Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Talks to Paul Quinn about his choice of Ghost Light (3/3)

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Talks to Paul Quinn about his choice of Ghost Light (3/3) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

0:22
None Hamster with a blunt penknife
0:35
for doing quicker. Quicker, quicker.
0:40
Hello, welcome back to Hamster of a Blunt Penknife.
0:42
I'm Paul Quinn and I've made a massive technical error here
0:45
that Joe's going to have to try and repair.
0:47
But I'm here with our leader, Incomparable host.
0:52
Go forward for episode three of the Incomparable Ghostly.
0:56
Every time you say our leader, I feel like a cult leader or
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something like that. Well, Adolf Hitler of the Doctor
1:02
Who. Oh no, no, no, no.
1:04
More like a kind of benign religious cult that stand around
1:07
stations offering our PDFs of new adventures and that type of
1:11
thing. Oh no, nothing seems.
1:13
All right, well, I'm having a wonderful time here talking
1:17
about Ghost Light with you today.
1:20
I mean enormously. So I just talked over this arm.
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Do you know when I, when I did the sensor rights with Gary
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Russell, he did that about four times.
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He just kept rolling on this and I said no, no, Gary, I literally
1:35
goes, oh man, it's my old man brain on.
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Of course we had other problems with the sensor rights in the
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fact that we only of the six episode length.
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We probably talked about the sensor rights for 15 minutes and
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the rest of the time I just grilled him on his career, which
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was far more interesting. Because it's the sensor, right?
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Yes, right. Yeah, but this is ghost light.
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Yes, and I don't have Gary Russell's career to talk about.
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What we have is Mark Pat's amazing script, McCoy and
2:01
Aldridge. Best performances, I think.
2:03
And and A and A and a guest cast to die for in a set to die for.
2:07
Well, I've got a question for you going into 3 then is this?
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Anticlimactic, no? Why on earth would you say that?
2:16
Well, there's sort of a lot of talk and then it ends.
2:20
Yeah. That's not how we typically end
2:21
the Doctor Who story, is it? No, but it's been all talk,
2:24
hasn't it? As we've already said, you've
2:25
got a whole section of of Episode 2 where Ace is asleep
2:28
and then McCoy tells you what he's done.
2:30
It's not working like a conventional Doctor Who script,
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and this is an episode where you don't want whizzes and bangs and
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pops and fizzies and and and laser guns.
2:38
Go if you want that. Go and watch Resurrection of the
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Daleks if you want something quieter and more subtle and that
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has this kind of catharsis where we discover what Ace has done
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and that the one regret then is that she didn't blow the house
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up and it's just the perfect ending to the the story.
3:00
Can we only do this sort of an ending, though, when there are
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only 4 million people watching and we're up against Coronation
3:06
Street because normally we need some bangs and whistles.
3:09
Well, you've had bangs and whistles I haven't knew the
3:12
previous week. And you'll have bangs and
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whistles the following week. And then then the story.
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After that you'll have McCoy shouting Anthony Alien waving a
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chopper. I'm not sure why I'm saying this
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because I think this is a fantastic ending.
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I feel as if I'm speaking for the general audience here that
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are very confused about what's what's rolling out in front of
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me in this 3 Carter, I mean. I'm just trying to think where
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the ending is foregrounded. Are we into the hole?
3:40
If you show a gun in the first act, you have to have a gun off
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in the in the third act. I mean, it has a quiet, sinister
3:50
opening, doesn't it? It opens with a tea tray with
3:56
the times being delivered to a creature in a cell in this stone
4:01
spaceship and it ends in the stone spaceship.
4:04
And then at the start we go up into the hallway and that
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there's something sinister and Mrs. Gross, the centre of
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normality, leaves with the house space and she locks the door and
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what we have at the end is return to the hall.
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Time begins again and the sense in which Ace is unlocked.
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But I do take the point that that's about 3 minutes to wait
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on a Wednesday, and there's probably Watchdog coming on
4:27
after it. It's not typical and it's not
4:29
what most people want. Which is what's glorious about
4:32
it. I mean, I think until this
4:34
point, despite being very unusual in its tone, in its
4:40
literary references, in its atmosphere, all of that in its
4:43
dialogue, it is still kind of beaten into the shape of a
4:47
Doctor Who's story. You've got a villain in there,
4:49
you've got monsters in there, there's a scrap, You know,
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there's there's enough for this still to be Doctor Who.
4:56
But I actually think this episode then, and especially
4:58
with Ace's big moment around the dinner table and then that very
5:04
quiet ending, that's the point where it just deserves being a
5:06
Doctor Who story or a conventional Doctor Who story
5:10
completely. And of course, what you have is
5:13
how your villains are dealt with.
5:15
Josiah isn't dead and light is dispersed, but there's a sense
5:19
in which he's still there because he's still pervading the
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house I think, and the whole fire under imagination comma
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lack of he's gone into the catalogue.
5:27
The catalogue becomes part of the catalogue.
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It's the great, it's the great horror and the never ending task
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is what it was and the fact that these figures go off, but the
5:34
potential for it to go wrong again.
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As McCoy says, they're gone like a passing thought so long as
5:39
their minds don't wander. And Flat had plans for a sequel.
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He did. Yeah.
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He talks about on the Coventry whereby because in the wider
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idea control and the survey creature always become the
5:56
superior creatures in the world of their survey and he was going
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to have them get into the TARDIS and they'd eventually become
6:02
Time Lords or become Tardises themselves, which I don't think
6:05
would work. And it and it's flat going too
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far like he will do in Lungbar and some of his Big Finish
6:10
stuff. But as a night you can see the
6:11
concepts of working around it but you do wonder how far carton
6:14
or hammers this into shape and makes this work.
6:18
And even though you're absolutely right, this isn't a
6:21
conventional ending at all. Who dies?
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Who doesn't die? Who's still alive at the end?
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It's not doing what. Where's the bloody big
6:27
explosion? Well, of course we're told there
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will be an explosion, a very big explosion, very, very soon.
6:33
But of course it's redeployed for takeoff.
6:35
It's basic physics is that the the energy is going to be used
6:39
to shift that spaceship and to get them off into this, this,
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this, this wild blue Yonder essentially is where they're
6:44
going. And then ACE and the Doctor
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still have a mention of what they're going to go off into
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that wild blue Yonder as well for what we've got is described
6:51
at the end of survival. So no, it's not convention at
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all, but it gives us the end that we need, not necessarily
6:56
the end that we want. What I would love to do is to
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head back to 1989 and I don't want to sit in and watch it with
7:03
Doctor Who fans. I want to sit in and watch it
7:05
with those people that are like, we don't want to watch Curry
7:06
tonight, what's happening on Doctor Who and say, well, what
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do you think of that, you know? I do wonder what if anyone
7:13
reviewed it for the papers, what they made of it?
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Well, because I think the not we could watch Battlefield and
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Curse of Fenrick and Survival. I'm not really having issues
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with it I. Think it was a specifically
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brutal review of the first episode of Survival.
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I remember it to this day that I did, actually.
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Really, it's not. But I read about it subsequently
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And then. Where was that published?
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I think it was the News of the World or the Sun.
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It was Charlie Catchpole, said Doc.
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Doc docs to Diddy to Duff up Asylum.
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Because it's the whole business with McCoy trying to track down
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the cat. Oh yeah.
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And then you get the bits of Hale and pace because of course
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they're they're they're height of popularity at that point.
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They of course are going to use very odd not long after that
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because they're going to play the original TV version of DL
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and Pascoe for ITV. You can.
8:04
Still feel John Nathan Turner's fingerprints in there, can't
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you? I bet because.
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Totally. Snare is that it's not.
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They're not doing what you'd expect to do.
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That's quite as soon as the scene that clicks, you know,
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because you get the joke that the McCoy has to explain.
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You know, if you have to explain a joke, it's never funny.
8:21
This one's not funny either. It's about people beating other
8:24
people and it's just emphasizing Monroe's point about this overly
8:29
acquisitive society and not acquisitive, this overly
8:32
competitive society and this kind of hyper capitalist system
8:35
where dog eats dog or cat eats human in this instance.
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So this survival and and Ghost Light are operating in very
8:45
different ways. Cursive Fenrik, he's relatively
8:49
conventional up to a point. I think once you get to the the
8:51
the last part where you do get some philosophizing, I think the
8:55
terrible scene where Sophie ordered is essentially talking
8:59
about adolescent sex crime isn't well done at all.
9:03
But he. There's a wind whipping up.
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Yeah, he's whipping up somewhere and it it whipped up to show the
9:09
stockings up on the church. But customer has got a pace to
9:13
it. It's action-packed.
9:14
It's full of explosions. The climax sees the villain
9:17
being defeated in a grandstanding moment.
9:19
You know, it's it's it's everything you would imagine
9:22
would be in a Doctor Who story. Yeah, yes.
9:25
But I mean, if you wanted to, if you wanted to to look at Platt
9:30
sources, a lot of the text that you're looking at, they'd have
9:33
these type of quiet end. G can hide for everything that
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we associate with it, which is tends to be adaptations of it
9:40
that ends with us and reading a letter.
9:43
And G could disappearing. Dorian Gray.
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You don't see Dorian killing himself, but you see the body at
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the end. Sorry spoilers there.
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Also, Dorian Gray is all about masturbation.
9:53
He wants to penetrate himself. Boy, it's been around for a
9:56
while. Yeah, let's see the time travel.
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He just disappears. You get everything, the the
10:01
violence the escape from the from the mall.
10:05
So Platt looking at this type of source material, you know think
10:09
about some of the Sherlock Holmes stories, how often they
10:11
end with Holmes just explaining stuff and the Sherlock Holmes
10:14
would rarely have a murder in them.
10:15
They're not really offering the way we tend to think they are
10:17
but that's based on adaptations. So Platt again he's constructing
10:23
a very different text I think to to to what you traditionally
10:26
have and it only be works in this season the.
10:29
Weird thing about Platt is, and it's the rarest of things, is I
10:33
think he does his best piece of work first and and don't get me
10:37
wrong, I think he does some great stuff.
10:39
Later on he's written some terrific big finishes and
10:42
something less, and he wrote some interesting novels.
10:45
I'd rather have a writer that is trying new things and daring to
10:50
be a bit poetic and literate and you know, and all of that,
10:54
rather than, you know, I'll say his name in vain quite a lot.
10:57
But another Nick Briggs script, which is effectively Death to
11:00
the Daleks, You know, for the 19th time, I'd rather take the
11:05
risk on somebody that's going to be a bit different.
11:08
I mean, yeah, the fact the fact that this all gel the first time
11:12
out, but but everything you think about a Doctor Who
11:14
production, think about all the things that could go wrong.
11:17
What if the wrong designer was handed this?
11:19
What if the wrong actors were cast?
11:21
What if the wrong director was pulled in?
11:23
What is McCoy and Aldridge were having an off day that did.
11:26
Originally approach the production office while Robert
11:30
Holmes a script editor. So he's been working their way
11:34
with the ideas for a very long time.
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And how long is it taking for this to come to fruition or the
11:40
ideas are there and then work with Carl he hammers it out.
11:43
But you're right, it's that rare occasion where everything seems
11:46
to go right. Casting design direction, I
11:49
think where is a very underrated director actually.
11:52
E Even the husks which I think work.
11:55
And again, that's that's J&T and we're kind of what they're there
11:58
for. But that's someone who's done
11:59
all this before and goes. We need something there.
12:03
And actually it it does add to this sense of disquiet around
12:09
Victorian ideas of superiority. Well, where do you come from?
12:12
A monkey like figure, yes, but also those weird lizards
12:16
downstairs in the cellar. I mean, I've not thought J&T was
12:19
thinking on those levels. No he.
12:20
Wasn't but but it it it does work in terms of that wider
12:24
ideas that work through this text and you know and the horror
12:30
aspect what's the something nasty in the set.
12:32
There's also something nasty up in up in the Observatory, which
12:35
is also a nursery. But because it's also a prison,
12:38
this house has become this kind of torture chamber, as I've
12:42
already said before, and that that, yeah, the the, the nursery
12:45
come prison. That's almost Charlotte Perkins
12:48
in the yellow room where you have the the, the post
12:52
menopause, where you have the woman suffering from postpartum
12:54
depression. She's put in there, locked away.
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When sinister things are happening in that room, there is
13:01
a a like a nursery rhymes style music playing.
13:05
Yeah, I mean again, and Ayers is really I I really like Marquez
13:09
and I think that a lot of the work he's done there and he's
13:11
been, he's been a great champion of the show and he's still you
13:15
know with the, with the, with the material that that he's that
13:18
he's preserved. This is probably his best score.
13:21
I I think the music is really working alongside it.
13:25
He says that the music he he regrets the music when Glendon
13:29
is chasing AIDS, but he doesn't think that works.
13:31
It's too much. It's kind of too emphatic.
13:33
And really this is a chase you have to look at like this.
13:36
But I think, yeah, the the, the music when Redfis, yeah pulls
13:40
the gun on Ace and the doctor as you said in the first.
13:44
But yeah, that that that tinkle tinkle nursery and the
13:47
creepiness. But of course, yeah, it's as Ace
13:50
is. It must be.
13:51
It has to be Victoria, because that unique combination of kind
13:54
of childlike innocence, but also the grotettes and so lights
13:58
voice that you've said has to be charmed like at the most brutal
14:02
moment, which is where he sliced up his body to see how it works.
14:06
Well then my last question to you before we head into episode
14:10
3 then has Doctor Who here it's Zenith, just as the curtain is
14:15
called. It's returned to greatness
14:19
because it's had various heights, you know, creative
14:22
heights, heights. In terms of the audience, we
14:26
don't always, not always the same thing.
14:28
You know, look at where the audience is in Season 2 compared
14:32
to which episode, and you wouldn't expect Same Web Planet
14:35
to have the highest ratings, though you know there's been
14:38
that discussion this week about the difference between ratings.
14:40
There has indeed, yes. And but yeah, you can see where
14:44
that current inside, say Pinchcliff, you discount I think
14:50
some of the Williams ratings because of course they're
14:51
artificially inflated because of the strike on ITV.
14:54
But you've got these peaks and troughs.
14:56
What you've got is it's emerged from a long period in which
15:00
you've been a through. And I think the pressure is
15:03
often because they know the BBC want them gone.
15:05
So they're now making the best that they can for the audience
15:07
they've got. And what they've got is, is
15:10
remarkable. I mean.
15:10
In in 26, it's like they have learned the lessons from 24 and
15:14
25. What has worked, what hasn't?
15:17
Yeah, but I don't have that many lessons to learn from 25.
15:21
I think 25 is a really good season as well.
15:22
Even even even Silver Nemesis, as I've said, there are far
15:26
worse stories than silver Nemesis.
15:27
It's just that it pales in comparison what's around it.
15:29
I've gone on a journey with that one as well.
15:31
I used to hate it. Now I think it's glorious.
15:33
That's so entertaining. Yeah, it it it, it's it's the
15:36
kind of like it is in that season.
15:38
What battlefield is in this. It's the life of story with the
15:42
waking material around it. Because if you look at your
15:45
remembrances about racism, it happens.
15:48
Patrol, as we said on on the special recording, is about
15:52
Thatcherism and about Thatcherite attacks on the the
15:56
the LGBT community, LGBT community.
15:59
And then Great Channel Galaxy is about Doctor Who as a program
16:07
itself, because of course you've got the business with Bellboy
16:11
and and he's about Mythos and about Primeval 5th Sylvan, MC
16:15
kind of a run around with Nazis. But it has got, as we've already
16:18
said, Fiona Walker, and that's is doing something similar here.
16:21
Well, I do wonder. If you take the battlefield out,
16:23
this isn't too dark as well like you need.
16:26
That bit like this, you definitely need that.
16:29
What's interesting is you and I could talk about how glorious
16:31
this this period of Doctor Who is to a blue in the face.
16:34
The truth of the matter is is when the TV movie was made and
16:37
Seagull suggested that Sylvester McCoy was in it, the BBC were an
16:41
absolute horror saying why on earth do you want to remind
16:44
people of that terrible period of Doctor Who where it was taken
16:48
off the air in a massive embarrassment?
16:50
I still think sort of to the outer world.
16:52
This is still unfairly maligned. Well, I mean I think the issue
16:58
there is that this run is really taking a punishment beating for
17:03
issues that have happened earlier on in the 80s.
17:07
I mean there's there's there's a distinct sense if you read those
17:10
production Diaries that they're not convinced by JNT until
17:14
relatively late and really when it's too late I think.
17:18
Well, it comes to the point where they're like no one else
17:21
is going to do. It McDonald definitely makes it
17:24
clear that there are other people.
17:27
Actually, there weren't anyone else.
17:28
So isn't it? George Galachco is in the
17:29
running and he doesn't want it. Now Galachco season, that's a
17:33
really fascinating what might have been.
17:35
But then of course the Omega Factor doesn't land.
17:37
And then he goes off Miss Markle and more conventional stuff.
17:40
Sutherland's Law, I think, is what he did instead of Doctor
17:43
David Reed clearly isn't convinced by what they're doing.
17:47
And David Reed knows his stuff because he'd come up with
17:49
Sapphire and Steel. And I think that the real
17:51
crucial killer line is where he says the Ki and company looks
17:55
better. Although I got to say, some of
18:01
those script notes that were coming through when I was
18:03
reading that they were, I thought they were per, they
18:06
were, Oh yeah. Absolutely, absolutely.
18:09
And the problem is that it becomes damaged because it
18:12
becomes associated with a particular version of JNT.
18:15
And the version of JNT is the one who takes people off for
18:19
that very expensive lunch, gets the rap over the knuckles and
18:22
told never do that again. And instead of taking the
18:24
punishment that he rightly deserves, JNT goes actually a
18:27
four people at dinner, not three, and it's like you're a
18:30
Dick and you'd be sacked anywhere else.
18:32
What's also clear of course, is that they've got massive
18:35
problems there in terms of those studios and the BBC is a
18:37
creaking institution where you can't work after 10:00 if you
18:41
work. The amount of excuses he was
18:44
making for overruns. But all of that is building and
18:47
it it's blood. There's blood in the wall by
18:49
that point and the audience is still there, but the audience is
18:52
going to go at a particular point and it's going to be
18:54
actually unfairly in 22. I wonder if it's the coat, you
18:59
know? I think there is that.
19:01
I think, I think there's, I think a lot of, I think Davidson
19:03
brings a kind of a a fan, a group of viewers with him when
19:09
he goes and you get Colin Bacon because there's this, I mean, I
19:12
like Baker. We've said this before.
19:14
I think your discussion with Sai Hart about Twin dilemma goes to
19:17
the heart of it. It's a repeat.
19:19
It will be repeated. With Capaldi you have an
19:21
absolute brilliant figure a great ambassador show loves the
19:25
show and you you cripple him almost from the the get go and
19:29
and and of course the the point is there that the line missed.
19:31
And when we were talking about resurrection, of course twin
19:34
dilemma is there because if they'd been a strike action you
19:37
might have lost Hezandrozai. The point is you make that
19:40
earlier on the run and you get away with that problem because
19:42
they had had that in season 20 when they lose warhead.
19:46
But I think, I think the bad reputation the show has at this
19:50
point is to do with what's happened already.
19:53
I I don't. I don't think you can look at
19:55
most of 24 or 25 or 20. Three.
19:58
Well, if you look at 25, you look at the numbers that I know
20:01
we're not saying numbers equate to quality, but the audience was
20:05
starting to come back. Silver nemesis, great show in
20:07
the Galaxy. We're starting to tip 6,000,000
20:09
again. And then they didn't this season
20:13
that they barely advertised it, did they?
20:14
They wanted it gone. Yeah, they put it up against the
20:17
great behemoth on. ITV They didn't let anybody know
20:21
it was coming on and of. Course that sounds a peculiar
20:24
week opening as well. Though of course you know, what
20:27
do you get when a garden? Do you wander on a garden?
20:30
If they're throwing money at Battlefield for the type of
20:33
battles that it requires, and they'd absolutely got behind it
20:37
in terms of publicity, you would have got that audience.
20:39
Back again. That's how bizarre misstep of
20:42
Aronovic and Carmel isn't it? Because you could have at that.
20:45
Start with annoying, you know, tearing down to earth and the
20:48
ground exploding. Instead you've got Doris going.
20:51
This will look great by one of our Azalea beds.
20:53
Isn't the issue, of course, that they don't think it's the
20:55
opening of the season, it's meant to be third?
20:57
Yeah, Curse of Fenrick was supposed to open the season,
21:00
wasn't it? And that opens on the sea with
21:02
the the Russian soldiers coming. Yeah, yeah.
21:05
It's a big reveal of Mccoy's coat, but that's a weird thing
21:07
to hang your season on. Mccoy's got a dark jacket, so
21:09
he's a darker figure there. There's there's there's another
21:13
version of Season 26 that that ends with ghost life.
21:19
And you go, Curse of Henrik, Survival Battlefield, Ghost
21:25
Life. I don't think that works in the
21:27
running order, because I think the running order you've got
21:29
here now we've already described, you have to come here
21:32
first. You have to come to Gabriel
21:33
Chase to explain things and then this working out across the
21:36
season. Battlefield is the one that
21:37
sticks up the sore thumb. Battlefield has to go at the
21:40
start, otherwise you break up that run, but you put it at the
21:42
start. You have to have a better
21:43
opening than that. You don't.
21:45
And so the audience is gone. This, of course, may turn the
21:47
audience off anyway, for all the reasons we've said we love it.
21:51
The ordinary punter coming in from work, Daddy's Tea on a
21:54
Wednesday night. He's going to watch this, you
21:56
know, what's this? Rock.
21:58
That's Rock Cliff. He's in a van with some young
22:01
sort taking a piss, which actually did happen in in the
22:03
first episode of Rock Cliff. I don't understand this.
22:06
Yeah, What? That?
22:07
What's who's that in that? Who's the who's the one in the
22:10
ride? Why?
22:11
She said. And so you can see.
22:13
And that's a shame, because they don't go here again.
22:15
Ever. Not even in the new series.
22:17
Not even the densest scripts in the new series.
22:20
They're never going to go there because the new, the new script
22:22
doesn't have scripts like this, because you don't.
22:25
What we think is density in the news scripts isn't at all.
22:28
It's Moffett trying to be clever.
22:30
Yeah, because Moffett kind of loses the control when he tries
22:33
to do those. Moffett can plot, look at go in
22:36
the fireplace, look at Blink, but try and do it overseas and
22:40
it just doesn't work. Now I'm looking forward to
22:42
taking you to the new series. You know, that's going to be an
22:45
interesting Ave. Well, look, we could talk about
22:48
the demise of Doctor Who. So we're blue in the face.
22:50
I think we've given some good reasons there.
22:53
However, let's go and watch the very final episode made of
22:58
Doctor Who and and just see how peerlessly it can be done.
23:04
Yes 3/2. One off, we go back, back.
23:11
Do you know what? I'll tell you what as a viewing
23:13
experience the 80s is It's so up and down.
23:19
As a discussion tool, it's fascinating, isn't it?
23:23
Just because there are so many mistake made and there are so
23:26
many great things that come out of it anyway.
23:29
Yeah, the highs and lows of races who, you know, the decline
23:33
and fall isn't inevitable, but I don't know.
23:36
I don't know. If you look at where TV sci-fi
23:39
goes at the same time I I yeah, I don't.
23:41
I don't think it's not going to survive.
23:44
But but seeing Jay-Z pay it up with those three different
23:47
script editors and what came out of those periods, it's like he's
23:52
not the defining factor at all. No, no, no, no, no.
23:55
It it's something goes very, very badly wrong there in that
23:59
run. But it's not clear until you get
24:01
to Colin Bay. But the problems were there
24:02
before. This is a real, this is an
24:05
uplift in terms of how they're making the show, how it's been
24:08
written, and it just, it just feels like a healthier
24:11
atmosphere reading about behind the scenes.
24:14
And there's. I do wonder if Carmel is
24:16
actually writing to J&T strength as well.
24:20
Oh yeah, I think so. You know, like knowing, knowing
24:22
where where he can put the money and who he can bring in, you
24:26
know, to play the parts. I think I think it it's in it's
24:30
in about time isn't it that you can contrast J&T around 1983 is
24:37
kind of I think they call him bloated which is unkind and then
24:41
this kind of pensive figure that you have in 242526, he's done it
24:46
all before. He knows what works.
24:48
He knows what doesn't. He's locked into this show and
24:50
kind of a death spiral and so yeah he can work with Carmel
24:53
can't work with him. I'm.
24:54
So pleased. I'm so pleased he had these last
24:57
couple of years. Otherwise he just would have
24:59
been written off as somebody that that did go off a Cliff.
25:02
Yeah. I mean.
25:04
Look at control there. I mean, that is pure Phantom of
25:08
the Opera, isn't it? Yes, we go sinister maids.
25:14
Oh, they're great as well. Wasn't there a sequence with a
25:17
knife that was edited out? I think so.
25:21
And there's the machete as well. I think Mrs. Pritchard chases
25:24
after Frank Windsor with the machete.
25:27
I think Frank Windsor is the most vocal in terms of how much
25:31
time he loses because he's really that character.
25:33
I think he was a bit annoyed, wasn't he?
25:36
I think when it airs. Yeah, I mean it's a it's a great
25:39
role for him and it, but of course he's kind of typecast
25:42
forever as as a policeman. What's interesting when
25:45
Stratford John's breaking out of Zed Cars and softly, softly and
25:49
turns up as a mad God like frog in this, he needs to have better
25:53
choices. Frank Windsor ends, I think,
25:55
selling insurance on the telly because he's a comfortable
25:58
figure. Do you know what there was a
25:59
sequence there where you know where the maid's killed?
26:02
Yeah. Yeah.
26:03
Think back to the twin dial, Emma.
26:05
Think back to the embolism. Yeah.
26:07
And it's basically the same effect, but totally.
26:12
Yes, it's completely different. Ace.
26:16
They're learning. They're learning.
26:17
ACE. Tells like to bog off at this
26:19
point and we went to your nan's house once and I was only at
26:24
your nan's flat once and we were playing a board game and it came
26:27
about Doctor who'd be an axe and you said bog off and you're now
26:31
well if that's the type of language they're teaching it's a
26:33
good job it's coming off the telly.
26:35
I've. Forgotten all about that?
26:37
That's. Wedged in my rails it's kind of
26:40
amazing moment you're. There.
26:41
I think I'll remember that day, though.
26:43
You know she gave us some money for sweets or something like.
26:46
That I think she did, because it was we'd move by that point, so
26:49
I'd come down to you for the day and you were going to your
26:51
nan's. So we went up there, I think.
26:52
I think my mum dropped there and it.
26:56
Was oh, thank you for that, because I've forgotten all about
26:59
that. No.
27:01
It was W Green or Northgate, you're.
27:04
Northgate. Yeah, I'm quite Northgate.
27:05
Yeah, you can quite say, yeah, yeah, You know our doctor,
27:08
because we're over there, he's, he's McCoy.
27:12
Not at his best. But how?
27:14
Light brings his voice down. Now you are interfering.
27:18
The the voice has to go up and down, otherwise it doesn't work.
27:20
He has to be the sinister figure.
27:22
Oh, Paul McCoy this line and his sort of reaction to the light,
27:28
you know? Creepy Creepy Gwen's no rocking
27:32
horse, with the mother rocking her as a child and along comes
27:35
Creepy Uncle. Josiah, it's time for Miss Ace
27:38
to leave us. He's he's adopting a bit of
27:42
light, sinister singing. Songs as well down here now,
27:45
it's all very charged. Apparently they really played up
27:50
the sexual side of it in rehearsals and they had to tone
27:53
it down because. J and TS held them to.
27:55
They all wear and told them to because it's all suggested, but
27:58
it is. It's clearly, clearly they've
28:01
had sex. Did you see that?
28:03
We had a transition there, fade out into the corridor.
28:06
Now we're just zooming around. This is beautifully done.
28:09
You know this just to emphasize the creepiness, and here's the
28:12
figure creeping along. Oh, what?
28:15
What about the bit in a minute? Where face hears the police
28:20
sirens and the lights on her face.
28:21
That sort of literal interpretation of the nightmare.
28:24
Yeah, but it's her memory as well, isn't it?
28:26
This is, this is that's Dracula, isn't it?
28:30
Because what's his name? Redfern eats, eats flies,
28:33
doesn't he? So that's where that's come
28:35
from. I want her in the box.
28:37
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that window as a computer
28:42
screen. It's such a simple effect.
28:44
And here we go. I'm here, child.
28:47
Again. The voice, the voice and the
28:49
costume are are telling you two different things, and so it's
28:51
meant to skew what you expect. Because it's.
28:55
Creepy, though. Isn't it I like.
28:57
Your assistance. And it's how she plays it as
29:01
well. Terrified.
29:04
McCoy stalk in the place now as well.
29:09
Yeah, oh, I love the bit where he goes.
29:10
Even I can't play this many games at once.
29:13
You can see, of course, a whole run of new adventures.
29:18
What are you playing, Doctor? Chess Draughts, snakes and
29:23
ladders. And that's just conundrum.
29:29
Yeah. Oh, that's great.
29:30
What's it remind you of? All right.
29:31
It's none of my business. It's absolutely brilliant.
29:37
I just remember at the time, I remember thinking I would never
29:41
see characterization like this. And Doctor Who Again, this sort
29:44
of thoughtful characterization of the assistant.
29:46
Yeah, And now it's, we expect it.
29:49
And when it's not there, it stands like a sore thumb.
29:52
So of course all the problems around Jenna Coleman, I think,
29:54
who's a great actress, they were really lucky to get it.
29:56
But the inconsistency there, the fact she essentially becomes a
29:59
different character between 7:00 and 8:00, kind of unforgivable
30:03
that she's just got a different and because she's clearly meant
30:05
to go at the end of a Christmas special between 8:00 and 9:00
30:08
and then they bring her back, which.
30:10
Would have been a better place for her to go.
30:11
There's nothing is moving in this saying, just the camera and
30:15
an effect and her performance and it's terrifying on.
30:19
On on on the commentary, because I make the point that it's the
30:21
two time zones clash there. At that point, it's her memory
30:25
recalls. The future, or her past, of
30:27
course, and she. Just the use of the lie.
30:32
Oh ace, my dear, I want you to come away.
30:36
She's so scary. Oh, and how Sharon Juice plays
30:40
this now. Sort of learning to be a lady.
30:43
Yes. I mean, again, it's about
30:45
evolution throughout this test and she's evolving very, very
30:49
quickly. Does anyone call her Eliza
30:51
Doolittle? No, no, but that's they tell,
30:54
they tell Sharon Juice. That's how she meant to play it.
30:56
So of course that's the characters on the pin.
30:58
It's, you know, it's Eliza Doolittle, it's Miss Havisham,
31:02
it's Bertha Mason. She's so funny because you know,
31:06
she's she's trying to be refined, but she'll still jump
31:09
for a bloody window. He's the only one who needs the
31:11
house. Of course she can't cope in the
31:14
outside world. So again, it's the idea of the
31:16
house as an institution, It's a hospital, it's an asylum, it's
31:20
it's the only place that these figures can operate.
31:22
And it's a sense it's a comment on the on the program.
31:25
The only place this group of characters could operate is in
31:27
this particular episode of Doctor Who.
31:29
They don't belong anywhere else because of course they've got
31:31
weird combination of characters anyway.
31:34
Crown sack Coburg, Missus Sack Coburg, of course is was how she
31:38
was known kind of contemptuously because what's underpinning this
31:44
is the sense that Queen Victoria lived too long because she's
31:46
essentially disappeared for 20 years at this point.
31:49
And where is the direction? In, in, in in the country.
31:53
So of course Josiah as the strongman will emerge to save
31:56
the country because it's all part of this discourse around
31:59
the crisis within the country, even though the country appears
32:02
to be moving towards the heights of its power.
32:04
You know she's emphas of India by this point, though
32:06
territorially speaking, the empire will be its height in
32:09
1918 because those German territories after the First
32:12
World War. But again, Platt is really
32:14
looking at this deep sense of unease that's running through
32:17
society at this point, particularly in in the
32:19
literature. These chucks are in there.
32:24
Always Platt slumming in Doctor Who.
32:27
No, God no. I think it's the natural place
32:29
one at this point in time. I think it's where else would
32:31
you able to do this on British television at that point?
32:34
There is only Doctor Who left at that point, unless it's a one
32:36
off play, but I don't think this is the natural venue for it,
32:40
even though it's it's an unnatural venue as well because
32:43
it's not what you expect. Joe, the only sort of other
32:46
writer, I think, that approaches this level of sort of greatness,
32:50
Yeah, Posties is Robert Shearman.
32:54
And interestingly, he took ideas that he wanted to write as a
32:59
Doctor Who story and they wouldn't make it.
33:02
So he did it as a play, and they wouldn't make it as a play
33:04
either because they said it was too like a Doctor Who story.
33:08
Les is art, but he he he does that similar thing of sort of
33:14
sick humour. Yeah.
33:16
You know, and darkness real. His.
33:20
Real darkness. He knew it's a collection of
33:25
short stories in that they're interconnected, which is
33:27
essentially choose your own adventure.
33:29
He was telling me about a convention about three or four
33:33
years ago. This is brilliant as well,
33:35
Mackenzie. Don't expect Mackenzie to die.
33:37
And there he is, draining away. And that gets darker and darker
33:41
because you're choosing the direction you're responsible
33:44
for, the for the dark direction of the story.
33:46
It's really challenging stuff to make you think about yourself as
33:49
a reader and really what you're prepared to accept in in in
33:53
text, in terms of actions, the grotesqueness.
33:58
Yeah, he he show me. I mean that thing about Jubilee
34:01
and like the Doctor with his legs cut off in the tower and he
34:04
really goes in. The dwarf in the Dalek.
34:07
Yeah. But then I was thinking, you
34:11
know, like Chimes is the only other Doctor Who story that's
34:13
really like this. Yeah, set inside an old house.
34:17
There's even a sequence where time's pushed on towards the end
34:20
of a cliffhanger. Although I do wonder if Chimes
34:23
owes more to sapphire and steel. Oh definitely, yeah.
34:26
Yeah. Than than necessarily do so
34:28
yeah, I did. Yeah, I think I think that's
34:30
right. And again look where you said
34:31
it. You sent in the Victorian period
34:32
where everyone knows, everyone knows about the Victorian
34:34
period. Except they don't.
34:36
And you get a ghost story in the house.
34:38
And of course it's that kind of Dickensian.
34:41
And Mr. James of course. And it's peppered with similarly
34:45
disturbing, you know, sick ideas, the repeated deaths that
34:51
are quite comical. We're lucky.
34:54
We're lucky to attract these people to our silly show.
34:57
This this aces elocution lessons.
35:00
Of course. I do wonder how far it's part of
35:02
a joke around. What was that commercial where
35:06
Lorraine Chase was playing a cockney and was having to be
35:09
taught elocution lessons? It was about 10 years before
35:11
this. I wonder if Platts got some sort
35:12
of a reference to that. Here we go, this crucial moment
35:15
where we discover, well, no, she we already noticed.
35:19
Don't because of course in touch, Mackenzie, but here the
35:22
breaking of this creature. This is horrible.
35:25
It is awful. It really is.
35:27
And and. Severe trauma.
35:30
I always forgive her if she hadn't enjoyed it so much.
35:36
I mean it's it's it's the problem of course is does she
35:38
remember what she's done and does she remember what Josiah
35:41
has done and. That and at the moment where
35:44
they they find each other, mother and daughter, that moment
35:47
of happiness. Oh, it's not happy, though.
35:50
It's not happy. It's not happy for Mrs.
35:51
Pritchard because when this is Mama I.
35:54
Thought she goes. We're both lost.
35:56
We both are, yeah. He knows in a way that Gwenden
35:59
doesn't. And again, what does Mrs.
36:02
Pritchard remember once the memory comes back?
36:05
I mean, this is a great scene as well, because there's humour
36:07
here, but there's real tension. And like that darkness of the
36:10
room, the maze, because we know the maids are all tall up as
36:13
well. So there's a sense in which this
36:15
isn't we already know it's not a normal dining room, but there's
36:18
this fraught heightened tension about potential violence.
36:22
And of course the doctors, they don't eat the soup, so you
36:25
already know there's something nasty coming there.
36:27
And of course, then the punchline comes you.
36:29
Know that You know that bit in Rocky Horror?
36:31
I can't believe I'm going to say.
36:32
It's where he pulls away the tablecloth and Eddie's
36:35
underneath it and they realise they've all been eaten.
36:37
Eddie. I've got bits of that here as
36:40
well. I think so.
36:41
I I I think I think that's definitely in in in this.
36:45
And it's again, it's the it's the text and plat suggesting
36:49
just how quickly civilization can collapse.
36:52
The only thing that stops Ace becoming a cannibal is that the
36:55
Doctor knows how he knows, or that he spotted the logic of
36:59
this house. The kind of Alice in Wonderland
37:03
has its own logic Through the looking glass is his own logic.
37:05
This has its own logic and only the Doctor can really see how
37:08
it's working. The bug crawling across the
37:11
table, yeah. I knew it was a trap as soon as
37:16
I walked in. Fortunately, your guests have.
37:18
Honestly. Oh.
37:19
This scene, he's so perfectly played the scene.
37:24
Oh my dear. Then you've sent them away to
37:27
Java. But they do.
37:29
They do remember. The warmth she exudes, you know,
37:32
here compared to the rest of her performance.
37:35
Great. Yeah.
37:35
You can see what you get when you cast an actress of of her
37:40
talent and her length of career because she she's she's a Bogart
37:44
in in Victim isn't she? That that that brilliant film
37:47
where Bogart really runs a terrible risk of exposing his
37:54
own private life in a play about, in a film about people's
37:58
private lives being exposed for for no reason other than their
38:01
sexuality. And of course she oh, she's got
38:03
that long career there. She's a genuine stuff.
38:06
The fact they got her, the fact she was available tells you that
38:08
there's no roads for older women.
38:10
The fact they got her at all shows how they think
38:12
out-of-the-box and they get this performance from it.
38:14
Yeah. It may be the best performance
38:16
in it. And yet she barely speaks from
38:22
Mistress to Maze. I so it's so sad.
38:27
It's so sad. And again, Nimrod is the figure
38:29
who's able to have the correct emotional response.
38:32
So again the text is saying here is the figure who's died out and
38:35
yet this is your other reference point.
38:39
This is your other figure who explains as well to you.
38:41
It's ace and Nimrod. It's it's utterly fascinating.
38:44
Out that does it. Here we go.
38:45
Here's the strong man. Here's the kind of proto fascism
38:48
of how to save Britain, Strength and.
38:51
Confusion. I want to provide a new order.
38:56
Wealth. Prosperity.
38:57
Oh Mccoy's reaction. Hello, the Atlas is pink.
39:02
I do. Wonder is this something
39:04
significant about the room being read as well?
39:07
Jane Eyre there, there's very, very little that's done
39:11
accidentally in this. They they've really thought this
39:13
through. So is this the the the only
39:15
point where we realised why redface is here has it?
39:20
No, no, it's there. It's there earlier on because he
39:22
shows the Doctor the picture. And I'm hunting the greatest
39:25
creature in the world. Crown Sax Coburg.
39:31
I mean, what's interesting here? This makes me think of the
39:34
relationship between skin sale and pharmacy.
39:38
In horror fan rock that's concealed is the gentleman and
39:45
and the palace is the kind of the black guard who's on the
39:48
make and has reached the top of the tree but but he's got no
39:52
class. There's something going on here
39:54
I think with with with with this relationship between redfers and
39:58
and Josiah because Josiah is this blowing.
40:00
He is he's described as the as the cuckoo.
40:02
There, there. There's something going on in
40:04
this about class as well I think.
40:05
But here he is. He's reduced to scrubbing
40:07
around. In in in in the half to try and
40:10
get that. That relationship's more
40:12
explicit horror fan roll, though.
40:13
It's like they get more time together as well.
40:15
But then it's it's a it's a Terence Dick script.
40:17
I mean it's it's Dixie's best script, I think, along with The
40:20
War Games, but it's it's brilliant.
40:22
Those those little character pieces in horror fan rock are
40:24
really, really good. There's something similar going
40:26
on here, but it's for a different purpose.
40:28
I haven't covered that one. You know, Paul, I haven't
40:31
covered that one. You.
40:32
Know Oh, well, you know, you know we might we might talk
40:35
about Pebble Mill and. The cream of Scotland Yard.
40:41
One of the great lines look at, look at how Josiah is actually
40:44
enjoying it. Because of course the other
40:46
thing is, to be honest, these three all know each other,
40:48
control Josiah, and and and and, like all know each other.
40:53
They're kind of locked in this horrible relationship with each
40:55
other, but they all know each other too well.
40:57
So there's a weird sense in which they've invaded this
41:01
house, but we've invaded their relationship and we can see this
41:04
kind of weird family self. And here's Daddy comes to sort
41:08
the mess out and these kind of twins who swap over
41:10
significantly and in the book. And I knew it was there.
41:15
And I went and checked. I'm read the book in 30 years.
41:17
All Josiah's hair comes out at the end.
41:19
All his red hair falls down. He's kind of devolving.
41:22
I love her line. It is very sisterly, she said,
41:25
that I shall take care of you. And Platt clearly had plans for
41:30
that with UNIT to go off, even the fact that Light probably
41:33
isn't dead, he disperses, he's dispersed, but the doctor files,
41:37
so he can be brought out. Because of course this kind of
41:39
which I didn't realise that Platt was an archivist for the
41:44
BBC in the radio, OK, it's a never ending task.
41:47
You're always having to add things to that catalogue and
41:50
it's like. You're telling me that he's
41:53
light? She is.
41:54
Well, what's interesting, his mother's name is Gwendolyn and
41:57
his father's name was Ernest and his grandfather was Josiah.
42:02
No, his father's society. One of the this is.
42:06
Autobiographical. Partly.
42:08
But I think what's going on here, of course, is, you know,
42:13
Light is trapped in this job of cataloguing and everything, and
42:17
he can't, as the Doctor doesn't. You can't destroy anything until
42:20
the cattle's complete. And it's like Dorothea Brooke in
42:23
Middlemarch when she realizes that if she takes on Casa bonds
42:26
research, it will never end. It's what Le Carre says.
42:30
There is no last day. There was no final product.
42:32
And it's the kind of it's the great fear of all researchers
42:36
that you'll never actually finish it.
42:37
There'll always be something else to put in there.
42:39
So there's that level working here as well, of course.
42:41
What is so good here, of course, is Nimrod is now free.
42:45
He's free to make that choice and that he's not now he's going
42:48
to. He's got his connection is with
42:51
the earth not with light and so he rejects that role.
42:53
His servant come slave I think. And of course, Mckenzie's
42:58
horribly racist reference to him is, was it Gypsy blood?
43:01
And like, yeah. I can see it in them, yeah.
43:04
Because the Doctor doesn't have those type of racial language.
43:06
This is different to talents when trying where the Doctor is
43:09
given that type. Oh, this little man and those
43:11
other little man, Yeah. Well, and of course the
43:13
policeman there says him, him talk plenty by and by a Johnny.
43:16
So the two policeman in the two Victorian texts are working the
43:19
same way. But here Nimrod is free and it's
43:22
great. But I mean, he died very young,
43:24
didn't he? The acts of playing Nimrod, He
43:26
died very young really. It's a really, really
43:30
beautifully observed. Role I think what I love about
43:32
that whole super size McCoy is so assured he doesn't even raise
43:35
his voice. Really.
43:36
Yeah. Yeah.
43:36
Yeah, yeah. And again, it's it's not the
43:38
big, but we've seen this before. This is, this is, this is, this
43:42
is the competition with Davros and remember.
43:43
Imagine. Imagine Colin playing this.
43:45
Oh, you can't. It would be all bombast.
43:48
Wouldn't. It because the Colin Baker's
43:51
costume immediately precludes the possibility of him being in
43:54
this. Mccoy's costume is ordinary
43:57
enough that he's not the person they look to.
43:59
It's Ace's 20th century costume, which attracts the attention and
44:03
highlights the fact that it's she who doesn't belong here,
44:06
even though she's got a relationship with the house that
44:08
the Doctor doesn't. There go the rungs and
44:10
evolutionary ladder. Those exploding heads are great.
44:13
Oh, they are. Well, there's your there's your
44:15
action adventure at the end of it.
44:16
No way out now, No changing. The point being his.
44:20
How easy it is to devolve from the height of power.
44:24
This is this is. You are the most unhappy
44:28
creature. I should look after you by
44:31
locking you in the cage. We have work to do to complete
44:34
the catalogue, so they're still going to do it then.
44:35
Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
44:37
But of course the dangers, they'll get distracted.
44:39
I mean, Platt, Platt says. What?
44:41
What are Redfers and Nimrod going to do when they discover
44:44
just how dysfunctional control and and server?
44:48
Or we'll never find out. Where they start swapping over.
44:51
But this is this is a weird family.
44:53
UNIT The idea though that they have to travel all the universe,
44:56
all the adventures they're going to have, you know, in order to
44:58
complete the catalogue. But then it's only this sense of
45:02
the earth is unique. It's a weird one because of
45:04
course Platt saying it, it counts, and it it it, it, it, it
45:09
rejects what the Bible says. But it also kind of implies that
45:12
earth is absolutely unique, and therefore it's absolutely
45:15
affirming what the Bible says. It's a weird thing.
45:17
Even that is avoiding what Doctor Who would normally do.
45:20
The amount of engines of Doctor Who wears like a spaceship taken
45:22
off. No, we're just cutting till them
45:24
gone. It's not important.
45:27
That's not the important thing. The important thing is here.
45:30
Think about the end of full circle.
45:31
You know what star are going out and all of that.
45:33
All the spectacle, all not impressed.
45:37
I quite like Full Circle, but it's it again it's about.
45:41
Evolution again? But it's the fear that you have
45:44
to have the space here also the the, the, the child actors in it
45:47
are terrible. They're all awful, I think.
45:51
I think, yeah. I mean the visuals and the
45:53
script are telling you two things in full serve in a way
45:56
that the visuals and script are absolutely working in in tandem
46:00
in this. What's frustrating is I think
46:03
like Mccoy's has been hit or miss, he's got it here, he's
46:07
absolutely got it and this is where you can't do anymore.
46:12
I mean. Even he says, doesn't he?
46:15
Even he says they might have had that 4th year.
46:18
You would have seen some incredible things.
46:20
I mean, that's why. I mean I have an issue with past
46:23
doctor adventure books. By and large, I avoid because of
46:27
the sense in which. Kind of know what's going to
46:29
happen, don't you? Well.
46:31
I kind of what's the point I could see with Colin Baker
46:34
because Baker doesn't get a fair shake of things at all and
46:38
certainly Big Finish show how good he he is and how good he
46:40
could have been. Maybe McCoy, but I I don't know.
46:44
I think you've got you've got three full seasons there with
46:46
McCoy and there is the the the what If and I Yeah, I think
46:50
you're right. How how often does Big Finish
46:52
really show us how good McCoy is and how far you really need to
46:59
go back to to this to the the sequence in the tunnels with the
47:04
the Ancient One in cursive Fenway.
47:07
This is the this is how this is how the 2nd Doctor defeats his
47:09
enemies. He talks them to death.
47:11
That's why the end of survival sticks out like a sore thumb,
47:13
because it's a big fight. But the trouble with big
47:18
finishes, their model is that it is like a site read script and
47:23
McCoy just does his worst work when he isn't prepared.
47:26
So he'll come in and he just reads it like he's reading it
47:29
off the page for the first time. Colin can do that.
47:31
Colin can look at a paragraph and find a way to pace it and
47:35
things like that. McCoy is all you can tell.
47:38
He has studied this script. Yeah, yeah.
47:41
I mean it's it's a very different performance method and
47:44
that, you know, Colin Baker's route to the role of the Doctor,
47:47
Mccoy's route to the role of Doctor are are two very
47:50
different things. You know, Baker had those big
47:54
roles in TV in War and Peace and then in in in The Brothers.
47:58
McCoy hasn't got a lot of TV work, but he's got this huge CV
48:02
of stage work and some very strange things and you know, and
48:06
they try and exploit that certainly same time in the Rani
48:10
on Greatest Show Galaxies. I think that I think Greatest
48:13
Show is him at his most confident.
48:15
I I think, I think, yeah. I mean, when he walks out and
48:19
the explosion happens behind him, then again there's the
48:22
explosion, but then it's just slowly crumples down the ground.
48:26
This this is a run of the show that will give you an exploded
48:29
explosion, but sometimes it won't because this is a Doctor
48:32
Who talks his enemies to death. Completely, completely off
48:36
topic. What you just said about the
48:37
past Doctor Adventures and Colin Terence Dick's got to write one
48:42
Players, Did you read that one? I've read.
48:45
Players. Yeah, but it's a complete
48:47
reinvention of Colin Baker's Doctor.
48:49
And it's Dick's going. I don't want to write the 6th
48:51
Doctor. I'm going to take the basics of
48:53
his personality and I'm going to make him likable.
48:56
Ah, it seems. It's it's similar to when Holmes
49:00
writes and resigns. He's not really interested in
49:03
writing for the 5th Doctor. He writes the Doctor and you can
49:07
see that Davis is responding to that.
49:12
That type of wasp is humour. That, that and that second
49:14
episode where he says, well OB jolly fun Perry, we can have
49:18
picnics by the fire and we wait for the time at all.
49:20
That kind of sarcasm that you occasionally get.
49:23
And there's a sense which the older, the older writers get it.
49:27
And then when you get to this run the new writers who looked
49:32
at the work of the old writers, they get it as well.
49:36
And that you get McCoy here. And then when you get Sophie
49:38
ordered in, they're really all working together to get this
49:42
thing as good as they can get it.
49:44
And Carmel is there and JNT as well.
49:47
Yeah, there is. There's a real sense that that
49:48
this is this. He's rejuvenating.
49:51
Not regenerating, obviously, but he's rejuvenating.
49:53
And actually he's now looking at the show.
49:55
Seriously. I kind of the sense in which
49:57
maybe Moffett in series 10, he's actually back producing by the
50:03
end of series 10. If you think about World Enough
50:05
in Time in The Doctor Falls, that's completely different type
50:08
of script and some of the stuff that's been knocked out there.
50:12
There's a huge sense that he's rejuvenated at the beginning of
50:15
that season. And I think you get something if
50:18
you if they're in it for too long, I think.
50:20
And I think you can see Davis has come back with a kind of
50:23
real Vim and a zip about him and Tennant as well.
50:26
I mean, Tennant's as good as you've ever seen it, yeah.
50:29
Tenant. They've ironed out those more
50:32
annoying characters. They're still there, but it's.
50:35
Brought way down as it was. I mean tenant tenant's original
50:38
wrong is the period of new who that I would watch rewatch the
50:42
least? Oh, really?
50:43
That I'm the other way around. No it's what I would what
50:45
rewatch. I find that the screech in the
50:47
goal. Blimey, Governor, we look at all
50:49
that, I'll. Let's hear, but I'll just talk
50:51
about the stories. I know, I mean, but I think my
50:53
favorite weird enough is is Science in the library Forest of
50:56
the Dead. And I think the great what if
51:00
about new Who is series five with Tennant in the original
51:05
version of it much more as I love Matt Smith in series five.
51:09
I think. I think he's brilliant.
51:10
He really. Intriguing.
51:11
What it, mind you, the other what if that intrigues me is for
51:14
what if Colin had stayed on with Carmel?
51:16
Yeah. I don't know.
51:18
I he I could see him in that first season.
51:20
I can't see him in 25. They they they would do
51:25
something different when they Well, it just goes to show
51:27
though, James TS insects were correct like you just said that
51:30
you give them the right script. Davidson and Razzani, Colin will
51:34
go forward to Big Finish and there's countless examples.
51:37
McCoy, Mark Platt comes in. You know, like you give them the
51:40
right script. They were savvy casting choices.
51:44
Oh yeah. I mean, I I think Ken Campbell
51:47
would be clearly wrong. If you want to see what Ken
51:49
Campbell could have looked like, the need, watch Erasmus Microman
51:52
over on CITV, which is an interesting show, but he is a he
51:56
is a kid show. But yeah, Ken Campbell's a
51:58
really versatile performer. I don't think he'd work in this.
52:00
I think McCoy McCoy on his best is as good as anyone.
52:04
I think I I adore him and I think when he's got the material
52:07
and the director, you know, when the wind's in the right
52:11
direction, as Riversong says, you you, you get gold and what
52:15
you get is something like this, which is only possible in this
52:19
run of the programme. It's kind of unique, wouldn't
52:22
work anywhere else, I don't think.
52:23
I don't. I don't need to tell anyone.
52:25
That is say what? What would you do with this big
52:28
needle? Rice.
52:29
Bid me, you know, he wouldn't know what to do with it either.
52:31
I don't think much as I kind of changed my position in bid Mead.
52:35
I used to think he wasn't very good.
52:36
I actually think season 18 is very good and I think he can
52:39
write for the 5th doc the way most people can't.
52:41
But I can't see that they would have produced something like
52:43
this. I mean, State of Decay is too
52:45
much for them really, isn't it? Well what's a you think about
52:49
Kinder? Yeah which went, which went
52:51
through bid Mead and Anthony Root and then finally failed.
52:54
But it was sort of beaten into shape by the time and say we've
52:56
got his hands on it. So he just did a little bit of
52:59
work on it when he got when they did that again with Snake dogs,
53:02
which is still a great script. I love it's.
53:04
Far more traditional Doctor than you, absolutely kinder.
53:08
So I think, say we would have taken hold of this and we would
53:10
have got our explosion and we would have got our villain
53:13
confrontations and we would have got our terrible cliffhangers.
53:17
Although not necessarily because if it was the same Lord who
53:21
writes Revelation, the Daleks, that gives you a big explosion
53:25
but it's kind of grudging. You've got a very different so,
53:28
so there you know can do it but it's whether as writer rather
53:32
than script editor, What as a script editor he would do with a
53:35
script like this. I don't I don't know how far it
53:37
would have got. In fact I I think if Holmes, if
53:39
Holmes doesn't do the Russian set thing that's being pitched
53:43
10 or 15 years before this. I don't know that say what picks
53:46
up this. But Carmen I think you can see
53:49
because he's thinking about showing a different way and
53:52
because of the kind of background of what he's reading
53:56
and how you know Platts pitching this.
53:58
I I think it it can only work at this point in time.
54:02
I don't think he would even work in 25.
54:04
I think it can only work in 26 as part of this trilogy about
54:07
Ace. It really is a fascinating
54:10
decade to talk about the 80s. And you and I have, on our first
54:14
two hamster commentaries together, gone to the point
54:17
where you know we're at crisis point, resurrection of the
54:19
Daleks, and to a point where it's all coming together and
54:23
singing. Would you please grace me with
54:27
three fabulous reasons? So, I mean, you've given me 500
54:31
already, but sort of condense your thoughts down into three
54:35
reasons as to why you would recommend this story.
54:39
Because of people. Well.
54:40
Listening Mccoy's best performance, it's got I think
54:46
the best supporting cast that you're likely to see in in most
54:52
Doctor Who and it's direction and it's design work are
54:58
phenomenal. That's even before you get into
55:00
the script. So the performance is the
55:03
design, the direction. This is what you should do.
55:06
And it's only an hour and a quarter long, hour and 15
55:09
minutes long. Yeah, it's it's awesome.
55:12
It's, it's, it's this, it's infinite.
55:15
Treasures in a little room is what it is.
55:19
Do you know what? I'm going to I'm going to leave
55:21
the discussion of ghosts like that.
55:22
Paul, where are you and I heading next?
55:24
Where would you like to go? Well, we can either tip forward
55:29
into the new series. We did talk about doing probably
55:33
the the complete reverse of this, which is an action-packed
55:37
Chris Chipnall story resolution, which I would be fascinated to
55:42
get your take on, because I don't think you dislike that
55:45
one. I don't dislike I I I like a lot
55:47
of Chipnall stuff and I've been watching Chipnall again recently
55:50
and I've been, I've been reappraising my own position
55:53
regarding it and I've I've found my previous thoughts wanting and
55:57
so I've been re educating myself.
55:59
OK, let's do that then, because I think we'll start with
56:03
resolution, but it will spill out into a an era spanning
56:07
conversation. Almost certain.
56:10
Let's do that. Well, until then then, thank you
56:14
very much for your time. It's been an absolute pleasure.
56:16
Thank you, Joe. I look forward to going into the
56:20
Dalek well with Chipman with you fairly soon.