:46
  actually done quite well here about this whole sort of
• 1:00:51
  remainder of the episode is that they don't go too hard on this
• 1:00:55
  being the future. Yes, I noticed that the the the
• 1:01:00
  most, the biggest concession they do is the lighting in the
• 1:01:02
  hospital. That's it.
• 1:01:04
  There's just a key and there's a couple of little lines here and
• 1:01:06
  there and you see people with some little handheld devices.
• 1:01:09
  But I think it's, I think it's, they think it's the right
• 1:01:11
  decision because that's not what this story is.
• 1:01:13
  This isn't, this is a Horror Story.
• 1:01:14
  It's not. It's not science.
• 1:01:16
  Things don't change too much, you know, like a few bits and
• 1:01:20
  bobs do, but generally speaking, you go out in the street in 20
• 1:01:24
  years time, it's still going to look like the street, all right.
• 1:01:27
  And also the point is that it's about it's about Ruby getting
• 1:01:31
  older. It's not about what what is
• 1:01:34
  there isn't. You can write a story that's
• 1:01:36
  going to be what is, what is the world going to look like in 10
• 1:01:38
  years time? And that can be your story.
• 1:01:39
  But that's not the story we're doing here.
• 1:01:41
  This is a thought experiment, as we said, with dot and bubble
• 1:01:44
  this and sort of quasi anthology format that they tried a little
• 1:01:48
  bit with this series, which I really liked.
• 1:01:50
  It just means we can say we're telling a different type of
• 1:01:52
  story here now. And let's face it, you know,
• 1:01:54
  bigger, better Boulder Britain mentioned one of the writers
• 1:01:59
  that Arthur Mackin is a big inspiration on is Alan Moore.
• 1:02:02
  And this is and there'll be a little bit more Alan Moore to
• 1:02:04
  talk about, I think in this episode.
• 1:02:06
  But this is that thing that Alan Moore said, that when you write
• 1:02:08
  about the future, you're always writing about the present, and
• 1:02:10
  that's Russell's. Davis makes no pretence of that
• 1:02:12
  here, right? This is all about.
• 1:02:14
  There's a lot of parallels here with Roger Ackrillum, isn't
• 1:02:17
  there? Oh, 100%.
• 1:02:19
  Just just to go back to what I was saying about the montage
• 1:02:22
  again, like that is absolutely Rusty Davis's wheelhouse though,
• 1:02:25
  right? Like we were talking about sort
• 1:02:27
  of Davis Moffett there. I don't think Moffett would have
• 1:02:30
  written that montage where he had to cover 2 decades with as
• 1:02:35
  many emotional beats and as simply as Russell T Davis did it
• 1:02:39
  there. That is a real skill to tell to,
• 1:02:43
  to move things on that economically.
• 1:02:45
  Yeah, and I do. One thing I admire about Russell
• 1:02:48
  T Davis is that he is wanting to do different things with Doctor
• 1:02:53
  Who. He's always he's, you know, he's
• 1:02:55
  come back and he's not just doing the same thing, which I
• 1:02:57
  think I really enjoyed the 60th anniversary specials, but there
• 1:03:00
  was a little part of me that was like, is it just going to be RTD
• 1:03:03
  2? Whereas actually it fit tonally,
• 1:03:05
  it feels very different. I think he's been inspired by
• 1:03:09
  Steven Moffett, actually. I think he had a formula when
• 1:03:12
  when he did RCD one, Moffett came along and Moffett just
• 1:03:15
  changed, shook it up every year and tried things and some things
• 1:03:18
  worked and some things didn't, but he kept trying new things.
• 1:03:21
  This season is far more experimental than some of those
• 1:03:25
  Russ T Davis earlier seasons. I think he, I think he's sort of
• 1:03:28
  looked over his shoulder and gone.
• 1:03:29
  Yeah, I want a bit of that. I think you're right.
• 1:03:31
  And I think also in that time that he's been away, he's had
• 1:03:33
  success with, you know, the success of It's a Sin.
• 1:03:36
  And also he's done years and years and, and very good
• 1:03:39
  Scandal. I think there's part of it has
• 1:03:40
  gone. Oh yeah, writing drama that gets
• 1:03:42
  into the national conversation that has these influences on
• 1:03:44
  what people are talking about. I like a bit of that.
• 1:03:46
  And you know what, Doctor Who could be a very good vehicle for
• 1:03:49
  that in a way that it never never, it never quite used it to
• 1:03:52
  do in the first time around. By the way, sidebar, before he
• 1:03:55
  leaves, I would like to say that Amol Rajan is a lot better at
• 1:03:57
  playing himself than most news readers.
• 1:04:00
  Do you know what that there? I've, I've heard complaints of
• 1:04:02
  that dialogue is sort of too unnoticed.
• 1:04:04
  Oh, are you saying you actually want to fire a nuclear missile?
• 1:04:08
  And then he just smiles. I think the simplicity of that
• 1:04:11
  is fucking chilling. And the fact that he then goes,
• 1:04:14
  you're going to cut that bit out and then he looks really awkward
• 1:04:17
  in the interview. I just think it's great.
• 1:04:20
  But worse than that is all the stuff around this poor girl
• 1:04:24
  that's working on his team. This is really dark stuff.
• 1:04:28
  This is really, it's also reminding you that Doctor Who
• 1:04:31
  isn't being written for children anymore.
• 1:04:33
  It's being written for for young adults.
• 1:04:35
  You know, if the casting of Shooting at World wasn't enough
• 1:04:39
  of a, you know, enough of a clue towards that.
• 1:04:42
  This is Yeah, you. It's as close to the line as I
• 1:04:46
  think you can get with this particular subject.
• 1:04:49
  That's what they're talking about, you know.
• 1:04:51
  I mean, we talked on the Book club episode about Damaged
• 1:04:54
  Goods, his Virgin New Adventure novel, and this is where we said
• 1:04:58
  in that episode, you can listen to it.
• 1:05:00
  It's quite good. We said in that episode that it
• 1:05:03
  felt more like Doctor Who, written by the Russell T Davis,
• 1:05:06
  who's written everything except Doctor Who, than anything else
• 1:05:09
  he'd read with the Doctor Who logo on it.
• 1:05:10
  This is getting some. More splashes of that.
• 1:05:13
  Yeah, I mean, all of this with Roger Quinn.
• 1:05:16
  This is all the years and years, right?
• 1:05:18
  Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's so brilliantly cast
• 1:05:21
  because that's the guy from Game of Thrones who was an absolute
• 1:05:25
  monster. So and that was such a popular
• 1:05:27
  show. The second you see his face, all
• 1:05:30
  of those memories from Game of Thrones flash in people's heads.
• 1:05:33
  No, it's not. Is it not?
• 1:05:34
  No, no, this isn't Marie Barnard.
• 1:05:38
  Welsh people look the same to you.
• 1:05:42
  Probably. I thought he was.
• 1:05:44
  No, no. He was in This isn't Marie
• 1:05:47
  Barnard. He was in Hunky Dory.
• 1:05:49
  Then that's me being stereotypical and a part of the
• 1:05:54
  problem as well. Oh God, here we go.
• 1:05:57
  He is a great actor though. Noreen Barnard.
• 1:05:59
  OH. This is so horrible.
• 1:06:04
  I, I, I, well, Mark and I watch this like this episode.
• 1:06:07
  We were on a razor's edge throughout and certain scenes
• 1:06:13
  just stuck with me after I watched it.
• 1:06:15
  And when she says to the girl later on, I'm so sorry.
• 1:06:18
  I only had one chance and I'm sorry I couldn't help you, man,
• 1:06:25
  oh man. But this, I mean, look now as we
• 1:06:27
  get go out into this bright open football pitch.
• 1:06:31
  It's the Millennium Stadium, it's a rugby pitch, but it's
• 1:06:34
  Dave. Oh, sorry, cliche.
• 1:06:36
  Stereotypical. Insulting it is also a football
• 1:06:39
  bitch. I'm coming to invade shortly,
• 1:06:42
  but aesthetically it's so different from where we were and
• 1:06:45
  that Tavern earlier in the episode.
• 1:06:47
  Yeah, no huge hugely as you say, it's it it's a story that is
• 1:06:55
  constantly wrong footing it because there is a part of this,
• 1:06:58
  you know, I think around that point where you start getting
• 1:07:00
  the time jumps and the montage there is a bit of you that is in
• 1:07:03
  your head is going oh, OK, this is all getting a little bit Star
• 1:07:06
  Trek Voyager we're detecting a build up of Cronon particles
• 1:07:10
  episode. You know, none of this is going
• 1:07:11
  to mean anything by the end of it.
• 1:07:13
  And yet the fact that we are constantly wrong footed as to
• 1:07:17
  where this story is going to go. We keep moving away from I.
• 1:07:21
  Love that though. I just love not knowing very
• 1:07:24
  often. I've watched so much genre TV
• 1:07:25
  now, you know, it chooses a tone, it chooses a genre and it
• 1:07:30
  just goes with the cliches, you know?
• 1:07:32
  Yeah, doing it like it's own thing with it.
• 1:07:35
  So how do you love how she has now started using the old woman?
• 1:07:39
  Yes, no, I think, I think this, I think it's very that sort of,
• 1:07:42
  it has to be the resolution, doesn't it, mechanic in terms of
• 1:07:45
  the plot mechanics, for all I've said barrels, there's not care
• 1:07:47
  about plot mechanics. This is narratively very
• 1:07:49
  satisfying as a resolution. They're literally putting
• 1:07:51
  fascist symbols on all of those chairs.
• 1:07:54
  Did you say he's putting stickers on all of them?
• 1:07:57
  Again, Alan Moore, this is all very V for Vendetta, all of this
• 1:08:00
  as well. But one thing we'd like to say.
• 1:08:03
  So here we are. So we're going to find out that
• 1:08:04
  Roger Roger is going to launch the nuclear codes and we take it
• 1:08:08
  to mean this is going to be the end of the effing world, right?
• 1:08:09
  Because if you start firing Euclid missiles or people, they
• 1:08:11
  fire them back, right? And they actually get very feat
• 1:08:15
  vendetta. I don't know if I was inspired
• 1:08:19
  by Alan Moore of just their writers who explore the same
• 1:08:21
  area, but that's a that's a note for elsewhere.
• 1:08:23
  Perhaps put a pin in that. We'll discuss it on a book club.
• 1:08:26
  But so he's going to destroy it all.
• 1:08:28
  So you've got this. So if we take this back to the
• 1:08:30
  start, the whole story that's being told here, this whole sort
• 1:08:32
  of cycle that's going on, we have British Prime Minister who
• 1:08:37
  is Welsh. Because that's the other thing,
• 1:08:39
  that tension of the Welsh identity.
• 1:08:41
  You are British people, you're not separate, you don't, you
• 1:08:43
  can't. This there is sometimes you see
• 1:08:44
  that you do sometimes see this of people who always want to
• 1:08:47
  from, from, you know, Wales or Scotland, you know, wanting to
• 1:08:51
  sort from recuse themselves from anything bad that Britain has
• 1:08:54
  ever done and say, oh, well, you know, the Welsh first victims of
• 1:08:57
  empire and all the rest of it. You think, no, no, no, it's,
• 1:08:59
  it's more complicated than that. You know, we've played a big
• 1:09:02
  part in all of this. And so here you have one of the
• 1:09:03
  worst premises ever is Welsh. He's leading the place and yet
• 1:09:07
  he is going to bring about the destruction of Britain and
• 1:09:09
  England and Mad Jack is going to come and get you.
• 1:09:12
  And one of the ideas in a folk horror which you mentioned much
• 1:09:16
  earlier on the episode was that idea about ancient wrongs being
• 1:09:22
  revisited and revenged upon in the present.
• 1:09:26
  And there is a bit of, you know, a well you could, you could read
• 1:09:30
  Roger Upgood and Mad Jack as being this Welsh spirit of
• 1:09:34
  vengeance who has been destroyed by an English person and who is
• 1:09:37
  now going to destroy them. You know to to to borrow a line
• 1:09:43
  from from Goldeneye, you know England's about to learn the
• 1:09:48
  cost of betrayal inflation adjusted for 13 O one.
• 1:09:53
  It's a great reading. It's one I needed to be educated
• 1:09:56
  on to get, but it's a great reading.
• 1:10:00
  But it's only one reading. And that's the great thing about
• 1:10:02
  this episode is that you know, it is it is it is genuinely open
• 1:10:06
  for interpretation because it gives you enough that you can
• 1:10:08
  talk about it. It's because there's also add
• 1:10:11
  versions of this that just don't explain themselves, and they
• 1:10:13
  think they're just not explaining things is somehow
• 1:10:15
  evocative. Now you need you need to be
• 1:10:18
  hinting. You need to be giving the sense
• 1:10:19
  of a shape without defining it. Another thing I love about this
• 1:10:23
  episode as well is it doesn't follow because it is sort of
• 1:10:25
  similar to Turn Left right. It's showing us an alternative.
• 1:10:29
  The timeline for the companion is giving them all the focus,
• 1:10:32
  but whereas turn left was all, it gets worse and worse and
• 1:10:36
  worse. I really like how Ruby has sort
• 1:10:39
  of highs and lows and triumphs throughout the episode.
• 1:10:43
  Sorry, I just I that that that's actually a very funny shot of
• 1:10:47
  Roger Quinn, who resigns when he just.
• 1:10:49
  I think he's supposed to be humiliated, isn't it?
• 1:10:52
  That's the idea. It's just such a, well, it's
• 1:10:54
  just such a funny shot. I think it's such a great
• 1:10:58
  episode. Ruby that was in the trailer,
• 1:11:06
  her holding up the wine glass. I was like what the hell?
• 1:11:14
  And now, now this, now this. And this, of course, is another
• 1:11:18
  lovely bit of wrong footing from Russ Stepson, because you think
• 1:11:21
  you know what this story is now, right?
• 1:11:22
  You're like, oh, there we go. It's all going to.
• 1:11:25
  Yeah, no. And then boom.
• 1:11:32
  Was it 40 years later? Yeah.
• 1:11:34
  Yeah, so I did it too early. Don't worry.
• 1:11:36
  If you're actually watching along, you're not out of sync.
• 1:11:39
  Yeah, and. This is a very sweet here, but
• 1:11:41
  the beer in the hospital. Mom and I were clinging on to
• 1:11:45
  each other when the woman is in the dark turning round.
• 1:11:49
  I mean, I was so I was properly scared.
• 1:11:52
  Michael, Doctor Who doesn't scare me.
• 1:11:54
  No, that's the great lie, isn't it?
• 1:11:55
  That the scary program for children isn't actually that
• 1:11:58
  scary for adults. Blink the bit where they go,
• 1:12:00
  you're not looking the Angel, neither you.
• 1:12:02
  That and the bit in the hospital.
• 1:12:04
  Those are the only two scenes that have properly freaked me
• 1:12:07
  out when I've been watching them live.
• 1:12:10
  So bravo to Stephen Moffett and bravo to Rusty Davis.
• 1:12:15
  The TARDIS covered in Moss is just a brilliant image, isn't
• 1:12:19
  it? It's very nice.
• 1:12:23
  And it is again. It's another one.
• 1:12:24
  We can only do it here, you know?
• 1:12:27
  Yeah. It's the story that David
• 1:12:28
  Tennant told him. Wild blue Yonder, isn't it about
• 1:12:31
  he says to to the well, we don't realise it's the fake Donna
• 1:12:36
  Noble at this point. He tells a little like a minute
• 1:12:40
  story about the TARDIS being left in a town to decay.
• 1:12:44
  And the whole town's built up. And, you know, it's sort of
• 1:12:47
  leaning inside. Looks strange at me.
• 1:12:51
  I'm watching the episode. You're looking strange at me and
• 1:12:59
  I think the thing that we kind of forget she's now what how old
• 1:13:05
  is she now? 80 That actually the the time in
• 1:13:08
  the TARDIS was what, a couple of weeks of her life?
• 1:13:11
  Bizarrely, 6 months is. It six months.
• 1:13:14
  Remember. Is that the?
• 1:13:15
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
• 1:13:17
  Side note I that I I think they may have changed the order of
• 1:13:21
  the broadcast order of some of the episodes, but we can talk
• 1:13:24
  about that another time. Do you think this was later then
• 1:13:26
  or? Not this one.
• 1:13:27
  I think Devil's Court might have been pulled forwards to be in
• 1:13:30
  the initial 2 episode drop. That would make more sense,
• 1:13:34
  wouldn't it, with that? The six month line would be
• 1:13:36
  fine, but it's the six month line Then in the very next
• 1:13:38
  episode saying she's never been away from Earth that feels.
• 1:13:42
  Like, look how sort of minimalist and casually
• 1:13:45
  futuristic this room is without actually screaming the future.
• 1:13:50
  And I liked, I liked the little passing line about I can't get
• 1:13:52
  any closer because I won't have any signal for the engine, which
• 1:13:56
  is just, which is just a nice little sort of.
• 1:13:59
  Oh yeah, that's that sounds believable as like it will be
• 1:14:02
  beaming energy to engines or something.
• 1:14:04
  It's a bit of a childhood fear of mine of waking up and someone
• 1:14:08
  being at the end of the bed. But that felt Ian Gelda from Can
• 1:14:14
  You Hear Me? You know when he's at the end of
• 1:14:17
  the bed, when his fingers are coming away.
• 1:14:19
  And then this old woman, they're just, it's just freaky.
• 1:14:23
  So what's going on here, Joe? Well, so right now the lights
• 1:14:31
  have gone out and then the old woman's at the end of the bed,
• 1:14:34
  but she's no longer 73 yards away, she's about a metre away.
• 1:14:39
  And it seems to suggest that Ruby is the old woman and the
• 1:14:46
  old. I don't know, tell me.
• 1:14:48
  Well, I don't know my my favorite interpretation my the
• 1:14:53
  most convincing interpretation I saw of this was on was on
• 1:14:56
  Twitter not long after this episode went out.
• 1:14:58
  I think it was from might have been Josh Snares.
• 1:15:01
  Apologies if it wasn't. It was someone else and I got it
• 1:15:02
  wrong. But they compared it to from
• 1:15:07
  Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell.
• 1:15:10
  Their their graphic novel about the Ripper murders, but which
• 1:15:14
  engage in a lot of this sort of, you know, magical realist
• 1:15:19
  psychogeographic thinking and they're very straight.
• 1:15:23
  It's a very good book, very strange book, one that leads you
• 1:15:26
  to sort of, if you can feel your brain being rewired and they
• 1:15:29
  connected this moment here with what's going on, the idea of a
• 1:15:33
  consciousness passing through time and how that appears on the
• 1:15:37
  outside. So how I read it based on that
• 1:15:41
  is that this woman we've been seeing the whole time is Ruby's
• 1:15:45
  minds travelling back, consciousness travelling back
• 1:15:47
  across her life from the moments of her death.
• 1:15:50
  And that every moment we have seen her, that has US been
• 1:15:53
  seeing that process from the outside.
• 1:15:55
  The process of someone's mind travelling back along their own
• 1:15:58
  life to the point to to the point that they remember the
• 1:16:02
  point they wish to change. And that the moment in the bed
• 1:16:05
  there is the moment of unification between Ruby heading
• 1:16:08
  forwards and Ruby heading backwards when she spins around
• 1:16:11
  and the whole time she's going back, that's her calling out to
• 1:16:13
  her past self. And so eventually she reached
• 1:16:15
  this point where she finally manages to get her past selves
• 1:16:20
  have passed self attention and and changes the past.
• 1:16:23
  I think that's what's going on. And I think it is a metaphysical
• 1:16:26
  thing. I think that's not how Doctor
• 1:16:27
  Who normally talks and that's not how Doctor Who normally
• 1:16:29
  works, but I think it's how it works here.
• 1:16:32
  I think that's a beautiful reading, and I don't mean this
• 1:16:35
  as an insult, but it doesn't make the episode better for me
• 1:16:39
  to know that, you know, I just like the fact I don't know.
• 1:16:43
  No. And the direction is
• 1:16:45
  deliberately, you know, confusing, beautiful.
• 1:16:49
  But, you know, it's just a series of weird images where you
• 1:16:52
  could read whatever you want into it.
• 1:16:54
  You know, I was like, oh, OK, so the old woman was Ruby all along
• 1:16:59
  as an old woman. And she's been beaten back to
• 1:17:00
  that point. And she's 73 yards away.
• 1:17:03
  Just because I don't know. I think for enough for for
• 1:17:06
  people watching this who aren't you.
• 1:17:08
  We're the brain the size of a planet.
• 1:17:10
  Sorry. I'll stop making that joke.
• 1:17:14
  I think it's like, OK, there's some, there's something circular
• 1:17:17
  going on here and that's enough. You're like, OK, all right,
• 1:17:21
  we've connected 2 dots and that's enough.
• 1:17:23
  Yeah, and it to answer your earlier, your earlier question,
• 1:17:27
  way back at the start before we stepped on the fairy trap, you
• 1:17:30
  said is talking about this episode moot?
• 1:17:33
  It's not moot, but there's a good argument that talking about
• 1:17:36
  this episode spoils it in any way.
• 1:17:38
  Because the horror this the the horror comes from not knowing.
• 1:17:44
  I would say that, but I've learnt so much about the Welsh
• 1:17:46
  tonight that I can't possibly agree with you.
• 1:17:50
  Meantime, next time oh this looks this looks like a fun.
• 1:17:53
  God. This looks like a fun, cheery
• 1:17:55
  episode. Looks like we're.
• 1:17:56
  Gonna have a savage takedown of Facebook next week.
• 1:18:00
  That looks wonderful. Oh dear, we should do a
• 1:18:03
  commentary on that. No, wait, Sir, we've already
• 1:18:06
  done it. I see.
• 1:18:08
  Here's the thing as well. Like this is This is why you
• 1:18:09
  don't have the title sequence at the start, right?
• 1:18:11
  Can you imagine in the middle of all that horror?
• 1:18:15
  It doesn't quite work, Does. It well, and all that weird
• 1:18:18
  panting that's going on in the total sequences.
• 1:18:20
  Oh come on, you must hear it. No.
• 1:18:24
  There's someone doing like heavy breathing at the start of the
• 1:18:27
  title sequence. Now come on are.
• 1:18:31
  You sure your airports were connected when you heard that?
• 1:18:35
  You're pying with me, Michael. That was so much fun.
• 1:18:40
  Well, I'm assuming that you have prepared or you will now
• 1:18:44
  improvise. 3 fabulous things to ascribe to 73 yards.
• 1:18:50
  I forgot what we're talking about.
• 1:18:51
  Then I'll tell you what, if we're knocking back and forth,
• 1:18:54
  you go first. Number one it the reason that
• 1:18:59
  Russell today's kids. This is Welsh folk horror.
• 1:19:01
  This is Doctor Who doing a type of story consciously that it's
• 1:19:07
  never really done before. I think there are two classic
• 1:19:10
  who stories that probably qualify as folk horror, which
• 1:19:14
  the demons that even more so image of the Fendall.
• 1:19:16
  But this is the song they're consciously thinking about it.
• 1:19:18
  And it's it's a Doctor Who story that that that operates in a
• 1:19:20
  different way from how Doctor Who stories are mentioned.
• 1:19:22
  And here we are 61 years in and we're doing new, we're doing
• 1:19:26
  different. It is this glorious, stupid,
• 1:19:28
  strange, regenerating, endlessly living show is surprising us
• 1:19:32
  again and doing something different.
• 1:19:33
  And I love that. No.
• 1:19:36
  Do you remember Listen? Of course you do.
• 1:19:38
  Did you like listen? I I could you know what the fact
• 1:19:43
  that I'm going to go did I like listen, I think it was a
• 1:19:46
  chipnote 1 wasn't. It it was Moffett.
• 1:19:49
  Oh, the 4th episode of series 8, you know.
• 1:19:53
  It goes to the future with. Older Danny and the kid on the
• 1:19:56
  beds with the sheet or we don't know it was a kid.
• 1:20:00
  I no, I'd say I like the bit in that when the old lady says he
• 1:20:05
  sleeps out here because the other boys make fun of him.
• 1:20:08
  I think that's the best line we've ever had about Doctor
• 1:20:11
  Who's past. I think that was so I like that
• 1:20:14
  bit. We did have one listener left
• 1:20:16
  after all these insults to the English, and that was Rod.
• 1:20:18
  But now you've suggested that Listen was written by Chris
• 1:20:20
  Chibnall. He's gone as well.
• 1:20:22
  So it's. Just not too good just now.
• 1:20:24
  Turns out one thing I don't know a lot about is Doctor Who.
• 1:20:27
  That's why I'm here. No, no.
• 1:20:30
  But the thing I really love about listen is the fact that
• 1:20:33
  the threat is mysterious and he never gives you an answer in the
• 1:20:37
  bit in the future with the thing knocking on the door, whatever
• 1:20:40
  that is, with the sheet on it on the bed.
• 1:20:42
  You know, that's that sort of ambiguity is a great horror
• 1:20:47
  episode because you never get the answer.
• 1:20:49
  So you don't get just like this one.
• 1:20:51
  And I'm making that point. I don't know why, but there you
• 1:20:55
  go. I've made it.
• 1:20:56
  Oh no, I'm making that point because I just think that's the
• 1:20:58
  two times where horror in the new series has really been
• 1:21:01
  effective. Basically when it denies you an
• 1:21:04
  explanation. I thought of another bit that I
• 1:21:07
  thought was genuinely horrific in Doctor Who.
• 1:21:09
  Go on. The bit in the waters of Mars
• 1:21:11
  where the woman is about to be killed by the water and she
• 1:21:14
  looks at the last video from her daughters, from her children,
• 1:21:17
  That's, that's, that's, that's awful.
• 1:21:21
  We've talked about that elsewhere, haven't we?
• 1:21:23
  Yes, we have. My first thing I actually want
• 1:21:25
  to choose is Millie Gibson, who I cannot believe at 18 years old
• 1:21:28
  is giving a performance like this confident.
• 1:21:32
  And I think she has to carry this entire episode and she does
• 1:21:36
  it effortlessly. She has to convince she's older
• 1:21:40
  Ruby with a pair of glasses and a bad wig, and she does it
• 1:21:44
  extremely well. No, I just think she's very,
• 1:21:48
  very watchable and everything this episode asks of her, she
• 1:21:53
  delivers. If there was ever any question
• 1:21:56
  as to why Millie Gibson got this role, 73 yards is the answer.
• 1:22:01
  Yes, well, annoyingly, my second point was going to be Millie
• 1:22:04
  Gibson as well, but I would actually say that the whole cast
• 1:22:07
  is, I think there's we, we really crack through characters
• 1:22:11
  in this, you know, because she is alone and we really move
• 1:22:14
  through different stages and we get those different casts.
• 1:22:16
  So many points, so many people who appear in this in one scene,
• 1:22:19
  you know, all those people from the pub, they don't appear
• 1:22:20
  again. They're not, they're not set up
• 1:22:22
  for, you know, don't. Forget them though, do you?
• 1:22:24
  No. And I'm going to say, if I can't
• 1:22:26
  say Millie Gibson, I'm going to say Sean Phillips, actual acting
• 1:22:29
  royalty in Doctor Who. You know, what privilege to have
• 1:22:31
  them in this, to have them in this show.
• 1:22:33
  You know, big points in the history of the show, some longer
• 1:22:36
  ago, some sooner, more recently. We might like to think where
• 1:22:39
  it's felt vaguely embarrassing when they've been, you know,
• 1:22:42
  actual proper actors in it. But she's given stuff to work
• 1:22:45
  with here. And you, Bloody hell, she does
• 1:22:47
  it well. I love that scene.
• 1:22:48
  Do you? Know what I love about her and
• 1:22:50
  that I always say, like, the best actors aren't afraid to
• 1:22:54
  have the camera shoved right in their face.
• 1:22:56
  Yeah. Because there's nowhere to hide
• 1:22:58
  when you're that close. And it's almost like, because
• 1:23:01
  you see how close the camera was in that scene.
• 1:23:04
  Yeah. It's almost like she went, no,
• 1:23:05
  come on, come a bit close. Yeah.
• 1:23:07
  All. Right.
• 1:23:07
  Yeah, now I'll do it, you know? Yeah, she knows what she's
• 1:23:11
  doing. My second thing then is the
• 1:23:14
  direction of this episode, which we sort of touched on it as we
• 1:23:17
  watch it does sort of go from 1 aesthetic to another throughout
• 1:23:22
  the episode, and every single one is done brilliantly.
• 1:23:25
  Political thriller, folk horror, I mean explicit horror at the
• 1:23:32
  end, that scene in the hospital that could have come out of any
• 1:23:34
  terrific horror movie. But I think as well he has to
• 1:23:38
  show the passage of time in a really quick succession.
• 1:23:44
  I just think this and dot and Bubble, it's where all and
• 1:23:49
  they're all kind of good directors for the new series by
• 1:23:52
  and large. But this was a find, you know,
• 1:23:54
  and he should definitely come back for the second year.
• 1:23:58
  They they and if you watch him on the unleashed, he's a bit of
• 1:24:01
  a Graham Harper. He's out.
• 1:24:03
  He's down on the set, all mad energy and trying to get the
• 1:24:06
  best out of everybody, you know, and I know the light is not
• 1:24:09
  good. Let's go again.
• 1:24:10
  You know, like he's a bit of a madman.
• 1:24:13
  But I I've forgotten the fan's name and that's really bad on my
• 1:24:17
  part. Do you have it out there on the
• 1:24:19
  screen? I shall do hold.
• 1:24:22
  These Dylan Holmes Williams. Always a Dylan is it?
• 1:24:27
  Dylan Williams could be Welsh. Well, the direction is my second
• 1:24:33
  choice. I think it's faultlessly dumb.
• 1:24:35
  I I I couldn't pick a hole in the direction of this episode.
• 1:24:38
  No, no, I mean, I think I think the we've launched the episode.
• 1:24:42
  So I've got the, you know, the iPlayer card, graphic card just
• 1:24:46
  up there in the in the window of Millie Gibson sort of looking
• 1:24:49
  off camera with the bar one behind her.
• 1:24:52
  And you know, I could that that that'll that'll be a still, but
• 1:24:54
  that could be a shot from the episode.
• 1:24:56
  I think you could just hit pause.
• 1:24:57
  It's so have any points in this episode and just have a, you
• 1:24:59
  know, it's brilliantly composed photography.
• 1:25:02
  Just watch. Watch those beautiful scenes of
• 1:25:04
  the camera going around the TARDIS on that Cliff, Tom, It's
• 1:25:08
  just stunning. My 3rd and final reason is going
• 1:25:12
  to be this, you know, personal one as a proud Welshman.
• 1:25:16
  This is a Doctor Who story about Wales and Wales, you know,
• 1:25:22
  fairly registered in classic Doctor Who.
• 1:25:24
  We went there twice and I think it's fair to say it wasn't
• 1:25:26
  exactly a a subtle and understanding depiction of the
• 1:25:31
  lands of my father's on either occasion.
• 1:25:33
  And although we know that production wise it's had an
• 1:25:36
  outsized influence since Doctor Who's return, rarely do we
• 1:25:40
  actually still occasionally if we see whales as whales on on
• 1:25:45
  screen. And this is the first time we've
• 1:25:47
  actually had a story about Wales and about Welsh history and the
• 1:25:52
  Welsh cultural identity and all of the contradictions and
• 1:25:55
  tensions and frustrations that are part of that.
• 1:25:58
  And I just think it was it, it, it was really nice to see that.
• 1:26:03
  It was really nice to see that that story, that story be told
• 1:26:07
  and captured in this way within Doctor.
• 1:26:09
  Again, how wonderful that not only are there different types
• 1:26:11
  of stories that we can be telling, but still there are
• 1:26:13
  always more things that this format can let us talk about.
• 1:26:18
  And my last thing is going to be the fact that this is a stand
• 1:26:25
  alone episode. And I will explain that because
• 1:26:28
  I think general feeling, and it's certainly my feeling as
• 1:26:33
  well, is that this season had a lot of promise that it perhaps
• 1:26:38
  didn't deliver upon. And certain parts of certain
• 1:26:42
  episodes now kind of are a bit tainted.
• 1:26:47
  You know, I love the Devil's call, but there's bits and the
• 1:26:49
  devil's call, but I'm like, well, that doesn't make no
• 1:26:51
  sense. And that's annoying to me now
• 1:26:53
  after watching the Empire of Death.
• 1:26:55
  This and dot Bubble aren't really affected by that.
• 1:26:59
  By and large, they are unique unto themselves.
• 1:27:03
  And they're two episodes I can pull out of what I think is a
• 1:27:06
  pretty good season of Doctor Who and say that's fantastic Doctor
• 1:27:11
  Who. And I'm really pleased.
• 1:27:14
  If there had been to a lot of Arc stuff in this, it would have
• 1:27:17
  spoiled my enjoyment a little bit.
• 1:27:19
  And so I'm pleased that there is just a handful of episodes that
• 1:27:22
  can sort of stand up in their own right as genuinely
• 1:27:25
  magnificent Doctor Who. Absolutely.
• 1:27:28
  And I think you could, I think you could show this to people
• 1:27:32
  who weren't particular Doctor Who fans and they would be able
• 1:27:35
  to engage with it and enjoy it in the same way that you can do
• 1:27:37
  so with, you know, with, with Blink.
• 1:27:39
  And I think you can even show if this were, if this were took the
• 1:27:43
  TARDIS bit out of it and this were just a short film, I I
• 1:27:47
  think it would stand up remarkably well.
• 1:27:50
  I would never show this to anyone as an example of what
• 1:27:54
  Doctor Who is so. I would if I wanted.
• 1:27:56
  What the fuck was that? I would if I wanted to
• 1:27:59
  misrepresent it and make it seem like something they might enjoy
• 1:28:01
  more. What's the What is like the most
• 1:28:05
  typical example you could show somebody?
• 1:28:09
  Oh God, it's going to be something like Nightmare of
• 1:28:11
  Eden. Like not it's not good, but
• 1:28:13
  like, yeah, that's if you. Actually 42 if.
• 1:28:16
  You had to genuinely say, yeah, that's, that's, that's what
• 1:28:19
  Doctor Who's like, yeah. Oh Jesus Christ, it's always a
• 1:28:22
  toughy, you know, when you're trying to introduce someone to
• 1:28:24
  Doctor Who, isn't it? Well Michael, what an absolute
• 1:28:27
  treat to have a a call with a a proud Welshman.
• 1:28:33
  I'm. Glad it wasn't a trick Halloween
• 1:28:37
  episode. We've really we've really
• 1:28:38
  carried that through. No, we haven't done it at all,
• 1:28:40
  have we? In fact, we've done more
• 1:28:41
  politics than we did in the dying days.
• 1:28:44
  Can I ask you a question now, please?
• 1:28:46
  Because it's absolutely. I feel as if I get a different
• 1:28:49
  you, you know, when you come on and talk about TV episodes to
• 1:28:51
  when you come and talk about books, Because with the books,
• 1:28:54
  we've talked about all of this continuity and we do lots of
• 1:28:57
  brawl talking as well as talking.
• 1:28:59
  Whereas, you know, good grief, that was just wonderful.
• 1:29:02
  Would you come back and talk about another TV episode
• 1:29:04
  sometime? Yes.
• 1:29:06
  OK, choose one. I would like to come back
• 1:29:10
  because it's going to be Christmas soon, and I'd like to
• 1:29:12
  come back and talk about another fine piece of Doctor Who that
• 1:29:14
  you could show to anybody who would surely love it.
• 1:29:17
  And a piece of that, I'd like to talk to you about the return of
• 1:29:20
  Doctor Mysterio. Oh, thank God.
• 1:29:23
  I thought you were going to say A Christmas Carol.
• 1:29:25
  Yes. Oh, lovely.
• 1:29:27
  Yeah. Oh yeah, the most toxic couple
• 1:29:29
  you're ever going to see on the screen.
• 1:29:32
  Joe Joe Ford discovers heterosexual relationships.
• 1:29:37
  Always sounds absolutely delightful.
• 1:29:39
  Well, I'll just say then, Michael, thank you very much.
• 1:29:43
  And until next time. No start.