Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Talks to Robert Valentine about his choice of The Brain of Morbius (1/4)

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Talks to Robert Valentine about his choice of The Brain of Morbius (1/4) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:33
  Hamster with a blunt. Pen knife for doing quicker.
• 0:37
  Quicker 01. Two, give me 3 seconds.
• 0:39
  Yeah. Thank you.
• 0:40
  Obviously 123. Off we can go the other way.
• 0:44
  Welcome back to our hamster with a blunt pen knife, The Doctor
• 0:47
  Who commentary podcast. Rob, man, we were only together
• 0:52
  a couple of weeks ago. I feel like the wedding's back
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  on. Hello.
• 0:56
  Yeah, well, we're we're back together and we are still in
• 1:00
  season 13 of Doctor Who. Yes.
• 1:05
  Excuse me, I'll talk here about season 13 of Doctor Who.
• 1:08
  You just said we're back together there, so that means
• 1:10
  it's officially back on. Can we just see how things go
• 1:16
  without giving a name to it? Would that be?
• 1:19
  Yeah, just, you know, I think. Friends for benefits, that sort
• 1:22
  of thing. The benefits being watching
• 1:23
  Doctor Who's Together. Yeah.
• 1:25
  Well, I thought that is a benefit.
• 1:27
  That is a benefit. That would be the best night of
• 1:31
  your life, I promise. What are we here to talk about
• 1:34
  today, even though it's clearly there in the podcast Catcher for
• 1:37
  everybody. Well, we are here at your
• 1:39
  suggestion to watch the brain of Morbius, yes?
• 1:43
  Well, it's because you've got me obsessed now of watching all of
• 1:46
  these peripheral horror movies that influence these Doctor Who
• 1:50
  stories. I never realised.
• 1:52
  I mean I I did realise because if you go and read the
• 1:54
  discontinuity guide and a fabulous section called Roots
• 1:58
  for every single store and and they would put in.
• 2:00
  Oh yes. And movies and things like that.
• 2:03
  That potential. Oh, it's literally.
• 2:05
  Have it your habit right here. I have it right here, yes.
• 2:09
  Right book. And boy, we had so much fun
• 2:13
  doing The Abominable Snowman and Pyramidism Mars.
• 2:15
  I've already booked you in with the movies for the one after
• 2:17
  this. Yeah, well, it's, you know, I
• 2:20
  thought it'd be a fun thing to do.
• 2:22
  And it is a fun thing to do. You know, I've said this before,
• 2:25
  but I do like digging into the family tree because the whole
• 2:32
  thing about originality is about is really, it's not about doing
• 2:35
  something brand new that's been done before.
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  But that is what happens when you're original.
• 2:39
  But originally originality comes from knowing where you are in a
• 2:44
  tradition of genre, whatever else, And if you know where you
• 2:48
  come from in terms of your range of influences, sometimes I think
• 2:52
  the more influences the better then you.
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  Basically you take what has been done before and then you
• 2:57
  synthesize it into something brand new.
• 3:00
  So people sometimes say you know every idea has been done, every
• 3:04
  story has been told, it's true, but not in this time and not by
• 3:08
  you. So we're all doomed to
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  originality because we're all unique and we can't help but
• 3:14
  leave our own sweaty fingerprints on anything we
• 3:17
  touch. But the whole point is you take
• 3:19
  stuff that's been done before and you can't.
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  And you know, and it was good, but all but, you know,
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  Shakespeare did this. You take stuff, you know,
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  history, these tragedies from other people, Britain before,
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  you can't help but turn into something new.
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  And yeah, but everything, nothing, nothing comes from
• 3:35
  nothing. No idea is is in a vacuum and
• 3:39
  everything has parents the more. We do this the more I'm reminded
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  of what you said when we did the first one, the Abominable
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  Snowmen, and that is that Doctor Who is this great absorber of.
• 3:52
  It's like the absorber of it can take in all of these different
• 3:55
  influences and utterly reshape itself into a homage to that,
• 4:02
  but something totally unique to itself because very often it's
• 4:06
  not science fiction. It's homage.
• 4:08
  Yeah, Yeah. It puts a, a funny, a scary, you
• 4:12
  know, a witty spin on, on the original material.
• 4:16
  Absolutely is the case with this one, which I think is a very
• 4:19
  playful take on probably even more movies and books than we
• 4:25
  watched. But why don't you tell everyone
• 4:27
  what we did watch? Well, we watched this.
• 4:29
  Well, I did, to be honest, I think all you really need to
• 4:33
  watch as just the the, the the baseline film, it's one that you
• 4:39
  didn't watch. You watched the horror of
• 4:41
  Frankenstein. You know, you watched the horror
• 4:44
  of Frankenstein, but the other side is you've got Kate, O'Mara
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  and. And her amazing tits, yeah.
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  Well, I left, I left you to say that, but yes.
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  But the coming the curse of Frankenstein is the Peter
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  Cushing Christopher Lee one, which I watched.
• 5:01
  But I mean, you could watch you could watch a Hammer film.
• 5:03
  But I did say to go away and watch the James Whale
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  Frankenstein and bright of Frankenstein, because why
• 5:09
  wouldn't you? Because they're just.
• 5:10
  Yeah, you said just sort of life enhancement and I was like.
• 5:13
  Yeah, exactly. What about life enhancement?
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  These 30s movies? And then I watched the first
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  Frankenstein. And of the three, it was by far
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  my favorite, but easily the most atmospheric of the free, the
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  most sort of at 70 minutes, a blissful length.
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  It was so to the point. Yeah, in in the the Hammer one
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  wasn't I watched the horror of Frankenstein, right.
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  There was a whole bloody sequence where we were doing the
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  administration of getting the organs and the body parts, and
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  then we were watching them build the fucking laboratory.
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  And I was like, get to the point in the first one that the 1930s
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  one the the laboratory, it literally just cut to a scene in
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  the laboratory. They're all assembled, The
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  lightning coming down. We knew it all already.
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  So it just got to the point it was.
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  It was blissfully economic, but stylish as fuck, Rob It was so
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  stylish, that movie. I couldn't believe the special
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  effects in the last sort of 10 minutes.
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  Yeah. No, I'm, I'm delighted you
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  enjoyed it, but I'm surprised because that, yeah, you
• 6:18
  preferred Frankenstein to The Bride of Frankenstein.
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  A a whole different kettle of fish.
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  May I say that I think Bride of Frankenstein true true more in
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  common with Bride of Morbius in that it is tonally all over the
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  place. It is very funny in places and
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  it's very camping places and it is scary in some place, but
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  nowhere near as frequently as that first one was.
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  Because I think with the first one he's really trying, isn't
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  he? Like he's trying to make his
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  mark. The second one, he's been a bit
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  indulgent. And if there's one thing Robert
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  Holmes is being in Brain and Morbius, it's a bit indulgent,
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  no? Well, we can talk about it.
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  I mean actually as we go, but not necessarily in the first
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  episode. We can mention a couple of the
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  other things that are definite influences on this.
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  And if you glance at the discontinuity guide, a couple of
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  them do get mentioned. So we will there as they come
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  up. We'll, we can talk about some
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  stuff. It's not like you, so I'll have
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  to rely on you to just tell them.
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  Oh. Sure, sure, but some yeah, it's
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  Frankenstein isn't the only thing coming in.
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  I yes, I spoke over you then, but I think you suggested
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  playing pressing play and I think.
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  That would be before we press play.
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  Don't think you're getting away with not saying what you thought
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  of those movies. Just very quickly now I want to
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  know your opinion. My opinion.
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  I'm here all the time. Oh.
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  God, no. I love them.
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  Frankenstein. Bride of Frankenstein with Elsa
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  Lanchester as Mary Shelley and the bride, Ernest Sessinger as
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  Doctor Pretorius. Oh yeah, no, it's I, I, I do
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  love those films. So your favorite?
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  Sort of. Is that your favorite horror?
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  Oh, no, no, I wouldn't say so. But they are definitely sort of,
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  they're kind of the kind of movies that used to be on BBC
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  Two on a Sunday morning, you know what I mean?
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  You know, horror movies from from, of that pedigree from that
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  era. Yeah.
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  No, I'm a huge fan. I mean, I've been, you know, I
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  mean Young Frankenstein, the Mel Brooks film, is one of my
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  favorite films. Never seen that.
• 8:22
  I might have to figure that out. I do like.
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  Yeah, no, Oh, no, you must, you must.
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  But no, it's. But I thought if we're going to
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  do Brain of Morbius, then it's just a wonderful excuse to go
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  and watch watch some old classic horror.
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  I will point out scenes in Brain of Morbius that Christopher
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  Barry almost shot for shot Nicks.
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  For yes, right, Absolutely. Certainly when they're in the
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  laboratories. Just one last thing before we
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  press play. Yeah.
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  And that is, that's a bit, you know, trays against the trays
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  description of that, don't you think?
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  That second movie, I mean, the pride of fucking Frank, she's
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  only in the last five minutes. She pops up.
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  Right. And it don't get wrong.
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  It's the most iconic look you could possibly imagine.
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  So stolen by so many things. I was like, my God.
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  That's Kate Mulgrew in Voyager in that episode.
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  That's Rocky. Oh yes, I was just.
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  Seeing all the different influences there.
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  But you know, a poor bloody woman she gets, she wakes up and
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  then she's sort of thrown about the room by Frankenstein, does a
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  load of sort of weird statuesque poses and and very operatic
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  facial reactions. How Then she just gets blown to
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  buggery. That's, you know, that's, you
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  know, cinematic immortality for day's work.
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  I think I call that not a bad gig.
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  I mean, she took every wrong for the 5 minutes, the fact that she
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  was immortalized like that and no one ever forgot her.
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  But she's I took a look, she's all over the posters and all
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  this stuff. So I was expecting her to be
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  there, maybe in the scene 3, not, you know, scene 500 of this
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  movie. Oh yes, yeah.
• 9:54
  Well, I didn't, that's the thing.
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  I was looking forward to you going in blind to to both of
• 9:59
  these. It was campus tits though I will
• 10:01
  say that that second one, it was grave.
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  Oh, it's incredibly camp. Camp, Yeah, obviously, because
• 10:08
  you know James, well, I think he was openly gay in in Hollywood
• 10:11
  back then. And so there is a real, real,
• 10:15
  real subversive quality to it, in fact.
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  That movie. No, it wasn't.
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  But he he went and went to do quite a lot of other stuff.
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  But there is a biopic about him with Ian McKellen playing James
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  Whale and the Brendan Fraser playing his.
• 10:35
  Is he a pool boy or something like that?
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  Anyway, he's some guy. He I think comes around to clean
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  the pool and it's a beginning of a relationship between them.
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  But yeah, that's that's a movie that's worth checking out
• 10:43
  sometime. Another rational to The Mummy
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  there from the last movie. Brendan Fraser again.
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  Well, you know, you know, not that we can't get away from
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  Brendan Fraser, but why would you want to get away from
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  Brendan? Fraser I really would have.
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  Well, I'll tell you something else.
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  That's campus tits, Rob. But that's the bright and
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  obvious Episode 1. Well, OK, shall we?
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  Before we, before, before I say, well, that was a very good
• 11:05
  segue, but let me just be sick. Be careful at synchronizing
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  pressing play because. Oh my word.
• 11:11
  I'm a bit chaotic sometimes. OK, well, so you count as in
• 11:14
  then and I'll press play when you say.
• 11:17
  Excellent. OK, 5.
• 11:19
  Safe in your hands. That's a bit premature, 321.
• 11:27
  Are we gone? OK, close enough.
• 11:31
  Close enough, even. With all that prep, we still
• 11:35
  might have got it wrong. Oh well.
• 11:38
  It's fine. It's fine, yeah.
• 11:40
  So we're in the same season, we're just two stories later, we
• 11:43
  go to season. 13 it's. Android invasion in between it.
• 11:48
  Well, yeah, and Android invasion notwithstanding, it's pretty
• 11:53
  damn great. Excuse me, that is the how I've
• 11:56
  got. My OH.
• 11:57
  Look at this now. The target novelisation tells us
• 12:00
  that this is Griz the mutant. Well, yes, well, I'm glad you
• 12:04
  mentioned the target nobilization, because that was
• 12:06
  my first introduction to the story and I think the version of
• 12:09
  the story in my head is still sort of the the kind of real
• 12:14
  core mem reading memory for me. But yeah, this is a really
• 12:18
  great, brutal, brutal opening. Well, you really this?
• 12:23
  He screams out, doesn't he? Like a hysterical screamer.
• 12:26
  It's horrible. Yeah, yeah.
• 12:27
  With the knife it's saying it's still though, right?
• 12:30
  It's, I mean, it's getting to the point quicker than that
• 12:32
  Hammer movie of like getting the body parts.
• 12:36
  Yeah, that's the thing. We have our hook handed Igor
• 12:40
  type character. Of course, Igor doesn't appear
• 12:42
  in the James Whale Frankenstein's he turns up in
• 12:45
  the next one, son of Frankenstein, played by Bela
• 12:47
  Lugosi. But the Fritz character, Yes, it
• 12:51
  is. Actually it is.
• 12:52
  Yeah. And and now we have.
• 12:53
  Oh my God, we have. Philip Solo, the legendary.
• 12:58
  Philip Maddock. The great legendary Philip
• 13:00
  Maddock is Solon, and which I will pronounce as Solon because
• 13:04
  that's how I read it in the book.
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  And we have these sets, Rob, these sets with the Askew
• 13:10
  pillows and the conference everywhere.
• 13:13
  The set's incredible. The set is incredible.
• 13:15
  His his costume is incredible because he looks like a Leonardo
• 13:19
  da Vinci or a Beethoven, but he does have a vaguely futuristic
• 13:24
  vibe to his outfit as well. I think you can make a
• 13:27
  comparison between, oh God, what was the fellow's name?
• 13:30
  The one from Poldark, from the Hammer movie that the lead from
• 13:33
  the Horror of Frankenstein, that actor and Philly, yes, they're
• 13:38
  basically playing the same role, the person that's assembling all
• 13:40
  the parts, but they're doing very different things.
• 13:43
  In the Hammer movie, he's sort of a bit.
• 13:45
  He's very casual about everything.
• 13:47
  Whereas Maddock, he knows he's playing dogs Who and he's just
• 13:50
  taking it a bit above the whole time.
• 13:54
  He is, but he's all he's also a brilliant man who's right on the
• 13:59
  edge of his sanity. And here we are.
• 14:02
  I think about you sometimes, Rob.
• 14:06
  Wait. Right on the edge of his sanity.
• 14:10
  I'll do my best to hold on to it.
• 14:13
  No one thinks that of me, unfortunately.
• 14:16
  Now, look, there's some very judicious use of dry ice in this
• 14:18
  scene, like to cover up the studio floor.
• 14:21
  Why don't they do this more often?
• 14:23
  Yes, I mean the the studio floor is one of the eternal weaknesses
• 14:26
  of well, to be honest TV. But I love the set.
• 14:30
  I love the lightning, the lightning effects Khan, which we
• 14:33
  will we will revisit in night of the doctor one day.
• 14:39
  This is. Irene the Terrence Dicks book
• 14:41
  Warmonger. Easily one of the worst past
• 14:45
  doctor adventures of all time. And I will tell you what happens
• 14:49
  in that book because it is a prequel to The Brain of Morbius,
• 14:52
  OK? Fine, OK, I will never ever read
• 14:56
  it. Conversation round episode 3.
• 14:59
  Yeah, I'll let you know the plot details.
• 15:01
  Fair enough, Fair enough. Now here we have, as ever, the
• 15:05
  delirious Elizabeth Slayden, who extraordinarily good in this
• 15:10
  story. She has to play blind later on
• 15:13
  and she convinces. Yeah, she's she's fun, playful,
• 15:18
  and then the story does dreadful things to her.
• 15:20
  She has a miserable time in this one, but this thing is
• 15:23
  wonderful. Now far.
• 15:25
  Worse than pyramids and Mars, right?
• 15:27
  Well, she was quite proactive in that.
• 15:29
  Yeah, no, she's proactive. She's incredibly proactive in
• 15:31
  this one, but the ordeal she goes through in this one would
• 15:35
  make me never want to travel with the doctor ever again.
• 15:38
  That's all of season 12 for me, Everything.
• 15:41
  She goes for revenge at the side of man, the arc in space.
• 15:46
  I'll be like Doctor. I'll see you later.
• 15:49
  Actually, I do love the the lightning effects the lightning
• 15:54
  on the horizon there. The the idea of like a Sargasso
• 15:58
  sea of spaceships. Yes well the Sargasso Sea is a
• 16:02
  sea that has no land border and it's it's got currents going.
• 16:06
  It's like a giant Whirlpool. It's a gyre.
• 16:09
  So it's it's, it's a stretch of the sea that is notorious for
• 16:12
  shipwrecks. And I just just, I love the fact
• 16:15
  that Doctor Who will mention something like that.
• 16:17
  And it's. Good homes that popping in
• 16:20
  little details like that that you might want to go and explore
• 16:23
  elsewhere. Yeah, no, exactly, exactly.
• 16:25
  And that's the thing, you know. Most of Sarah punches the
• 16:30
  Doctor's mood straight away. He comes out, you know,
• 16:33
  screaming at the heavens at the Time Lords, and she just goes,
• 16:37
  oh, so there. Yeah, you know, exactly,
• 16:40
  exactly. But the fact that this is now a
• 16:42
  time travel show about the Doctor and his companion
• 16:45
  travelling around, and that the Time Lords are a constant vague
• 16:49
  thing in the background, this, this story is a major one in
• 16:54
  terms of Time Lord and Doctor law.
• 16:57
  Really, this is quite a significant story in that regard
• 17:00
  too are. You talking about the sister of
• 17:02
  Khan, the elixir of life? We'll.
• 17:04
  Get there. We'll, we'll get there, yes.
• 17:07
  I mean, if this was being made now, I was thinking about this
• 17:09
  because it's very meta in that it wears its influences on its
• 17:14
  sleeve. But it's not met her in the way
• 17:16
  that TV is now, where it makes, you know, if this was being made
• 17:20
  now, Sarah will be going, Oh, yeah, I've seen that Hammer
• 17:23
  movie, you know, in Seeds of Doom, she'd be going.
• 17:26
  Oh yeah, I remember that Avengers episode.
• 17:28
  Yeah, no, yeah, no, Frank Frankenstein would be name
• 17:31
  checked if you're doing it now. You think it's wise that he
• 17:35
  wasn't? It wasn't.
• 17:39
  Yes, because you're honouring it so much.
• 17:41
  Oh, here we have the the castle on the hill, framed in
• 17:45
  lightning, and this drizzle looks wonderful.
• 17:47
  I believe that. And, you know, I, I actually
• 17:51
  don't mind the artificiality of the planet in this.
• 17:55
  I, I'm not sure why, because I'm some Doctor Who stories, it
• 17:58
  really bothers me. But because this whole thing is
• 18:00
  so theatrical, I could just see this on the stage, you know?
• 18:10
  Well, the thing we yeah, all TV of this period is like this, not
• 18:16
  a, but look how look at this laboratory.
• 18:18
  And this laboratory actually I think owes a lot more to the the
• 18:22
  Cushing Hammer laboratory than it does to Universal.
• 18:26
  And for one thing, part of the reason it's so different is that
• 18:30
  when Universal Studios found out that Hammer were going to be
• 18:32
  making Frankenstein, they wrote, they gave, they sent them a
• 18:35
  cease and desist because you can't do anything.
• 18:38
  Yeah. And they haven't pointed out,
• 18:40
  well, actually the only person who can make our cease and
• 18:43
  desist is Mary Shelley. Indeed.
• 18:46
  But they did say, well, you can't copy our laboratory design
• 18:49
  and you can't copy our Frankenstein, our Frankencense
• 18:52
  monster design either. And they didn't.
• 18:54
  But this is all test tubes and tanks.
• 18:56
  And it's. Yeah, it's, this is not James
• 18:58
  Wales, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 19:00
  Equipment, Oh, it's just gorgeous, but it but it is that
• 19:02
  mixture, isn't it like the scientific?
• 19:05
  It's the gothic horror. It's just completely oh, here we
• 19:09
  go. Here's the sisterhood of Khan.
• 19:11
  Now these what they call them the evil harpies, I think
• 19:16
  somewhere. Yeah, yeah, I wrote it down
• 19:20
  somewhere, but my notes are very, very small and my glasses
• 19:23
  are all the way over there. And anyway, the podcast would
• 19:25
  just be me rustling paper all the time, so I'm going by
• 19:28
  memory. People are very kind.
• 19:30
  You know, Rob, I think the the woman who plays Marin because
• 19:35
  she is a young woman. She's not old.
• 19:38
  That's all makeup. Cynthia Grenville.
• 19:41
  Amazing like like I, I'm convinced that is an old deer
• 19:44
  they've dragged in. You know who's done many years
• 19:47
  of great TV and film work? But it's not.
• 19:50
  It's quite a young actress. Yeah.
• 19:52
  And The thing is that one, if we are going to talk about
• 19:55
  influences and adaptational choices and stuff like that, the
• 19:59
  sisterhood of Khan do not fit into the Frankenstein paradigm,
• 20:05
  I don't think in the slightest. So for me, it's a bit of an odd
• 20:09
  one. Why?
• 20:10
  Do you think? Oh, because you know.
• 20:12
  Because you know, for other writers, you know, influences
• 20:16
  are one thing, but I'm, I'm, I'm just, I just cut from my taste,
• 20:20
  from a purist point of view. It's not really, if anything,
• 20:24
  they're bringing in she by H Rhoda Haggard Aisha, she who
• 20:28
  must be obeyed. You know, the whole the flame of
• 20:30
  life thing. It's, it's a completely
• 20:33
  different story. So if, if you, if you've been
• 20:35
  loyal to Frankenstein, it's difficult to, to reconcile
• 20:38
  bringing she into it. But they have, you know.
• 20:43
  It's also very refreshing to have this many women in a Philip
• 20:48
  Hinchcliffe produce Doctor Who story because.
• 20:50
  Incredibly rare, yeah. So rare.
• 20:53
  And you know, Holmes gave that excuse.
• 20:55
  I've read his biography and he gave the excuse he didn't like
• 20:59
  murdering women. That's why he didn't put women
• 21:01
  in stories. And we talked.
• 21:02
  Like, I think what? Yeah, could, Yeah.
• 21:04
  Have you ever considered not murdering everyone?
• 21:06
  But hey, he. Does and this is he has most of
• 21:08
  the women survive, but he has murder a couple of them in the
• 21:10
  last episode. Yes, true, true.
• 21:13
  I do think that this is a this is a oh, for God's sake, Rob, I
• 21:18
  have AI have a stutter that kind of just comes out for special
• 21:21
  occasions and podcasts, but anyway makes.
• 21:23
  You more cute, you know. Well, bless you.
• 21:25
  Thank you very much. But this is a religion that does
• 21:29
  not get a free pass in Doctor Who.
• 21:31
  This there is a theme of science versus mysticism in this story.
• 21:38
  And essentially mysticism loses because it's it's all
• 21:41
  scientifically explicable and it's not some high rarefied,
• 21:47
  almost indistinguishable from magic kind of science.
• 21:50
  It's it's, it's, it's chemistry and, and A and A and a city
• 21:56
  chimney. On that level, well, you say
• 21:58
  chemistry, you say chemistry to me, but like really just some
• 22:03
  some chemicals that are in that mountain that drip down like
• 22:08
  honey and that gives people eternal life, which clearly
• 22:11
  you've been using. I mean, look at ya.
• 22:12
  I don't know. I think there's something
• 22:15
  happening there, you know and all.
• 22:16
  Those big universe, you know, But yeah, it's it is
• 22:19
  interesting. But yeah, but suddenly now we're
• 22:21
  back in Frankenstein again with Frankenstein and Igor or Solon.
• 22:27
  Solon feels weird to me. And Condo.
• 22:32
  I wouldn't lose the sisters in this.
• 22:34
  Story I wouldn't know, I wouldn't lose them, but I would
• 22:36
  never have put them in that's I'm not saying it should be
• 22:40
  different. I'm just making an observation
• 22:41
  that it's an. It's an interesting if and
• 22:44
  random set of things to smash together.
• 22:47
  One thing, Is it wrong with that one thing?
• 22:49
  Absolutely not. No, please observe away because
• 22:51
  I'm not going to make any small ones.
• 22:54
  Oh, listen to this line. Can you spare a glass of water?
• 22:57
  The amount of times I've used that when coming in out of the
• 22:59
  rain. Oh, it's beautiful, it.
• 23:00
  Never gets old. One thing I really love about
• 23:03
  this I recently berated Chris cloth for his direction of the
• 23:08
  happiness patrol because he starts off directing it in all
• 23:10
  sort of Dutch angles and and making it look your JNT caught
• 23:13
  wind of what he was doing good. No, no, no.
• 23:15
  None of that. Get your cameras the right way
• 23:17
  and let's go. Chris Barry is directing this
• 23:22
  like a Hammer horror movie. He does weird angles.
• 23:26
  He does like atmospheric lighting.
• 23:29
  He just goes for it. He knows exactly what he's doing
• 23:33
  and he just goes for it. I.
• 23:35
  Love it. I would actually say this is AI
• 23:37
  find this direction more dynamic than the hammer but closer to
• 23:43
  the James whale ironically. You could be right there
• 23:46
  actually. Yeah.
• 23:47
  Now we've watched two of those hammers.
• 23:49
  They were a bit a bit slow. Philip Mazaka, though in this is
• 23:54
  just he is so good. His performance is so detailed
• 23:57
  and layered, he's barely keeping it together.
• 24:00
  He is selfish, zealous, lonely, half when you think he how many
• 24:08
  years he has spent here with, you know, Igor and the witches
• 24:15
  you know and him it's. Stitching together body parts.
• 24:18
  Yeah. From Yeah, yeah.
• 24:20
  Crash spaceships? Yeah, it's going to wrought your
• 24:22
  mind a bit, isn't it? He's barely holding it together
• 24:25
  now he The other thing is, the Doctor is not fooled by any of
• 24:28
  this. The Doctor recognises Morbius
• 24:30
  immediately and I also doesn't Morbius look like Davros?
• 24:34
  Very much that sort of Goyle look isn't.
• 24:37
  It. Yeah, yeah.
• 24:39
  Yeah, I mean, the Doctor sort of spots his straight away.
• 24:41
  Sarah's quick off the mark as well, because in a minute, when
• 24:43
  they have the drink condo, how many times must I remind you the
• 24:47
  drink must be allowed to breathe?
• 24:49
  She pauses straight away. Doesn't she?
• 24:51
  Yes, it's really fascinating in this, how the Doctor and Sarah
• 24:55
  are both totally aware of their danger, but the audience isn't
• 25:04
  isn't clued in that they're aware.
• 25:06
  So we're worried on their behalf.
• 25:08
  And then it turns out that Oh, no, no, no, no, they've their
• 25:12
  eyes are wide open. I mean, they're clued in, right?
• 25:14
  But I think, I don't think the audience could ever quiet have
• 25:17
  prepared themselves for say, the first cliffhanger with that
• 25:21
  horrible butcher's shop assemblance little, you know,
• 25:25
  like we're just not used to this in Doctor.
• 25:28
  This is a level of horror that we're not used to seeing.
• 25:30
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.
• 25:32
  And here we have the Oh yeah, this is the the wine and
• 25:34
  breathing line. Now, in terms of Hammers
• 25:38
  Frankenstein, in Hammer Frankenstein, Doctor Victor
• 25:42
  Frankenstein is the monster. And of course the series of
• 25:45
  films he makes different creatures each time.
• 25:48
  And unlike James Wales Frankenstein, where the the
• 25:52
  Karloff creature is the recurring monster and he's like,
• 25:57
  in some ways he's the victim protagonist Solon is he's the
• 26:04
  villain. Frankenstein is the villain and
• 26:07
  that so if in terms of immediate family tree, I think Peter
• 26:14
  Cushing's. Apparently Peter Cushing was
• 26:16
  actually on the wish list of actors to play Mahendry.
• 26:19
  So on. Really.
• 26:21
  Yeah. Apparently so.
• 26:22
  I mean, I wouldn't want to lose Maddock for anything, but that
• 26:24
  is just too tasty to think about.
• 26:26
  Too obvious, I think. Yeah, yeah, I think we'd lose
• 26:30
  Philip Maddock's performance, which I think is actually
• 26:33
  utterly unique and one of the greatest things in all of
• 26:36
  Doctor. Who by all accounts, and this is
• 26:39
  reported in her autobiography and in the commentary that Chris
• 26:44
  Barry and Elizabeth Sladen are both on.
• 26:47
  Christopher Barry did not have a lot of time for his regulars in
• 26:50
  this because he was lavishing most of his directorial talent
• 26:54
  towards Philip Maddock. Now, I wouldn't always say
• 26:57
  that's a good approach, but in this case the results speak for
• 27:01
  themselves. Well, you, that performance
• 27:04
  needs to work. And to be honest, in many ways,
• 27:07
  I do think the Doctor and Sarah could look after themselves, you
• 27:12
  know, in many ways in this. At this point there.
• 27:14
  Having said that, having said that, the work that Elizabeth
• 27:17
  Slayton does in this story, her performance in this one,
• 27:22
  especially, just the depth of it, is incredible.
• 27:25
  I mean, of three, astonishing. The fact is in this story, the
• 27:31
  second one where she's blind going into that room, I think
• 27:34
  it's the best of the three. We'll get there.
• 27:36
  We'll get I love as well. Do you not know it's like when
• 27:39
  the sisters do their sort of crazy interpretive their hands.
• 27:43
  He does like overlap some things just to make it more weird.
• 27:47
  Yeah, yeah. And they have using the power of
• 27:51
  their magic science. Suppose this is this is them at
• 27:55
  their most powerful. They have brought the TARDIS
• 27:57
  here. And Oh my word, look at Cynthia
• 28:02
  Grenfell's hand there like she's.
• 28:04
  Literally. Going crazy touching the TARDIS.
• 28:07
  Yeah, no, they're, they're really selling it.
• 28:09
  Yeah, it's. It's another one of those things
• 28:11
  that it could be. So, Pony, you've just got to go
• 28:14
  for it. Yeah, no, you.
• 28:16
  Yeah, if, if, if they have conviction, we're convinced.
• 28:19
  Yeah. Cynthia Grenfell as Mar and and
• 28:21
  Julie Brown as Ohika. I'll give you an example of
• 28:25
  another pack of girls. Yeah, in Doctor Who.
• 28:28
  And that's the Kangs in Paradise, where perhaps, you
• 28:31
  know, it didn't go according to plan.
• 28:34
  Could have, but didn't. Yeah, I've said this before, but
• 28:36
  you know, I kind of think that if you if you cast a bunch of
• 28:38
  inner city kids straight off, straight off the set of Grange
• 28:41
  Hill, that would have. Mark's watching Biker Grove at
• 28:45
  the moment and all of that cast could have done it brilliantly.
• 28:49
  Yeah, well, yeah, they hey, do you know what we're every
• 28:52
  conversation becomes a Paradise Towers conversation.
• 28:56
  It influences. Everything.
• 28:57
  Something in that. There's something in that.
• 28:59
  It does. I love the fact though.
• 29:01
  Don't you like the fact that these, these witches, shall we
• 29:04
  say, I mean, that's basically what they are in this, aren't
• 29:06
  they? It's sort of science fiction
• 29:08
  witches. They're the ones dragging these
• 29:10
  spaceships down with the power of their minds.
• 29:14
  Yeah, yeah, witches. Odd.
• 29:20
  But you know it. But it works.
• 29:21
  It works. Well, I suppose if they're
• 29:24
  supposed, if they're, if the idea is that they are known to
• 29:28
  the Time Lords and that they use the elixir in moments of
• 29:33
  unstable generations and all of this, you have to make them
• 29:36
  powerful enough that they can basically say to the Time Lords,
• 29:40
  leave us alone. We.
• 29:41
  Are. Yeah, yeah.
• 29:43
  I mean, there is something there.
• 29:45
  I I do wonder if there would have been a way to make it sort
• 29:50
  of about life and death in terms of the sisterhood has the flame
• 29:54
  of life, the elixir of life essentially and so on.
• 29:59
  Is a man up to his elbows in bloody death If there's if
• 30:03
  there's something more way of pulling those two strands into
• 30:07
  together. I, I kind of for me, there's not
• 30:10
  quite enough there in terms of you do.
• 30:13
  This you were doing this in the gunfires as well, you know,
• 30:17
  making thematic links that unfortunately weren't quite
• 30:20
  there but could be. I'm not right either.
• 30:22
  Oh, here we. Here we are with Sarah.
• 30:23
  But it's fascinating for exercise.
• 30:25
  She yeah, she's pouring away her roses.
• 30:27
  Lime cordial. Yeah.
• 30:29
  Oh yeah. That's it.
• 30:31
  Look, the wind coming in the Thunder.
• 30:34
  Oh, that isn't wind. It's a freak school.
• 30:36
  Or is it a telekinetic visit? So yeah, telekinesis.
• 30:40
  You know, it's which, but it began within the within the kind
• 30:44
  of the pseudoscience of Doctor Who.
• 30:46
  We just have to accept that isn't math, that isn't magic,
• 30:48
  it's science. What are you saying, Rob?
• 30:50
  That they're making scientific science fiction explanations for
• 30:54
  gothic cliches. What?
• 30:57
  Yeah. Well, you know, they're, they're
• 30:59
  making scientific, you know, sort of dogmatically scientific
• 31:04
  excuses for what is actually magic.
• 31:06
  Unless it isn't. Ah, now the doctor's still
• 31:10
  playing dumb. Actually, he's playing drunk at
• 31:12
  the moment. He's playing, he's, he's playing
• 31:14
  a little bit. Tom knows how to do that very
• 31:17
  well. I mean, I love the fact that he
• 31:20
  realizes who it is and then he's plot face palms the table, but
• 31:24
  OK, that's and then Sarah very quickly pretending to be
• 31:29
  unconscious. Yeah, playing possum, Yeah.
• 31:31
  And and so well, because she's actually, when you actually
• 31:34
  study her, she you can, you can kind of see her making the
• 31:37
  decision to do it and she's convincingly unconvincing, like
• 31:42
  a woman who was legitimately play acting in a dangerous
• 31:44
  situation. Absolutely.
• 31:46
  You know Tom's play acting there, you know, But it's so
• 31:48
  compelling, anyone would think he'd been face down on a bar a
• 31:51
  few times. But never without his
• 31:54
  toothbrush, I'm sure. I'm sure, yeah.
• 31:57
  Yeah, I do love the set though. It's the the skewed pillars.
• 32:01
  You really get the sense that this place was a, you know, a
• 32:05
  beautiful and palatial once, but someone is just living in the
• 32:11
  dirt and the shadows, a miserable, obsessive existence
• 32:14
  waiting for for his golden days to return.
• 32:18
  Well, one thing I truly respect Terrence Dicks for doing.
• 32:22
  Obviously he wrote the original treatment for this about a
• 32:24
  robot. Wasn't it a malfunctioning robot
• 32:27
  going around gathering up all the parts?
• 32:29
  To build. To build a man.
• 32:30
  To build a. Man and Hinchcliffe, as Terrace
• 32:33
  Dick says, went off the robot and Terrace was away on holiday.
• 32:37
  So Holmes rewrote the whole thing and had a lot of fun with
• 32:40
  it. When he came to write the
• 32:41
  Target, he didn't do his original version, did he?
• 32:44
  He's like, no, no, no. People want what's on the
• 32:46
  screen. I'm going to give him that.
• 32:48
  I kind of respect him for that, because he could have.
• 32:50
  He could have. Some of the other writers of
• 32:52
  Targets did. Yeah, it would have been a real
• 33:00
  curious. So I do love I do love
• 33:09
  throughout Solon's just care with with, you know with them
• 33:15
  being really careful with heads and brain pans.
• 33:18
  And then there's a brilliant moment.
• 33:20
  Come, we'll talk about it when it happens.
• 33:22
  But he. Just went mind his head.
• 33:26
  He's surprisingly low tech in so many ways.
• 33:29
  Yes. Well, you know, the weather,
• 33:32
  it's bad, you know, sort of been beaten at the place for a while.
• 33:34
  Everything's falling apart. I mean, it's got to be though,
• 33:38
  right? It's going to be a bit trashy to
• 33:40
  have that proper, I don't know, that sort of decaying look that
• 33:45
  you expect. Yeah, but it's a, it's a quasi
• 33:51
  medieval futuristic environment that is allowed to decay.
• 33:54
  So this is the far, far future. And that will, when we get to
• 33:57
  it, that will throw up interesting questions about the
• 34:01
  extent of Morbius's reach in his in his salad days.
• 34:09
  Notice that very judicious use of CSO, then, to make that
• 34:12
  corridor go on and on and on. I did, but I only noticed it in
• 34:16
  that moment for the very first time.
• 34:18
  I'd never tweeted it before until.
• 34:19
  I saw it there. Yeah.
• 34:22
  It's not like 72 special effects to be subtle like that.
• 34:25
  That that's the best use of any kind of special effect.
• 34:28
  Look at this set, Rob all the tunes and the Oh my God, the
• 34:32
  glass Mile. Fabulous.
• 34:34
  Yeah, this is this is a Cushing Frankenstein set.
• 34:37
  This is not a James Whale Frankenstein set.
• 34:41
  Oh, and here we have some more Not not science, sorry, not
• 34:45
  magic. It's science.
• 34:46
  Believe me, honest Gov. Slightly less special effects
• 34:49
  than we were just praising a second ago there.
• 34:51
  Yeah, but you had a bit of music and sound effects.
• 34:53
  It's really. Quite nice, isn't it?
• 34:55
  Yeah. I mean, we're doing, we're doing
• 34:59
  a. Lot special effects terms.
• 35:01
  That's the perfect crime. Do you?
• 35:02
  Remember when we were running around the Priory in the first
• 35:05
  episode of Pyramids of Ours, doing the same thing down the
• 35:08
  similar sort of corridors here, waiting for the horror to
• 35:12
  emerge? Yeah, but the, the, the threat
• 35:15
  here is much grubbier and more human in a way.
• 35:18
  It's a it's a guy in his surgical kit that is the
• 35:21
  currently the the main danger. Currently the main danger,
• 35:26
  things will escalate beautifully.
• 35:29
  But on here we have sort of a compulsory beat in Frankenstein,
• 35:33
  which is a young woman exploring the laboratory at night.
• 35:37
  And this cliffhanger, when I first saw this as a nipper, it
• 35:42
  scared the life out of me. This cliffhanger, it was so
• 35:45
  horrific to a young and young Joe Ford.
• 35:49
  I think is it the is it the Doctor Who monster book the
• 35:55
  Morbius Monster would have appeared in?
• 35:57
  Because I remember being obsessed with the illustrations
• 36:00
  of him long before I ever got to see him.
• 36:03
  Here we go. Rob, he's got no fucking head.
• 36:08
  He has no heads. Yes, I think so.
• 36:10
  In in this first cliffhanger, we just get the body.
• 36:13
  We have the body of the the Frankenstein monster,
• 36:16
  essentially. And he's got a human arm for
• 36:19
  fuck. 'S sake and a crab claw.
• 36:22
  It's so. Brilliant.
• 36:24
  And all the bits of warrior coming out of his neck.
• 36:26
  I mean, come on. Yeah, that, that that's peak
• 36:30
  Doctor Who for me. That Doctor Who at its most,
• 36:34
  Doctor Whoey. Yeah, absolutely.
• 36:37
  Like waiting for the shock till the end of that first.
• 36:40
  I think Hinchcliffe, who does this best, the end of episode 1,
• 36:44
  think Terror, the Zygos, think Pyramids and Mars.
• 36:47
  You know those great sort of horror reveals at the end of the
• 36:50
  first episode. Yeah, there's been suspense.
• 36:51
  Yes, we know Doctor Frankenstein going around make it, you know,
• 36:56
  just taking body parts. But that's, forgive me, that's
• 37:00
  fucking horrible, that is. It's wonderfully hideous, and
• 37:06
  it's the kind of thing that will haunt your nightmares for a
• 37:09
  week. Wonderfully hideous and the sort
• 37:11
  of thing that will haunt your nightmares for weeks.
• 37:13
  I've been described that way on a few occasions, you know.