Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Talks to James H about the evisceration of The Wedding of River Song

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Talks to James H about the evisceration of The Wedding of River Song · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

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  Welcome back to A Hamster with a Blunt Pen Knife, the Doctor Who
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  commentary Podcast. I feel like that might be the
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  most positive thing that you hear in the next two hours.
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  It's hamster with a blunt pen knife and guest with a very
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  sharp tongue. I am here with honestly, I mean
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  now you're starting to dominate my schedules.
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  It's a wonderful thing. I found this furious voice in
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  Mr. James H Hello. I feel very, very kind of.
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  I feel like you're building me up and I'm just waiting for this
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  kind of crash kind of thing. Anyway, good afternoon.
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  It hasn't happened yet. You know you've.
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  And now the next one I am bringing out of yours is
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  actually your debut, and that is 6 fabulous episodes on the wheel
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  in space. Interestingly, I was going to
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  comment on those during this. OK, well, because there's.
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  Yeah, I'll get to that when I get to it.
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  But today rather than season six, we are doing a Series 6.
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  God, that's going to confuse the hell out of me Series season
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  five. I thought Wheeling space was
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  season 5. Oh God, it is, isn't it?
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  Yeah, we mean to go on, yeah. Yes, we are.
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  We're about to do an episode where fact and logic and common
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  sense mean nothing. Mean nothing.
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  But then again, they haven't for a long time now.
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  Oh, I know what you talk about the whole of new Who here.
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  More actually, right, I'm afraid to say.
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  But I say this is not going to be the the more glowing ones
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  that I do. It's essentially the Stephen
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  Moffat era, Russell Davies era I absolutely loved.
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  I bawled my eyes out regularly. The Stephen Moffat era.
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  I usually cheered when the companions left me too.
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  Yeah. And Series 5.
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  Was the series that turned me from a fan of the TV show into a
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  viewer of the TV show. Oh wow, Five.
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  Really. Cuz that's That's usually
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  considered some people's favorite of the.
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  Series Series 6 nearly turned me away from the TV show, and I
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  think it was only the promise of a new companion in series seven
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  that kind of kept you going, kept.
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  Me going. Yeah.
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  Well, OK, seriously, First of all, we're talking about the
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  wedding of River Soul, and I'm going to be out front and say
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  for me, people think I'm crazy. This is the nadir of the new
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  series. This is my least favorite
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  episode and I will explain why I know you're not a fan of this as
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  well. I can't decide if it's my least
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  favorite or if there's an awful lot which get that title because
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  my problem with Stephen Moffatt's era.
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  Is clearly his brain works in one way.
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  Clearly my brain works in another way.
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  And for me what he has written is not Doctor Who.
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  You know you've got 4 by this time, you got 404048 years or
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  something of history behind and it's just like.
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  He's he's done almost like what Netflix is doing with
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  foundation. They've taken the title
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  foundation and then written something completely different,
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  with occasional references to character names and stuff like
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  that. What's your objection, then?
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  Why isn't this Doctor Who? OK, I think the best example is
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  from the demons. It's not demons is not a story
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  that I particularly like, but The Demons makes it clear.
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  That kind of basically kind of magic is bullshit.
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  You know that there is scientific explanations for
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  everything, and although the classic series and RTD does play
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  fast and loose with facts and continuity, more fact just puts
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  it all in a skip. And has it taken away.
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  You know you've got the Aztecs. You can't change even a single
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  line reign of terror. You know, Barbara says, oh, what
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  happens if we left a note from Napoleon?
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  Oh, it would have got lost someone.
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  You know, the Time Meddler and Space Museum confuse things a
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  bit. But there's generally this big
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  thing through the whole of the classic era that time is
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  flexible. And Ian Martha actually rewords
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  the dialogue from Rayna Terra in the target book.
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  And he says it's the mainstream of time remains the same.
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  So basically if you're not important, if you're not
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  relevant, you can live as much as you like and the doctor can
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  save you. If you're in the podium
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  Bonaparte, you didn't. You then get the era of the
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  Virgin books, which again they say that time can be changed,
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  but it, you know it gets changed back.
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  You know the whole you've got the Exodus.
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  Where it's the time worm that's changed it and God like Time
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  Lords, war chief and so on. You then get the alternate
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  universe cycle where time has changed, you know blood, heat
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  and all that lot. But again, this is big powerful
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  knowing entity thing that has changed.
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  It's controlled by the monk. So again, Time Lords, you then
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  get the TV movie with temporal orbits and we're going to move
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  very swiftly on from that one. But hang on if if you're saying
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  these things are all flexible in the classic serial and in the
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  books and all of this, so what's different from that to this?
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  I will give you the line and it is the line from.
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  It's from. It's basically let's kill
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  Hitler. It's the second part of.
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  Yeah, yes, yeah. You know, he has and always will
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  die. At Lake Silencio, you know this
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  idea of fixed points. And I'll show Russell T Davis
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  introduced the term fixed points, but he introduced it to
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  refer to Captain Jack, this kind of fixed point in the universe.
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  In other words, it's always there.
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  Not the kind of, you know, Captain Jack can never change or
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  anything. It's just that Captain Jack is
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  always there and then suddenly we've got in, let's kill Hitler
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  this. Oh, we know the date and time
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  and location of the Doctor's death.
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  You know, same as in the 11th hour, Prisoner 0 seemed to know
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  that the Pandora would open and then silence would fall, even
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  though silence fell in a totally different universe to the one
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  that we were in, in the 11th hour.
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  I mean, I'd rather think a lot of this stuff.
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  The Doctor's death silence will fall.
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  It's all trailer fuel. It's all clickbait.
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  It's all how can we entice the audience?
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  And I don't think he really gives us shit about tying it all
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  up. And no and.
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  This is the difference in big Finnish In a lot of the books
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  you got people like Jonathan Morris who go to great pains to
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  write these wonderfully intricate, perfectly plotted
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  things where, yeah, they're all over the place in different time
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  zones and everything because they've had some kind of event
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  or something. Your first book club won
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  Festival of Death. Is the perfect example of this.
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  The Doctor turns out and turns up and finds out that he's just
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  died, you know? And then the whole of the rest
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  of the book is putting together all of the events that lead up
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  to it, but then giving the doctor an out, but still making
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  people think he's died. So is your big objection, then,
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  that he doesn't think any of this through?
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  Yes, there is zero thinking through of this.
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  To the extent where, and we'll talk about this briefly after
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  the episode, he even or he, the production team, the BBC or
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  whatever, end up rewriting parts of this episode in their
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  reference books. I didn't know that.
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  No. And my other delight till today
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  when I got so fed up that I actually ended up looking
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  something up and my brain went oh, what production team rewrote
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  sections of this episode? We'll get to that afterwards,
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  cuz they kind of it's hey yeah, it's cuz I say.
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  But at the end of the episode, I have got a very specific
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  question which I want to know your answer to and that will be
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  the one where kind of it's like you might be surprised at the
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  actual answer. All right, then.
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  I wanna turn your attention towards Series 6.
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  Okay. So we've done, we've done 48
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  years. Now let's do the Series 6 is a
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  total clusterfuck. It is a mess.
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  So Impossible Astronaut and Day of the Moon.
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  We've got this wonderful scenario where we see the Doctor
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  shot and regenerating. Except, of course, they put that
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  in the prepublicity, because Mofat can't resist putting all
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  the spoilers in the prepublicity.
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  The key thing is you get what should you get, River Song.
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  So I've got I'm a bitch about River Song as well.
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  In a minute you get River Song. So basic coming in.
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  There are entities that would tear the earth apart for a
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  single cell of the Time Lord, you know, causes a lot of times,
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  which is why you've got that big funeral pie seen out to see the
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  Viking ship and everything where presumably they intend the body
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  is kind of burnt to cinders and everything like that.
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  I mean, it's just a robot, so I don't matter.
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  Well, yeah, we'll get to that at the end of this episode because
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  it's kind of like what, you know, the Silence of being there
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  for centuries. They're all around us at the end
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  of it. Yes, the you know, the Doctor
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  does that very cliche thing of using a recording of the
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  Silence, putting it out as part of a broadcast.
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  Which did lead me to ask the question, what the hell happened
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  to all the dead bodies of all the Silence?
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  It's the same question I asked at the end of Heaven's Scent,
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  when all those bodies have come to life for cyber men you know
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  have been blown up all the bits. You mean dark water, by the way?
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  Yeah, that's not Oh no, What did I say?
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  I mean death in heaven. Sorry, not heaven's scent.
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  There's lots of heavens and Hells in the moffet era.
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  The hell is the viewers, right? The key.
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  The key thing is, though, at the end of Day of the Moon, the
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  little girl regenerates. Yeah, so it's approximately
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  Decemberish in 1969. Somehow she survived on the
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  streets for six months and she regenerates.
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  Curse the black spot. You then get the doctor,
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  basically leaving cell samples all over the place, despite what
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  River Song said about. Tearing the earth apart to find
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  a single spot. Oops, people.
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  And whatever the other half, I've only got most people from
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  the rebel flesh and the almost. Oh, rebel flesh as ghastly as
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  this. Which basically gets very
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  confusing because at the end of it, it turns out that Amy's
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  clothes were also made of flesh, which means that either.
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  You can or as the sources you can seemingly remove bits of
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  flesh and other people can wear it because of course the Doctor
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  takes the gang as shoes off and then wears them.
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  So does his shoes dissolve when he dissolves Amy?
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  And now I was thinking that for a while for all.
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  They. Or if the clothes are part of
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  the flesh, does this mean Rory hasn't had sex for six months?
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  Right. I'm more appalled, you know, by
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  the fact that a Doctor has been spending a whole episode
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  standing up for ganger's riots and then murders a ganger in the
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  final scene. Very strange.
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  Okay. We then take the season break,
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  the half half point season break, which I'm with Let's kill
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  Hitler. The gloriously fucking awful bad
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  taste where suddenly we find that young males is this is at
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  school with Amy. Amy is only kind of, you know,
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  her 20s or whatever, so presumably those scenes take
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  place in about 1998. Nineteen 99 kind of thing.
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  So where the hell has this regenerating little girl being
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  between 1969 and 1999? And why isn't she's 30 years old
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  by now? Don't you give Big Finish ideas,
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  all right? They've already done 13 River
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  Song Box. And more importantly, how did
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  some girl lost on the streets of New York end up as a young girl
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  in a British school? Yeah, well, you don't think
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  about this stuff. What he does is he expects us
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  to, not to. Also, it's exactly what he did
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  with Clara when she went from being a nanny to being a
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  teacher. You don't ask what happened in
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  between. It's happened and.
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  Then let's kill Hitler. We find out that Melody Pond is
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  the woman who killed the doctor. Okay.
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  That is stated as we'll find out in the coming as a good man goes
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  to war, you know? Yeah, with reason.
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  Oh, okay. Go on.
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  It's shit, Okay. I mean, that's where we learn
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  it's Amy's daughter. Yes, yeah, yes.
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  And the whole thing about if you have sex in the TARDIS you give
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  birth to. Yeah, right.
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  And more importantly, as I said earlier, Let's Kill Hitler is
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  where we get the mention of the fixed point where we learn from
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  the Tess selectors database. The date and time of the
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  Doctor's death. And then we go through a few
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  mediocre stories and then at the end of closing time, which is
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  where we're going to pick this up, we've got the kind of we got
• 14:33
  the Stetson in place, we get the blue TARDIS envelopes and more
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  importantly, we get the Doctor caressing the the police box
• 14:42
  going one last trip. And we're about to throw all of
• 14:50
  this out the window. Is it that it's too ambitious?
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  It's basically written by someone who isn't going back and
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  checking their work. It's like the first draft of a
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  story arc that he's just thrown in onto the page without
• 15:13
  actually. Kind of checking that the
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  details he puts in in the later episodes tie in with the ones in
• 15:22
  the earlier episodes. Cause bearing in mind as well
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  that kind of going back to various things.
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  You know, in the Space Museum we saw a timeline where the Doctor
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  was dead and frozen in a cabinet.
• 15:36
  In Pyramids of Mars, we saw a 1980 where the Earth was
• 15:40
  absolutely ravaged. You know, we blew the universe
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  up in The Big Bang. Rory's been written out of time
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  and killed countless number of times, yet none of these seem to
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  have had any impact on this fixed point where the Doctor
• 15:54
  absolutely definitely does die, you know?
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  And basically the, the and I'm going to justify this when we
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  get onto the actual episode Stephen Moffat is coming across.
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  As being to Doctor Who. As to what Boris Johnson was to
• 16:16
  government? Oh my God, promising shit loads
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  and delivering? Absolutely bugger.
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  All of it. You know what?
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  I I get that now and I say that, yeah, I don't even listen to any
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  of my previous Stephen Moffett episodes, but that's what I
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  always say. It's all promise and very
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  little. And then he goes back and says,
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  Oh no, I never said that. I said this instead, you know,
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  it's like. No.
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  And we've got so many examples of that coming up in The Wedding
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  of River Song. We've also got pure Doctor Who
• 16:47
  where he's come up with a nice trendy phrase, Miss Johnson, you
• 16:51
  know, which is absolutely meaningless.
• 16:55
  And I know Brexit hadn't even been dreamed of at this time,
• 16:59
  but quite frankly, this is the Brexiteers wet dream of a Doctor
• 17:02
  Who story. Go on.
• 17:05
  We'll get to that in a minute because it's it's actually an
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  important one of my comments for the This was going to be great,
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  I'll tell you. All right.
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  I watched. I told you this off my I watched
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  15 minutes of the Wedding of River Song this morning.
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  I was going to watch the entire thing.
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  I always do before. It's the only time I've not been
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  able to get through the episode. And I said to you, it's like
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  written by someone with attention deficit disorder.
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  You cannot have a prolonged scene between 2 characters in
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  this. And you know, and I think I
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  think it's selfish as well because he does this a lot where
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  he he comes in and he does have pretiles where there's like 15
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  scenes in 15 locations and he sucked the budget.
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  It's why we've got episodes like the dog complex, closing time in
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  a department store and things like this.
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  Because there's no money for anything else.
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  Because he wants to grandstand and he's the show he can.
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  It's with this one more than anything, I think he's using the
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  visuals to distract you from thinking about what's actually
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  being said. And what's actually going on?
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  But because there was so many ideas in each episode, so many
• 18:19
  diversions, and we're going to so many characters, James, I'll
• 18:22
  stop taking it in. My brain just said there's too
• 18:27
  much being juggled up here. Just stop and just look at the
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  pretty pictures and I'm wondering, you know, if he's
• 18:33
  trying to beat my intelligence into submission.
• 18:36
  It does feel like that. It really does.
• 18:40
  I heard him say in the Girl in the Fireplace commentary that
• 18:45
  you have to every minute or so you have to divert your
• 18:49
  audience, otherwise they're going to turn over to another
• 18:52
  channel and I think that is the wrong way to make.
• 18:55
  Absolutely trust your audience. Trust.
• 18:58
  Trust them to watch something like midnight with a 20 minute
• 19:01
  scene in the middle of. It, I mean, you look at the
• 19:03
  history of television, basically you got things like I, Claudius,
• 19:07
  you've got, you know? Shakespearean stuff on TV you
• 19:11
  got loads of complicated 2 hour long murder mysteries.
• 19:14
  I know Stephen Moffatt thinks that the audience is a fish and
• 19:17
  apologies to any goldfish that I've just insulted because
• 19:21
  basically he he he is terrified of people thinking about what is
• 19:27
  going on. And I'm afraid to say that,
• 19:31
  yeah, it's just. When even more so, because I'm
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  not saying that RTD was perfect and God only knows the classic
• 19:41
  series and Big Finish and all the books have been all over the
• 19:44
  place. But at least within kind of like
• 19:48
  the books, there's been some consistency about how time can
• 19:52
  be changed and the catastrophic events and stuff like that.
• 19:56
  And then, yeah, we get to this episode.
• 19:59
  And you know, like I've done enough of these with you now to
• 20:02
  know that you are somebody that I'll say the word obsessed, but
• 20:06
  will study the detail of a story if it's something that you like.
• 20:11
  And I'm now. Getting, I'm going to let.
• 20:14
  You know you don't like. You try to figure out why you
• 20:16
  don't like it. I'm going to let you in on
• 20:17
  something that was said to me in therapy because, you know, I
• 20:21
  have a I have a psychiatric disorder.
• 20:22
  I mentioned a lot of times on Twitter in the past, I kind of
• 20:24
  stopped talking about it a bit. These days I've got something
• 20:27
  called body dysmorphic disorder, and it's about the way I
• 20:31
  perceive my body and how people see me and stuff like that.
• 20:34
  But in the middle of one of my counseling sessions for it, the
• 20:37
  the therapist said oh. By the way, do you notice all
• 20:40
  the continuity errors and discrepancies when you're
• 20:43
  watching TV shows and everything?
• 20:45
  And I said yeah. And he said yeah, that's really
• 20:49
  common amongst people with certain mindsets.
• 20:53
  And the problem is, once you've got this mindset, trying to get
• 20:57
  out of it is virtually impossible.
• 21:00
  RTD manages it because he creates really lovely
• 21:04
  companions. He treats the audience like
• 21:06
  adults. As you say, Midnight is an
• 21:08
  incredibly grown up, terrifying, claustrophobic story.
• 21:12
  I think he knows how to make you feel as well, and that does
• 21:16
  sometimes cut through some of the illogic if.
• 21:20
  You if you are emoting when you're watching precisely and
• 21:25
  unfortunately not, that doesn't make me emote.
• 21:28
  Well, not in the way that he did.
• 21:31
  That he can make me emote, but with far less frequency and far
• 21:36
  less potency as well. And it sometimes it surprises me
• 21:40
  when he does, actually, as it is, I don't Sometimes it's not
• 21:42
  moments. I think he's intending to.
• 21:45
  Well, look, you know, we've clearly got a lot to unpick
• 21:48
  here. We should probably head into the
• 21:50
  episode and see what The Wedding of River Song.
• 21:54
  Another click bait title I'm I'm so tempted to do the countdown
• 21:58
  as 5.025.025.02. Well, it's all yours.
• 22:03
  Just do it five times and then I'll press play.
• 22:05
  I'll give you, I'll give you a proper countdown because I'm not
• 22:08
  going to stoop to that level. So on the count of 321.
• 22:16
  Off we know right now I'm going to refer back to one of your
• 22:20
  previous podcasts with the with Toby Haydock with the IT was one
• 22:27
  release recently of the stories forgotten but he talks a lot
• 22:29
  about kind of how much to give away in the previously on kind
• 22:34
  of bit and they make such a big deal of the test selector in
• 22:39
  this pre credit. I remember before the episode
• 22:41
  was shown, I was basically flipping a coin.
• 22:43
  Is it going to be the flesh Dr. from the rebel flesh or is it
• 22:47
  going to be a test selector? And then in all the bloody
• 22:50
  previously on, it's all the test selector.
• 22:52
  Oh, that's what it is. Then, you know, basically he's
• 22:54
  given away the ending within the first 30 seconds of the episode.
• 22:57
  Are we supposed to know that, though, Do you think?
• 22:59
  Do you think like he's got something else up his sleeve for
• 23:02
  the finale that that is so awful?
• 23:04
  It's going to be that? My problem is that he is the
• 23:08
  world's worst murder mystery writer.
• 23:11
  Oh, I'll get back to that during the title sequence because I
• 23:13
  want to comment on this. We later find out the whole of
• 23:16
  history is happening at once. No, the whole of history isn't
• 23:20
  happening at once. And more importantly, total
• 23:22
  common sense has gone out the window.
• 23:24
  You've got roads in London. Where the fuck would you hang
• 23:26
  cars from balloons? That makes no sense whatsoever.
• 23:30
  It's a pretty picture. As you said, it's trying to
• 23:31
  divert you. It's trying to distract you.
• 23:33
  It's like, well, no, that makes no sense.
• 23:36
  We're not on it long enough to think about it, are we?
• 23:39
  Really. Then they show it again later
• 23:40
  on, you know, They show it again at the end and they haven't got
• 23:42
  to the end before this. I just think this is.
• 23:44
  Lazy shorthand for all time now. So we've had dinosaurs, we've
• 23:49
  got Romans, we've got all War of the Roses, Right?
• 23:52
  War of the Roses. Enter second year.
• 23:53
  That's going to come up in a minute.
• 23:55
  We've got Shakespeare, we've got Churchill coming up.
• 23:58
  Basically we've got all the things from the Brexit big book
• 24:00
  of boys history. Yes, you know, we haven't got
• 24:04
  any of the shitty stuff. Where's the Blitz?
• 24:07
  Where's slavery? Where's the Vikings raping and
• 24:09
  pillaging people? We haven't got any of the nasty,
• 24:12
  awkward little bits of history we've got.
• 24:14
  Still kids watching. You know, James, we can't can't
• 24:17
  be too appalling, right? And first, massive objection to
• 24:21
  the Moffat era is Winston Churchill.
• 24:25
  Oh, don't get me. Go on.
• 24:27
  I've had Marseille. Yeah, he is an incredibly
• 24:30
  morally dubious character. He is not the jolly, fat, wobbly
• 24:35
  chin bloke that. Yeah, you go back to the Beast
• 24:39
  below and you can see the kind of they've got this fifties 60s
• 24:44
  fetish going on because they've turned all of the UK ship into a
• 24:50
  1960s tribute. Seriously, the Moffat and to
• 24:55
  some extent Gaitas who introduced Churchill are
• 24:58
  Brexiteers because they are insisting on this kind of
• 25:00
  glorified British history. The other problem I've got is of
• 25:06
  course that in victories of Dominic we learned that
• 25:08
  Churchill has been a friend of the Doctor for a very long time,
• 25:13
  which makes no sense in the context of any of the previous
• 25:16
  47 years. Right.
• 25:18
  It'll cuddle up to to Winston Churchill, but it won't give
• 25:21
  Danny Pink a second look. You know, I decided it's always
• 25:26
  502, afternoon or evening. It's always five or two.
• 25:30
  It's the same date, April 20. Hold on.
• 25:33
  If it's the same date, how do you know that?
• 25:34
  The Wall of the Rose has been going on for two years.
• 25:38
  How can you have afternoon and night if it's always 5 or O2?
• 25:44
  What he's done, what the plagiarist in chief has done, is
• 25:47
  he's taken that ridiculous sorry big thing is your ridiculous
• 25:51
  ultimate Divergent universe where time doesn't happen.
• 25:54
  And he said I'm going to have one with Time happens all at
• 25:57
  once because I'm going to do one up on Big Finish.
• 25:59
  And, you know, I don't think it works in either direction.
• 26:01
  I think they struggled in the Divergent universe, and he
• 26:04
  certainly fucking struggles. Do you know what else he does in
• 26:06
  this as well is Churchill says it's the thing I hate in science
• 26:10
  fiction. He says a ton of stuff to the
• 26:12
  doctor that they both already know.
• 26:14
  Deliver it to the audience you don't have.
• 26:17
  I'm not having a conversation with you now about stuff you
• 26:20
  already know. So in the closing time we had 01
• 26:27
  last trip. So now we've got this great long
• 26:30
  travel log of the Doctor doing shed loads of one last trip.
• 26:35
  Why the hell doesn't he just put the Stetson in the TARDIS
• 26:37
  wardrobe and go off somewhere? It was the scenic route, all
• 26:41
  right. Oh, by the way, if he's so pally
• 26:43
  with Winston Churchill when Rory and Amy are sent back to 1930s
• 26:47
  America, why doesn't he just get on the phone to Winnie asked
• 26:50
  them to shift Mount to England. He could collect them from
• 26:52
  there. That's a good point.
• 26:54
  If he's with Winston Churchill, you know, why hasn't he pally
• 26:57
  with the Daleks? They could be all a bunch of
• 26:58
  racists together, yeah, but no, Let's say kind of.
• 27:03
  They've introduced Churchill as this jolly, fat, wobbly person,
• 27:07
  one of the people who can remember alternate timelines.
• 27:10
  And it's like, no. And we won't even go into the
• 27:13
  whole ultimate. What is remember isn't
• 27:15
  remembered with that horrible crack plot line.
• 27:19
  Most science fiction series do the big glowing crack thing as a
• 27:21
  one episode story. More fact made it a 13 week
• 27:25
  disaster, right? Okay.
• 27:29
  So we've now got, oh look, we're repeating what we had in Goodman
• 27:34
  Goes to War, where we get the flashback to all the recent
• 27:38
  characters, for fuck's sake. I mean, this fellow's not, and
• 27:43
  neither is Mark Gates in a minute.
• 27:44
  These are all new characters, yeah, let's say, but this is the
• 27:46
  Tess selector. This is yet again reminding us
• 27:49
  that we've got a shape changing robots on our hands.
• 27:53
  Of course it is. And you know all of that, what
• 27:56
  we've had Churchill and the Silurian, and it is literally
• 27:59
  all shorthand of old characters that we've had before.
• 28:02
  But you're right, it does do that a lot.
• 28:04
  And it's the law of diminishing returns, yes, Which we're about
• 28:08
  to get big time with Irish walls.
• 28:10
  I'm sorry, River Song, sorry. I wish it was Irish Wild that
• 28:15
  got calm. Basically whilst they're
• 28:17
  waffling in science in the library, River Song started out
• 28:23
  as Bernice Summerfield and then when's Moffat took over he
• 28:28
  basically rewrote her as Iris. Wild Time mixed in with the plot
• 28:33
  twist from the Big Finish release.
• 28:35
  The game where the 5th Doctor meets Lord Carlisle at the very
• 28:39
  end of Lord Carlisle's life, when he's known the Doctor all
• 28:42
  his life, but the Doctor hasn't met him yet.
• 28:45
  So basically, kind of he's nicked that plot line from Big
• 28:48
  Finish. He was paying attention to any
• 28:50
  of that stuff. He's nicked this from bloody
• 28:52
  Blake 7, for fuck's sake. Of course it is.
• 28:55
  Speed Chess the It's deep Roy, isn't it?
• 29:00
  Mark Gatiss cuz of course, Stephen Morphett is incapable of
• 29:04
  doing anything without Mark Gatiss.
• 29:06
  How many Laura's Miles books do you think he read before he
• 29:08
  wrote Name of the Doctor? Probably about the same number
• 29:16
  that I made it through in one go.
• 29:22
  I did that. When we get to the book club,
• 29:26
  I'll talk about him, but yeah, more fat.
• 29:30
  I I do object to kind of him bringing Mark Gates into
• 29:33
  everything. I think he was one of the he was
• 29:34
  one of the worst things about twice upon a time and that's
• 29:37
  saying something. What?
• 29:38
  His performance? Yeah.
• 29:41
  I do not rate Mark Gates as an actor whatsoever.
• 29:44
  Oh see, I I quite right him as an actor.
• 29:46
  I don't really write him as a writer of this was a writer you
• 29:50
  you look at where he basically more fat keeps gates on as a as
• 29:53
  a writer to ensure that more fat doesn't come last in the DWM
• 29:57
  season polls. You bitch.
• 30:02
  The Daleks sleep no more. Yeah, and actually that pole,
• 30:06
  they just start. They were all at the bottom,
• 30:08
  weren't they? So we've now into this realm of
• 30:11
  kind of magic Indiana Jones heads.
• 30:15
  They had these weird headless skulls from the headless monks,
• 30:17
  isn't it? Yes, who are still sentients and
• 30:20
  active. Yeah, it's magic again, isn't
• 30:23
  it? He does like a bit of magic.
• 30:25
  I mean, the whole headless monk thing was just what the fuck was
• 30:28
  that all about? It was too many.
• 30:30
  Weird. They cut their heads off so that
• 30:31
  they aren't capable of thought anyway.
• 30:37
  Should we try it? Yes.
• 30:40
  Oh, and now we bring back Dorium.
• 30:43
  My gold Now this is 1 character I find intolerable and a bit at
• 30:47
  the end of this episode where he starts screaming out Doctor Who.
• 30:50
  That's the worst part of the new series for me, because he does
• 30:53
  that to stop you thinking about something he said just before
• 30:56
  it. Oh, what's that?
• 30:58
  Oh, we'll get here. Oh, yes.
• 31:02
  I mean, that is a bit ghoulish. Although skulls eating that man,
• 31:05
  the skulls kind of are just wobbling their jaws.
• 31:08
  They're not actually seemingly doing anything.
• 31:11
  I just don't think Dorian Valdeva was very funny.
• 31:14
  No. And this whole head in the
• 31:16
  boxing is just so overdone. And all the jokes about the
• 31:20
  Wi-Fi and everything. And Moffat, basically he's an
• 31:27
  he's a reasonably good sitcom writer.
• 31:28
  I mean, Cutling was a good sitcom, very, very dated.
• 31:32
  But it's. Smug.
• 31:34
  I found that yes, smug is the four letter word that
• 31:37
  encompasses the whole of the Moffat era do.
• 31:41
  You know, the only thing I've seen of his that I I didn't find
• 31:44
  intolerably smug was Press Gang. Yeah, because he hasn't.
• 31:49
  Still think it's his finest achievement because the Cult of
• 31:52
  Moffat hadn't built up by that stage.
• 31:55
  You start believing in yourself and then you're handed a show
• 31:58
  where you can go anywhere. And by the way, if it's 502 all
• 32:01
  the time, how's the Doctor going to be it?
• 32:05
  Well, I mean, clearly time is running.
• 32:07
  Yeah. All of history is happening at
• 32:09
  once. By the way, if all of history is
• 32:12
  happening at once, why? What is an adrec coming in?
• 32:17
  That would be amazing, wouldn't it?
• 32:19
  But if all of history is happening at once, shouldn't it
• 32:21
  just be just a still image, right?
• 32:23
  And he even says it's like a wreck, a needle stuck in the
• 32:26
  groove. No.
• 32:26
  If it's a needle stuck in the groove, you get the you get that
• 32:29
  one revolution over and over and over.
• 32:33
  I would not wait for a particularly gripping hour of
• 32:35
  television. Well, except later on we find
• 32:40
  out that apparently everything is progressing normally for the
• 32:43
  rest of the universe. How?
• 32:46
  Yeah. He's just making it up, James.
• 32:49
  Yeah, basically kind of. He's got, he's got his Boris
• 32:53
  Johnson catch phrase of all the time happening at once, you
• 32:56
  know, and he doesn't have anything to back it up with.
• 33:02
  Oh, by the way, the Boris Johnson thing does continue
• 33:04
  because fairly soon we get into the kind of the pop star era
• 33:09
  where he buggers off every few years to do a big tour of the
• 33:12
  world with his entourage. Yeah.
• 33:17
  I never really thought of of that analogy before, but now I
• 33:20
  won't ever be able to forget. And I'm sorry, 20 Boris Johnson
• 33:24
  fans out there who are insulted by calling him Stephen Moffatt
• 33:29
  I. Thought I was mean.
• 33:33
  That's just this whole head in the box things.
• 33:36
  The sentient, moving skulls. You.
• 33:39
  Know what's weird is this is where the story has slowed down.
• 33:42
  Now, this thing of these dancing skulls and a man with his head
• 33:47
  in a box, it's just kind of terrible, terrible jokes.
• 33:55
  I mean, they're not even good jokes, right?
• 33:58
  And he can write good jokes. Yes, he can.
• 34:00
  I don't think they land half the time, but he can write good
• 34:04
  jokes. Can I just say, by the way, that
• 34:06
  I absolutely detest this console room?
• 34:09
  Yeah, me too. The the the thing that always
• 34:11
  bugged me about it, it was, you know, at the start of the 11th
• 34:16
  hour the old console room is destroyed and everything and
• 34:19
  basically the TARDIS kind of regrows itself.
• 34:21
  Why does it regrow itself in this wacky Earth based
• 34:24
  typewriter hot and cold tap way? Why doesn't it regrow itself
• 34:28
  back into something that looks like an actual functioning alien
• 34:31
  console? And it is something that I mean,
• 34:35
  I really like the next one because I feel more functional,
• 34:39
  but then you head into a whisker 0 and I I like the atmospherics
• 34:42
  of that one. But again, Salt Lamps and I like
• 34:46
  it. I like it because it actually
• 34:47
  looks alien, but it's. Not a custard cream dispenser.
• 34:52
  It has a food dispenser. It's a throwback to David
• 34:55
  Whitaker. Zero.
• 34:56
  Anyway, yeah, so we've got kind of this lovely, chummy
• 35:00
  relationship which you don't ever really get again, do we?
• 35:05
  We Winston Churchill now he's then we're back again.
• 35:08
  He gets palmed off onto Big Finish, which I thought was
• 35:10
  absolutely bloody abysmal decision.
• 35:13
  Sorry, Big Finish. Those two or two box sets that
• 35:15
  you really shouldn't. Have done.
• 35:16
  I'll say I do really like Ian McNeese.
• 35:18
  Like, I'm a great actor, and he was so proud to be part of this.
• 35:23
  Yeah, but it's just all right. OK, we've now got oh, we've got
• 35:28
  the whole memory loss thing again with the silence and it's
• 35:34
  just kind of like, you know, forgetting that they've seen the
• 35:37
  which it's in some ways it's a good idea.
• 35:43
  But I'm just thinking kind of like has that crossed in the
• 35:46
  line, cross the line from science fiction into science
• 35:50
  fantasy sort of thing. There's a there's a really big
• 35:54
  blurring in this era more than any other about science fiction
• 36:00
  science fantasy, which actually kind of puzzles me.
• 36:04
  Because if you wanted an era which was all fairy tale and
• 36:08
  ethereal and fantasy based, why'd you have a hardcore disco
• 36:12
  tips version of the theme music? You know, why don't you have an
• 36:16
  ethereal, spooky fairy tale version of the theme music?
• 36:19
  Again, it's just kind of like, you know, he's commissioned it
• 36:22
  but not thought about how it ties in with the tone of the
• 36:24
  show. I don't know where where you can
• 36:29
  have the companion at the end of the season willing the Doctor
• 36:32
  back into existence. That's the sort of magic I just
• 36:35
  can't get behind, and I hate that two parties.
• 36:38
  People tell me that's a beautiful moment.
• 36:41
  No, it's not. It's shit.
• 36:42
  There are tears watching it because she, she's claimed her
• 36:45
  fairy, her childhood character, and that's people claiming, you
• 36:49
  know, Doctor Who from their childhood again and all of this.
• 36:52
  And I'm just like, yeah, but that made no sense.
• 36:55
  This bit I thought was very bad taste.
• 36:56
  With the death of the Brigadier, I did not like this.
• 36:59
  Oh, well, I mean, we've barely become in destroying Nicholas
• 37:03
  Courtney's memory, have we? Oh, I was about to say kind of,
• 37:05
  you know, and then bringing him back as the cyber Brig.
• 37:09
  And then giving him the dullest daughter, if known to mankind.
• 37:14
  Yeah, the poor Brig he should have.
• 37:17
  He should have just made an appearance, you know, while he
• 37:19
  could have, Yeah. I mean it's very telling that
• 37:24
  yeah there was a lot from from every there's a lot of backlash
• 37:28
  against this scene and I do wonder if Stephen Moore I
• 37:31
  thought oh I'll I'll bring the Brig back as a as a robot and
• 37:36
  it's just. Like, no, he I think he digs
• 37:38
  his. He double s down.
• 37:39
  He doesn't say. He doesn't apologize if if he's
• 37:43
  done something and there's a bad reaction, he does it again.
• 37:46
  But worse point. Mark Gatiss.
• 37:49
  Right. OK, so so we've got this kind
• 37:53
  of, oh, we've now got the whole the, the, the blue envelopes and
• 37:59
  everything. Do you know what the one thing I
• 38:01
  did like about The Impossible Astronaut, and I didn't like
• 38:04
  that at all, but one thing I did like was when he invited himself
• 38:07
  to his own death. That was one moment where I was
• 38:10
  like, that's quite funny. Yeah, actually.
• 38:12
  I mean, the sad thing is as a as a science fiction thing.
• 38:18
  Impossible Astronaut Day of the Moon, if it was a single movie
• 38:23
  without episodes after it, without ramifications, without
• 38:27
  everything that it actually is really good.
• 38:30
  But the problem is, it's part of a series, and the series doesn't
• 38:33
  ever really gel with itself. You know, I said that I think if
• 38:37
  I wouldn't want to watch it because I don't like the
• 38:39
  episodes, but if there was like 6 episodes like The Flux, it
• 38:42
  just was a condensed season, yes.
• 38:45
  Maybe because all those individual episodes, those
• 38:48
  standalones just are bits thrown in that don't make a bit of
• 38:52
  sense in context, No. So yeah, we've got all the
• 38:57
  flashbacks because MUFAT can't be bothered to write a full
• 39:01
  episode, you know, Going to remember.
• 39:03
  Also, up until now, the season finales had basically always
• 39:08
  been like an hour long. This is the first season finale
• 39:12
  that isn't A2 parter and is 45 minutes.
• 39:16
  And and it's doing a lot of heavy lifting for this season as
• 39:19
  well, Yeah, and. This would be like A2 parter.
• 39:22
  Wouldn't you like that one? Oh yeah, so.
• 39:27
  She is Riverside, who basically every single line either has to
• 39:31
  be some sassy quip or an overwrought declaration of love
• 39:35
  for the doctor. It does annoy me that she is
• 39:37
  supposed to be this independent. She is one.
• 39:40
  She is one level of emoting away from becoming a bloody drag
• 39:43
  queen. She is that sort of character.
• 39:47
  Everything has to be a one liner.
• 39:49
  Everything has to be overall to motion.
• 39:52
  She basically almost like lip syncs.
• 39:54
  Some of her love for the Doctor. They they did do the back down
• 40:01
  test on the eras. Yeah Smith era scored by some
• 40:05
  margin, the worst of the new series.
• 40:10
  I think Oldies era did pretty well, but Matt?
• 40:13
  Will comment about the scoring of the the Smith era in a minute
• 40:17
  because I've done some research into that as well.
• 40:19
  Okay Yes, the world's The world's worst murder mystery
• 40:22
  writer. At chapter one we find person
• 40:26
  standing over a dead body with a blood soaked knife in their
• 40:29
  hand. And in Stephen Moffat's world
• 40:31
  the twist at the end is the person actually did do it.
• 40:35
  Obvious there were no twists in the kind of the plot line of it
• 40:44
  it was. I know it went all over the
• 40:46
  place in terms of history, as in years, but it did seem an
• 40:51
  incredibly linear season without many twists and turns.
• 40:56
  The only one which I thought was good was Amy dissolving into
• 41:00
  flesh. And if that had been the mid
• 41:02
  season cliffhanger where you ended the season with the word
• 41:05
  push and you then had to wait four months to find out what the
• 41:09
  hell was going on, that would have been amazing.
• 41:14
  And then they started with. Then they put a good man goes to
• 41:16
  war on after it and the. Annoying thing about that is is
• 41:19
  I did guess the twist in the series in the scene before
• 41:22
  because they really stressed the Melody Pond name.
• 41:25
  Yeah, right. Melody Pond, Riverside.
• 41:28
  Quick comment, when we get in the flashbacks in Longshot, it's
• 41:33
  clear they're on location. No, that that is a that's a
• 41:36
  backdrop. Yeah, that's what I mean.
• 41:38
  It's like kind of why didn't they film this when they were on
• 41:41
  location? I don't know, but it is,
• 41:43
  unfortunately now. Television is so sophisticated.
• 41:46
  Things like strange things, they can do this effortlessly.
• 41:49
  But I'm watching this on my bloody Android tablet and I can
• 41:53
  tell clearly that it's a fucking green screen backdrop.
• 41:58
  They wait in America. Why didn't they film it?
• 42:01
  Yeah, that's a good point. I'm not going to be too tough on
• 42:04
  the visuals in this though, because I do think the money's
• 42:07
  on the screen for the most part, yeah.
• 42:09
  And say when we get to the end we're going to fight over who
• 42:11
  gets that as one of their three good things.
• 42:15
  So we can then get that weird crashing of history.
• 42:19
  Even though so many bloody times in, as I said at the start, in
• 42:23
  the 47 or 48 years leading up to this, we've seen timelines where
• 42:27
  the doctors dead or we've seen timelines where kind of, you
• 42:30
  know, everything has gone to part.
• 42:32
  And then yeah, for those 40 is there was always some kind of
• 42:37
  consistency to the way that time could be changed and how it
• 42:41
  worked once it had been changed. And Motha has come along and
• 42:47
  said, oh, I'm in charge now. There were all these rules.
• 42:50
  I'll make everyone else stick to them, but I'm going to do what I
• 42:52
  like with them. Boris Johnson, you know, it's
• 42:55
  kind of. It's like it's the objection I
• 42:58
  make to, you know, you brought up the Aztecs.
• 43:00
  We can't write history, not one line.
• 43:02
  And then you get something like A Christmas Carol, where the the
• 43:04
  fundamental premise of that is that he is going back and
• 43:07
  rewriting somebody's life. And strangely, with A Christmas
• 43:11
  Carol, the ship that's about to crash into them doesn't realize
• 43:14
  that time has changed. From memory, yeah, it's just
• 43:18
  like. And the problem is, again, it
• 43:21
  would be fine if at the start of Series 5, he'd laid down the law
• 43:25
  about his version of what time travel and changing time could
• 43:29
  and couldn't do. He seems to have to lay down a
• 43:33
  new law every 5 minutes to justify what his own actions
• 43:37
  are, which again is anyway. Do you wonder if because we know
• 43:42
  he was juggling 2 shows, do you wondering if his eye was just
• 43:45
  off the ball? No, because actually series
• 43:49
  five, he had two years to create.
• 43:53
  And I'm gonna do my final parallel with Boris Johnson.
• 43:57
  God. Go away.
• 43:59
  He's got his dream job, doesn't know what to do with it.
• 44:03
  So he's copying what everyone else has done.
• 44:06
  You know, he's basically kind of he's got no, he's got this.
• 44:10
  I'm the boss of Doctor Who. Oh, I need characters.
• 44:14
  Oh my God, I need this. I need that.
• 44:16
  I oh, I better have a modern day character.
• 44:18
  I better give him a give her a boyfriend.
• 44:21
  I'd better basically kind of, you know, and.
• 44:25
  I mean, I'd say season six, series 6 hasn't been done before
• 44:28
  this sort of long. Sort of dense arc.
• 44:32
  This hasn't been done before except in the EDA's and.
• 44:37
  And and that's fair, in 10 year arcs, the big finish did with
• 44:40
  the. Season 2 of Paul McGann and Big
• 44:43
  Finish two of Paul McGann. It's just like.
• 44:45
  All right. I I retract that statement.
• 44:49
  Oh, look, here she is in the most meta joke ever, where we
• 44:52
  all turn around and we're wearing eye patches.
• 44:55
  Amy Ponds. Oh, by the way, just going back
• 44:58
  to the whole eye patch. When we learn that it's the only
• 45:00
  way that you can retain the information in one of the
• 45:04
  previous stories, I can't which one it was, I made a note about
• 45:09
  it. They say that basically I think
• 45:12
  it was the day of the moon. Even technology has the stuff
• 45:17
  erased from it, and it's like, well, suddenly we've now got it
• 45:21
  that it's not erased from it. It's just like.
• 45:24
  Well, I think the idea here is it's all time and widely so
• 45:26
  Everything you've previously learned is out the window.
• 45:28
  Yeah, so it's. Making it up again.
• 45:31
  Yeah, basically I've there's one bit coming up which I'm gonna be
• 45:38
  very, very bitchy about, but about one person I'm never
• 45:43
  bitchy about. This is the only time I'm going
• 45:46
  to say this right Amy's drawing of Rory.
• 45:50
  There is only one place where there is a worse drawing of Rory
• 45:56
  and I I swear he paid the comic strip guys to give Rory biceps
• 46:04
  and muscles in the chains of Olympus where he's in a toga and
• 46:08
  he's got these ultra toned biceps.
• 46:13
  Yeah, that I know of Darville, though, is it?
• 46:17
  And you know what I'm going to say I do really like Arthur
• 46:19
  Darville and I do really like Rory.
• 46:21
  And I think that's the regular that works for me in this whole
• 46:24
  era. Yeah, I miss Rory massively.
• 46:27
  Rory is a goofball. Rory is basically the Comic
• 46:31
  Relief with the heart of gold. He is Harry Sullivan.
• 46:33
  He is Christopher Quedge. He is that he, Amy isn't the
• 46:38
  grounding for the audience. No, I just couldn't buy into Amy
• 46:43
  Pond at all. But you know what?
• 46:45
  I'm going to say this. I've done a couple of these
• 46:48
  Stephen Moffett episodes in this era with heterosexual men.
• 46:53
  I know. I'm thinkable, right?
• 46:55
  But they love her because she's sassy and she's pretty and she's
• 46:59
  a bit morally dubious. And you know what?
• 47:01
  So I. A sex or a girl?
• 47:05
  Maybe straight men like that. But I'm going to say there is an
• 47:07
  audience for her. Oh yes.
• 47:09
  No, it's not you and me. It's just not.
• 47:10
  And this, this is the problem. Russell T Davis knew what the
• 47:15
  core audience was, and knew what the subsidiary audience was, and
• 47:19
  knew how to play to both of them.
• 47:21
  Indeed, he gave us lots of topless fit men on a very
• 47:25
  regular basis. A ton of beautiful women as
• 47:28
  well, yeah. Again, love that.
• 47:31
  I do love that train going into the period.
• 47:33
  I don't care about the logic. It looks like, oh, the United
• 47:38
  States for us. I know he's such a conservative.
• 47:43
  And he Oh, and of course. Is he a conservative Moffett?
• 47:47
  I don't know. I don't care.
• 47:49
  Russell T Davis. The joke was all his secret
• 47:53
  bases were under English landmark, So of course Moffett
• 47:56
  has to go for a world landmark instead.
• 47:58
  But it's the same thing. It is.
• 48:00
  Russell T Davis wiped out 10% of the population, so Stephen
• 48:04
  Moffatt had to destroy the entire universe.
• 48:07
  Yeah, it's basically It's almost like Moffatt feels like he's in
• 48:12
  the Dick measuring contest with Russell T Davis.
• 48:15
  He's got to do everything that Russell T Davis did, only one
• 48:18
  stage bigger and bolder and better.
• 48:20
  But as anyone who's ever read a Dave Stone novel will know that
• 48:24
  doing everything all at once to an extreme does not make a
• 48:28
  smooth read. Yeah, interesting watch.
• 48:32
  Interesting. By the way, the visuals in this
• 48:36
  are very similar to the visuals in Dark Water and Death in
• 48:39
  Heaven of the creature suspended in the tank.
• 48:41
  He's again got one visual idea, which he again reuses later on.
• 48:46
  But he certainly recycles his the weird thing about him
• 48:49
  recycling his ideas, so I'm not sure he perfects them.
• 48:52
  I think they get worse as they go.
• 48:54
  Russell T Davis kind of picks something, runs with it and
• 48:59
  makes it a joke between him and the audience.
• 49:03
  Everyone in All in all the seasons is waiting for the next
• 49:06
  London landmark to be destroyed. Yeah, that doesn't have that
• 49:10
  kind of or he never. I never had that relationship
• 49:13
  with more fats episodes where I was thinking like, we've done
• 49:16
  this is this year, this this year.
• 49:18
  How is he going to top it this year?
• 49:19
  It's just like, Oh my God, he did this this year.
• 49:21
  Oh, he's done it again. This this.
• 49:23
  And I think Rusty Davis as well created a world that we could
• 49:28
  all buy in and that world existed from Rose all the way
• 49:32
  through to the end of time. I don't think Moffett's doing
• 49:34
  the same thing. He we're not coming back to the
• 49:36
  same character that he's basically shaking it up every
• 49:39
  year. We'll come back to that after
• 49:41
  the episode, because I've got some notes and some comments
• 49:45
  about the fallout from this and some other things.
• 49:50
  I mean, it's just yeah. But I was always going to ask
• 49:53
  you at the end of this, is there anything else you wanted to
• 49:55
  cover? Because I knew you wouldn't be
• 49:57
  able to do it within the episode itself.
• 49:59
  No, I mean, there's just, you know, it is.
• 50:02
  Yeah, I'd say it's just kind of, it's the British Museum again
• 50:06
  from the Pandora Opens, The Big Bang.
• 50:08
  It's, you know, Well, look, it's that close up of the clock
• 50:13
  digital clock thing that we had about the time code of the
• 50:16
  universe counting down to Amy's wedding.
• 50:18
  He's doing exactly the same thing in just.
• 50:22
  Look, here's half cancelled but somehow still clinging on.
• 50:26
  Francis Barber, yeah. The thing is, I do love a camp
• 50:32
  villain, so I think earlier in the season when she got to just
• 50:35
  saw a hiss a bit, I quite enjoyed her.
• 50:38
  But we don't learn a fucking thing about her at all.
• 50:44
  She's one of the kind of the Tracy Ann Oberman type people.
• 50:49
  I don't like Yvonne Hartman from Torchwood because again, I find
• 50:52
  a completely unrealistic and unrelatable to River Song.
• 50:56
  I River Song in Big Finish, by the way.
• 50:59
  I think they do her so much better.
• 51:02
  She hasn't got all that smug as assholes dialogue, that's why.
• 51:05
  And also they throw out certain aspects of continuity but
• 51:09
  bringing better things to replace it and the you know,
• 51:13
  hold on and it's like in you know when when she first meets
• 51:19
  tenant, she says. I've never seen you looking so
• 51:21
  young. Well, actually, kind of.
• 51:24
  Matt Smith looks a lot younger. Yeah, well.
• 51:26
  Hang on though, we didn't know what was coming then.
• 51:29
  I know Magic Time that somehow River Song and Matt Smith
• 51:35
  touching allows time to advance. That's right, yes.
• 51:41
  Now, bearing in mind that last year we found out that, you
• 51:44
  know, a room full of box, a room full of air from one universe
• 51:48
  could be used to recreate another universe.
• 51:54
  Biology basically says that there's gonna be an awful lot of
• 51:56
  River Song floating around in the air from when she's breathed
• 51:58
  out her hair follicles and everything.
• 52:01
  Matt Smith is gonna have touched her by now.
• 52:04
  It's just yeah. Yeah, he's making it up.
• 52:07
  I'm gonna keep saying it. Oh, yeah, Let's guess.
• 52:12
  Let's see if we can guess what happens to the villains that are
• 52:14
  being kept in tanks of water. They're gonna smash out Earth
• 52:18
  shots, yes. Cyberman, we've been there
• 52:22
  before. But you know what?
• 52:24
  That's I think that's always pretty a good moment, isn't it?
• 52:27
  We're monsters. And actually this bit with the
• 52:30
  water dripping is done pretty well, but that's because he's
• 52:35
  not got ridiculous dialogue going on.
• 52:38
  He's letting the picture actually build the suspense.
• 52:41
  I just don't think you're ever going to get a better monster
• 52:44
  smashing through something than you did in Rise of the Sidemen
• 52:47
  when those sidemen crash the party because Graham Harper
• 52:50
  directs the shit out of that. Oh, again, there's, you know,
• 52:55
  there's there's cliche images, but if you direct them, well
• 52:58
  then yeah, they're cliches for a reason.
• 53:01
  I can see that smashing glass in my mind's eye.
• 53:04
  I'm starting to sound like Mary White House Jesus.
• 53:08
  Just don't start to look like her.
• 53:09
  Why is Madam Kevarian's deal? Who is she?
• 53:13
  Where is she from? Why is she doing this?
• 53:15
  Why is she by herself, with the silence?
• 53:17
  Because enough of her now that we should expect those answers.
• 53:21
  Yeah, silence. Zapping kind of electricity.
• 53:26
  It's an interesting idea, but it's kind of, you know, that
• 53:29
  it's got guns built into their hands.
• 53:31
  You know, it's not something that's been that's particularly
• 53:33
  new. Well, especially the Daleks,
• 53:36
  isn't it? Yeah.
• 53:38
  Oh, now, here we go. All the eye patches.
• 53:42
  Sizzle. Sizzle.
• 53:44
  Yeah. And basically she's just kind of
• 53:46
  like super villainess of the week sort of thing.
• 53:50
  She doesn't have. Well, not that I can remember.
• 53:55
  I don't remember any back story, really for her in A Good Man
• 53:59
  Goes to War. I don't remember kind of.
• 54:02
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 54:04
  And it's just kind of like, oh, I'm not gonna sort of by the
• 54:07
  doctor surviving this big zappy vaulty thing, but the effects
• 54:12
  will vary from person to person depending upon what contract
• 54:15
  they've signed and if they're a speaking character or a non
• 54:17
  speaking extra and playing it as every single female villain ass
• 54:23
  has ever played. I believe the electricity knows
• 54:26
  if they're needed for next week. Yeah.
• 54:31
  And what a surprise. The monsters have turned on
• 54:35
  their human ally and they're going to do her in, yeah.
• 54:38
  Yeah, Why is that? That's never explained.
• 54:40
  However, I'd I'd I think we care at this point.
• 54:44
  Do we? None of them are wearing eye
• 54:46
  patches, so they should have all forgotten the silence anyway.
• 54:48
  So are we saying this is just a series of scenes without any
• 54:53
  logic or thought at all? Just a series of images and
• 54:58
  twists and turns. Designed to make you sit there
• 55:02
  and just watch the moment. Yeah, and not actually think
• 55:07
  about what's going on. As strange that Rory still has
• 55:12
  his own and is seemingly in perfect control because that's
• 55:16
  what the plot requires. Yeah, I don't buy that bit, I'm
• 55:21
  afraid. We're still doing this bit as
• 55:23
  well. Where Amy's going to fall for
• 55:24
  him again. Yeah, Jesus Christ.
• 55:29
  And I actually do think they had a nice exit in the God complex
• 55:34
  and we really didn't need to see him again.
• 55:38
  Yeah, I say kind of there's there are a few episodes of
• 55:42
  Smith that I genuinely like, and the God Complex is one of them.
• 55:45
  A because I think it's a nice simple story told very well,
• 55:48
  very visually, and B because it actually gives a genuinely
• 55:52
  decent closure to. Moffett has got a hard on right
• 55:57
  now. Amy's got a submachine gun.
• 56:00
  She's blasting away at the monsters.
• 56:02
  Her hair looks fabulous. Yeah, it's just.
• 56:08
  Oh, and that this I find unforgivable.
• 56:10
  I've had many arguments with people about this scene where
• 56:13
  she murders Madame Cavarian without consequence.
• 56:19
  When do we ever get to a point where?
• 56:21
  Where this was OK, like it wasn't OK when Lula did it, that
• 56:25
  was always an issue. Once was bugged.
• 56:28
  Me is the reboss operation where the doctor basically hands the
• 56:31
  graph into graph in decay, the bomb counts down to the
• 56:35
  destination and then last. That, to me, is a really
• 56:38
  freaking awful bit. Well, I think the way this is,
• 56:41
  this is presented, it's a triumph that she's killed this
• 56:45
  woman. Yeah, it's it's vengeance.
• 56:48
  It's not Doctor Who. It's really kind of yeah.
• 56:53
  Oh, and there's a nice James OnStar with.
• 56:55
  Yeah, with the Colin Baker line. Or perhaps we'll have a drink
• 56:58
  sometime. Very strange.
• 57:00
  Oh, now, I did say that you can see the money on the screen, but
• 57:04
  I think the greatest on top of this pyramid looks terrible.
• 57:09
  It's really weird that there's a bit in the 11th hour where the
• 57:13
  green screen is absolutely, shockingly awful.
• 57:16
  It's just nice that they kind of pay tribute to that with this
• 57:18
  particular scene. Why do they have to get married?
• 57:22
  I don't know. I don't think Stephen Moffett
• 57:25
  knows. No.
• 57:26
  It's just because basically, you know, beneath Summerfield banged
• 57:32
  the Doctor. Iris Wildtime wants to bang the
• 57:34
  Doctor, so therefore to do one up in the ship he has to have a
• 57:38
  companion marry the Doctor. Yeah, but.
• 57:41
  And then the doctor acknowledged that he is she is his wife.
• 57:45
  And that she had a profound impact on his life.
• 57:48
  The most important woman he's ever known.
• 57:50
  Except until Clara came along. But she was the most important
• 57:53
  woman he'd ever known. Yeah, Moffat, allegedly in one
• 58:00
  interview, allegedly because there is some dispute about,
• 58:03
  they said the kind of, you know, between wives.
• 58:04
  He banged his way around women like a mechanical digger kind of
• 58:08
  thing. And you feel like that's being
• 58:10
  reflected on screen. Basically he just needs this
• 58:13
  never ending stream of women for him to kind of right out of his
• 58:18
  system, you know? Makes you feel sorry for Bill,
• 58:21
  you know, because she's never acknowledged as the most
• 58:23
  important woman he ever. He just blew out in her, and as
• 58:26
  such, she's probably the most realistic and best companion of
• 58:29
  the entire Stephen Moffatt era. She is just a companion.
• 58:33
  She's not an important plot line.
• 58:34
  She's not this mystery to be solved.
• 58:38
  She's someone who likes traveling with the Doctor and
• 58:41
  that was wonderful. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 58:44
  Well, and I. But I do think as well that she
• 58:47
  did have some inconsistent writing that year, but the
• 58:49
  actress smoothed it over. She was so good.
• 58:53
  And yeah, this kind of marriage business is just shit.
• 58:57
  Sorry. I I don't see the reason for it
• 59:00
  other than it's almost like a bootstrap paradox.
• 59:03
  The Doctor marries her because he knows the Doctor marries her.
• 59:10
  The greatest love story ever told.
• 59:14
  Because there is an obsession with family in the Stephen
• 59:17
  Moffett era, especially in the Matt Smith era, and there's a
• 59:19
  lot of families in, there is is this sort of an obsession to
• 59:22
  give the doctor a family? A wife?
• 59:25
  Again, it's the one upmanship on Russell T Davis, who had the
• 59:30
  dysfunctional family type stuff. Was a proper family though.
• 59:33
  They they went at each other, hammer and tongs.
• 59:36
  They did ridiculous things. They annoyed each other and
• 59:42
  what? Why?
• 59:43
  What? Oh God, yeah, And this device
• 59:47
  apparently is signaling out to the rest of the universe that
• 59:50
  the Doctor needs help because the rest of the universe isn't
• 59:53
  affected by history all happening at once.
• 59:56
  It's just like what? How?
• 59:58
  Why? My brain is zoned out at this
• 1:00:00
  point, so I just didn't care. I was just sort of nodding and
• 1:00:03
  going stuff is happening. That's fine.
• 1:00:06
  Basically more fat is trying to write.
• 1:00:10
  He's trying to write romance scene and failing miserably.
• 1:00:14
  Where did this one poll? In that Matt Smith poll?
• 1:00:17
  Oh, I can't recently. I actually think it was quite
• 1:00:19
  low. This one I don't finish too
• 1:00:21
  well. I didn't seem to check that, but
• 1:00:23
  I have got some other data about this story which is really
• 1:00:26
  damning. Oh, fabulous.
• 1:00:28
  Well then we'll get that at the end, shall we?
• 1:00:30
  Oh yeah. Oh, trust me when I do a hatchet
• 1:00:32
  job. Oh great.
• 1:00:36
  I'm going to get some more stories you don't like.
• 1:00:38
  If this is the result, I'm going to surprise you with the next
• 1:00:42
  one. We're doing though.
• 1:00:44
  There's well, we'll get there. There's this curious obsession.
• 1:00:49
  And I know Davis started this with the Doctor in Doctor Who.
• 1:00:53
  Now isn't there at this point in the show?
• 1:00:56
  Yeah. I mean, never was like that in
• 1:00:58
  the classic series, was it? We just accepted the fact that
• 1:01:01
  he was a time traveler. I mean, again, it's almost like
• 1:01:04
  a leftover from the Cardinal Master plan.
• 1:01:08
  Why wouldn't they snog? Does time go back to normal?
• 1:01:11
  It's it's the physical contact. Remember the arm bit earlier
• 1:01:14
  where he grabbed? Why does that happen?
• 1:01:17
  No idea. It's magic.
• 1:01:18
  But it's also interesting that kind of he grabbed her arm, so
• 1:01:21
  it wasn't even touching River Song, it was touching her coat,
• 1:01:24
  and presumably here it's touching her lipstick, right?
• 1:01:26
  The big funeral part, you know? Presumably at the end of day of
• 1:01:32
  the moon they checked that pyre to make sure there were no cells
• 1:01:36
  left unburnt because of rivers, instruction about it and
• 1:01:40
  everything, all the cars on the balloons disappearing and the
• 1:01:42
  pterodactyl disappearing. The Earth went back to exactly
• 1:01:46
  how it was before all this madness occurred.
• 1:01:49
  There was no changes whatsoever. And what's?
• 1:01:53
  The point of that then what was the point of it?
• 1:01:55
  But we're about to find out. There was no point to this whole
• 1:01:57
  season. Oh go on, tell me when we get to
• 1:02:00
  it. I will point it out because I
• 1:02:03
  screamed at the television set when it happened first time
• 1:02:05
  around, because it instantly stood out to me as Mofat just
• 1:02:11
  writing Series 6 out of history. Go on.
• 1:02:14
  No, we'll say. We will get to it.
• 1:02:19
  This is the one time you know where I actually felt the three
• 1:02:21
  of them were portrayed as a family.
• 1:02:24
  Just sitting around in a garden having a drink.
• 1:02:26
  And you'll notice River is not trying to be sassy.
• 1:02:31
  She's not trying to be emotion. It's the one time in the Moffat
• 1:02:37
  era where I actually can believe that she is some kind of person.
• 1:02:44
  I don't buy her in any other Moffat era episode other than
• 1:02:49
  this one scene. That's sad isn't it?
• 1:02:52
  Cuz she's in a lot of it, yeah. And she's also dangling plot
• 1:02:56
  thread of the Moffat era, because in the name of the
• 1:02:59
  Doctor, she somehow magically reappears as that ghost in the
• 1:03:03
  seance scene. Clara says.
• 1:03:05
  How are you? Here she goes.
• 1:03:06
  Spoilers and we never find out. Just can't let her go, can he?
• 1:03:10
  It's the hex thing in in Big Finish.
• 1:03:13
  They just can't let people go when they should let them go.
• 1:03:16
  Yeah, and they haven't got the courage to kill people off when
• 1:03:19
  they should kill people off. Yeah, this is, you know, this is
• 1:03:25
  a believable thing because there's no overacting, there's
• 1:03:29
  no overall stuff. It's quite charming.
• 1:03:34
  And the bit in a moment is the bit that I do when when you see
• 1:03:38
  Amy and River hugging and bouncing up and down with joy.
• 1:03:43
  That bit, I can't believe that's the only bit in the whole of the
• 1:03:48
  bloody thing. I have that exact same problem
• 1:03:50
  with the good Man goes to War, right?
• 1:03:51
  So load of sound and fury signifying nothing.
• 1:03:54
  And then you get that one scene where the Doctor, Amy and Rory
• 1:03:57
  are all reunited and they're cracking jokes and they're
• 1:04:00
  hugging and I'm like. Yeah, I just wanted an episode
• 1:04:03
  of this. Let's just have more of this,
• 1:04:05
  you know? Yeah, it's it's kind of we don't
• 1:04:09
  want the big pompous stuff. We don't want the the sass, we
• 1:04:12
  don't want the kind of the. We just want decent dialogue,
• 1:04:15
  decent characters, quietness. Oh, Rory coming back.
• 1:04:19
  That was the home sign. I you know what?
• 1:04:21
  I genuinely think the majority of fans were just exhausted by
• 1:04:27
  the end of this season, exhausted of this bullshit.
• 1:04:30
  Not everybody I know. I spoke to people, Dylan Reese,
• 1:04:32
  people that absolutely loved it and found this a satisfying
• 1:04:35
  ending. But I think the majority were
• 1:04:37
  like, okay, thank God that's over.
• 1:04:40
  Let's start the next season. Yeah.
• 1:04:42
  And actually that was the only reason I tuned into Series 7,
• 1:04:45
  because I thought they're advertising it as movie of the
• 1:04:48
  week kind of thing. Thank God they're doing
• 1:04:50
  something different. I mean, it was still not very
• 1:04:53
  good, but at least it wasn't some ridiculously big plot talks
• 1:04:56
  that didn't work. You've got the delights of the
• 1:04:58
  Doctor, the widow and the wardrobe next.
• 1:05:01
  Yes, Which is the in my top three cures for insomnia, right?
• 1:05:06
  Listen very carefully to this following scene.
• 1:05:07
  I mean, I'm going to turn out so I can hear it properly.
• 1:05:09
  I'll pick a one. Right.
• 1:05:11
  So we're back to Dorium. Yeah, right.
• 1:05:16
  OK, so Dorium now knows that the Doctor has survived because
• 1:05:22
  Dorium, right? How could you have possibly have
• 1:05:26
  escaped? He says.
• 1:05:27
  Right, okay, okay. So now we get the big reveal
• 1:05:31
  that, ah, what a surprise, That whole test selector thing that
• 1:05:33
  you kind of built up so massively earlier in the episode
• 1:05:36
  turns out to be the thing that is the shock twist.
• 1:05:43
  And to be honest, if I'm in the giant metal robot, by the way,
• 1:05:45
  which is then sit on fire, I'm going to want a sauna suit.
• 1:05:49
  But anyway, yeah, right. Okay, okay.
• 1:05:57
  So. So this is right he there's this
• 1:06:01
  kind of whole get out clause bit.
• 1:06:02
  That's fine. Let them all think you're dead.
• 1:06:06
  No, he doesn't do that at all. We'll get to that in a minute,
• 1:06:10
  right? Step back into the shadows we
• 1:06:16
  accept for creating an anachronisms that eunuch can
• 1:06:19
  detect. For fuck's sake.
• 1:06:23
  Right, Right. All Still waiting for you.
• 1:06:33
  How does Dorian know there's stuff still waiting for you if
• 1:06:36
  Dorian thought that the Doctor died on Lake Bloody Silencio?
• 1:06:40
  Well, it's like the Master with his backup plans, just in case.
• 1:06:44
  So basically what it's essentially saying is Dorian
• 1:06:47
  knew there was a whole load of stuff after Lake Silencio, so
• 1:06:52
  just decided to keep very quiet about it and pretend that the
• 1:06:54
  doctor was going to die. You know and say the reason we
• 1:06:58
  get this whole wretched Doctor Who's seen is to stop you
• 1:07:01
  thinking about the fact he's just named trends, the law, and
• 1:07:05
  all that kind of crap to try and distract you from.
• 1:07:10
  You know, you know what irritating me so much about that
• 1:07:13
  last scene was like? We just had this whole season of
• 1:07:16
  what I call that trailer bait, you know?
• 1:07:20
  You know, the doctor's gonna die and all of this.
• 1:07:21
  And then he's already doing it with the next season.
• 1:07:25
  At the end of this season, I'm like, no, just giving a fucking
• 1:07:28
  rest. I don't mind the.
• 1:07:31
  I don't need more mysterious companions.
• 1:07:34
  I just want you to tell a story. Oh, after the end of a Goodman
• 1:07:39
  Goes to War. We had that coming soon.
• 1:07:42
  Trailer single frame shot Thing of the skeletal Dr. hand holding
• 1:07:47
  the Sonic screwdriver. Yeah.
• 1:07:52
  What was that all about? Because that never happened,
• 1:07:55
  Yeah. Well, that voice that was on the
• 1:07:57
  scanner screen saying silence will fall.
• 1:08:00
  That was never explained. I mean again, there's right now
• 1:08:05
  first question for you. Yeah, go on.
• 1:08:09
  What is the name of the big creature that is based on the
• 1:08:15
  scream? What is the name of the big
• 1:08:18
  creature that shoots electricity from its fingers and people
• 1:08:21
  forget when they see it? It's the silence.
• 1:08:25
  How do you spell that? SILENCE.
• 1:08:33
  Except that a in the credits, it's spelled the silent SILENT.
• 1:08:40
  OK, right. So in the brilliant book 2012,
• 1:08:46
  the creature on page 146 is named as the Silent SILENTS.
• 1:08:59
  But in the Encyclopedia, one of the many books that he wrote
• 1:09:03
  over and over again, the creature is referred to as the
• 1:09:06
  Silence, SILENCE, and then in the Doctor Who Character
• 1:09:15
  Encyclopedia. What's it called in that it is
• 1:09:20
  officially What's the page? It is the Silence, SILENCE and
• 1:09:30
  then back in Doctor Who, the Visual Dictionary version 4 or
• 1:09:35
  whatever, The creature is back to being called the Silent and
• 1:09:40
  the religious order is the Order of the Silence.
• 1:09:44
  They cannot make up their mind, even after they broadcast the
• 1:09:48
  sodding episode, what those creatures are actually called.
• 1:09:52
  I think that's indicative of what's on the screen though, and
• 1:09:57
  I don't, I do not think there is anybody that has any power above
• 1:10:02
  Stephen Muffin that is casting an eye over this any degree of
• 1:10:06
  sort of. Accuracy or detail and getting
• 1:10:10
  this stuff right, Yeah. And this is one of my major
• 1:10:14
  issues with the Stephen Moffat era.
• 1:10:18
  You know nothing is being double checked by anyone.
• 1:10:23
  I think or they try. They get fired.
• 1:10:25
  They get erased from Doctor Who like Carolyn Skinner.
• 1:10:29
  I know. Kind of me.
• 1:10:30
  We talk a lot about series one of Doctor Who having trouble
• 1:10:38
  behind the scenes, you know, with with Eccleston not being
• 1:10:41
  happy with more than one person who is not necessarily a nice
• 1:10:49
  person due to things that have been revealed about them.
• 1:10:53
  Since you know I, I want to know what the hell is going on during
• 1:11:01
  series Five and six though. You'll never know.
• 1:11:04
  I think I'll ever be told because I'm going to take.
• 1:11:09
  I want to go back to a series five episode now.
• 1:11:12
  Okay, because This is why I asked the question about what
• 1:11:16
  the creature was called. Okay.
• 1:11:19
  So we've already mentioned that in the 11th hour, Prisoner 0
• 1:11:24
  says the Pandorica opens, Silence will fall.
• 1:11:30
  And then in Vampires of Venice at the very end, we get that
• 1:11:37
  scene where Silence literally falls.
• 1:11:42
  And it's like what? That's never explained earlier
• 1:11:48
  on. We get the the line of dialogue.
• 1:11:53
  There were cracks, plural. Some were tiny, some were as big
• 1:11:57
  as the sky. Through some we saw worlds and
• 1:11:59
  people, and through others we saw silence and the end of all
• 1:12:03
  things. I get the feeling that basically
• 1:12:08
  Moffat is kind of writing two different story arcs and it's
• 1:12:12
  not till he gets to series six that he actually decides which
• 1:12:17
  one he wants to go with. You know, because I said there
• 1:12:20
  is that literal silence that falls at the end of Vampires of
• 1:12:27
  Venice, which is never ever explained.
• 1:12:29
  Do. You know what I think?
• 1:12:32
  I think he is creating moments that he thinks are good moments
• 1:12:37
  and he's not joining the dots. And I mean that whole crack
• 1:12:41
  thing. The nature of the crack varies
• 1:12:45
  from story to story. No one seemed to sit down with
• 1:12:49
  all 12 or 13 episodes, how many it was to check that there was
• 1:12:54
  consistency. And again, with a whole of
• 1:12:58
  Series 6, again, this one big story arc thing, I don't feel as
• 1:13:03
  though there was anyone who was courageous enough to stay to
• 1:13:08
  Stephen Moffatt, right? We're going to sit down and
• 1:13:11
  we're going to make sure that this jigsaw actually fits
• 1:13:15
  together. You know, Russell T Davis,
• 1:13:19
  winged for years, basically. I mean, he's freely admitted the
• 1:13:22
  bad Wolf was made-up as it went along, and kind of.
• 1:13:25
  It was only miraculous that there was a reference to it in
• 1:13:29
  The Doctor Dances and The Empty Child.
• 1:13:31
  What is? It's 2 words.
• 1:13:32
  That one is simple, the other. Reason is a name is simple.
• 1:13:37
  The other reason why I kind of I'm really confused Going back
• 1:13:43
  to Bad Wolf. In those first six 9th Dr.
• 1:13:48
  novels, 5 of them reference Bad Wolf.
• 1:13:54
  The comic strips reference Bad Wolf.
• 1:13:58
  You get the feel that Russell T Davis is overseeing everything
• 1:14:04
  to make sure that what you get on the TV ties in with what's
• 1:14:08
  presented in the comics, ties in with what's given in the books.
• 1:14:13
  You get the feel that Russell T Davis wants to create this whole
• 1:14:19
  Doctor Who. Universe.
• 1:14:22
  Yeah, right. And then along comes Stephen
• 1:14:26
  Moffat, who says, oh, am I supposed to do this?
• 1:14:33
  Bugger this, bearing in mind that kind of, you know, at the
• 1:14:38
  height of, you know, Tenant, we were getting 9 novels a year.
• 1:14:45
  And we got the Darksmith legacy, and we got the fact files, and
• 1:14:50
  we got the Choose Your Own adventure books, and we got the
• 1:14:54
  activity books, and we got the story books and we got really
• 1:14:57
  detailed annuals. And we got The Sarah Jane
• 1:15:00
  Adventures. And in 2012 and 2016 there were
• 1:15:07
  no 11th Doctor regular novels published.
• 1:15:11
  In 2013, 1415, and 17, we got three books a year.
• 1:15:16
  We never had such little output. The last three books in 2017
• 1:15:21
  weren't even done as audio books.
• 1:15:26
  Are you suggesting that Stephen Moffett is not as adept A
• 1:15:29
  showrunner as Russ T Davis? I'm saying that he took
• 1:15:33
  everything that Russell T Davis had done and pissed on it from a
• 1:15:36
  great Heighten and threw it out the window after having set a
• 1:15:39
  delight. And you look at the ratings.
• 1:15:47
  Okay, it's. Going to be contentious because
• 1:15:50
  everyone's got an opinion on the fucking.
• 1:15:52
  I've heard arguments this week have gone on for days, and I'm
• 1:15:56
  going to do something really nasty.
• 1:15:58
  I'm going to throw a second set of numbers into the mix to
• 1:16:01
  really piss those people off because OK, ratings, Stolen
• 1:16:07
  Earth. Journey's End When Journey's End
• 1:16:09
  got 10.57 million. OK, The Pandorica Opens and Big
• 1:16:15
  Bang. Oh God, we're down to.
• 1:16:18
  Well, Pandorica Opens with Six was 7.6 million, Big Bang was
• 1:16:25
  6.7 million, and they were 10th in that week's charts, whereas
• 1:16:34
  Stolen Earth and Journeys End were basically #1.
• 1:16:37
  Now, I accept that comparison 10th is still pretty good,
• 1:16:41
  right? You look then how we're doing in
• 1:16:45
  Series 6. Oh, I'm scared.
• 1:16:49
  Girl Who Waited 7.6 million Thirteenth God Complex 6.77
• 1:16:58
  million Eighteenth Closing time 6.9 Three 20th season finale we
• 1:17:06
  managed. It was a season for 9:00, so you
• 1:17:08
  expect the ratings to go up, but they went up to 6.67 million and
• 1:17:11
  became 16th. You know, I mean I I have heard
• 1:17:16
  the argument though that. The way people were watching
• 1:17:19
  television, it was mutating at this.
• 1:17:21
  OK? And I've heard this argument as
• 1:17:23
  well, so I've got my backup argument.
• 1:17:27
  Go on. And I've taken these numbers
• 1:17:29
  from the complete History. I don't think they can be
• 1:17:33
  disputed because as has been the case right the way through
• 1:17:38
  television history, you got the audience appreciation index
• 1:17:42
  thingy. That's right.
• 1:17:46
  A small fraction of the audience that give that though, right?
• 1:17:49
  But. It's how it's gauged.
• 1:17:52
  Yes. It's how it's gauged.
• 1:17:53
  Yeah. So it is a measure of
• 1:17:57
  comparison. Stolen Earth and Journeys and
• 1:18:02
  got 91 out of 100. Is that the highest show ever
• 1:18:06
  got? Pretty much, yeah.
• 1:18:09
  Pandorica Opens in Big Bang, Got 88 and 89.
• 1:18:13
  That's high. That's high.
• 1:18:15
  Yeah, but it's lower, yeah. Wedding of River Song got 86.
• 1:18:21
  We're going down. By the time we get to The Doctor
• 1:18:24
  Falls, we're down to 83. Right.
• 1:18:27
  I mean, I do think in the Whitsker era, it fell down to
• 1:18:30
  sort of 70. I can't.
• 1:18:32
  I can't. This whitsker wasn't covered by
• 1:18:34
  the complete history. Right, Okay.
• 1:18:37
  I know that actually the whiskey area, it varied massively.
• 1:18:41
  Doctor World, Enough in Time got 5 million viewers and came 21st
• 1:18:46
  in the charts. You know, interest was
• 1:18:51
  hemorrhaging, yes. Yeah, because basically Moffat
• 1:18:56
  has killed off all the subsidiary stuff that kept it
• 1:19:00
  going. Russell T Davis knew there was
• 1:19:03
  going to be that year where they were only going to be specials.
• 1:19:07
  He made damn sure we got Torchwood, we got Sarah Jane,
• 1:19:09
  and we got Radio 7 in the. Public consciousness.
• 1:19:15
  And more importantly as well, he knew that it was a family thing.
• 1:19:18
  So he wrote. Doctor Who, apparently to watch,
• 1:19:23
  made sure there were books that were aimed at older readers.
• 1:19:27
  Books that were aimed at kind of early teens.
• 1:19:30
  We even we had the quick range rate.
• 1:19:33
  Quick. Read Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:19:35
  Which Mofat stopped after two books.
• 1:19:38
  Shame they sold. I was working for Gardener's
• 1:19:40
  Books for me. They sold in their drones.
• 1:19:44
  This is why I knew you, why I thought I could bring this up
• 1:19:46
  with you because I knew you got the kind of various bits.
• 1:19:49
  Basically, you know, you look at kind of the books and stuff that
• 1:19:54
  Mofat produces. I'm serious.
• 1:19:56
  On my shelf there's the RTD version of the Visual
• 1:19:59
  Dictionary. And then there's three further
• 1:20:02
  rereleases, all done through the the Moffat years, two of which I
• 1:20:07
  think are actually identical, just with different covers.
• 1:20:10
  You had those wonderful 6 Justin Richards books, Spaceships and
• 1:20:13
  Villains, Spaceships and Space Stations, Aliens and Enemies and
• 1:20:20
  all Moffat did was basically just churn out that type of book
• 1:20:25
  over and over again. I mean.
• 1:20:27
  There is an audience for those talks in Doctor.
• 1:20:30
  So RTD, you had the TARDIS model making kit, you had the Dalek 3D
• 1:20:36
  Dalek kit, you had time and space, those wonderful beautiful
• 1:20:40
  pop up books. I just, I agree with everything
• 1:20:46
  you're saying. I don't think comparing.
• 1:20:48
  Any showrunner to Rusty Davis is very fair because I don't
• 1:20:52
  there'll be anyone that understands the audience or how
• 1:20:56
  the industry of television, you know he is the whole package.
• 1:21:00
  I'm going to actually say that Chris Chibnall did his damnedest
• 1:21:04
  because when Chris Chibnall came back, you got the novels.
• 1:21:09
  You then got The Secret of Volt 13 and The Maze of Doom, which
• 1:21:13
  are aimed at slightly older. You got those teen TARDIS books
• 1:21:17
  which were aimed at the much younger.
• 1:21:20
  You know, there was this feeling that actually he was trying to
• 1:21:22
  get The Foot back into kind of the different eras of the
• 1:21:28
  fandom. But if he compared to?
• 1:21:30
  What's coming? Well, I mean, you know, Russ, I,
• 1:21:33
  I know that Russell series is well, we don't actually know
• 1:21:36
  because we've got three target novels coming out which are the
• 1:21:39
  target novelizations of the three specials.
• 1:21:45
  From what I know, yeah it's going to be huge and it's going
• 1:21:50
  to be than even it was back in the.
• 1:21:56
  But I'm I'm wondering what the Shooty era is going to bring.
• 1:22:01
  Will we return to 9 novels a year?
• 1:22:04
  Will we return? Yeah.
• 1:22:06
  I mean, there's this talk of the unit spinoff series, but that's
• 1:22:08
  gone. Very, very quiet.
• 1:22:10
  There's been no kind of gossip about that.
• 1:22:13
  There's been no sighting or anything of filming for that.
• 1:22:15
  In terms of spinoffs, I from what I understand, without
• 1:22:19
  giving anything away, there's quite a lot coming.
• 1:22:24
  Yeah. And I said, you know, it's what
• 1:22:26
  really we needed during the Motha era.
• 1:22:31
  Just sort of to keep it going. To keep it going at the moment,
• 1:22:34
  you're going to take a couple of, you know, two years off
• 1:22:36
  because you got to do Sherlock. Oh God, that was awful.
• 1:22:40
  You know, I hated to show up with a passion even more than I
• 1:22:42
  hated some of his Doctor Who. But do something to keep it
• 1:22:45
  going. Don't suddenly put a break on
• 1:22:47
  all the novels. Novels, By the way, if you look
• 1:22:51
  at the word counts of them, seven out of the 10 shortest
• 1:22:55
  novels are from the Stephen Moffat era.
• 1:22:59
  You know, he made them look nice and big.
• 1:23:02
  He made them taller, but reduced the word count.
• 1:23:06
  So. OK, I want to I want to cuz you
• 1:23:09
  know, you've sort of covered him as a writer, as a showrunner, as
• 1:23:13
  the, the industry maker at all of this, the Pillager.
• 1:23:21
  So do you think he's without talent?
• 1:23:24
  Right? I think he is very good at
• 1:23:29
  writing certain things. And I think if he writes one
• 1:23:34
  episode and they give him plenty of time to write it, he can
• 1:23:40
  write good Doctor Who stories. Give.
• 1:23:43
  Me an example. I actually thought The Empty
• 1:23:45
  Child and The Doctor Dances was a superb 2 parter.
• 1:23:51
  I really thought that this kind of, you know, the the the whole.
• 1:23:55
  I mean the gas. Oh God, that.
• 1:23:56
  That is one of the few times that Motha has creeping out the
• 1:24:00
  gas mask coming out of Richard Wilson's face.
• 1:24:03
  Right. Yeah.
• 1:24:06
  You know, he can create really good dialogue.
• 1:24:10
  Are you my mummy? That'll live on in Doctor Who.
• 1:24:14
  Are there any lines from the Moffat era that have resonated
• 1:24:19
  the same way as Are you My Mummy?
• 1:24:23
  I don't think so, no. No Doctor Who fans, but not in
• 1:24:28
  public conscious. And I say I think Moffat can
• 1:24:33
  write. I don't think he can write story
• 1:24:37
  arcs. No, I don't either.
• 1:24:40
  Yeah. And I think if he wrote
• 1:24:43
  episodes, you know, they can be really good.
• 1:24:46
  I don't think he's anywhere near as good a writer as Russell T
• 1:24:48
  Davis. I don't think he's anywhere near
• 1:24:52
  as good as he thinks he is. I get the impression that more
• 1:24:56
  fat thinks he is good. I mean, I talked to Sobiha
• 1:24:59
  though and he says actually he's quite self facing and.
• 1:25:04
  It's not there in his work, cuz he might be as he might be as a
• 1:25:08
  person, but when, you know, I've never met the guy, you know,
• 1:25:12
  just going by the interviews and the way he ran Doctor Who for,
• 1:25:17
  what was it six years or six or seven years?
• 1:25:20
  No, he's not a showrunner. Quantify.
• 1:25:23
  Then give me 3 specific things about his writing that doesn't
• 1:25:28
  work. Ox OK.
• 1:25:32
  He cannot link more than two episodes together, OK?
• 1:25:36
  This one, I do not like the companions he created.
• 1:25:41
  The I do not like the women he created.
• 1:25:44
  I think Rory was a godsend. If Rory hadn't been in series
• 1:25:48
  five, I think it would have been an abysmal series, yeah.
• 1:25:54
  You acknowledge that's not a popular opinion, though.
• 1:25:57
  Okay, it's my opinion. That's fine.
• 1:26:03
  I've just. I've never heard anyone say
• 1:26:05
  that. Anyone.
• 1:26:06
  Yeah, I really, you know, And the one thing that I think
• 1:26:11
  Moffat needed to step away from is time travel.
• 1:26:16
  Yeah, because he cannot write a coherent time paradox type
• 1:26:22
  story. Jonathan Morris can.
• 1:26:24
  Jacqueline Rainer can. Most of big Finnish writers can.
• 1:26:28
  You know, there's a huge cannon of people who through the
• 1:26:34
  through 50-60 years old Doctor Who showed that they could write
• 1:26:39
  a story where time was changed. Yeah, I mean Day of the Daleks
• 1:26:46
  is a fascinating 1 to try and dissect.
• 1:26:49
  Day of the Daleks opens up so many questions.
• 1:26:52
  I mean, it really is an amazingly.
• 1:26:56
  Open one. It's simple as well.
• 1:26:59
  Yeah, that is what Mofat doesn't realize.
• 1:27:03
  If you're going to try and write a time paradox story, you gotta
• 1:27:08
  keep it fairly simple because as soon as you try and
• 1:27:12
  overcomplicate it, everything collapses in on itself.
• 1:27:16
  And I say I so I don't like his arcs.
• 1:27:19
  I don't like what he tries to do with time travel.
• 1:27:21
  I don't think he's a good enough writer to do time travel.
• 1:27:24
  Even Russell T Davis got it wrong.
• 1:27:25
  And turn left. By the way, Turn Left is a
• 1:27:29
  fantastic emotional episode, but there's a couple of massive plot
• 1:27:33
  holes in it to do with the changing of time.
• 1:27:37
  Although care about the time travel, because that episode
• 1:27:39
  just breaks my heart. I can't tell my watching it.
• 1:27:42
  I blubbed my eyes out during that one.
• 1:27:44
  Yeah, and it's only when I actually physically stop and
• 1:27:47
  make myself think about it that the holes appear, whereas with
• 1:27:52
  these they appeared as I was watching them.
• 1:27:56
  I want to, I want to, sort of. So you've given me those three
• 1:27:58
  reasons, and I actually agree with all three of them.
• 1:28:02
  I I mean, I think I rate it more than you.
• 1:28:04
  About half of his output I really like and about half of it
• 1:28:07
  I can't stand. Do you understand why other
• 1:28:13
  people rate his era? Because he does have his fans.
• 1:28:18
  I think it's because my brain actually analyzes it.
• 1:28:24
  I have some very good friends. Hello Tony.
• 1:28:27
  I don't know if Tony listens to this, but hello Tony who has
• 1:28:30
  routinely bitch slapped me for overanalyzing Doctor Who.
• 1:28:34
  And he's right to do so, you know, He says.
• 1:28:37
  Just, you know, try and turn your brain off and watch it, you
• 1:28:41
  know? And I wish I could.
• 1:28:42
  I really wish I could because I feel that if I could, I would
• 1:28:46
  enjoy more fats era a lot more. Well, please don't tell me your
• 1:28:50
  suggestion that everybody that enjoys this era is brainless.
• 1:28:54
  No, but I'm saying that kind of. I'm sorry, I've been leading.
• 1:28:58
  Now they don't have the They don't have a brain that, by
• 1:29:01
  default tries to overanalyze. And that's my problem.
• 1:29:07
  Because most of Russell T Davis era and Chris Chibnall's era
• 1:29:11
  were more straightforward stories.
• 1:29:13
  There wasn't stuff to overanalyze in them.
• 1:29:16
  And so I could really bloody enjoy them.
• 1:29:19
  Because Moffatt tries to write these ridiculously complicated
• 1:29:22
  jigsaw murder time Me. Why me?
• 1:29:24
  Mystery things and is obsessed with a particular type of woman,
• 1:29:30
  you know. I just don't get on with him.
• 1:29:33
  I kind of wonder, you know, we didn't have some head teacher or
• 1:29:36
  something like that when he was younger.
• 1:29:37
  You know of a certain mold, the Linden Lake type that he's been
• 1:29:41
  who disciplined him probably, yeah.
• 1:29:45
  Around a massive dung. Yeah.
• 1:29:48
  I I, I do wonder what trauma occurred to him when he was
• 1:29:52
  younger Because, yes, an awful lot of the female characters he
• 1:29:56
  writes are of a very specific type.
• 1:30:00
  And that actually is against him because it means that a lot of
• 1:30:03
  his work work becomes very. Yeah, I agree.
• 1:30:08
  Well look, we we are going to have to try and dig deep.
• 1:30:12
  I will find and find 3 reasons each.
• 1:30:15
  However, before we do that, do you have anything else to cover
• 1:30:21
  on The Wedding of River Song? It it should have been the end
• 1:30:27
  of Wither. It should have been the last
• 1:30:31
  River Song story that should have been it.
• 1:30:38
  Admittedly, I like The Husbands of River Song.
• 1:30:41
  I think it is a very funny episode.
• 1:30:43
  I think the Pre credits the line that Capaldi delivers just
• 1:30:47
  before the the theme music. I'm going to need a bigger flow
• 1:30:50
  chart before a bigger spreadsheet had me in bloody
• 1:30:54
  hysterics. Yeah, because that's you.
• 1:30:57
  Yeah. Yes.
• 1:31:01
  I would have been very happy if this had been the the end of
• 1:31:03
  River Song, because it kind of we would have been spared so
• 1:31:10
  much elsewhere. Didn't we?
• 1:31:11
  The Lord diminishing returns this character back.
• 1:31:14
  You got to do new and interesting things of if you do
• 1:31:17
  that, it's just going to get exhausting.
• 1:31:22
  And I can really see the fatigue setting in with Moffat.
• 1:31:30
  I can see that he's already feeling tired.
• 1:31:34
  I can see or it to me rather because I can't see him.
• 1:31:38
  I feel as though he's realized he's taken on too much.
• 1:31:43
  And the last comment I will make is if I could go back in time, I
• 1:31:50
  would show him kind of like the numbers and what's going to
• 1:31:54
  happen to Doctor Who over the next four years of his time on
• 1:31:58
  it that he's not going to have the energy that he's going to
• 1:32:02
  abandon so much that was built up.
• 1:32:04
  He's going to kind of, he's going to see the audience
• 1:32:07
  appreciation index fall, you know, and say look, you need to
• 1:32:13
  get someone else on board, someone fresh.
• 1:32:19
  Because an awful lot of the people he relies on I think are
• 1:32:23
  too much of A yes Man type person, and anyone who isn't Yes
• 1:32:28
  man he gets rid of. Well, the sad truth is as well
• 1:32:31
  is in series seven he is good, as admits this in Docs Who
• 1:32:35
  magazine that the weight of the monster that he had created in
• 1:32:39
  the previous, it gave him a breakdown.
• 1:32:42
  He had a breakdown series 7 and he was trying to juggle 2 shows
• 1:32:46
  and he had the expectation of the 50th coming up.
• 1:32:49
  And he said that year I just wasn't at my best.
• 1:32:52
  I was struggling in my personal life, you know, and all of this
• 1:32:56
  stuff was going and he's kind of sad.
• 1:32:58
  It is. I mean I I do think that if he
• 1:33:01
  had been sensible and said I need help and people who know me
• 1:33:07
  will know how difficult I have found it in the past to say I
• 1:33:11
  need help, You know, I've, I'm terrible at it.
• 1:33:13
  Men in general are really bad at it.
• 1:33:17
  But this was, you know, someone at the BBC should have told him
• 1:33:22
  and they shouldn't have taken no for an answer.
• 1:33:25
  That I think, is I'm going to say that the blame for this lies
• 1:33:30
  with the BBC. I'm not gonna blame Mofat.
• 1:33:35
  I'm gonna blame the BBC for not turning around and saying we're
• 1:33:39
  gonna do your performance review and we're gonna make changes on
• 1:33:44
  the outcome of it. Had they done that?
• 1:33:48
  Who knows? Because you had the trio in
• 1:33:51
  Russell's time of him, Julie Gardner and Phil Collinson, and
• 1:33:55
  you hear on the special features, they battled out plot
• 1:33:58
  points. They battled out how scenes were
• 1:34:01
  directed, how it was edited. And sometimes Russell got his
• 1:34:04
  way and sometimes Julie got away and sometimes Phil got his way.
• 1:34:08
  But in the end, they battled to a point that they were happy
• 1:34:12
  enough, whereas Moffatt took it all on himself and the show
• 1:34:18
  suffered. Well, on that note, make good
• 1:34:23
  things each. Let's do for and I think I
• 1:34:25
  could. I can do it as well, yeah.
• 1:34:27
  I know. I can do three good things,
• 1:34:29
  yeah. Cool, cool.
• 1:34:30
  You go 1st. I'm going to Nick Con from you.
• 1:34:32
  I'm going to say that because I've said so much about him.
• 1:34:34
  I've only said one even remotely cheeky thing about him.
• 1:34:37
  Arthur Darville, you are the lifesaver of the 1st 2 1/2 years
• 1:34:42
  of the MOFA era. Your Rory performance was
• 1:34:46
  amazing. Rory just is just this
• 1:34:48
  wonderful. Yeah, he's the Patsy, he's the
• 1:34:52
  stooge and he does it so well. And he is a perfect audience
• 1:34:57
  point of view. So Rory is my first one.
• 1:35:02
  I am going to steal something that my guest said earlier in
• 1:35:06
  the week when a another story that both me and the guest did
• 1:35:11
  not like said, but I think it's relevant and that was relevant
• 1:35:14
  to the classic series. It's now relevant to the new
• 1:35:17
  series. I think this is the perfect
• 1:35:20
  education of how not to do the new series of Doctor Who.
• 1:35:26
  And let's never, ever do this again.
• 1:35:28
  It exists purely as a cautionary warning of what not to do.
• 1:35:33
  Yeah, absolutely. My second one.
• 1:35:38
  Sorry. I'm going to nick it again
• 1:35:39
  because I'm going to stop it. Trudos to the visual effects
• 1:35:46
  department for saying if this is what we want, if this is what he
• 1:35:51
  wants, we are going to give it to him and it is going to look
• 1:35:54
  bloody fantastic. Very little in that episode
• 1:35:58
  makes sense, but it looks brilliant.
• 1:36:03
  It really does, yeah. I think if you have a lobotomy,
• 1:36:06
  you know you can perfectly, enjoyably watch The Wedding of
• 1:36:11
  River Song. Yeah.
• 1:36:14
  Look at the pretty pictures. You know, it's like watching
• 1:36:16
  porn. It's a friend of mine who shall
• 1:36:19
  remain nameless, said. The only reason he ever watched
• 1:36:21
  Strictly Come Dancing was because he took drugs before it
• 1:36:25
  and it was pretty pictures and nice flushy colors.
• 1:36:31
  With Ali Ash on there, I can understand entirely.
• 1:36:35
  OK, my second thing is going to be may you try the special
• 1:36:41
  effects. And I was going to go there.
• 1:36:44
  God, this is hard because it is my least favorite.
• 1:36:47
  OK, I'm going to say. I think they are horrendously
• 1:36:53
  characterized in this, but Matt Smith, Karen Gillan of A
• 1:37:00
  Darville, when they are together have a very natural chemistry
• 1:37:05
  which transcends the material and I would happy agree with
• 1:37:09
  that. These are all very backward
• 1:37:11
  compliments. But no, I would happily agree
• 1:37:13
  that because I think kind of there is a spark between the
• 1:37:16
  three of them and when they are on screen together you can see
• 1:37:21
  them bouncing off each other and it lifts that material.
• 1:37:26
  So my third one is the garden scene at the end, which I
• 1:37:29
  actually thought was really. Lovely an example of that, isn't
• 1:37:32
  it? Yeah, it's the it's it's people
• 1:37:34
  who clearly like working with each other, who are given
• 1:37:39
  gentler, less bombastic, kind of toned down but very natural
• 1:37:47
  sounding dialogue. Andy.
• 1:37:49
  God, it works magnificently. And that scene where you see Amy
• 1:37:53
  dancing around the garden, it's just like, yeah, I believe that.
• 1:37:56
  I actually believe that. The same thing happens in the
• 1:38:00
  very next episode. You get an hour of cloying
• 1:38:05
  saccharine material about Mother Earth and family and lemonade
• 1:38:09
  taps, and then you get this gorgeous scene at the end where
• 1:38:13
  he visits them at home. The Doctor, he goes for
• 1:38:15
  Christmas dinner with Amy and Rory and I'm like.
• 1:38:18
  Well, where's this come from? Well, my third thing then is you
• 1:38:22
  know what? I'm going to make it a hat trick
• 1:38:24
  of backhanded compliments. My third thing is Series 6 is
• 1:38:29
  finally over. Basically you're saying the
• 1:38:32
  closing credits? That's just the the Wedding of
• 1:38:37
  River Song exists purely to bring this agonizing year of
• 1:38:41
  Doctor Who to an end. And thank God it's over.
• 1:38:47
  Oh dear, do we sound like a pair of entitled fans?
• 1:38:51
  Because the next, the next one we're gonna do, apparently, is
• 1:38:53
  the invisible enemy. Oh, marvelous.
• 1:38:57
  And I adore it. And I am gonna say again, I've
• 1:39:00
  already been thinking about this.
• 1:39:02
  I'm gonna say something that is gonna piss certain fans off, and
• 1:39:07
  I'm not gonna say what it is here, but I've.
• 1:39:08
  I've realized that kind of. It's a really important story
• 1:39:12
  for the Virgin New Adventures. Well, yes, going inside the
• 1:39:17
  doctor's end. Do a lot of that.
• 1:39:21
  I'm surprised you said that in our next commentary.
• 1:39:25
  You're going to piss off a lot of listeners because I feel as
• 1:39:27
  if you may have done a bit of digging this, but do you know
• 1:39:33
  what? No, no, no.
• 1:39:34
  And that's the thing about this bloody pocket.
• 1:39:36
  It's your and. And that's one.
• 1:39:39
  There are people who knock me for liking certain classic
• 1:39:42
  stories. And you and I grew up about in
• 1:39:45
  the 80s and 90s when we had the Howard Stammers Walker books
• 1:39:49
  telling us what we should think about certain stories.
• 1:39:53
  And this is our generation's chance turn around and say we
• 1:40:00
  now have our own publishing platform.
• 1:40:03
  We are, you know, we are going to actually redress the balance.
• 1:40:08
  And the the, the debate, you know there it is riveting
• 1:40:14
  because so many of those preconceptions are being
• 1:40:16
  challenged. And I will happily accept anyone
• 1:40:21
  on Twitter messaging me to say you are wrong about this.
• 1:40:24
  If someone can tell me why I'm wrong then please do.
• 1:40:28
  Please tell me where I've gone wrong and you know well.
• 1:40:32
  That's the other thing though, is, is anyone who comes on to
• 1:40:35
  this or any podcast. It is a subjective opinion and
• 1:40:39
  so people can tell you so you're blue in the face that you're
• 1:40:41
  wrong, but it's your opinion. Let's say if someone can present
• 1:40:45
  me with facts, if someone can present me with explanations
• 1:40:49
  that appeared on screen that aren't kind of head canony type
• 1:40:52
  things, please do. Because I I know there are
• 1:40:57
  people out there who love the the Stephen Moffat era.
• 1:41:00
  It just does not gel with me. I want it to.
• 1:41:03
  I want it to be an era. That actually, I can revisit and
• 1:41:07
  be suddenly surprised by, rather than revisiting it with a sense
• 1:41:14
  of trepidation every time I look at the disks on the shelf.
• 1:41:19
  Well, can I? Can I finish it by saying a
• 1:41:22
  massive thank you to you? Because I do believe that people
• 1:41:26
  think I've gone a bit soft on this era because I keep inviting
• 1:41:30
  on handsome, you know, charismatic, intelligent people
• 1:41:33
  that adore it. And, you know, sometimes they
• 1:41:35
  sway me. Yeah, sometimes.
• 1:41:38
  Sometimes I'm. I'm a whole firm in my opinion.
• 1:41:42
  But you know what? This, this era doesn't shine
• 1:41:44
  with me either. And to have had somebody come on
• 1:41:48
  with this level of smarts, basically giving me a ton of
• 1:41:52
  confirmation bias. Yeah, it is.
• 1:41:56
  I probably did go out of my way to find the negatives, but yeah,
• 1:42:01
  you know, it's how I remember the story.
• 1:42:04
  So it's kind of how it came out. Yeah, I think this is going to
• 1:42:07
  go down as a matter of a hugely memorable sort of hamster, as
• 1:42:13
  all yours are. But no, from my heart, thank you
• 1:42:17
  very much, it is. Absolute pleasure, a joy.
• 1:42:21
  And I'll see you in the Doctor's brain, yes.