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Strictly Come Hamster - Season Six (featuring Gary Russell & Daniel Rawnsley) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:36
  Welcome back to Strictly Come Hamster.
• 0:38
  My name is Joe Ford and as ever I'm going to do no work at all
• 0:43
  and hand you straight over to my Co host, Mr. Rob Brown.
• 0:45
  Hello, Ross. Hey, Joe, how are you doing?
• 0:48
  Yeah, I'm having a Well, we haven't started yet.
• 0:50
  I'm not sure. We're about to talk about
• 0:54
  Patrick Trout and Wendy Padbury and Fraser Hines.
• 0:57
  That makes me very happy. Fantastic.
• 0:59
  And I've decided I'm going to call you my Dolly Co host for
• 1:02
  the entire episode. Hey, are you stinking rich?
• 1:06
  I wish So, in the words of ABBA, it's the end of a decade.
• 1:10
  It's 1969. But is this fine vintage, or is
• 1:14
  it more of a table? Wine?
• 1:16
  Space was very much in the news this time, in the public
• 1:19
  consciousness. The moon landings were happening
• 1:21
  in July, just after this season finished, and that's reflected
• 1:24
  in a lot of the stories this season.
• 1:26
  Yet despite trying to latch onto the public zeitgeist, Doctor Who
• 1:30
  and his friends are in trouble. The ratings are tumbling and the
• 1:34
  first potential cancellation crisis is looming on the
• 1:37
  horizon. But does that lack of public
• 1:40
  faith reflect the quality of the stories this season?
• 1:43
  Well, we're going to find out tonight and to help us sort out
• 1:46
  our Dominator fleet from our Ice Warrior fleet, from our Cyberman
• 1:51
  fleet. There's quite a few fleets this
• 1:52
  season. We're joined by two very special
• 1:55
  guests. They're going to help us decide
• 1:57
  which of our stories is going to lift that really now famous
• 2:00
  Liqueursion glitter ball and which is going to be dressed in
• 2:02
  a pair of curtains and sent to a Dolcean island of death.
• 2:07
  So let's welcome today's guests. Gary, would you like to
• 2:10
  introduce yourself? No, my name is Gary Russell and
• 2:17
  and I have been forced at gunpoint to come in here and and
• 2:22
  and talk about season six. You can't quite see that there's
• 2:26
  Dominator. Rago is just standing to the
• 2:28
  side of me with a quark doing this at me.
• 2:31
  So I'm I'm going to have to be nice about the Dominators.
• 2:37
  I'm not going to ask where Tober is then, in that case.
• 2:41
  Right behind him. Is that bondage gear?
• 2:46
  I'm. Daniel, welcome to.
• 2:50
  I think it's your inaugural hamster.
• 2:52
  Yes, yes, hello. I'm Daniel Daniel Ronsley,
• 2:56
  far-flung hamster correspondent from France.
• 3:01
  Yes, this is my first hamster. It's not the first podcast I've
• 3:05
  been on, but it is probably the first time you're hearing me on
• 3:09
  one of these things. Well, you're very welcome to
• 3:12
  join the hamster. Happy to be here.
• 3:14
  Fantastic, right? So before we get into the
• 3:17
  stories themselves, let's just take a few minutes just to
• 3:19
  reflect on the season as a whole.
• 3:21
  What did? What were people's feelings
• 3:23
  about it? How do you feel about Patrick
• 3:25
  Troughton? Did this TARDIS team work for
• 3:27
  you, Gary? Give us a a brief overview of
• 3:30
  your. I'm I'm you know the sad old man
• 3:35
  amongst you all. So because I watched this when
• 3:37
  it went out and although I've been watching Doctor Who I guess
• 3:41
  for a couple of years at this point, certainly all of town and
• 3:44
  stuff I remember, but this was the first season that I really
• 3:49
  became obsessive about Doctor Who and and leading into the
• 3:53
  poetry stuff the following year. You know, this is the point I
• 3:56
  became, I think without knowing it, a Doctor Who fan.
• 3:59
  So season 6 to me has this lovely warm glow of nostalgia
• 4:04
  about it. I don't think with hindsight
• 4:08
  that it's absolute perfection, but at the same time, I don't
• 4:11
  think it's anything like as bad as some of the things that came
• 4:16
  ten years later, oh. That was the first.
• 4:20
  The 1st knocker 1979 goes in there.
• 4:24
  We covered that. Last time, don't you worry.
• 4:26
  Next time, Joe, just to. You know, Oh yeah, I'll be in.
• 4:28
  Timely, wimey fashion. Are we recording?
• 4:30
  He's out of order. Then we are, Yes.
• 4:32
  OK. Thank you.
• 4:34
  You see why he's here, right? You see why he's there?
• 4:37
  And Daniel, what's your feelings overall?
• 4:39
  I guess you weren't around in 1960?
• 4:41
  Nine. I was.
• 4:42
  Well, no, I was not, actually. He says.
• 4:46
  That there's such pride. Well, I don't know.
• 4:50
  Seems a bit simpler back then. Yeah, I well, I've I've got
• 4:55
  quite a unique perspective I guess, because I grew up
• 4:57
  watching the new series and then going back and watching the
• 5:00
  classic series and he. Invited him along because
• 5:04
  thanks. Sorry.
• 5:07
  It's still a bit of still a bit of a jigsaw which means I'm
• 5:12
  again, I'm I'm watching it out of order.
• 5:15
  But yes I watched. I watched this one in order and
• 5:19
  yeah, I mean I'm going to be a bit boring and say I think it's
• 5:21
  a really good season. It's it's a nice sort of
• 5:26
  contrast to Season 5, where you had based Under Siege and then
• 5:31
  based on The Siege, and then based on The Siege again, And
• 5:34
  this one's a lot more varied. It goes a bit more experimental
• 5:38
  and you know, it's fun all the way through, You know, I think
• 5:42
  we've got a it's probably down to the TARDIS team that we've
• 5:46
  got. I think also the thing about
• 5:49
  this season is whereas as you say based on your siege is very
• 5:53
  much season five in a quite a bit of season four as well.
• 5:57
  This I think probably with the influence of of Terence Dicks is
• 6:01
  docs who's starting to actually do for the first time since
• 6:05
  early Hartnell, science fiction as opposed to whimsical fantasy
• 6:09
  and and sort of monsters and things like that.
• 6:12
  This actually, you know, with things that the stories behind
• 6:15
  this season, the actual scripts and everything, are much more
• 6:18
  sci-fi. Bit pulpy, but they're still
• 6:21
  sci-fi and they haven't been there for a while.
• 6:26
  Joe, what's your? Opinion It's my favorite trout
• 6:29
  on the season by mile. Actually, I do like 4:00 and
• 6:32
  5:00, but I think this has higher highs than four and it's
• 6:35
  more interesting than five because it's more diverse
• 6:37
  storytelling. I love it.
• 6:39
  It's Trout and Hines and Padbury and they've got brilliant
• 6:42
  chemistry. There are some weaknesses here,
• 6:46
  which I'm sure we'll discuss. I can't wait to see what people
• 6:48
  are going to be in this year because I don't think any of us
• 6:50
  are going to go for the same stories.
• 6:52
  But I think the highest highs in Season 6 are about as high as
• 6:56
  Doctor Who goes. Yeah, I think, I think that's
• 6:59
  fine. It is very mixed.
• 7:00
  I was looking at the the recent DWM poll and it is a really
• 7:05
  mixed bag, isn't it? So of 21 Troutons you've got War
• 7:09
  games, game in at #1, Invasion at 4, Mind Robber at 8, Seeds at
• 7:13
  13 and then way down. The bottom three of the four
• 7:17
  bottom ones are from this season, which is quite
• 7:18
  surprising given what everyone said about the team.
• 7:21
  Can I take a guess? The dominators, the protons and
• 7:26
  the space pirates. In that order.
• 7:27
  No, actually, it's Crotons. We're at 18, Dominators at 20
• 7:31
  and Space Pirates at 20. Oh, I just met those three, but
• 7:33
  it is those three, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 7:36
  Very unloved. But let's see if we redress that
• 7:38
  balance tonight. Fantastic.
• 7:41
  Should we? Before we kick off with the
• 7:43
  individual stories, should we just get the views from our
• 7:45
  listeners or about their general overview of the season?
• 7:49
  And I'll put our guests to work. Absolutely crack that whip,
• 7:56
  Gary, would you like to kick us off?
• 7:58
  I'll kick you off with with John Arnold, who says I love the
• 8:02
  chaotic energy of it all. You don't quite know what you're
• 8:05
  going to get from story to story.
• 8:07
  And there's two brilliant additions, the sheer zest of
• 8:09
  patterns and Uncle Terry bringing structural storytelling
• 8:13
  nouse that's perhaps been absent for a while.
• 8:15
  Same. I agree with that.
• 8:18
  Mark Dodick says, unpredictable in so many ways.
• 8:22
  Is it going to be gritty, comedic or psychedelic?
• 8:25
  Will it last four weeks or 10? Will Jamie be a bit of an umpty
• 8:29
  or a complete numpty? The only certainty is that Wendy
• 8:33
  Padri will be acting her socks off her final line.
• 8:37
  I thought I'd forgotten something important, but it's
• 8:39
  nothing. Will never not, will never not
• 8:42
  hit me hard. God, we've got a We've got a bit
• 8:43
  of muscles beautifully. Done Daniel Welding.
• 8:47
  We love that as well guys. The fact that you don't know
• 8:49
  from story to story how long these things are going to be. 8
• 8:52
  episodes, 10 episodes, 4 episodes, 5 episodes.
• 8:55
  There's not another season like it, is there?
• 8:58
  Well, that's, yeah, that's, that's what I was.
• 9:02
  That was what I was going to say is I I I watched it, you know, I
• 9:05
  didn't binge watch it. I watched it in small
• 9:07
  instalments, you know, So every every evening I'd be coming home
• 9:11
  looking forward to, you know, Trout and Hines and Padbury.
• 9:15
  Every evening. That was my evening.
• 9:17
  It was. It's just great.
• 9:19
  Of course, when it was the Dominator, you even got the same
• 9:21
  cliffhanger every night. Well.
• 9:24
  That's not just limited to the dominators.
• 9:27
  But maybe not. No, it's not.
• 9:29
  Maybe that's the most blatant. Are we reading another one?
• 9:32
  That's tough. Yeah, right, Dave, Rennie says.
• 9:35
  Considering the madness of the script situation, it's a miracle
• 9:39
  this is as good as it is, and that's down to Terrence Dix and
• 9:42
  a wonderful set of regulars. Dan Pin says the 2nd Doctor.
• 9:47
  Jamie and Zoe are a fantastic team and really elevate this
• 9:51
  series this season. Sorry Zoe is so much better than
• 9:55
  weeping Screaming Victoria. This season has its problems but
• 10:00
  benefits from a more diverse selection of stories.
• 10:03
  She. Lives better than Victoria,
• 10:04
  right? Most are better than Vic.
• 10:08
  Oh. Victoria, that's yet to come.
• 10:12
  Sorry, Gary. Electronic, Dan says.
• 10:16
  My views are somewhat mixed, but it's far less formulaic than
• 10:20
  Season 5, which is a good thing. Jason Thompson says a season
• 10:24
  that is far better than, quote UN quote received fan wisdom
• 10:28
  would have it in the 90s. Certainly it's not without its
• 10:31
  flaws, but it is a return to variety, one of my favourites.
• 10:36
  And Jim Allenby says Jamie and Zoe are the perfect companions,
• 10:40
  and despite a few blips, it's firing on all cylinders.
• 10:44
  There is a sense of the show looking a bit tired by the end
• 10:47
  of it, though, but it never fails to entertain.
• 10:50
  Michael Storm says Probably my favorite of the Trouton seasons.
• 10:54
  The team of Trouton, Hines and Padbury is one of the strongest
• 10:57
  in who Padders make Zoe a fun and engaging character, No mean
• 11:01
  feat as in lesser hands Zoe could have fallen into the
• 11:04
  irritating child genius that that Adric and various twerks on
• 11:09
  Star Trek fall into. The presence of Terence Diggs
• 11:13
  clearly helps stay the seasons, but I think the real unsung hero
• 11:17
  is Derek Sherwin. Big orange, Michael says.
• 11:21
  A solid season for lots of reasons, and given the way the
• 11:23
  scripts kept falling through, it's a miracle any of these
• 11:26
  stories were coherent. But I do beg fans not to binge
• 11:31
  the longer stories. Sip them like a fine wine they
• 11:34
  are. Yeah, I agree.
• 11:36
  I did, yeah, Taylor Edwards says.
• 11:40
  My favorite Trouton season. And I love the trio of the
• 11:42
  scruffy Dr. Brilliant wrestler Joey Loveable Idiot Jamie.
• 11:49
  I've loved. That scene.
• 11:53
  Anthony Carroll says it feels like a long season, but I love
• 11:57
  Invasion and War games and have fond memories of the protons
• 12:00
  from the five faces of Doctor Who.
• 12:03
  But some episodes do drag. Troughton is clearly worn out.
• 12:06
  Seven out of 10. OK, Jack Coyer says six.
• 12:12
  I think he means the second dot. So.
• 12:13
  You mean you mean 2 doesn't? He, Jamie, and Sorry, one of my
• 12:17
  favorite TARDIS teams. Maybe my favorite.
• 12:20
  Such a clear dynamic between the three makes it so easy to frame
• 12:23
  any story around their interactions.
• 12:25
  As Star Trek is proving with Kirk's Bock and Bones, I could
• 12:29
  watch them do anything. And on the same lines, Jola
• 12:34
  Walland says my favorite classic team Tricky, Second Doctor,
• 12:38
  Brainy Space Girl, Good hearted Highlander.
• 12:41
  It's a really interesting dynamic, but maybe never got
• 12:44
  explored as much as a modern series would, but always a fun
• 12:48
  group to hang out with. OK, the Polish box.
• 12:51
  Hi guys. Season six.
• 12:54
  Season six makes a strong case for being the best Trout in
• 12:57
  series. Yes, even with the Dominators
• 13:00
  and the Space Pirates. And then Fraser, Gregory added.
• 13:04
  Especially with the Dominators. Oh, whatever.
• 13:11
  The last Karate for the Chuck. Everything at the Wall 1960s run
• 13:15
  features. My favorite Doctor TARDIS crew.
• 13:17
  And in the Invasion, my fate, My second favorite story.
• 13:20
  Daft old London. A file that I am.
• 13:23
  Which makes one wonder what number one is.
• 13:28
  Mark Donaldson says there's certainly a feel of the show
• 13:31
  running out of steam, but when it works, it's some of the very
• 13:34
  best Doctor Who. Zoes Feather Boa great name.
• 13:38
  One of my favorite eras ever. Regulars are a delight.
• 13:42
  There's variety in the season and at least three class sticks
• 13:45
  with War games, Invasion and Mind Robber.
• 13:47
  And I couldn't believe when we saw the colour pictures from the
• 13:50
  invasion that her feather boa was fluorescent yellow.
• 13:54
  I never would have believed that in a million years.
• 13:56
  Sorry, Gary, back to you. All right.
• 13:59
  The brilliantly named Sea Devil Lagoon.
• 14:02
  I approve of that name a split. It has three of the most
• 14:06
  confidently made and stylish classic serials ever in
• 14:09
  Invasion, Seeds and War Games, which are all amongst my top 20
• 14:13
  stories. Invasion especially is 10 out of
• 14:15
  10. Not so keen on dominators,
• 14:18
  crotons or pirates. And finally, Deb says love all
• 14:23
  of Trouton and all of season six.
• 14:25
  My only complaint is how they changed Jamie when Zoe came on
• 14:28
  board, went from being uneducated but brave and
• 14:31
  resourceful to being treated as stupid.
• 14:34
  It was kind of abusive. My pick overall was mind rubber,
• 14:37
  but love Dominators. OK, so an interesting blout.
• 14:42
  Obviously most, well, I would say 99% of people are loving the
• 14:45
  trio. So you know, that's going to
• 14:47
  carry us through a lot of these stories.
• 14:50
  But should we dive into round one?
• 14:53
  In round one, each of us are going to pick at least one story
• 14:56
  from the season and give the three reasons why we either want
• 15:00
  to save it or Bennett, and their job is to control and convince
• 15:04
  the rest of us to stick to that. Gary, why do you look worried?
• 15:08
  Right. I think we're gonna.
• 15:11
  I think we're gonna dive straight in with Gary, Gary.
• 15:14
  I haven't. Go for it, Gary.
• 15:16
  I'm. I'm doing this on the fly.
• 15:19
  If there's anybody I trust to do this on the fly if.
• 15:22
  You want me to to make convince you of a story that needs not to
• 15:27
  go in the bin or or to? Go in the bin whichever way.
• 15:31
  To throwing them in. Throwing the dominators and and
• 15:34
  the crotons in the bin is just too easy because.
• 15:37
  It's. Obviously where they belong.
• 15:39
  But the story, I'm going to defend and and try and convince
• 15:43
  the world that they've misjudged it for all these years as the
• 15:45
  Space Pirates, which I think a lot of people criticize the
• 15:50
  Space Pirates based on the existing rather dull episode
• 15:54
  that meanders around and has lots of lovely visual effects
• 15:57
  with spaceships and some very comedic nonsense stuff.
• 16:01
  But actually, if you sit and listen to the audio, the story
• 16:05
  of the the Space Pirates, yeah, it's probably an episode or two
• 16:07
  too long, is actually a really good slice of 1960s and 70s
• 16:14
  boardroom drama. It's like an episode of the
• 16:16
  Brothers or the Troubleshooters or Mogul in Space, really.
• 16:20
  And I love it. I love the politics of it.
• 16:22
  I think all the stuff that the the internal bickering that's
• 16:25
  going on behind the scenes of of the Space Captains, you know,
• 16:29
  with Ian Warren and all of that, like there's clearly some stuff
• 16:33
  going on behind there. And then you've got the Pirate
• 16:36
  Space Pirates themselves, who don't seem to like each other
• 16:38
  very much. And then you've got the whole
• 16:40
  DOMA Sigree story, which is going behind all of it.
• 16:43
  And then comes to this big punch in the last two episodes, which
• 16:47
  is really where we become a complete different story the
• 16:50
  first four episodes. And in a sense that the Doctor
• 16:54
  and Zoe and Jamie are always like guest stars in the first
• 16:57
  half of this story, because they don't really come into it until
• 17:00
  we hit the DOMA Sigree story. But it's brilliant and it's just
• 17:04
  cleverly written and it bombs along like no one's mad.
• 17:07
  And I just think people need to sit down and listen to the
• 17:10
  audio, maybe even read the novel though wasn't perhaps the best
• 17:15
  novelization because I think lots gets cut out in that
• 17:18
  novelization. But it has a lot of atmosphere
• 17:21
  and a lot of cracking dialogue and it's actually a good story.
• 17:24
  And and was something that when I was doing the animations, I
• 17:28
  kept campaigning to animate. Because I think if people could
• 17:31
  see or six episodes of the Space Pirates together, I think you
• 17:36
  could stand a really good chance of changing people's mind on
• 17:39
  that story. So I want to save it from
• 17:41
  everyone else's bin and I will throw myself prostate across
• 17:45
  their bins and go no, you shall not space Pirates.
• 17:50
  You know, you actually you did manage to achieve that with
• 17:52
  Galaxy 4 and me, you know, because I'll never really gave
• 17:54
  that chance for then I'll watch that animation and it came alive
• 17:57
  in a way and never had before. So I think there's definitely.
• 18:00
  Something in that, Pirates. Yeah.
• 18:03
  Fabulous. Should we go to the comments
• 18:04
  first of all, Jason Thompson said.
• 18:07
  I'd have thrown it out if you'd asked me this two years ago.
• 18:10
  Now I'm not so sure there is a lot wrong with it.
• 18:13
  The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe don't even properly meet another
• 18:16
  character until 1/3 of the way into the story.
• 18:18
  General Hermack is too stupid to realise how things move in space
• 18:22
  whilst failing to connect the sudden return of Argonite to a
• 18:25
  Mind Out planet and an organization run by someone who
• 18:29
  displays a beta dart on her desk.
• 18:31
  I like what he says. I love General Hermack and his
• 18:34
  delivery. Who's that?
• 18:36
  Jack. We are going to be too late
• 18:39
  again. He's such a brilliant actor and
• 18:42
  he plays it in this very weirdly mannered way.
• 18:46
  But I think it's because of the way it's written, because he
• 18:50
  plays it obviously English and it's written in American.
• 18:55
  It's it's Robert Holmes kind of trying to make everyone sound
• 18:57
  like they're all Cowboys from the Wild West, even the even the
• 19:01
  sheriff's. And he doesn't play it that way.
• 19:03
  And that's why his dialogue is very stilted and very odd
• 19:07
  because he's not, he's not buying into it and and maybe the
• 19:10
  director should have said, you know what, just just chill out
• 19:13
  and relax a little bit. I think he's the only weak
• 19:15
  character in the entire story. He he, he goes.
• 19:19
  Extra plummy, doesn't he? Yeah.
• 19:20
  I mean, I I remember him from me.
• 19:22
  He was on The Archers and my mom used to listen to The Archers,
• 19:24
  and he was in that for years and years.
• 19:27
  So I know his voice really well, but he, he really overemphasizes
• 19:31
  the English. I didn't know it was written as
• 19:33
  American, but yeah. The thing it was, I'm saying, I
• 19:36
  think it is from from the way the dialogue, if if you imagine
• 19:39
  Hermac's dialogue spoken by Shane Rimmer, yeah, would all
• 19:42
  make far more sense, yeah. I think Donald G's tripped up a
• 19:46
  little bit as well playing American too, isn't it?
• 19:48
  It's all the beautiful. I think that I think maybe
• 19:50
  that's what actually gave me that realization that maybe
• 19:53
  somewhere down the line someone said you're all meant to be
• 19:56
  American Cowboys and Donald G goes for it.
• 20:01
  But, but yeah, General Hermack is just.
• 20:05
  Just try picking up the phone though.
• 20:06
  One time to a friend going you know Liz, 79, this is B41.
• 20:13
  Anyway, Michael Storm says a solid story that suffers badly
• 20:17
  from being missing Space opera clearly isn't Holmes's thing, so
• 20:21
  he uses the tropes of the wild witch fiction to drive the
• 20:24
  story. But it takes a long time for
• 20:26
  regulars to get involved, and even then they are on the
• 20:28
  sidelines. I'm.
• 20:30
  Pleased to discover I'm In Sync with all these people you've
• 20:33
  got. They're picking up the world W
• 20:35
  stuff. I thought that was just me.
• 20:36
  Hooray. That's actually part of my notes
• 20:38
  as well. Don't I?
• 20:39
  Yeah, saying. John Arnold said Justice for the
• 20:43
  Space Pirates think it's so dependent on the visuals for
• 20:46
  Impact and therefore its reputation would improve vastly
• 20:49
  if we could see it. I mean, it's a stone cold
• 20:52
  classic just for Madeleine is is a Grizz.
• 20:56
  I can never pronounce that. I was just going to go
• 20:58
  Madeleine's hair alone. I love that bit.
• 21:01
  Oh, you love that bit? At the end of episode two
• 21:03
  though, where she turns towards the camera and goes I'm even.
• 21:06
  I love that bit James, James H says.
• 21:11
  Everybody tells me it's underrated, but nobody tells me
• 21:13
  why not. Even mentioned in DWM 60th
• 21:16
  Special was he not? Wow, The physics tries to be
• 21:20
  real and fails miserably and Clancy thinks he's in a panto.
• 21:23
  Episode one is great though, but only if you need a cure for
• 21:27
  insomnia. Don't think James is a fan?
• 21:31
  Fraser, Gregory, Here we go, sadly hamstrung by how little we
• 21:36
  can see of it. The best way to enjoy this
• 21:38
  story, though, is through the novelization, which is a real
• 21:41
  page Turner, a blend of Buck Rogers and Little House on the
• 21:44
  Prairie. Can any home story go in the
• 21:46
  bin? No.
• 21:48
  Keep it Andrew Cornell was in complete sympathy with Gary.
• 21:51
  Based on the soundtrack, The Space Pirates is actually a
• 21:54
  little gem that is just dying to be reappraised.
• 21:57
  Maybe Missus Holmes was right. Ian Banks says I've only
• 22:01
  experienced a novelisation of this, but even the late 80s
• 22:04
  extra page counter the targets can't hide the bloat of the
• 22:07
  space western. Some great dialogue but a weak
• 22:10
  story. Never mind.
• 22:11
  Maybe Robert Holmes will get another chance.
• 22:15
  Maybe Daniel Knight. Too many dodgy performances, the
• 22:17
  regulars are sidelined far too much and the plot moves like a
• 22:20
  snail in oh, good grief, what does that say?
• 22:23
  Thank you. No wonder Trout and got annoyed.
• 22:26
  Jack Coyer says I'm pleased Episode 2 survives because it's
• 22:29
  just Pat, Jamie, and Zoe messing around, which is what I come to
• 22:32
  this era for. Space mercenaries, the Doctrine
• 22:35
  Companion. Sidelined are comedy moron.
• 22:37
  Robert Holmes writes a season 22 story 15 years early.
• 22:42
  Nearly there, folks. Jim Allenby I don't like this,
• 22:44
  and yet I want to like it. I'm desperate for something to
• 22:47
  be found or for it to be animated because I think it's
• 22:50
  better than I think. Big Orange, Michael said, not
• 22:53
  held by its surviving episode. Episode 2 just isn't strongest.
• 22:57
  But was my listen to the audio once, never again.
• 23:01
  And James Lark finally says the weakest of the season is the
• 23:03
  Space Pirates. Or is it?
• 23:05
  We thought Enemy of the World was a Bit Pants until it turned
• 23:08
  up and it was brilliant. So maybe the Space Pirates will
• 23:11
  do the same and reveal the Dominators to be the weakest of
• 23:14
  the season after all. So, Daniel, your impression of
• 23:20
  the Space Pirates? Yeah well it feels a bit it
• 23:23
  feels a bit mean to kind of beat up on this story when we can't
• 23:26
  really see a lot of it. We've got I think only episode 2
• 23:29
  is is in the the universe streaming library that they've
• 23:33
  put online And then yeah we have to kind of make do with
• 23:36
  reconstructions and use our imagination to to conjure up the
• 23:40
  rest. Yeah.
• 23:43
  I I I think I'm going to keep it.
• 23:45
  I'm just I've been I've been convinced what I what I like
• 23:49
  about it is is I do. I do.
• 23:51
  I do. I like I do like the character
• 23:53
  of Milo. He sounds a bit like Jimmy
• 23:56
  Stewart in those Frank Frank Capra music.
• 24:00
  We talked a bit like. This and they they he has a
• 24:06
  scene in episode two I think where it's an it's kind of it's
• 24:09
  basically an exposition scene and he he owns it.
• 24:12
  He walks around that spaceship with of the space core and
• 24:15
  they're all watching and he's basically telling them stuff
• 24:18
  they already know. But he's kind of sort of it's
• 24:20
  kind of more of a, you know, I I can do what I like and you can't
• 24:24
  touch me. And and you contrast that with a
• 24:28
  scene with General Hermack and Madeleine Sigre in there in her
• 24:32
  office. And that one's really clumsy
• 24:35
  where they're basically telling each other stuff that we already
• 24:38
  they already know to just for our benefit.
• 24:41
  But I think I guess Milo gets away with it.
• 24:43
  He puts a bit of more pizzazz into it.
• 24:45
  And yeah, I mean that's that's one of the one of the the the
• 24:50
  really good bits of of the Space Pirates.
• 24:53
  He's got so much personality, hasn't he?
• 24:55
  I think, yeah, that that accounts for a lot.
• 24:57
  It's it's homes coming in and giving his characters sort of
• 25:00
  really vivid personalities. One, they have that whole bit
• 25:03
  too, where he's he's trying to eat his breakfast and there's
• 25:07
  always something that's disrupting him and he's got to
• 25:09
  put his breakfast down and go. That made me do the lines.
• 25:13
  Spare me another slice of bread. He's great, yeah.
• 25:22
  And when they are in it, the Doctor, Zoe and and Jamie, I
• 25:25
  mean the the the Doctor's got a funny bit of business where he's
• 25:29
  he's trying to explain to Jamie and Zoe the the principle of
• 25:32
  magnetism that he's going to use on their space pods to stop them
• 25:35
  drifting away. And Zoe's like, but can you do
• 25:38
  it? Ben Trout.
• 25:39
  And he just holds up the screwdriver and goes, Well, I've
• 25:41
  got a screwdriver and there's slight knowledge of
• 25:45
  electromagnetics. Oh, that's right.
• 25:50
  Fabulous. So it's going through well.
• 25:52
  It's going through so far, Joe. Unbelievable.
• 25:55
  Unfortunately not. No, not for me.
• 25:57
  I like. It's primarily down to the fact
• 25:59
  that I'd never get past episode one when I listen to the
• 26:01
  soundtrack because it's the same set piece happening about 6
• 26:04
  times. The space pirates go you watch
• 26:07
  the loose kind of reconstruction and they just play the same
• 26:09
  footage over and over again. The same lot of work, the same
• 26:12
  people on the outside of the thing and and so I really sort
• 26:15
  of stumble in episode one. I do think writing out the
• 26:19
  regulars because that's my go to for season six is the three of
• 26:22
  them being together and the more you go along the story, the less
• 26:25
  they're in it. I think they're only in like pre
• 26:27
  filmed inserts in the last episode.
• 26:30
  I'm not sure how that could ever happen in a Doctor Who's story,
• 26:33
  but I do. I do think it has some some
• 26:35
  character to it. I do think it's quite fun, That
• 26:37
  scene you said with Marlo Clancy walking around the ship, all of
• 26:40
  that. It's like a floating fun palace
• 26:42
  here. I, I, I there, there's some good
• 26:44
  lines in it. It's too long for me and it's a
• 26:48
  it's just a bit dreary so that I would be in this one.
• 26:51
  Well, so I've got the casting vote on this one.
• 26:54
  I'm going to keep this one, I think.
• 26:55
  Space Pirates. Isn't.
• 26:57
  It, I think spice say spirates gets a bad rap.
• 27:00
  And I think like a lot of people said, and maybe A world's got a
• 27:03
  bad rap for having a dull third episode and then we saw the rest
• 27:06
  and we loved it. And I think it would be the same
• 27:08
  with us. I think there's a lot going on
• 27:10
  here. I do recognize there are two
• 27:12
  elements in particular that I could imagine would really great
• 27:15
  on people. One is Milo Clancy, and I think
• 27:19
  if you don't like is, I mean, you guys have done fantastic
• 27:22
  impressions of him, but you know, if you don't buy into that
• 27:25
  kind of COD American accent and all the bluster, I can imagine
• 27:28
  that character would really piss you off quite quickly.
• 27:31
  And he's in it. He's in a lot of it.
• 27:33
  He's in episodes two to six pretty heavily, but I quite like
• 27:37
  him. I find he acts as a fantastic
• 27:40
  counterbalance to everybody else who's playing it, either deadly
• 27:43
  serious, like the space core or the space pirates who are a bit
• 27:47
  cliche, shall we say. So Milo Clancy just gives you
• 27:50
  that fun. I just think he's he's a typical
• 27:53
  Holmes character before Holmes has really developed what he
• 27:57
  wants his character to be. It's almost like an antecedent
• 28:00
  of Henry Gordon Drago. He's got that same kind of
• 28:03
  bluster run. And the other thing I think with
• 28:06
  him, like with Trouton watching the act of Gordon got too slow.
• 28:10
  Sort of great name, isn't it? He does an awful lot of
• 28:13
  business. He's a bit like Troughton and a
• 28:15
  bit like Sylvester, though. When you watch him in episode 2,
• 28:18
  he's always doing something. He's always looking to camera or
• 28:21
  gurning or raising his eyebrows or doing a double take and all
• 28:25
  that business you were just talking about with having his
• 28:27
  breakfast and balancing his tray and doing his toast.
• 28:30
  I mean, it's bloody ridiculous. He's making a a breakfast on the
• 28:33
  spaceship, but it's. Glowing his nose in one scene,
• 28:36
  isn't it? You know, waving his hanky about
• 28:38
  and. Exactly.
• 28:39
  So I think, of course you just don't get there.
• 28:41
  When you listen to the audio, you lose all of that visual
• 28:44
  stuff. So I think he would really you,
• 28:47
  you'd love him or you'd hate him on audio.
• 28:49
  I really enjoy him and I think I'd enjoy him even more if I
• 28:52
  could see all that business that he was doing.
• 28:55
  So I think he's great. I think the music is really
• 28:57
  good. I like all the choral music,
• 28:59
  particularly the space scenes. Think that works very, very
• 29:02
  well. Again, I can imagine that might
• 29:04
  annoy people, but I find that quite different.
• 29:06
  I think you could. Thank you, I thought.
• 29:08
  I wondered if somebody was going to.
• 29:11
  Do it I I feel as though. I would blow out the mic, so I
• 29:14
  won't do it. I think the plot is a good plot.
• 29:17
  I've listened to on audio several times.
• 29:19
  I think it really rattles along. I'm surprised, Joe, you fall
• 29:21
  over at episode one. I think it really rattles along.
• 29:24
  I think it's quite fast. Paced There's not a lot of
• 29:27
  dialogue in episode one. You know, when you're listening
• 29:29
  to a soundtrack, you're listening to a lot of narration.
• 29:31
  Yeah, true. But you know, you get past part
• 29:34
  one. There's a lot happening and
• 29:35
  typical homes, it is moving, it moves from place to place to
• 29:39
  place. So I think there's a lot of,
• 29:42
  there's a lot of action within it, and it's just a shame that
• 29:44
  we can't see it. We don't even know really what
• 29:46
  the sets look like or what some of the characters look like.
• 29:48
  But I think there's plenty enough.
• 29:50
  I find it really easy, listen, compared to some of the other
• 29:53
  ones that are missing. I think this just rattles along
• 29:56
  nicely. There's plenty of instant,
• 29:57
  there's plenty of jeopardy, there's comedy, there's drama,
• 30:00
  you get revelations, you've got some interesting characters.
• 30:02
  What's not to love? It's all dissatisfied with the
• 30:05
  Space Pirates. You're going to love the rest of
• 30:07
  the season. Well, maybe not So maybe not.
• 30:10
  Well, actually. You.
• 30:11
  You. You.
• 30:11
  You. You brought up the revelation so
• 30:13
  so that I know I've just let it through, but I I am going to
• 30:16
  beat up on the ending a little bit because that's where it
• 30:19
  really falls down for me is, is you've had this revelation where
• 30:24
  you know Madeleine's father, Dom, is still alive and being
• 30:27
  held hostage by by Cavan and in his office and all that
• 30:35
  confident facade that she's been, you know, keeping up falls
• 30:38
  away until she's pretty much begging, you know, Cavan to
• 30:41
  spare his life. And and then when Cavan's been
• 30:44
  killed she goes off to reunite with her father.
• 30:48
  So it's off screen it's we don't see that happen and and then it
• 30:53
  ends on this note that's like, you know it's it's worthy of a
• 30:56
  freeze frame really where they're going to take, you know
• 30:59
  Milo's ship back to the TARDIS. And Jamie goes, Oh no, not the
• 31:03
  Liz again. I'd rather walk and then tram
• 31:05
  goes, whatever, you never know, Jamie, you might have to.
• 31:09
  And they all laugh. It's like the end of.
• 31:11
  Every Series C episode of Blake 7.
• 31:13
  Isn't it a terrible game being? Served.
• 31:16
  Yeah, it's really bad. It's very sick on that final
• 31:19
  joke and the laughter just goes on and on and on and on.
• 31:23
  There's a reason why we don't normally do that and on I
• 31:26
  thought so this for the space for us.
• 31:27
  I think Troughton's characterized brilliantly that
• 31:29
  bit. That close up of it in episode 2
• 31:31
  is like Zoe, don't be such a pessimist.
• 31:34
  And there's a late where he's been a bit of business with
• 31:35
  marbles as well isn't there? And like he's Holmes knows how
• 31:39
  to write for Troughton. So what the hell happened when
• 31:42
  the two doctors came round? Well, and then there's that
• 31:45
  scene where he has to, he has to tell Zoe and Jamie that he's
• 31:48
  basically condemned them to drift aimlessly through space
• 31:52
  until they run out of air. And he plays it completely
• 31:55
  seriously, you know, And you know, Oh dear, what a what a
• 31:58
  silly idiot I am. And it really works, you know,
• 32:01
  It's great. So it's going through the one
• 32:04
  other thing I want to shout out, which we don't see a lot of in
• 32:07
  episode 2, but it's the model work and I think it is worth
• 32:10
  calling out. I've read quite a bit about what
• 32:12
  they did and how they created it because obviously we can't see
• 32:15
  well. We can see very, very little of
• 32:16
  it. And it's great that even at this
• 32:18
  period and Doctor Who, when everyone's, you know, patients
• 32:21
  has run out, the crew are absolutely knackered.
• 32:23
  They're custom knackered, but they're still putting that much
• 32:26
  time and effort into producing visual effects and doing new
• 32:30
  stuff. They brought in a team that
• 32:32
  worked on Thunderbirds to work on these models.
• 32:35
  They shot them the way that Star Wars shot their spaceships 8
• 32:37
  years later by keeping the ships still and put it flying the
• 32:41
  camera around it rather than flying the camera on.
• 32:43
  There's a shot at the beginning of episode 2 that goes on for a
• 32:47
  good sort of 20 seconds of the ship going right over the
• 32:50
  camera. It's really impressive with that
• 32:53
  sort of screaming music going on at the same time.
• 32:56
  Why the hell didn't I put this through?
• 32:57
  Exactly What were you thinking, Joe?
• 32:59
  So I'm putting it through and it's going through.
• 33:01
  So Space Pirates is saved for Round 2.
• 33:05
  Daniel, your first pick. Right, OK.
• 33:09
  Bear with me on this one because I didn't put as much effort into
• 33:12
  the others. Imagine if you will see if you
• 33:16
  can pick up what I'm saying. A free spirited independent
• 33:21
  rogue who's also something of a great big man child, and also
• 33:25
  probably a lot older than he's meant to be, Who hails from an
• 33:27
  alien species of two hearts. And whose rebellious nature is
• 33:32
  wildly at odds with that of his own people.
• 33:34
  Who are a highly advanced but boringly repressive society.
• 33:39
  Who are peaceful to the point of indolence and appear to be
• 33:42
  almost entirely made-up of pompous old men standing around
• 33:45
  in robes. He seeks excitement, he seeks
• 33:49
  adventure. He steers his craft to
• 33:50
  destinations that he hopes will yield great opportunities to
• 33:53
  explore and terrifying scientific thrills.
• 33:56
  Followed by his attractive bantering and adorable teenage
• 34:00
  companions who tease them about his bad driving, get themselves
• 34:03
  into all sorts of trouble, and eventually pay a heavy price for
• 34:07
  their curiosity. So I'm not talking about the end
• 34:11
  of the season. I'm talking about the
• 34:12
  Dominators. Very well thought through.
• 34:15
  Well done. So yes, this one's for all the
• 34:19
  phrases out there. Fraser, Heinz, Fraser, Gregory.
• 34:23
  So the Dominators, which is in, as the kids might say these
• 34:26
  days, in my view, an absolute banger.
• 34:31
  It's a it's a pacey, retro B movie style adventure which sort
• 34:37
  of feels like the last gasp of 5060 science fiction.
• 34:42
  So maybe like Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers, you've got flying
• 34:48
  sources, you've got murderous robots or robots as robots.
• 34:56
  And it all goes down right down to the carapace.
• 34:59
  Carapace like design of the Dominators themselves, where
• 35:02
  it's this very distinct recognizable shape that looks
• 35:06
  macho or or like they're wearing giant parkers and also kind of
• 35:12
  can be alien at the same time. And that's one of that's one of
• 35:16
  my first big reasons is the Dominators themselves is you
• 35:20
  have this absolutely fascinating antagonistic dynamic between the
• 35:25
  two Rago and and Toba, where there'll be dialogue scenes
• 35:29
  where they're not even looking at each other because their
• 35:31
  costumes are so big. But it also works as like, you
• 35:34
  know, I I am so in contempt of you I can't be bothered to even
• 35:38
  look at you. And so Mueller in.
• 35:40
  Season. 18 Is that how you read it?
• 35:42
  I read it as the hottest, almost gay romance in Doctor Who.
• 35:45
  They're just this far from kissing each other from scene to
• 35:48
  scene. Well, that's what getting at,
• 35:50
  yeah, yeah, yeah, well, well, it it it it builds and builds and
• 35:53
  builds where they keep having the same bickering argument
• 35:56
  again and again and again because Toby was so trigger.
• 35:58
  Happy. And we've all had a relationship
• 36:00
  like that, right? And you know, Rago keeps
• 36:05
  shooting him down because, you know, I outrank you.
• 36:07
  We have to ration the quarks. We have to conserve power.
• 36:10
  You must do as I say. And it's so sort of become so
• 36:13
  passive aggressive to the point where when they address each
• 36:15
  other by their title, you know, go back to the ship probation at
• 36:19
  Toba, commander accepted, Dominator Rago.
• 36:23
  And that becomes starts to feel like an insult where they're
• 36:26
  basically just using it to insult each other.
• 36:29
  And it all, it all was coming to the head while I was convinced
• 36:32
  that they were either going to kiss each other or kill each
• 36:34
  other. And and then it kind of goes in
• 36:38
  a completely different direction, which I wasn't
• 36:40
  expecting. And instead Tober ends up cowed.
• 36:44
  He ends up backing down. He knows his place.
• 36:47
  He has a chance to send the quarks after the prisoners.
• 36:50
  But he changes his mind because he knows now that he's lost the
• 36:53
  argument. And it helps that you know
• 36:56
  Ronald Allen and Kenneth Ives, who's got this wonderful
• 37:00
  baritone voice, they really commit to the to the parts that
• 37:04
  they're given, you know. And it's a nice contrast to the
• 37:08
  Dolceans who are all standing around having these cancel
• 37:12
  meetings who can only agree on and doing absolutely nothing.
• 37:18
  And and, well, the the, the second thing is the corks
• 37:21
  themselves. I think they're absolutely
• 37:25
  iconic. You've got the childishly, very
• 37:28
  simple boxy design, the stompy little legs, the chirpy little
• 37:31
  voices, You know, shall we? Let's strike.
• 37:35
  It's, you know, the cute but murderously deadly monster that
• 37:38
  you see again and again in Doctor Who.
• 37:40
  So you know, the Chamblees, the adipose, the Tokra fame, the
• 37:44
  petting. And they have this absolutely
• 37:46
  classic introduction in episode one where they're being kept off
• 37:50
  screen in favour of the Dominators themselves, and you
• 37:53
  only see the point of view. And then at the end, they're on
• 37:56
  the Ridge and they're flanking one of the Dominators and, you
• 37:59
  know, going, shall we, let's. Try as powerful a cliffhanger as
• 38:03
  as Terror. The Zygons episode one, isn't it
• 38:08
  so? If Russell T Davis has any
• 38:12
  sense, he's going to be trying to sort these merchandising
• 38:15
  rights out. So we could see shooting
• 38:16
  Gatworth facing off the quarks in the new series.
• 38:20
  And it also helps. At the end of the war games, the
• 38:24
  Doctor reels off that list of the evil creatures he's faced in
• 38:27
  the Time Wars and the very first one is a cork.
• 38:30
  So they are cannon. They are part of a deadly oh,
• 38:38
  and finally is the TARDIS team. So this is going to probably
• 38:42
  come up a lot. But you know, the Doctor, Jamie
• 38:43
  and Zoe, they just make this story for me.
• 38:46
  You know, they're like, you know, Trouton's Doctor.
• 38:49
  He's so panicky, he's so anxious, he's so shambolic.
• 38:52
  And he gets along great with Jamie.
• 38:54
  They have that whole monkey business aboard the the
• 38:56
  Dominator's ship. Where he goes, you know, an
• 38:58
  intelligent, an unintelligent enemy is far less dangerous than
• 39:01
  intelligent one, Jamie. A just act stupid.
• 39:04
  You think you can manage that? Oh, aye, it's easy.
• 39:06
  And then he gives him a look. Like what?
• 39:11
  And then, you know, there's that bit where he's rewiring the the
• 39:13
  Dulcin transport catch and he literally ends up with his eggs
• 39:16
  in his, his legs in the air like a like a cartoon character.
• 39:21
  And and it also has a great episode for Zoe as well because
• 39:25
  she gets plenty to do. You know, it's her very first
• 39:27
  episode as the Doctor's companion and it's like she's
• 39:30
  been there forever. You know, they're so good
• 39:32
  together. They have that scene on board
• 39:34
  the the Dominator ship where they're investigating the power
• 39:37
  unit and she's saying how it works and the Doctor just goes,
• 39:40
  Oh yes. Wait, Must be pretty powerful.
• 39:42
  And she's like, wait, are you Are you are you messing around
• 39:45
  with me? Oh, they're glorious, aren't
• 39:48
  they? And and then of course finally
• 39:51
  it has the an absolutely laugh out loud ending where they
• 39:54
  foiled the dominator scheme. It's triggered a volcano, a
• 39:57
  volcanic eruption, and the Doctor says, Oh yeah, yes, I've
• 40:00
  saved the planet and only the island.
• 40:02
  Was already devastation. Oh my God.
• 40:06
  And his? His.
• 40:06
  His. But his?
• 40:07
  Face completely changes. It's such an elastic kind of
• 40:10
  expressive performance from from Trouton.
• 40:14
  So. So yes, I know this story gets a
• 40:16
  lot of Flack, but I think it's entirely undeserved and it's
• 40:21
  going through for me, absolutely.
• 40:23
  Wow, I've got a question I've got to ask very quickly.
• 40:26
  Gary, I know you've read a lot of Doctor Who comic strips,
• 40:29
  right? Is there a Doctor comic strip?
• 40:31
  A second Doctor One with the quarks going around in motor
• 40:34
  cars in like a race. Yes, I think there's there's a
• 40:38
  lot of seven Second Doctor TV comic strips with the Quarks.
• 40:42
  They clearly thought they were going to be the new dialects, so
• 40:45
  So they turn up quite regularly, I think for a while.
• 40:48
  There's a bit of contention around that.
• 40:49
  Wasn't there the where the rights fall?
• 40:52
  Anyway, Sorry, sorry. Back to the show.
• 40:54
  All right, let's go to our comments.
• 40:56
  Jason Thompson says better than its reputation suggests, though
• 41:00
  cutting it down by one episode was definitely the right idea.
• 41:03
  The stuff on location is great if you can ignore the very
• 41:06
  obviously not Patrick droughts and stand in and Ronald Allen
• 41:09
  and Kenneth Ives are sublime. It does suffer somewhat from the
• 41:13
  fact that all the cliffhangers are the same, and the arguments
• 41:15
  between Toba and Raygo get repetitive, but it's a great
• 41:19
  story for Jamie. Michael Storm.
• 41:21
  The weakest by far. The production feels very 1930s
• 41:24
  Flash Gordon in terms of sets and costume.
• 41:27
  The quarks, while visually interesting, fail to pose any
• 41:30
  threat as they lollop about on the screen, and their voices are
• 41:33
  virtually unintelligible. Unintelligible.
• 41:36
  I can understand them. The only real interest is Toba
• 41:39
  and Toba and Raga Brago. Isn't it Tober and Brago who
• 41:43
  come across as two polar opposites who might have been
• 41:46
  made to work together by a frustrated teacher who
• 41:49
  desperately hopes that putting the upstart in a more senior
• 41:52
  role will mature them, but instead makes them go all dirty.
• 41:56
  Big bollocks. Fraser, Gregory.
• 41:59
  But I don't know what Fraser will think of this actually.
• 42:02
  No, God surprise me this. Will be an interesting comment.
• 42:05
  Surprise me. Oh, he says.
• 42:06
  It's an unfairly unloved classic.
• 42:09
  So much to enjoy here, from the squabbling antagonists and their
• 42:12
  amazing robots robots, to the two handers with the TARDIS team
• 42:16
  and all the hilarious, hilarious Wow Dolceans in between a
• 42:23
  gorgeous slice of 60 sci-fi. Keep it hilarious.
• 42:27
  Dan Pitton says kind of crap, but not without his charms.
• 42:31
  Although what the heck are the Dolceans wearing?
• 42:34
  Looks like my mum's old curtains.
• 42:35
  The power struggle between Raga and Tobra is quite entertaining
• 42:38
  and I rather like Cully, but other than that I have nothing.
• 42:42
  Daniel Nice to see safe from tedium.
• 42:44
  Thanks to the regulars and Arthur Cox, who, despite being
• 42:47
  the oldest teenager, is at least giving a good performance.
• 42:50
  The Dominators and quarks are fun villains, but I couldn't
• 42:53
  care less about the Dolceans. A pathetic bunch deserve all
• 42:57
  they get. Jack Corey, there are three ways
• 42:59
  that Doctor Who's story can be bad.
• 43:01
  One boring, two offensive, three being against what I deem to be
• 43:06
  the spirit of Doctor Who. This takes all three.
• 43:09
  It occasionally looks fine, so it's Doctor Who for the dentist.
• 43:12
  Waiting room perhaps? Jolie Welling said somewhere
• 43:16
  there's a serious discussion on the pros and cons of pacifism.
• 43:19
  It's not here. A troubled production, some less
• 43:22
  than awesome costumes, pluses the 2nd Doctor, Jamie and Zoe.
• 43:26
  And it exists so we don't have to watch Recon recons.
• 43:29
  Plus it has quarks. James HA4 part story overwritten
• 43:33
  to six, then butchered to five. Nice ideas, but in need of
• 43:36
  another draft. Jim Allenby says more good than
• 43:39
  bad, one episode too long. Ian Banks A story that drags on
• 43:43
  too long but could be could be told with probably any doctor in
• 43:46
  it as well, which makes it interesting.
• 43:49
  Matthew says some interesting world building, but the story
• 43:52
  itself is tedious. Finally, Matt Barber.
• 43:54
  A story so I'll planned. It commits suicide, an episode
• 43:57
  early giving rise to a far more successful result of ill
• 44:01
  planning, the semi improvised first episode of The Mind
• 44:04
  Robber. So a mixed bag, I would say.
• 44:07
  Gary, Has Daniel wound you around his little finger?
• 44:10
  Are you convinced of the joys of the Dominators?
• 44:14
  I I I would never throw the dominators in the bin in the
• 44:18
  first place. I don't love it.
• 44:22
  I don't like it very much. But it has, as everyone has
• 44:25
  said, Ronald Allen and Kenneth Ives.
• 44:29
  They make the whole thing utterly watchable.
• 44:32
  It has the quarks which I can tell you as a kid playing that
• 44:36
  in the school playground they were the best things in the
• 44:38
  world's play because you could just waggle your arms around
• 44:41
  back and forth and hit yourself and and you could hear the
• 44:43
  voices and they had lovely brown spiky heads and and they were a
• 44:47
  design masterpiece and they're brilliant.
• 44:50
  The film location work and the camera work on it is is quite
• 44:55
  astonishing. It's it's Morris Barry isn't it
• 44:58
  Which is always good because there's a man who could always
• 45:02
  do brilliant stuff on film look at to him the side men and
• 45:05
  always produce utter shite in the studio side men and and this
• 45:10
  is a private example of it. You know he's great on location.
• 45:13
  He knows how to make cameras and lighting and everything work and
• 45:16
  then clearly has absolutely no concept of how to do 4 camera
• 45:20
  work in the studio. It's such a shame and and the
• 45:24
  other thing I love about the Dominators is the visual effects
• 45:28
  used to kill the dolphins that the teenagers at the beginning.
• 45:31
  It's so gross and so very unusual and over the top for 60s
• 45:37
  Doctor Who when when when the girl dies and her face, it
• 45:42
  literally turned into sort of burnt photographic negative
• 45:44
  thing. It's horrendous.
• 45:47
  I loved it as a kid. I thought it was great.
• 45:49
  So I think the actual script of the Dominators is is really
• 45:53
  quite pissful. It is, as everyone else has
• 45:56
  said, at least one episode too long.
• 45:58
  I might venture says it's two episodes too long.
• 46:02
  All the back and forth zooming around in rockets to to see the
• 46:05
  Dolceans. Who needs them.
• 46:07
  It should have just been Jamie, Zoe and Jamie.
• 46:11
  Sorry, the dogs trapped on the planet with the quarks and the
• 46:17
  dominators. You actually don't need the
• 46:19
  dolphins at all. You can lift them out of that
• 46:21
  story and have a really good type three or four part story
• 46:25
  just with with people basically portraying the Doctor and Co and
• 46:30
  discovering he's got two hearts. Let's not forget this is a major
• 46:33
  thing for Doctor Who. This is the first mention that
• 46:36
  the Doctor's physiomity is different from from normal
• 46:40
  humans and that's quite an important thing at this stage of
• 46:44
  a season as we're building since the start of the season and by
• 46:47
  the end of the season all the secrets are out, or so we think.
• 46:51
  So you know that's quite a fascinating little little idea
• 46:55
  that presumably is the early genesis of Terence's wanting to
• 46:59
  fiddle and meddle and make things interesting.
• 47:03
  So yeah, I keep the dominators for for it's good points and and
• 47:08
  ignore it's really quite terrible bad points.
• 47:11
  But but I'm with Dan that this one needs to be kept.
• 47:15
  Joe, you've recently released your omnibus on this with
• 47:18
  Fraser, so I'm going to jump in next to keep the audience
• 47:21
  guessing. I saved the Space Pirates, but
• 47:24
  I'm not stupid. I'm not going to save the
• 47:26
  Dominators for crying. It's terrible.
• 47:31
  It's terrible. What is wrong with you people?
• 47:36
  First reason is the plot is so weak.
• 47:39
  Gary, you're saying he could lose a couple of episodes.
• 47:42
  I think he could lose 3 episodes.
• 47:43
  To be fair, parts one to four are just set up and very, very
• 47:48
  repetitious set up. You could do that in one
• 47:50
  episode. And then part 5 as it stands at
• 47:53
  the moment, is quite a decent episode.
• 47:54
  Quite a lot happens. So you could condense one to
• 47:57
  four as one and then have five. That would make a much tighter 2
• 48:01
  part, so the rest of it can just go.
• 48:04
  There is so much repetitions running around and padding us.
• 48:08
  We've already talked about the cliffhangers are pretty much
• 48:11
  synonymous. They're the same every time.
• 48:13
  Even the dialogue repeatedly points out the fact.
• 48:16
  So I pulled out a couple of lines as I was listening to her,
• 48:19
  Raga tells Toby says you've repeatedly destroyed the
• 48:22
  creatures in this installations of this planet to no purpose, so
• 48:26
  he's not only telling us you've done this over and over again,
• 48:29
  you're telling us it's made no effect whatsoever.
• 48:32
  So even they're damned by their own dialogue.
• 48:35
  Then in the next episode, he says once again, you drop
• 48:38
  everything to hunt the prisoners.
• 48:40
  It's not great when your dialogue is pulling out your
• 48:43
  floors and telling the audience this is not the only guy whose
• 48:47
  story. He's a stubborn one, that.
• 48:50
  Maybe not, but this is the one I'm talking about at the moment.
• 48:53
  Fair enough. I think Hazel and Lincoln just
• 48:55
  decided to have a a lazy afternoon on one rainy Sunday.
• 48:59
  They went to the cinema to watch the double bill of the Dalek
• 49:02
  films and they thought, oh, I quite like that pacifism bit
• 49:05
  from the Daleks. Oh, and in The Dalek Invasion of
• 49:07
  Earth, there's that bit where that bomb drops down and they
• 49:10
  stop it. Let's put those two things
• 49:12
  together and turn out a story. And this is the result of it.
• 49:16
  It's just very, very weak. They don't know what to do with
• 49:18
  it. There are plot lines that are
• 49:20
  just, we have all that business with the Senate, You know, we
• 49:24
  have a fairly interesting debate.
• 49:25
  Are they going to fight? Are they going to flee?
• 49:27
  Are they going to submit? But it goes nowhere at all.
• 49:30
  It just gets forgotten. Gary, you can't jump in at any
• 49:33
  point. I was just going to butt in and
• 49:36
  go. I don't think they ripped it off
• 49:39
  from the fouls at all. I think you're looking at two
• 49:41
  very ancient, reactionary old writers who brought up in the
• 49:45
  40s and 50s with their tweed jackets, and they're poking
• 49:49
  their pipes going. The bloody hippie movement is
• 49:52
  the worst threat in civilization, and the Summer of
• 49:55
  Love can go and screw itself. And they are.
• 49:58
  Saying hippies are the worst thing that can happen.
• 50:01
  And the ultimate level of that is eventually the hippies become
• 50:04
  old people and take over and society falls down because of
• 50:07
  peace, love and and and goodwill.
• 50:10
  And it's a terrible indictment I think of of what old people
• 50:15
  writing Doctor Who think of young generation.
• 50:18
  They think, you know if you're if you're nice to people and
• 50:21
  you're peaceful, you're going to bring about your own
• 50:24
  destruction. I I think it's a horrible way
• 50:27
  of. What's the alternative?
• 50:31
  Just be nice and and and let's build a nice utopia full of
• 50:35
  happiness and joy and being nice to each other.
• 50:38
  As long as you make. Enough though.
• 50:39
  The the. The as it goes on that because
• 50:43
  the the, all the, the a lot of the Daltons are meant to be
• 50:46
  students, aren't they? Well, 40 year old students.
• 50:50
  Very. Old students so and and this was
• 50:55
  you know this came out in sort of 68 so the same year as those
• 51:00
  all those student protests going around the world and as it goes
• 51:04
  on when when when Jamie and Carly are basically doing
• 51:08
  guerrilla warfare against. The Coors, it's it's two.
• 51:11
  Guerrilla warfare I think I've ever seen.
• 51:15
  Where it it sort of came across to me as more like you know,
• 51:19
  yeah rebel, don't listen to your elders.
• 51:23
  Don't listen to the the lessons that have been taught to you.
• 51:25
  Forge your own path and fight injustice.
• 51:27
  Because all these governments are just sitting around doing
• 51:30
  nothing. And you know the only way is
• 51:34
  anarchy basically, which I mean is is 1 possible way of reading
• 51:38
  it. Maybe not the writer's intention
• 51:40
  though. I mean, that's, you know,
• 51:41
  terrorist Dicks came in towards the end, didn't he?
• 51:43
  And he was sort of rewriting some of this.
• 51:45
  Maybe he's like, well, I'm not having none of these fostering
• 51:47
  old men saying that pacifism is a bad thing.
• 51:50
  And he made some changes towards the end.
• 51:52
  And it's great. Gary and Daniel, what you're
• 51:54
  both saying, unfortunately none of that plays out on screen and
• 51:57
  we just got five episodes of very dull padding.
• 52:01
  So yeah, I'm not a fan of it. I think the characters, I think
• 52:05
  the characters are weak, very poor characters.
• 52:09
  The Dominators, they come on, they tell us they've conquered
• 52:12
  10 galaxies, how all they do is bicker with each other.
• 52:16
  Joe, we just recently did season 22.
• 52:18
  These two remind me of Bates and Stratton from Attack of the
• 52:21
  Cyberman. They just stand around in a
• 52:25
  quarry, stitching at each other without any style or wit
• 52:29
  whatsoever and just repeat themselves so.
• 52:31
  Bates and Stratton are even hotter than Rago and Tober the.
• 52:36
  Difference between Bates and Stratton and and and Tober and
• 52:39
  Rago is that Tober and Rago actually have something to do
• 52:44
  with the plot and Bates and. Stratton.
• 52:47
  Everything in the attack on the side, men have no relation to
• 52:50
  anything else that's going on in that story.
• 52:54
  And and they're not hot at. All I.
• 53:00
  Was going to say too it. I mean, there is, there is,
• 53:03
  there is. There is some funny bits in
• 53:06
  those in those dulgent council council chambers where they say,
• 53:10
  you know, surely no civilized race would indulge in
• 53:13
  purposeless violence. And then a dominator comes
• 53:16
  walking in. No.
• 53:17
  When he comes in and the fellow goes, have you got an
• 53:19
  appointment to invade or whatever is?
• 53:21
  I love that bit. I've.
• 53:22
  I've been in meetings like that. I was here.
• 53:25
  Sorry Ross. Totally high checked your
• 53:28
  argument here. It's fine, it's fine.
• 53:29
  I just I I just can't see it with this one.
• 53:33
  I think the production is weak too.
• 53:34
  So I think it's weak story, weak plot, weak characters, weak
• 53:37
  production. The quarks, really guys, they
• 53:40
  are the most egg box Doctor Who monster you could possibly get.
• 53:45
  They are so blue, Peter. Yeah, you may be waving a bottle
• 53:49
  at me, Joe. I am not convinced.
• 53:53
  We've got somebody here who played quarks in the playground.
• 53:57
  Yeah. Are you doing it right now?
• 54:01
  I'm still not impressed. I'm sorry.
• 54:03
  And when they're defeated by doing that real kind of Chuckle
• 54:06
  Brothers gimmick of lying on the floor and tying a rope around
• 54:10
  their legs and pushing them over, I mean, come on, they're
• 54:13
  not exactly as serious men this at that point, are they?
• 54:17
  They are awful, that. That you could mount a defence
• 54:21
  of a Nimon and a. The Nimon of the corks.
• 54:25
  Oh, and just yeah, the studio, Gary arrived.
• 54:29
  Some of us work in the studio. It's horrendous.
• 54:32
  The the backdrop is creased so badly.
• 54:34
  All you see is the creasing of the sky.
• 54:37
  Yeah, no, for me, this is, this is out.
• 54:40
  Dolceums equals dull. It's going.
• 54:43
  Barry Newby's wasted on you, you know.
• 54:47
  He can have his curtains back. He can make some more togas out
• 54:50
  of it. Joe, you have to deciding vote.
• 54:53
  Of course I'm putting it through.
• 54:54
  I've been completely turned to the ways of Fraser Gregory.
• 54:57
  I used to go outside one out of 10 when I reviewed it on my
• 55:00
  website years back and now I'd give it sort of A7 and an 8.
• 55:03
  I really think this is fun. Like Daniel said, I think this
• 55:06
  is sort of the last love affair with sort of 40s fifties pulp
• 55:09
  science fiction before we head into sort of before we actually
• 55:13
  go up into space and realise it's actually a bit dull.
• 55:16
  And then Spaces colony in space, you know, a muddy patch and
• 55:20
  domes and it's all a bit dreary, although I quite like colonies
• 55:24
  ways as well for other reasons. But you know, it's all like
• 55:27
  gleaming space cities, flying saucers, you know, WAVY hand
• 55:31
  robots or sorry, robots. That's how Doctor Zoi burgers.
• 55:35
  It isn't it robots, that's what balance it.
• 55:38
  I just think that's really fun. I think it's worth celebrating
• 55:40
  that sort of sci-fi of old one last time before we sort of head
• 55:44
  into more realistic depictions was realistic as Doctor Who's
• 55:48
  going to get? I think this is a lot funnier
• 55:51
  than people say as well. I think that fella in episode
• 55:53
  one, Balon, who's like the Doctor, comes in, he goes, we're
• 55:56
  from another planet and he goes, oh really?
• 55:58
  I will write that down in my notebook.
• 56:00
  You know, like it's the sort of thing that happens to him every
• 56:03
  other day. And the the scenes in the
• 56:05
  dulcine chambers. Yeah, where they're tying
• 56:06
  themselves up in knots in in indolence whilst they're being
• 56:09
  invaded. I think that's funny as well.
• 56:11
  I just think the quarks are hilarious.
• 56:13
  No wonder the kids loved him at the time, you know, sort of
• 56:16
  stomping around a quarry. They look great.
• 56:19
  See, Garry's doing it again for us.
• 56:22
  I love the fact there's somebody here that actually played what's
• 56:24
  in the playground. I feel as if our defence is
• 56:27
  there and I think this is a surprisingly decent production,
• 56:30
  Gary said. It's got good location work.
• 56:32
  There's an explosion of the the space shuttle in episode one.
• 56:37
  It goes up about 14 miles. It's enormous.
• 56:40
  Some of that location work is really, really good, and I think
• 56:43
  the psychedelic sets of the Dominator's craft are really I
• 56:47
  love the wall they've got with. The Oh yeah, with the claws.
• 56:49
  The. Turn out every time they blow
• 56:52
  up. That's hilarious.
• 56:54
  And I I know that back cloth is creased for the Dawson City, but
• 57:00
  this is what we've been doing ever since, sort of the Aztecs.
• 57:02
  And way back then, the fact that they were in the corner of a
• 57:05
  tiny studio and they would take you all over the universe and
• 57:09
  all around the world, and it didn't hold them back, but they
• 57:12
  were in a tiny studio. They just went for it.
• 57:15
  I love it. I just love the ambition of the
• 57:17
  60s. So yeah, for the production, for
• 57:20
  the humour, which I think is there.
• 57:22
  I've sometimes feel like Morris Barry thinks he's directing a
• 57:24
  drama where some we lose, we lose some of the comedy lines,
• 57:28
  and for the last love Affair with Pulp SF, it's going
• 57:31
  through. So the Dominators is through to
• 57:34
  round two. Joe, pick a story.
• 57:37
  I would like to champion the seeds of death, please, which I
• 57:42
  think is wonderful. And another battle with Fraser
• 57:46
  on that one I love. I think Michael Ferguson is one
• 57:49
  of the best directors we ever had on Doctor.
• 57:52
  You look at the four stories he did, he's a brilliant director.
• 57:55
  His use of space in the sets, sort of how he shoots through
• 57:58
  things. His RT camera work, he does lots
• 58:01
  of work in silhouette. He's got that fabulous wall of
• 58:04
  lights that he keeps silhouetting people against the
• 58:07
  Ice Warrior on location with the sun behind him.
• 58:11
  Really dramatic shots. And I just think his location
• 58:14
  work both at Ealing and on location.
• 58:18
  Is it just it pops on the DVD it looks absolutely glorious.
• 58:24
  There's a shit ton of larking around with Trout and Hines and
• 58:27
  Padre and this one, and that's part of the reason I come to
• 58:31
  Season 6. It's blissful.
• 58:33
  Patrick Trout and asked him about in that foam at the end of
• 58:36
  episode 5. It's so funny.
• 58:38
  You've got Jamie and Zoe dashing around on the moon and then
• 58:41
  Weather Control hiding from Ice forest and going.
• 58:44
  They're running away. It's pure panto, but I love it.
• 58:47
  And the sequence of trout and running around that moon base
• 58:50
  and all the mirrors and all of that, when it goes all sort of
• 58:52
  Looney Tunes is hilarious. And another reason I love this
• 58:57
  is Dudley Simpson's score, which is wacky and unforgettable.
• 59:02
  It brings personality to the story.
• 59:04
  It brings pace to the story because even though it is being
• 59:08
  really well filmed, I always feel like the best scores bring
• 59:10
  a lot of pace sometimes that the directors calm and just a lot of
• 59:14
  excitement as well. It's possibly one cliche too
• 59:20
  many. I think maybe the idea that rain
• 59:23
  is the thing that defeats the seed pods is, you know, well,
• 59:26
  don't come to Earth and certainly don't come to England
• 59:28
  then. But it's really fun.
• 59:31
  It's really pacey. It's full of great set pieces.
• 59:35
  I think Ferguson directs the hell out of it.
• 59:37
  I think it's seriously underrated, the seeds of death
• 59:40
  and I would like to put it through.
• 59:42
  Fantastic. OK, let's go to the comments.
• 59:45
  Syhart agrees with you, Joe. He says it's best of the year.
• 59:48
  Terribly underrated. Great fun with an awesome score.
• 59:51
  I love it. Fraser Gregory an inferior
• 59:54
  remake of The Ice for us. Oh what does he know?
• 59:56
  What this story does, What this story does have going for it is
• 1:00:00
  an outstanding director and Terence Dicks holding his craft.
• 1:00:02
  Sadly though, there is too much foam where there should be plots
• 1:00:06
  and LAX characters that are original.
• 1:00:09
  Bennett. Jason Thompson says Great and
• 1:00:12
  Fusion is one of the best supporting characters ever.
• 1:00:15
  He does what he does because he doesn't want to be brutally
• 1:00:17
  murdered, but meeting the Doctor lets him find his strength and
• 1:00:20
  his final self sacrifice is a fitting redemption.
• 1:00:23
  Daniel Knight, A retread of the Ice Warriors, but much more fun
• 1:00:26
  and exciting. I was trying to say there, but
• 1:00:28
  he's been a lot more succinct. Terry Scully's Fusion is a stand
• 1:00:34
  out character. Joe Llewellyn says an underrated
• 1:00:37
  jam. Some great set pieces.
• 1:00:38
  Moves quite well for a six parter.
• 1:00:41
  Jack Coyer An interesting mix of the Hartnell's era, depiction of
• 1:00:44
  the future and pert Weira's vision of the present.
• 1:00:46
  A daft comedy ending some naff cliffhangers.
• 1:00:49
  A1 last stone party. Great camera work and direction
• 1:00:52
  by Michael Ferguson. James H says the weirdest in
• 1:00:56
  story chronology ever, but so utterly watchable even.
• 1:00:59
  I don't care. Just knows why front inspired
• 1:01:03
  outfits. I would wear those.
• 1:01:05
  I would wear those Michael Store.
• 1:01:06
  Michael Ferguson directs the story very well and there are
• 1:01:09
  many memorable visuals. The guest cast is superb,
• 1:01:12
  particularly Terry Scully. How did I forget to mention him?
• 1:01:15
  However, the team at Uniforms do fall into 60s TV doing future
• 1:01:19
  codes that just look embarrassing.
• 1:01:21
  Chris Hogman says in a series of such strong stories.
• 1:01:25
  My favorite must be Seeds of Death, my second Doctor Who VHS.
• 1:01:28
  Heavily edited, but absolutely fantastic.
• 1:01:31
  Dan Pin The best Ice Warrior story.
• 1:01:34
  Brian Hales, with a little help from Uncle Terrence, really gets
• 1:01:37
  them right here. Full of menace and threats and
• 1:01:39
  the weapon effects. So simple, but so good.
• 1:01:42
  Dave Rennie says trouting is on fine comedy form.
• 1:01:45
  The Ice Warriors get a much better story than their debut,
• 1:01:48
  Terence Dix. Let's be honest, he wrote.
• 1:01:49
  Most of it delivers a cracking script and you can see the guy's
• 1:01:53
  pants. It's a winner.
• 1:01:55
  Tim Allenby A sprawling, epic feature in the Ice Warriors at
• 1:01:58
  their very best, with a strong guest cast and some great
• 1:02:01
  direction of music. Definitive.
• 1:02:03
  Classic. Ian Banks's absolute cracker.
• 1:02:06
  It may be an episode too long, but it's really a great story
• 1:02:09
  that cycles through it's few locations in a very exciting
• 1:02:12
  way. Possibly the best Ice Warrior
• 1:02:14
  story. And finally, Adrian Adrian
• 1:02:18
  Berry. I'd go for Seeds of Death as
• 1:02:20
  best. The introduction of Slog gives
• 1:02:22
  more weight to the Ice Warriors. So, Gary, has Joe convinced you
• 1:02:28
  to keep seeds of death? Only need no convincing
• 1:02:35
  perfection. I mean, I I think Fraser and the
• 1:02:38
  others were insane when they said he made life warriors.
• 1:02:43
  And there's nothing in common with the Ice Warriors other than
• 1:02:46
  the Ice Warriors being in it. And and the reason rain works is
• 1:02:50
  because there's no rain on Mars. So they wouldn't prepare
• 1:02:54
  anything. They wouldn't know what rain was
• 1:02:55
  because, you know, the flood was many, many thousands of years
• 1:02:58
  ago. So they wouldn't know what rain
• 1:03:01
  was. So it's it's perfectly in
• 1:03:02
  keeping with they they invent something to take the air out
• 1:03:06
  and don't think about rain. I'd love all that.
• 1:03:10
  It's a story. Nostalgically for me, it is the
• 1:03:13
  point. I can tell you the exact moment
• 1:03:15
  where I realized I was a Doctor Who fan, which is the
• 1:03:18
  cliffhanger to whichever episode it is.
• 1:03:20
  It must be the end of episode four or five.
• 1:03:23
  Where Christopher Cole yells Lookout Zoe, and then he gets
• 1:03:29
  killed. But you don't know actually
• 1:03:31
  who's being killed, because the Ice Warrior effect is so good.
• 1:03:34
  And then it goes into the credits.
• 1:03:35
  And I remember as a kid finally understanding what a cliffhanger
• 1:03:39
  was and absolutely distraught that I had to wait a whole week
• 1:03:43
  to find out what happened to Zoe.
• 1:03:45
  That whole moment, that whole thing is so tense and so
• 1:03:48
  brilliant. I passionately love every single
• 1:03:52
  thing about the seeds of death. There isn't one second wasted.
• 1:03:57
  It is 6 episodes of the most perfect Doctor Who from the 60s
• 1:04:01
  and every every frame of it should be cherished and hung up
• 1:04:06
  in the Tate Gallery. It is brilliant Doctor Who.
• 1:04:10
  So can I just get it right? Do you like it though, Gary?
• 1:04:13
  Yeah, a little bit, yeah. Look at.
• 1:04:14
  It and the computer voice is sublime as well and.
• 1:04:18
  It's the Ice Warriors. I mean, my God, Brian Helz's
• 1:04:20
  stuff is fantastic and and Ice Warriors are just great great
• 1:04:25
  monsters and and you know screw the Daleks over and over again
• 1:04:31
  and you're absolutely right, whoever it was.
• 1:04:32
  That said the the the invention of of Slough for this story just
• 1:04:37
  takes them up a level and I think that's always what you
• 1:04:39
  want to do with monsters and he does it again next time by
• 1:04:42
  making them the good guys. So you keep doing stuff with the
• 1:04:45
  Ice Warriors. They're one of the most well
• 1:04:46
  defined and interesting aliens Doctor whoever had.
• 1:04:51
  Yeah, just brilliant. I love it.
• 1:04:54
  I could sit down and watch it now and and just be happy.
• 1:04:57
  When they finally pop their helmets and, you know, the CGI
• 1:05:01
  creations emerge, is that how you envision them to look?
• 1:05:04
  You have to go back and read the amazingly brilliant New
• 1:05:07
  Adventures novel Legacy to find out what I think.
• 1:05:09
  OK. Does it marry up?
• 1:05:14
  Yeah, pretty much. What are you trying to tell us?
• 1:05:19
  Gary I think that that slid around submarines.
• 1:05:22
  No, I just had them looking like reptiles.
• 1:05:25
  They're. Daniel.
• 1:05:28
  Well, I can only agree. Thank God for that.
• 1:05:34
  Well, the thing that that sort of really jumped out to me in
• 1:05:36
  this one is it There's the very funny version of the future
• 1:05:41
  where it kind of reminded me where the TARDIS lands in in
• 1:05:44
  Dalek. Actually in the new series where
• 1:05:46
  it lands in a museum. And the same thing happens here.
• 1:05:49
  It lands in a museum that's filled with old relics of the
• 1:05:51
  space race for a story which was broadcast just months before the
• 1:05:56
  movie landing. So it's quite a meta kind of
• 1:06:00
  setting where it almost feels like Doctor Who's kind of
• 1:06:03
  criticizing itself and saying, well, it's not as popular or
• 1:06:06
  even really relevant anymore, we're going to have to change it
• 1:06:08
  up again soon. And it's, you know, and so no
• 1:06:11
  wonder, you know, the Doctor and Professor Eldred kind of geek
• 1:06:15
  out over the the charm of all these obsolete relics like, you
• 1:06:19
  know, iron rockets and and, you know, Jamie looks at them and
• 1:06:22
  and says to Zoe, oh, there are a couple of kids.
• 1:06:25
  And then there's the TMAC technology, which is all
• 1:06:29
  operates through dematerialization, which is the
• 1:06:31
  same sort of way that the TARDIS works, which is, you know, the
• 1:06:34
  Doctor's personal mode of transport.
• 1:06:36
  And so he gets really excited when he actually gets to travel
• 1:06:39
  by one. He's like, oh, this should be
• 1:06:40
  fun. And then he's very disappointed
• 1:06:43
  because it's been commodified and industrialized by
• 1:06:47
  governments all across the world and everyone's lost all
• 1:06:50
  interest. He says there's there's no
• 1:06:51
  feeling at all, is there? And yes, and so the
• 1:06:58
  extraordinary has become the ordinary, which actually is
• 1:07:01
  quite similar to today, where the only forms of space
• 1:07:05
  exploration today seems to be either sending out satellites or
• 1:07:09
  a bunch of, you know, billionaire funded vanity
• 1:07:12
  projects really. I don't know.
• 1:07:15
  NASA seems to be very good at at landing a rocket on the moon and
• 1:07:18
  it falling over. Hey, we finally got something on
• 1:07:23
  the moon. Oh, it's falling over.
• 1:07:29
  And then there's also that this is a kind of blink and you miss
• 1:07:32
  it moment. But in the very, in the very
• 1:07:35
  beginning, where they come out of the TARDIS in the museum,
• 1:07:40
  they have a sort of bit of ad libbed dialogue between the
• 1:07:42
  Doctor and Jamie where they've just started exploring the
• 1:07:46
  museum. And Jamie points at a model of a
• 1:07:48
  rocket and goes, hey, look at the size of this one.
• 1:07:50
  And he goes, Oh yes, my word, Jamie.
• 1:07:52
  Oh, very large. Yes.
• 1:07:54
  Which, you know, if you, if you know your two doctors, that's a
• 1:07:58
  big dog. Brilliant.
• 1:08:02
  So 2 for two. I'm superfluous than my vote,
• 1:08:06
  but of course I'm going to keep this.
• 1:08:08
  Of course I am. It's wonderful.
• 1:08:11
  First reason would be, and This sounds like it could be a
• 1:08:14
  slight, but it absolutely isn't. It's kind of like the greatest
• 1:08:18
  hits of the Trout and era. You've got so much here that's
• 1:08:21
  reflected out the whole era. So you've got the Moon Base,
• 1:08:23
  which is effectively your base on the Siege, which by God we've
• 1:08:27
  seen a lot of in the previous season.
• 1:08:29
  We haven't had much of this year.
• 1:08:31
  So we've got a little bit of a base on the Siege, but you're
• 1:08:33
  also mixing up with an Invasion story.
• 1:08:35
  And actually you've got invasion twice here, because not only if
• 1:08:38
  you've got the Ice Warriors invading the Moon Base, you've
• 1:08:41
  also got them invading Earth. And on Earth, you've got gun
• 1:08:44
  battles to keep the aliens at Bay, which again, we see quite a
• 1:08:47
  few times in this season. It's a proper monster story too,
• 1:08:51
  isn't it? And we haven't had many of those
• 1:08:53
  this season. We got this and the Invasion
• 1:08:56
  that are kind of proper invading monster stories, and here we're
• 1:08:59
  using a monster that's been created in this era, which is
• 1:09:03
  great. We get heavy focus on space
• 1:09:05
  exploration, which we get a lot of in the latter part of the
• 1:09:08
  season. We've got a great set of
• 1:09:10
  supports and characters. You've got Eldrad, Commander
• 1:09:12
  Radner, Miss Kelly. How did no one mention her?
• 1:09:15
  Huge. Yes.
• 1:09:17
  With us? All these characters, even
• 1:09:19
  Fet's, you know, it's a smallish role, but he does so much with
• 1:09:22
  it. I think it's.
• 1:09:22
  Terry Scully though, it's Terry Scully's fusion that we we've
• 1:09:26
  never had a character under pressure like that before.
• 1:09:28
  You know, it's effectively having a nervous breakdown
• 1:09:31
  because of the dilemmas that he's being put through.
• 1:09:33
  Absolutely. It feels real.
• 1:09:36
  You've got Troughton. Yes.
• 1:09:37
  Troughton's doing his comedy shtick.
• 1:09:38
  Absolutely. That Chase, you mentioned Joe.
• 1:09:40
  It's superb in Episode 3 when he's running around the base.
• 1:09:44
  I'm a genius, yes. Exactly how did nobody mention
• 1:09:49
  that one? But then he's coming as well.
• 1:09:51
  He's the one that devises the plan to to divert the fleet with
• 1:09:55
  the fake homing beacon Jamie. He hasn't been terribly well
• 1:10:00
  served in a lot of this season, but he's heroic at the end.
• 1:10:03
  He comes to save the Doctor at the end and then you've even got
• 1:10:05
  on being a bit glib, but you've got the phone machine back
• 1:10:08
  again. That's back.
• 1:10:10
  And you've got one of the main cars taking a holiday with
• 1:10:12
  Trouton. Powerful.
• 1:10:13
  And isn't it obvious when Trouton's missing?
• 1:10:15
  I think you can get away with losing Jamie, even losing Zoe.
• 1:10:19
  But when Trouton's not on screen, my God, you miss him.
• 1:10:22
  But I think you've got all that. It's it's a it's a condensed
• 1:10:26
  form of the Trout and ERA and I think it's lovely for that.
• 1:10:30
  And I'll contradict you for a second, because I do think
• 1:10:33
  losing Trout is a mistake always, because he's amazing.
• 1:10:36
  But I think in this story where you've got Fusion and Miss Kelly
• 1:10:39
  and Jamie and Zoe like that is a confident little line up there
• 1:10:43
  to sort of hold the episode. Oh.
• 1:10:45
  Absolutely. I don't think the episode falls
• 1:10:47
  apart for it, but I still just miss seeing him.
• 1:10:49
  I think it's because he's so intrinsic to Doctor Who at this
• 1:10:52
  stage that I I really miss not seeing him.
• 1:10:55
  But you're right, there are great, great characters and it
• 1:10:57
  keeps bubbling along. It's not a it's not a dead
• 1:11:00
  episode at all. So I think the plotting is
• 1:11:03
  really clever in this story. I think it's one of the few
• 1:11:06
  stories that really optimizes. It's it's running length,
• 1:11:09
  there's good pace throughout. It's plenty instant, good
• 1:11:12
  logical progression. I love the fact that the Doctor
• 1:11:15
  and companions are kept away from the moon for the first two
• 1:11:18
  episodes, because all that stuff they're doing on the rocket is
• 1:11:20
  setting up for the end of the story.
• 1:11:22
  So it's not padding, it's actually foreshading what we're
• 1:11:25
  going to see at the end. I think there's this clever
• 1:11:28
  shift in Power Four. I've mentioned it already.
• 1:11:29
  We then come to worth. We've had all that stuff on the
• 1:11:31
  moon base, then we come to Earth.
• 1:11:33
  Which I'm not sure how clever that control is.
• 1:11:35
  So on and off. On the right, with a big on and
• 1:11:39
  a big on. Yeah, the switch as well.
• 1:11:41
  It's the same with the heating control, isn't it?
• 1:11:43
  On the moon, they're all the switch.
• 1:11:44
  Bloody wish my heating control was like that.
• 1:11:46
  I can't use mine at all. We talked about the rain before,
• 1:11:50
  but I think the rain is done really well because we've just
• 1:11:53
  seen in the Crotons, the doctor found the sulfuric acid
• 1:11:57
  destroyed the Croton machine, and that just plays out like you
• 1:12:00
  would expect it. Here we find out water can get
• 1:12:03
  rid of the blight, but the Ice Warriors have already thought of
• 1:12:06
  that and they've gone to weather control to stop it from raining.
• 1:12:09
  So I think that's Terrance Dix thinking this story through and
• 1:12:12
  thinking actually, we don't want our villains to look stupid.
• 1:12:15
  We're going to make sure that they're ahead of the game.
• 1:12:17
  They know the Achilles heel. They're going to go to weather
• 1:12:20
  control and stop it. And I think it's things like
• 1:12:22
  that that just raise this story above most of the others this.
• 1:12:25
  Season. When he figures it out, that
• 1:12:27
  balloon is blowing up and he's throwing all the acid over it.
• 1:12:30
  Hydrochloric acid. Oh, I love it.
• 1:12:33
  We're saying an awful lot of rightly brilliant things about
• 1:12:37
  Terrence, but I think it may be slightly exaggerated as to how
• 1:12:44
  much Terrence actually wrote it. To this Brian Hill's very, very
• 1:12:47
  good, very successful writer, I I would level that.
• 1:12:52
  You know, the actual plot points you're all talking about are all
• 1:12:55
  Brian Hill's. I think Terence might have
• 1:12:57
  tweaked an awful lot of dialogue because I think Terence is
• 1:13:00
  brilliant at writing dialogue and possibly Brian Hill's
• 1:13:03
  wasn't. But story wise and the actual
• 1:13:06
  structure and the actual beats per episode, it's all pure Brian
• 1:13:09
  Hales, I'm sure. I I I don't think, you know we
• 1:13:12
  should take too much away from him for this.
• 1:13:14
  No, Terrence, I say, doesn't he? On quite a few of the special
• 1:13:18
  features, the how magnanimous Brian Hales was when he used to
• 1:13:21
  ring him up and say, look, I'm going to rewrite this whole so
• 1:13:23
  Brian Hales would be there going, oh, don't worry, do it.
• 1:13:26
  Yeah, no worries. Yeah, if Brian Hales was that
• 1:13:28
  bad, he wouldn't have been. Terrence wouldn't have employed
• 1:13:31
  him twice in in the. Well and also you know Terence
• 1:13:37
  has that off a very often famous quote of you know the Doctor is
• 1:13:41
  never cruel nor cowardly and in this in this one, you know.
• 1:13:48
  So I think that's that's probably more Brian Hales, yeah
• 1:13:50
  than. You know what, Daniel?
• 1:13:51
  He gets away with it, doesn't he?
• 1:13:52
  Because he's got that lash up around him and those two solar
• 1:13:55
  panels and Dudley Simpson going, you know, and you just think
• 1:13:59
  it's the most hilarious thing. What he's actually doing is
• 1:14:01
  going around murdering a load of people.
• 1:14:03
  It's an interesting approach. And then they get to the end and
• 1:14:07
  and you know, and Slav says you've destroyed our entire
• 1:14:10
  fleet and he's like you tried to destroy an entire world.
• 1:14:14
  Do you do any acting, Daniel? Voice acting, yes.
• 1:14:18
  I can tell. I try.
• 1:14:22
  Fine. So it looks like the Seeds of
• 1:14:24
  Death is absolutely, unanimously going through to round two.
• 1:14:28
  So it's my pick and I'm going to leave the big hitters.
• 1:14:32
  I am going to defend the Crotons.
• 1:14:36
  Good luck. Thank.
• 1:14:38
  You I don't quite understand why the Crotons gets as much bashing
• 1:14:42
  as it does these days. I think it's a cracking little
• 1:14:46
  story and the reasons I like it. First of all, I would say it's
• 1:14:50
  probably got the tightest structure of the stories.
• 1:14:53
  This season we've got a lot of stories that have been extended
• 1:14:56
  by multiple episodes. This is helped by the fact it's
• 1:14:59
  season six is only four parter, but it's a cracking little tight
• 1:15:03
  script. It's well structured, it's well
• 1:15:06
  paced. It's not really surprising that
• 1:15:09
  Robber Holmes Nicks many of the plot ideas and recycles them in
• 1:15:12
  mysterious planets a few years later.
• 1:15:15
  But not loving it. Part one we got, you know, we
• 1:15:18
  got premise laid out for us. But he holds back.
• 1:15:20
  Enough mystery so there's plenty still to come.
• 1:15:23
  But we understand what's going on.
• 1:15:25
  We get introduced to all the guns.
• 1:15:27
  We understand the power struggle between the Elders and the
• 1:15:29
  Youngers. The Doctor gets involved almost
• 1:15:32
  straight away. He gets threatened.
• 1:15:34
  He then wins them over by saving Varna.
• 1:15:37
  He's fully integrated into the story in 23 minutes.
• 1:15:41
  We've got through so much plot. We really understand that
• 1:15:44
  society, which is, I know, something that Robert Holmes
• 1:15:46
  always excels at. But we've, you know, we
• 1:15:48
  understand what's going on and we're in the thick of it, I
• 1:15:51
  think. Great.
• 1:15:52
  And then Part 2, we get to meet the Crotons 3, we get all the
• 1:15:56
  information about it being a mousetrap, which is a lovely
• 1:15:59
  clever idea and all the factions start to fight and then we get
• 1:16:02
  the big resolution in four. So it's a really well structured
• 1:16:06
  stories, plenty going on and what I really like about it.
• 1:16:09
  As I mentioned, a lot of the other stories feel as though
• 1:16:12
  they've been thrown together a little bit and some of the
• 1:16:14
  episodes feel like they're written on the fly a bit, naming
• 1:16:17
  no stories. But here we kept bread crumbs
• 1:16:20
  seeded throughout, so as soon as the tard is slammed, Jamie comes
• 1:16:23
  out. The Tard's the very first thing
• 1:16:25
  he says. He talks about the bad smell,
• 1:16:26
  referring to the the sulphur, which again comes back then in
• 1:16:30
  parts three and four when they create the sulphuric acid.
• 1:16:34
  In Part 2, when the Doctor and Zoe go into the dynotrope, first
• 1:16:37
  thing Zoe talks about is the pipe that connects the crotons,
• 1:16:40
  the sludge. And again that comes back in
• 1:16:43
  Part 4 because that's how she poisoned them.
• 1:16:45
  So there's all these little things.
• 1:16:46
  It just feels, particularly when you watch it as a whole, a
• 1:16:49
  really well structured, well thought through story that just
• 1:16:53
  takes us on a lovely journey. So first one is structure,
• 1:16:56
  second points. I think homes work right really
• 1:16:59
  well for the three regulars. I don't think there's another
• 1:17:02
  story this year that gives all three regulars a good crack of
• 1:17:05
  the whip the minute they come out the tards.
• 1:17:08
  They are playing this so much more seriously than they've done
• 1:17:11
  some of the other stories. There's a lot less larking
• 1:17:13
  about. They're Doctor seems to be
• 1:17:15
  almost back in Tomb of the Cybermen mode.
• 1:17:17
  He's got his furrowed brow. He's really serious.
• 1:17:20
  He takes the whole story very seriously.
• 1:17:22
  But that's not to say there aren't some lovely comedic
• 1:17:24
  moments, because of course there are.
• 1:17:25
  When his umbrella gets destroyed by the dispersion gas.
• 1:17:29
  I love the way he gets upset by that.
• 1:17:31
  Obviously there's all the bits and all the nonsense with the
• 1:17:33
  teaching machine. And then at the end, with him
• 1:17:35
  and Zoe in the dynotrope, I stand here.
• 1:17:37
  No, you stand there. No, you.
• 1:17:39
  It's great, lovely. So you get his comedy gold, but
• 1:17:42
  he is still really serious throughout this.
• 1:17:44
  I don't think there's another moment in the whole this season
• 1:17:46
  that he gets as cross as he does.
• 1:17:48
  When Zoe is invited to go into the dynatrope, he really shouts
• 1:17:51
  at it. He's really cross.
• 1:17:52
  He wants to save her. Zoe is paired with the Doctor,
• 1:17:57
  Trout this, and they make such a brilliant team.
• 1:17:59
  I see a lot of nonsense about Holmes doesn't write for female
• 1:18:02
  characters. He writes Zoe brilliantly.
• 1:18:05
  She's inquisitive, she's super intelligent, she's bright, she
• 1:18:08
  does everything she needs to do. And the two of them together, I
• 1:18:11
  don't want to be disrespectful to Fraser, but just the two of
• 1:18:14
  them together I think are absolutely gold.
• 1:18:16
  But even Fraser and Jamie does get possibly his best out in
• 1:18:20
  this season. He's straight into a fight.
• 1:18:22
  The minute he meets the guns, he steams into the dynatronic to
• 1:18:25
  try to save the doctor. He fights off the Crotons with
• 1:18:28
  their own dispersal gun. A lot of times this season he's
• 1:18:32
  really sidelined and underutilized, but I think
• 1:18:35
  Holmes gives him and all the three lots to do, so that will
• 1:18:38
  be my second reason. And thirdly, I think there's
• 1:18:41
  some great sacking going on in this.
• 1:18:43
  Obviously, you know, I can't say anything about the three
• 1:18:46
  regulars. They're just superb.
• 1:18:48
  Philip Maddock I think gives a great performance.
• 1:18:51
  He's really sly and arch. He steals every scene that he's
• 1:18:55
  in. Even someone like Beta, he gives
• 1:18:58
  a really good performance. James James can cross.
• 1:19:01
  He gives a really good performance, even when he's when
• 1:19:04
  he's rating the sulphuric acid with Jamie and he's playing the
• 1:19:07
  comedy, or when he's arguing with ELAC.
• 1:19:10
  He gives that role a lot when he lifts that role off the.
• 1:19:12
  Not that fella in charge, though.
• 1:19:14
  What's? Oh, no.
• 1:19:15
  No, I'm not. I didn't.
• 1:19:16
  They are now with the Croftons, not here.
• 1:19:19
  Obviously didn't mention him, no.
• 1:19:22
  But no, you know, oh. And I am going to give bonus
• 1:19:25
  points to Roy Skelton and Patrick Toll for their lovely,
• 1:19:27
  booming South African voices. They're really, really
• 1:19:31
  distinctive, really different. About her via Birmingham.
• 1:19:35
  Yes. But yeah, so I think for all
• 1:19:39
  those reasons I don't like the fact that sets the 18th up to
• 1:19:43
  21st. I'm going to put this one
• 1:19:45
  through. Something has to come 18th, 1st
• 1:19:47
  can. I fuck in here and say I think
• 1:19:49
  that that's a really interesting pro protons stance.
• 1:19:56
  I'd like to see this version of the Crotons, because I'm certain
• 1:20:02
  that no other human being on planet Earth has seen that
• 1:20:05
  version of the protons we've seen, The one that went out in
• 1:20:08
  1999, which possibly had all those things you've just talked
• 1:20:13
  about, could have been there if it had been competently
• 1:20:17
  directed, acted, filmed, designed.
• 1:20:22
  You talked about egg hot monsters when you were talking
• 1:20:24
  about the quarks because you're mad.
• 1:20:26
  Here are the ultimate egg that are so shit that half the time
• 1:20:31
  they can't move and then certainly they can move and then
• 1:20:35
  spin around for no readily apparent reason.
• 1:20:37
  I don't have an Eagle Moss Croton on my desk.
• 1:20:41
  Do you know? No, it's OK.
• 1:20:42
  It's OK. No, no one should have an Eagle
• 1:20:45
  Moss Croton because they're just awful.
• 1:20:48
  This story is is the absolute nadir of Doctor Who.
• 1:20:55
  Anyone ever said to me, you know, you can lose 4 episodes of
• 1:20:59
  Doctor Who and replace them with another four episodes that are
• 1:21:02
  currently missing. I'll go have the Crotons back.
• 1:21:05
  We we don't need the protons. It is.
• 1:21:08
  So now I'll give you there are three very good things in The
• 1:21:11
  Crotons, all of which you've mentioned the the the Moment in
• 1:21:15
  the teaching Machine with the Doctor and Zoe.
• 1:21:17
  Beautiful. If the rest of the story had
• 1:21:19
  been as classy written and classy look to that, it would
• 1:21:21
  have been fantastic. There is a brilliant sequence
• 1:21:26
  visually when Jamie and Zoe and the Doctor separately are
• 1:21:30
  plowing their way through the inside of the dynotrope, and
• 1:21:33
  it's all this kind of 60s pop art design.
• 1:21:37
  Glorious. Absolutely brilliant.
• 1:21:40
  Fuck. All to do with the rest of the
• 1:21:41
  story and saw thumb and looks like it was edited in six weeks
• 1:21:46
  later when they made the War Games and they went, oh, let's
• 1:21:49
  reuse those sets and do a bit of pop artist stuff and insert it
• 1:21:53
  into the protons to pad the story out of it.
• 1:21:57
  Yeah. Other than that, no, there are
• 1:21:58
  no other positives. I'm sorry, it's it's just in the
• 1:22:05
  bin. It's in a shredding gene pumped
• 1:22:09
  to the far end of the universe and saying to every alien race
• 1:22:13
  out there, we're really sorry we've made some great television
• 1:22:16
  in our time on planet. Don't watch this one.
• 1:22:19
  When the radio signals meet Alpha Centauri, please skip
• 1:22:25
  over, it is unforgivably bad. Gary, you know this is the first
• 1:22:30
  time ever someone's been so incensed we haven't even got the
• 1:22:33
  comments out. They've had to jump in and say
• 1:22:36
  what the counter response is. I.
• 1:22:37
  Just can't believe that that rod seen the same.
• 1:22:41
  I felt the same when you were defending the dominators.
• 1:22:44
  Well, that's just because you're mad.
• 1:22:46
  I tell him this all the time. Is that difficult?
• 1:22:49
  To understand. So I've got a question for you,
• 1:22:51
  Gary, if you had to choose between Crotons and Horns of
• 1:22:55
  Nimon, which is staying and which is going?
• 1:22:58
  The Nimon, The Nimon has the Nimons brilliant design, not
• 1:23:04
  very well or practically worn, but such a great idea.
• 1:23:10
  And unlike the Crotons, Haunts of Nimon has a story moved from
• 1:23:15
  episode to episode and episode 4 ends a story that began in
• 1:23:18
  episode one. The Crotons every episode ends
• 1:23:21
  the story of that's that episode and has no real resonance to
• 1:23:26
  anything else. This is like a really badly made
• 1:23:31
  version, if this was possible, A really badly made version of
• 1:23:35
  Earth Shock, where every episode is its own individual story and
• 1:23:40
  there's no resemblance to any other episode around it.
• 1:23:42
  And the Crotons and Earth Shock are fairly unique in that in
• 1:23:46
  Doctor Who. Gary, by the way, I can I just
• 1:23:48
  say I just wish you'd stop sitting on the fence.
• 1:23:53
  The only reason I agreed to do season six with you is because I
• 1:23:57
  have to destroy the proton. So I love is that we've had two
• 1:24:01
  very passionate critiques there in both directions.
• 1:24:05
  And now Daniel, we get to choose wherever this is staying or
• 1:24:08
  going. Shall we go to the comments?
• 1:24:09
  We better do the comments first. Go to the comments.
• 1:24:11
  Keep everyone in suspense. OK, so Michael Storm says a
• 1:24:15
  solid, if unremarkable Hugh debut for Robert Holmes.
• 1:24:19
  It's interesting to know the homes would reuse quite a few
• 1:24:21
  elements of it for his final, fully scripted home.
• 1:24:25
  Daniel Knight goes from dull to laugh out loud funny.
• 1:24:28
  Troughton and Padbury are comedy gold together, but poor Fraser
• 1:24:31
  Hynes gets little to do this season apart from being the
• 1:24:34
  muscle and the occasional butt of the jokes.
• 1:24:37
  Jason Thompson said it's fun, especially the Doctor and Zoe's
• 1:24:40
  competition with the teaching machine.
• 1:24:42
  And if you want an example of a consummate professional who
• 1:24:44
  turns in a performance straight down the line in the middle of
• 1:24:47
  what other actors might have decided was fantasy tosh so they
• 1:24:50
  could just phone it in, look up Philip Madduka's ELAC.
• 1:24:56
  Oh, Gary, Dan pins your man balls me to death.
• 1:24:59
  Definitely the weakest absolute tripe.
• 1:25:02
  Poor villains with the real the really cliche plan of nobbling
• 1:25:06
  the brainiest young natives. Yawn.
• 1:25:09
  Even Philip Maddock is crap. And I will apologize for this
• 1:25:13
  one in advance. The Polish box says has a giant,
• 1:25:17
  threatening, angry behemoth with no legs and a South African
• 1:25:20
  accent years before Oscar Pistorius.
• 1:25:24
  Awkward ahead of its time. Not guilty.
• 1:25:27
  I love those guys like that, James.
• 1:25:30
  Layton No comment. Fascinating concept, but the
• 1:25:33
  story has more holes than plot, and the Crotons should only have
• 1:25:35
  been shot from the waistline up. They shouldn't have been shot
• 1:25:39
  or. Jack Coy has.
• 1:25:41
  Met with a big dump 4 barreled shotgun that would have been
• 1:25:43
  quite good. Jack Coyer says a godfather of
• 1:25:47
  new who? Robert Holmes, cutting his teeth
• 1:25:49
  on something that's fine but lacking his caustic weight and
• 1:25:52
  memorable side characters. The most Star Trek story of the
• 1:25:55
  season, Supercomputers fight with robots, logic and intellect
• 1:26:00
  versus emotion and passion. Contrary Mary Fraser Gregory
• 1:26:04
  says. Correct comes Bob Holmes.
• 1:26:07
  Contrary Mary with a rough and ready tale of alien overlaws
• 1:26:10
  that may not stand up to scrutiny, but it's delightful
• 1:26:13
  fun. The world building is as good as
• 1:26:15
  you'd expect. The cratons are second only to
• 1:26:18
  the quarks I see on, and four parts is the right length.
• 1:26:23
  Keep it. Crazy, you're you're almost
• 1:26:25
  right there, Michael Donahue says.
• 1:26:27
  While slight, this is full of childhood nostalgia from the
• 1:26:30
  1981 repeat. The Arrow of Bowley, Just a bit
• 1:26:33
  vanilla as a story and concept. Jim Allenby said they're a bit
• 1:26:37
  creaky, a bit wooden, a bit cheap, but the Crow Tons are
• 1:26:41
  effective monsters, and trout and Hinds and Padbury are always
• 1:26:44
  entertaining to watch. Ian Banks finally had hard to
• 1:26:48
  believe that this is the guy that wrote case of Andrazzani
• 1:26:50
  just means that you should always give people a second
• 1:26:52
  chance, which he gets later in the season.
• 1:26:55
  Oh, wait. So Daniel, I put up my defence.
• 1:27:00
  I think Gary is saying that he doesn't agree with me.
• 1:27:04
  I really know what your feeling is, Gary, you know?
• 1:27:08
  I I I hide. I hide it all.
• 1:27:10
  You see, Andrew. Godshill.
• 1:27:12
  Daniel, what's your take on the magnificent story that is the
• 1:27:15
  Crotons? That's for the Crotons, all
• 1:27:17
  right. Well, for starters, it doesn't
• 1:27:20
  start off well because you have that whole sequence in the Hall
• 1:27:24
  of learning the Opening Ceremony, which looks like the
• 1:27:27
  set of Tales from the Crypt with all these humanoid characters,
• 1:27:32
  and they're all acting very hushed and very formal, and they
• 1:27:34
  speak in all these declarative sentences.
• 1:27:37
  You know the names of the first selected candidates are male Abu
• 1:27:40
  Ghand. The 2nd is female Varnagon.
• 1:27:43
  It should have. Been unworn in, shouldn't it?
• 1:27:47
  Alone of your generation, you have been chosen to receive the
• 1:27:50
  highest honour that can befall aghand the companions of the
• 1:27:53
  crew, etcetera. And then they cloak the chosen
• 1:27:57
  ones in honourable Kates. And it's all the kind of really
• 1:28:00
  bad science fiction cliches that makes me hate science fiction.
• 1:28:05
  It's the kind of stuff where you know, you see that on TV and you
• 1:28:08
  think, yeah, This is why people make fun of people who watch
• 1:28:11
  Doctor Who. This is what makes them turn off
• 1:28:14
  or shy away from sci-fi in general when they shouldn't.
• 1:28:16
  Because of course, sci-fi is an incredibly important genre.
• 1:28:22
  It does. I I am going to, I'm not going
• 1:28:24
  to lie and said I didn't have fun though because it goes on
• 1:28:28
  it's it's relatively painless at 4 episodes, so it's over
• 1:28:31
  quickly. Relatively painless does suggest
• 1:28:35
  a criticism though. Over quickly isn't great.
• 1:28:41
  Positive terms, Daniel. Well, I do like the Doctor
• 1:28:45
  coming into the Hall of Learning and he's all smiles and he's
• 1:28:49
  like we are friends and then they immediately hold him at
• 1:28:52
  spear point, which is basically Doctor Who in a nutshell,
• 1:28:54
  really. And I really like the whole all
• 1:28:59
  the stuff of Jamie I think is really good.
• 1:29:02
  I I think wasn't this meant to be Jamie's last story at one
• 1:29:06
  point? And then they decided to keep
• 1:29:08
  him. I think a few of them this
• 1:29:09
  season were all ringed as potentially Jamie's last story.
• 1:29:14
  I mean it could be because he's, he's told repeatedly, you know,
• 1:29:17
  by everyone, by the Crotons actually you have no value.
• 1:29:20
  And he's always been portrayed as a bit dim, a bit dim, a bit
• 1:29:23
  thick headed. And you know, the Doctor and Zoe
• 1:29:26
  go off into the dynatrote without him and he has to follow
• 1:29:28
  them because he's so loyal. He wants to save his friends and
• 1:29:32
  he even briefly thinks you know that he's been abandoned when he
• 1:29:35
  sees them going off to the TARDIS, you know and then you
• 1:29:38
  know he has that fight and because he wants to defend you
• 1:29:41
  know the the Doctor and Zoe so and you know he can handle
• 1:29:44
  himself. And he also has that clever bit
• 1:29:47
  where although the Crotons are much more powerful than him, he
• 1:29:52
  he's able to distract them because he keeps asking
• 1:29:54
  questions until the the Croton commander says stop asking
• 1:29:58
  questions. And this is also he can get his
• 1:30:02
  hands on a weapon. But yeah, so Gary hopped on a
• 1:30:06
  bit about the Crotons themselves.
• 1:30:11
  So I'm going to do. The old scary or.
• 1:30:14
  Hopped on a bit. Yeah, so, so.
• 1:30:16
  I'm going to damning this. Faint phrase thing doesn't.
• 1:30:18
  It. So let me do that too then,
• 1:30:22
  because although the the Croton voice is very effective at first
• 1:30:28
  when you first hear it, when they say, you know, leave the
• 1:30:32
  whole of learning now. And I quite like the way the
• 1:30:36
  Doctor describes them to to Zoe in that sequence outside the
• 1:30:39
  TARDIS where they're collecting sulphur.
• 1:30:42
  But the Crotons themselves, it it is basically 2 blokes in in
• 1:30:46
  cardboard boxes and they're meant to be these thousand year
• 1:30:49
  old sentient crystalline beings and they don't really do much.
• 1:30:53
  I mean one of them goes outside and you have that really long
• 1:30:57
  drawn out sequence of the Croton just lumbering across the
• 1:31:01
  wasteland going direction coordinates and then the
• 1:31:06
  commander goes 7 vector 0. But really, that's Daniel.
• 1:31:11
  It is Daniel. That is what everybody that's
• 1:31:13
  not a Doctor Who fan thinks. Doctor Who is like, all the
• 1:31:16
  time. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:31:18
  Yes. Well, exactly, exactly at.
• 1:31:20
  Least at least I can hear what they're saying.
• 1:31:22
  I'm like those fucking bumbling quarks.
• 1:31:25
  Now you're mad. Saying Dan brought up a really
• 1:31:28
  interesting point actually. You think there?
• 1:31:31
  The Crotons have been sitting there for thousands of years.
• 1:31:36
  The whole point of the story is that the protons are looking for
• 1:31:43
  the most intelligent guns, and then they're going to draw a
• 1:31:47
  suck in their brains and add it to their pool of of genius.
• 1:31:50
  The problem being that the guns are as thick as pig shit.
• 1:31:54
  So why have the Crotons come to this planet?
• 1:31:57
  Why do they have all the planets in the world they in the
• 1:32:00
  university could have chosen? They're looking for super
• 1:32:02
  intelligence. They're looking to give these
• 1:32:05
  people intelligence so they can then eat them, and they go to
• 1:32:08
  the Croton world, where they get sorry, the Gond world, where
• 1:32:12
  they are all very, very stupid, unintelligent, really quite
• 1:32:17
  boring people. The story makes no sense right
• 1:32:21
  from the outset. Yeah, but the only world you
• 1:32:23
  know well. I was going.
• 1:32:25
  To say the only world that would they be in more trouble will be
• 1:32:27
  coming to earth, wouldn't it really, Jesus Christ?
• 1:32:31
  Well, to add to that, they they there's that they come across
• 1:32:34
  the TARDIS and their first reaction is to destroy it.
• 1:32:37
  And you think, why, why do they want to destroy it again?
• 1:32:40
  They don't really give a reason. It's, you know, it's, I would
• 1:32:43
  imagine that the whole repository of, you know, Time
• 1:32:46
  Lord knowledge and they yeah, let's blow it up, you know, I
• 1:32:50
  mean, what? It's a moment of false jeopardy,
• 1:32:53
  Daniel. That's what it is.
• 1:32:55
  Yeah, it's a lot of false jeopardy.
• 1:32:57
  It doesn't. As we call it, shit.
• 1:33:03
  But it does give, you know, there's there's people complain
• 1:33:05
  that, you know, the Daleks shouldn't have long drawn out
• 1:33:08
  conversations with each other. And you know when you see the
• 1:33:11
  Crotons, you can kind of understand what they mean by
• 1:33:14
  that. So I'm going to say I did have
• 1:33:17
  fun watching it, but I I don't think I can keep this 10.
• 1:33:22
  Sorry. Guys.
• 1:33:25
  So I'm off the hook. You are but what we?
• 1:33:27
  Don't say anyway, Joe. I'm so on the fence for this
• 1:33:30
  one. I can't actually make a choice
• 1:33:32
  because if I had my way, I would have booted out Fraser Hye and
• 1:33:36
  sorry Fraser, I love you. But I would have booted him out
• 1:33:38
  in Fury from the Deep and just had Trout on the Padbury in
• 1:33:42
  Season 6. Because I feel like you could
• 1:33:43
  pretty much tell all these stories with just the two of
• 1:33:45
  them, and they're so great together, their chemistry is so
• 1:33:49
  great. And those sequences in Episode 2
• 1:33:52
  and when they're explored and the dynatrope and all that,
• 1:33:55
  that's they're really fun. And that's the best of this
• 1:33:57
  story. On the other hand, this is the
• 1:34:01
  Russy Davis's ultimate planet, Zog, isn't it?
• 1:34:05
  Like where he says, you know, we go off to our planet and it's
• 1:34:07
  just so boring with people with a load of space names doing
• 1:34:12
  Spacey things that we just can't buy into at all because there's
• 1:34:15
  sort of nothing recognizable there at all.
• 1:34:17
  Oh, except for that one fella, though, in episode one who's
• 1:34:21
  like Varna, I won't let her go, you know that.
• 1:34:24
  Oh, I love him. Sorry, I'm just want to quote a
• 1:34:27
  lot today. Yeah, it's really boring.
• 1:34:30
  Well, doesn't it? And I can see what you're saying
• 1:34:33
  about the structure of this. And he's trying to do some
• 1:34:36
  interesting things with the ideas.
• 1:34:38
  I don't think any of it really lands.
• 1:34:39
  It's very worthy. It's all very.
• 1:34:43
  Important science fiction. Yeah, you know what I mean.
• 1:34:47
  Like, it's not. It's not particularly
• 1:34:48
  entertaining, except when Trout and Padbury are on the screen.
• 1:34:53
  But I can almost forgive the Crotons, because it gave me one
• 1:35:00
  of my favorite moments ever in a Doctor Who book, and that is in
• 1:35:06
  Alien Bodies in the A of Doctor range.
• 1:35:08
  When you think the Daleks are going to show up and there's
• 1:35:11
  this big thing, the Doctor's body is being auctioned and the
• 1:35:13
  dialects are going to show up. I know it's the Crotons.
• 1:35:16
  They've wiped out the dialects, and the crowns turn out and
• 1:35:18
  there's a massive it's not done as comedy.
• 1:35:20
  They're done as a genuinely sort of disturbing threat in that
• 1:35:23
  story and Loras Miles does some really interesting things with
• 1:35:26
  them that isn't really done here at all.
• 1:35:30
  I I would get rid of it. Do you know what I I was on the
• 1:35:33
  fence for this one and listening to everybody.
• 1:35:35
  Gary's passion certainly it's going you can you can harp on at
• 1:35:40
  me anytime Gary. I'll listen, don't you worry.
• 1:35:43
  So the Crotons is the first to fall and the dominators has
• 1:35:47
  gone. Through.
• 1:35:49
  What the hell is going on? Justice in the world.
• 1:35:54
  Right. OK, so let's go back round
• 1:35:56
  again. So we're left with the what's
• 1:35:58
  effectively or usually thoughts of as the three biggest invasion
• 1:36:02
  War, games and Minddropper. Gary, pick your story and decide
• 1:36:07
  whether you're going to champion or boot.
• 1:36:09
  I'm going to champion because yeah, I'm going to there's two
• 1:36:16
  I'm going to champion and 1:00 I'm going to boot.
• 1:36:18
  So I'm going to choose the one I'm going to hear myself, the
• 1:36:20
  one I'm going to champion, which is the War games, which is just
• 1:36:25
  utterly fantastic. And I grew up with loads of
• 1:36:29
  people in Doctor Who found them going, oh, it's so boring.
• 1:36:34
  Oh, you cut it out, Oh, oh, you could do this or you cut.
• 1:36:38
  No, you can't cut any of the war games out.
• 1:36:40
  Every single episode of it moves the story on.
• 1:36:43
  There is literally apart from possibly the moment where they
• 1:36:46
  go back through the zones and we see the bloody Romans again.
• 1:36:50
  That in 10 episodes is the only 30 seconds worth of padding in
• 1:36:53
  there. Everything else is just joyful.
• 1:36:56
  It is beautifully written by Dixon Hulk.
• 1:36:59
  It is beautifully acted. I'm afraid, Joe, I cannot agree
• 1:37:02
  with you when you say we could have done without Fraser Hines
• 1:37:05
  in this season. Maybe not in this story.
• 1:37:07
  But War Games? The three of them, are integral
• 1:37:10
  to the plot. They all have across 10 episodes
• 1:37:13
  tons to do. I love all the stuff in the in
• 1:37:17
  the different time zones. I love the the the sort of the
• 1:37:20
  main villains with putting on their glasses and you go Oh my
• 1:37:23
  God he's a he's an alien he's the bad guy and everyone
• 1:37:26
  believing them and the creation of the rebellion and then we end
• 1:37:31
  up on the aliens home world. I refuse to call them warlords
• 1:37:34
  they're the aliens and that that set those those sets are just
• 1:37:41
  phenomenal. That is 60 size television is
• 1:37:44
  best. They're brilliant, they're
• 1:37:46
  clever, they're imaginative. They're so beautiful and pop
• 1:37:50
  arty. All the costumes, everyone were
• 1:37:52
  in those silly cardboard glasses, fantastic.
• 1:37:55
  The the whole idea of the spectacles motif of these aliens
• 1:37:59
  continuing through and you have in it the war chief and the
• 1:38:03
  security chief. You know, we talk about Holmes
• 1:38:06
  in double acts. All of them pale in into
• 1:38:09
  insignificance next to the security chief and the war chief
• 1:38:12
  who's endless bitching and fighting and ultimate murder.
• 1:38:18
  I mean, it is just brilliant. They are such well drawn
• 1:38:21
  characters and and that's the glory of having 10 episodes, is
• 1:38:26
  that when you have good villains you can make them totally 3D and
• 1:38:30
  realistic and believable because the 10 episode story, even
• 1:38:33
  though they're only in half of it, but the other members of
• 1:38:36
  their race we've met earlier. It all builds into this
• 1:38:38
  completely real and utterly believable situation and then
• 1:38:44
  Philip Maddox comes in and just steals the show.
• 1:38:47
  I mean, oh, James Bree and Edward Brayshaw are fantastic,
• 1:38:51
  but Maddox, unlike I'm afraid the Crotons where he's totally
• 1:38:55
  wasted here, he is just a God amongst men and and he is the
• 1:39:00
  true opposite to Trout's Doctor Who.
• 1:39:04
  Again, because it's coming to the end.
• 1:39:06
  Probably. But actually throughout the
• 1:39:08
  whole story really turns the comedy down and there are great
• 1:39:12
  comedic moments but there's a foreboding that goes through
• 1:39:16
  this story and and Zoe and Jamie start on their normal level and
• 1:39:20
  Trout and because it's World War One and he knows something is
• 1:39:23
  weird, is immediately down. And during the course of the
• 1:39:26
  story, they all come down to his level of seriousness so that by
• 1:39:30
  the time you're on the the aliens home world, it is played
• 1:39:33
  for for total paranoia. You never know who's with the
• 1:39:37
  bit where they all think the doctors turned villain on them
• 1:39:40
  when he gets shot down at the end of an episode.
• 1:39:43
  God, I remember watching that and just assuming he was dead,
• 1:39:46
  you know, it was it's fantastic. Has a great visual effect they
• 1:39:49
  have on those guns as well. And then of course you have
• 1:39:52
  episode 10, which is just the most perfect piece of television
• 1:39:58
  ever. There's just nothing.
• 1:40:00
  It's gorgeous, The time. Time Lords.
• 1:40:03
  The scariness of them. At the point here we see Time
• 1:40:06
  Lords as something to be feared. Those costumes, the black and
• 1:40:09
  white costumes. They have the idea that the Time
• 1:40:13
  Lords don't just have the power to interfere with time and roll
• 1:40:17
  time back and make people forget their memories and put them back
• 1:40:20
  where they came from. They can take an entire race of
• 1:40:23
  villains, put them inside a force field, and make sure that
• 1:40:27
  not only do they cease to exist, they never existed.
• 1:40:31
  What power? That is Fantastic.
• 1:40:33
  So yeah, that's what I'm going to say.
• 1:40:35
  The war, games, perfection and and should be lauded forever.
• 1:40:40
  Oh, let's go and watch it now. I really want to watch it now.
• 1:40:43
  But before we go and watch it, let's read the comments, Jim
• 1:40:46
  Allenby says. A true masterpiece.
• 1:40:49
  It grabs you by the scruff of the neck and takes you on an
• 1:40:51
  epic journey. The Time Lords have never been
• 1:40:53
  better than they are here, and it all ends in such
• 1:40:56
  heartbreaking fashion. A true end of era feeling.
• 1:40:59
  Surely nobody is going to give this a negative criticism.
• 1:41:02
  Let's find out James Locke. Against all odds, it sustains
• 1:41:06
  its length and UPS the ante with every episode.
• 1:41:08
  How many great villains can one story give us?
• 1:41:11
  Maddock alone is enough to win this more great location,
• 1:41:14
  filming the regulars on stunning form, one of the high points of
• 1:41:18
  the last 60 years. Jolu Allen said 10 episodes, but
• 1:41:21
  it doesn't feel like a slog. Always a new twist or
• 1:41:24
  environment. I know the I knew the major
• 1:41:27
  revelations going in, but it still felt exciting when the
• 1:41:30
  words Time Lords were finally spoken.
• 1:41:32
  Heartbreaking end for Jamie and Zoe, finally fixed 50 years
• 1:41:37
  later. Here we go everybody.
• 1:41:39
  Fraser Gregory. Too long.
• 1:41:42
  Way, way too long. But because of the genius of
• 1:41:45
  Dixon Hulk, who spins plates with all their might, it works.
• 1:41:49
  Maddock, Bree and Bray Shaw help, but it's in the plotting
• 1:41:52
  that this story wins with the drip, drip of what's going on.
• 1:41:55
  Just enough to keep us engaged. Keep it.
• 1:41:58
  Ian Banks Brilliant conclusion to the Trout and ERA.
• 1:42:01
  It should feel like a run around, but each episode adds
• 1:42:03
  stakes and dilemmas until we get to that wonderful heart rending
• 1:42:07
  final episode. Jack Hoyer Simply one of the
• 1:42:10
  greatest achievements in the show's history.
• 1:42:12
  The heart of this is, of course, the TARDIS crew.
• 1:42:15
  Doctor Who thrives on putting dark characters in light
• 1:42:17
  situations, and inversely, it's most childlike team must face
• 1:42:21
  the show's darkest moments. Christ, great Jack.
• 1:42:24
  The fun is over. The war's lost, but Doctor Who
• 1:42:27
  survives without his friends or even his TARDIS.
• 1:42:30
  Daniel Knight is epic, not the work of desperation that one of
• 1:42:33
  its writers claimed. There's a wonderful cast of
• 1:42:36
  characters on That last episode is heartbreaking.
• 1:42:39
  Michael Storm also says epic, the 60th equivalent of an RTD
• 1:42:43
  Moffett season finale. Things are tied up.
• 1:42:45
  We have dramatic reveal, epic threat and Cliff hangers leading
• 1:42:49
  into the next season. Trout and Give some of his
• 1:42:51
  finest work and episode 10 is a phenomenal piece of TV.
• 1:42:55
  As with Lugopolis, there is an impending feeling of do running
• 1:42:58
  throughout the story. Paul Smyce is fantastic, a
• 1:43:01
  classic that builds the tension throughout in my top ten of all
• 1:43:04
  time. Andrew Kernow A genuine epic
• 1:43:07
  with what must have been an extraordinary roller coaster of
• 1:43:10
  a final episode. Impossible now to watch without
• 1:43:13
  knowing, but my goodness, Time Lords, the trial and those
• 1:43:16
  heartbreaking goodbyes know you've got something in your
• 1:43:20
  eye. Jason Thompson said a stone cold
• 1:43:22
  classic again in the 90s. We were assured that it was 9
• 1:43:26
  episodes of padding until the Time Lords show up, but my God,
• 1:43:29
  it's so much more than that. Every episode advances the story
• 1:43:32
  somehow, and extending it so far really makes it seem plausible
• 1:43:36
  that this is actually too big for the Doctor to fix on his
• 1:43:39
  own. Troughton's reaction to the
• 1:43:41
  possibility of having to call in the Time Lords sells them as a
• 1:43:44
  real threat, and the whole era comes to a solid end.
• 1:43:48
  James HA master class in how to pad out a story till you fill
• 1:43:51
  the slot without sending the audience to sleep.
• 1:43:53
  Some truly great what the fuck moments.
• 1:43:56
  The regulars on top form and a last episode that changes the
• 1:43:59
  series forever and possibly should have been a one off.
• 1:44:03
  Michael Donahue said. Wonderful and so happy to see
• 1:44:05
  you get more credit over the last few years.
• 1:44:09
  Hobo. Interesting name.
• 1:44:10
  It isn't truly impressive how something 10 parts long can hold
• 1:44:13
  my attention. And finally, Paul Quinn says it
• 1:44:17
  pisses on most of the Doctor Who.
• 1:44:19
  What a stupid fool you would be to suggest otherwise.
• 1:44:23
  No. Let's see if any of us are
• 1:44:25
  stupid fools. Can I jump in on this one?
• 1:44:28
  Go. For it something that Gary said
• 1:44:32
  there about having ten parts and affording it time to develop
• 1:44:37
  characters. I think it's so true.
• 1:44:39
  And what I love about the War games is how it's got this sort
• 1:44:42
  of hierarchy of villains as you go through the story.
• 1:44:46
  It's sort of opposite game with each villain that comes along.
• 1:44:49
  You start off with like Smive, then you have the security
• 1:44:52
  chief, then you have the war chief, then you have the
• 1:44:55
  warlord, and then you have the time laws.
• 1:44:57
  And with each one, the stakes get higher and higher.
• 1:45:02
  I agree as well. The impending sense of doom and
• 1:45:04
  desperation that builds over the five hours culminates in the Is
• 1:45:08
  it the end of Episode 9? When they're in slow motion
• 1:45:11
  running towards it's fucking apocalyptic.
• 1:45:13
  It's like they can't get back to the TARDIS and his hand going
• 1:45:17
  for the lock and and then you get the absolute worst possible
• 1:45:21
  consequences you could have in a Doctor Who's story.
• 1:45:23
  And that is our two loveliest friends having their memories
• 1:45:26
  wiped and the Doctor being stripped of his adventures.
• 1:45:29
  It is. The way it builds across the 10
• 1:45:32
  episodes is extraordinary. And the other is I adore this.
• 1:45:36
  There's 100 reasons I could go on for years, but I won't.
• 1:45:39
  It's packed with wonderful, wonderful character moments,
• 1:45:43
  which both Terrace Sticks and Malcolm Hulk are brilliant at
• 1:45:47
  doing. You've got that wonderful scene
• 1:45:49
  in episode 2 that how dare you treat me like this as he's
• 1:45:53
  trying to get into the prison. I love that so much for a little
• 1:45:57
  woman. Your mouth is too big ass hero
• 1:45:59
  video is Zoe amazing. The doctor when he puts them
• 1:46:03
  being on the fellows head, he's like I better leave him on
• 1:46:05
  simmer. Yeah.
• 1:46:07
  Throughout the whole tennis while there's twists and turns,
• 1:46:09
  there's set pieces of action and all sorts going on.
• 1:46:12
  There's so many great character moments in this and characters.
• 1:46:15
  My instructor, if I love the characters, I'm invested.
• 1:46:18
  I love these characters. So I'm super invested in this
• 1:46:21
  story. It's amazing.
• 1:46:23
  I think this is the best Doctor Who story of all time.
• 1:46:27
  Keep it. Daniel.
• 1:46:31
  Yes. Well, it is.
• 1:46:34
  God, I'll defy you. Oh yes, no, yeah, it's.
• 1:46:39
  I mean everyone, everyone says it's saying it's epic and it
• 1:46:41
  really is. It fits the definition of of an
• 1:46:44
  epic. And I was just thinking out loud
• 1:46:49
  while while Joe was was talking about, you know, we know, we all
• 1:46:54
  know that, you know, Doctor Who didn't end.
• 1:46:56
  You know, we had the Pertwee era and, you know, and then and then
• 1:47:00
  all those marvelous Doctors after that.
• 1:47:02
  But I was just thinking, you know, what if it did end there?
• 1:47:05
  What if the final image of Doctor Who was trout and
• 1:47:09
  spinning into a void, screaming impotently as you know, he's
• 1:47:14
  basically condemned to exile by the Time Lords.
• 1:47:18
  And you know, so basically it does answer, it does give us a,
• 1:47:21
  a, a start of an answer towards the question Doctor Who, who is
• 1:47:26
  this guy who travels around in his TARDIS with, you know, human
• 1:47:30
  companions, Well, he ran away from his people because, well,
• 1:47:33
  he says he was bored. There's, you know, different
• 1:47:36
  interpretations to that. And so it's a really bleak
• 1:47:40
  answer to the question Doctor Who you know this is this kind
• 1:47:43
  of anarchic you know rebellious figure and by the end of the
• 1:47:48
  story you know the the the establishment is back in charge.
• 1:47:52
  You know the it's the end of the 60s.
• 1:47:55
  It's the end of an era and we all, you know, and I just
• 1:47:58
  remember reading out, you know, you read up about the 60s about
• 1:48:01
  how the Summer of Love ended and all the optimism that youth were
• 1:48:06
  going to change, the world ended.
• 1:48:08
  And how, you know the story itself begins.
• 1:48:12
  Well, end of episode one is, you know, you really think the
• 1:48:14
  Trousers actually going to get executed.
• 1:48:17
  And then he does at the end, at the very end of the final story,
• 1:48:20
  you could read that as an execution of how basically this
• 1:48:24
  is what you've done. This is what your meddling leads
• 1:48:26
  you to your you lose your friends, you lose your TARDIS,
• 1:48:29
  you lose everything. And you know, you don't even get
• 1:48:33
  to choose what you look like anymore.
• 1:48:35
  Should I tell you? I think if that had been the end
• 1:48:36
  of Doctor Who, that ending would be like remembered up there,
• 1:48:40
  like the ending of Blake Seven or the ending of Satire and
• 1:48:43
  Steel as one of the most memorable endings of a TV show
• 1:48:46
  he's sort of screaming as. He's yeah.
• 1:48:49
  It's just it's just brilliant. And I mean of course, you know
• 1:48:53
  thank God it kept going because This is why we're probably why
• 1:48:56
  we're still talking. But yeah, it's it's just it's
• 1:49:01
  just very and you know the people will say well you know
• 1:49:05
  there's a few too many episode episodes in there where they get
• 1:49:08
  captured or you know, and they they they take over one base and
• 1:49:12
  then they have to retreat. But what it really the the kind
• 1:49:16
  of repetitive nature of that, what it really sort of hammered
• 1:49:18
  home to me was that it was it was more sort of, you know, the
• 1:49:23
  you have these whole generations of soldiers throughout history
• 1:49:26
  that are being lied to, that are being exploited and then
• 1:49:29
  murdered by their aristocratic leaders.
• 1:49:32
  And, you know, the generals who basically just want to have this
• 1:49:34
  appropriate war spectacle and they just manage it and it never
• 1:49:38
  really touches them. And so, you know, it's it's it's
• 1:49:43
  it's very significant that I think that the end point to all
• 1:49:46
  that is the Time Lords and they're the kind of people who
• 1:49:49
  will, you know, just sit by while the Daleks wipe out
• 1:49:52
  billions and just wipe you from existence on a whim.
• 1:49:57
  And they're more interested in, you know, preserving their own
• 1:50:00
  power than sort of helping anyone else.
• 1:50:02
  So no wonder the Doctor ran away from Gallifrey, you know?
• 1:50:07
  Fantastic. So my vote is superfluous on
• 1:50:10
  this because it's going through anyway, but I'm going to have to
• 1:50:12
  have my say. Gary, you said that.
• 1:50:13
  People said it's dull and it could be boring and.
• 1:50:17
  Don't do it. Don't do it.
• 1:50:19
  Of course I'm not going to do it.
• 1:50:21
  Fuck for that. How could I say anything but
• 1:50:23
  praise for it? It's, it's, it's absolutely.
• 1:50:26
  I mean, you have gone after some pretty great stories in the
• 1:50:29
  past. I've gone for a few, I've gone
• 1:50:30
  for a few. But no, this is I I couldn't say
• 1:50:33
  anything but positivity about this one.
• 1:50:36
  I'm just going to, I'm going to be slightly different to you
• 1:50:38
  guys. I've picked out three episodes
• 1:50:40
  that I think really sum up why I think this story is so great.
• 1:50:46
  The first one will be the first episode, I think right from the
• 1:50:49
  off. It's gritty.
• 1:50:50
  It's serious, it's shot as though it is in World War One
• 1:50:54
  and you get bombs, you get trenches, you get ambulances
• 1:50:57
  under protective fire, you get that lovely claustrophobic
• 1:51:00
  officers quarters in the trench, you get barbed wire.
• 1:51:03
  It just feels really real, doesn't it?
• 1:51:05
  It's got such an ominous, real, tangible sense of of fear and
• 1:51:09
  people are saying on the comments about it feels ominous.
• 1:51:11
  And it absolutely does. I mean, 8 minutes in, I looked
• 1:51:14
  at the clock, it's 8 minutes in when we know that there's
• 1:51:17
  something more going on because Smythe goes to his view screen.
• 1:51:20
  But the TARDIS crew don't know that at this stage.
• 1:51:23
  To them, this is real. And they play it as though they
• 1:51:26
  are trapped in World War One. And you know, that's still in
• 1:51:30
  living history for for people of this age.
• 1:51:33
  And so it is. It just feels really real and
• 1:51:36
  grounded. We get some great characters
• 1:51:38
  right from the off. We've got Lady Jennifer, who
• 1:51:41
  we've not mentioned, and car stairs.
• 1:51:44
  You can do car stairs. He's probably, I say as well,
• 1:51:48
  but they're two great characters.
• 1:51:50
  I really miss Lady Jennifer when she's left in She Goes in
• 1:51:54
  episode 5 and it's a shame she doesn't come back.
• 1:51:56
  She's off to do Derek Sherwin's washing.
• 1:51:58
  That's. Why?
• 1:51:58
  Well, clearly, yeah. Shame he didn't bring her back
• 1:52:01
  again. Car, stairs, we get all the way
• 1:52:03
  through. And he's kind of a a pseudo
• 1:52:04
  companion, isn't he? And he's staunch our life for
• 1:52:07
  the Doctor all the way through the great characters, the court
• 1:52:10
  marshalling. I love the court marshalling
• 1:52:12
  scene in episode one. It's kind of foreshadowing what
• 1:52:15
  we're going to say at the end of episode 10 because the Doctors
• 1:52:18
  put on trial on whatever he says.
• 1:52:20
  They're not really listening. They've made-up their minds
• 1:52:22
  already. And it's very much mirrors what
• 1:52:24
  we're going to see at the end. And again, people who say, oh,
• 1:52:26
  you know, Dixon, Hulk wrote this on the fly and wrote an episode
• 1:52:29
  as it was going out. No, because you've got evidence
• 1:52:32
  like this. It's absolutely laid in stone
• 1:52:34
  from part one. This is how this is going to
• 1:52:36
  end. Once the Doctor, I mean the
• 1:52:39
  Doctor, if nothing else, he is being framed for desertion, kind
• 1:52:43
  of. That's what he did from
• 1:52:44
  Gallifrey as well, wasn't he? He deserted Gallifrey and left
• 1:52:47
  them. So the parallels between the two
• 1:52:49
  trials in one and 10 are so clear.
• 1:52:52
  When the Doctor's been sentenced, he kisses Zoe on the
• 1:52:55
  forehead. I've never seen him be so tender
• 1:52:58
  and gentle before. Again, that's saying to you
• 1:53:00
  something really significant going on here.
• 1:53:02
  And like you guys said before, that kind of cliffhanger just
• 1:53:05
  feels really real, and you do. It's the case of Andrew Zandi 1.
• 1:53:10
  Cliff angry again. Absolutely.
• 1:53:11
  Again. So that comes in the future.
• 1:53:13
  But it's that, how the hell is he going to get out of this?
• 1:53:15
  It's just been short. I know, I know, I dissed on it
• 1:53:17
  before. But we, you know, at the
• 1:53:18
  beginning of the season we have the cartoon quarks and we've
• 1:53:21
  come to this. I mean, you couldn't get two
• 1:53:23
  more extremes. Showing the diversity of Doctor
• 1:53:27
  Who both classics. Let's oh God.
• 1:53:30
  OK, let's go with that. I'm going second episode.
• 1:53:34
  I'm going to pick is episode 8. Now this is the lowest rated
• 1:53:38
  episode until Battlefield, but that absolutely can't be equated
• 1:53:42
  to the quality of it because I still think it's still
• 1:53:45
  absolutely on fire and Dicks and the Hulk are still juggling
• 1:53:49
  those balls in the air thrown. There's new stuff all the time,
• 1:53:51
  so there's loads of scenes in eight that I absolutely love.
• 1:53:54
  Start with a little bit of you. We don't get much humour in this
• 1:53:57
  story. It's pretty grim, but you get
• 1:53:59
  that great scene where Arturo comes to the Chateau and Jamie
• 1:54:03
  and Zoe have to kind of convince him to to join them.
• 1:54:08
  And of course, Jamie comes out all bolsters.
• 1:54:11
  He's dressed himself up and he can't.
• 1:54:13
  He can't carry off the play, can he?
• 1:54:15
  So Zoe has to step in and she completely diminishes him and
• 1:54:19
  makes him look like a fool. But you know, great, good for
• 1:54:22
  Zoe. She's really establishing a
• 1:54:23
  character. The other scene that I really
• 1:54:26
  find in episode 8, it's the first time we get the proper
• 1:54:28
  meeting between the War Chief and the Doctor and they have
• 1:54:31
  that really serious conversation.
• 1:54:33
  That's when we find out that the Doctor stole Letardis and ran
• 1:54:36
  away from, well, I was going to say Gallifrey.
• 1:54:38
  We don't know it's Gallifrey, but his home planet from the
• 1:54:40
  Time Lords. This is new information we're
• 1:54:43
  hearing for the first time. And the two of them, Edward
• 1:54:45
  Brayshaw and the Doctor, Patrick Troughton, they just they're
• 1:54:48
  both so calm and collected and measured.
• 1:54:51
  There's no pissing about. There's no Oh my giddy arms or
• 1:54:54
  dropping things. It's absolutely deadly serious.
• 1:54:59
  And Brayshaw. It does feel like they're trying
• 1:55:01
  to end the show, doesn't it? Because by answering the
• 1:55:03
  question Doctor Who, it does feel like they're bringing the
• 1:55:06
  show to an end. Yeah, and you actually don't
• 1:55:08
  know at that stage. I mean, Edward Brayshaw kind of
• 1:55:10
  offers him almost a partnership and gallery, like you said.
• 1:55:12
  That's the cliffhanger we then get where it looks like the
• 1:55:14
  Doctor has betrayed all his friends and and you know, you
• 1:55:18
  kind of believe it at that. Point He sells this life.
• 1:55:21
  He absolutely sells it. And he's just been offered, you
• 1:55:23
  know, a share in the Galaxy by the the war chief.
• 1:55:26
  So you absolutely could believe it.
• 1:55:29
  And then of course, Episode 10, you know, there's too many
• 1:55:31
  superlatives for episode 10. It changes everything, doesn't
• 1:55:34
  it? Interesting though, if you
• 1:55:36
  watched episode one and episode 10 in isolation, there's very
• 1:55:40
  little between. You wouldn't actually believe
• 1:55:42
  it's the same story. The only bit of kind of war
• 1:55:44
  games we get in 10 is the Trial of the Warlord.
• 1:55:50
  Well done, thank you. But he's not even in episode
• 1:55:54
  one, so and there's not much between those two, but it shows
• 1:55:57
  how much of the journey this story's gone on and it's a
• 1:56:01
  brilliant journey. It's a brilliant goodbye to our
• 1:56:03
  TARDIS team. I love the fact that the the
• 1:56:05
  production team have gone to the effort of kind of re filming
• 1:56:09
  that bit of the end of the Highlanders and the bit of the
• 1:56:12
  wheel in space. So we see Jamie and Zoe in their
• 1:56:15
  respective first stories. I think that's so lovely.
• 1:56:19
  And then, as you said, the final scenes of of Pat spinning off
• 1:56:22
  into space. On a personal note, I was 3 when
• 1:56:26
  this went out. I have no memories of being 3.
• 1:56:30
  But my mum told me for years after this I made her life hell
• 1:56:33
  for the entire summer because I was so upset for six months that
• 1:56:37
  my doctor had been killed and I have no memory of it.
• 1:56:40
  But I spent six months crying. I mean three.
• 1:56:43
  I should have probably forgotten it, but it made such an impact
• 1:56:46
  on me that, yeah, I was absolutely devastated for, for a
• 1:56:49
  whole six months between July and January, beginning with John
• 1:56:53
  Purtway. So, you know, it clearly was
• 1:56:55
  doing its job, wasn't it? Do you know what?
• 1:56:57
  Just another quick word for Philip Maddock.
• 1:57:01
  Yeah, And one of the most terrifying things in Doctor
• 1:57:03
  Who's entire run is when Philip Maddock smiles in the war games.
• 1:57:07
  I swear to God, five star systems go up when he smiles.
• 1:57:11
  He's terrifying and he's so still, isn't he?
• 1:57:13
  Yes, he really gets me every time.
• 1:57:16
  Sorry. And well, just a word for for
• 1:57:19
  Trouton as well, because, you know, by the end of that story
• 1:57:22
  he's just, he's falling apart at the scenes, you know, like
• 1:57:24
  literally, you know, he looks all, he looks all disheveled.
• 1:57:27
  And he has that moment where he actually snaps at Jamie, where
• 1:57:31
  he's been so patient with him for all the whole the time
• 1:57:33
  they've travelled together. And Jamie's always been a bit
• 1:57:36
  asking the very obvious questions and the Doctor's
• 1:57:38
  always been very nice to him, very cuddly.
• 1:57:41
  And then he turns around. He goes.
• 1:57:42
  For once, Jamie. And.
• 1:57:47
  Of course, you know, they they have a they have a lovely
• 1:57:50
  goodbye at the end. It's very understated too.
• 1:57:52
  I mean, you know, to do it nowadays when someone loses
• 1:57:55
  their memory in ATV show, it's, you know, it's coming down from
• 1:57:59
  the heavens and wailing and gnashing their teeth.
• 1:58:02
  And you know which I like, which I like to.
• 1:58:04
  It is understated. But then the fact that you see
• 1:58:07
  them back in Scotland and back on the wheel, I think that
• 1:58:10
  really that just cemented. If you'd just seen them go at
• 1:58:13
  that point, possibly it would have been too understated.
• 1:58:16
  But just to see that and and I think someone mentioned in the
• 1:58:18
  comments at the beginning of the fact that Zoe thinks oh I've
• 1:58:21
  forgotten something but I can't remember what it was.
• 1:58:23
  That really punches home then, at that moment.
• 1:58:26
  Go to the link to do the wheel sets and Talia Lena's there as
• 1:58:30
  well, yeah? Well, and also if, if, I mean
• 1:58:33
  you, you know that it's supposed to be kind of a quite comedic
• 1:58:37
  ending for for Jamie because he, you know, he's back to the old,
• 1:58:40
  same old Jamie going after the Redcoats again and you know, the
• 1:58:43
  doctors laughing. But you know, given that when he
• 1:58:46
  first met Jamie, it was in the middle of a battle, you know you
• 1:58:51
  could be. Sentenced execution in the
• 1:58:53
  Highlanders, right? Well, you could, if you were
• 1:58:55
  feeling even more pessimistic than the story itself, you could
• 1:58:58
  say, well, you know, Jamie. Jamie probably gets killed in
• 1:59:01
  that battle. You know, he's he's been sent
• 1:59:03
  home to die. Grim.
• 1:59:04
  It's grim ending, which is very grim, yeah.
• 1:59:07
  One other thing that that we haven't mentioned, which I think
• 1:59:11
  we probably should about the War games and and Spearhead from
• 1:59:15
  Space is that the only two stories produced by Derek
• 1:59:18
  Sherwin and I have a great deal of time for Derek Sherwin as a
• 1:59:23
  person I'm afraid. But I can't not admire the fact
• 1:59:27
  that those two stories bridging, you know Troughton and Purley
• 1:59:32
  are phenomenal and and his work as a producer to allow those two
• 1:59:38
  stories to be his only two stories, as it were.
• 1:59:41
  It's fantastic. I mean the man's a man's a
• 1:59:44
  genius for doing that to to create the war games and and
• 1:59:47
  Terrence Dix has always said that the Time Lords was Derek
• 1:59:50
  Sherman's idea. He came up with the name he came
• 1:59:52
  up with the idea of them and it was his idea to to create
• 1:59:56
  episode 10. So you can't ever take away from
• 2:00:00
  from just how brilliant a producer.
• 2:00:02
  Derek Sherman was. Did you ever listen to the
• 2:00:05
  initial or sorry the the redone commentary on Spear and space
• 2:00:09
  It's Derek Sherman and Terence Dicks.
• 2:00:12
  And the the tension in that commentary is is a joy to
• 2:00:17
  behold. Terrace Dicks is all but saying
• 2:00:19
  look you're you're you gave us some great ideas you gave us
• 2:00:21
  some terrible things as well. The seven part is this that you
• 2:00:24
  lumbered us with the earth setting.
• 2:00:26
  Oh it's wonderful. And oh, actually, can we finally
• 2:00:30
  just say good grief, I can't remember his name.
• 2:00:34
  David Maloney's direction of this 10 episodes is, you know,
• 2:00:38
  and what else do you do? Decision the Crotons and the
• 2:00:40
  mind robber as well, like, you know, the director probably of
• 2:00:44
  the season, but just to take hold of this epic and bring it
• 2:00:47
  to the screen with this much skill?
• 2:00:49
  Brilliant. Brilliant.
• 2:00:51
  Oh boy. Then there's such interesting
• 2:00:53
  parallels between the way he directs a lot of the World War
• 2:00:56
  One stuff, both film and studio, with the way he did Genesis, the
• 2:01:01
  Dialects, you know that they both feel like that, that you
• 2:01:04
  can tell that from the same director who has a very definite
• 2:01:07
  vision on the futility and darkness of war.
• 2:01:10
  You know when the bombs are going off at the beginning of
• 2:01:12
  the war games and at the beginning of Genesis, One is
• 2:01:16
  close-ups of Zoe like this, and the other one is close-ups of
• 2:01:19
  Elizabeth Slayden like this. It's the same shot, but it's
• 2:01:22
  just as effective both times. Anyway, sorry, back back to the
• 2:01:26
  game. So I think we all kind of quite
• 2:01:29
  like the war Games. So the War Games is definitely
• 2:01:30
  going through. And let me also what was that?
• 2:01:33
  Not a popular story at one time? I mean, I find it baffling back,
• 2:01:37
  back. Back Well, there's the there's
• 2:01:38
  the sort of everyone. Hates it.
• 2:01:40
  Yeah, there's the received wisdom that, oh, you know, the
• 2:01:43
  the final, the final episode's great, but you've got to go
• 2:01:46
  through nine episodes of set up and padding to get which is, you
• 2:01:49
  know. Actually, I remember reading it
• 2:01:52
  in the How Sammers and Walker's Handbook.
• 2:01:54
  They were really hard on it because when I watched it I
• 2:01:57
  thought, well, this is going to be boring.
• 2:01:58
  It blew my mind away. Yeah, it was.
• 2:02:01
  It was quite down. It was quite downcast, but of
• 2:02:05
  course it's lifted now. It won the recent poll, but will
• 2:02:08
  it win strictly? That is the question.
• 2:02:10
  By now. We've got to find out, Daniel.
• 2:02:13
  You are left with Mind Robber and the Invasion, which you're
• 2:02:16
  going to pick. What a choice.
• 2:02:18
  OK, oh, let's go mind robber then, Which for me is probably
• 2:02:23
  the ultimate, not necessarily the best of the of the season,
• 2:02:27
  but the ultimate 1960s story of Doctor Who.
• 2:02:30
  Because it's just got, it's a collage of basically everything.
• 2:02:34
  It's got word play, it's got pop art, it's got breaking the 4th
• 2:02:39
  wall for when, you know, when Zoe lands in the land of
• 2:02:42
  fiction. And she actually asked, but what
• 2:02:44
  are we doing here? And then, you know, you've got
• 2:02:49
  all these mythical and legendary creatures, you know, the the
• 2:02:53
  Minotaur, the Medusa. You've got classical historical
• 2:02:57
  literature, fairy tales, sci-fi robots, comic strip heroes and
• 2:03:01
  they're all coming to do battle with the Doctor.
• 2:03:04
  And it's you know it's basically an episode where I watched this
• 2:03:08
  quite late at night and I was we got to that.
• 2:03:13
  We got to the cliffhanger where you have that charging Unicorn
• 2:03:18
  to that's charging towards our TARDIS trio.
• 2:03:21
  And I was just going and excuse my French for this, what what
• 2:03:25
  the fuck am I watching? But in the best possible way,
• 2:03:30
  because it's it's it's just pure dream logic with all these
• 2:03:36
  incredibly powerful images you've got.
• 2:03:38
  You've got the white void in episode one.
• 2:03:39
  You've got the the cliffhanger where the TARDIS explodes.
• 2:03:43
  You've got Jamie losing his face where you have.
• 2:03:46
  They have that ingenious way of replacing Fraser Heinz for an
• 2:03:49
  episode after. You got chicken pox.
• 2:03:51
  You've got the forest of words you've got you know it's it's
• 2:03:56
  the kind of the thing that the kind of story that works that
• 2:03:58
  even though I was kind of falling asleep it it worked
• 2:04:01
  better that way in the sense that it would kind of washes
• 2:04:04
  over you. No, no.
• 2:04:05
  I mean this in the in the highest possible praise because
• 2:04:09
  nowadays some. People say that about my
• 2:04:11
  podcast. You know, Daniel?
• 2:04:14
  Always better when you're asleep.
• 2:04:19
  Well, I mean there was there's, there's something to be said
• 2:04:22
  about, you know, especially this term gets thrown around a lot on
• 2:04:25
  online and it doesn't really mean anything where they say
• 2:04:28
  something is a fever dream. Oh, this, this or that, this or
• 2:04:32
  that TV show is a fever dream. Did you watch this movie?
• 2:04:34
  It's such a fever dream. No.
• 2:04:36
  But this really does feel like a fever dream where I I did go to
• 2:04:40
  bed after I'd finished it. And I I I I dreamt about it and
• 2:04:45
  it was kind of, you know, it was just all these really weird
• 2:04:48
  images that kind of stick in your brain and it's and to think
• 2:04:51
  that they made it with virtually no budget, it was the
• 2:04:54
  replacement for story that, you know, that they could only do in
• 2:04:59
  five parts instead of six. I think I'm getting that right.
• 2:05:04
  And it's it's also kind of quite aware of itself because you have
• 2:05:11
  that whole showdown with the master who's answerable to this
• 2:05:14
  higher alien power. And you know he's a writer and
• 2:05:18
  the fiction and the forces of creativity are in charge of him
• 2:05:21
  rather than the other way round. And and yeah, it's just it's I
• 2:05:29
  was just mesmerized by it. And especially another word just
• 2:05:32
  for Trouton. Again, he's really good in this.
• 2:05:36
  He he's. I mean, when is he not?
• 2:05:38
  But here he looks very worried. You have that very grave warning
• 2:05:43
  that he gives to Zoe in the TARDIS at the at the beginning
• 2:05:45
  where he's like, do not go outside.
• 2:05:47
  You can't. It's you can't.
• 2:05:48
  I will lose you forever if you go out there and then you know,
• 2:05:52
  there's also moments of of of fun, you know, because he gets
• 2:05:56
  so indignant when the children bully him in the in the forest
• 2:05:59
  of words. And then I.
• 2:06:01
  Love that. And then they find, you know,
• 2:06:04
  they find Jay Zoe, who's trapped in a jar with Jamie, and they
• 2:06:08
  laugh at her, you know. And then you get to the climax
• 2:06:13
  where Zoe and Jamie are trapped in this in the pages of this
• 2:06:19
  enormous book which, and you know, I get to use a bit of
• 2:06:22
  French here they the, the book reads Ahona Piso Pierge, which
• 2:06:27
  basically translates as a fox caught in a trap.
• 2:06:32
  And they become, they become fictional characters.
• 2:06:34
  And Trouton's reaction where he thinks basically that he's lost
• 2:06:37
  them and he looks so desperately sad.
• 2:06:40
  He looks so despondent. And I really felt for him, I I
• 2:06:43
  really thought, you know, God, he's he's playing this to the
• 2:06:46
  Max. So yeah it's I mean we were
• 2:06:51
  talking earlier about cliffhangers that might be
• 2:06:54
  repetitive. The cliffhangers, although
• 2:06:57
  they're great, they are kind of end in the same way in which
• 2:07:03
  especially Zoe is meant to believe you're not, you're not
• 2:07:06
  meant to believe. These are these are real, these
• 2:07:08
  are fiction, and that's what breaks the spell.
• 2:07:11
  And so it gets repeated more two or three times.
• 2:07:14
  But it's the same. Get out every time, isn't it?
• 2:07:16
  Say it doesn't exist. Say it.
• 2:07:18
  Yes. And Zoe's meant to be this very
• 2:07:20
  sort of, you know, logic minded, computer brained, you know,
• 2:07:25
  brain box. And so I I find it sometimes
• 2:07:28
  hard to believe that, well, did she really grow up with all
• 2:07:30
  these fairy tales, or did she read them about them, you know,
• 2:07:33
  with a sort of detachment? Even after he's been telling her
• 2:07:38
  to say it doesn't exist, that when he's confronted with the
• 2:07:41
  carcass, it's like, I don't know, I've never heard of him.
• 2:07:44
  Just say it anyway, you know. Yeah.
• 2:07:48
  So yeah, I I I just, I was, I was, I was really mad.
• 2:07:53
  And I love the way it ends too. Where it it it it could end.
• 2:07:56
  It could. It could be just if you just
• 2:07:59
  threw this on as a stand alone episode and you didn't even know
• 2:08:02
  it was called Doctor Who. And it just ends where they, you
• 2:08:05
  don't really know if they get out of it or not.
• 2:08:07
  And then, you know, you get to the invasion, then they go, they
• 2:08:09
  all go, Well, that was a bit weird, wasn't it?
• 2:08:11
  Oh well, never mind. But it really feels like the
• 2:08:15
  whole sort of the whole reality, the whole television screen kind
• 2:08:19
  of collapses in on them and then, you know, you go to the
• 2:08:21
  credits. So yeah, for all that, for all
• 2:08:24
  the things that I basically, I I didn't always understand what
• 2:08:27
  was going on. But I love that it doesn't
• 2:08:29
  explain itself like that that way.
• 2:08:31
  So yeah, I'm keeping it in. Fantastic.
• 2:08:34
  Let's go to the comments, Mark Donaldson said.
• 2:08:36
  A favorite of mine, and the last hurrah of the high concept Devil
• 2:08:39
  May Care weirdness that define so much of the Hartle era.
• 2:08:43
  Great James H makes no sense. But the only story in Who?
• 2:08:47
  Where? That's part of the point.
• 2:08:48
  Utterly glorious and a triumph of overcoming production issues.
• 2:08:52
  James Larks is gloriously imaginative and successfully
• 2:08:55
  surreal, the regulars on excellent form and buckets of
• 2:08:58
  atmosphere laced with genuine wit, probably a bit too
• 2:09:01
  repetitive to take the top spot. Michael Storm starts off
• 2:09:05
  amazingly, but does begin to suffer from diminishing returns
• 2:09:08
  as the land of fiction sequences go on.
• 2:09:10
  Then it goes off and does a mostly amazing finale, even if
• 2:09:14
  the ending is a bit rushed. The weird, eerie trippiness of
• 2:09:17
  episode one is probably the nearest we'll get to Who, as
• 2:09:20
  directed by David Lynch. Dan Pin says the first episode
• 2:09:23
  is fantastic and those that follows so inventive and
• 2:09:26
  creative. The land of fiction.
• 2:09:28
  What a brilliant idea all those literary characters weave
• 2:09:31
  throughout with stunning visuals.
• 2:09:33
  Those toy soldier designs are iconic.
• 2:09:36
  Jim Malami blown away by this as a kid.
• 2:09:38
  One of the absolutely best stories of the Trout and era.
• 2:09:41
  Clever, inventive and entertaining.
• 2:09:43
  Fraser, Gregory A triumph of imagination and inventiveness
• 2:09:46
  over adversity. High concept out there, but
• 2:09:49
  above all, amazing fun. Keep it.
• 2:09:52
  Paul Smile, a classic, weird and wonderful first episode
• 2:09:55
  cliffhanger is one of the best ever.
• 2:09:57
  Jason Thompson said get points for trying something different
• 2:10:00
  and for being a great example of how to solve unexpected
• 2:10:03
  problems, both with the addition of the surreal part one and the
• 2:10:06
  temporary recasting of Jamie. But you have to not think about
• 2:10:09
  it, as the rules don't make any sense.
• 2:10:11
  It's great fun though. Jack Hoyer The greatest
• 2:10:15
  improvement in consecutive stories in Doctor Who History So
• 2:10:18
  creative, witty and fun, this team are perfect for the fairy
• 2:10:22
  tale quest and literary influences of this story, and
• 2:10:25
  episode one is unparalleled genius Doctor Who cutting
• 2:10:28
  corners at its finest. Daniel Knights is a weird mix, a
• 2:10:32
  bit too much repetition on the rushed ending.
• 2:10:34
  The Part 1 cliffhanger is iconic, and not just because of
• 2:10:37
  Wendy. Wendy Padbury's behind.
• 2:10:40
  Joe L'walin Trippy as hell. What was?
• 2:10:43
  That. Trippy as hell.
• 2:10:46
  Love this one. A 60s highlight.
• 2:10:48
  Two Jamie's are thrown together. Episode one that works.
• 2:10:51
  Zoe's spectacular. Zoe's spectacular fighting
• 2:10:56
  skills. And Ian Banks says the Doctor
• 2:10:58
  and friends do battle with some public domain characters and
• 2:11:01
  learn that escapism is bad for you.
• 2:11:03
  Great message for a popular show to espouse, right?
• 2:11:07
  Can I jump in on this one? No, because I know you're going
• 2:11:10
  to be really mean. When am I ever made, Joe?
• 2:11:14
  Because you told me you were going to rip a classic.
• 2:11:19
  Daniel. Daniel, you said that you were
• 2:11:23
  watching this thinking, what the fuck?
• 2:11:25
  I was also watching this thinking what the fuck?
• 2:11:30
  This is awful. I hate.
• 2:11:33
  The money Wrong. With you it's what I've never
• 2:11:37
  got this So the story is about a hack writer who's run out to the
• 2:11:41
  imagination, so I'm assuming it's autobiographical.
• 2:11:45
  It's just shoddy childish shit. I've I've never understood the
• 2:11:50
  love for this story. So start with plotting consist.
• 2:11:54
  It is just so inconsistent. Part One.
• 2:11:57
  It can be inconsistent. It's set in like a dreamscape.
• 2:12:01
  That just doesn't give you a license to do anything, it's it.
• 2:12:04
  Does it? Exactly.
• 2:12:06
  It's not the. Right, I want a bit of I want I
• 2:12:09
  want logic within my illogical. Go and watch a Steven Moffett
• 2:12:13
  story then. I will thank you very much.
• 2:12:17
  So part one, yes, it might be surreal, but it doesn't make any
• 2:12:20
  sense given what we say afterwards.
• 2:12:22
  We've got in part one, we've got Jamie and mine, Jamie and Zoe's
• 2:12:26
  mind being attacked. We've got the Doctor in a mental
• 2:12:29
  battle of wits. We don't get any of that in the
• 2:12:31
  following episodes. We just get some shite bloody
• 2:12:34
  literary characters from nursery rhymes, walking on like some bad
• 2:12:39
  1950s Amdram actors and walking off again.
• 2:12:43
  That is Bernard Horsehall. How dare you?
• 2:12:47
  And the later episodes all depend on literary characters.
• 2:12:49
  We have no literary characters in episode one, so it just, it
• 2:12:52
  doesn't make sense together. And then when we get to the land
• 2:12:55
  of fiction, we've got the traps and riddles.
• 2:12:58
  But then we also get encounters with literary characters.
• 2:13:00
  So which is it? They don't work together because
• 2:13:03
  you've got Gulliver. Gulliver doesn't create a a trip
• 2:13:06
  or a trap or a Riddle. And Rapunzel actually helps the.
• 2:13:09
  Doctor, he was a he was a bad hand writer.
• 2:13:13
  It's. Nursery rhyme.
• 2:13:16
  Oh, it's just it's the day they don't work together.
• 2:13:18
  There's no consistency. Why does Gulliver have to only
• 2:13:21
  speak the words given to him by Jonathan Swift, which which they
• 2:13:25
  forget about by episode 5 completely.
• 2:13:27
  But then none of the other characters do.
• 2:13:29
  Doesn't make any sense. The Master is from 1920s, so
• 2:13:33
  he's creating characters that he knows.
• 2:13:35
  So how does he invent the bloody carcass which is from the year
• 2:13:37
  2000? It doesn't make any sense and I
• 2:13:41
  want some sense in it. Just irritating.
• 2:13:44
  Right. Do you like the Celestial Toy
• 2:13:46
  Maker? Oh my God, that's.
• 2:13:47
  Shit. Well, I can see this sub genre
• 2:13:50
  of Doctor Who might not be for you.
• 2:13:52
  Maybe not. So you're like Amy's choice?
• 2:13:56
  Yes. Yeah, of course you do.
• 2:13:57
  It's sticking. So my second reason for not
• 2:14:01
  liking this is we get a piss poor set of adversaries.
• 2:14:05
  So we get a mix of creatures from mythology, from nursery
• 2:14:07
  rhymes, 19th century fiction, and then we can just get these
• 2:14:10
  weird generic stock characters like the irritating children and
• 2:14:15
  the toy soldiers. If we've got white robots who
• 2:14:18
  are obviously doing the computers bedding, why do we
• 2:14:21
  need toy soldiers? Doesn't make.
• 2:14:22
  Any sense, aren't they? Aren't they supposed to be the
• 2:14:24
  same thing that the white robots are?
• 2:14:26
  The toy soldiers. No, no who?
• 2:14:28
  Cares, They're both great. The one the ones that I think
• 2:14:34
  are most effective are properly mythology, Character, the
• 2:14:36
  Unicorn, Medusa and the Minotaur.
• 2:14:38
  But like you've rightly said, once you've learnt how to dispel
• 2:14:41
  them, why do we need to see them time after time after time?
• 2:14:45
  You think that Minotaur mask is the most effective thing in this
• 2:14:48
  story? Bless you.
• 2:14:50
  Gulliver Oh my God, he's so irritating.
• 2:14:53
  The Children of Rapunzel is embarrassing.
• 2:14:57
  You got the. Hair is wasted on you, Rod.
• 2:14:59
  It's. Funny you mentioned Toy Maker,
• 2:15:01
  because I think it's it shares the same problem with the
• 2:15:04
  Celestial Toy Maker. There's no sense of momentum.
• 2:15:07
  You just have these random puzzles, random traps until you
• 2:15:10
  get to the cast, it's not leading anywhere.
• 2:15:12
  Celestial Toy Maker has the same problem, but then at the end we
• 2:15:15
  throw in a bloody supercomputer that wants to rule the world.
• 2:15:18
  I mean Daniel. What the fuck?
• 2:15:20
  Excuse me? There is a there is a map of
• 2:15:22
  that maze that is literally showing you them and leading
• 2:15:26
  somewhere to the middle where all the answers are.
• 2:15:29
  Rubbish, it's there. My last reason is this is not
• 2:15:35
  childlike. This is childish.
• 2:15:37
  This is the most childish. I think Doctor Who's got episode
• 2:15:41
  two. We have riddles saying Jamie is
• 2:15:44
  safe and well with picture riddles.
• 2:15:47
  When is a door not a door? When it's when it's a jar.
• 2:15:52
  It's so farmed. It's out of kids comics.
• 2:15:54
  It is embarrassing. It's.
• 2:15:57
  It's supposed to be out of kids comics.
• 2:16:01
  And when they're finding the face for Jamie, it's like
• 2:16:03
  watching Bloody Crackerjack or the Generation game.
• 2:16:06
  It is so embarrassing. There's.
• 2:16:08
  Supposed to be an author with this. 10 I just, I It just
• 2:16:11
  doesn't work for me. Then you've got the crackers
• 2:16:13
  with his painted ABS, The dreadful Germanic accent, I
• 2:16:17
  mean. And then Zoe.
• 2:16:18
  I met your command. I mean, give give me Ingrid Pitt
• 2:16:22
  fighting the Merc any day. I mean, the Crackers versus Zoe
• 2:16:26
  is just, that's as lame as it gets.
• 2:16:28
  She's a brilliant wrestler, you know.
• 2:16:30
  Oh, apparently so. Lesson We 32.
• 2:16:33
  But if the characters are thick, you like you rightly said so, is
• 2:16:36
  super intelligent. So how does she not remember to
• 2:16:39
  dispel the characters? By pretend, by knowing they're
• 2:16:42
  not real? Why does she walk back into that
• 2:16:44
  infrared? The doctor says Don't walk into
• 2:16:46
  that infrared. I love that bitch.
• 2:16:47
  I'm. Just going to walk.
• 2:16:49
  Oh no. Oh, let's get out of.
• 2:16:50
  No. Oh, just just sober.
• 2:16:54
  David Maloney does surreal superbly years later in Deadly
• 2:16:59
  Assassin. But this is just shambolic
• 2:17:02
  shite, I mean. Question in all sincerity.
• 2:17:06
  Go for it. You would rather watch the
• 2:17:08
  Crotons than the mind robber anytime.
• 2:17:11
  And now I know you're crazy. Any?
• 2:17:13
  Time of the day so. Sorry, go ahead.
• 2:17:18
  Go go for it, darling. No.
• 2:17:19
  Well, what you were saying in the so in the words of the toy
• 2:17:22
  maker, then he he he made a jigsaw out of the Doctor's story
• 2:17:27
  and you didn't like it, you? Didn't Gary please bring some
• 2:17:32
  sense to this conversation? I'm just shaking.
• 2:17:35
  Out of the story the. Problem I've got with everything
• 2:17:37
  Rod's just said is it's. True is that it's true.
• 2:17:42
  Premise that the Celestial Toy Maker is a bad story.
• 2:17:46
  Obviously that's just bollocks. Toymaker is brilliant.
• 2:17:50
  I love Whoa. Once was called oddball esque
• 2:17:55
  Doctor Who stories, and episode one of the mind robber is just
• 2:18:00
  gorgeous Derek shallowing. I I what many excuse me
• 2:18:05
  rambling. But many years ago I had dinner
• 2:18:08
  with Peter Ling when he wrote the novelization The mind
• 2:18:10
  Robber. And I was interviewing for
• 2:18:11
  dinner and he took me out for a nice Chinese meal and we were
• 2:18:14
  talking about it and he'd never seen it.
• 2:18:16
  He hadn't seen it since it had gone out, and I think he
• 2:18:18
  actually wasn't able to see it when he wrote the novel.
• 2:18:20
  So he just had the scripts and he was talking to me about it
• 2:18:23
  and going, you know, I don't remember a lot about this story.
• 2:18:28
  I mean all this stuff with with the white void and the white
• 2:18:31
  robots, and that's very good. But I really, I don't remember
• 2:18:35
  why now. I must have been very good and
• 2:18:37
  I'm kind of going, going and and you kick in with the land of
• 2:18:41
  fiction. And he was like, that makes a
• 2:18:43
  lot of sense. And he's also why in the
• 2:18:45
  eventual novelization, he cuts episode one right down to to his
• 2:18:49
  barest minimum, because it wasn't him.
• 2:18:52
  Episode one is just perfect. It's it's just amazingly great
• 2:18:57
  bit of 60s television. Could have been an episode of
• 2:19:00
  Out of the Unknown. It could have been an episode of
• 2:19:02
  anything. It just it's a it's a futuristic
• 2:19:06
  play for today for 25 minutes. It's clever.
• 2:19:09
  The the costumes going from normal to white versions, the
• 2:19:13
  white boy, the white robots, all of that stuff is just beautiful.
• 2:19:17
  You just sit and wallow in it and go, This is fantastic.
• 2:19:21
  I love it to pieces. I think that's a brilliant
• 2:19:23
  episode of Doctor Who. Where I will then agree with Rod
• 2:19:27
  is that are going straight in the bin for me.
• 2:19:33
  Any doubt. I don't necessarily dislike it
• 2:19:36
  for the same reasons that Rod does, but I I'm afraid it it has
• 2:19:40
  never worked for me. It never lives up to the promise
• 2:19:42
  of that first episode and I think that's why I don't like
• 2:19:45
  it. It's simply isn't as clever as
• 2:19:49
  it thinks it is. I I'm it's for me.
• 2:19:52
  I just get bored of it. I think it's lovely to watch.
• 2:19:56
  It's mostly mostly well acted. I think Hamish Wilson does a
• 2:20:00
  very good job as Jamie and that's a very inventive way to
• 2:20:02
  get over it. I think the concept of the
• 2:20:06
  master on his own would have been fascinating.
• 2:20:09
  Oh, wait a minute. There's a big Star Trek computer
• 2:20:13
  running everything behind the scenes, which they then blow up,
• 2:20:17
  and that's Captain Kirk territory.
• 2:20:19
  And I think actually if The Master just been some sort of
• 2:20:22
  super writer from the future who was doing this, that would have
• 2:20:24
  made a much better story than having a computer.
• 2:20:28
  The The Regs are all brilliant in it.
• 2:20:32
  I love Wendy Papri. I just think she's fantastic.
• 2:20:34
  I think Fraser's great in the few episodes is in Charlton is
• 2:20:37
  absolute best in this, but it just that's enough.
• 2:20:40
  Reasons alone to put it through. Not, not in this season.
• 2:20:44
  It's not by any means. So I'm afraid we're going.
• 2:20:49
  To. Split thing here because I'm
• 2:20:51
  with Rod and ultimately despite episode one which is beautiful,
• 2:20:56
  episodes 4 to two to 4-5 mean that it goes well in the bin for
• 2:21:01
  me and gets shredded. Well the the rules are that
• 2:21:04
  Daniel proposed it and two of the three listening have been
• 2:21:07
  this. So it is going Joe, you can have
• 2:21:10
  your say on it, but it's heading straight for me I.
• 2:21:13
  Don't need to bother do I? I love this story so much.
• 2:21:17
  I love the Mudra. I loved it as a child.
• 2:21:19
  I love it as an adult. It's a story I've shown to
• 2:21:22
  countless non Doctor Who fans who all loved it as well.
• 2:21:26
  So I've done it. I'll say what Gary said earlier,
• 2:21:28
  I don't know what story you two are watching, but this is great
• 2:21:32
  fun. It's hilarious.
• 2:21:34
  A story for one. I mean this.
• 2:21:35
  I've written down so many quotes.
• 2:21:37
  I don't do a few trout and gang sausages.
• 2:21:40
  Mankind will become like a string of sausages all the same.
• 2:21:43
  Or the bit where Zoe's fighting the carcass and he's like,
• 2:21:46
  please don't do anything rash, you know, Rapunzel.
• 2:21:51
  Ouch. I suppose you know that hurts.
• 2:21:53
  Which is wonderful. Zoe to the doctor.
• 2:21:56
  That's why Jamie's face got changed.
• 2:21:58
  You've got it all wrong. Oh, no, I was rushed.
• 2:22:00
  It's so funny this. It's hilarious.
• 2:22:04
  And like Daniel said, it's massively creative.
• 2:22:07
  Soldiers, surreal robots, white spaces, fiction, skates,
• 2:22:11
  unicorns, head snakes, puzzles, writers.
• 2:22:14
  There is no other script like this that just keeps throwing
• 2:22:18
  things at you every couple of minutes and because of that it I
• 2:22:23
  never get bored with it. I'm just going from one set
• 2:22:25
  piece to another, one idea to another, one character to
• 2:22:28
  another, all realised brilliantly, all well acted, all
• 2:22:32
  superbly directed moments as well, that it just goes by so
• 2:22:36
  fast. People say 60 stories are slow,
• 2:22:39
  it's just nonsense. Some of them go by like a lick.
• 2:22:42
  And again, David Maloney, who had no hope in the world of
• 2:22:45
  being able to realise this with the budget that they've got and
• 2:22:48
  that isn't going to stop him trying and he just uses every
• 2:22:51
  trick he possibly can. Some of his direction list is
• 2:22:54
  avant God. There's weird sequences that
• 2:22:56
  sort of out of focus like Gary said when they're all in the
• 2:22:59
  white costumes in episode one. It's so weird, it's so creepy.
• 2:23:04
  I love how he shoots that castle, that dreadful fairy tale
• 2:23:08
  castle backdrop, but try to give it some sense of depth.
• 2:23:12
  I I you're bad. The peer review.
• 2:23:15
  Yeah, the bit, when it's curious, they're in the the,
• 2:23:18
  the, the Doctor and Zaria are in the tunnels too.
• 2:23:20
  It's very atmospheric, I thought too.
• 2:23:23
  Yeah. The lights come right down, yes.
• 2:23:25
  I mean, until we rod your. Until we see the Minotaur.
• 2:23:28
  That Minotaur. It's a dreadful mass, even worse
• 2:23:31
  than one in the Time Master. But the shadow on the wall is
• 2:23:33
  great. You know the stop notion
• 2:23:35
  animation for the Medusa snakes. Was that did it?
• 2:23:40
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's all it's it's a bit like
• 2:23:42
  the Scarasan in it's it's the same sort of technique.
• 2:23:44
  It's the Ray Harryhausen sort of effect.
• 2:23:48
  And I love, love, love. My last thing is the sound
• 2:23:51
  effects in this story. Nobody credits sound effects
• 2:23:53
  enough in Doctor Who. The noise of the white robots,
• 2:23:56
  the noise that creaking of the toy soldiers, you know, the
• 2:24:00
  echoey sort of dripping inside the it's so who is it Dick Mills
• 2:24:05
  doing this? I'm not too sure.
• 2:24:07
  Probably. I think so.
• 2:24:09
  Or it's just so on top of all the other layers.
• 2:24:12
  That's another layer of atmosphere in here that really
• 2:24:15
  sort of gets under your skin. I love it, but it's going, but I
• 2:24:19
  love it. Bye bye mind rubber.
• 2:24:22
  Well, there's there's no there's no point being grown up if you
• 2:24:24
  can't be childish sometimes. So 2 have fallen the Crotons and
• 2:24:32
  the Mind rubber, and we're left with the invasion.
• 2:24:35
  Joe, do you want to take it? You want me to take it?
• 2:24:38
  Yeah, I'll take this. I don't mind the invasion.
• 2:24:42
  Well, of course it's going through, isn't it?
• 2:24:44
  It'd be mad not to take it for Proto.
• 2:24:46
  Doctor Who from the 70s, smack bang in 69, Douglas Canfield's
• 2:24:51
  direction. I'm going on about the directors
• 2:24:52
  a lot, but there's some really impressive direction this
• 2:24:54
  season. A really muscular production
• 2:24:57
  with sort of brooding spy thriller location work in the
• 2:25:01
  early scenes and then some very memorable set pieces towards.
• 2:25:05
  My favorite scenes in this are actually down in the sewers with
• 2:25:07
  that mad Cyberman roaming about. I think that's really scary
• 2:25:11
  stuff. But you know, he's also doing
• 2:25:13
  helicopter rescues, pitch battles in that factory that go
• 2:25:17
  back to about four times in the Jumper era.
• 2:25:20
  It looks really expensive. Anyone who's saying the money's
• 2:25:23
  running out at this point, it's bullshit because this looks
• 2:25:26
  really expensive. And like Maloney with the War
• 2:25:30
  games, he's how he's having to make this sort of eke out over 8
• 2:25:34
  episodes and he does it just by making it look fabulous.
• 2:25:39
  Secondly, Kevin Stoneley and Peter Holiday.
• 2:25:42
  I know everyone else is going to talk about Vaughan, so I'm not
• 2:25:44
  going to go there as a comedy double act, ridiculously good.
• 2:25:50
  And you know the the many inflections of the word Parker
• 2:25:54
  that there's a super car on YouTube.
• 2:25:56
  I think of that where you can hear every single one, but how
• 2:26:00
  Packer gets increasingly more inept throughout the story and
• 2:26:04
  how Vaughn starts off very sort of chilled about it and by the
• 2:26:08
  end he's like, you're an incompetent.
• 2:26:09
  Call Packer. I love it.
• 2:26:12
  It's so, so funny. And my last point for The
• 2:26:16
  Invasion is I know Zoe vanishes into a box for two episodes, but
• 2:26:20
  apart from that, this is again more glorious stuff for Wendy
• 2:26:25
  Padre in this story when she gets to talk that computer to
• 2:26:28
  death in Algo or whatever it is, doing a fabulous photography
• 2:26:32
  with Isabel Watkins and obviously taking down the cyber
• 2:26:36
  fleet at the end of the story. She's just amazingly good, isn't
• 2:26:40
  she? Zoe, like truly underrated
• 2:26:42
  companion and Wendy Padre has just got massive charisma.
• 2:26:46
  And in fact she's still got it now because I keep staring at
• 2:26:48
  the phantom conventions and she can beguile a room in about two
• 2:26:52
  minutes. Yeah, I think the invasion, it
• 2:26:55
  looks gorgeous for me. It doesn't get boring because it
• 2:26:58
  goes from that sort of spy fi in the first four episodes to a
• 2:27:02
  really great sort of techno thriller in the second-half of
• 2:27:05
  it. It does interesting things from
• 2:27:07
  the side Men, it's got a great villain.
• 2:27:09
  I wonder if Trout is a bit of a fish out of water in this story.
• 2:27:12
  He's not too sure where he lands in this sort of contemporary
• 2:27:15
  thriller, but he's still brilliant.
• 2:27:17
  You know, he gets to go down to Suez with his walkie-talkie.
• 2:27:20
  He gets to wind up Vaughn. You know, you're a fool, Vaughn.
• 2:27:23
  You know all these things. Yeah, it's fabulous.
• 2:27:26
  Of course it's going through, unless any of you 3 gentlemen
• 2:27:29
  say otherwise. Well, let's go to the comments.
• 2:27:31
  We had more comments, comments on the invasion than any other
• 2:27:33
  story. So let's try and rattle through.
• 2:27:35
  Them anyone needs a we go now, all right?
• 2:27:38
  So let's start with the most controversial 101.
• 2:27:40
  Surprise, surprise, it's Fraser Gregory who says Derek Sherwin's
• 2:27:44
  dry run for his vision of the show he ultimately ditched, but
• 2:27:47
  without the swagger of the let's era.
• 2:27:49
  Kevin Stoney almost saves the day with a superlative
• 2:27:52
  performance. All together now Parkour, But at
• 2:27:56
  the end of the day, it's too long been it.
• 2:28:00
  Joe Shaw. Oh, lovely Joe Shaw.
• 2:28:02
  I love The Invasion. Might be a bit long, but it's
• 2:28:04
  the beginning of UNIT. The debut of Benton and Zoe in a
• 2:28:08
  cat suit, side minutes and Pauls are one of the best villains
• 2:28:11
  ever in Tobias form, plus cows and parkour.
• 2:28:15
  James Ark says no. It's not too long, It has pace
• 2:28:19
  and tension throughout, and it's one of the few Doctor Who Earth
• 2:28:22
  invasions with an appropriate sense of scale.
• 2:28:24
  Plus, Courtney Stoney and some of the best location work the
• 2:28:27
  series has gifted us wouldn't lose a second of it.
• 2:28:31
  Daniel Knight Too long but Well. Directed by David Canfield,
• 2:28:34
  David Canfield, Douglas Canfield and Kevin Stoney is brilliant as
• 2:28:38
  Vaughn. Watch out for the squatty
• 2:28:39
  checking out Wendy Padbury's behind.
• 2:28:42
  Yes, I tweeted that picture out today.
• 2:28:43
  It's a little bit obvious, Electronic Dance said.
• 2:28:47
  Excellent. One of the best invasion stories
• 2:28:49
  of the franchise. So pious.
• 2:28:50
  Vaughn is a fascinating villain. The length and scope are epic
• 2:28:54
  and good pacing despite the length.
• 2:28:56
  I mean, have you seen the end of mine Robber episode one where
• 2:28:58
  we're all checking out our ass at that point?
• 2:29:00
  I don't think we can. Oh.
• 2:29:01
  We didn't bring it up, did we? Oh, it's gorgeous.
• 2:29:04
  Isn't it hard? I usually go for that sort of
• 2:29:06
  thing, Jack says. From Marvel's Avengers to ITV's
• 2:29:11
  Avengers. Bleak cliffhangers and a great
• 2:29:13
  fish out of water stuff for Trouton, Tobias form may be the
• 2:29:16
  greatest one story villain. You'll never say Parker the same
• 2:29:20
  way twice, but then again, neither did Steven Kevin Stoney.
• 2:29:24
  Kev blower says top tier who sprawling an urban but with
• 2:29:28
  Comic Relief. This is season seven.
• 2:29:30
  If pattered stayed on, the monsters don't show until
• 2:29:32
  halfway, but that's OK when you've got one of the best ever
• 2:29:35
  villains has a scene so iconic it was repeated decades later
• 2:29:39
  with Capaldi to. Dreadful effect.
• 2:29:42
  Matt Foy. Possibly the best Cyberman
• 2:29:44
  story, although they are hardly in it.
• 2:29:47
  Canfield's The Man to direct an urban thriller and introduce you
• 2:29:50
  it. Jason Thompson said.
• 2:29:52
  I love the Invasion, even though you can see how it's being
• 2:29:54
  extended from a six part story to you in to a unique eight part
• 2:29:58
  one. But it's the blueprint for most
• 2:30:00
  of the next few years. If you've been this, the Pert
• 2:30:02
  era will collapse. Damping Unit feels like a
• 2:30:06
  properly military outfit with resources.
• 2:30:08
  Not just a Brig, a captain and a Sergeant.
• 2:30:11
  Superb soundtrack. Oh, the music's great.
• 2:30:13
  Tobias Vaughan is one of the best Who villains.
• 2:30:16
  Michael Stone says the contemporary setting manages to
• 2:30:18
  bring forth echoes of the Ipcris file and more overtly, The
• 2:30:21
  Avengers. The reduction of Cybermen to
• 2:30:23
  effectively silent robot stooges shouldn't work, but on this
• 2:30:27
  occasion it does. I bet a lot of people have
• 2:30:29
  things to say about this, isn't it?
• 2:30:30
  James H Kevin Stoney saves an over long story where the cyber
• 2:30:34
  Men's motive is yes, what is it Buggers the 10th planet, but
• 2:30:39
  does give us unit definitely could drop an episode if it's
• 2:30:41
  ever colorized and done movie style like the Daleks.
• 2:30:45
  Ian Banks is excellent, A long story, but doesn't outstay it's
• 2:30:48
  welcome. Deliver surprise after surprise.
• 2:30:51
  Victor Agrida Junior My favorite what?
• 2:30:55
  When I watched it for the first time just a few months ago, I
• 2:30:57
  was surprised at how well it held up.
• 2:30:59
  The pacing is great for the era. Adrian Berry says I enjoy the
• 2:31:03
  invasion and I love Cybermen stories, but there are little
• 2:31:05
  more than foot soldiers here. Gareth Bailey Great with
• 2:31:09
  brilliant music. Pace is pretty good.
• 2:31:11
  Always forget how long it is. Gavin, Lukens says, manages to
• 2:31:14
  combine two ideas that could be 4 parters into a functional 8.
• 2:31:18
  Parter keeps the suspense up, and Vaughan is one of who's best
• 2:31:21
  villains. Two more Matthew.
• 2:31:23
  A bit too long and yet still manages to end abruptly.
• 2:31:26
  And finally, the British Alien says outstanding on so many
• 2:31:29
  levels. How about a puff?
• 2:31:32
  So Gary, it's true or not well? I don't know after this episode
• 2:31:41
  it could go either way. Right, well let me just say the
• 2:31:43
  following. Tobias Vaughan, a cyber planner
• 2:31:47
  in a cupboard, an office that is identical in London and also out
• 2:31:53
  in the country. The best Cyberman design in
• 2:31:57
  history Never been bettered only gets that apart from Little
• 2:32:01
  Cameo and Carnival of Monsters, it's the only story we ever see
• 2:32:05
  this design in and it is just beautiful.
• 2:32:08
  The regulars at their best, even though Jamie disappears randomly
• 2:32:12
  up to getting shot in one episode and seems to be fine
• 2:32:14
  after that. It's the start of unit, it's the
• 2:32:17
  start of the Pertwee era. It's got a great, great script.
• 2:32:21
  It's not too long. At 8 episodes, it's another one
• 2:32:24
  that just every episode justifies.
• 2:32:27
  The next episode coming up. The whole brilliance of the
• 2:32:30
  invasion of London coming out the sewers, just the nostalgic
• 2:32:35
  kick for me. I remember this episode blow by
• 2:32:37
  blow as a kid, when I first got around to seeing it on some
• 2:32:42
  illegal pirate video back in the early 80s.
• 2:32:45
  I sat there gobsmacked at going Oh my God, this is exactly as I
• 2:32:49
  remember it, although curiously, occasionally backwards.
• 2:32:55
  But yes, yeah, this this story, he doesn't doesn't even get a
• 2:33:00
  sniff of the bin. This story is given 10,000
• 2:33:04
  awards and they're all lined up on a shelf somewhere.
• 2:33:07
  It's it's perfection. It's Derek Sherwin again,
• 2:33:11
  proving how brilliant he is and and how much he understood 60s
• 2:33:17
  Doctor Who and and and moving it forward.
• 2:33:19
  I love it. I I just absolutely love it.
• 2:33:23
  Fabulous, Daniel. Yeah well so do I I think this
• 2:33:30
  one is is probably the best example of of why watching a a
• 2:33:35
  60s Doctor Who in that's in eight parts or 10 parts is that
• 2:33:39
  you really just get to luxuriate in it.
• 2:33:42
  And the there's just the the, oh, thank you the the atmosphere
• 2:33:48
  is everything for me in the story where we mentioned the
• 2:33:52
  music, where it's very, very quiet, it's very, very
• 2:33:55
  minimalist and yet it's always going through the whole story.
• 2:33:59
  So it creates a very Moody kind of atmosphere and which is kind
• 2:34:05
  of in keeping for me with the sort of the, the interesting.
• 2:34:10
  Well, the throughout this season there's a lot of mind control,
• 2:34:12
  but there's also a general sort of mistrust of of technology and
• 2:34:17
  the sort of contradictory relationship we have with it
• 2:34:20
  because the Doctor hates computers.
• 2:34:23
  And, you know, I refuse to be bullied by this infernal
• 2:34:25
  machine. And so I think, you know, his
• 2:34:28
  moment where he had he gets very impatient with a, you know, a
• 2:34:32
  droning answering machine is is very relatable indeed.
• 2:34:37
  And then, you know, he, he, Vaughan gives Jamie a portable
• 2:34:40
  radio to sort of spy on them and the Doctors completely
• 2:34:43
  disdainful of it. But then Eunuch gives him a sort
• 2:34:45
  of radio transmitter and he said, oh, this is a rather
• 2:34:48
  splendid little toy, Jamie. And you know you've got Vaughan
• 2:34:52
  conspiring of the cyber controller computer in his
• 2:34:54
  office wall and he's got a cybernetic body of his own.
• 2:34:58
  And then you've got UNIT that are bristling with with
• 2:35:01
  technology. You know they've got their
• 2:35:02
  secret aircraft base, they've got helicopters, they've got
• 2:35:05
  armed soldiers in jeeps and guns and grenades and flamethrowers
• 2:35:10
  and bazookas. And so the defeat it's very
• 2:35:13
  interesting that defeat the way the Cybermen are defeated in the
• 2:35:16
  end it's all about tech because the doctor and company kind of
• 2:35:20
  have to take a back seat and sort of trust the the military's
• 2:35:24
  missile expertise to defeat the the sidemen.
• 2:35:28
  And of course we mentioned that Zoe has a, a brilliant hand in
• 2:35:33
  this because she takes centre stage in that in episode 7
• 2:35:36
  especially, you know rushing from desk to desk and coming up
• 2:35:39
  with all the calculations in seconds and you know, the major
• 2:35:43
  says, oh, you'd better be right And she's just says I am, that's
• 2:35:48
  great. So that's a big, that's a big
• 2:35:51
  sort of part of the story. I mean Vaughn and Packer, which,
• 2:35:55
  you know, we've already mentioned, but I mean you could
• 2:35:58
  just you could play a you could play a game about how many times
• 2:36:01
  he says Packer. How many times he means it means
• 2:36:04
  it as a sort of condescending punctuation mark and how many
• 2:36:09
  times Packer gets outwitted by the Doctor and Jamie.
• 2:36:13
  Something we haven't brought up is the animation that they used
• 2:36:17
  to restore the the missing episodes.
• 2:36:19
  And I think it works really, really well, especially for me.
• 2:36:24
  I was watching the the the helicopter escape, the
• 2:36:27
  helicopter rescue. I think it's at the end of
• 2:36:29
  episode 4 and I was, I was blown away.
• 2:36:33
  I I just couldn't you know I was like this is amazing.
• 2:36:35
  I mean of course obviously we haven't seen what it really was
• 2:36:38
  like. I haven't anyway.
• 2:36:40
  But but it's great that they got to sort of breathe, breathe life
• 2:36:45
  into that again. And and finally I just this,
• 2:36:52
  this story is, I mean a lot of Doctor Who after this owes so
• 2:36:56
  much to the invasion where you've got, you know, the iconic
• 2:37:00
  cliffhanger of the the side men slowly marching down in front of
• 2:37:04
  Saint Paul's. And you know, it's they've tried
• 2:37:07
  to recapture that image and they've never managed to sort of
• 2:37:09
  equal it. So, you know, if you had side
• 2:37:12
  men taking over the world in Army of Ghosts, you had Dark
• 2:37:15
  Water, which we already mentioned.
• 2:37:18
  They mention international electromatics in Rise of the
• 2:37:22
  Side Men, Then you have the rope ladder escape.
• 2:37:25
  In The Age of Steel, you have also a shot of the side men in
• 2:37:28
  the sewers. That's very reminiscent of The
• 2:37:31
  Age of Steel, which was directed by Graham Harper, who was a
• 2:37:35
  protege of Douglas Canfield. So and finally even Roger Lloyd
• 2:37:41
  Pack's performances. John Lumic is he's maybe trying
• 2:37:46
  to to lend homage to Tobias Spawn, but it's a bit it's
• 2:37:50
  slightly less subtle where he goes.
• 2:37:52
  And how will you do that? From beyond the grave.
• 2:37:58
  Kevin Stoney would have iced that line.
• 2:38:00
  Right, So and so I was keen to get everyone else's opinion.
• 2:38:05
  Do we prefer Kevin Stoney as Mavic, Chen or Vaughn?
• 2:38:10
  Oh. Trouble is, so much of Mavic
• 2:38:12
  Chen is missing, isn't it? So you just don't get to see his
• 2:38:15
  glorious physical interpretation.
• 2:38:19
  I prefer Mavic Chen's ending, where he's, you know, so
• 2:38:22
  arrogant, he feels like he's been locked up because, you
• 2:38:26
  know, with all the others and he's murdered horribly.
• 2:38:28
  It's totally ignominious ending. I think I prefer Marvin Chen
• 2:38:33
  part again. Yes I'm.
• 2:38:35
  I'm with Joe on this one that it's the ending because Tobias
• 2:38:38
  Vaughn does that ridiculous about face at the end and so he
• 2:38:42
  goes oh you're right doctor. The side men are evil.
• 2:38:44
  Oh, I will try and stop them. Get shot on top of of
• 2:38:47
  Stepladder. They're very hard because
• 2:38:51
  there's nothing similar in them as villains.
• 2:38:54
  Because Cheney is is brilliant, but he's straight out of an
• 2:38:57
  episode of Stingray and and Marvin Cheney's Tobias Vaughn is
• 2:39:01
  straight out because episode of The Avengers.
• 2:39:04
  So they're equally brilliant and and Stoney is is, you know?
• 2:39:11
  The best scene he gets is that bit where the professor shoots
• 2:39:15
  him and he's got those smoking holes in It's Jesse.
• 2:39:18
  He just laughs. That's an incredible moment.
• 2:39:20
  But yeah, they're both brilliant.
• 2:39:22
  It's hard to choose. Yeah, I'd pick Vaughan probably
• 2:39:24
  just because he's not subtled with the make up and you
• 2:39:27
  actually get to see all of Kevin Stoney's face acting, which is
• 2:39:31
  he's got, I mean we talk about Trout and have an elastic face
• 2:39:34
  but so does Kevin Stoney in this story and he really puts it to
• 2:39:38
  good effect. So probably, yeah, because he's
• 2:39:41
  not not being pulled and tied by solar tape, so.
• 2:39:45
  To buy a Scorn doesn't have that incredible space.
• 2:39:47
  Handwriting, though, does. He well, no, absolutely
• 2:39:49
  Absolutely Fabulous. So I'm my pick on this one is
• 2:39:56
  obviously it's going to go through as well.
• 2:39:57
  How could it not? I think it's a very clever
• 2:40:01
  story. It's a little bit of a look to
• 2:40:03
  the past, but there's so much here that's foreshadowing what's
• 2:40:06
  to come. So we get few little nods to
• 2:40:09
  what we've seen before. So we get the big Doctor Who
• 2:40:11
  monster parading in front of well known London landmarks like
• 2:40:15
  we did in dialect invasion of Earth and a little bit probably
• 2:40:18
  in in war machines and to a lesser extent I guess web affair
• 2:40:22
  again a little bit. We get the military resistance
• 2:40:25
  led by Lethbridge Stewart that we've only recently seen in Web
• 2:40:28
  Affair. We get the chief villain siding
• 2:40:32
  with the baddies in a way. You just talking about Mavic
• 2:40:34
  Chandan and it's it's that's the similar kind of set up.
• 2:40:38
  But obviously then the twist here is that the villain goes on
• 2:40:41
  to work with the Doctor as the Master will do in many stories
• 2:40:44
  to come and that's what leads me into the next bit.
• 2:40:46
  There is so much here though. We kind of take for granted
• 2:40:49
  because we've seen it in some in poetry stories to come, but so
• 2:40:53
  much of it was new here. So this kind of urban, gritty
• 2:40:57
  feeling in warehouses and factories.
• 2:40:59
  We see so much of that to come, but we didn't really see much of
• 2:41:02
  that before this point. We see the doctor in a canoe and
• 2:41:06
  driving a car. That just feels really weird to
• 2:41:08
  see Troughton doing those things, this putting him more in
• 2:41:11
  the real world, nothing we've ever seen before.
• 2:41:14
  This is a real ensemble pace. You've got the Brig, you've got
• 2:41:18
  Jimmy Turner. You've got Isabel, I've got
• 2:41:21
  Turner. You've got his.
• 2:41:22
  Arm on I've never. I've never sort of led into a
• 2:41:26
  character more than Isabel Watkins.
• 2:41:28
  You know when she starts chatting up that Hot squaddy?
• 2:41:30
  Oh. Is.
• 2:41:32
  He a Dolly. The first line in every day is
• 2:41:34
  Hey, are you stinking rich? So.
• 2:41:38
  It's a proper ensemble piece that we get in the unit period,
• 2:41:41
  although Jamie is a little bit forgotten towards the end.
• 2:41:44
  You've got that the real feeling of a worldwide takeover that
• 2:41:47
  again we're going to see in late years, this heavy reliance on
• 2:41:50
  military equipment and troops. They thank the MOD in the
• 2:41:54
  credits at the end, as we will see many times throughout, again
• 2:41:57
  throughout the Perot we era so, so much this we're going to see,
• 2:42:01
  we see a civil servant who's fighting against unit.
• 2:42:04
  Now in this case, it's not because he's incompetent, as
• 2:42:06
  most of them are in the Perot we year, it's because he's been
• 2:42:09
  brainwashed. So you get so much.
• 2:42:11
  But it was new at this point and it's so, so easy to forget when
• 2:42:15
  you can just pick and choose any episode from iPlayer or from
• 2:42:18
  DVD. You forget how much of this at
• 2:42:20
  this point was new and original and different and must have been
• 2:42:23
  quite shocking to the audience. So I think this is an absolute
• 2:42:27
  trend setter. So for that reason alone, I will
• 2:42:30
  put it through a couple of other pins up points I've pointed out
• 2:42:33
  was Dan Harper's music. I think it's really sorry, Don
• 2:42:37
  Harper. Don Yeah.
• 2:42:39
  It was his only credit for for the show.
• 2:42:42
  We know that Douglas Campfield didn't get on terribly well with
• 2:42:45
  Dudley, so he always wants to bring in his own composers.
• 2:42:47
  It's a shame he only used Don Harper this once.
• 2:42:50
  And it's great, great news because only 32 minutes of
• 2:42:53
  original music. You know that bit Rod, you know
• 2:42:55
  that bit when they're down the suit, it's like.
• 2:42:58
  Yeah, I love that. It's brilliant.
• 2:43:01
  I love all the spy espionage. And then he gives unit that
• 2:43:04
  really, really jaunty. That's.
• 2:43:06
  Just weird though, isn't? It it.
• 2:43:09
  Is. I mean that's not too feels a
• 2:43:11
  bit odd towards the end. Well, not to be too inside
• 2:43:14
  baseball, but I was quite surprised that the theme for The
• 2:43:17
  Trap One podcast showed up in The Invasion.
• 2:43:22
  I think you might have been wrong order Daniel, but yeah, I
• 2:43:26
  think it's great, lovely music. And I was also going to mention
• 2:43:29
  Vaughan and Packer and put them together as a combo, just as you
• 2:43:32
  did Joe. So it is a very odd symbiotic
• 2:43:35
  relationship. But yeah, they are just they
• 2:43:37
  wouldn't. How many double acts have we
• 2:43:38
  mentioned here as well? The the security chief and oh
• 2:43:42
  good grief, what's his name? Yeah, yeah.
• 2:43:47
  Yeah, yeah. There's some great double acts
• 2:43:49
  this year, they. Really are, they really are.
• 2:43:51
  So yeah, All in all, obviously it's got to go through, so we've
• 2:43:55
  got to the end of round one gentleman we're on to round. 2
• 2:43:58
  1/2 hours in, Don't worry, round Two's about 2 1/2 minutes.
• 2:44:02
  If that so we have ditched. Let me get up my randomizer.
• 2:44:07
  So we have ditched off the mind robber and we have ditched off
• 2:44:11
  the Crotons. We've got five stories left, so
• 2:44:15
  we are going to spin them. And because we've kind of all
• 2:44:18
  said where we stand with these stories, pick which one we think
• 2:44:21
  is the best. So we have seeds of death
• 2:44:23
  against the war games. Oh, Gary's going to struggle
• 2:44:27
  with this one because he absolutely loved both of them.
• 2:44:30
  Look at his face I. Know they're going to be
• 2:44:32
  difficult ways. You've got to pick your face.
• 2:44:34
  So we will come to Gary first. He's put himself.
• 2:44:37
  On the He's that shocked either his screen is.
• 2:44:41
  Still on mute, Gary. Or he swears.
• 2:44:45
  I was swearing. No, I was going.
• 2:44:47
  I hate you. Oh my God.
• 2:44:50
  How am I supposed to pick? What?
• 2:44:52
  Why couldn't we pick between Invasion versus the Dominators?
• 2:44:58
  Because. Dominators.
• 2:45:00
  Well, we might. Be obviously if if if we're
• 2:45:04
  doing the seeds of Doom versus the War Games, then obviously
• 2:45:07
  when it comes to the Dominators versus the Invasion, we know is
• 2:45:11
  going to win that one. I can't choose.
• 2:45:16
  That's like choosing my favorite children.
• 2:45:18
  I have to go You see nostalgia and my love and my whole life
• 2:45:29
  being based around nostalgia would make me say ultimately has
• 2:45:32
  to be the Invasion. The Doctor Who fan in me who
• 2:45:36
  cares about writing and thinking about Doctor Who for the last 30
• 2:45:41
  years and and and everything else, says it's got to be the
• 2:45:44
  war games because everything is. It's the war games.
• 2:45:49
  I'm going to the War Games. Games.
• 2:45:51
  So Daniel Seeds or War Games? I mean, Seeds is so underrated
• 2:45:57
  and it really deserves more love.
• 2:46:00
  But I'm going to go to the War Games just because, actually, it
• 2:46:03
  was the first time I watched it all the way through, because I
• 2:46:06
  I'd only heard. I'd only heard about it, and I'm
• 2:46:09
  so glad that it lived up to its reputation.
• 2:46:12
  So, yeah, War Games. It's the easy War Games win for
• 2:46:16
  me. I love Seeds of Death, but it's
• 2:46:17
  the War Games. So my superfluous but I would
• 2:46:20
  have gone war games anyway. So Seeds is the next fall.
• 2:46:24
  So let's take seeds out of the Gary is crying at this point,
• 2:46:30
  but we've got four stories left, so we have the invasion against
• 2:46:36
  the dominators. Well, I'll go close.
• 2:46:39
  On this one, because I think it's fairly obvious which one
• 2:46:41
  I'm going to go for out of these two, I'm going to go for the
• 2:46:44
  invasion for me. Enough.
• 2:46:48
  I'm going to say the invasion, obviously, but I'm going to say
• 2:46:51
  that's more of a battle than it would have been 20 years ago.
• 2:46:55
  But it is the invasion. Gary of.
• 2:46:59
  Course, it's the invasion, Not even a competition.
• 2:47:03
  And Daniel, I think this one's probably fairly easy, isn't it?
• 2:47:07
  Dominators. I'm.
• 2:47:11
  Kidding. I'm kidding.
• 2:47:12
  The invasion. The invasion.
• 2:47:13
  I wanted you to be contrary then do you know?
• 2:47:17
  So we are left with the Invasion, the Space Pirates and
• 2:47:22
  the War Games. How?
• 2:47:24
  Is the Space Pirates still in there?
• 2:47:26
  Because it's not come up here, so it depends if it rolls.
• 2:47:29
  So we've got the invasion. This is the war game.
• 2:47:36
  Oh Christ. Well, I guess we knew this was
• 2:47:40
  probably going to come up at some point.
• 2:47:43
  The War Games, I said The War Games was the best Doctor Who
• 2:47:45
  story ever, and I don't think The Invasion is quite the best
• 2:47:48
  Doctor Who story ever. So the War Games?
• 2:47:50
  Daniel. The invasion?
• 2:47:54
  No. The war games?
• 2:47:56
  No. Yeah.
• 2:47:57
  The war games. The war games.
• 2:47:59
  The War Games. Gary, we're all the.
• 2:48:03
  Reasons, I said last time. It's the War Games.
• 2:48:06
  Fine. So War Games it is, I think.
• 2:48:08
  We know what's going to win this now.
• 2:48:11
  Do you know what? This is probably the only time
• 2:48:13
  we've got to a final two, though We're really not quite sure
• 2:48:16
  which way it's going to go. So do we think it's going to be
• 2:48:19
  Space Pirates or is it going to be the War Games?
• 2:48:23
  Is it going to be Jack May or Philip Maddock?
• 2:48:26
  Who knows, Joe? Who knows?
• 2:48:28
  The tension is so high at this point.
• 2:48:32
  Daniel, let's come to you first. Can you break the deadlock
• 2:48:35
  between Space Pirates and War Games?
• 2:48:38
  The The War Games. OK, Gary.
• 2:48:45
  I firmly believe that if more of the Space Pirates existed or it
• 2:48:49
  was animated by me, but obviously it's the War Games,
• 2:48:55
  isn't it? That would just be mad.
• 2:48:59
  We have been mad on this podcast before.
• 2:49:01
  It's not unknown Joe. Absolutely.
• 2:49:04
  The War Games Best of the Season.
• 2:49:06
  Best of the Year of. Me and absolutely War Games for
• 2:49:09
  me too. So that was a very easy that's
• 2:49:11
  easiest final round. So the War Games clinches there
• 2:49:15
  with Space Pirates a very worthy second I.
• 2:49:18
  Certainly didn't realize that the Crotons would be the most
• 2:49:22
  divisive and passionate for the conversation in this entire
• 2:49:26
  season. Thanks gentlemen.
• 2:49:29
  Thank you both very much indeed. Yeah, it's been a fascinating,
• 2:49:32
  maybe a few views that people weren't expecting, but hopefully
• 2:49:35
  we've done season six proud. Gentlemen, would you like to
• 2:49:39
  point listeners to yourself on social media or promote anything
• 2:49:43
  you're working on at the moment, Gary?
• 2:49:46
  I'm I'm working at the moment. We're just wrapping up on a book
• 2:49:50
  called The DNA of Doctor Who which is the first of a series
• 2:49:54
  of ongoing books with round of books, part of Castaway Comics,
• 2:49:58
  The first volume which we've nearly finished.
• 2:50:00
  What we have finished, it's being laid out and designed at
• 2:50:04
  the moment is the Philip Hinchcliffe years, with a lot of
• 2:50:07
  input from Philip which is lovely.
• 2:50:09
  And then I'm just about to start work on the Graham Williams
• 2:50:11
  ears, so that that's that's ticking along and I'm writing
• 2:50:17
  the ongoing Inferno comic cutaway.
• 2:50:20
  Yeah, that's that's, that's that.
• 2:50:23
  And I jump in though, Gary and recommend that everybody goes
• 2:50:26
  and reads your fabulous novelization of the star base as
• 2:50:29
  well, please I. I You can absolutely jump in and
• 2:50:32
  say that. I will allow you to say that.
• 2:50:34
  I've been waiting to find out what happened to that milkman
• 2:50:36
  ever since stolen of Oh no, it was.
• 2:50:41
  It was a fantastic read. Thank you.
• 2:50:45
  And Daniel, where can people find you?
• 2:50:48
  Well, I'm on Twitter at Daniel under score, Rawnsley.
• 2:50:53
  That's RAWNSLEYI also have a YouTube channel called Daniel
• 2:51:00
  Rawnsley Voices where I'm trying to put all my voice demos on
• 2:51:03
  there. And Speaking of novelisations, I
• 2:51:06
  wrote my own, my very own fan novelisation of the Doctor Who
• 2:51:11
  story New Earth, which I've been trying to rehabilitate as an
• 2:51:15
  overlooked story. Don't listen to the episode.
• 2:51:18
  Coming out next week then. I shall be listening very
• 2:51:21
  carefully. I said nice things, Daniel.
• 2:51:24
  I'll just. I'll just put that on I.
• 2:51:26
  Think you may remember that story?
• 2:51:28
  You know, I'm going to read that.
• 2:51:30
  Well, I've also releasing it on my YouTube channel as a semi
• 2:51:35
  audiobook. Semi Big Finish ish.
• 2:51:39
  I'm not really because I'm put sound effects in it.
• 2:51:43
  So if you go on Daniel Ramsay Voices, you'll find me.
• 2:51:46
  If you'd like to listen to me reading my novelization with
• 2:51:53
  voices and sound effects and. Well, I think you have
• 2:51:56
  demonstrated some excellent voices tonight.
• 2:51:59
  You're. Very kind.
• 2:52:02
  So all it reminds us to thank our two guests very much indeed
• 2:52:07
  for their wit and wisdom. Thank you for bringing us to the
• 2:52:10
  sanity of the conclusion of the War Games being the best Joe.
• 2:52:14
  Next time we are off to Gary's favorite era, we're off to 1979
• 2:52:19
  Season 17 that. Has vintage years.
• 2:52:23
  Already been recorded but. Yeah, and you are both
• 2:52:26
  completely welcome to. Thanks, Gary.
• 2:52:33
  And all it remains for us to say is to wrap up.
• 2:52:38
  Why couldn't we about Gary on that one?
• 2:52:41
  We asked Gary to come on. Gary didn't want to do.
• 2:52:43
  Seems fair enough. Fair enough.
• 2:52:45
  It would have been amazing. Listen, though.
• 2:52:47
  I think it might have been even more vitriolic than tonight's
• 2:52:50
  episode. I would have said very, very,
• 2:52:53
  very nice things about Nightmare of Eden and one or two good
• 2:52:58
  points about Destiny of the Daleks and Creature from the
• 2:53:01
  Pit. And then there would have just
• 2:53:03
  been, yeah. Well, obviously as we're yet to
• 2:53:10
  record that Joe, just reminding you in timey wimey fashion, we
• 2:53:14
  shall find out next time what we think about those stories I.
• 2:53:17
  Wish you would stop doing that. We had a three hour recording
• 2:53:20
  doing that. I'm starting to wonder whether
• 2:53:21
  it actually existed. But apart from that, we just
• 2:53:25
  need to thank everyone for listening.
• 2:53:27
  And until next time. Listening.
• 2:53:47
  The. The.