Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Talks to Michael Mills about his choice of Dot & Bubble

Transcript

Talks to Michael Mills about his choice of Dot & Bubble · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:00
  Portrait of a young lady in love with herself.
• 0:03
  Improbable, perhaps, but in an age of Pookie, Ratio, and Riz,
• 0:08
  let us hesitate to say impossible.
• 0:10
  These and other cruel vanities may be awaiting Lindy Pepperbean
• 0:15
  in the future. A future that lies in the
• 0:18
  hamster zone. I'm sorry, it's my turn.
• 0:22
  Welcome back to a hamster. So I was just laughing.
• 0:26
  Love, Pen life. The Doctor Who commentary.
• 0:30
  Pearl, Michael, we don't need to go again.
• 0:32
  That was perfect. Thank you.
• 0:35
  May I ask, did you rehearse that?
• 0:38
  No, not at all. That's just that.
• 0:40
  That's how I speak when I'm not Mike.
• 0:42
  Oh fair, fair, I thought You sound like a Welshman.
• 0:45
  No, I can't keep making that joke.
• 0:47
  Jesus Christ, how are you this evening?
• 0:50
  I am very well, Joe, how are you?
• 0:53
  I'm having a fine time, thank you for asking.
• 0:56
  I see. What he did?
• 0:57
  There, thank you, thank you. I've powered up my dot, my
• 1:01
  bubbles ready to go. Do you know what I was thinking
• 1:03
  about this earlier? Actually, can I just say the
• 1:06
  whole sort of the extended hamster verse now?
• 1:10
  And I was thinking, my God, I am like, I mean, I'm not like Linda
• 1:13
  Pepper been in many, many ways, but like surrounding yourself
• 1:17
  with like minded people. We're in a almost not not quite
• 1:21
  an echo chamber because I allow weird dissenting voices in like
• 1:25
  Dylan Reece, obviously, and people like that with and Rod,
• 1:28
  of course, with absurd opinions that conflict my own.
• 1:32
  But like, we do kind of put ourselves in these bubbles,
• 1:35
  don't we? We do, and I'd just like to say
• 1:38
  how nice it is to be invited back here to do the third strand
• 1:41
  of this podcast. Have you not done one of these
• 1:44
  yet? No, this is my first time.
• 1:46
  Oh, my God. Well, yeah, But no, no, no.
• 1:49
  Obviously, I I don't take the prestige guests to the book
• 1:52
  club, you know, that's why. Yeah.
• 1:54
  Thank you. Thank you.
• 1:57
  I've got to say, I have watched this episode again and again and
• 2:04
  again. And in particular, I've watched
• 2:05
  the ending many, many times since last Friday night because
• 2:11
  I had a lot of extremely conflicting feelings at the end
• 2:16
  of the episode, which I think is the point.
• 2:18
  Oh, absolutely. What's what's your sort of
• 2:21
  instant reaction to this when you were watching it?
• 2:26
  I was pretty knocked sideways by it, to be honest.
• 2:30
  I mean, I've been, I've been enjoying the episode.
• 2:32
  Don't get me wrong. I, I was, it was very Russell T
• 2:37
  Davis is doing a, doing a satirical.
• 2:42
  There was a bit of me that was my main question was are we
• 2:44
  going to find out this is a colony of New Earth or something
• 2:46
  like that? It's that sort of, it's that
• 2:49
  sort of space, isn't it? It's where he does, he does the,
• 2:51
  the laughing at things and, and then we get to, well, not quite
• 2:55
  the final scene, but of course, you know, quite near the end.
• 2:58
  And then events transpire and we, we learn what we learn.
• 3:01
  And I was absolutely bowled over by it very quickly.
• 3:05
  Just oh, whoa, golly gosh, are you?
• 3:08
  And I don't know about you, but there's sort of the dawning
• 3:10
  realisation of what it's saying. There's no moment.
• 3:12
  There's no like single line in this, in that final scene where
• 3:16
  you suddenly go, it was Earth all along or anything like that.
• 3:21
  It was, it's you slow, you guys like oh, oh, oh, oh.
• 3:26
  You suddenly start looking around going oh, where are the
• 3:30
  ethnic people here? Like I, I'll be honest, I didn't
• 3:35
  notice the all white casting, but I did notice the extreme
• 3:45
  aggression towards Judy Gatwil's doctor.
• 3:48
  So something, something clicked in my head saying her behaviour
• 3:52
  towards him is not right, especially at the point where
• 3:54
  she goes, I'm going to call the call the police and you're going
• 3:57
  to be disciplined and like, what's going on there?
• 3:59
  Like, but it wasn't until it was, you know, very subtly, the
• 4:04
  hammer came on down on my head in the last scene that suddenly
• 4:08
  all clicks into place. And the thing, the reason why I
• 4:12
  watched the ending again and again and again, it was because
• 4:15
  I wanted to figure out how Rossati Davies had so
• 4:20
  compellingly got me on side of somebody that had behaved
• 4:26
  appallingly throughout the entire episode.
• 4:28
  Like, I was truly hoping she was going to get out of this
• 4:30
  situation. And then somehow at the end I
• 4:33
  was hoping she was going to walk straight into a slug.
• 4:36
  Just with one scene. You know, I was, I just, I
• 4:40
  couldn't reconcile my feelings I was having for and then and then
• 4:44
  to just so blatantly play the race cars.
• 4:49
  I don't know, I, I just had about 5 conflicting emotions.
• 4:52
  I think I was watching it over and over again just to try and
• 4:54
  figure out my reaction, all these different reactions I was
• 4:57
  having. Doctor Who hasn't done that to
• 4:59
  me for quite some time. No.
• 5:02
  And it, it, it's doing lots of things that Doctor Who doesn't
• 5:06
  tend to do. I mean, you know, we're Doctor
• 5:07
  Who fans. People listening to this are
• 5:09
  presumably Doctor Who fans. We we've rewatched these
• 5:12
  episodes time and time again, but it's generally and largely
• 5:16
  I, I, I would say for the process of enjoyment because,
• 5:19
  you know, we enjoy those stories.
• 5:20
  We're like hearing them. We're like having them told to
• 5:21
  us. We don't do it because we need
• 5:24
  to unpick that story. We don't do it because it is a
• 5:27
  text that is deliberately attempting to obscure itself
• 5:31
  from you in some ways. So you're not necessarily
• 5:33
  getting the real OK, maybe you rewatch world enough and time
• 5:37
  knowing that Mister Razor is the master.
• 5:39
  Sorry, but that's not that's not the same as rewatching it to
• 5:43
  think. But hang on a bit.
• 5:44
  What is I? It is I, the author here is
• 5:50
  holding characters in opposing views from how he is asking me
• 5:56
  to take them on the surface of it.
• 5:59
  Because what is very clever about about this story in the
• 6:03
  way that it obscures its true meaning is that as much as he is
• 6:07
  playing with a story, you know, did the Rod Sterling.
• 6:11
  But at the start there, because this owes a lot to to the
• 6:13
  Twilight zone to, you know, the the twist ending that reveals
• 6:15
  the real moral of the whole story.
• 6:18
  He's playing with your expectations of a Doctor Who
• 6:21
  story. You know, I'd say we thought I,
• 6:24
  I think I and I, I'll be willing to bet most other Doctor Who
• 6:26
  fans who went into this were thinking, oh, it's going to be
• 6:30
  Russell does a satire on the fact that we're all in a bubble.
• 6:34
  Do you get it? We're completely blind.
• 6:36
  We can't do anything anymore. And yeah, yeah, obviously that
• 6:39
  is a part of it. But he's obscuring the fact that
• 6:43
  this this is something Doctor Who doesn't do.
• 6:47
  Doctor Who doesn't address these things this bluntly and in this,
• 6:50
  this way of. Of course there have been
• 6:51
  episodes that have addressed racism and prejudice in the
• 6:55
  past. Of course there have been.
• 6:56
  But it's always been much more open and direct.
• 6:58
  And it has attempted to, like Rosa, you know, to, to, to, to
• 7:02
  engage with the, the historical nature of that and the real
• 7:05
  world engagement of that. This I, I said to to Mark once
• 7:11
  this this was over, I said, I think Rosa is a better episode
• 7:14
  about racism because that was real.
• 7:18
  And that's talking about stuff that really happened.
• 7:20
  And, and so I think it, it tackles the themes deeper.
• 7:26
  But this is a better shock reveal about racism.
• 7:29
  It's the best I've seen in a long, long time.
• 7:33
  The sort of the, the insidious of the insidiousness of it, of,
• 7:38
  of how, you know, you can be talking to somebody in your
• 7:41
  everyday life and then suddenly the penny drops.
• 7:44
  You know that sort of shock, like, oh God, is that who you
• 7:47
  are? Yeah, And I mean, I mean, we,
• 7:50
  you know, we need to acknowledge this off the bat, right?
• 7:52
  We're two white guys. We, we, we're going to be
• 7:55
  talking about an episode that that that addresses racism.
• 7:57
  We don't we, we have not had a lived experience of racism, but
• 8:04
  neither has Ross T Davis. And this is not a story that is
• 8:07
  attempting to tell non white people about racism.
• 8:12
  This is this is a story that is trying to tell white people
• 8:15
  about how this operates and about how the structures that
• 8:18
  you engage with the values and behaviours of your world of our
• 8:24
  world, do not in the way that we like might like to imagine
• 8:27
  preclude or or they're no barrier to to the repetition of
• 8:34
  historical atrocities. And we know that because we see
• 8:35
  that, you know, all all the time societies go backwards.
• 8:39
  There's a real it could happen here element to all of this to
• 8:43
  warn you about influencer culture to being in your bubble
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  to your insularity, to talking to the people who who look like
• 8:51
  you and think like you and act like you inside, you know,
• 8:53
  creating in crowds and out crowds.
• 8:56
  And that that is all very pernicious and that directly
• 9:00
  connecting that into into a a sci-fi version of social media.
• 9:04
  So we're thinking about the future and saying, well, you
• 9:06
  know, some of the people who committed some of the worst
• 9:08
  atrocities of the 20th century believed that they were thinking
• 9:11
  of the future. And you know, that's obviously
• 9:15
  very Russell T Davis, isn't it? You know, that that thing of,
• 9:17
  you know, it could happen here is I mean, turn left years and
• 9:21
  years, miracle days. He's written three big projects
• 9:24
  that all that all involve modern society setting up death camps
• 9:27
  for God's sake. So this is a back at Christmas,
• 9:31
  we talked about damaged goods on the book club and we said that I
• 9:35
  think sort of one of the agreements we came to was that
• 9:37
  in some ways it felt more like the story by the Russell T
• 9:41
  Davis, who had written everything except Doctor Who,
• 9:44
  than anything he'd actually written for Doctor Who.
• 9:46
  I think this comes a very close second.
• 9:48
  This is very much of a piece with things like years, years
• 9:51
  and years in his really, he has a very, a very bleak negative
• 9:58
  view of humanity. You said to.
• 9:59
  Me can can you think, you know, on the on our chat you said can
• 10:03
  you think of a darker ending of a Doctor Who episode and ending
• 10:06
  so without hope than this. And I thought I started coming
• 10:10
  up with potential options and then you were telling me very
• 10:13
  intelligently why those are they perhaps have a glimmer of hope
• 10:17
  in them. And you're right.
• 10:18
  I couldn't think of A1. Let you see, you've got Genesis,
• 10:21
  the Daleks, where the Doctor, the Doctor ultimately fails.
• 10:25
  The last line is optimistic, isn't?
• 10:26
  It the last line is optimistic You you suggested Inferno part
• 10:30
  episode 6, but you've got 7. There's an episode 7.
• 10:33
  So yes, that will died, but it's death allows our world to swipe
• 10:36
  even in midnight. You know, like Perry gets away
• 10:39
  at the end, so there's still hope.
• 10:41
  They're literally going on their death boat at the end of this
• 10:44
  episode thinking they're absolutely in the right and
• 10:47
  they're off to tame this planet, you know, like all those people
• 10:50
  in history. And the Doctor spells it out
• 10:53
  very clearly. If you go out there, you will
• 10:55
  die. He does and it's always that is
• 11:00
  that is that is in keeping that is of a piece with a lot of what
• 11:03
  Russell T Davis does outside of outside of his Doctor Who work.
• 11:07
  And it did feel like this is the first time in his Doctor Who
• 11:11
  stuff where he's just gone. No, no.
• 11:13
  And I think perhaps is is reflective of the target
• 11:17
  audience for Doctor Who. It's sort of central tempo
• 11:19
  audience now being slightly older than it used to be.
• 11:21
  I don't I think Doctor Who is still very much open to and
• 11:23
  available for children. But I think in RTD one he was
• 11:28
  talking to the ex 12 year olds. I think these days his central
• 11:32
  audience is 14 to 21 year olds maybe.
• 11:35
  Somebody on my Twitter feed, when I put out a message saying
• 11:40
  that that ending will stay with me for a long time, said the
• 11:43
  second the episode ended, their kid got it.
• 11:45
  He understood the message, young kid.
• 11:47
  And they had a, a, a, a very important conversation about
• 11:50
  racism that they had never had before.
• 11:53
  And like, there, that's why we're doing this, you know,
• 11:56
  yeah, people talking about. But he's so clever because he
• 12:00
  puts it in the middle of the season in the episode called dot
• 12:04
  and Bubble, which I think, you know, going in, I think
• 12:07
  everybody was assuming this is going to be the fluffy one, Maya
• 12:09
  Varad said. This is going to be the long
• 12:11
  game of the season, the all right one.
• 12:14
  And then in fact, this is the one that's even more insidious
• 12:17
  than that. The episode previously 73 yards,
• 12:21
  he had that section in the middle with the politician where
• 12:23
  it was so on the nose and it was so obvious that you're thinking,
• 12:27
  OK, well, he's going to do this stuff, but it's literally going
• 12:29
  to be sticking out going can you see the message?
• 12:33
  And then what he does here is, like you said, he he lows you in
• 12:38
  thinking this is all going to be a massive satire about, you
• 12:41
  know, social media and the bubbles to put ourselves in and
• 12:44
  then slips the real message in there and then hits you with at
• 12:48
  the end. It's such a clever bloke.
• 12:51
  It's also that, you know, that lack of mediation because to go
• 12:56
  back to the Twilight Zone and well, not not analogy, I think
• 13:01
  that I think this is very much of A of a piece of a tradition
• 13:04
  with sci-fi of having a self-contained single story in a
• 13:09
  single world. That is a that is basically a
• 13:12
  thought experiment for our world.
• 13:14
  And the reason Rod Sterling, I think he said this interviews he
• 13:18
  did The Twilight Zone was because when he went to network
• 13:21
  television in 60s, it started in his 60s, maybe late 50s.
• 13:25
  And wanted to write about civil rights, wanted to write about
• 13:29
  the Red Scare, wanted to write about all of these things.
• 13:31
  He wasn't allowed to do it. But if you wrote a sci-fi script
• 13:35
  that did exactly the same thing but didn't call them Russians,
• 13:38
  called them aliens, or what have you.
• 13:41
  Star Trek's been doing all of that for years as well, Maybe as
• 13:45
  a direct, you know, influence from The Twilight Zone.
• 13:48
  Yeah, well, but but the, you know, the tradition of sci-fi,
• 13:50
  of talking about important things in a mediated way.
• 13:53
  What's quite what one of the things that is that I think, you
• 13:58
  know, it's it's part of the power behind that punch at the
• 14:01
  end, is that it's not mediated. Yes, we're in a sci-fi world.
• 14:04
  Yes, we're yes, we're using all sorts of funny sci-fi versions
• 14:08
  of social media. But the story of prejudice here
• 14:11
  isn't going to be about the, you know, the, the, the, the
• 14:17
  glorious people who live above ground, enslaving the people who
• 14:20
  live below ground. No, no, they're racists.
• 14:23
  They're racists and they don't like dogs because he's black and
• 14:25
  they think he's inferior to them for that, for that explicit
• 14:28
  reason to say, to say that this is not a world to mediation.
• 14:31
  This is a world to which, no, these things still happen and
• 14:34
  these things will persist into the future.
• 14:36
  And we as a society as as as a species, do not move beyond
• 14:43
  these impulses and are very, very naive if we think that we
• 14:51
  can without consciously being aware of them.
• 14:55
  I I have such a visceral reaction to racism myself
• 15:02
  because I was brought up when I was younger by my mum.
• 15:06
  My dad went to prison, thank goodness, because I think I
• 15:09
  would have been brought up in a very different way.
• 15:10
  And my mum almost shook me and told me to appreciate everything
• 15:15
  around me and, and, and to love all until you're given a reason
• 15:19
  not to. And she really, really did drive
• 15:22
  some important messages into my head, just like this episode to
• 15:25
  do. And then towards the end of her
• 15:29
  life, something changed and my mum became a UKIP voter.
• 15:35
  And the day she told me that, I just had a vicious row with her
• 15:39
  on the phone. Like my what are you doing?
• 15:41
  This is not who you are. This is not who you made me be
• 15:46
  like, this is absolutely outrageous.
• 15:47
  So I, I, I have very uncomfortable feelings about
• 15:53
  racists, which I think is another reason why the end of
• 15:56
  this episode hit me as hard as it all of it dug up in one go.
• 16:01
  I'm just so not used to Doctor Who doing this to me.
• 16:04
  And so that that's why I think this is one of the most
• 16:07
  important episode I've seen since the revival.
• 16:10
  But two, I think it's like a top three for me.
• 16:14
  Like it's that that important for me now, this one.
• 16:17
  And I spoke, I listened to some podcasts, some good, some bad,
• 16:25
  and some of them where the message went completely over
• 16:30
  their head. Despite the fact that people
• 16:32
  were actually talking about the issues.
• 16:34
  You know, there were people putting their putting their
• 16:36
  voices on record saying, well, well, maybe, maybe there was
• 16:40
  something we didn't learn about the shooting cat whilst Dr. was
• 16:45
  furious about at the end of the episode.
• 16:48
  And I'm, I'm baffled by that reaction.
• 16:51
  So I thought to myself, no, don't be too critical.
• 16:55
  Go back and watch the episode again and try and see it through
• 16:59
  somebody else's eyes. Unfortunately the second I was
• 17:02
  tuned in to the racism all I could see was markers
• 17:06
  everywhere. But they are subtle.
• 17:11
  They, they, they are, they are subtle, I think.
• 17:15
  Well, they're subtle if you're not looking for them, but then,
• 17:16
  you know, interestingly, as I said to them, being 2 white
• 17:19
  guys, we, we, we can't really apply too much lived experience
• 17:22
  towards being one here. We're the ones here to be
• 17:24
  educated by this story. But I have seen people talking
• 17:28
  about relating to their own experiences on social media.
• 17:30
  But you know, the, the comments I've seen have have largely been
• 17:32
  very, you know, positive and supportive of, of the way in
• 17:35
  which this episode attempts to depict racism the way that
• 17:38
  there's a one person referred to as well as they said that they
• 17:44
  said that for them. What the reveal at the end that
• 17:48
  final scene really captured for them was that their experience
• 17:51
  of racism was a sort of sense of successive, successive episodes
• 17:57
  of oh, it was a bit odd. Oh, it was a bit odd from
• 17:59
  different interactions with people until oh, the penny
• 18:02
  dropped and they said it was this person is acting towards me
• 18:04
  in this way because because of my race.
• 18:07
  And it was very interesting to hear that from, from, from
• 18:09
  someone, you know, who, who, who can talk to that and said that
• 18:12
  that that experience of it is for that was for them very
• 18:16
  reflective of, of how they've experienced this in, in real
• 18:19
  life, which was, which was a real, a real insight I, I think.
• 18:24
  To be utterly selfish for a second because you know, I'm
• 18:27
  part of a minority group, I'm gay.
• 18:29
  And so I started to think of have I ever and I I can only
• 18:33
  really remember 2 examples. One was my dad when he found
• 18:36
  out, dreadful man. But another was somebody at my
• 18:39
  work years back who assumed I was married with children until
• 18:45
  they found out that I was not and I just got out.
• 18:48
  Well, I wouldn't have expected that of you like that.
• 18:51
  And I sort of really stood back. But that's really, that's two
• 18:53
  examples in my entire life. So I yeah, you're right.
• 18:57
  This is an absolutely an education for me as well.
• 19:00
  But if you will indulge me for a second because I've made a small
• 19:03
  list of things and I'll forget when we're in there watching the
• 19:07
  episode. Now, we will go in as like, I
• 19:09
  promise, guys. But this is stuff that we need
• 19:11
  to talk about. Like, for example, I didn't
• 19:14
  notice the very obvious marker that when their body is dragged
• 19:17
  off, there's blue blood that they've got, which is a very,
• 19:22
  you know, royal blood, pure bloods that they're in section
• 19:28
  55, which looks like S s when you look at it on the it's it's
• 19:34
  just little things like this. How Ricky grabs Lindy
• 19:39
  Pepperine's hand in exactly the same way the knife doctor
• 19:42
  grabbed Rose's hand. So I think he's supposed to be
• 19:43
  the doctor style figure in this and how willing she is to take
• 19:48
  his help and how resistant she is to take help from our doctor
• 19:53
  because he's black. How there's a line there where
• 19:58
  she said we're we're told not to head outside and it keeps
• 20:00
  pushing the fact that these people are blindly obeying their
• 20:04
  parents that you know, a lot of this is has been taught down.
• 20:08
  At one point, Lindy goes, no, not just anyone is allowed in to
• 20:12
  find time while she looks straight at the doctor.
• 20:16
  The fact that she's disgusted that they're in the same room
• 20:18
  together and then she suddenly thinks there's a whole
• 20:20
  conspiracy taking place. Oh, none of this registered
• 20:24
  while I was watching. He is going to be so disciplined
• 20:28
  and I can't wait, she says. At one point.
• 20:30
  Now that was the point where my brain clicked in and I was like
• 20:33
  1 odd thing to say until obviously the scales come away.
• 20:38
  And then it's a very obvious thing for her to say.
• 20:40
  I don't think he's as stupid as he looks, she says at one point.
• 20:45
  And and how she's in utter denial about huge swathes of
• 20:50
  people dying around her all the time.
• 20:52
  I'm like, so you're not tuned into people suffering at all.
• 20:55
  You know, there was just tons of references everywhere I was
• 20:59
  looking. But it is very, very cleverly
• 21:03
  subtle. Yeah, yeah.
• 21:06
  Because and I suppose part of what's meant to be what I think
• 21:11
  maybe trying to be conveyed there is the idea that as a
• 21:17
  society, the segregation, the racism is, is a, is a part of
• 21:22
  it. But for the people who benefited
• 21:24
  within that system, it's not a part that they consciously think
• 21:27
  about, but for the, the, for them, they enjoy, they live,
• 21:30
  they live happy, carefree lives. And they can because they have
• 21:34
  built a society that excludes others, that specifically allows
• 21:39
  them to live, to live this life. I don't know if you caught it,
• 21:42
  but when we get the, the one very brief shot of the home
• 21:45
  world on the screen and it is a, and it's a, it's a, it's a dark,
• 21:49
  polluted industrial nightmare. It's a horrible place, but the,
• 21:54
  the rich have paid for their children to escape this, to be
• 22:00
  distanced from the from, from, from the reality of where their
• 22:06
  wealth comes from. You know, so it's, it's, it's,
• 22:10
  it's, it's tying that prejudice into a, a broader mindscape that
• 22:14
  says, no, this is, this is part of this.
• 22:16
  This is not, you know, racists are not racism often at a slight
• 22:21
  level on individuals is not people sitting down or, you
• 22:25
  know, becoming. It's not, it's not just members
• 22:26
  of the Ku Klux Klan or, or the OR the s s as you say it is.
• 22:30
  It is people who who just are willing to accept the values and
• 22:35
  prejudices of of a society that benefits them.
• 22:38
  And you know what's great about this is it's got people talking,
• 22:42
  whether they're they're angry or they're baffled or they're
• 22:46
  nodding away understanding or they see themselves in these
• 22:49
  characters or whatever. I've heard so much discourse
• 22:52
  about this episode. He's absolutely achieved what he
• 22:56
  wanted. And I mean, apart from I think I
• 22:58
  was just putting this more broadly into his approach to
• 23:00
  Doctor Who for this this series, you know, fewer episodes.
• 23:06
  But I'm going to say for me, all killer, no filler.
• 23:11
  But each episode is a mini event in and of itself.
• 23:13
  And in Doctor Who terms, we can we can talk about that in terms
• 23:17
  of it's what it's probably what Steven Moffat was angling at
• 23:19
  wanting to do in Series 7 A when he talked about every episode
• 23:23
  being a feature film. But this is this is, I think,
• 23:28
  reflective of a modern approach to streaming television where
• 23:31
  each episode needs to have a reason for people to be talking
• 23:34
  about it. We say television, we're sort of
• 23:36
  moving into a post television era now.
• 23:37
  This this, you know, this is streaming now.
• 23:39
  It's not it looks the same, but doesn't operate within our with
• 23:43
  our culture in the same way. Each episode needs to be a
• 23:47
  blockbuster. Each episode needs to be an
• 23:49
  event. Each episode needs to have its
• 23:50
  own. It's a reason for people to be
• 23:55
  going and watching it and logging into Disney Plus or BBC
• 23:58
  iPlayer to be picking this one up.
• 24:00
  That's that's why I think it's one of the reasons that
• 24:02
  anthology series have have seen resurgence in recent years as
• 24:04
  well. But it certainly has something
• 24:05
  like Game of Thrones operated, you know, especially as time
• 24:08
  went on, it needed to have that big twist.
• 24:10
  Every episode, each episode of Star Trek now has to have a
• 24:13
  concept at its heart that will get people watching it.
• 24:15
  This is. Closest.
• 24:16
  The closest is Black Mirror. I think Black Mirror's had a
• 24:19
  huge influence on this season of Doctor Who because they are all
• 24:23
  mini movies, aren't they? Which with biting satire, huge
• 24:27
  twists at the end, each visually interesting in diverse ways.
• 24:32
  And that's exactly what he's doing this season.
• 24:34
  And we said, you know, both of us said that going in, we
• 24:37
  thought this is going to be the filler episode because there's
• 24:40
  always, there's a lot of filler episodes in, in Doctor Who,
• 24:43
  especially in Doctor Who as well.
• 24:46
  But there's really no, no, we don't have time for that
• 24:48
  anymore. We don't have space for that
• 24:49
  anymore. That's not what we do anymore.
• 24:51
  We're not doing the Rebel Flesh anymore.
• 24:55
  Goodness, it's. It's masquerading as that.
• 25:00
  But that isn't. That is not what it is.
• 25:02
  This has got a punch behind it. This has a reason for being
• 25:05
  here. My my other half, who is kind of
• 25:09
  he like he likes the new series, but he doesn't love it like he
• 25:11
  loves the classic series. He'll only generally watch most
• 25:15
  episodes once. He's watched a couple two or
• 25:17
  three times this year. And he said exactly what you
• 25:20
  said. There you go.
• 25:20
  This might be 8 episodes he goes, but I would happily have
• 25:24
  truncated all those previous seasons if every episode was as
• 25:28
  good as this. And I think it's his favorite
• 25:30
  since like series 3, which he holds in massive acclaim.
• 25:34
  So that's huge praise from him. But we forget how much
• 25:37
  television has changed since since series 3, right?
• 25:41
  You know, back go back to 2007 tech Doctor Martha, you know,
• 25:45
  doesn't feel like that long ago it was.
• 25:48
  But you would watch TV and it would go out and you'd probably
• 25:53
  need to be there to watch it. If you taped it to catch up
• 25:55
  later, you had missed it. You had to go to it was more
• 25:58
  effort not to see it because you would have to get the the TV set
• 26:03
  up video everything kids. You can't imagine what it was
• 26:06
  like. You know, this was before.
• 26:08
  This was before Sky Plus. You know you, you before.
• 26:11
  IPlayer isn't it? Before iPlayer, 2000 and Seven
• 26:14
  2007 was a year iPlayer launched.
• 26:17
  You know you had you had to crank up the TV before you could
• 26:20
  turn it on. We were using typewriters, you
• 26:22
  know, Cassettes were still going.
• 26:25
  And you know, the fans, the, the fans would, would go to that
• 26:28
  effort, right? But the we would tape it and we
• 26:30
  would watch it back and, you know, we'd write on the Late
• 26:32
  Show. Not the way anymore, is it?
• 26:34
  But I know, but also that's not the way anymore.
• 26:36
  And also that's not how the general audience would engage
• 26:38
  with it. They wouldn't bother to go back
• 26:39
  and maybe they'd catch a repeat of it down the line, but you
• 26:41
  know they wouldn't go. You'd have to watch it once and
• 26:43
  have got it. OK.
• 26:46
  Now with streaming, there is an expectation that people can and
• 26:48
  do go back and re watch and re watch and re watch.
• 26:50
  And we know that you know, when, when the streamers do do release
• 26:53
  any data at all about how people are engaged with it, we know
• 26:56
  that the most rewatched things are things like friends or
• 26:59
  classic movies, because people like rewatching the same thing.
• 27:01
  So you have to, you have to, I think Rusty Davis feels anyway,
• 27:07
  you have to have something that rewards rewatching in one way or
• 27:11
  another. So there's this 7373 or 72
• 27:15
  yards, I'm sorry about 373. I'm going to be getting that
• 27:18
  wrong for years. 73 yards where you're trying to unpick what's
• 27:21
  the process? What's the what what was going
• 27:23
  on in the gaps here? Or even something like the
• 27:26
  Devil's Cord, which in a very different way has got so much
• 27:28
  fun, majority and trivia in it that you can sort of go back and
• 27:31
  relive all the big moments. But they're not things that are
• 27:34
  meant to be exclusively consumed in and understood in one sitting
• 27:38
  in the way that they had to be in two.
• 27:41
  Thousand, I think a lot of older Doctor roofers are still in that
• 27:44
  classic who mindset of it's on once you've got to watch it when
• 27:47
  it's on, oh, you're never going to see it again.
• 27:50
  You know, like it was in the 70s and the 80s and then, you know,
• 27:53
  things are different now. That's why they're doing this
• 27:55
  midnight drop. It doesn't matter anymore.
• 27:57
  It's always going to be there to watch.
• 27:59
  Yeah, yeah. It, it, it doesn't.
• 28:01
  It's we, as I said, we live now in a post TV landscape and I
• 28:07
  think Doctor Who is, is, is is catching up with that with this
• 28:10
  format. There's two other things I just
• 28:13
  want to say before we press play.
• 28:14
  Yeah. One is I am staggered by Callie
• 28:19
  Cook's performance as Linda have been in this episode.
• 28:23
  I think she commits to this role so brilliantly that that, you
• 28:28
  know, the pampered child she it never drops right up until the
• 28:33
  last scene, you know, oh, lucky mummy, she says when she finds
• 28:38
  out her mother's just died like it.
• 28:39
  It is just such a a a compelling performance and I I really
• 28:44
  couldn't take my eyes off her. And given the last time an
• 28:47
  episode was handed to a guest actor like this was blink and we
• 28:53
  know how her career ended up. I'm truly hoping is it Callie
• 28:57
  Cook? Is that how you say it?
• 28:59
  Well, I'm hoping her career, you know, careers off as well
• 29:03
  because she is amazing. But also Shooty Gatwas first
• 29:06
  scene coming back to Doctor Who was that final scene with Lindy
• 29:11
  Pepper Bean and Russell Davis says in the Unleashed.
• 29:14
  You know, we were talking about rescheduling.
• 29:15
  Like, how could we have him come back?
• 29:18
  And his first scene is this facing this terrible racism.
• 29:21
  And apparently he's like, no, this is Gray Ryan.
• 29:25
  Let's let's go. Apparently was his answer.
• 29:30
  The way he plays all of those shifting emotions in that last
• 29:35
  scene, I'm not sure we've seen a performance like that before in
• 29:39
  Doctor Who. It is perfect.
• 29:43
  Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's an incredibly big moment because
• 29:47
  there's so much that is being he's being asked to convey there
• 29:50
  with, with with, with really no dialogue after, you know, they,
• 29:54
  they turn and walk off and yet to guide you through his
• 29:59
  reaction and the audience's reactions to what you're seeing,
• 30:02
  you know, and there's some some, I'll face it, counter intuitive,
• 30:05
  but actually incredibly well judged moments in, in in that
• 30:10
  performance because there's the outrage, there's the upsets, you
• 30:12
  know, which obviously, obviously we understand we're there with
• 30:15
  him, but the choice to laugh as well, but just.
• 30:18
  Just doesn't understand because anyone could turn his offer
• 30:22
  away, you know, knowing they're going to die.
• 30:24
  Well, because it's not just saying that that that racism is,
• 30:27
  is, is bad. But you know, of course we know
• 30:29
  it's a bit and it's always worth restating, but that's also that
• 30:33
  racism is absurd in that moment. They are going off to die for
• 30:37
  something so, so stupid, such such a meaningless prejudice.
• 30:44
  But the. Warmth in his voice when he
• 30:46
  stepped forward and said I don't care what you think.
• 30:49
  You can think whatever you want if you just allow me to save
• 30:53
  your life. That as a mission statement for
• 30:55
  the doctor, it's probably the most perfect example.
• 30:58
  I don't care how prejudice you are, please let me save your
• 31:02
  life. Amazing.
• 31:06
  We should probably watch this thing.
• 31:07
  Should. Probably watch it, shouldn't we?
• 31:08
  What do you think? OK, I mean, we've all talked
• 31:11
  about all of the ending now, really, but never mind.
• 31:14
  All right, well look, why don't you do me the incredible honour
• 31:16
  and countlessly 3/2. One and go.
• 31:24
  I I say incredible honour. You know, it's just doing a
• 31:26
  countdown, but there we go. Oh, thanks.
• 31:29
  Sorry, did it feel like a moment?
• 31:32
  I've checked my sense of privilege that I had from
• 31:33
  getting to do that, yeah. In an episode about privilege.
• 31:37
  I'm pleased that you've done that.
• 31:40
  Here we go, Miss Linda Pepper Bean waking up.
• 31:44
  It's a beautiful morning in fine time.
• 31:47
  There she is. She's in her social media
• 31:49
  bubble. How?
• 31:50
  Subtle puffing, that is. But he's playing you.
• 31:54
  That's the point, isn't that he knows you're there going.
• 31:56
  Oh yeah, well done, Russell. Also worth mentioning at this
• 31:59
  point as well, early on, we've said Black Mirror, we've said
• 32:02
  Twilight Zone also very there's something of the 2008 D about
• 32:06
  this as well, which we know that Russell D Davis is is a big fan
• 32:09
  of. We've seen its influence in
• 32:11
  previous episodes. So maybe that explains some of
• 32:13
  the, some of the new Earth similarities that I was thinking
• 32:18
  of there, because that's, you know.
• 32:19
  You know when they're out in the streets and it's all, all the
• 32:22
  cityscape and then the the newsreader's face on the
• 32:25
  building. They were told to do Blade
• 32:27
  Runner esque cityscape but in Wales often they did a good job
• 32:33
  on the nose. Oh, Blade Runner was inspired by
• 32:36
  the steel books or Patel. But so Blade Runner is very
• 32:38
  Welsh. Thank you very.
• 32:40
  Much even. Oh is it?
• 32:41
  Oh, lovely. Even that character there,
• 32:43
  Hoochie pie, right? Who's sort of kind of nice
• 32:45
  throughout the whole episode, endorsing her all the time.
• 32:48
  And lovely her line at the end about voodoo.
• 32:53
  Which is the, which is the closest that anyone actually
• 32:55
  comes to, you know, using actual explicitly racist language.
• 33:02
  And yeah, I don't think it's coincidence they give it to that
• 33:04
  character. I think if this, you know, if
• 33:07
  Lindy's lines about not going with them isn't obvious, that's
• 33:12
  the point where most people sort of catch up.
• 33:15
  Oh, look at how dreadful these people, all these Americanised
• 33:19
  sort of glitzy young kids. It's hideous, isn't it?
• 33:23
  Oh, mind you, Ricky September's here now.
• 33:29
  Actually, I'm not sure if he is that prick.
• 33:31
  Do you think he was supposed to sing?
• 33:32
  Because they're talking about his song all the way through.
• 33:34
  It's like, is he supposed to have sung?
• 33:35
  Itsy bitsy teeny weeny. It's a good point, isn't it?
• 33:39
  But then, I mean, I, I, I can't, I'm, I'm not on, I'm not on the
• 33:42
  tickety tock. I can't pretend to be keeping up
• 33:45
  with the children. But isn't, isn't there a thing
• 33:47
  about just choosing songs? And then isn't that what the
• 33:51
  children do? You just get a song and then you
• 33:53
  dance to it. I imagine so we we've never
• 33:56
  sounded older than we. Oh God.
• 34:01
  Do you know what though? Right?
• 34:02
  People were saying, oh, it's so on the nose all of this that the
• 34:05
  bubbles around you all the time. I am that person that takes my
• 34:09
  phone to the bathroom and I'm literally looking at my phone
• 34:12
  the whole time. Then I rest it against the
• 34:14
  mirror and it's playing something at me whilst I'm
• 34:17
  brushing my teeth. This is literally me.
• 34:20
  Oh I I watched this episode sat on the sofa next to my wife and
• 34:25
  daughter with my Airpods in watching it on my phone,
• 34:28
  ignoring them. So I was like oh oh OK.
• 34:30
  I mean. I mean, look, how subtle is that
• 34:32
  a literal bubble around us down there?
• 34:35
  A. Literal bubble.
• 34:36
  But then, but then that's part of the point, isn't it?
• 34:38
  You know, he, he's being so unsubtle with that element of,
• 34:42
  of the satire so that you know, it's, it's, it's the classic
• 34:45
  sort of, you know, you can talk about twist structures and all
• 34:47
  the rest of it as as magic tricks.
• 34:49
  And there's a lot of look at the left, look at the right hand.
• 34:52
  So you're not looking at what the right hand is doing
• 34:54
  misdirection. That's the that's.
• 34:55
  The this, this whole thing here about her talking about
• 34:58
  everything she's dressing. There are whole TikTok accounts
• 35:01
  that my friend Kate follows where this is exactly what
• 35:04
  happens. They're walking the streets like
• 35:05
  I'm wearing this. I'm environmentally friendly,
• 35:07
  I've got my Gucci shoes, I've got this and that.
• 35:09
  It's all, it's very on the on the nose, but it's all happening
• 35:14
  right now, all of this. And, and the the sort of
• 35:18
  everything we get here as well of the profession of the
• 35:20
  profession of I'm very careful about not repeating resources
• 35:24
  and wearing retro. It's all meant to see.
• 35:26
  It's this this dichotomy that is obvious.
• 35:29
  And yet to anyone who pays any attention to what is being said
• 35:32
  and how it is being said that you are professing selflessness.
• 35:35
  I'm so selfless, I'm so meek, I'm so humble, which is is all
• 35:42
  performative. It's all, it's all the
• 35:43
  performance of these things which speaks only to the
• 35:45
  obsession with oneself. Although I think something that
• 35:48
  is interesting to say about social media that I think
• 35:52
  personally, I think my take on a lot of what goes on with social
• 35:55
  media and you know, particularly young people, if I have concerns
• 35:57
  about it is not so much that it's self obsession.
• 36:00
  I think a lot of time it's, it's self-awareness of a lot of
• 36:03
  critical, critical, huge level of self-awareness of I'm so self
• 36:07
  aware and concerned about myself that my image, but I need to
• 36:10
  project the whole time and we have set up media and channels
• 36:14
  for that projection. I think this element of the
• 36:17
  satellite, I think maybe that's one bit for me that just just
• 36:19
  feels like it gets a little bit missed about how I think social
• 36:22
  media actually operates and it's problematic.
• 36:24
  But you know, maybe that's just my reading of it.
• 36:28
  I mean, there's so much that's happening here, obviously and
• 36:32
  quietly. Is there space for it to do that
• 36:35
  as well? No, no.
• 36:36
  And that's, that's a very good point.
• 36:37
  No, there's only so much you can you can put in there and.
• 36:40
  You know, enormous slugs going around killing people horribly
• 36:43
  as well, eating them whole. May I say, Michael, I love.
• 36:48
  I saw a picture of the slug at the beginning of the episode
• 36:52
  where someone went, my God, it's a horrible monster.
• 36:54
  And then the slug at the end of the episode and went, oh, it's
• 36:57
  the hero of the episode. It's true.
• 37:01
  I I saw I saw someone whose main take away from this was wanting
• 37:05
  to know whether they were meant to be tractators or or bestors
• 37:08
  saw. That one as well, yeah.
• 37:11
  Somebody who used to work on the DVD range, I believe.
• 37:15
  Oh, bless. You said to me, didn't you?
• 37:17
  You know what? Great comment as well.
• 37:19
  I mean, I've been using it to say to him very often, Yeah, you
• 37:22
  say smart things to me. I'll, I'll send them to other
• 37:25
  people. And they think I'm so smart.
• 37:26
  So thanks, Michael. But about the whole Doctor Who
• 37:30
  being their their only point of reference?
• 37:34
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that, that that's, and it's
• 37:37
  not, it's not exclusive to Doctor Who.
• 37:38
  You get it in fans as soon as you soon as see it amongst Star
• 37:41
  Wars fans and Star Trek fans as well.
• 37:43
  Where But that that person's only frame of reference for
• 37:46
  extracting intent and purpose and meaning from something is
• 37:51
  entirely within that franchise, within that series, in that
• 37:55
  story. And it's just so limiting it.
• 37:57
  He could. At least have said, are they
• 37:58
  Tractatus or Jabba the Hutt's kids?
• 38:01
  You know, just to push it out a little bit.
• 38:05
  Oh, so here we go. Oh, no.
• 38:07
  Well, do you know what? We talked all over the bit where
• 38:08
  the doctor first pops up and she gives that disgusted look and
• 38:11
  just wipes him aside. Which is which on 1st view you
• 38:15
  just think of, oh, it's someone interrupting a bubble, I don't
• 38:17
  want me to talk to that. And Carrie's like, as with so
• 38:20
  many moments, we'll see. Carrie's such a different way,
• 38:22
  doesn't it? And.
• 38:23
  I think 1, How astonished I've been by Millie Gibson in this
• 38:28
  season overall, especially at 73 yards, when when I heard how
• 38:32
  young she was, how how confidently she carried that
• 38:36
  episode. But even here as well.
• 38:38
  So this is, again, this is early in the season filming wise for
• 38:40
  her and how she pops up and plays the whole bit like a
• 38:44
  telephone operator. Hello.
• 38:46
  You know, I'm sorry to interrupt you.
• 38:47
  Can I just talk to you for a second?
• 38:49
  Yeah, She, I think Millie Gibson knows how to play every tone,
• 38:53
  everything that's been asked of her this season.
• 38:56
  Yeah. And it's something like Doctor
• 38:57
  Who you, you, isn't it? Something that I think actors
• 39:00
  who regas and doctors who don't get enough credit for is you
• 39:02
  have to be so flexible in that as well because it's tone and
• 39:05
  it's genre shift every single week.
• 39:07
  This isn't like, you know, you, you've been cast in in Line of
• 39:12
  Duty or something and you're going to do 6 episodes that are
• 39:15
  all the same tone, that are all the same story.
• 39:18
  The Walking Dead. You know you're shooting zombies
• 39:20
  for 10 weeks. Yeah, I mean, last week she was
• 39:22
  doing, she was doing folk horror.
• 39:24
  This week she's doing, you know, quite biting satire.
• 39:28
  And Devil's chord, she was singing and dancing.
• 39:31
  She was dancing, Yeah. You know, you have to, you have
• 39:33
  to be an all round entertainer on this show.
• 39:36
  And then space babies. Oh, still my heart.
• 39:38
  Space babies I'm not. Sure.
• 39:40
  She was. She's learning a lot in that
• 39:41
  episode. Instead, before we before we
• 39:43
  leave Lindsay's office, one of the bits that I really love
• 39:51
  about this is the is the bullshit job that the rich kids
• 39:54
  have. Well.
• 39:55
  They're not doing anything, are they?
• 39:57
  Oh no, you know, they just go in and sit in the office for a
• 39:59
  couple of hours and it's, these are clearly jobs that could not
• 40:01
  actually, and you know, let's face it, we know people like
• 40:04
  this. I live in London.
• 40:05
  I know people like this jobs that there's no way that these
• 40:09
  things, they're very attractive because they're so low effort.
• 40:11
  But you know that you you invest them with a lot of importance,
• 40:13
  but clearly could not actually sustain someone financially
• 40:17
  because there are so little use. It's the first job during
• 40:22
  lockdown that would have been cancelled out.
• 40:24
  Stay at home, all right? You're not needed.
• 40:26
  I'll have you know. OK.
• 40:27
  I have to work the whole time. I'm valuable.
• 40:30
  Me OK. So I'm standing on my doorstep.
• 40:33
  I'm standing on my doorstep. I'll put things on the shelf.
• 40:37
  I'm huge to society. Oh, I fucking love these slugs.
• 40:41
  Look. They're good, aren't they?
• 40:43
  I mean your friend and mine Dylan Reece was completely not a
• 40:50
  fan of this season. I might add on the whole said
• 40:55
  that the CGI slugs were were really crap and embarrassing.
• 40:58
  I'm like, are you joking me? How are you going to realise the
• 41:00
  CGI slug better than that? I mean also there's even before
• 41:06
  we knew fully what was going on. I I love the conceit of a
• 41:10
  monster that is so slow moving and so undirectly threatening
• 41:16
  that you could easily you could just walk away from it unless
• 41:20
  you like. There's no point at which they
• 41:21
  lunge or anything like that. Isn't that the joke though?
• 41:24
  That they literally walk straight into their mouths.
• 41:27
  Exactly. That's that's such a good thing.
• 41:30
  It's it's such a great idea for a for a monster, the ones that
• 41:34
  are just too stupid to escape from.
• 41:37
  Yeah, they don't deserve to die. Frankly, I just watched you so
• 41:41
  well is when clearly all these people have been adds and none
• 41:45
  of them believe it. Do they just refuse to believe
• 41:47
  the evidence of their own eyes? This is.
• 41:52
  This is very off topic, apologies I I forget her name
• 41:56
  but Lindsay the actress, it's she.
• 41:58
  Callie Cook. Callie Cook, Is she wearing
• 41:59
  contact lenses in this or is it all colour grading?
• 42:02
  It's definitely colour graded because it was the most
• 42:07
  miserable day in Wales when they filled all the outside stuff and
• 42:10
  they said they had to use their most extreme filters to make it
• 42:14
  look fine. I mean, we're not quite there
• 42:16
  yet, but you can see it. There's a couple of shots.
• 42:20
  It's dancing, isn't it? It's a bit like Billie Piper
• 42:23
  when she's in that lift in New Earth, you know?
• 42:25
  Yeah. Can I just say, just on a
• 42:29
  complete sidenote, shooting out what is the most prettiest
• 42:32
  Doctor Who I've ever known? And I love him very much.
• 42:36
  He's, I mean, I can't. It's a face on the eyes,
• 42:38
  Michael. He's beautiful.
• 42:40
  I'm not used to having these feelings for Doctor Who.
• 42:44
  Now I know how you feel with the companions all these years.
• 42:46
  You know all the Amy Ponds and Clara Oswald's.
• 42:49
  Clara, Yeah. There's only two reactions to
• 42:53
  Clara. It's Clara or Clara and.
• 42:59
  They're what we call the two classical sexual orientations.
• 43:04
  That's the two type of Doctor Who found there.
• 43:08
  Oh, now this, I, when I first watched this, this whole she
• 43:12
  can't walk without the arrows, I was like, oh, come on.
• 43:15
  But then I was thinking to myself, how many times have I
• 43:19
  literally walked into a post because I'm on my phone in the
• 43:23
  street and walked into the road and almost been knocked down by
• 43:26
  a car? It has happened, Michael.
• 43:28
  Yeah, and I know we don't want to admit these things because
• 43:30
  they we all just sound like, you know, boomers who are fed up
• 43:34
  with the Internet. But it it is true that people's
• 43:37
  that our skills do atrophy from overuse of, of technology at
• 43:41
  times. Like how many, you know, no one
• 43:43
  can read a map anymore. Joe, this is this.
• 43:46
  This is my most Tory. This is my most Tory opinion.
• 43:48
  It's ridiculous that people can't read a map anymore.
• 43:50
  I've got my phone for that. Well, exactly.
• 43:53
  But then what? What?
• 43:54
  Well, you won't have your phone with you the whole time.
• 43:56
  Then I'll be like poor Lindy Pepperbean walking into the
• 43:59
  Kings, do you? Remember, do you remember when
• 44:01
  we were, when we were kids, the teachers used to tell you when
• 44:03
  you're in maths, they used to say you won't have a calculator
• 44:06
  in your pocket everywhere you go.
• 44:10
  Oh my God, there's so many things now that when I was a kid
• 44:13
  I'd have been, I'd have been saying that's voodoo.
• 44:15
  Jesus Christ, the things we take for oh, look at that.
• 44:17
  It's just inside the lift. And so the one thing that isn't
• 44:22
  really expected, one of a couple of things that isn't expanded
• 44:24
  on, and I've pleasingly, I think is that the dots obviously are
• 44:29
  so fed up with the facile conversation of these privileged
• 44:33
  white kids that it's decided to murder them all horribly
• 44:36
  alphabetically and drive them into these slugs.
• 44:39
  But we don't really know how that's happened, do we?
• 44:41
  We just, it's just happened. I think there's AI think there's
• 44:44
  a degree if you've just got to, yeah, There's only so much room
• 44:49
  to explain everything with a certain amount and some stuff
• 44:51
  can just be sketched in. And I think you're really.
• 44:53
  Interested. Yeah.
• 44:55
  We only spend 45 minutes with these people and I want to
• 44:57
  murder them all. I need no more explanation than
• 45:01
  what I'm seeing. And yeah, and yeah, the first
• 45:04
  time you're watching it, you know, I think you're, you're
• 45:07
  annoyed at that character. You're annoyed at that character
• 45:09
  in many ways. But there's a really difficult
• 45:12
  thing to do when you're dealing, when you're creating unlikable
• 45:15
  characters, which is that you can, especially when they're
• 45:18
  carrying the episode, you can't make them so unlikeable and so
• 45:22
  irritable that the audience doesn't want to watch anymore.
• 45:25
  You have to get that across in some ways.
• 45:26
  And I think what he cleverly does here with with Lindsay is
• 45:31
  he tricks you. And this is part of it.
• 45:33
  So this is this is also this is one of the things that is, is,
• 45:35
  you know, it's it's it's not a single moment, but it's
• 45:37
  something that's building towards the ACT.
• 45:41
  What what she will eventually do even more actually, I think her
• 45:44
  her attitude towards towards towards Ricky than than than
• 45:49
  than the doctor is that you're taking her at her own
• 45:52
  estimation. You're taking her that she is an
• 45:54
  innocent, that she's just useless.
• 45:56
  Oh, if only I was better that she is to be pitied and she's to
• 45:59
  be liked because that's what she wants you to do.
• 46:02
  That's and that's that's part of the problem she has.
• 46:04
  No, she is entirely self-centered, but no but, but
• 46:10
  will accept no responsibility herself for anything.
• 46:14
  And that's why her playing it in that child by lightweight is so
• 46:17
  vital. You're like, oh, she's just a
• 46:19
  kid, really. Yeah, but she's not.
• 46:21
  No, but she's not. She's awful.
• 46:25
  It's interesting as well that hold on this being the that this
• 46:29
  is what the rich people choose to do that they choose to to
• 46:31
  save their to save their their children, save their children.
• 46:35
  Quote UN quote from societies, you know, realities and send
• 46:38
  them off, which is an idea that is in the end of time.
• 46:45
  And I think it's one of the it's one of the more interesting
• 46:46
  ideas in the end of time. But again, it's a bit lost among
• 46:48
  everything there, which is that is it Maitland the baddie in end
• 46:53
  of time. He wants the eternity gate for
• 46:55
  his daughter because. This idea that it's not
• 46:58
  Maitland. What's his name?
• 46:59
  I know. You mean, yeah.
• 47:01
  He's trying to save his daughter, isn't he?
• 47:02
  He's trying to give life to his daughter because there's this
• 47:05
  thing of, you know, speaking as a parent, it's very easy to fall
• 47:08
  into this trap. But I think it's made a
• 47:10
  particular comment on, on the rich here, which is that thing
• 47:13
  that as a parent with children, it can become a sort of egotism
• 47:17
  by proxy, right? Oh, I don't want to.
• 47:19
  I don't want the turn of the life for myself.
• 47:21
  I want it for my child because that sounds like parental love.
• 47:24
  But what actually is this massive vanity?
• 47:26
  No, no, I want to set my child up above, above everybody else.
• 47:29
  I want to save them from the realities that everybody else
• 47:32
  has to go through. I want them to jump the queue.
• 47:34
  I want them to have the cushy job, you know, I want them to
• 47:37
  have everything done for them while other people are suffering
• 47:40
  and being excluded. And I, I, I, I, it was a, it was
• 47:45
  a thread that I'd always liked the end of time but gets lost.
• 47:47
  But I think here it's, it's, it's just again, another little
• 47:50
  thread of like Russell T Davis saying this is how societies
• 47:53
  operate. This is how societies operate.
• 47:55
  And this and this is where all of that can lead on what it
• 47:58
  means. It's all like, really natural,
• 48:01
  she says about the Wild Woods. They just don't have a clue
• 48:06
  you're going to die. So many things about what you
• 48:08
  just said there. It's also very similar to
• 48:10
  Paradise Towers. All the kids was left, were
• 48:14
  they? And then they went off to war,
• 48:16
  all the adults. What were we just saying about
• 48:18
  people who's only? Friends.
• 48:19
  Oh, shit. Oh, no.
• 48:21
  Think of something else. Something else?
• 48:23
  No, I can't. I can't.
• 48:25
  Do you know how much I'll talk about Doctor Harry Michael
• 48:27
  Mills? You could have said it was like
• 48:30
  High Rise by JG Ballard, which is the novel that Paradise I was
• 48:33
  written. It's not actually much like I
• 48:36
  was by JT Ballot. That's no I know.
• 48:39
  You get the point I'm trying to make, right?
• 48:41
  I said it because you're a big 7th Doctor fan and I thought
• 48:44
  you'd enjoy the references. Twisted.
• 48:46
  My God, there's always A twist in the tail.
• 48:50
  Here we are. They're beginning to spot in.
• 48:51
  Fact. Have you noticed since they sung
• 48:52
  that song, there's been a twist in every tail you know?
• 48:56
  I've I've been need to go back and check.
• 48:58
  Is she also the last person credited it on each one in the
• 49:01
  young credits? I bet, I bet, I bet you she is
• 49:05
  I. Bet.
• 49:05
  She is. I love it though, I love her
• 49:08
  appearances. I know what the hell was going
• 49:09
  on with her, but I've seen her in a picture in a sharp business
• 49:12
  suit in the in the two-part finale.
• 49:14
  So we're going to find out. Yes, sorry.
• 49:17
  You're not allowed to spoil things that we haven't seen yet,
• 49:19
  Joe. You know the other thing that
• 49:20
  battles me? Very.
• 49:22
  Oh, sorry. That's the big one, isn't it?
• 49:24
  That's the one that I know a lot of.
• 49:27
  I didn't catch that one the first time round and it was
• 49:29
  like. Well, no, because I figured
• 49:31
  because we only see people individually.
• 49:33
  Yeah, I figured that you you just weren't allowed to be with
• 49:36
  other people on those screens for some.
• 49:38
  Reason but that but that that's the point you know none of this
• 49:40
  is none of this is unintentional.
• 49:42
  He is misdirecting you all the way through.
• 49:45
  I think it was James Craig Smith on blue sky who said he doesn't
• 49:49
  want you to spot the murderer in the first act.
• 49:51
  This is it's it is deliberate misdirection.
• 49:54
  But I guess the point that being is how easily we can be
• 49:57
  misdirected about, about about, you know, such, such such major
• 50:01
  things. I.
• 50:02
  Think on the whole, Doctor Who attracts a certain sort of
• 50:05
  person, morally speaking, you know, and I think if we knew
• 50:10
  that about her in the first act, then we wouldn't want to follow.
• 50:13
  We wouldn't want to watch this episode.
• 50:15
  I know some people that said, oh, she's just so horrible all
• 50:17
  the way through. I just didn't want to.
• 50:18
  Why are we not with the Doctor, you know?
• 50:22
  But yeah, I think, I think because the Doctor, I think
• 50:25
  Doctor endorses her because he's really worried about her.
• 50:28
  So we're really worried about her, because if the Doctor
• 50:30
  thinks she's worth saving, then clearly she's worth saving.
• 50:34
  Yeah, yeah. And I, I think we where we're
• 50:37
  all expecting this, this episode to go on the 1st watch, is that
• 50:42
  ultimately through these events and through the Doctor showing
• 50:46
  her a better way, Lindsay is going to, you know, go through a
• 50:49
  period process of self realisation, So self
• 50:51
  actualisation, as they all do. And that she's, there's going to
• 50:54
  be some big moment where she's, where she is motivated to save
• 50:56
  herself. And in fact, there is, but in
• 50:58
  the most horrible way. But that's what we're being
• 51:00
  strict. That's we think that she's
• 51:02
  horrible because we we accept that she's horrible now because
• 51:04
  we think she's going to be redeemed at the end, that that
• 51:07
  this is going to be her journey out of being this person through
• 51:09
  being confronted with reality. You know, the moment where she
• 51:11
  puts the bubble down that, you know, you sort of feel like the
• 51:14
  first one. She's going to.
• 51:16
  Take that step, but but actually no.
• 51:18
  Pay attention to what's going on because in terms of Linda's, how
• 51:22
  Linda is presented, she is given time after time after time,
• 51:26
  those moments to take responsibility, to take agency,
• 51:30
  to do something. And every single time she
• 51:32
  rejects it in increasingly, increasingly big ways until, you
• 51:38
  know, she she sacrifices someone else's life and then walks off
• 51:41
  to her own death. Can I ask you about the somewhat
• 51:46
  baffling but very pleasing decision to piss off so many
• 51:49
  Americans this series? Because we're now on Disney
• 51:52
  Plus, this huge platform where lots of Americans can now watch
• 51:55
  Doctor Who gladly. And yet in boom, we're taking on
• 51:59
  warfare, capitalism, religion in 73 yards, we're taking on
• 52:03
  nuclear weapons and what's this called again, dot bubble.
• 52:07
  We're taking on white privilege and racism.
• 52:09
  I mean, these are the America's favorite things.
• 52:13
  What's going on here, Michael? Come on, come on, Joe.
• 52:16
  We're, we're both British. We are very, we have very far
• 52:20
  from clean hands on any of those things you just listed.
• 52:25
  I know there are. It's not.
• 52:26
  Like he's got a gun culture episode you.
• 52:28
  Know, I only have to type in, you know, Trump supporters to
• 52:31
  see, you know, examples of all of those things put together in
• 52:34
  one person. It's deliberate, right?
• 52:38
  It is deliberate. I think these, I think there
• 52:41
  are, there are commonalities across these.
• 52:44
  These are things that will speak to both sides of the Atlantic in
• 52:46
  terms of what's been proposed. Literally looks like a
• 52:49
  Californian Valley valley girl. That's a deliberate look she's
• 52:53
  got. There no still, you know, here's
• 52:55
  the thing actually in terms of, in terms of the look of it and,
• 52:57
  and how people presented, I think it's, I think that's the
• 52:59
  important point 'cause I've seen what hand on heart, first time I
• 53:02
  watched this, I did spot quite early on that everyone was
• 53:06
  white. And I, I think I've spotted that
• 53:09
  because I'm a Doctor Who fan. So I know how big Russell T
• 53:12
  Davis is on, you know, on the quite rightly on, you know,
• 53:16
  diverse casting is that. What I mean, and I think look at
• 53:18
  the last era, we've seen so much wonderful diverse casting.
• 53:22
  Exactly. For years and years now, yeah.
• 53:25
  But I think it's because I have that knowledge of him as a, as,
• 53:27
  as a producer, that it's sort of when I, I sort of like, oh,
• 53:30
  everyone's white. But I have to admit, I I I to
• 53:35
  quote someone else from Blues card, I thought that was going
• 53:37
  to be I thought that was texture.
• 53:38
  I thought that was a little bit of a sort of, you know, they're
• 53:40
  all rich, they're all white, they're all useless.
• 53:43
  I so although I spotted it, I still didn't expect that the
• 53:46
  still quite didn't expect the the episode to to like literally
• 53:51
  engage with that. So directly at the end of.
• 53:54
  This shot of the which has to walk for all these slugs.
• 53:58
  Yeah, it's like a Bee Movie now, just for a second, but.
• 54:02
  And that's great, right? She can't even walk.
• 54:05
  There's clearly an enormous gap there, and she can't get through
• 54:08
  it without stumbling into one of their jaws.
• 54:12
  Yeah, it's wonderfully, deliberately ludicrous image,
• 54:18
  isn't it? What's the name of the director
• 54:20
  of this episode? He did this in 73 yards, and
• 54:23
  I'll tell you what want to find. Like, talk about packing the
• 54:27
  screen with visual interest. Well, another thing that's easy
• 54:30
  to get lost to to get missed as well as just from a a lot of
• 54:33
  this is going to be quite complicated from a just a
• 54:35
  shooting point of view. And you know, I know some people
• 54:38
  have said they can't see the Disney money on screen in.
• 54:41
  In these episodes met Dylan recently.
• 54:43
  But it's worth remembering every single time someone's got their
• 54:46
  bubble up, that's a VFX shot. Every single time someone's
• 54:49
  walking along with that they. Couldn't do this in series 5,
• 54:52
  which is when he mooted to do this.
• 54:55
  I do love the fact that we might have had a Rusty Davis episode
• 54:57
  in the Series 5, though, so it's not so unreasonable that Moffett
• 55:01
  came back in season one. But yeah, they just said, yeah,
• 55:06
  there's no way they could have that many VFX shots for an
• 55:09
  episode. So it just wasn't feasible.
• 55:11
  But from it, but also, you know, as a direct as you know, same
• 55:13
  conflict in the director whose name certainly neither of us can
• 55:15
  remember, but but well done, well done, Sir.
• 55:18
  That's quite that's tricky stuff to direct.
• 55:20
  You know, lots of directors don't, you know, can can can
• 55:23
  Carver even today Carver, you know, very big critical don't
• 55:26
  happen to think about how do you how do you block that?
• 55:29
  How do you frame that? What do I need to be allowing
• 55:31
  for? How does that work with the
• 55:32
  lighting? In fact, you know, you know,
• 55:35
  Kenneth Branagh directed the first full movie.
• 55:38
  And yes. I did do.
• 55:40
  That and he said the reason he did, he said the reason he did
• 55:42
  it was because he said he realised at that time, which
• 55:45
  would have been 20/10/2011 I think he said, oh, you've
• 55:48
  realised that if I wanted to carry on directing the sort of
• 55:50
  films I wanted to direct, I needed to learn how to direct
• 55:53
  special effects in CGI. And there are problems with
• 55:57
  Marvel. But he he said, you know, Marvel
• 56:01
  gave him a, you know, a very safe, supportive environment in
• 56:04
  which he could get that experience because he was just a
• 56:06
  skill you needed to have. Now that wasn't a type of film
• 56:09
  you did anymore. That was films do.
• 56:10
  You know what he brought to that, though was he's such a
• 56:13
  great actors, director. There were wonderful
• 56:15
  performances in that movie. I thought the first four film
• 56:18
  was great. Oh, it's, it's a it's a
• 56:21
  wonderful film, and much witchier than it needed to be on
• 56:24
  the paper. Second one on the other hand,
• 56:26
  good God are they pulled it back from the third one.
• 56:29
  I thought as a the second one was dreadful.
• 56:31
  Now I'll just say, please, everybody out there listening to
• 56:35
  this episode of having sort of blonde, no, just just go back
• 56:38
  and read your tweets before you send them.
• 56:41
  OK, Just give them one quick glance over and say, how does
• 56:44
  this read? Because the the probably the
• 56:47
  most thoughtless, and I think it's inadvertently thoughtless
• 56:50
  tweet I saw was somebody saying, you know what?
• 56:53
  In Ricky September, they've they've given us the best Doctor
• 56:58
  we could have had since Peter Capaldi.
• 57:01
  And I was like, oh, please, please read back that because
• 57:04
  the last two doctors have been, you know, a woman and black and
• 57:10
  and that that was all the responses were that were like,
• 57:12
  do you know what you're saying? You know well.
• 57:17
  Yeah, it's, it's, it's not a great, it's it's, you know,
• 57:19
  people, I think people do need do need to be well.
• 57:21
  So I'm sure that was not that. No.
• 57:23
  And I, I, I don't think so. I think it was entirely
• 57:25
  accidental that he loved the character and he thought, wow,
• 57:28
  he'd make a great doctor and maybe word it that way, though,
• 57:31
  you know, oh, wouldn't he have been an interesting Doctor Who?
• 57:34
  But. Then it's interesting, isn't it,
• 57:37
  because in a few people have made the Doctor comparison with
• 57:39
  Ricky September and I've I some people say they thought there
• 57:43
  was going to be some sort of twist that this was the doctor
• 57:45
  using some sort of hologram to project himself into the system
• 57:48
  or something like that to help out or, or what because he is
• 57:51
  cast as the heroic character and but but it's interesting there
• 57:57
  isn't it that again thing of we what why do we why do we put up
• 58:02
  with Lindy? Why do we ignore so much of her
• 58:04
  obvious faults throughout this? And again, it's that thing of
• 58:06
  the validation that she is getting from the hero character.
• 58:09
  It's, it's entirely reflective from everybody from.
• 58:12
  Everybody in this. Everybody gives her the benefit
• 58:14
  every. I mean, that's another part of,
• 58:16
  you know, this is another part of the, you know, the commentary
• 58:19
  about how racism operates. This is everybody gives her the
• 58:22
  benefit of the doubt because she's a pretty young white
• 58:24
  woman. And that includes and that
• 58:27
  includes the audience, I'm afraid to say, you know, that's
• 58:29
  that's a deliberate part of the construction.
• 58:30
  Because, you know, racism often is as much of that is as much
• 58:35
  about what isn't said as what is about who gets the benefit of
• 58:38
  the doubt and who doesn't, who is listened to and who and and
• 58:42
  who is not, whose voices are included and excluded.
• 58:46
  And I think that is another thing that is being played with
• 58:50
  here and that that we as an audience are being our being,
• 58:55
  you know, played with, that we are willing to accept the person
• 58:59
  that we are told is good the whole way through.
• 59:00
  And again, all the good. This is why I watch this again
• 59:03
  and again, because I was totally suckered in the whole, in
• 59:07
  everything you just said there, absolutely everything.
• 59:11
  I, I like where they're filming here as well, these sort of
• 59:14
  pipes and staircases. And yeah, we've gone, we've no,
• 59:17
  no, no, I mean, we've gone away from that sort of bubble gum
• 59:20
  exterior now down into what does she say?
• 59:23
  It's so manual. We we skipped, we skipped over a
• 59:27
  line there, another little sort of Ricky has a line about the
• 59:32
  great abrogation. Abrogation.
• 59:34
  I didn't know what that. Meant abrogation I'm.
• 59:36
  Sure, look it up. Yeah, I'm.
• 59:38
  I'm sure our listeners were ahead of us both, but an
• 59:41
  abrogation is the. Excuse me, If you're going to do
• 59:43
  it, can you do the voice, please?
• 59:45
  You know the teacher voice. Come on.
• 59:48
  Anyone who doesn't listen to the book club, this is in danger of
• 59:51
  becoming a running joke, for which I apologize, where I
• 59:53
  pretend to be a teacher giving to a lesson.
• 59:55
  So an abrogation, as, as the more student listeners will will
• 1:00:00
  be aware, is the repeal or abolition of a law, right or
• 1:00:04
  agreement. And I think knowing what we know
• 1:00:06
  about this world later on, that's, you know, it's it again.
• 1:00:09
  It's just those little bits of things that are being built up,
• 1:00:11
  isn't it? And that's something you know,
• 1:00:15
  you might a viewer might not understand and actually look up
• 1:00:19
  and then maybe then they'll realise just how how white this
• 1:00:24
  cast is. Well, again, it's, it's
• 1:00:26
  inviting, you know, it is a it's a story that invites engagement,
• 1:00:31
  you know, from from the audience of of no, it wants you to engage
• 1:00:34
  with with the text. What is telling you to go beyond
• 1:00:37
  what is merely being presented. I mean I.
• 1:00:39
  Have heard people say they felt quite patronised by the episode,
• 1:00:42
  could you understand that reading as well?
• 1:00:47
  I. Like, you know, the newspapers,
• 1:00:49
  a couple of the newspapers said that it was all, it was all too
• 1:00:53
  on the nose, all of it. A couple of podcasts I heard,
• 1:00:57
  yeah, said that, yeah. I don't like being told how to
• 1:00:59
  feel about social media and things like this.
• 1:01:03
  I mean, I think I think such on the some of the social media
• 1:01:07
  stuff is very on the nose, but you know, that's, that's
• 1:01:10
  possibly the sort of that's that's on purpose.
• 1:01:12
  It's part of my direction. Sorry, just again, sidebar.
• 1:01:16
  We've now reached Ricky and Ricky and the Numbers, which is
• 1:01:21
  absolute Grade A for the for the ages Russell T Davis plot
• 1:01:25
  contrivance. Isn't it?
• 1:01:26
  It's it's the 42 doors again, isn't?
• 1:01:29
  It exactly the same thing I thought there is It's it's
• 1:01:32
  proper Galaxy Quest. Why is this here?
• 1:01:35
  Because it was in the episodes. Well, of course, the the excuse
• 1:01:39
  is to get her at the door doing it and then to make that call.
• 1:01:43
  And you know what? This is for me, the best
• 1:01:46
  character rug pull since Avon in Blake Seven in the episode
• 1:01:51
  Orbit. Have you seen that?
• 1:01:53
  I have, yes. Yes, that is one of the films of
• 1:01:56
  Blaze. Obviously that's always going to
• 1:01:57
  kill the. Exact same thing where you
• 1:01:59
  think, right and they're going, Oh my God, we can't get off the
• 1:02:01
  planet, we'll never make orbit. We're too heavy.
• 1:02:05
  What the hell weighs 72 kilos? He goes billow, weighs 70 kilos
• 1:02:10
  and then he hunts him through the ship.
• 1:02:12
  You know, he makes that call. I'm going to murder this guy
• 1:02:14
  that I've been with. And this is exactly what she
• 1:02:17
  does here. And it's as good of a rug pool
• 1:02:19
  because I don't think anyone, you can't possibly know that.
• 1:02:23
  He's changed his name to Ricky September, so we can't really
• 1:02:26
  figure out the twist. But two, it's like nobody would
• 1:02:29
  do this. Surely nobody could be this
• 1:02:32
  evil. I mean, you've heard you've
• 1:02:35
  heard it here if ever there was a more Doctor Who podcast
• 1:02:38
  assessment, but Disney Plus's Doctor Who is as good as Blake's
• 1:02:42
  second. Whilst aping the Twilight Zone
• 1:02:49
  and, you know, cutting some slack to Andrew Cartmill's
• 1:02:52
  Doctor Who as well. There are some some of the names
• 1:02:55
  in here are gloriously Toast of London, aren't they?
• 1:02:59
  There's a, there's a, you see, toast of London.
• 1:03:02
  No. Are they cute cutesy wootsy
• 1:03:04
  names like this? Just deliberately, deliberately
• 1:03:07
  ridiculous names. Like there's a, there's a,
• 1:03:09
  there's a Harry tendency in here and stuff like that.
• 1:03:12
  You know, all the characters in Toast of London are called
• 1:03:15
  things like Stephen Toast or Ray Purchase or things like that.
• 1:03:18
  Oh, look at that slug coming up behind Bless.
• 1:03:22
  I just think they have great design.
• 1:03:24
  I I wouldn't never stop going on about them.
• 1:03:26
  And of course they're doing us a massive favour by Mercury.
• 1:03:28
  And I thought he's horrible racists as well.
• 1:03:30
  I'm not actually saying that the only answer to racism is to kill
• 1:03:34
  everybody, but I'm going to stop the sentence there.
• 1:03:42
  Just, it's just so it's really well filmed though, isn't it?
• 1:03:45
  This this this sequence. Again, that's another thing that
• 1:03:49
  is is doing some of the work here in terms of the
• 1:03:51
  misdirection is the ways in which things are presented in
• 1:03:54
  their shots. But they do allow you bits of
• 1:03:56
  it. You know this, you know, this is
• 1:03:57
  shot like like a romance. This is shot like, you know, the
• 1:03:59
  big stirring speech with the music, like, yes, he's going to
• 1:04:02
  save everybody. It's his most doctor doctor
• 1:04:05
  moment. So, you know, that's what we've
• 1:04:06
  been. We're being LED down this
• 1:04:08
  presentation of the story that she thinks she's living we.
• 1:04:10
  Think the two of them are going to get away together at the end
• 1:04:13
  and live a happy life? That's the Disney ending.
• 1:04:16
  Yeah, but but, you know, he does give you little, little glimpses
• 1:04:20
  through it as well. You know, there are, it's not
• 1:04:22
  completely sealed. You can start if you wanted to,
• 1:04:25
  you could push through and see where it is, which is why it
• 1:04:27
  appears so different on 2nd viewing because, you know, he
• 1:04:29
  catches that sort of, there have been plenty of romances in
• 1:04:33
  Doctor Who and and in plenty of other stories.
• 1:04:35
  But there is a sort of, you know, insane vanity to a love
• 1:04:38
  story as well in a disaster movie, in an alien invasion
• 1:04:41
  movie that the thing that cares about is 02 people have found
• 1:04:43
  each other. And I think here he actually
• 1:04:45
  sort of quite cleverly flags that up at the same time as
• 1:04:48
  playing it. You know, the fact that she just
• 1:04:50
  wants to talk about Ricky September, despite everything
• 1:04:55
  else that's going on, is, is really well done.
• 1:04:57
  One of the more absurd criticisms I heard of the
• 1:05:00
  episode was oh the slugs are so embarrassing, why isn't it just
• 1:05:04
  the dots killing them throughout?
• 1:05:06
  Well that is rather A twist at this point.
• 1:05:09
  If they were killing them throughout then we'd know
• 1:05:11
  exactly what's going on all the way through.
• 1:05:14
  Although it is a lovely given that that's someone holding a
• 1:05:16
  ball right now in the set, you know, in place of the CGI dot.
• 1:05:21
  There's something very menacing about that red eye.
• 1:05:24
  It's very hell, isn't it? Yeah, well, no as well.
• 1:05:29
  When she says, you know, it's name is cool and it sort of
• 1:05:32
  turns, doesn't it? Like thinking about it, It's
• 1:05:35
  yeah. A slight slight slight absurdity
• 1:05:39
  here that just keeps going into pipes.
• 1:05:41
  Like are they magnetic or something?
• 1:05:43
  No, it's dramatic though. Come on, it means we've got dry
• 1:05:46
  ice pumping into the scene. POV shots.
• 1:05:50
  How can anyone say there's no money in this episode?
• 1:05:54
  Honestly, It's constantly visually inventive.
• 1:05:57
  Oh, he's so cool with that pipe that he's doing jousting with.
• 1:06:00
  It's very, it's very Luke Skywalker with the training
• 1:06:03
  drawing, isn't it? Well, it's Luke Skywalker,
• 1:06:05
  Allah, the Backstreet Boys with that haircut, isn't it?
• 1:06:08
  This, this bit here, what we were saying earlier about this
• 1:06:13
  the, the, you know, if you like the, the, the, the, the
• 1:06:15
  centrepiece audience for Doctor Who no longer being children
• 1:06:18
  quite as young as it once was. I think what happens with Ricky
• 1:06:21
  here, he's a big part of this, is one of the nastiest deaths
• 1:06:25
  we've seen him. It goes through his head,
• 1:06:27
  doesn't it? It goes.
• 1:06:28
  Through his head, there's no, I mean, OK.
• 1:06:29
  They have to kind of cut, he's sort of there half on the screen
• 1:06:32
  because we can never see that in a family show.
• 1:06:35
  But look, look, there is no, there is no pretence here of
• 1:06:39
  what happens to him in this second.
• 1:06:40
  Like you see it, you don't literally see the detail, but
• 1:06:42
  you see what happens. And because it goes at him and
• 1:06:46
  then come around him. Well, and and they use.
• 1:06:49
  It's very cleverly put together. They use the flash of the red
• 1:06:53
  coming out to mimic a blood splatter, so they don't
• 1:06:55
  literally show you blood, but there's a big red on the screen
• 1:06:58
  when it comes out. It's I was quite taken about.
• 1:07:01
  This. So she comes, so she's just done
• 1:07:03
  something absolutely appalling. Yeah, She comes down the ladder
• 1:07:06
  and then how she composes herself, she gets herself back
• 1:07:09
  into that, that, you know, full on image.
• 1:07:12
  Yeah, well, because she, she is a narcissist, isn't she?
• 1:07:17
  And the thing here where she tells, she says, oh, oh, he was
• 1:07:20
  so brave. And this is something people,
• 1:07:22
  you know, a question people often ask of people who tell
• 1:07:26
  very obvious self-serving lies. You know, do they believe their
• 1:07:28
  own lies? But The thing is, narcissists
• 1:07:31
  don't view truth and falsehood in the same way that other
• 1:07:35
  people do. For them, reality is really just
• 1:07:39
  sort of extension of will. So if so, me saying this is the
• 1:07:42
  first step towards that being the case because it's all
• 1:07:45
  ultimately centred on me and my perception of reality and that
• 1:07:48
  therefore gets extended to other people.
• 1:07:50
  And I think that is very well depicted here.
• 1:07:53
  But if she's I'm, I'm not going to suggest that Lindy Pepper
• 1:07:57
  Bean is a victim. But if she has been enclosed in
• 1:08:01
  in a world where she's not been able to see any other views
• 1:08:06
  beyond the ones that she's been told by her parents, by society,
• 1:08:10
  by the other people here, can she know any better?
• 1:08:16
  I, I mean, I think there's entire strands of philosophy
• 1:08:19
  dedicated to, to what degree can people be both products of and
• 1:08:25
  supporters of I? Think some of this is
• 1:08:27
  indoctrination, right? Like you're told this stuff by
• 1:08:31
  your parents. I don't think you're born a
• 1:08:33
  terrible racist. No, but then equally we have
• 1:08:38
  agency if we have free will. And I think maybe that's what
• 1:08:41
  that that's that's possibly actually within the within the
• 1:08:43
  satire. Maybe that's the most important
• 1:08:46
  role of of Ricky September is someone who has started to get
• 1:08:49
  it, someone who has who has pulled it apart, who, unless
• 1:08:53
  I've missed something, doesn't show the same prejudice towards
• 1:08:55
  the doctor that the other characters do and what little
• 1:08:58
  interaction they have. Because I think, I think he's
• 1:09:02
  there to remove the excuse if you like, you know, you still,
• 1:09:06
  you still have a choice. She makes the wrong one.
• 1:09:11
  This life that Brewster has now about, we're going to go out
• 1:09:14
  there, we're going to tame the land like true pioneers.
• 1:09:17
  Man oh man, there's a whole dissertation in that as well.
• 1:09:20
  Oh God, he is this this character is like he's he's,
• 1:09:23
  he's on screen of such a I hate him so much.
• 1:09:28
  He is absolutely one of those sort of, you know, effective
• 1:09:31
  naturalist, back to basics, vegan Viking Bros who you get
• 1:09:36
  on, you know, social media, who, who, who live such a sheltered
• 1:09:41
  life that they think that they're rediscovering reality
• 1:09:44
  because because they're the first people who've gone out and
• 1:09:47
  chopped wood, you know, all that they've known to go out and do
• 1:09:50
  it. It's, it's, it's oh, it's so
• 1:09:53
  annoying, but it also you get the little, you get the little
• 1:09:55
  hinted, don't you? As well of amongst everything
• 1:09:57
  else, that's this society might also perhaps have more
• 1:10:00
  conservative views around gender than we think because we're not
• 1:10:02
  to the same extent. But that's, you know, him, he
• 1:10:04
  takes the leadership role, you know, to turn away ladies and
• 1:10:08
  they and they listen as well. You know, it's all again, it's
• 1:10:12
  just part of that building, building a recognizable world of
• 1:10:16
  the way in which these prejudices manifest, even even
• 1:10:21
  as societies tell themselves they've moved beyond it.
• 1:10:24
  I hate Hoochie Pie just as much so because she has the most
• 1:10:29
  explicitly racist line now, but all of her dialogue is couched
• 1:10:34
  in this cute, you know, old Darling Pie.
• 1:10:38
  Or it just goes to show you just how how nasty all this nasty
• 1:10:43
  stuff can just be covered in syrup.
• 1:10:47
  It's horrible. She's vile.
• 1:10:49
  They're all vile. Get on your death ship and go.
• 1:10:55
  Sorry, that was a bit mean. But there's, but I mean, the
• 1:11:00
  ship itself is so is, is again, so much of the production
• 1:11:06
  design, so much of the shooting about this tells the story as
• 1:11:09
  well. Like the little ship they're
• 1:11:10
  going off on in. It's not, that's not a proper
• 1:11:13
  boat. That's like a little Disneyland
• 1:11:15
  riverboat, you know, and it is. But it's just another reflection
• 1:11:17
  of how their their sense of superiority and agency and
• 1:11:21
  control extends beyond these obvious flaws that obvious in
• 1:11:25
  abilities that that that cost of lives that they are, they are so
• 1:11:28
  close that they are invisible to them.
• 1:11:32
  You know I'm. Just obsessed with the look she
• 1:11:34
  gives him here, the look she gives him of just like, you
• 1:11:38
  know, don't tell me what to do. Who the hell do you think you
• 1:11:42
  are, you know? That that that head held back,
• 1:11:45
  sort of offended. Like, yeah, I'm going, you know
• 1:11:50
  they. Saved her, and she turns around.
• 1:11:52
  She just rolls her eyes, doesn't she?
• 1:11:54
  Oh, I've got to talk to you, have have I?
• 1:11:56
  And then even then, she patronises him and goes, Well,
• 1:11:58
  you, it was your duty to help me.
• 1:12:01
  She's, she's the one who thinks she's been offended here, right?
• 1:12:04
  You know, this is all part of it as well.
• 1:12:05
  The the ways in which the, the, the, the ways in which people,
• 1:12:10
  people who who enact prejudice and subjugation of others will
• 1:12:13
  often assume the language of victimhood themselves in the
• 1:12:17
  process of doing it. And again, just just just just
• 1:12:21
  caught, just caught in a in a, in a choice there.
• 1:12:22
  But I mean, here is, I mean this, this this is.
• 1:12:25
  This was his first post Giggle bits.
• 1:12:29
  And, and what gives me the chills is not just his reaction,
• 1:12:33
  but how she tries to touch him, how she's trying to help the
• 1:12:37
  situation and she doesn't know how to do it.
• 1:12:39
  So she sort of holds back and then she touches his arm.
• 1:12:42
  In that way. They're like, how do you help
• 1:12:44
  someone process this? How, How?
• 1:12:46
  How can I? How can?
• 1:12:47
  How can I, you know, feeling for a friend, but how can I, how can
• 1:12:50
  I relate to that? How, How can I say I know?
• 1:12:52
  It's like because I don't know what, I don't know what it's
• 1:12:55
  like. And he waits, and he maintains
• 1:12:58
  eye contact until they're gone. She's just straight at the
• 1:13:00
  TARDIS. I don't care about these people.
• 1:13:03
  Screw them, let them die. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:13:08
  And you know, it's, it's wonderful because they, they let
• 1:13:13
  the doc, they let you see the doctors hurt at this, that the
• 1:13:16
  doctor, you know, that there's no, oh, just just, you know,
• 1:13:21
  stiff, stiff up a lip, you know, sticks and stones about it.
• 1:13:24
  It's it is not gonna patronize you like that.
• 1:13:29
  And can I say kudos to Murray Gold, whose score in this scene
• 1:13:35
  is pitch perfect. Our thing, every emotion is we
• 1:13:39
  talked about this, even we did the orphan episodes with James,
• 1:13:41
  like how Murray Gold can sort of sometimes he can overplay AI
• 1:13:45
  think he's learnt quite a bit from second Akanola actually
• 1:13:48
  about doing ambience rather than stressing things all the time.
• 1:13:53
  But the the horns come in at the end of the episode and it's a
• 1:13:56
  sort of like a a vengeful music. It's it's as angry as the
• 1:14:02
  episode is itself. Oh, now we're looking at
• 1:14:06
  Bridgeton. With Susie Costello.
• 1:14:10
  Dressed as a bird that doesn't look right.
• 1:14:13
  Actually, the bird makeup does not look right, although I'm
• 1:14:17
  sure the episode will be. Well, Michael, that was quite a
• 1:14:23
  piece of Doctor Who. But before we out this episode,
• 1:14:27
  now you've never done this before, but now this will see.
• 1:14:30
  Now, if you've ever listened to any of these before, do you know
• 1:14:32
  what happens at the end of the episodes?
• 1:14:36
  You, you, you thank me very much for being such a witty.
• 1:14:38
  No, I have to give three reasons that's.
• 1:14:42
  Right. Well, we do three each and we'll
• 1:14:44
  go back and forth. So you start.
• 1:14:48
  I I so number one, I think that number one reason it's brilliant
• 1:14:52
  is it's a Doctor Who story that is playing off your expectations
• 1:14:56
  of what a Doctor Who story is to do something that a Doctor Who
• 1:14:59
  story has not done before in this way.
• 1:15:01
  So I think that it's wonderful for it's it's misdirection and
• 1:15:07
  it's playing on an audience. You could only do this story in
• 1:15:10
  this way because this is a 61 year old series that the
• 1:15:16
  audience can expect to have assumptions about it, the way it
• 1:15:18
  operates and the types of story it tells.
• 1:15:20
  And I think Russell Stab's finding new ways to do Doctor
• 1:15:24
  Who stories in its 61st year. It is brilliant.
• 1:15:29
  My first thing then is using how blatant the season has been to
• 1:15:37
  hide a very powerful message in this episode, abortion in the
• 1:15:43
  first episode, you know, I already said it in boom.
• 1:15:45
  There's lots of messaging in there.
• 1:15:47
  There's definitely messaging in 73 yards, but it's all sort of
• 1:15:51
  there coming at you. You know, it's, it's not
• 1:15:54
  something that you you can't see.
• 1:15:57
  And then even here with the social media at the start of the
• 1:16:00
  episode, you know, that's what we think this episode's all
• 1:16:03
  about. And then to twist that to subtly
• 1:16:06
  have it all in there throughout the entire episode, and then to
• 1:16:09
  smack you in the face at the end with an ending I think we'll be
• 1:16:13
  talking about for some time. I think it's really, really
• 1:16:16
  clever. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:16:19
  And I, I'd say my second reason is, and you've sort of touched
• 1:16:22
  on it there, it's willingness to, its willingness to provoke
• 1:16:27
  the audience to assess themselves and reflect on why
• 1:16:30
  didn't you, why didn't you pick any of this up the first time?
• 1:16:33
  And as I said, you know, from, from, from people who, who, who
• 1:16:37
  speak from far greater, you know, knowledge than I do to say
• 1:16:43
  that it's, it's the picture of the way racism operates
• 1:16:45
  day-to-day is, is, is very well captured.
• 1:16:47
  And then to say the audience who who won't have that experience
• 1:16:50
  to present that to them and say, well, yeah, why didn't you you
• 1:16:53
  watch it back the same time and all of the hints are there.
• 1:16:55
  Why did you why did you not see those clear markers as being
• 1:17:00
  what they are? You know, these these micro
• 1:17:03
  aggressions for what they are. And then maybe maybe think about
• 1:17:06
  that in the wider world as well. And that's very Russell T Davis.
• 1:17:10
  I'll. Never forget, you know, when I,
• 1:17:12
  I used to, I was brought up in Crawley, which is just next to
• 1:17:15
  Gatwick. Very mixed race really, but you
• 1:17:17
  know, sort of 5050 at least. And so I was brought up in
• 1:17:24
  various sort of diverse cultures in, in school, in my, in my
• 1:17:27
  friendships. And, and then I moved to
• 1:17:29
  Eastbourne, which is an incredibly conservative older
• 1:17:33
  town. And I just couldn't believe how,
• 1:17:35
  why it was I, I went to a workplace with 50 people in an
• 1:17:39
  office and there was a single black person working in that
• 1:17:42
  office. And it was just an anathema to
• 1:17:44
  me. It was so weird.
• 1:17:46
  I should have been primed to watch this and notice it
• 1:17:49
  straight away. And do you know what I said to
• 1:17:51
  you earlier? I didn't.
• 1:17:52
  I did so. So it made me think about me and
• 1:17:56
  what I'm seeing around me. Yeah, exactly that, exactly
• 1:18:00
  that. I think, I, I think as well a
• 1:18:05
  third reason as well. I do think for for all that it
• 1:18:08
  is much more than deliberately on the nose.
• 1:18:10
  I do think it has some, at the same time, some important things
• 1:18:13
  to say about social media and influencer culture.
• 1:18:16
  And yeah. It was very me as well
• 1:18:18
  unfortunately. And you know, these, that isn't
• 1:18:23
  something that sits apart from, you know, from the exploration
• 1:18:25
  of racism. And, you know, they are very
• 1:18:27
  much combined. It is making a point about, you
• 1:18:29
  know, the heterogeneity of of the image that can, that can
• 1:18:32
  come through that, that can, that can be emerging that we
• 1:18:34
  all, if we all accept certain standards of of of beauty, of
• 1:18:40
  success. That is very much tied in.
• 1:18:44
  But but but also, you know, that that is all tied into what
• 1:18:47
  happens with social media that we are, we are in our own
• 1:18:50
  bubbles that that having an all white cast, as you say, is
• 1:18:56
  something that doesn't necessarily jump out for
• 1:19:00
  everyone, watch for everyone watching.
• 1:19:02
  And to be honest, wouldn't be out of place in a lot of other
• 1:19:04
  TV that isn't making these points still even today.
• 1:19:06
  I'm sorry to say better than better than it was, but you
• 1:19:09
  know, not not where it should be.
• 1:19:12
  And so I think it does connect. I don't think the social media
• 1:19:17
  satire is separate. I think it is a part of it, and
• 1:19:20
  I think it is it is more than the most obvious points it is
• 1:19:25
  making. To do 2 appalling things in one,
• 1:19:29
  one, be self indulgent and two, to couch this only in Doctor Who
• 1:19:33
  terms, something that we have already discussed today.
• 1:19:36
  I'm so pleased that I invite on people with opposing opinions to
• 1:19:40
  me. And I'm just about Doctor Who
• 1:19:42
  now, but that's all I podcast about, so that's all I can
• 1:19:45
  really talk about. But otherwise I would literally
• 1:19:49
  just be sitting there in an echo Chamber of I was all going, oh,
• 1:19:51
  this is wonderful. I love this.
• 1:19:53
  Oh, you love this as well, do you?
• 1:19:54
  Oh, great. They're probably some of my
• 1:19:56
  dullest episodes, if I'm honest. The ones where people come on
• 1:19:59
  and say no, Joe, you're a bloody idiot.
• 1:20:01
  That's why Steven Moffett's great, all right?
• 1:20:03
  And I'm going to tell you why for 3 1/2 hours.
• 1:20:06
  Yeah. You've got it though, right?
• 1:20:08
  You've got to invite in other opinions, you've got to have a
• 1:20:10
  dialogue. Otherwise, what the hell are you
• 1:20:13
  learning in life? Yeah, you have to.
• 1:20:15
  And, you know, the great promise of the Internet was that it
• 1:20:18
  would diversify the voices that we were, we were exposed to,
• 1:20:21
  that we would be able to, you know, it would be the global
• 1:20:24
  village, to use a very 1990s phrase.
• 1:20:28
  We did just create bubbles, didn't we?
• 1:20:30
  Or a lot of us, anyway. But what it also does is it
• 1:20:32
  gives you a unique ability to find other people who have the
• 1:20:37
  same values and interests as you, Michael says to the other
• 1:20:42
  Doctor Who fan who he's only ever spoken to over the
• 1:20:44
  Internet. Not true, not true.
• 1:20:51
  Well, OK, and my very last thing is going to be Callie Cook as
• 1:20:54
  Lindy Pepperbean because, and she beautifully sums it up in
• 1:20:58
  Unleashed where she goes. Lindy Pepperbean is fun and
• 1:21:04
  outrageous and deeply problematic, and that's how she
• 1:21:09
  sums up the character. And I think it's quite brave to
• 1:21:12
  take on a role like this. I think a lot of people, it's
• 1:21:14
  easy to take on a heroic role. It's easy to be Ricky September,
• 1:21:18
  you know, being the one that everyone goes, oh, it wouldn't
• 1:21:20
  be lovely. The hero and he died, you know,
• 1:21:23
  in such a terrible way to play that sort of insidious racism,
• 1:21:28
  so brilliant and still make that character engaging and fun to
• 1:21:33
  watch. It's a tough line.
• 1:21:35
  And and then she'll make us so ugly at the end, this very
• 1:21:40
  Pretty Woman, so ugly. I think it's an it's an
• 1:21:43
  incredible performance. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:21:46
  No, I, I, I actually, you know, yeah, I think she's fantastic.
• 1:21:50
  And hopefully she sees the same success as Carrie Mulligan did
• 1:21:54
  off the back of Blink. It's all down to Blink for Kerry
• 1:21:57
  Mulligan. It's all down to blink.
• 1:22:01
  Michael, I'm going to ask you on camera now to a big favour
• 1:22:05
  because I've enjoyed this conversation so much.
• 1:22:08
  I mean, I always do talking to you, but would you do me the
• 1:22:11
  incredible honour because I haven't yet recorded the
• 1:22:14
  commentary for 73 yards and we haven't got to do it soon.
• 1:22:18
  We'll do it at some point. But I think you've got an
• 1:22:20
  interesting take on that as well, this Welsh folk Horror
• 1:22:25
  Story. I think you'll probably have a
• 1:22:26
  lot of things to say. What do you reckon you're up to
• 1:22:28
  the task? Yeah, let's do it.
• 1:22:30
  Yay. But right now we've got a second
• 1:22:33
  recording to do tonight, so I suppose we should say Tata.
• 1:22:38
  Bye bye. Don't off.
• 1:22:40
  Bubble down. No, that's wrong, isn't it?
• 1:22:42
  Bubble up, top down. I'll cut it there.