Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Talks to James Lark about his choice of Eve of the Daleks

Transcript

Talks to James Lark about his choice of Eve of the Daleks · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:33
  Hamster with a Blunt pen knife for doing quicker Welcome back
• 0:38
  to a Hamster with a Blunt Pen Knife, the Doctor Who Commentary
• 0:42
  podcast. I never thought I would say
• 0:45
  this, but this is the first commentary podcast I've done in
• 0:50
  five weeks, which is the most amount of time since I started
• 0:55
  this endeavour three or four years ago that I haven't done
• 0:58
  it. So I'm very excited today to be
• 1:00
  talking to the magnificent Mr. James Lark.
• 1:05
  Hello James. Hello Joe, How would you?
• 1:09
  Be your your first one after after your sabbatical.
• 1:13
  That sounds disgusting. Excuse me just from
• 1:17
  commentaries, how are you today? I'm I'm well.
• 1:21
  I'm well. James, we are broaching an era
• 1:26
  of Doctor Who, which may, depending on which way your
• 1:30
  opinion falls, cause a little bit of contention.
• 1:34
  Why don't you tell everybody what we're going to be talking
• 1:35
  about today? I'm going to do that in just a
• 1:39
  I've just realized that your voice is coming out of my this
• 1:43
  is. Are you?
• 1:45
  This is not your listeners stereo.
• 1:47
  Want to be No, it's just you're coming out of my speakers and I
• 1:49
  wanted I wanted you in my headphones.
• 1:54
  This is this. This is the the magic of
• 1:57
  podcasting. It reminds me of that time.
• 2:00
  Do you remember when I gave you the reins at the start and you
• 2:02
  started going on about offering chairs to everybody around the?
• 2:05
  Oh, yeah. No, that, yes.
• 2:07
  Never give me the reins at the start.
• 2:08
  I do remember that. Yeah, I'm sure your listeners
• 2:10
  remember that as well. Or the other time, in fact we
• 2:13
  don't do stars too well. Do you remember the time when we
• 2:15
  did Desert Planet Picks and I said to you right, tell everyone
• 2:19
  about yourself and suddenly everything about you deserted
• 2:22
  your head and you need to some form of direction?
• 2:24
  That's right. I mean, I don't really know very
• 2:26
  much about myself. I'm quite suspicious of people
• 2:29
  who do. Anyway, sorry, what was the
• 2:30
  question again? What are we talking about today?
• 2:33
  Am I in your ears now? You are, yes.
• 2:36
  Has the sound changed for you at all?
• 2:38
  Not at all. I haven't distressed any
• 2:40
  listeners. I'm very sorry for that
• 2:43
  technical digression, but I'm much happier.
• 2:45
  And that's the that's the main thing.
• 2:47
  We're talking today about Eve of the Daleks, one of the one of
• 2:53
  the last of Jodie's stories, You're.
• 2:56
  Quite keen on the Daleks aren't you?
• 2:57
  You and I did Daleks Invasion of 2150.
• 3:00
  Eighteen. So I think we agreed that that
• 3:02
  was the that was where they peaked.
• 3:04
  That was the hype, yeah. It was all downhill from there,
• 3:06
  really. Borrow maybe the old David
• 3:08
  Whitaker script. The old David Whitaker script
• 3:11
  and and and and probably remembrance of the dialects and,
• 3:15
  and actually, I think this, I think this will come up in our
• 3:19
  conversation because one of the things that I like about Eve of
• 3:22
  the dialects is that it manages to do that thing that new who
• 3:26
  has done so relatively rare rarely, which is to capture
• 3:31
  something of that kind of original free song that that the
• 3:35
  dialects provoked in classic who, particularly the
• 3:39
  particularly the 60s. I think that there's something
• 3:41
  quite trad about the way the Daleks are treated in this
• 3:43
  story. Well, they're clever as well.
• 3:45
  I like. That exactly.
• 3:47
  That loop starts happening and they start figuring it out and
• 3:50
  then it's basically a game of who can out out out loop the
• 3:54
  loop and kill each other. And you get that sense of
• 3:57
  relentlessness. They they're not going to give
• 4:00
  up. And So what starts off looking a
• 4:04
  little bit like a bit of a comic motif, like all the repetition
• 4:06
  is played for laughs initially. And that's another thing where
• 4:09
  the Daleks were they, they weren't afraid to make the
• 4:11
  Daleks a bit funny in the 60s. But there is that it is a bit of
• 4:15
  a joke. But then you realize that the
• 4:17
  threat is that they are just going to keep coming and they're
• 4:19
  going to keep coming fast. They're going to get better at
• 4:21
  it every time. And so then the Daleks actually
• 4:23
  become really scary in this, which I love.
• 4:25
  Plus, it is one of the very, very rare Doctor Who stories
• 4:29
  where the Daleks can actually kill the Doctor.
• 4:32
  Yeah, and they do. And, and, and what we get in
• 4:34
  this what is essentially a chamber piece with a very tiny
• 4:38
  cast, we still get loads of exterminations, which is another
• 4:41
  thing that harks back to what happened in the 60s and, and
• 4:44
  surprisingly hasn't happened so much since.
• 4:49
  So they're funny, they're clever and they're total bastards as
• 4:53
  well. It's just the way we like them.
• 4:55
  Well, before we head into even Daleks, would you please tell
• 4:59
  the listeners because I like asking this question about the
• 5:01
  Jodi era because there is a myriad of opinions, usually one
• 5:04
  way or the other, what you think of 13's era as a whole and what
• 5:11
  you think of sort of this little period as well?
• 5:14
  Well, I am more of a fan of the Muffet era than you are,
• 5:21
  certainly, but. That would not be hard.
• 5:24
  But sure, even I as a as generally, you know, a fan of
• 5:29
  the Moffat era on balance, have to admit that there are highs
• 5:33
  and lows and and and some of the lows are pretty low.
• 5:36
  And I think I've kind of tired of the gimmickry that was so
• 5:42
  much kind of part of the his formula.
• 5:45
  You know, Moffat did his best, writes a really, really clever
• 5:49
  script, a really well structured script that makes you feel
• 5:52
  clever as well. And you come out of it at the
• 5:53
  end of it going, well, that could only have ended in that
• 5:55
  one way. But I never saw it coming.
• 5:56
  But I could've seen it coming because all the clues were
• 5:58
  there. That's that's him at his best.
• 6:00
  But there is a formula there where he does that on a bad day.
• 6:03
  And you sort of think, Yep, but if I start trumping that, that
• 6:06
  doesn't make any sense at all. But you've still done a thing
• 6:08
  where you started the second episode in a different location.
• 6:11
  So we didn't know, you know, that tricks that he uses as a
• 6:13
  writer. I mean, all writers have them.
• 6:16
  I just started to tire of the, the, the narrative trickery and
• 6:23
  also the fact that it had sort of become a show about time
• 6:27
  travel and a show about the Doctor in a way that I don't
• 6:29
  think Doctor Who really works as if you sustain that.
• 6:33
  I don't think Doctor Who is often about time travel because
• 6:37
  if it becomes about time travel, you're always left with that
• 6:40
  question, Well, why doesn't he just go back and do it again?
• 6:43
  Why doesn't he or she go back and say Vadrick?
• 6:46
  Or do you know what I mean? Like you start to question that
• 6:49
  premise too much and the whole show comes part of the seams.
• 6:52
  My feeling is that time travel is the the the Mac Guffin to get
• 6:55
  you into a story. The Doctor is the the character
• 6:59
  who leads you through it. But but the story should not
• 7:02
  really about the be about the time travel or the Doctor.
• 7:04
  It should be about the story and what I wanted from Doctor Who,
• 7:07
  particularly after kind of years of Moffat doing all these kind
• 7:10
  of story arcs and strange experiments with narrative, I
• 7:15
  just kind of thought, can we go back to good old fashioned
• 7:19
  storytelling where the TARDIS lands in a place and the thing
• 7:22
  that's interesting is the place and the characters and you're
• 7:25
  going to sell a, a, a ripping good yarn.
• 7:27
  And I think Chipmel's outlook was very much to do that.
• 7:31
  And particularly in Jodi's first series, you have, you know, no
• 7:37
  classic monsters. You've it's almost like a
• 7:39
  mission statement. We're we're going to go back to
• 7:41
  telling proper stories. I, I really respected that.
• 7:48
  I didn't think that the first series quite took off in the way
• 7:51
  that it needed to, to, to bring people with it.
• 7:55
  I don't think the writing was quite good enough.
• 7:58
  And I think we had one of the things with Moffett is you, you
• 8:00
  sort of come to take for granted just how sharp that dialogue is.
• 8:04
  And as, you know, overseeing the the series, you just get used to
• 8:09
  that. You know, you might find it
• 8:10
  irritating. You might think, well, people
• 8:12
  don't talk like that. But it has that kind of that
• 8:14
  spark, a kind of Aaron Sorkin level of of ease of writing
• 8:20
  dialogue. And we've with Chibnall, we lost
• 8:23
  that straight away. And I, you know, I listen to
• 8:27
  your strictly on on her first series.
• 8:30
  Is it series 11? We said every one of your
• 8:33
  comments or. Yeah, and but my comment, I hope
• 8:35
  you got that my comments weren't uniformly negative.
• 8:38
  No, they weren't at all. In fact, the thing that you were
• 8:41
  saying, and I didn't disagree, was that it was a little too
• 8:45
  serious for its own good and a little too much of A downer.
• 8:49
  You know people, people close to the companions dying and the
• 8:52
  atmosphere, there wasn't much zip to it.
• 8:55
  I really found The Woman Who Fell to Earth like it was trying
• 9:01
  too hard. The the whole tone of it, the
• 9:05
  whole visual style was kind of 9:00 at night.
• 9:10
  Channel 4 serious drama. Wrenching, wasn't it?
• 9:12
  Yeah, really. And I just kind of thought this,
• 9:14
  this doesn't feel kind of brave new start.
• 9:17
  Also, there is something about, you know, you're taking the show
• 9:20
  up north when when London is used as kind of an iconic
• 9:26
  location for the series. It has a kind of tourist guides
• 9:31
  Sheen to it. Because we all know London, you
• 9:34
  know, isn't all like that. And the reality of London is it,
• 9:38
  it can be pretty, pretty crossy in places.
• 9:41
  But what you see, you know, in Doctor Who particularly kind of,
• 9:45
  you know, think back to the the launch in 2005 is red buses and
• 9:48
  red telephone boxes and London Eye, Saint Paul's Cathedral, or,
• 9:52
  you know, all of the icons. Of.
• 9:53
  Visual shorthand, and I really think you can do that with
• 9:57
  Sheffield as well. And it just felt like it was
• 10:01
  going for kind of urban grimness that that that sort of doesn't
• 10:07
  do any favours to to the the location that you are trying to,
• 10:11
  you know, you're trying to do something quite rightly, you're
• 10:13
  trying to say there's more to England than just London, but
• 10:16
  if. Interestingly, when he tried
• 10:18
  again, when he tried with Liverpool in the flux, I thought
• 10:22
  he got that right. Yeah, agree.
• 10:24
  Sweet. Suddenly Liverpool looks amazing
• 10:27
  and you're like, well, I want to go and visit there.
• 10:28
  I sort of feel like it should have been more like that because
• 10:31
  that I, I do want Doctor Who to be a little bit escapist.
• 10:34
  I mean are. The Sheffield Tourist Board or
• 10:37
  were issuing refunds the the year season 11 came out.
• 10:41
  I also think that there is I, I wanted it to go the whole way
• 10:45
  and do pure historicals. And I heard your discussion on
• 10:49
  Rosa. I heard your justification for
• 10:50
  the for the sort of sci-fi element.
• 10:52
  I didn't buy it. And I actually, as you were
• 10:54
  talking about Rosa, I, I realized how I would have
• 10:57
  written it rather than having the, the, the TARDIS crew as
• 11:02
  kind of House of witnesses to what was happening.
• 11:07
  I feel like they should have been intervening, right?
• 11:09
  Rather than the threat coming from this fairly weak kind of
• 11:12
  character from the future whose, whose justification is, is, is
• 11:17
  is pretty kind of thinly drawn. It should have been one of the
• 11:21
  companions wading in and trying to intervene, you know, trying
• 11:24
  to, to stop Rosa from having to go purse seats.
• 11:28
  It should have it. They should have been doing the
• 11:29
  Aztecs, but in the 21st century they should have actually had
• 11:35
  maybe maybe Graham, but you know, stand up for her and and
• 11:39
  in doing so, create a problem with the what should have been
• 11:44
  the timeline, something like that, you know, to actually make
• 11:46
  them active participants. And maybe that attack to
• 11:50
  establish that conversation between the doctor saying, no,
• 11:52
  you cannot change this and a companion saying, well, why
• 11:55
  can't I? Because this is right.
• 11:57
  You know, I wanted to see more kind of I, I think that would
• 12:01
  have been, that would have been the way to do it as a pure
• 12:04
  historical, but but with a, a real sense of, you know, the,
• 12:08
  the characters engaging with the subject matter.
• 12:11
  You see why other people like those though that and Punjab?
• 12:15
  Or does that confuse? Well, I think I think I think
• 12:17
  they're two of the strongest in in the series, but I still
• 12:20
  don't. I still don't think they're as
• 12:21
  strong as they should have been. I mean, you make you made an
• 12:23
  eloquent and very moving defence of demons of the Punjab and the
• 12:31
  sci-fi element to that, which again I didn't.
• 12:34
  Agree with it sort of hit me at the right of.
• 12:36
  Course it hit you at the right time, but I just wanted to see
• 12:39
  that story told as a historical. I thought the thing that was
• 12:41
  most interesting about that was the historical context.
• 12:44
  I didn't need the aliens and so although I admired Series 11, it
• 12:53
  left me a little bit cold. Why do I feel there's another
• 12:58
  buck coming though the. But is, and that's what I was
• 13:01
  anticipating from series 12, so Spy Full absolutely knocked me
• 13:06
  for six because it grabbed me in a way that I wasn't expecting.
• 13:09
  Do you think that's where it should have sort of started?
• 13:13
  Maybe not that story, but that confidence and that energy.
• 13:16
  Oh yeah, that, that, that confidence, that pace.
• 13:19
  And of course Spy Full is really funny as well.
• 13:21
  It's, it's got a a sense of humour that I think is lacking
• 13:24
  from Series 11 and the teamwork. Suddenly with with series 11 you
• 13:30
  have the problem that there are three companions which we all
• 13:32
  know just never really works because you're always left with
• 13:35
  one companion with nothing to do.
• 13:36
  And yet, in Spyville, Chipmills worked out how to use them all.
• 13:41
  And suddenly there's a joyousness to having three of
• 13:44
  them. And I've heard people make the
• 13:46
  argument, you know, when talking about the three companions in
• 13:50
  the Chipna era, and they poured a lot, the 1st Doctor 0 where
• 13:53
  there was often 3 companions. Don't watch those stories again,
• 13:56
  all right? Somebody was always the outlier
• 13:58
  in their story, whatever story it is.
• 14:01
  Absolutely. And and that was 1963 that
• 14:05
  television worked in a very different way.
• 14:06
  Of course they were going to three be 3 companions in 1963
• 14:09
  because they were looking to fill particular archetypes.
• 14:12
  Also because bear in mind, the doctor was not the hero from the
• 14:15
  start. Ian Chesterton was the hero at
• 14:18
  the start and and Barbara Wright was his kind of potentially
• 14:23
  romantic interest. Susan was there to to to to grab
• 14:27
  the teenagers. The Doctor was a mysterious
• 14:29
  character who actually has has written has the least to do in
• 14:33
  those very early stories. Maybe that's where Doctor Who
• 14:36
  paid, say, before Doctor Who took.
• 14:38
  Over. Oh, it was all downhill.
• 14:39
  All downhill from then on until. We came to the new series and
• 14:42
  then it all became about the companions again.
• 14:44
  Yeah, I, I, I do think companions when, when they're
• 14:49
  working well, the, the companions are more interesting
• 14:51
  than the Doctor because the Doctor's not there to be
• 14:54
  interesting. The Doctors, the, the most
• 14:56
  interesting thing about the Doctor is what we don't know
• 14:58
  about the Doctor. So the minute you have stories
• 15:01
  focusing on the doctor's past and the doctor's anxieties, and
• 15:06
  you know what make what makes the doctor tick, I, I just don't
• 15:08
  know that it necessarily delivers.
• 15:12
  I don't know what, I don't know what the expectation is if if
• 15:15
  we're examining the doctor too closely, but I'm not sure it's
• 15:17
  ever something we want to spend too much time doing.
• 15:19
  It's a weird obsessional, the new series, which I wish they'd
• 15:23
  sort of get over. But I think as well in 12, you
• 15:26
  can absolutely see from Spy Fall, actually probably from
• 15:29
  Resolution, that that is a group of actors that have Jill
• 15:33
  together and love working together, and I can just see it
• 15:37
  beaming off the screen. And it looks great as well.
• 15:39
  I mean, the other thing about Series 12 is that they have,
• 15:41
  they have brightened up the colour palette.
• 15:44
  That kind of murky filter they've used for everything in
• 15:48
  Series 11 is gone. Series 12 looks fibre.
• 15:51
  I mean, it looks fantastic. And I think we've had this
• 15:53
  conversation before. I don't think Doctor has ever
• 15:55
  looked better than in series 12 and series and you know, flux
• 16:01
  and, and everything the the, the last few episodes.
• 16:04
  I think Doctor Who looks so good.
• 16:06
  Bizarrely enough, with the Disney money, it feels like
• 16:08
  we've had a bit of a budget count.
• 16:10
  Yeah, it, it, it doesn't have the same it, it doesn't look as
• 16:14
  cinematic. Isn't it odd it looks more
• 16:16
  televisual? Didn't Race has a theory that
• 16:18
  Shiba's was aspiring for cinema and Rusty Davis absolutely right
• 16:22
  for television? I think that's absolutely.
• 16:25
  I think that's a shrewd observation.
• 16:27
  Yeah. And that's absolutely right.
• 16:29
  And it does look cinematic. And the effects, I think because
• 16:32
  they're so carefully deployed, are really astonishingly good
• 16:40
  for, for a television series, you know, with, with a, a
• 16:42
  fraction of the budget of the kind of the Disney ones and the
• 16:45
  and, and the Netflix series. Aside from the confidence, aside
• 16:49
  from the sort of the regulars being deployed better, aside
• 16:53
  from the effects, I think it's all the pace of 12, like every
• 16:57
  single episode of 12, except maybe Dear Darte, which is
• 17:02
  deliberately a measured pace for the first half.
• 17:06
  It's almost furious, isn't it? Like there's really no time to
• 17:09
  be bored. Although I mean, dear Darte is
• 17:12
  my favorite from that series as well, because it does it just
• 17:15
  does a, a ghost story really, really well.
• 17:17
  And and then it does a Simon story really well.
• 17:20
  But I the low point for me, and this is I'm I'm at odds with
• 17:24
  most of fandom is fugitive of the Judoon, which started so
• 17:29
  well. I just I and then it became a
• 17:32
  story about the doctrine. It became a kind of fan
• 17:34
  servicing. It's like, oh, and here's
• 17:35
  Captain Jack. Why no reason just to, you know,
• 17:38
  because people want to see him and it doesn't really stand up
• 17:42
  to scrutiny either. The Timeless child thing it it's
• 17:45
  like a kind of a ship version of the cardinal master plan.
• 17:49
  So I'm not sure what it brings to the party and I certainly
• 17:52
  don't, you know, I don't think we've ever had explanation
• 17:56
  enough for what we saw in Fugitive, the Jejune and the
• 18:01
  Timeless Children. It, you know, anyone with a
• 18:04
  knowledge of the series starting to scrutinize it, it's going to
• 18:09
  find holes in it and things that just don't make any kind of
• 18:11
  sense. Why was it shaped like a police
• 18:14
  box when that apparently got stuck, you know, in An Unearthly
• 18:19
  Child, You know, it's just simple things like that.
• 18:21
  But also, I mean, why, why do I care?
• 18:26
  Why do you know? I don't care who the doctor is.
• 18:29
  I don't care about the doctor's background.
• 18:31
  I want it to be shrouded in mystery.
• 18:32
  That's that's for me is where the where where the character
• 18:36
  is. Which I think he's, I think
• 18:37
  that's what he's aiming. For with I'm not sure but.
• 18:40
  Unfortunately he sort of replaces a really shitty because
• 18:43
  by this point Gallifrey is so terrible.
• 18:46
  A really shitty origin story for the Doctor with a sort of almost
• 18:51
  a shit but slightly more obscure version.
• 18:54
  Yeah, I mean, I agree with you that Gallifrey basically should
• 18:57
  never be visited. If you don't want to do
• 18:58
  Gallifrey stories, just ignore Gallifrey.
• 19:01
  You never have to go there. You don't need to set fire to
• 19:03
  it. You don't need to destroy
• 19:04
  Gallifrey again. You can just not tell stories
• 19:07
  about Gallifrey. What?
• 19:09
  I'm not sure what was achieved there.
• 19:10
  Like, was he hoping to put other writers off using Gallifrey
• 19:13
  because it's on fire now? It just never go there.
• 19:16
  Just ignore it. You were the 8th Doctor books
• 19:18
  when the Doctor tended to lose his memory, you know, every
• 19:21
  other week and everyone was going.
• 19:22
  Oh, not again. It's gone that way with
• 19:24
  Gallifrey now. Is that?
• 19:25
  No, it's back. No, no, it's gone again.
• 19:27
  Oh well. Jesus Christ, just leave it
• 19:29
  alone. Yeah.
• 19:31
  I mean, I don't even know whether Gallifrey ever properly
• 19:33
  came back. Obviously we we sort of briefly
• 19:35
  went there, but it was never quite clear to me what was going
• 19:38
  on with Gallifrey it. Was in some sort of pocket.
• 19:40
  Universe in a painting and also also who cares?
• 19:47
  And then Russell Davis came back and just sort of forgot
• 19:49
  everything that happened between the two showrunners and went,
• 19:51
  well, let's just pretend it's still gone from when I was
• 19:53
  there, you know, yes, fair enough.
• 19:56
  All right, well then series 12 we're on the up.
• 19:58
  So what about 13? We're we're doing a six part
• 20:02
  pandemic filmed. It must have been a nightmare to
• 20:06
  shoot this. Mini series of Doctor Who.
• 20:10
  Yeah. Well, there's been attempted
• 20:11
  before. I, I, I love that he did that.
• 20:14
  I love that he wanted to tell a story over six episodes.
• 20:19
  I think that given the circumstances, it's kind of
• 20:22
  miraculous that it was made at all and that it looks as good as
• 20:26
  it does. I think you know it.
• 20:28
  There are weak episodes and there are strong episodes and it
• 20:32
  may be, it may be shows up. Why actually Doctor Who
• 20:37
  shouldn't be one continuous story?
• 20:40
  Much like, I mean much like the final series of Buffy the
• 20:47
  Vampire Slayer shows exactly the same thing.
• 20:50
  You know, this is a format designed for telling individual
• 20:52
  standalone stories and the most successful story arcs are
• 20:59
  written in such a way that you can still watch the individual
• 21:03
  stories as a, as a casual viewer and not be too bothered about
• 21:06
  what's going on with the ark. And I think the the best
• 21:11
  episodes of flux are the ones that stand alone.
• 21:15
  So war of the suntarans, I think it's brilliant.
• 21:18
  I think village of the Angels is, is pretty darn good as well.
• 21:21
  I, I didn't think it was quite coherent enough as, as a six
• 21:26
  part adventure. And, and it did the thing, and
• 21:30
  this brings us back to even the dialects.
• 21:32
  It did the thing that I think new Doctor Who has been kind of
• 21:36
  getting wrong in its season finales kind of since 2006,
• 21:43
  where it's sort of it's always on a, such a, an enormous scale
• 21:50
  that it's hard to invest in and even to communicate the kind of
• 21:56
  the, the meaningfully communicate a sense of that
• 21:59
  scale. And of course, flux is, is the
• 22:01
  biggest thing ever really. Well, maybe since Lugopolis, you
• 22:05
  know, it, it's, it's everything being destroyed.
• 22:08
  And I just, you know, at that point, it's on a scale where you
• 22:11
  like kind of, well, who, who really care.
• 22:14
  You know what? When you're, when you're, when
• 22:17
  you're casually kind of wiping out entire galaxies.
• 22:21
  You can say that one from Tom Baker in The Pirate Planet was
• 22:24
  it You commit mass murder on a scale that's almost
• 22:26
  inconceivable when you asked me to appreciate it.
• 22:30
  Exactly that. How can you have a feeling about
• 22:33
  mass murder on such a scale? I mean, I've been talking about
• 22:35
  a lot of books lately. I've done a couple of Jim
• 22:37
  Mortimer's, and, you know, he likes murdering entire worlds,
• 22:41
  you know, things like that. And I'm just like, yeah, I don't
• 22:44
  care, like. And I sort of think, you know,
• 22:47
  Russell is, is guilty of this as well.
• 22:50
  You know, it's it's every, every season finale.
• 22:52
  It was like it had to be a little bit bigger, you know, it
• 22:54
  had to be, you know, the whole planet, you know, the whole
• 22:57
  universe. And I think he got it right in
• 22:59
  2005 where it wasn't actually about the the, the scale of the
• 23:04
  drama. It was about the personal nature
• 23:07
  of it. It became about Rose, which I
• 23:08
  think is exactly how to make the stakes really high as you make
• 23:14
  it about characters you care about, which is where even the
• 23:16
  Daleks is so refreshing because it gets that small stakes are
• 23:21
  not necessarily low stakes. And it is incredibly refreshing.
• 23:25
  I mean, I think this is, again, pandemic filmed.
• 23:28
  So through necessity, it has to be a small location and a small
• 23:32
  group of people and Kelsea Prize that plays the Christian more
• 23:36
  strengths. Absolutely.
• 23:38
  And it's all and the and and the whole jeopardy in Eve, the
• 23:42
  Daleks is will the Doctor and her companions and these two
• 23:48
  other characters who through the course of the drama, you
• 23:51
  absolutely start to love. Will they escape?
• 23:55
  That's it. There's no there's no grander
• 23:58
  consequences than that. But and yet that's, that's all
• 24:01
  we need. That is the highest stakes of
• 24:03
  all. Will Will the people we care
• 24:04
  about survive? Chris Chipnall took over Doctor
• 24:09
  Who, right? I thought what we were going to
• 24:11
  get in series 11 was what he delivered in The Power of Three,
• 24:15
  which was sort of good character beats for the regulars, fast
• 24:20
  pace, some fun visual imagery, and just just that sort of
• 24:25
  feeling, that just feeling of enjoyment.
• 24:28
  Yeah, I don't think that really was there in 11.
• 24:30
  The thing he learned by Season 13, and I'm including the
• 24:33
  fluxiness as well, is just to make scene to scene the thing
• 24:37
  really fucking entertaining. Lots.
• 24:39
  Of pieces, you had those brilliant villains swarming as
• 24:42
  you're campaigning every scene, you know, those triangles
• 24:46
  zooming about the place, a Sontaran invasion, that Sontaran
• 24:49
  that wants to eat chocolate. You know, there's just really
• 24:52
  fun things going on all the time.
• 24:53
  But I think, I think the comedy that he injects from 13 onwards,
• 24:59
  more of it lands than not. I think before that is hit and
• 25:02
  miss. I don't know why.
• 25:03
  I just feel like John Bishop coming in makes the show
• 25:06
  funnier. Yeah, although he's not playing
• 25:10
  as a funny character as well. He's playing it completely
• 25:12
  straight. It is funny, isn't it?
• 25:15
  But he's funny in this. I think he has a great scene in
• 25:17
  this where he winds up a Dalek. You know, I agree and they are
• 25:20
  like we've discussed in strictly Legend of the Sea Devils, which
• 25:23
  is massively flawed but but still, as you say, entertaining
• 25:28
  and and the script is full of great one liners.
• 25:31
  And you gave the best ever reading of a single Doctor Who
• 25:35
  story on Strictly Come Hamster when you talked about Power of
• 25:39
  the Doctor and practically had an orgasm whilst listing out
• 25:43
  it's huge lifts of faults before finishing off with a climax of I
• 25:49
  love it. I mean, it's, it's an absolute
• 25:53
  mess, but what what, what what what cold hearted idiot would
• 26:00
  would not just relish everything about the power of the doctor.
• 26:03
  Even Oh, I loved it when she put on that bomber jacket all.
• 26:06
  Right. Oh yeah, Yeah.
• 26:07
  OK, I think she's one of the best things in it.
• 26:10
  I'll never thought I'd say that. OK, well then let's go round to
• 26:14
  Eva the Daleks. That was a fantastic overview of
• 26:17
  the Christian era. So I'm getting the impression of
• 26:19
  sort of flawed, but you sort of appreciated it more as it went
• 26:23
  along. Yeah, I, I, I wish that he'd, I,
• 26:27
  I wish they hadn't got sidetracked in series 12 with
• 26:30
  with his his grand back story idea and had actually just
• 26:36
  carried on telling really good stories because that's how that
• 26:38
  starts, you know, even or from 55, I think is is eminently
• 26:43
  watchable. I think the stuff with series 12
• 26:46
  that I find weakest is all to do with the Doctor, the mythology
• 26:55
  and all elements. And I don't think mythology is
• 26:57
  chipper strength. I think that I think good, clean
• 27:00
  storytelling is his strength. And it is weird because he did
• 27:04
  go completely One Direction, you're right, and then did a
• 27:06
  total U, Turner said. Actually, no, we're going to go
• 27:08
  the other way. We're going to have Daleks and
• 27:10
  Suntaras and Sidemen and and. It feels planned, though.
• 27:13
  I I do think there's something very clever about giving us a
• 27:15
  series with absolutely nothing from the past.
• 27:18
  We're going to tell new stories here and spy for you.
• 27:21
  You don't. You're not expecting the Master
• 27:23
  to turn up. You're really not, because
• 27:25
  that's not what he's been doing. What about Eva, the Daleks then,
• 27:30
  before we press play on this episode, is this a highlight of
• 27:34
  the era? Oh yeah, you asked me because
• 27:38
  I'm nervous about doing a commentary about New who because
• 27:41
  I just don't know it as well as the classic series and I'm not
• 27:46
  sure. I'm just not sure what I have to
• 27:49
  say about it, though clearly we have lots to say about it, so
• 27:52
  maybe I shouldn't be nervous, but.
• 27:53
  But you asked me what my I think.
• 27:57
  You asked me what my second favorite Jodie story was.
• 28:00
  Because clearly power is my favorite.
• 28:02
  Because power is everyone's favorite.
• 28:03
  Surely my favorite. Is demons sort of Punjab but
• 28:09
  then I just like to be with. It I mean, that's the best,
• 28:11
  that's the best, but your favorite is power.
• 28:13
  Sure, your power. I don't.
• 28:14
  Know on the right day it could be haunting of Verdi Adarsi.
• 28:17
  Yeah, yeah, no, OK, I have other favourites, but you know, if, if
• 28:22
  you'll go to Jodie's, like if the one you're going to keep
• 28:24
  coming back to when you're feeling a little bit poorly is
• 28:26
  the power of the Doctor, what's what's the one that you're going
• 28:29
  to kind of rate above all others?
• 28:31
  I mean he. Opens with the Cybermen
• 28:33
  attacking a space train. It gets enough on the right
• 28:37
  foot. Straight away it's.
• 28:39
  Got so much going for it. No, I I did think about demons.
• 28:43
  I thought about haunting. And then I thought, do you know
• 28:46
  what Eve of the Daleks was? It was sort of unexpected as
• 28:50
  well, because it's that I think I know he's been criticized for
• 28:54
  doing not Christmas stories, but they went, they were there.
• 28:59
  A couple went out on New Year's Eve.
• 29:00
  Or was this the only one? No, all of the SO resolution.
• 29:05
  Of course, of course a resolution and the.
• 29:07
  Other one whose name I never remember because it wasn't that
• 29:10
  memorable. Revolution.
• 29:11
  So Resolution followed by Revolution, which are both the
• 29:15
  Dalek stories, both bangers as well.
• 29:17
  I, I, you know, love, love them both in different ways.
• 29:20
  And then another Dalek story and, and I think this is the
• 29:25
  best of the three. There's one thing you haven't
• 29:29
  mentioned in your overview of the Chris Chibnall era, and it's
• 29:34
  very unusual as well. I love Ave.
• 29:37
  One because you always have a unique take.
• 29:39
  You haven't mentioned the Doctor herself.
• 29:43
  No, I haven't and I don't. I don't want to be.
• 29:52
  I don't want to be mean spirited about this because I think Jodie
• 29:54
  Whisker is a phenomenal actor and I think she really, really
• 29:59
  made a mark. I mean, her Doctor is iconic.
• 30:02
  Clearly they all are. I'm not sure how well her Doctor
• 30:09
  is written. And again, it goes back to kind
• 30:12
  of series 11. I'm not sure how many
• 30:16
  discussions they had about kind of what actually is this Doctor
• 30:18
  going to be or how much they sort of left it in her hands.
• 30:24
  I, I feel like kind of Peter Davidson is quite an interesting
• 30:27
  comparison because I feel like exactly the same thing happens
• 30:30
  with him where they're not sure how to write the doctor, but
• 30:32
  then but he's going to be more serious than Tom and and a bit
• 30:37
  more vulnerable. But in terms of how to play it,
• 30:40
  it's, you know, Peter Davidson is, is sort of making decisions.
• 30:43
  And that's why you can see his doctor get better year on year
• 30:48
  because he becomes, because it's because it's been left to him.
• 30:52
  He doesn't get a lot of direction.
• 30:53
  He just becomes better at making judgments about how to say, how
• 30:57
  to deliver the lines. And you know, by Andrew Zani,
• 31:00
  you've got, you know, he's arrived at the doctor.
• 31:02
  He wants to play all along. By which time it's a little bit
• 31:06
  late. I do think that's true of Jodie
• 31:10
  as well though. I think so, and I think that
• 31:12
  initially she's just playing it with kind of raw enthusiasm,
• 31:16
  which can get you quite a long way.
• 31:18
  And she certainly takes us with her.
• 31:19
  You know, I, she's infectiously enthusiastic, but there are
• 31:23
  times when certainly in series 11, her doctor feels a little
• 31:28
  bit like tenant light. And I'm not sure either that the
• 31:35
  kind of anguish that she's rather artificially put through
• 31:39
  in 12 is necessarily doing her any favours because suddenly
• 31:43
  kind of it's enthusiasm, but also she doesn't look very
• 31:47
  serious and Gallifrey is burning.
• 31:50
  I, I don't think those two things ever kind of quite
• 31:53
  cohere. I just think she gets better at
• 31:55
  playing, you know, working out how to, how to balance it.
• 31:57
  And, and I, and I think what you say about the kind of the comedy
• 32:00
  dynamic as well is it's very telling here, because I think
• 32:06
  that that's where her strength is.
• 32:08
  She's a very funny doctor. And when she's, when she's
• 32:12
  working with this team, you know, we said with series 12,
• 32:15
  they, they go into it and you just feel like these people have
• 32:18
  worked together for long enough. They absolutely know each
• 32:20
  other's kind of there's a rhythm to the way they speak and it's
• 32:23
  really fun to be with them. And I think it gets even more
• 32:26
  fun. And even the Daleks, that
• 32:28
  dynamic is, is there from the start.
• 32:32
  I love that there's the a scene that I remember loving first
• 32:35
  time around and I I loved just as much where on repeat viewings
• 32:40
  is where they're all sitting on the sofas.
• 32:41
  Oh. That's my one of my favorite
• 32:43
  bits this whole episode. I'm in the Daleks entrance and
• 32:46
  they're all just sitting around. It just feels so natural that
• 32:48
  it's like, yes, this, this is, this is this team.
• 32:50
  They've arrived. They've arrived.
• 32:54
  Well, shall we go into either the Daleks?
• 32:57
  I think we're going to have a lot of fun talking about this.
• 33:00
  Are you hooked up and ready to go?
• 33:02
  Hooked up. And ready to go.
• 33:04
  OK, well why don't you count as in then?
• 33:06
  So for those of you watching along, which I think is probably
• 33:10
  none of you, we're going to go in 321.
• 33:16
  I think you're right. Oh, we start with a song, don't
• 33:18
  we? I know, it's lovely, isn't it?
• 33:23
  Enter taxi and self storage center.
• 33:26
  This looks like it's going to be riveting.
• 33:28
  It, it gives it because it's not a Christmas special.
• 33:33
  It's a, it's a New Year's special.
• 33:34
  I know some fans were, were upset about that.
• 33:37
  I just, I, I, I had grown a little bit tired of stories set
• 33:41
  on the planet Christmas with the Monster Called Christmas and
• 33:46
  obligatory Kind of snow. We sort of gave up and started
• 33:49
  doing Christmas movies and things didn't.
• 33:51
  We, Yeah, I just love that this has, you know, it's got the kind
• 33:55
  of the vestiges of Christmas lights and it's got that kind
• 33:58
  of, it's got that lovely kind of jazz, you know, light, light,
• 34:02
  light music opening. But then it undercuts it
• 34:04
  straight away. You know, it cuts out and it's
• 34:06
  actually, it's going to be a miserable New Year's Eve, which
• 34:08
  I love. I like that it's, you know, it
• 34:10
  doesn't feel the need to be too kind of celebratory.
• 34:14
  A miserable A working New Year's Eve, and probably the longest
• 34:18
  New Year's Eve on record. Yes.
• 34:21
  And huge please may I give huge praise.
• 34:24
  I'd never get her name right. Is it Ashling or ailing?
• 34:28
  Well, I'm going to defer to you on this because I've no idea.
• 34:33
  And I'm going to say Ashling I. Ashling B.
• 34:36
  Ashling B What? What else has she been in?
• 34:39
  She did a comedy show on Channel 4 that was big.
• 34:43
  That's all I know her from. All I know is she makes her mark
• 34:46
  in this episode and then some. From the, from the minute she
• 34:49
  walks in through those doors, doesn't she?
• 34:51
  I think she's brilliant in it. I've I've not seen her in
• 34:53
  anything else. I'm not, not knowingly anyway.
• 34:55
  I might have accidentally watched her and not not realized
• 34:57
  it was her, but. Tell me if I'm mad.
• 34:59
  I think guest actors can come in in this Chris Chibnall era and
• 35:03
  they either swallow down his dialogue and it it's very
• 35:06
  indigestible, or they come in with a huge amount of
• 35:10
  personality and make spin gold out of it.
• 35:13
  And she makes every joke land in this I.
• 35:15
  Think she does and the Chibnall era is is is basically it's good
• 35:19
  for for guests characters because he gives his guest cast
• 35:24
  plenty to do. And so when they are on side
• 35:27
  with the with the writing, it's, it's a joy.
• 35:30
  Every New Year special he brought in a brilliant female
• 35:33
  guest, actor Richie, You had, I forget the woman's name, Who was
• 35:38
  the Prime Minister of Revolution of the Daleks?
• 35:40
  Can't remember that. Woman who was incredible and I
• 35:43
  think this is the PS to resist on so because what I really like
• 35:47
  about Sarah is she isn't very nice.
• 35:51
  She's, she's really not nice and, and that's one of the one
• 35:57
  of the things that's brilliant about this.
• 35:58
  She's not nice at all. She's here being basically kind
• 36:03
  of quite callous towards a character who is written as
• 36:06
  quite annoying. So on paper, you've got 2
• 36:10
  characters who you shouldn't be at all interested in.
• 36:14
  Although I've, I've never bought the argument that characters
• 36:16
  have to be nice for you to be interested in them.
• 36:18
  So I'll, I'll rephrase that. These are two characters who you
• 36:20
  want to loathe. You have to loathe the one for
• 36:23
  being like. Creepy.
• 36:24
  Stop hanging around this. Stop hanging around with your
• 36:27
  Monopoly set, you weirdo. And can't you just be a bit
• 36:32
  nicer on New Year's Eve to this poor man who's clearly lonely?
• 36:36
  Like so. Why do we like these people
• 36:38
  then? Well.
• 36:38
  We, I'm, I'm not sure we do it first, I think, but I think that
• 36:42
  the dialogue is, is funny. So we don't have to like them
• 36:46
  because I think we're entertained by them.
• 36:50
  And I think it's what this is one of those rare chipper
• 36:52
  scripts where he sees gags as well.
• 36:54
  So she says there at the start about all the things that you're
• 36:57
  not allowed to have in the storage centre.
• 36:59
  And of course this unseen character.
• 37:01
  And I love it when you have an unseen character with a lot of
• 37:04
  personality who's storing all the stuff upstairs.
• 37:07
  He's got every single thing on her list as they open all the
• 37:10
  doors. Yeah, we're going to.
• 37:15
  We're going to grow to that because because of the screen
• 37:17
  time they're given, we actually start to realize why they are
• 37:21
  like they are. So the fact that he's creepy and
• 37:23
  the fact that she's aggressive start to make sense.
• 37:26
  We, you know, we, we grow to to know them.
• 37:28
  And in in doing that, he gives us plenty of things to love as
• 37:32
  well. But he also uses the loop to
• 37:35
  allow especially Sarah to become a.
• 37:37
  Better become better, better versions of themselves.
• 37:40
  And that's that's it. It's got a it's, it's, it's,
• 37:43
  it's kind of got a slightly Christmas Carol vibe.
• 37:46
  Will you please watch this special effect as the TARDIS
• 37:49
  folds in on itself? I mean it is gorgeous.
• 37:52
  Look at it. I mean, I have some of that is
• 37:56
  physical, isn't it? And what I think you've got here
• 37:59
  as well is you've got a A1 time and Out director who's come into
• 38:04
  the show and got the tone perfectly.
• 38:07
  So she knows she'll do all of that fireworks inside the
• 38:10
  TARDIS. Then they run out.
• 38:11
  Utter silence and the line from yes.
• 38:16
  I was going to ask how you feel about the the TARDIS interior.
• 38:19
  Well, I do have a model of it up here very kindly sent to me from
• 38:22
  Jeff from who corner to corner. And it does look, rather
• 38:26
  disturbingly, like a big penis sticking out of the tallest
• 38:28
  console and a load of limp penises coming.
• 38:30
  It's a very strange design. I like the sort of new ageing
• 38:34
  design, isn't it? But my mother was a New Ager so
• 38:37
  she was very much of approved of salt lamps everywhere.
• 38:39
  Yes, it's got the whole crystal thing, hasn't it?
• 38:42
  It's it's like a cross between a a a new age shop and a spa.
• 38:48
  But. Then you've got that sort of
• 38:50
  weird sort of industrial vibe with the walls.
• 38:53
  You know, with the walls. That sort of invasion of Time
• 38:55
  War with all the cogs. I'm not sure it quite works.
• 38:59
  I I think they get better at lighting it though.
• 39:01
  They don't watch the early ones. That is absolutely true that I
• 39:04
  don't think it. I don't think there's a single
• 39:06
  shot of the TARDIS interior in in series 11 where it looks like
• 39:10
  anything much at all. I.
• 39:11
  Remember in Can You Hear Me where they're suddenly dyeing it
• 39:14
  like Reds and Blues. Yes yeah, suddenly it's quite
• 39:18
  sexy. I, I mean my, my, my personal
• 39:21
  taste is that the, the the more kind of Spartan and white is
• 39:27
  just the the best colour for the TARDIS interior as what's.
• 39:30
  The latest 1 then. No, it's too big.
• 39:33
  It's very big, isn't it? I, I, I'm, I'm afraid I think
• 39:36
  that there is also there's a point at which it gets too big
• 39:39
  for you to quite process that it's inside the the police box.
• 39:45
  Stop spending your money on a big empty room and start
• 39:48
  spending it on the production values.
• 39:49
  Because because the because the original TARDIS had had a sense
• 39:53
  of scale but could still be a little bit claustrophobic.
• 39:57
  Well, I will say I do really love that Kapoldi Tardis.
• 40:01
  No, I love that one. That's that's, that's a
• 40:04
  beautiful, but it's very, but it's a very clean design that
• 40:07
  there's not too much going on, which most of the the new artist
• 40:10
  designs have had. They've been very busy.
• 40:13
  Now, Chris Chibnall does remember something that Steven
• 40:16
  Moffett often forgot, and that is that Daleks kill people.
• 40:19
  So immediately in this episode we've got a Dalek appear.
• 40:22
  The first thing he does is. Kills and it's great because of
• 40:25
  course we don't know we're in a loop yet.
• 40:26
  So when you first see that you think, hang on, you've just
• 40:28
  you've introduced get. Star of the Week.
• 40:31
  Ruthlessly killing them off in a way that the Daleks absolutely
• 40:34
  ought to do. So it's shocking.
• 40:35
  It's great he he gets to have his cake and in a moment he's
• 40:38
  going to then eat it repeatedly. And what I really think is, and
• 40:42
  we'll sort of get into this as we go along, very sophisticated
• 40:44
  about this is I've watched a lot of genre TVI have seen more time
• 40:48
  loot episodes than I care to shake a stick at.
• 40:50
  Window of Opportunity from SG-1, Cause and Effect from TNG Monday
• 40:56
  from The X-Files when the bank exploded.
• 40:58
  This is, I think, the best time loop episode I've seen as
• 41:02
  written, just because it does lots of clever things with
• 41:05
  character and with plot. And it really sets out the
• 41:09
  we're, we're not quite there yet, but it sets out the
• 41:12
  structure very clearly. So anyone watching knows exactly
• 41:16
  what's going to happen and and and and how the options for the
• 41:20
  characters become more and more limited each time.
• 41:23
  Do you? Know this was a last minute
• 41:25
  replacement script. I didn't know that.
• 41:27
  Yeah. So this one was never supposed
• 41:29
  to be made. It was going to be Legend of the
• 41:30
  Sea Devils and Power of the Doctor.
• 41:32
  And then they asked for another one because they wanted Power of
• 41:34
  the Doctor to speed up this centenary special on land at a
• 41:36
  certain time. So they said, well, can you do
• 41:39
  one last script? So this was basically knocked
• 41:41
  out in a couple of weeks. It was the fastest script he
• 41:43
  ever wrote. Sometimes that's just really
• 41:45
  good for writers, and sometimes they produce their best stuff
• 41:47
  that way. Yeah, think of Douglas Adams and
• 41:50
  sit your death. I don't know what you think of
• 41:52
  Midnight. I don't think you like it, but
• 41:53
  it's very popular. I know the midnight is popular.
• 41:56
  I think, I think midnight is insubstantial, but but you know,
• 41:59
  I can see why people like it. I think it's, it's very
• 42:02
  effectively written. I just, I think there's a cop
• 42:04
  house at the end where he refuses to explain what the
• 42:06
  Hell's gone on for the last 40 minutes.
• 42:08
  I do think this is a hugely confident performance from Jodie
• 42:12
  Whittaker in. This yes.
• 42:13
  She's brilliant, but there was one thing I realized watching
• 42:16
  this I'd never realized before just how much annoys me, how
• 42:20
  much she uses her body all the time.
• 42:22
  She has some annoying tics. I mean, the the thing for me
• 42:24
  that Jodie has that counts against her is that her diction
• 42:29
  is not always very good. It's such an old fashioned, such
• 42:33
  an old fart thing to say. But I do kind of have this.
• 42:36
  Sort of, you know. But it's not just that.
• 42:39
  It's the I, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm an aficionado of, of acting
• 42:44
  and actors and I, and I think there's something.
• 42:47
  Yeah. It's not an accent thing at all.
• 42:49
  It's just like in the olden days, actors were taught to
• 42:52
  speak properly. And we've, we've both been to
• 42:56
  the The Big Finish live recording recently.
• 42:59
  And one of the things that impressed on me is just how good
• 43:02
  Paul Mcgann's diction is. He can rattle off these lines,
• 43:05
  but every single consonant is there.
• 43:07
  Jodie Whisker is from a generation of actors where that
• 43:10
  hasn't been taught and it's not necessary.
• 43:12
  And arguably, you know, it's more naturalistic because she's
• 43:15
  talking like a real person. But there are kind of lines of
• 43:20
  technobabble and explanations where there's, there's an awful
• 43:25
  lot of fluff going on in between the in between the words and I.
• 43:28
  It's she, she can't say that It's the it's whenever she has
• 43:32
  to say extremely and it comes out as extremely.
• 43:36
  That's I mean, as I say, I'm an old fart.
• 43:38
  I just. But goes back one day and watch
• 43:41
  Once Upon Time again when she's playing the roof doctor.
• 43:45
  Yeah, her diction is completely different.
• 43:49
  So is it a choice? I think it's a choice.
• 43:51
  I think she's getting down with the kids, you know well, but
• 43:56
  come on, she says all of that bullshit that the kids say
• 43:58
  today. I mean, chippers can't do it
• 44:00
  because he's. Yeah, no.
• 44:01
  But he's trying. I find that a little bit cringe.
• 44:04
  I don't really want them called the fam sorry.
• 44:07
  It's like that's this year is Timey why me?
• 44:09
  Just don't say it anymore. All the Sonic sunglasses and all
• 44:13
  of it. Just stop doing any of it.
• 44:15
  The kids don't find it cool, at least if the kids do find it
• 44:20
  cool, it's because they're not very cool kids.
• 44:22
  And that's fine. We're fine with that.
• 44:23
  We've learn to embrace not being cool as fans.
• 44:26
  I will keep drawing attention to the direction in this episode
• 44:29
  because I think she had a really impossible task.
• 44:32
  She's shooting in a warehouse and she keeps it visually
• 44:35
  interesting throughout, but just watch the fluidity.
• 44:38
  The camera is constantly moving. It's sort of drifts around.
• 44:41
  It's got a fluidity to it. That's, that is, I mean, look,
• 44:45
  it's, it's also, it's not kind of handheld, shaky, shaky, kind
• 44:50
  of pretentious shooting. It just gives it this kind of
• 44:53
  constant motion. But she has to find interesting
• 44:57
  ways of shooting the same scenes.
• 44:59
  And so later on she like hooks a camera on garlic and you're
• 45:03
  watching it from the gums point of view, you know, it's really
• 45:06
  great. And a confident with wide shots
• 45:09
  as well. It's not.
• 45:10
  It's not too close up too often. Or.
• 45:13
  It's giving us a sense of the the space and lots of long shots
• 45:17
  as well, I mean. Than anything is you can shoot a
• 45:19
  Dalek and not every director. Can shoot a Dalek.
• 45:24
  Yeah, I mean, I, I, I think one of the one irritant for kind of
• 45:27
  all modern television is, is the the over dependence on close-ups
• 45:30
  and and fast cutting. This is very elegantly edited
• 45:33
  and we get to watch what's going on.
• 45:35
  We get lots of nice mid shots and they're allowed to run.
• 45:41
  We're allowed to follow characters around rather than
• 45:43
  cutting relentlessly from 1:00 to another.
• 45:45
  What is very telling of bringing in new directors, and I always
• 45:49
  love it when they bring in new directors to see what they can
• 45:51
  do, is Legends of the Sea Devils was a one and out director as
• 45:54
  well and that was hacked pieces in a way.
• 45:57
  With that it was barely coherent and affected the enjoyment of
• 46:00
  the story at times. So it just goes to show from 1
• 46:03
  director to the next well. Sometimes.
• 46:06
  So it's Annetta, Annetta Laufer. Yeah, I wish she'd done more.
• 46:12
  Yeah, she's. Well, if she could do this with
• 46:13
  a warehouse, what could she do with Aaron the Doctor?
• 46:18
  Well, to be fair, that's brilliantly directed as well.
• 46:21
  So at this point we're sort of figuring out the rules, right?
• 46:24
  And in time loop episodes, it goes one or two ways.
• 46:26
  They either remember the loop or they don't.
• 46:30
  So we're going through it with them and they're sort of going,
• 46:33
  I think I've. Done this.
• 46:33
  They're working out. But no, in this it's like, no,
• 46:36
  you remember everything right up to the point where you died.
• 46:40
  Now, I don't love the Dalek gun and I don't I, I actually just,
• 46:50
  I, I think that the Dalek design is so good that you meddle with
• 46:57
  it at your peril. And I think from what they've
• 47:01
  given the Dalek a gun of a wizzy kind of machine gun kind of
• 47:03
  thing. And, and there was a line in
• 47:05
  there to to suggest they've updated their arsenal to, to
• 47:08
  make it more effective and it's still left going, but I'm not
• 47:13
  sure it's better. Oh, see, I'm like, you know me,
• 47:18
  I'm six years old, so if I see a machine gun on a Dalek with lots
• 47:21
  of different bolts coming out, then that pleases me greatly.
• 47:24
  There's something odd about that.
• 47:25
  They've replaced the plunger with a kind of a claw thing as
• 47:27
  well. And again.
• 47:29
  Somewhat ironic, James, that you're a Dalek purist.
• 47:36
  I I actually. Think you do it by where they
• 47:39
  were shooting fire extinguishers in that movie.
• 47:42
  Do you know the the the best redesign of the Daleks the
• 47:46
  movie? No, because I mean, I think the
• 47:48
  movie is basically kind of the original start.
• 47:50
  No victory of the Daleks, of course.
• 47:52
  I'm not going to say Victory of the Daleks resolution.
• 47:57
  Oh, it was fabulous, wasn't it? So.
• 47:59
  If you're, if you're going to read like that for me is kind of
• 48:02
  OK, So it's a Dalek that's kind of welded itself together out of
• 48:06
  junk. And it's like a, it's a Dalek.
• 48:09
  They've made it squatter. They've made it, you know, it's
• 48:12
  the, it's the, the gremlin Dalek, isn't it?
• 48:15
  And it's slightly out of proportion, which which somehow
• 48:18
  makes it more nightmarish. What they did was they did the
• 48:21
  flood, didn't they? The flood gave us a design of
• 48:24
  sidemen that a person could not be in, could not be Resolution
• 48:27
  gave us a Dalek that a person could not be in.
• 48:29
  So it was all remote controls. And I think it's a great shame
• 48:33
  that they didn't maintain those. I sort of feel like there there
• 48:39
  there was an opportunity in Revolution to to go with the new
• 48:42
  Dalek design completely. And there's a point where the
• 48:45
  2005 design comes back. And I think that 2005 design,
• 48:49
  brilliant though it is in a lot of ways, has started to look a
• 48:51
  little bit dated. A little.
• 48:53
  It's a little bit. And maybe the problem is that
• 48:56
  they have been so available as toys.
• 48:58
  It's a bit plasticky. I mean if they're just going to
• 49:01
  kill, they could have brought in the special weapons Dalek.
• 49:03
  They could have done to just. Blow them all away.
• 49:06
  I mean, I think that's, I think Moffett realized, I mean,
• 49:08
  obviously Moffett misstepped with the Daleks big time,
• 49:10
  evicted with Daleks. There's a point where Moffett
• 49:13
  realized that you could put on a 1960s style Dalek and it would
• 49:16
  be totally effective on screen. And the, and, and there's a kind
• 49:22
  of timelessness to those, to the, to the design of those
• 49:25
  Daleks that, that, that this Dalek doesn't quite have.
• 49:28
  I think the, the gold design hasn't, hasn't quite the, the
• 49:31
  lights look plasticky. The ice stalk in particular
• 49:34
  looks plasticky. And I and I kind of feel like
• 49:36
  they they might have fixed that by now.
• 49:38
  I do like the lit up ice stalk though, especially when they're
• 49:41
  in the dark, you know, and you're suddenly aware they're
• 49:44
  there when the light's coming out of the dark.
• 49:46
  There's a a shot in Into the Dalek where they're all coming
• 49:49
  out of the fog as they burst their way into that spaceship
• 49:52
  and you just see the lights from the Ice Dogs and it's so great.
• 49:57
  Here we are talking about Dalek design again.
• 49:59
  Winning that life, James. Yes.
• 50:03
  Why have they never, you know, there's a Dalek in the, in the,
• 50:05
  in the early stories that they, they attached, I think they had
• 50:08
  a bit of a camera that they attached to the ice dogs.
• 50:10
  So the pupil gets bigger and smaller.
• 50:13
  Oh yes. And there's some close-ups where
• 50:15
  it goes into the shot. Yeah, they they should do that.
• 50:18
  I like when they did that from outside, so you saw the people
• 50:21
  going bigger and smaller and then from the inside when that
• 50:24
  Dalek had a terrible bit of trouble after he took a load of
• 50:27
  drugs in the Daleks. Anyway, look, I think that
• 50:30
  fundamental, like basically for all that I have a few niggles
• 50:33
  about the Dalek design here, it's back to doing what Daleks
• 50:37
  do really well and and he gets to keep exterminating with them.
• 50:40
  Well, I think it's a. Ruthlessness that.
• 50:41
  The big difference between what Chibnall got right and what
• 50:44
  Moffitt got wrong, and I'm not just saying that because, you
• 50:47
  know, I'm not just saying that is I don't think Steven Moffitt
• 50:49
  really wanted to write Daleks. And I can tell in his scripts
• 50:52
  that he's sort of doing parliaments and Honey, I Shrunk
• 50:55
  the Dalek, and he's doing anything to make them
• 50:57
  interesting because he just doesn't want a load of ruthless
• 51:00
  murdering pepper pots. Chibnall wants to write the
• 51:03
  Daleks and he just wants them to be fucking evil.
• 51:06
  And that's what he does. And it's great.
• 51:07
  I love. And, and he understands that
• 51:10
  Daleks can have personality that actually there isn't, there's a
• 51:15
  degree of flexibility with, you know, emotionless, as we learned
• 51:18
  with the Cybermen, if you actually do that literally is
• 51:20
  not very entertaining. Whereas if a Dalek is allowed to
• 51:23
  be kind of superior and snarky and, and, and, and have, you
• 51:29
  know, elements of individuality, even that's actually really
• 51:34
  effective writing, really fun. They can hold dialogue.
• 51:38
  I actually really like the motive of the Daleks in this,
• 51:41
  where the doctors, like, you know, oh, we've come to punish
• 51:44
  you for your crimes against the Daleks and she just goes, well,
• 51:48
  which one? They're just pissed because she
• 51:52
  wiped out that whole bloody army last week.
• 51:56
  And why not? Oh, that bit a minute ago.
• 51:58
  I love that scene where Sarah totally lies to him and goes,
• 52:01
  yeah, yeah, I I was looking for you and I couldn't find you
• 52:04
  anywhere. In that place and.
• 52:07
  Then later on, she finally gets to say to him, do you know what
• 52:10
  I was trying to get out? I wasn't looking for you at all.
• 52:12
  Yeah, I was ready for. I was happy for you to die.
• 52:16
  The writing here, the dialogue here is, is kind of there's a
• 52:20
  sitcom level of landing punch lines again and again.
• 52:23
  It's a it's. It's a really well judged
• 52:25
  script, isn't it? Because what are you doing?
• 52:27
  I'm being chivalrous, she goes. No, it's just patronizing.
• 52:30
  Come on. Doesn't the Dalek look good in
• 52:32
  silhouette? Yeah.
• 52:34
  Oh, they look fabulous. Oh my God, this whole scene.
• 52:36
  I'm going to keep doing this with every scene now.
• 52:38
  This whole scene where he says about why all of his ex's stuff
• 52:42
  are on the shelves. And there's that moment of
• 52:44
  silence where Yas goes, Are they still alive?
• 52:48
  And he goes, well, yeah, of course.
• 52:49
  And everyone sighs with relief. I love that saying.
• 52:54
  And she goes and she. Well, what's the way out of
• 52:56
  here? Then?
• 52:56
  He goes, no, the way we came in. She goes, well, what's all the
• 52:59
  plans there? Oh, it's fab.
• 53:05
  You can't do it with a small. Ensemble and you can and the and
• 53:08
  the. The joke with the phone is also,
• 53:11
  which becomes a a crucial plot point too.
• 53:14
  It's lovely to have Pauline McLean on the end of the phone,
• 53:18
  whose entire career has been based around playing characters
• 53:21
  a bit like Mrs. Doyle. I I absolutely believe that's
• 53:24
  her mother, because the very few scenes they get together,
• 53:26
  they're just arguing the whole time.
• 53:27
  You know, the lions will be busy at midnight.
• 53:31
  No, they won't, Mummy. Oh, and the payoff.
• 53:35
  Do you remember the payoff? Where she goes?
• 53:36
  If this plan succeeding relies on my mother phoning us when
• 53:41
  we're. I asked her to do it.
• 53:42
  We are finished. Yeah.
• 53:45
  Yeah. Who knew he was funny, you know,
• 53:49
  you remember. Is it because because because
• 53:51
  does? This give us the Wi-Fi family.
• 53:52
  You remember the Wi-Fi family. Got No, you're going to have to
• 53:58
  explain that. Come along now.
• 54:00
  That's the place, James. That's the resolution gag.
• 54:02
  You remember when all of the Internet goes down and we cut to
• 54:05
  that family and all their devices have gone off and the
• 54:09
  mum goes, Oh well, I guess we're going to have to talk to each
• 54:11
  other instead and two kids go. What?
• 54:14
  And it's the most agonising joke.
• 54:16
  I do. I do remember.
• 54:18
  I mean, there's a reason I've forgotten that joke.
• 54:20
  But also This is why I shouldn't, I shouldn't be
• 54:22
  discussing new who this is. This is the reason I've just
• 54:24
  like big, big chunks of it have detached themselves from my
• 54:30
  brain. Like melting icebergs.
• 54:31
  Like melting icebergs do. You know what?
• 54:34
  I'm not smart, but I do know Doctor Who, all right.
• 54:40
  Oh, and look, she's horrible for him now isn't she?
• 54:44
  She runs in a way that's that's very identified, very
• 54:47
  identifiable. Like in this high pressure
• 54:50
  situation, you probably are going to lose your temper a bit.
• 54:52
  But I have heard a lot of readings in this episode, you
• 54:55
  know, from people that don't like them that like what he's
• 54:58
  doing is incredibly weird and still Curry and actually maybe
• 55:02
  not the basis of a relationship. And I can kind of see it.
• 55:06
  But he's he's supposed to the joke.
• 55:07
  The joke is like he's the awkward geek, right?
• 55:11
  And that's what the doctor is for years.
• 55:13
  I mean, I think, I think I'd say two things to that.
• 55:17
  First of all, if you're going to identify creepy characteristics
• 55:20
  in Doctor Who characters, you only need to look back over
• 55:24
  Moffat's era to find some real problems and you know, and also
• 55:29
  ultimately. The 10 and Rose, Yeah, an age
• 55:31
  gap. There well absolutely but you
• 55:33
  know and the doctor is also if if you do you remember there was
• 55:37
  a series in Doctor Who magazine I think it was Rob Stearman did
• 55:43
  a kind of a character study of each of the doctors.
• 55:46
  This is, we're, we're talking a good 20 years ago and basically
• 55:50
  concluded by the end of it that the doctor was a psychopath.
• 55:53
  And I remember the last sentence was, you know, when I started
• 55:56
  writing these articles, I, the doctor was someone I was
• 55:59
  desperate to meet. Now I think I'd run a mile.
• 56:03
  Yeah, post new series even further.
• 56:05
  Even further. Yeah, bloody obsessed with him
• 56:08
  herself. But also, I mean, so it is
• 56:11
  drama. Let's let's let's not take these
• 56:13
  characters too literally. And I just think the way that
• 56:17
  Nick is played makes him this sad little face in that last
• 56:23
  scene. I just, you know, you're not
• 56:26
  analysing the creepy nature by now, but you're, you're going.
• 56:28
  Yeah, but he's a human being. Purely superficial level as
• 56:32
  well. I do think he's incredibly hot.
• 56:34
  So, you know, like, I mean, I've met hot creepy men, but.
• 56:41
  Yes, hot men can be creepy. All that door was about to blow.
• 56:47
  Come on. I just saw those that that
• 56:48
  machine gun blasting away at that door.
• 56:50
  Didn't I excite you? It did well, it's back to, but
• 56:53
  it's back to kind of based under siege.
• 56:55
  There isn't. I know this is doing a lot of
• 56:57
  kind of basic Doctor Who, isn't it?
• 57:01
  Why do I never make that connection?
• 57:03
  This is absolutely based under siege, but they can't even
• 57:06
  escape. Yeah, this is that scene from
• 57:08
  Earth Shock. Oh, it's the scene from the
• 57:10
  Daleks, isn't it? When they're.
• 57:11
  Well, I guess it is. Yeah, it's doing that.
• 57:14
  I think the Daleks. I could go on.
• 57:18
  What about Mick? He is dead.
• 57:20
  And of course as well, with the loop, he does have the
• 57:23
  opportunity to just murder people in spectacular ways over
• 57:26
  and over again. Yeah, and that's great fun.
• 57:28
  And as I said it, it's it's it starts off as a bit of a joke,
• 57:32
  which which time linked stories often are played for laughs.
• 57:37
  Yeah. What I think is impressive about
• 57:39
  this is, you know, it's got to sustain an hour, an hour's
• 57:41
  running time. And we're having a huge amount
• 57:44
  of fun for most of it. But he then really raises the
• 57:47
  stakes and and there was a point.
• 57:48
  And so we particularly when you get more than one Dalek, you
• 57:51
  realize they're not going to give up.
• 57:52
  And that's, that was always the greatest strength of the Daleks
• 57:55
  was that they had a kind of persistent ability to to, to
• 57:59
  just keep going. You know, goes back to invasion
• 58:02
  Earth 2150 AD, where you've got those just the, you know, the
• 58:05
  bombs don't work and they just keep coming.
• 58:08
  That's what he's doing here. I really like his pacing of the
• 58:11
  loop so as well. So as it goes on, there's like,
• 58:15
  right, we've got a plan, we're going to do it, yes.
• 58:17
  And even as one of the best jokes of the whole episode, the
• 58:20
  Doctor gives one of her interminable hope, wins all
• 58:23
  speeches, and then the Dark murders her straight afterwards.
• 58:26
  I think even Chinnall had enough of them by then, and he was
• 58:28
  right in the bloody things, but then in the next loop where
• 58:31
  we're all full of hope because they're going to get out of it.
• 58:33
  But Daleks murdered them all in about 2 1/2 seconds and you're
• 58:37
  like, oh, bullshit. And then they're like, right,
• 58:39
  we've got to be clever. We've got to have a decoy loop.
• 58:41
  And they're just using the the time we've been in such
• 58:43
  brilliant ways, Johnny Morris said in The Strictly Come
• 58:48
  Hamster. He said that this is one of the
• 58:51
  few Doctor Who stories that work.
• 58:53
  He thinks it's perfect for kids because it works like a computer
• 58:56
  game. So once you figure out the rules
• 58:59
  of it, then you can use the rules and then you so the kids
• 59:03
  actually could do this as they go along with the doctor.
• 59:05
  And I think there's something to that.
• 59:06
  Oh yeah, and it and it follows the the, the structure of a
• 59:10
  computer game as well, because every level is slightly harder,
• 59:12
  because the Daleks get better at it every time.
• 59:15
  So there's, there's, there's, there's, you know, there's more
• 59:17
  of them now, but. What's glorious is this.
• 59:21
  I forget the fellow's name. What is he?
• 59:22
  I mean the the unseen character that's storing all of his stuff
• 59:25
  and living in the story. What's his name?
• 59:28
  What is his name? It's a very, very good running
• 59:31
  gag, isn't? It, well, not only because it's
• 59:33
  it's like, I don't know, the graph indicates brother or
• 59:35
  President Zob from sort of these unseen characters that make huge
• 59:39
  impacts on the plot. And obviously he's got
• 59:41
  absolutely every single thing there stored that he shouldn't
• 59:44
  have, which we set up at the beginning that actually defeats
• 59:47
  the Daleks at the end. It's very neat.
• 59:50
  It is very neat. This is, it's a, it's a, It's a
• 59:53
  beautiful script, isn't it? It's.
• 59:55
  Yeah, it's clever. And then I would add in that I
• 1:00:00
  think this the character work done with Yaz as well is adeptly
• 1:00:05
  dumbed in this as well. I have, I'm OK, we'll, we'll get
• 1:00:09
  to that. I, I have reservations and
• 1:00:11
  they're not to do with the character or anything like that.
• 1:00:14
  It's to do with whether it's the right place in the right time
• 1:00:19
  and. Really.
• 1:00:20
  My heart stopped, but not literally, you know, maybe
• 1:00:23
  slowed down a little bit or maybe quickened.
• 1:00:26
  Ignore me. I had a reaction to that scene,
• 1:00:30
  that first scene with Dan and yes, but we'll get there.
• 1:00:32
  We'll get there. I was just thinking what a, what
• 1:00:35
  a, what a good choice of cardigan that is for Sarah.
• 1:00:39
  Go on. I think it's, it's something
• 1:00:43
  very much like it's what that character would wear.
• 1:00:46
  It's like it's it's the cardigan of someone who's given up
• 1:00:49
  slightly but but still wants a pattern.
• 1:00:52
  And to be fair, look at dad, look the lumberjack.
• 1:00:55
  I mean, yes, exactly what he should be wearing as well.
• 1:00:58
  And I just think Mandic Gil can pull off anything right wherever
• 1:01:01
  they. Don't touch the Dalek.
• 1:01:04
  That's a bit for me. That's a no no.
• 1:01:05
  The character shouldn't touch Daleks.
• 1:01:06
  That just weakens them. He was so happy though that he
• 1:01:09
  had this scene and one of the sort of rarest behind the scenes
• 1:01:13
  glimpses that they've got a camera rear film in this scene
• 1:01:16
  and he's so happy to have a scene where he's winding.
• 1:01:18
  Up. It's a great scene.
• 1:01:19
  He's very good in it. I I.
• 1:01:22
  I don't you think about the sort of knowing winks like I am not
• 1:01:25
  Nick when it is Nick. I'm fine with that.
• 1:01:30
  OK. I mean.
• 1:01:32
  I know these meta jokes can sort of go either way with you.
• 1:01:36
  It's it's, it's only a meta joke for people who know though,
• 1:01:39
  isn't it? It's not.
• 1:01:41
  It's not in the way. I really thought when I saw the
• 1:01:45
  because that sort of lava crusted targets there was in all
• 1:01:49
  of the promotional material. So I just thought absolutely the
• 1:01:52
  diet's going to do something terrible to the TARDIS.
• 1:01:54
  It was going to be very important to the plot, and it
• 1:01:56
  turns out now it was just repairing itself after the flux.
• 1:01:59
  It's Jeff, isn't it? Jeff, who's got all the stuff in
• 1:02:01
  the room? Yes, yeah.
• 1:02:06
  And it's great when the Doctor and Yaz go in and find all those
• 1:02:10
  tins of beef and beans. Beef and beans.
• 1:02:14
  Beef and beans. It was just a bit now where they
• 1:02:19
  finally start opening out with each other.
• 1:02:21
  So it is, yeah. And we're sort of at the halfway
• 1:02:23
  point. And this is, this is the right
• 1:02:26
  time in the story for these characters to start to be honest
• 1:02:28
  and to, you know, we've he's he's broken them down a bit.
• 1:02:32
  They're they're becoming vulnerable, but they're becoming
• 1:02:35
  vulnerable to each other. Which makes us like them even
• 1:02:39
  more. But there's a brilliantly paced
• 1:02:43
  joke stroke bit of horror in a second where she says the word
• 1:02:47
  no four times. They're having a conversation
• 1:02:50
  and everything he's saying she says no to.
• 1:02:53
  And then just before he says the last thing the Dalek shoots her
• 1:02:56
  and she screams no. And I'm like can she yell chip
• 1:03:00
  no I didn't know you had this in you.
• 1:03:03
  Even that shitty gag of X space terminated later on when they
• 1:03:08
  destroy everything in the in the room.
• 1:03:11
  It's sort of feels earned, doesn't it?
• 1:03:14
  Yeah, but you're right. Well, who knew that he had this
• 1:03:16
  in him? Because he's not his.
• 1:03:19
  His era is not is not really, as I said, Moffett series is, is
• 1:03:23
  the wise cracking funny era. That's where where you know, the
• 1:03:26
  whatever's going on, the the the dialogue is going to sparkle
• 1:03:29
  with, you know, the the expertise of someone who's
• 1:03:32
  written sitcoms. Jipnall never wrote dialogue
• 1:03:35
  like this. It's it's Jipnall's humour is
• 1:03:38
  weirdly sort of subtler and more obvious.
• 1:03:41
  I don't know how that's possible.
• 1:03:43
  I think it's more character based as well.
• 1:03:45
  I, I think Chibal is more interested in writing characters
• 1:03:47
  and, and when the humour emerges from the characters, which
• 1:03:50
  clearly it's, you know exactly what's happening here.
• 1:03:53
  It, it, it's, it, it kind of works better because it doesn't.
• 1:03:56
  It's never going to irritate because it feels like it's
• 1:03:58
  coming from the, that you know, it's, it's, it's, it's all in
• 1:04:02
  the service of the storytelling of the, of the, of the
• 1:04:04
  character. How?
• 1:04:05
  Could you not love Jeff? Look at all these shitty
• 1:04:07
  businesses that he's run in from this story centre.
• 1:04:11
  Oh how much are those beef and beans for 40 pig?
• 1:04:13
  Oh, they're going to taste lovely, aren't they 3?
• 1:04:16
  Years out of date, they'll still be good though.
• 1:04:18
  We we've got a. They won't.
• 1:04:20
  Taste. As good, but I'm going to tell
• 1:04:21
  you now, please never buy the bottom shelf beans because it's
• 1:04:24
  described as baked beans suspended in a tomato liquid.
• 1:04:28
  I mean, I'm not really. I'm not a tinned food person,
• 1:04:32
  full stop. Now you're a cheese man, aren't
• 1:04:34
  you? I'm a cheese man, yeah,
• 1:04:36
  something nice and fresh like cheese, which is food that has
• 1:04:40
  been deliberately let go sour so.
• 1:04:43
  Is this where she finds the fireworks now?
• 1:04:45
  Yes. Yeah.
• 1:04:46
  Yeah. No, no.
• 1:04:47
  Combustible. That was it.
• 1:04:49
  Yeah. And you know, at the end.
• 1:04:50
  Oh, no. I've got to stop skipping ahead.
• 1:04:52
  Jesus Christ. Talk about.
• 1:04:53
  No, but I love this. It's a call back to the rules,
• 1:04:55
  isn't it? It's a call back to the the
• 1:04:57
  warehouse rules like everything is planted.
• 1:05:01
  Oh, and. Exciting look at the dialogue in
• 1:05:03
  that like in again silhouettes. Something that I'll probably
• 1:05:06
  forget to say later. So I'm going to say it now
• 1:05:08
  because it's something that Manded Gill really learned to do
• 1:05:13
  in the last year, and that is show absolute fear when she is
• 1:05:17
  and and sort of tears of fear. So it happens in Village of the
• 1:05:22
  Angels a couple of times when she's facing the angels and it
• 1:05:25
  happens here and she just goes completely still with one sort
• 1:05:29
  of tear rolling down her face. Yes.
• 1:05:31
  Yeah. It happens later in this
• 1:05:32
  episode. And it I think if the companions
• 1:05:35
  this this is another reason I don't think the Daleks work in
• 1:05:38
  Moffitt's time is because nobody's really scared of them.
• 1:05:40
  He's going, oh, I have a Jamie Dodger and it's all a bit, you
• 1:05:43
  know, you're a bit of a joke. Yeah, whereas they sell the fear
• 1:05:47
  in the ship new era by just being afraid.
• 1:05:52
  Yeah, and that's, I mean, the the corollary is again Peter
• 1:05:55
  Davison, where they make the Doctor more vulnerable and and
• 1:05:58
  and he and the Doctor is allowed to be afraid again.
• 1:06:00
  You know, Capaldi was never afraid.
• 1:06:02
  He was too, too arrogant to to show fear.
• 1:06:07
  It was something that was joyous about Trowan, wasn't it?
• 1:06:10
  He was just afraid. All this.
• 1:06:11
  Yes. Yeah.
• 1:06:13
  Running around screaming his head up.
• 1:06:15
  Yeah, I mean, Moffett's whole kind of conception of the show
• 1:06:18
  was the Doctor as as a magician as as a as a kind of super
• 1:06:21
  being. And I actually think again, it's
• 1:06:24
  it's it you can do that for a while, but it become there's a
• 1:06:28
  law of diminishing returns. If the Doctor is a superhero,
• 1:06:30
  it's the same as Superman. It becomes just kind of the most
• 1:06:33
  boring super superhero because you can't kill him.
• 1:06:37
  I thought, I'm coming to the conclusion.
• 1:06:38
  I realise we're talking about Moffett again.
• 1:06:40
  I'm coming to the conclusion that Moffett saw Doctor Who as a
• 1:06:46
  bit of a sitcom, and in terms of the pace of it and how sitcoms
• 1:06:50
  were very tightly plotted, things like Foot in the Grave
• 1:06:52
  and things like that, everything's paid off
• 1:06:54
  beautifully. There's surprise twist, the
• 1:06:56
  dialogue's fast and witty and funny, and I think he can do
• 1:07:00
  other stuff, don't get me wrong, but I think there's a sitcom
• 1:07:03
  mentality. So Moffett's rising, That was in
• 1:07:06
  his Doctor Who. Yeah, yes, yeah.
• 1:07:08
  And that's certainly kind of some of the key relationships.
• 1:07:10
  Like the Doctor Missy relationship was very much a
• 1:07:12
  kind of, you know, sitcom double act.
• 1:07:14
  I do genuinely think Chimney wants to write character drama.
• 1:07:19
  He does. And I think from 1 script to the
• 1:07:22
  next, sometimes it lands brilliantly and other times he's
• 1:07:25
  concentrating on other things or he hasn't had enough time, he
• 1:07:28
  can't do enough rewrites, or he's written the Battle of
• 1:07:30
  Ranskorov Kolos, something's gone wrong or.
• 1:07:33
  Or it's, or it's all, all the, the structure, you know, the
• 1:07:37
  showrunner structure. It it doesn't, doesn't work for
• 1:07:40
  the Chipnalls outlook, which is, which is the program as
• 1:07:43
  ultimately kind of as flexible as it can be.
• 1:07:46
  Whereas for Moffat it was, you know, it was basically Doctor
• 1:07:49
  Who was a kind of fantasy sci-fi hybrid, but but with kind of
• 1:07:53
  fairy tales and fantasy very much high in the mix.
• 1:07:56
  Chipnall is doing the thing that I think Doctor Who ought to do,
• 1:07:58
  which it did very early on and, and and basically then stop
• 1:08:03
  doing, which is it can be a completely different genre from
• 1:08:06
  week to week. And I think Jibles area is the
• 1:08:08
  closest we get to that, you know?
• 1:08:11
  I think 11 is, yeah. Yeah.
• 1:08:13
  Very much so. Oh, sorry, that was that line
• 1:08:15
  there, your crimes against the Daleks race, which particular
• 1:08:19
  actions she says she delivers a live great.
• 1:08:24
  OK, back to the start again. Now that the the weird thing
• 1:08:29
  about talking about a time loop episodes is James, you and I are
• 1:08:32
  now talking about the same scenes over and over.
• 1:08:34
  Again. Over and over again.
• 1:08:35
  How do we do it without sounding repetitive?
• 1:08:37
  Welcome. Well, let's I was going to
• 1:08:40
  mention the director again, but no.
• 1:08:42
  But look, we've seen this location so much now.
• 1:08:46
  We've seen this scene so many times, but still we're seeing it
• 1:08:50
  from a different angle and it's slightly, and you know, the, the
• 1:08:53
  characters are slightly more tightly framed here.
• 1:08:55
  It's doing the kind of 12 angry men thing where everything kind
• 1:08:58
  of closes in The, the, the, the more it goes on.
• 1:09:02
  I always think as well the best Doctor Who should be very funny
• 1:09:06
  and it should be very scary and I think this walks that tight
• 1:09:09
  Rd. a lot. So Sarah's very funny but then
• 1:09:13
  in a minute she gets cornered in that lift with the Dalek coming
• 1:09:16
  towards the door. She's stabbing at the buttons
• 1:09:18
  and at one point she begs the Dalek, please don't kill me, and
• 1:09:22
  then it murders her and it's really scary.
• 1:09:26
  So that was like we, we, we've also got a, a love story at the
• 1:09:30
  heart of this. And, and I really well, this is,
• 1:09:34
  this is the, the slight problem I have with Yaz's involvement in
• 1:09:39
  this, because I feel like I'm, the story wants me to invest in
• 1:09:42
  the Nick Sarah potential relationship And the journey
• 1:09:47
  they go on is a substantial one and one that I, I, I think is
• 1:09:51
  really beautifully told and beautifully played as well.
• 1:09:55
  I don't need another love story on top of that.
• 1:09:59
  That's the, that's my first objection is that I think that
• 1:10:01
  it's joining a, a, a secondary love story, which the, which is
• 1:10:09
  unnecessary because the story's already got one and it's got a
• 1:10:12
  better one actually, because he hasn't, the doctor don't have
• 1:10:14
  the opportunity to go through that kind of substantial
• 1:10:16
  journey. You could argue that they've
• 1:10:17
  they've been on it, but I'm not sure it's been seeded in the way
• 1:10:20
  that maybe it's, it's supposed to have been.
• 1:10:25
  The other thing is that I can totally buy that Nick and Sarah
• 1:10:29
  in are in a situation where every time it's time that goes
• 1:10:33
  around, they've got less and less to do.
• 1:10:35
  They know what's going to happen.
• 1:10:36
  Yeah, they're involved in the plan, but basically they've got
• 1:10:38
  to sit and wait while the Doctor sold stuff.
• 1:10:41
  So they've got time to sit and have these heart to hearts and
• 1:10:44
  develop as characters, whereas the Doctor and and, and, and the
• 1:10:51
  companions are proactively dealing with the situation.
• 1:10:55
  I don't think they have time to sit back and, and have, you
• 1:10:59
  know, serious conversations. And I don't buy them when they
• 1:11:02
  happen. It's a little bit like the
• 1:11:03
  problem. It's a bit, it's a little bit
• 1:11:05
  like the canine problem. You know how in in in classic
• 1:11:10
  coup and canine when they're in a hurry and canine's in front of
• 1:11:13
  them and they always have that kind of awkward moment where
• 1:11:15
  it's like, hurry, we must get to this place.
• 1:11:17
  And then everyone in the cast has to wait for the dog to do a
• 1:11:21
  kind of three-point turn and and get out of the way.
• 1:11:23
  We did watch Android's of Tara. Together it's.
• 1:11:27
  It's that but but but where instead of K9 doing a
• 1:11:30
  three-point turn, it's the doctors.
• 1:11:32
  Companions have got to have an emotional moment.
• 1:11:35
  So even though the story needs them to be running as fast as
• 1:11:39
  they kind of doing stuff, they actually have to stop and talk.
• 1:11:42
  And it's. I think I find it similarly
• 1:11:44
  awkward. I'm going to offer you a counter
• 1:11:46
  argument only because I well, two reasons is 1.
• 1:11:52
  I do think this is what Nathan taught me a long time ago, is
• 1:11:55
  how things happening in the real world affect the television
• 1:11:58
  show. And obviously we had Yas and we
• 1:12:01
  have the Doctor. And a lot of gay Doctor Who fans
• 1:12:06
  saw more there than was actually in the script and possibly how
• 1:12:10
  they were playing it and relayed that information to Mandate Girl
• 1:12:14
  and Jodie Whittaker, who then both said, we'll be perfectly
• 1:12:17
  fine if you want to do this. And I think it would make some
• 1:12:20
  people very, very happy if we go down this route.
• 1:12:23
  And he started writing it in, and he cleverly seeded it all in
• 1:12:27
  Flux because there's that lovely scene in Flux where she's in the
• 1:12:31
  room on the ship and there's a hologram from the Doctor.
• 1:12:34
  And when she's back reunited with the Doctor at the end of
• 1:12:36
  Flux, there's clearly something going on there from Yaz's point
• 1:12:40
  of view. So I think it's all been set up
• 1:12:42
  really well. And I've seen so many people
• 1:12:47
  online love how it is explored here where Yaz says, I have
• 1:12:54
  these feelings, I don't understand them.
• 1:12:57
  I've never felt this way towards a member of my own sex before.
• 1:13:00
  I don't know what I'm doing. And I've just saw like this huge
• 1:13:04
  outcry as all the usual people saying, Doctor Who's gone, whoa,
• 1:13:06
  fuck those people. All of these people that had
• 1:13:08
  gone through a similar things were going through something
• 1:13:10
  like that. And I just thought that was so,
• 1:13:13
  so moving to give those people that storyline.
• 1:13:18
  And then a lot of people say it's unsatisfying, but I like
• 1:13:22
  the fact that the Doctor does love Yas, but she cannot
• 1:13:25
  reciprocate how she's feeling and how that's just handled in a
• 1:13:28
  really mature way. Not through histrionics, which
• 1:13:31
  is what RTD would have done. Not through sort of sitcom stuff
• 1:13:35
  that Moffett would have done. Just through mature
• 1:13:37
  conversations that they have in Legends of the Sea Devils, and
• 1:13:39
  then again in Power of the Doctor.
• 1:13:42
  And I get what people think is a bit unsatisfying because it's
• 1:13:45
  muted and it's subtle, but I think it's quite nice.
• 1:13:49
  It's a different way of doing it.
• 1:13:51
  I hear that and I and I think it's absolutely it's wonderful
• 1:13:56
  that a a television program can do that and can give, you know,
• 1:14:01
  hold hold this hand out to people in in that way.
• 1:14:04
  I'm looking at this objectively as a piece of drama and saying
• 1:14:08
  it doesn't work for me dramatically and I don't think
• 1:14:10
  it's needed in this in this particular individual episode.
• 1:14:13
  I also, I mean, I'm very I'm a less is more kind of guy.
• 1:14:17
  I love that people saw that in that relationship, even when it
• 1:14:21
  hadn't been deliberately planted there.
• 1:14:23
  I think one of the strengths of of, of any, any piece of art
• 1:14:32
  really, But, you know, certainly something like Doctor Who, you
• 1:14:34
  know, popular television program is that people can find stuff in
• 1:14:38
  it. And God knows, you know, gay
• 1:14:40
  people have been finding stuff in Doctor Who, you know, since
• 1:14:44
  the very beginning. Really awesome.
• 1:14:46
  You know, certainly it's, it's a program that has, has engaged
• 1:14:49
  with, has engaged with that demographic because of the
• 1:14:54
  amount of subtext that is either deliberately planted in there or
• 1:14:59
  or or or accidentally left there.
• 1:15:03
  And I wonder whether this, you know, I love that it's muted.
• 1:15:06
  I, I, I, I think that's where the Yas Dr. relationship is
• 1:15:10
  really well handled is in what's not said.
• 1:15:14
  I almost wish they'd said less because, for example, the look
• 1:15:19
  that Yas gave the doctor when Sarah was talking about how the,
• 1:15:23
  you know, the weird people could make the the best relationships
• 1:15:25
  that I'm I'm there for that. So absolutely Yas is as someone
• 1:15:30
  who has had just, you know, through through how my teenage
• 1:15:35
  years and and early adulthood just crushes on people that were
• 1:15:40
  that were. James, I'm with you.
• 1:15:42
  Trust. Troy, me.
• 1:15:43
  No, I was absolutely just being eaten up inside by the.
• 1:15:46
  But look, it's very, I can identify many times.
• 1:15:50
  Yeah, yeah. I can identify with that more
• 1:15:54
  than I can with with any of the conversations in Legend of the
• 1:15:57
  Sea Devils or Paradopter. So I suppose I, I don't, I, I'm
• 1:16:01
  saying I don't mind it being there.
• 1:16:03
  I feel like when it's, when it, it's made more explicit, it's
• 1:16:10
  doesn't serve the narrative in a way that Nick and Sarah's, you
• 1:16:13
  know, growing relationship absolutely does.
• 1:16:15
  That's it's central to the story.
• 1:16:18
  My last, my last prose for it, though.
• 1:16:20
  Yeah, I'll just give two more pros for it.
• 1:16:22
  I just think it's beautifully played.
• 1:16:23
  I think Mandate Gill plays the bit where Dan, Elsa just so
• 1:16:27
  beautiful. Yeah, not, not disagreeing at
• 1:16:29
  all. And I love the fact that Dan is
• 1:16:31
  that audience Avatar go in. We know.
• 1:16:34
  We know you like. Don't disagree with any of that.
• 1:16:37
  This, this, this scene, pace wise, it's one of the few
• 1:16:41
  moments in this story where I feel like the pace is slightly
• 1:16:43
  off because we've already had this scene.
• 1:16:44
  We had it between Sarah and Nick.
• 1:16:46
  Yeah, I'm afraid. I said my heart stopped.
• 1:16:48
  It wasn't my heart. I just held my breath.
• 1:16:49
  I remember I held my breath throughout this scene going
• 1:16:52
  because I didn't think. I didn't think they would go
• 1:16:54
  here. I didn't think they would say it
• 1:16:55
  out loud in any of the scripts. So I thought it was quite brave
• 1:16:59
  to do it. But that watch, watch how it
• 1:17:03
  goes from this character scene to then the director makes you
• 1:17:06
  very aware that that Dalek is right behind her.
• 1:17:08
  And he goes, there's one behind you, and she goes, yeah, there's
• 1:17:10
  one behind you, too. Then that tear comes down and
• 1:17:12
  we're suddenly back in the story.
• 1:17:14
  I mean, she's so great. I mean, she is great and she
• 1:17:20
  really grew into this character as well.
• 1:17:22
  I mean, I, I, I don't think I would have expected this kind of
• 1:17:25
  performance from her two years earlier.
• 1:17:27
  It's worth mentioning that in the beginning of a Halloween
• 1:17:30
  apocalypse, the show was being fronted just by two women, and I
• 1:17:34
  think that's wonderful. Oh yeah, absolutely.
• 1:17:39
  And Dan, like Dan, it's so weird.
• 1:17:43
  I could never really get a handle in him.
• 1:17:44
  I don't really get his character journey and he.
• 1:17:47
  Doesn't have one and he leaves in the oldest.
• 1:17:50
  Story, right? Kind of had enough now, that
• 1:17:54
  trade business, that was a bit much.
• 1:17:57
  But he's so fucking likable. He's so amiable.
• 1:18:00
  I love watching him all the same.
• 1:18:01
  It's Dan Bishop because say, it's Dan Bishop, John Bishop.
• 1:18:05
  John Bishop. Yeah, look at their faces.
• 1:18:08
  It just really makes the Dalek scary in the shadows.
• 1:18:10
  Again, just the. Light, they are so well lit.
• 1:18:13
  I mean, the framing of them is very, very good in this.
• 1:18:16
  And again, it's something that we.
• 1:18:20
  Oh, that's another thing I don't like.
• 1:18:21
  She's walking around waving that bloody screwdriver like a
• 1:18:24
  lunatic. I don't like the screwdriver
• 1:18:25
  design either. Oh, I don't mind that.
• 1:18:27
  I don't mind this sort of salt lamp screwdriver, but it.
• 1:18:30
  Just doesn't look like a screwdriver.
• 1:18:32
  Oh, neither does Shooty Cat was. No, I don't like that one
• 1:18:36
  either. I'm just very old fashioned.
• 1:18:39
  See, that's grim, right? Finding her body in the lid.
• 1:18:42
  Yeah. And then the doctor's dead
• 1:18:45
  again, and now she's pissed. Look.
• 1:18:48
  So the doctor has a really interesting kind of journey here
• 1:18:53
  because because we have gone from that kind of quite
• 1:18:56
  flippant, like, yeah, look at her face.
• 1:18:59
  She's like whisker's on on fire in this story.
• 1:19:03
  She's totally knows how to play the part now.
• 1:19:06
  I think I think her three best performances are in her last
• 1:19:09
  series. I think War of the Daleks, This
• 1:19:12
  and Power of the Doctor are like the three best performances that
• 1:19:15
  she gave that that looks you have there.
• 1:19:20
  You know, whenever her hair's over her face.
• 1:19:22
  It happened in the Timeless Children when she pushed the
• 1:19:24
  Master down and screamed at him to show her the rest.
• 1:19:27
  It happened in Rosa when she walks away from that entirely
• 1:19:31
  pointless Cresco and went, no, we're not leaving, let's go.
• 1:19:35
  She can do it. She does have gravity when she
• 1:19:37
  wants to do it. She just didn't do it more often
• 1:19:40
  than not. It's like you said, I think.
• 1:19:44
  I think they're going down the sort of sunshine and flowers
• 1:19:48
  route more often than not, which is why some people love her, but
• 1:19:52
  why some people find her a bit wearying.
• 1:19:57
  I wouldn't describe her as wearying, you know, personally,
• 1:20:00
  I, I, I can. I Yeah.
• 1:20:04
  Oh, that was a great stunt. You see.
• 1:20:05
  Yas there. Dalek bulbs going everywhere.
• 1:20:08
  It reminded me of Ice and Silver Nemesis.
• 1:20:11
  Am I ahead of you? You look confused.
• 1:20:13
  I know. I yeah, I, I no, no, I'm just
• 1:20:16
  kind of, I'm still, I'm reassessing my feelings about
• 1:20:19
  the dialect gun. Are you enjoying it now?
• 1:20:24
  No, I still, I still think the original dialect gun they could
• 1:20:26
  have they could have had bolts coming out of that speed from
• 1:20:28
  the you know, there was no need, no need to tinker with it.
• 1:20:32
  The weird thing about those original dialect guns were those
• 1:20:35
  sort of bits of paper that go bloop bloop at the end they.
• 1:20:37
  Look very strange, aren't they? Well, that's what they did
• 1:20:40
  before there was any effect at. Later on they were.
• 1:20:42
  They were fulfilling that role, weren't they, He.
• 1:20:45
  Goes, what are you going to do without this place?
• 1:20:47
  Oh, I didn't want to be here anyway.
• 1:20:48
  I always wanted to travel. There we go.
• 1:20:50
  We got our out at the end. They're off on an adventure.
• 1:20:55
  Yeah, actually, I do like, though, I do like Dan saying to
• 1:20:59
  the doctor, you know how she feels about you because this is
• 1:21:03
  a doctor that turns away from feelings, like actively ignores
• 1:21:10
  feelings at times. And I think someone did need to
• 1:21:13
  say, do you know what you're having an effect on this person?
• 1:21:16
  Like you need to address this even though you didn't want them
• 1:21:20
  to address. I'm just I'm so I'm revelling in
• 1:21:22
  the low angle tracking shot of the dark.
• 1:21:24
  They're fabulous, aren't they? It's the Graham Harper effect,
• 1:21:27
  isn't it? There's a Douglas Ansfield
• 1:21:28
  effect crime scene. Do not enter.
• 1:21:34
  Why haven't we seen more Daleks just gliding through corridors
• 1:21:37
  that that used to be kind of standard?
• 1:21:40
  How do we use Daleks? We haven't gliding through
• 1:21:43
  corridors but but you remember. Surprisingly in Evolution of the
• 1:21:47
  Daleks where they fix that camera to the front of the Dalek
• 1:21:50
  and he was going around those sewers and it was shooting.
• 1:21:52
  I do like he was a dodging kite. It's very cool.
• 1:21:55
  Yeah. James, we are so winning at
• 1:21:57
  life, I can't think of anything I'd rather do.
• 1:22:02
  Oh, I've totally missed her speech.
• 1:22:08
  But see, it didn't even go on very long, did it?
• 1:22:10
  Well, I mean, Nathan finds it interminable in that speech
• 1:22:13
  really, he said. Well, he finds it all the chip
• 1:22:16
  and we were a bit interminable. It's isn't it a take on a a
• 1:22:19
  famous speech that. Oh, I'm not sure about that.
• 1:22:23
  About trying again, getting it wrong, trying again, I think it
• 1:22:26
  is. Better people than me will be
• 1:22:28
  able to tell you that though. This is such a pacey, funny, fun
• 1:22:33
  episode though. I surely even the triple haters
• 1:22:36
  can find things to enjoy about this.
• 1:22:38
  I remember when this went out right and I was very, I was
• 1:22:41
  keeping an eye on social media at that point.
• 1:22:43
  I've given up now because basically everyone hates Doctor
• 1:22:45
  Who, even the people that love it and.
• 1:22:48
  Especially the people that love it.
• 1:22:49
  And so many people were going, oh, I really want to hate this
• 1:22:53
  era, but God, that was fun. You know, I've seen lots of that
• 1:22:56
  on social media. And I was like, well, don't,
• 1:22:59
  don't be annoyed that you enjoyed it.
• 1:23:02
  Oh, this is great as well. Suddenly.
• 1:23:04
  Why do you want to? I really want to hate it but
• 1:23:06
  like. This, this comedy relationship
• 1:23:09
  between him and her, her and her mum.
• 1:23:11
  And then she just brings her up and says, you know, mum, I've
• 1:23:13
  got to miss you. And then she goes, Oh my God,
• 1:23:15
  are you dying? Which would have been my mum's
• 1:23:19
  reaction as. Well, are you drunk?
• 1:23:20
  No, I'm not drunk, Mummy. Oh God, are you ill?
• 1:23:25
  I love this. Do you know what?
• 1:23:29
  Go on. It's just that it's just, do you
• 1:23:32
  know what? Happy New year.
• 1:23:33
  Oh. My God, look at that angle with
• 1:23:37
  the Dalek then. Oh, here we go.
• 1:23:39
  This is the short look on the Dalek gun.
• 1:23:40
  That's great. That is great.
• 1:23:44
  You think by now we would have run out of ways to shoot Daleks?
• 1:23:47
  Really. Wouldn't you, after 60 years?
• 1:23:50
  But here we are. Well done, Annetta.
• 1:23:53
  Oh, this is that joke. Exterminated.
• 1:23:59
  But he what does he say? He goes.
• 1:24:01
  That was like free therapy or something like that.
• 1:24:04
  Wiped away all of the past. Thanks for the therapy.
• 1:24:08
  Thanks for the therapy. Yeah.
• 1:24:09
  It's got a beautiful smile. Well, he looks a bit demonic
• 1:24:13
  there, actually. But, and do you know what now
• 1:24:18
  they can properly do? I remember when I first saw that
• 1:24:20
  extermination effect and remembrance of the Daleks in the
• 1:24:23
  junkyard. Do you remember when the bolt
• 1:24:25
  came? Through do I remember?
• 1:24:26
  What was his name? Tip Tipping.
• 1:24:28
  Tip tipping just flying backwards.
• 1:24:30
  Sort of badly quantailed in, but it was so excited.
• 1:24:33
  Now they can do all the skulls and everything.
• 1:24:36
  Yeah, though, though no one's ever quite replicated tip
• 1:24:39
  tippings actually flying backwards.
• 1:24:42
  It's wonderful. They're sane.
• 1:24:44
  Love it, love it. That's so.
• 1:24:48
  They're just so comfortable with each other.
• 1:24:50
  It's. She goes, I'm just having some
• 1:24:52
  beef and beans. Might watch the hoot Nanny, you
• 1:24:54
  know? And he goes, what's it?
• 1:24:57
  Daleks do not have friends. She just leans forwards and
• 1:24:59
  goes, Yeah, well, you've only got yourselves to blame for
• 1:25:01
  that. It's fabulous.
• 1:25:08
  And even now, look, in the climax, the lines will be busy.
• 1:25:13
  Just fucking phone me, all right?
• 1:25:15
  Like, oh bless. And you can't hear the brilliant
• 1:25:22
  score for this. Well, like I, I.
• 1:25:24
  Ramps and ramps up in this climax.
• 1:25:27
  I was kind. Of mentioning earlier, I mean, I
• 1:25:29
  think that I think that this is, I mean, I think second, Akanola
• 1:25:33
  is is brilliant always, but I think this is one of his best
• 1:25:37
  scores. It's it is one of the huge
• 1:25:40
  strengths of the year, isn't it Akanola?
• 1:25:42
  It sounds so it just sounds so it sounds.
• 1:25:49
  I was going to say it sounds so grown.
• 1:25:50
  It sounds like proper television.
• 1:25:52
  It, it does, it just, it's so classy and the, and the way this
• 1:25:57
  score builds is very, very subtle.
• 1:26:01
  And it's very, it's, I mean, one of his things as a composer is
• 1:26:07
  that he knows when to stop. It's never overproduced, it's
• 1:26:10
  never too much and it's quite a sparse score, but it's so
• 1:26:14
  effective and then it builds so beautifully so.
• 1:26:17
  Who's got a fairly tasty budget these days, right?
• 1:26:19
  So they can they can bring the pace.
• 1:26:22
  And I mean, you talked about the pace in the McCoy era and it
• 1:26:24
  wasn't quite there for the music.
• 1:26:28
  But Even so, you still need the music to give the action a push,
• 1:26:32
  I think. And I think we expect to hear it
• 1:26:34
  now because all scores have gone quite cinematic on TV and and
• 1:26:37
  quite apparent. But I think Akanola's is, I'm
• 1:26:40
  using that word again, subtler than most people's yes, while
• 1:26:43
  still giving it the push. There is a, a, oh, we're about
• 1:26:48
  to have the, the explosion. This is, I mean, in terms of
• 1:26:51
  special effects. Oh.
• 1:26:53
  I didn't think you were going to see it because it cuts away from
• 1:26:55
  the building to them. I thought, oh please show us.
• 1:27:00
  Now clearly what we're looking at here is ACGI explosion, but
• 1:27:04
  my God, it looks good, doesn't it?
• 1:27:07
  It's wonderful. And press fireworks.
• 1:27:09
  You know what? Any Doctor Who that ends with
• 1:27:11
  fireworks? The TV movie.
• 1:27:13
  I love it. I don't, I mean, I don't know
• 1:27:18
  that we obviously back in the day we had physics, physical
• 1:27:22
  explosions where they kind of abandoned health and safety and,
• 1:27:25
  and, and, you know, blown up huge things because they were
• 1:27:31
  just about allowed to do that in the 1980s.
• 1:27:33
  So we don't get that anymore. But you know, often kind of CGI
• 1:27:38
  explosions feel a little bit like they've been paid for and
• 1:27:41
  kind of slotted in and, and they can be, they can lack kind of
• 1:27:46
  heft. That felt so kind of that the
• 1:27:49
  building collapsing just felt like it, you know, it had, it
• 1:27:53
  had weight to it. So many Doctor Who stories will
• 1:27:56
  end on a Big Bang, right? You can name probably 100 Doctor
• 1:28:00
  Who stories that end on an explosion rather than a plot
• 1:28:04
  resolution. What they've done here is
• 1:28:06
  they've thought of a clever resolution and you get the bang
• 1:28:08
  as well, which is even more satisfying.
• 1:28:10
  And then you get them looking at each other in the fireworks, so
• 1:28:13
  the love stories coming to an end.
• 1:28:15
  And then you get this fellow who was on the crane and the woman
• 1:28:18
  who fell to Earth filming it all, and we're realising, oh,
• 1:28:21
  maybe this is all coming to an end soon if we're seeing him.
• 1:28:25
  I mean, it's a bit of a random inclusion.
• 1:28:28
  A little bit random, unless he's Jeff.
• 1:28:31
  Oh, James, that's perfect. Imagine he's like, yeah, thank
• 1:28:36
  God. Yes, yeah.
• 1:28:39
  I'm sick of living there. I'll squat somewhere else.
• 1:28:42
  But sorry, I was I was just extolling the the brilliance of
• 1:28:45
  Sagan Akanola and I think that there is a there is a tendency
• 1:28:49
  for modern television and modern cinema to over rely on music and
• 1:28:54
  actually gold. He's he's never been a less is
• 1:28:58
  more person himself, has he? I think it's music is so cheap
• 1:29:03
  now to, to, to, to write and produce and, and lay on things
• 1:29:06
  and, and often, certainly in kind of major film franchises,
• 1:29:10
  music is, is the, the sticking plaster that's making up for all
• 1:29:14
  manner of, of shortcomings and, and, and there's too much and,
• 1:29:19
  and it's so samey as well. I mean, Marvel films have fallen
• 1:29:22
  into this thing where every single score sounds exactly the
• 1:29:24
  same. So, and, and if you look back to
• 1:29:25
  the, the great film scores, those, those composers knew when
• 1:29:30
  to use silence or they knew when to use fewer instruments.
• 1:29:34
  They knew when to really kind of use a sparse texture.
• 1:29:37
  And the thing that I admire so much about Akanomo is that he's
• 1:29:41
  not afraid to to have transparency in his music.
• 1:29:48
  He's not afraid for you to be able to hear what's going on in
• 1:29:51
  it. He doesn't crowd his textures.
• 1:29:55
  So that gives him the biggest scope for build up because he
• 1:29:58
  can go from almost nothing to, to everything.
• 1:30:03
  And, and the other thing that he does really well is he he, he
• 1:30:05
  has a sense of, of pulse. So I love the scenes in this
• 1:30:10
  way. And it's particularly with the
• 1:30:11
  Sarah and Nick scenes. He just keeps that pulse going
• 1:30:14
  and it's almost just kind of a, a, a rhythm and a solo guitar
• 1:30:18
  playing over the top of it. That's beautifully written.
• 1:30:21
  And, and, and the music is, it's not, not in any way intrusive in
• 1:30:26
  the scene, but it's just, it's, it's there, it's present.
• 1:30:29
  And if you listen to the music, you can hear everything that's
• 1:30:31
  going on in the music because there's nothing.
• 1:30:32
  It's not. He's not hiding anything behind
• 1:30:35
  it. And he absolutely, you know, we
• 1:30:38
  talked about the changing tempo of the show in the Chimney era.
• 1:30:41
  He shifted with it as well. So yeah, you get a lot of
• 1:30:44
  ambience. In series 11, his first series
• 1:30:46
  11, Is, is is mostly just kind of ambient sound, isn't it?
• 1:30:50
  Well, I think. His score for Punjab is one of
• 1:30:52
  the best scores, yeah ever. And he knows when you know, he
• 1:30:55
  without doing ever kind of doing a pastiche, he knows when to use
• 1:31:02
  a you know, he tailors his style for different locations.
• 1:31:05
  So the you know, I think witch finds is a very good score as
• 1:31:07
  well. I think Rose's going to be from
• 1:31:08
  score and. And witch finders will be
• 1:31:10
  strings. Isn't he?
• 1:31:11
  Yeah, yeah. He's giving it a sense of
• 1:31:13
  location and but, but it's but it's not.
• 1:31:14
  There's never a point where you can't.
• 1:31:16
  You don't roll your eyes and go, oh, he's done a bit of a
• 1:31:18
  pastiche of. You extolled the score in
• 1:31:21
  Legends of the Sea Devils when we talked.
• 1:31:22
  About that, it's a it's a brilliant score.
• 1:31:25
  It's a brilliant. Score.
• 1:31:26
  Yeah, I I actually, I do miss Akanoda quite a lot.
• 1:31:29
  James, it ended. It did end.
• 1:31:32
  You know, there's a little dialogue exchange at the end
• 1:31:35
  that I love as well. I'm like, bloody hell, we even
• 1:31:36
  got the last scene right where he goes.
• 1:31:38
  Was it a first day? I think it was more of a meet
• 1:31:41
  you. I think that's a great.
• 1:31:45
  And she's still like being horrible to her Mama and him as
• 1:31:48
  so she's learnt to be a slightly nicer person, but she's still a
• 1:31:51
  bit of a cow. And you know, we kind of love
• 1:31:54
  her for that. Very efficient ending too.
• 1:31:57
  I mean, that's another rarity in in any area of Doctor Who is
• 1:32:00
  knowing when to wrap up the story in me and, you know, move
• 1:32:04
  on. Well, good grief, we were very
• 1:32:08
  positive about that. Oh, it's a great that is such a
• 1:32:10
  fine piece of writing. You could you could teach
• 1:32:13
  writing using that script. Everything in the script is is
• 1:32:17
  resolved. All of the, all of the things
• 1:32:19
  that need to be seeded at the start are seeded, but they're
• 1:32:22
  seeded in a clever way that you it makes you think that some of
• 1:32:25
  them are just jokes, but then later turn out to be vital plot
• 1:32:28
  points. And the character writing is so
• 1:32:30
  good. All of all of the regulars and
• 1:32:33
  your guest cast. I've got very clearly defined
• 1:32:35
  characters and and they all go on a journey.
• 1:32:38
  Are you using that as your first, second and third fabulous
• 1:32:41
  things? You know, it's, it's been 5
• 1:32:42
  weeks since I've done this, but I do remember we do have to take
• 1:32:45
  off three things each go on. I've won.
• 1:32:48
  What's your first one? The soundtrack, I'm going to go
• 1:32:53
  second. Akanola I, I think he's, I, I, I
• 1:32:57
  mean it. I think he's always brilliant.
• 1:32:58
  But I think this might be his strongest score.
• 1:33:02
  Certainly. It's certainly up there.
• 1:33:04
  It is a brilliant score and he is scoring technically the same
• 1:33:06
  scene over and over again. You know, like the director
• 1:33:10
  that. Is like the director skill and,
• 1:33:12
  and, and, and, and he literally is doing that, but he's just
• 1:33:17
  sort of like the director raising the, the stakes every,
• 1:33:20
  every time. So as we said with the direction
• 1:33:22
  that that there is a thing where kind of the, the shots get kind
• 1:33:24
  of subtly tighter and, and do you notice that more kind of
• 1:33:28
  stuff is brought in? Like at the site, you've got
• 1:33:30
  these very empty corridors. By the end, you've got a lot of
• 1:33:33
  stuff in the foreground and you know, and, and and objects and
• 1:33:38
  wires and cages and the walls of is like the building is closing
• 1:33:42
  in on them. And the music does the same.
• 1:33:45
  It starts off with it, with this, this kind of throb and it
• 1:33:48
  just kind of builds and builds and builds, but it's good.
• 1:33:50
  But it no, it comes in waves as well.
• 1:33:53
  It's it constantly allows space for stuff to happen.
• 1:33:56
  He's a he's a very, very classic composer.
• 1:33:59
  Yeah, so my first one, if we're landing on that Jodie Whitchell
• 1:34:03
  wasn't always written for well, but she grew in confidence in
• 1:34:08
  the part. I really want to make my first
• 1:34:10
  one Jodie Whitaker, because I just think she sings in this
• 1:34:14
  story. Absolutely.
• 1:34:15
  She dashes through it, improvising her way through the
• 1:34:18
  entire thing. And I always think the Doctors
• 1:34:20
  his her best when they are making it up as they go along
• 1:34:24
  but make clever moves. And she makes mistakes in this
• 1:34:27
  as well, but has the opportunity to sort of learn from them.
• 1:34:30
  And she dies in this as well. And she's just so funny.
• 1:34:34
  I'll, I'll say it one last time. The scene where they're all on
• 1:34:36
  the chairs, it's one of the funniest scenes in here.
• 1:34:39
  It's really great. Yeah.
• 1:34:41
  But her confidence for her humour, just for her, like,
• 1:34:45
  enthusiasm in the part, I really think she's got it in this third
• 1:34:49
  series. And yeah, I kind of would have
• 1:34:51
  liked to see more. I think I would have liked to
• 1:34:54
  see her doctor more written more like this from the start, less
• 1:34:59
  but less kind of wild enthusiasm and and more subtlety because
• 1:35:04
  it's because it's a subtle performance.
• 1:35:05
  And, and she can, what she's realized is if she's if she's
• 1:35:11
  toning down on the performance, she can actually switch from one
• 1:35:14
  side of her character to the other almost without you
• 1:35:17
  realizing. She's being funny one minute and
• 1:35:19
  then she's absolutely looking the Daleks in the ice talk and
• 1:35:23
  showing her metal. It's like less, less Aratness in
• 1:35:27
  the UK, which is like, oh, I'm a bit socially awkward and more
• 1:35:31
  War of the Sontarans where she said swim, take your helmet off
• 1:35:34
  and face me. And he takes it off and she
• 1:35:35
  goes, oh, no second faults. Put it back on again.
• 1:35:37
  You know more of that. Yeah, What's she saying?
• 1:35:41
  My second thing, I think I'm going to go, I'm going to go
• 1:35:44
  with this the the small stakes, because I'll reiterate what I
• 1:35:48
  said at the start, which is that small stakes, which in Doctor
• 1:35:51
  Who terms, this is a very, very self-contained small stakes
• 1:35:54
  story. They don't necessarily mean low
• 1:35:56
  stakes. And I'm, you know, I'm as
• 1:35:59
  engaged in this and on the edge of my seat with this, with this
• 1:36:04
  story as I have been with with many a story kind of destroying
• 1:36:07
  planets and you know, where the whole of time and space is
• 1:36:11
  threatened. We don't need Time Lords and
• 1:36:15
  huge spaceships and, you know, planets being wiped out of
• 1:36:19
  existence to, to care about what's happening.
• 1:36:22
  What you need is, is really good characters and, you know, and
• 1:36:28
  pace and tension coming through the action.
• 1:36:33
  And we've got all of that. I, I love that.
• 1:36:35
  I, I, I love that. This is kind of the opposite end
• 1:36:37
  of the scale to flux. That's what I was trying to say,
• 1:36:39
  yeah. The, you know, the biggest
• 1:36:41
  doctor, whoever, and this is just, it's, it's, it's the
• 1:36:45
  doctor and a few people in the warehouse and it's everybody's
• 1:36:48
  exciting, if not more. What goes wrong with the next
• 1:36:51
  one, I think, is they're trying to tell a sort of intimate
• 1:36:53
  story, the Doctor and yazzies and the pirate captains, but
• 1:36:57
  they want to do it as a big sort of Hollywood.
• 1:37:00
  Movie. But they can't do it as a
• 1:37:01
  Hollywood movie because we're in the pandemic.
• 1:37:03
  So you've got a crew of like, one person.
• 1:37:05
  And so it's all a bit of a mishmash, whereas this just is
• 1:37:08
  so focused on what it's doing. Yeah, it's, it's so focused.
• 1:37:12
  James I have watched so many romantic episodes of genre TV
• 1:37:17
  now because I've done a lot of reviewing in my time.
• 1:37:20
  The X-Files, Star Trek, Buffy, Doctor Who, especially Star
• 1:37:25
  Trek, they're sort of romances of the week are frequently
• 1:37:28
  agonizing. Generally, it's a guest
• 1:37:30
  character coming in who's incredibly unlikable and turns
• 1:37:34
  the regular character into a simpering idiot and, and yeah,
• 1:37:38
  you don't buy it for a second. The chemistry is not there and
• 1:37:40
  it's all forgotten about next week.
• 1:37:42
  Hurrah for Chris Chibnall for writing a one episode romance
• 1:37:45
  story where I like both of the characters.
• 1:37:48
  I appreciate the journey they go on and I'm satisfied with the
• 1:37:52
  conclusion. And I think they've got great
• 1:37:54
  chemistry, too. Bang.
• 1:37:56
  Well done. Absolutely.
• 1:37:57
  Yeah. Sorry, that was a bit of a rant
• 1:38:00
  about genre television there, but entirely in this episode's
• 1:38:02
  favour. It's your last one off you.
• 1:38:04
  How many Doctor Who stories have set out to tell a love story,
• 1:38:07
  though it's you know, it's quite a rarity dealt on the banner we.
• 1:38:12
  Did a long term love story with Amy and Rory, didn't we?
• 1:38:14
  Yeah. We did a sort of a weird love
• 1:38:18
  story with the Doctor and Rose. You talk about the one shots
• 1:38:20
  though, the single shot girl on the fireplace, That was a bit
• 1:38:23
  weird as well. Yeah, a bit creepy, yeah.
• 1:38:27
  Yeah, it's not, not often. Oh my God, that interminable
• 1:38:32
  pair in Doctor Mysterio. Oh, that's not going to end
• 1:38:36
  well, is it? We're.
• 1:38:36
  Not talking about good examples here, No, I, I, I, you know,
• 1:38:40
  maybe the doctor has a little romance in the Aztecs.
• 1:38:45
  That's a nice little. Love story.
• 1:38:46
  That's quite sweet, yeah. Dells from the Bannermen has a
• 1:38:48
  love story running through it. Yes.
• 1:38:53
  Well, what's your third thing then?
• 1:38:56
  I'm going to go with the Daleks. I, I, I don't think I'm alone in
• 1:39:00
  feeling that we've, we've, we, the Daleks have suffered from
• 1:39:04
  overexposure. I mean, the, the showrunners are
• 1:39:06
  constantly saying it. You know, Moffett, how many
• 1:39:07
  times did he try and reinvent the Daleks because they've been
• 1:39:10
  overused and, and how successfully did he really do
• 1:39:14
  it? I mean, he certainly did it
• 1:39:17
  unsuccessfully as well. You know, we've, we've been,
• 1:39:23
  they're in every other Big Finish release, it seems to me.
• 1:39:25
  And, and and they do become very much kind of like wallpaper.
• 1:39:29
  What this story does with the dialects takes them back to what
• 1:39:32
  they were originally so successful because of which is
• 1:39:37
  partly kind of good. Yeah, shrewd direction of of an
• 1:39:42
  excellent design. But it's also their characters.
• 1:39:45
  And this story gets that you can give the dialects characters
• 1:39:48
  and, and in this chamber piece, which has got a very, very small
• 1:39:52
  cast, the Daleks are absolutely vital characters in this.
• 1:39:55
  And they're cunning and they're clever and they're relentless
• 1:39:59
  and they're dangerous and they're a little bit sassy as
• 1:40:02
  well. And I, and I just think that
• 1:40:04
  it's, it's actually in his trilogy of New Year's stories,
• 1:40:08
  Chibnall really works wonders with the Daleks.
• 1:40:13
  He, he gets how to make them work and he gets how to make
• 1:40:15
  them scary. So yeah, the Daleks.
• 1:40:19
  Doesn't understand how to put them in a really exciting set
• 1:40:22
  piece as well that that bit in Revolution of the Dialects where
• 1:40:25
  they all zoom into the TARDIS and then it scratches up like a
• 1:40:28
  bit of paper. Fabulous.
• 1:40:30
  My last thing then is bit obvious and we have kind of
• 1:40:33
  touched upon it in this little coder is the director and Essa
• 1:40:37
  Launner. I think in the new series I have
• 1:40:41
  a really striking memory for all of the RTD one directors.
• 1:40:45
  I can kind of tell you who directed every single episode
• 1:40:49
  when we get to Moffett. I can tell you when Toby Haynes
• 1:40:54
  when Good grief, who directed well enough and Time that
• 1:40:58
  fabulous director, what's her name?
• 1:41:04
  Oh, I don't. I can't remember her name
• 1:41:06
  either. She did all the best.
• 1:41:07
  Heaven sent that director. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that director.
• 1:41:10
  I'm trying to say I can remember when I can't.
• 1:41:13
  There's a handful of directors I can really remember strongly,
• 1:41:15
  but there was a lot of sort of one and out or two and out
• 1:41:18
  directors that I don't remember at all.
• 1:41:20
  I do. Think you're you are thinking of
• 1:41:22
  Rachel. Talala.
• 1:41:24
  Talala, talala, talala. Say would say Ward.
• 1:41:29
  I mean, I'll get it wrong all the time.
• 1:41:31
  Apologies if we have pronounced your name in this podcast
• 1:41:33
  episode, Rock. And well done, for example, in
• 1:41:36
  yourself of that first shot of a star beast as well.
• 1:41:38
  Terrible anything, yes, but very often with the Muffet directors,
• 1:41:45
  I kind of of all the rest, I don't really remember at all.
• 1:41:49
  I do feature brought in a load of fresh directors and some of
• 1:41:53
  them stuck around like Jamie Magna Stone and delivered
• 1:41:55
  brilliant work. And then there were someone time
• 1:41:57
  directors who did really great work.
• 1:42:00
  And I think this is someone who came in, understood the show,
• 1:42:03
  understood that the tone of Doctor Who, understood how to
• 1:42:06
  shoot Daleks, could get great performances out of the
• 1:42:10
  character, could paste the script.
• 1:42:12
  And that must have taken some doing, could get the most out of
• 1:42:16
  that very small location. I just think this is put
• 1:42:20
  together with an intense amount of skill for what is effectively
• 1:42:24
  a bit of bump on a Saturday night.
• 1:42:26
  And so just huge kudos to Anessa.
• 1:42:29
  Was it Lautner? Laufa, Laufa.
• 1:42:33
  It's a very old school Doctor Who sets up really, isn't it?
• 1:42:36
  It's a, you know, a limited number of sets, a small amount
• 1:42:39
  of cast and you've got to sustain that for, you know, an
• 1:42:43
  an hour of telly or it would have been.
• 1:42:45
  But it doesn't feel old fashioned, it feels bang up to
• 1:42:48
  date. Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking it
• 1:42:50
  it, it calls to mind Graham Harper.
• 1:42:52
  Just, you know, really working those sets in, particularly in
• 1:42:57
  Revelation of the dialects. Just, you know, you don't feel
• 1:43:00
  like you've been on a handful of TV studio sets when you watch
• 1:43:04
  that. But the other thing about Harper
• 1:43:06
  was he understood momentum. And you, I said it to you when
• 1:43:09
  we talked about Waters of Mars and strictly, and I talked about
• 1:43:13
  it in Utopia as well, in that he would give you sort of a
• 1:43:17
  reasonably paced first half and then just Sprint in the
• 1:43:19
  second-half. And I think an ESSA law that
• 1:43:21
  does Laufer, the lovely director of this episode, does it here as
• 1:43:27
  well. She just paces it and and gives
• 1:43:30
  that second-half huge momentum. Yeah.
• 1:43:33
  Just it feels very worked. I mean, in, in, in the way that
• 1:43:38
  old school directors would have had to work out everything on
• 1:43:40
  paper, partly because they had to kind of provide a camera
• 1:43:44
  scripts and stuff. But they they would actually
• 1:43:45
  kind of work out the, the very, very deliberately the pacing.
• 1:43:48
  I'm, I'm not sure that's necessarily what, what directors
• 1:43:52
  do. They should, but I'm not sure
• 1:43:54
  they always do because because there are plenty of of episodes
• 1:43:57
  of not just talk to of, of television where the pacing
• 1:44:00
  feels very much like, well, they've shot that scene and
• 1:44:02
  they've shot that scene and there hasn't been a a clear
• 1:44:06
  sense of how it all fits together.
• 1:44:08
  This feels like something you know it.
• 1:44:09
  This has been really thoroughly worked out in advance.
• 1:44:13
  It's a bit of a triumph face in an era where people will tell
• 1:44:16
  you there are no triumphs. Oh, absolute triumph.
• 1:44:20
  I think there are several triumphs.
• 1:44:21
  But but but this is this is. One of the best this.
• 1:44:25
  Is one that I would keep coming back to as well.
• 1:44:29
  And I'm not sure I'd say that for all of Jodie.
• 1:44:34
  But this is, you know, I happily watch this every New Year's Eve.
• 1:44:37
  Right, you're on. Get the wine in and the cheese.
• 1:44:41
  James, where are you and I heading next?
• 1:44:43
  Now I know the next recording we do because I've just finished
• 1:44:46
  Remembrance of the Daleks Target novelization, and I enjoyed it
• 1:44:50
  thoroughly and we will be discussing that next week, I
• 1:44:53
  believe. Yes, we are, yes.
• 1:44:56
  But what? Television is indeed.
• 1:44:58
  Where are we coming? Where are we?
• 1:45:00
  Going I want you to pluck something out of the air right
• 1:45:02
  now, randomly. But I wish you'd I should have.
• 1:45:05
  I should have anticipated this question, shouldn't I?
• 1:45:08
  You've not only done enough of these now you've listened to
• 1:45:10
  enough as well. Have you, because when I gave
• 1:45:16
  you, I gave you a list a long time ago and I'm, I'm very
• 1:45:19
  conscious that other people may have nabbed things from my list
• 1:45:21
  by this, this point. Have you recently done the Mark
• 1:45:24
  of the Rani? Good grief in the misty dawns of
• 1:45:28
  hamster or blood pen knife that was done with Pete Lambert but
• 1:45:31
  it was about 3 years ago. Please tell me do you like it
• 1:45:34
  though because I love Mark. I love Mark, Yeah.
• 1:45:37
  Talks funny daunty cold heart. I'm I'm in the mood for some
• 1:45:44
  Colin. Oh great.
• 1:45:47
  Are you mad? I'm always in the mood for
• 1:45:49
  Colin. That sounds a delight, you know,
• 1:45:52
  And if we look at those signs on locations, we might even have a
• 1:45:55
  cream tea as well. Oh, absolutely, yes.
• 1:45:57
  Brilliant. Mark and Irani, bring it on.
• 1:46:00
  James, thank you. I love talking about Daleks with
• 1:46:03
  you. It's one of my favorite things
• 1:46:05
  to do now. Thank you so much for your time.
• 1:46:08
  As always, a huge pleasure.