Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Talks to Paul Quinn about his choice of Ghost Light (2/3)

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Talks to Paul Quinn about his choice of Ghost Light (2/3) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:00
  Because I teach Jiekel and Hyde and because I do a lot of late
• 0:03
  Victorian. And yeah, and I I most of it I
• 0:09
  have taught at some point or I've read.
• 0:11
  And so there's a lot coming through there.
• 0:13
  But he weaves it together so beautifully that again, Talons
• 0:20
  is formed from a series of a populist text.
• 0:24
  Isn't it? Sherlock Holmes?
• 0:27
  Fu Manchu, The Good Old days. And you'll know, of course, that
• 0:31
  that programme is called the Good Old days, like the late
• 0:33
  Victorian period was. The good old days, You know,
• 0:36
  poverty, no social welfare and an idea of the British Empire at
• 0:42
  its height. And this is is that any?
• 0:44
  Different from today. This isn't it.
• 0:48
  Whereas this is looking at it as a crisis and all that's going on
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  outside they these ideas are there and of course the figures
• 0:56
  who are are seen to occupy those opinions.
• 0:59
  Redfers, Inspector McKenzie as well.
• 1:02
  Quite crucially, they're all found wanting and you're back to
• 1:05
  this idea of a crisis around masculinity which is haunting
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  the late Victorian period. What's interesting is, you know,
• 1:13
  Zulu film Zulu. Yeah, I've not seen it, but I've
• 1:17
  heard of it. And so that's about Rourke's
• 1:20
  Drift, which had happened in 1879, so just four years before
• 1:23
  this story is set. And it's a group of British
• 1:27
  soldiers defeat some far larger Zulu army and there are more
• 1:31
  Victoria Crosses awarded for Rourke's Drift than at any point
• 1:34
  up up till then. What's interesting is the day
• 1:37
  before Asanaway, the British Army was butchered by Zulus.
• 1:43
  And so there's an argument that Rourke's drift is blowing up a
• 1:46
  whole proportion in the papers to distract from what had
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  happened the day before. But this these various setbacks,
• 1:53
  the fact they can't turn over the boars as effectively and as
• 1:58
  quickly as they thought they would do in the in the in the in
• 2:01
  the first Bull War. But Conan Doyle is and kind of
• 2:03
  already believes in the bull war that this prompts these ideas of
• 2:07
  crisis in in masculinity. And you get this emergence of a
• 2:10
  type of a fetish sizing of the military, a kind of proto
• 2:14
  fascism. You get eugenics turning up at
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  that same point. And so when you get to the First
• 2:19
  World War, Rupert Brooke looks to the war as this great moment
• 2:24
  for English masculinity to re establish itself.
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  He talks about to turn us from a world grown old, cold and weary
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  like swimmers into clean and sleeping.
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  The idea that the the war is cleansing and a kind of baptism.
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  Platt is locating this story very much at the start of that
• 2:41
  discourse around the crisis or or in Britain.
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  And that's why Josiah wanted to kill Queen Victoria is so potent
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  because what does he say? The British empires and an
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  Arctic mess. There's no clear authority from
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  the throne and he'll bring what prosperity wealth and then the
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  doctor says tyranny burnt toast all the Atlas is pink plaque
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  very skillfully and he really with a quite delicate touch and
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  it's so quotable goes to that period and kind of undercuts
• 3:12
  what people think they know about the late Victorian period.
• 3:14
  And it's kind of the reverse of, but also kind of in continuity
• 3:18
  what homes are done with times when trying even now to the
• 3:21
  racist policeman. You know, I'm not losing a
• 3:24
  second of what you just said. A hamster with a blunt pen knife
• 4:00
  for doing. Quicker, quicker.
• 4:05
  Quicker. So what I'm going to say is
• 4:06
  welcome back to a hamster with a blood pen knife.
• 4:10
  And that was a very small prelude to our episode to come,
• 4:14
  which is Ghost Light episode 2. I'm sorry, but I can't lose a
• 4:18
  second. The children are asleep.
• 4:22
  They. Are asleep, yes.
• 4:24
  And we are ready to jump into Episode 2.
• 4:26
  But before we do, I think we should talk about Lung Barrow,
• 4:30
  which we alluded to at the end of the last episode, which I
• 4:33
  think is a very skilfully done book.
• 4:37
  I think it is an intriguing origin story for the Doctor.
• 4:42
  I don't think in a million years they could have realised it in
• 4:46
  1989. No, and I'm glad they didn't,
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  because then goes like wouldn't exist.
• 4:53
  And do you think this is a better story like?
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  It's a better story for television and it's a better
• 4:58
  story for a show that's really trying to re establish itself
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  for an audience beyond a core group of fans.
• 5:06
  I think Long Barrow not even. It appeals to fans.
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  I mean I really like Long Barrow and and the two versions of it,
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  because it was there's the PDF version available, which is
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  slightly different, isn't it? And I think it it it kind of
• 5:17
  does pick up on and build on the sort of hints that Cartmel and
• 5:22
  Aronovich trying to put in their in the the figure of the other
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  in remembrance of the dialects, particularly in the novel, this
• 5:29
  figure that disappears in time or history.
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  I I, I I don't think it would necessarily work for a general
• 5:34
  audience. I don't think they could have
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  done it anyway with the budget. I is too self reflective.
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  I love the imagery, I love the atmosphere of it.
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  I love that sort of Gorben Ghast realization of the the house,
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  but as a like an adventure story, it's not and it is a
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  little bit dull. Yeah, I mean, I think.
• 5:56
  I think I mean. I think it's a good thing that
• 6:01
  The Dying Days saw out the Virgin New Adventures and not
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  long about. And though long where is
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  probably a more interesting story, A Dying The Dying Days is
• 6:09
  a better read, yeah. I think that's right.
• 6:12
  I don't. Lumber is kind of.
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  It's a novel of ideas. It's a novel.
• 6:15
  It is about Doctor Who, the character, but also about the
• 6:19
  program. I mean it's looking back to a
• 6:23
  kind of homesier model of time laws and Gallafray, but it's
• 6:28
  looking to kind of what Mark Platts going to do with Cat's
• 6:31
  Cradle in that first book with the the the travellers from a
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  pre Time Lord Gallafray. So interested in in myth, but
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  that's really a myth for a very small group of people.
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  Some of them are interested in it.
• 6:45
  I mean, I think your point about Gorman gas is absolutely right.
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  And they, the BBC can't really do Gorman gas even when they do
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  it. And that's 2002.
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  They're certainly not going to do it in.
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  In 1998. I said the closest thing to
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  what's coming in terms of television is maybe when they
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  did never wear. Oh, well, yeah.
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  But then they shot it on video and shot it in the foot.
• 7:04
  And so again, they're not really cut out for that type of thing
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  this, they can do this if, if, if lumber had been set in a
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  Victorian house. Perfect, but no.
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  So what we get is this, which is is the most interesting thing to
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  television and is, you know, is enthused with literature and
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  culture, but it's not longer because this is a program that
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  general public could watch if they were so inclined.
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  They're not going to pick up long Barrow.
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  But as well, I just think if you did, because it was mooted to be
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  made at this point and they obviously realized that they
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  didn't have the the ability to do it.
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  Just like it's a story about the Doctor's homecoming.
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  Again, it feels like we're even if it does cast history that
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  we've never explored before, it feels like we're looking back
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  again. Whereas this just feels like a
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  story in its own right and rooting ace at the heart of it
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  and her history. It just feels fresh and original
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  and like we're heading off in a direction.
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  And his ace comes home, which is more interesting, I think, than
• 8:04
  than the Doctor comes home again.
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  Because of course, in a sense, we've seen the Doctor go home
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  too often in the 1980s. Gallifrey has become
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  contemptuous through familiarity, and it just looks
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  really boring. Long Barrow, of course, has got
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  those images which kind of break free of that kind of sterile
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  Davison hero visits to Gallifrey.
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  Whereas this is about a girl, she's actually a girl from an
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  Earth that's nearly contemporaneous to the it's not
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  quite. I think there is something that
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  argument that really aces her out 1984.
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  She's not from 878889 and the reference points are are
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  slightly earlier in the decade. But aces return home what you've
• 8:43
  got in these three stories. And again back to Sandford.
• 8:45
  Sanderson looks at the argument that's made that in fact, Ghost
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  Like should be the last story in the season.
• 8:52
  There's there's a trouble with the order here, isn't it?
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  Because Curtis Federal is supposed to come first.
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  Where she lays the seed, there was an old house and then we
• 9:01
  would have ghost light and then we would have survival.
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  So it's almost like a trilogy of stories.
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  But I think this is the right order.
• 9:07
  I think Sander is absolutely right.
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  I think the fact that you know about the house, Lucy Cursor
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  Phrenic doesn't actually do damage to that scene because
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  this is all about Ace coming to terms with what she has done
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  with her past the house. The burning of the house is the
• 9:20
  big event. The relationship with the mother
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  is the underpinning. And then she finally returns
• 9:24
  home to Perryville. And of course, she discovers,
• 9:26
  like everyone does, you can't go home again.
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  And so she has to go. She goes off with the Doctor.
• 9:30
  And then of course you get these multiple endings issued.
• 9:33
  Dorothea in Paris, as it suggests at the end of Kirsten
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  Fenerick that she go off and join some type of fascist Marine
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  Corps or whatever else they're going to do into her.
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  But I, you know, in this, in a sense, you don't want it.
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  What you want is her McCoy going off at the end for these
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  adventures that are never going to work and that.
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  Which we kind of still haven't, because there's been a lot of
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  multiple endings for her love and war.
• 9:53
  And then she came back in some more new adventures.
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  What was this strip called that killed her off?
• 10:01
  It was the last McCoy strip. I can't remember the name of it,
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  but it was pretty memorable. And then Big Finish deemed to
• 10:08
  rise her out at one point, Dark Universe and have her meet McCoy
• 10:13
  again as an older woman and all that.
• 10:15
  But actually I just. I like the fact that it's a bit
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  ambiguous how she goes. It makes the end of survival
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  count, doesn't it? We've got more adventures to
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  come. Come on, Ace.
• 10:26
  We've got work to do because of course, what you've always had
• 10:28
  him, Not, not always, but at various points in Mccoy's run is
• 10:31
  you hear about Happiness Patrol. He's been hearing Ruiz up Terror
• 10:34
  Alpha tonight he's going to take down a totality regime.
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  There is a sense of this is a doctor with a purpose who will
• 10:40
  go in and he will deal with bad people and then he goes on.
• 10:44
  And so there's a sense of mission there with him, But his
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  primary mission here in these three, and in a sense,
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  battlefield kind of ruins thing, is it's his companion.
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  It should almost be a three story season, shouldn't it?
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  This is, this is, this is the trilogy of Ace, and this is how
• 11:00
  Ace is fixed. I come back to his eye.
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  He's a doctor, you know, Moffett fetishizes.
• 11:05
  The title of The Doctor is as as a healer.
• 11:08
  It's done far more subtly here, and his job is to repair people
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  and to repair Ace. And they're kind of the
• 11:14
  obsession with later media of killing off Ace.
• 11:16
  Why do you want to do that? Here's a figure that goes
• 11:19
  through all this trauma, and she emerges now, as I suggested in
• 11:22
  my deeply tedious lecture, which I released last week, there's
• 11:25
  always an issue around maturity in female companions, as though
• 11:29
  ACE is always a problem. And you can see they're battling
• 11:31
  with that, that any attempt at a sexual relation with part of
• 11:34
  ACE, the potential partners have killed off, and that's an issue
• 11:39
  they would have coming down the line.
• 11:40
  So the sense of taking the gallery to become a time was
• 11:42
  kind of fudging it. Even Cara even that suggestion
• 11:46
  of bisexuality and survival. Yeah, again, not the type of
• 11:50
  thing that you usually have, but this is a, this is an attempt, a
• 11:53
  rounded human. And again, it's go.
• 11:56
  They go. Back so we've never had any of
• 11:58
  this before. The the idea of actually telling
• 12:01
  these stories in season 26 and taking seeds from Dragon Fire
• 12:06
  through to Greatest Show in the Galaxy to build 1 continuous
• 12:09
  story. The show just hasn't thought
• 12:11
  like this before. Tegan is the only attempt at
• 12:13
  that previously and and they just.
• 12:15
  Awkward though, isn't it? Yeah.
• 12:17
  But it's it. It is them.
• 12:19
  No, I think there's AI think there's definitely something at
• 12:21
  the end of the the start of the 80s where they realized that
• 12:25
  alien companions are fine, but they don't work in the way that
• 12:29
  the companion is necessarily meant to work.
• 12:31
  And therefore you need to have a human companion and therefore
• 12:34
  they get teased, which is, you know, there's a sense of which
• 12:38
  they look into the foreign market and the same with Perry's
• 12:40
  well, but they are going back to the center.
• 12:42
  You put a female companion there, they become our
• 12:45
  identification point. And then there's something going
• 12:49
  on around Jonathan Turner and something for the dads, which
• 12:51
  are kind of is pretty good stuff, but we get it right with
• 12:54
  Ace, I think, I think Bonnie Langford.
• 12:57
  We're proving now that we could have done it then.
• 12:59
  What she could have done, but I think that that's part of the
• 13:02
  awkwardness around how she's introduced and that she doesn't
• 13:05
  get a proper story. And so now we know more about
• 13:08
  her and what she lost than we ever did during that.
• 13:11
  And it's kind of tragic and because Lanky is a consummate
• 13:14
  performer, which they didn't really make enough use of.
• 13:16
  I worked in 24 recently, and actually she's a lot better than
• 13:19
  you realized she was at the time.
• 13:21
  Was Delta again, where I think she has two lines in the last
• 13:24
  episode, but she in that setting, in that more
• 13:27
  naturalistic setting, she's great.
• 13:30
  And that's Carmel's point as well.
• 13:31
  You can do that when you go have Earthbound stories and when you
• 13:35
  put them in the past and when you actually build up a
• 13:38
  character and give them a background.
• 13:40
  And that's what you have a race. Hints.
• 13:41
  Yes, because that kind of defensiveness is there.
• 13:44
  And this is how she's broken down and you see it in the next
• 13:46
  story and then she appears. She can go home again, of course
• 13:50
  you're so she doesn't go looking for a mother.
• 13:52
  She goes to look for her friends.
• 13:54
  She has this potential relationship with Cara, and then
• 13:56
  she goes off with the doctor because that's her life.
• 13:59
  And so these business about being Dorothy Gale, kind of
• 14:02
  Yale, fine, but this is more interesting.
• 14:04
  I do think there are echoes of this in Rose in 2005, That lion
• 14:09
  in Survival where he says your mum had you down as a missing
• 14:12
  person. Well, that's the premise of the
• 14:14
  beginning of Aliens in London. Yeah, I mean they have looked at
• 14:22
  Davis, Collinson, Gardner in that first season.
• 14:27
  They are looking at season 22. They're looking at 2425 and 26
• 14:31
  and the McGann thing. And they're not just looking at
• 14:34
  them as ways not to do it, because Ace is the proper
• 14:38
  rounded human character that you have, the audience can relate
• 14:42
  to. Just that to go from survival,
• 14:46
  take the TV movie out of the equation of second.
• 14:47
  Although Davis does cherry pick sort of the romance and the
• 14:51
  spectacle. I love it.
• 14:53
  But you know, survival is sitting and around the council
• 14:57
  estate, Part 3 Rose is sitting and that, you know, you
• 15:00
  basically make the leap from one to another.
• 15:03
  Yeah, I mean surviving in summer states, he's more comfortable in
• 15:07
  that environment. But because Monroe is using it
• 15:10
  to write about politics as well in a way that Davis Davis and
• 15:14
  really get political until you get into any of the world and
• 15:19
  end of the world and then aliens of London and and World War
• 15:23
  Three. But Ryan and Roy again yeah you
• 15:26
  get the the the TA Sergeant bullying the boys trying to turn
• 15:30
  them into these kind of brutal militaristic militaristic
• 15:34
  figures and of course the mirror of that is the master of midge.
• 15:38
  It's a great run for setting up oppositional figures to each
• 15:43
  other and that you read the Doctor or you read these other
• 15:45
  characters against these other figures.
• 15:47
  And yeah, it's masterly what Carmel is work and his writers
• 15:50
  are doing. So it's pioneering isn't it?
• 15:52
  Like the the mythic Dr. Absolutely.
• 15:55
  In the new series, the focus on the companion being an equal,
• 16:00
  essentially a second Co lead. Absolutely.
• 16:02
  The new series, the domestic setting.
• 16:06
  Yeah, well, I'll tell you what, let's go and watch some
• 16:07
  pioneering Doctor Who, shall we? Which it's pioneering, but it's
• 16:12
  also looking back as well. I think that that's what it's
• 16:14
  doing as well because of that second, it's comfortable for an
• 16:18
  audience, but it's also disorienting.
• 16:21
  All the references are there, you know, all, you know,
• 16:23
  highbrow literature, mid brow literature, penny dreadfuls.
• 16:27
  It's all working here. This kind of almost seamless
• 16:30
  fashion, seamless for for huge runs of it.
• 16:32
  It's it's it's brilliant. I know the Davis does cherry
• 16:36
  pick human nature to retell in series 3, so he absolutely is
• 16:42
  aware of the new adventures at their high.
• 16:45
  But I think, I think it's this that he's really taking.
• 16:50
  Yeah, I don't think he's looking at the new adventure so much.
• 16:52
  I think he's looking at the Carmel era for inspiration.
• 16:56
  I mean, it's kind of awkward look into the new adventures
• 16:58
  because he comes up through that himself and then suddenly he's
• 17:01
  the boss and he's taken Paul Cornell's.
• 17:04
  Because Cornell is the big noise at that early run.
• 17:06
  And now and. Have you read Damaged Girls
• 17:08
  lately? Like it?
• 17:09
  It would no way past muster as a Doctor story now, no.
• 17:14
  I mean, I'm human Nature I'm not sure about is a book and I I
• 17:19
  don't particularly like the TV version.
• 17:21
  I know it's controversial, isn't it?
• 17:23
  I do love it when you call controversy.
• 17:25
  Well, let's do that something completely uncontroversial.
• 17:29
  Watch Ghosts Episode 2 and love it.
• 17:31
  OK, well, I'll count as in, shall I?
• 17:34
  In 321? Oh, I still love these tiles.
• 17:40
  I beautiful. I I, I, I adore this.
• 17:43
  This this is this. It is nostalgia, I can see
• 17:46
  effectively. This is very primitive
• 17:48
  technology at work, but this is the promise of an adventure for
• 17:52
  me. Well, it's primitive to us, but
• 17:55
  it wasn't necessarily primitive then.
• 17:57
  So of course it's what the show should always be doing.
• 17:59
  This is my point about Underwood.
• 18:02
  Underwood, the easiest thing we're doing.
• 18:03
  We can't. We can't make it.
• 18:05
  The other thing is to go well. We've got this technology.
• 18:06
  Let's see how far we can go with it.
• 18:08
  Is a success? No, but it is a show about.
• 18:11
  Fascinating, no? The Behind the Scenes.
• 18:14
  Whereas this is both cutting edge but also the BBC doing what
• 18:17
  it's always done well and what it will do well again.
• 18:19
  Like the the the special effects that are on Underworld very
• 18:23
  quickly it just says, you know what, we we modest enough to
• 18:26
  know that a lot of this didn't work.
• 18:29
  We pulled it off. I mean, there's, I mean, there's
• 18:32
  a point, of course, with the gunfighters as well.
• 18:34
  They're told this works better than they should have done.
• 18:36
  You shouldn't have done this though.
• 18:37
  But there's always that sense of cut and verb, and when Doctor
• 18:41
  Who tries it, if it lands, it lands really well.
• 18:44
  If it goes badly wrong, something else will come along
• 18:46
  next week. That's the joy of the show.
• 18:48
  This is it. Let's give this a try.
• 18:50
  And they get it absolutely right.
• 18:51
  Here is Josiah's previous versions of himself.
• 18:55
  You just. I don't think you could just
• 18:57
  ever do this again. What?
• 18:59
  This. Yeah, absolutely not.
• 19:01
  This is this is a one off. Absolutely.
• 19:03
  This is the one. Off.
• 19:03
  If they tried to pull off this kind of story now in the new
• 19:06
  series, it would be so different, wouldn't it?
• 19:10
  I don't think they'd do it. I don't.
• 19:12
  I don't. I don't.
• 19:13
  I think I'm. Too, too talky, too literate.
• 19:19
  I. Think possibly too liquor.
• 19:20
  I don't know how far Doctor Who is now making use of the the
• 19:24
  literary culture so much as it's TV and cinematic and pop
• 19:27
  culture. Our Frank Windsor back again.
• 19:30
  I was incredibly surprised. You know when we had a story set
• 19:33
  in a library, a planet size library, how few literary
• 19:37
  references there were in there? What what struck me seeing the
• 19:41
  new TARDIS is how they've got a huge console room.
• 19:46
  All the books are gone, all the books in the Capaldi era, all
• 19:49
  got given how in tooth and clawed, Tenant says.
• 19:54
  Books the, the, the, the most important weapon or whatever it
• 19:57
  is anyone has. And we kind of kind of moved
• 19:59
  away from that. Maybe they thought the, you
• 20:02
  know, the audience were a bit threatened by all all those
• 20:04
  books. Possibly, possibly here this is,
• 20:07
  this is very darkness and that I understand that the light and
• 20:11
  the torch they've had to add because the light from the
• 20:13
  actual prop wasn't sufficient. You think this is dark, That
• 20:18
  line that we talked about earlier, we which we didn't
• 20:21
  mention the cream of Scotland Yard.
• 20:23
  No, I mean they. Actually, oh, you mean visually
• 20:27
  it's dark? I know the Queen of Scotland
• 20:28
  Yard is a brilliantly macabre line.
• 20:31
  It's disgusting. I love it.
• 20:32
  He's. Just he's he's the man of
• 20:35
  property. He's kind of charming though,
• 20:38
  isn't he, Josiah, despite the fact that he's.
• 20:40
  But he's Dracs because there isn't he at this point.
• 20:42
  That's why he doesn't like the Light and Drac.
• 20:43
  Who is Drac, who's a sexy character?
• 20:47
  You know, when it gets into vampire law here, it's really is
• 20:50
  touching on the sexual element. What we're frailing says,
• 20:54
  doesn't he, that Dracula is about anal, oral sex.
• 20:58
  And you know, why does Dracula go around in a dirt box?
• 21:02
  And again, but that's a text that's talking about the crisis
• 21:05
  in, in English masculinity. If you look at who has to come
• 21:07
  together as a feat, Dracula. It's not Jonathan Harker Harker.
• 21:10
  In fact, in the early section, that text is a feminized
• 21:12
  speaker. He keeps a journal or diary, I
• 21:15
  can't remember which around it is, which is sort of women
• 21:17
  keeping those type of texts and he's threatened by the female
• 21:20
  vampires and then jackasses the woman.
• 21:22
  The man is mine and so he becomes the sexual prey.
• 21:27
  So Josiah is this kind of mercurial figure and again the
• 21:31
  kind of creepy relations with Gwendolyn when they're in that
• 21:33
  room on their own and then later on when he lifts her off the
• 21:36
  rocking horse. It's going to it's it's alluding
• 21:41
  to what's only have alluded to these white texts.
• 21:44
  Dorian Gray as well. Of course you know everyone has
• 21:46
  seen as Dorian Gray is about homosexuality but it's it's not
• 21:49
  it's not clear from the text of the door.
• 21:50
  It's because it's used at Wilds trial and it's it's a you know,
• 21:54
  a corrupt book like this can only be the products of a
• 21:56
  corrupt mind. Therefore he must have done what
• 21:58
  of what he's accused. And they've all, all of that's
• 22:00
  lurking behind this and that whole late Victorian what?
• 22:04
  Ace says scratched beneath the surface, isn't it?
• 22:07
  When she? Scratched the Victorian veneer
• 22:10
  and. Something nasty, and that's
• 22:12
  Platts doing this all the way through.
• 22:13
  He's challenging the assumptions of of the Victorian period
• 22:17
  today. You know, they've already been
• 22:18
  challenged within the Victorian period, within the literature.
• 22:22
  We didn't Mccoy's about to say which one's jekland.
• 22:26
  Well, which one's? Well, it's interesting.
• 22:28
  Which one's the Jekyll? Which one's the hide?
• 22:29
  Yeah, the. Correct pronunciation.
• 22:31
  The Edinburgh pronunciation is Jekyll, as I was told by a
• 22:33
  former colleague, because that doesn't quite work because
• 22:35
  Jekyll and Hyde are the same person.
• 22:37
  These are two figures who who do swap over, but it's it's making
• 22:41
  use of the popular idea around those those figures.
• 22:44
  This is fascinating. The Gwendolyn Mrs. Pritchard,
• 22:48
  obviously mother and daughter. We don't know that.
• 22:52
  Like, do you know what I I've always wondered why it's less
• 22:56
  the atmosphere of something that scared me as a kid.
• 22:58
  It was adults behaving in a sinister way.
• 23:01
  So what scared me about this was Mrs. Pritchard, who glides in
• 23:05
  and out of scenes there in a terrifying way, and Josiah a bit
• 23:10
  later on where he's like, we're so glad he has to go, you know.
• 23:15
  Then she comes towards you with the.
• 23:16
  Yeah. And again, the the angle of the
• 23:18
  camera is really crucial. Then of course in the book
• 23:21
  Matthew says like he's he's ministering Angel and then she
• 23:24
  kills it because of course, yeah, the Java game is
• 23:27
  Gwendoline killing people, yeah. Really, really got under my skin
• 23:30
  as a kid. Killing men for another man, a
• 23:33
  man who is her, quote UN quote uncle, but there's a heavy hint
• 23:36
  of kind of a sexualized thing going on.
• 23:38
  What's all the sort of brutality between Gwendoline and Azel
• 23:41
  about then? It's partly the new women.
• 23:45
  It's partly playing up to ideas. I think about degeneration
• 23:49
  because of course if you look at that first episode I talked over
• 23:52
  the, you know that she's described as noble, savage and
• 23:56
  she's, you know, she's half undressed.
• 23:58
  And it's that sense of that Victorian civilization can
• 24:04
  collapse very quickly. Wells is doing it or will do it
• 24:07
  in The Time Machine or how has done in The Time Machine.
• 24:09
  As far as we're concerned, the book has been published.
• 24:11
  When this is set, if you look at The Time Machine, the time
• 24:14
  travel wants to go forward to find the apex of mankind.
• 24:17
  What he finds is a society which is a satire on late Victorian
• 24:23
  England, where the Morlocks have emerged from the mines and from
• 24:26
  the underground, and the E lawyer will become so effete if
• 24:29
  the leisure classes can only defend themselves.
• 24:31
  But that text suggests that in fact the height of mankind is
• 24:35
  the Victorian period. The time traveler comes back to
• 24:37
  say that he's found this golden age.
• 24:40
  Therefore the Golden Age might be the late Victorian period.
• 24:42
  Therefore it's downhill all the way.
• 24:44
  Darwin really does disturb Victorian England's idea of
• 24:49
  itself and its place in the in in in the universe.
• 24:53
  And if mankind does indeed emerge, as Darwin argues, from
• 24:57
  an ape white creature, he never says ape, because he's always a
• 25:00
  theory. Therefore you can you can
• 25:03
  devolve. And this is all text all about
• 25:06
  devolution. Josiah thinks he's hit the
• 25:09
  heights, and if he has indeed hit the heights if.
• 25:12
  If the survey does leave, as and Cardinal suggest, and Josiah
• 25:17
  brings the shit back, then it's doing the same as well as it's
• 25:20
  suggesting. This late Victorian society is
• 25:22
  the apex of mankind and it's downhill all the way.
• 25:25
  So when the two fight, it's kind of suggestive because it's two
• 25:30
  women fighting. But it's also shown how easy it
• 25:33
  is for mankind to regress this kind of beast like face.
• 25:37
  That noble savage line is quite interesting.
• 25:39
  I I, I look this up as to who's the first person to to use it.
• 25:43
  And it's John Dryden in the 18th century, where Dickens has an
• 25:46
  essay called The Noble Savage. And it's it's it's a deeply
• 25:50
  racist text. Really.
• 25:53
  It's a complaint about a maudlin Victorian audience who get into
• 26:00
  rhapsodies when they bring over these members of various African
• 26:03
  tribes. And Dickens says, where's
• 26:05
  where's this kind of emotion for the London poor?
• 26:09
  But the way he describes the the characters from various African
• 26:12
  countries, deeply, deeply uncomfortable.
• 26:14
  You know what Platt's magic is, is obviously he's drawing in all
• 26:18
  these references, all these illusions, yeah, all these
• 26:20
  things that you're talking about.
• 26:22
  But at the same time, he's still pushing the plot along, and he
• 26:25
  wraps it all up in just magically memorable dialogue.
• 26:29
  It's never clunky. What's interesting there, Of
• 26:31
  course, you know, control at that point is also meant to be.
• 26:35
  She's Miss Havisham from Great Expectations, which is also
• 26:38
  about evolution. My my former colleague Duncan
• 26:40
  Salkeld used to argue that because there's only two years
• 26:43
  between Darwin publishing Origin of the Species and Dickens
• 26:47
  publishing Great Expectations, and that's a text, people asking
• 26:50
  where they've come from. And we know where Pip comes from
• 26:52
  very early on. It's then the first page, so it
• 26:55
  kind of defeats what you usually find in the building throne.
• 26:58
  But Estella, where she's come from, but Jagger's, the
• 27:00
  solicitor's, got skulls on the wall of his room because they're
• 27:04
  trying to understand where criminality comes from.
• 27:06
  So Darwin really does make people think and really disturbs
• 27:10
  them. And and yeah, it's all working
• 27:12
  through this, this text really, really brilliantly.
• 27:14
  Gwendolyn, of course, is now in a blue dress and she's about to
• 27:18
  kill. Or she's going to send to Java.
• 27:21
  Ernest Matthews. That's a brilliant bit of
• 27:23
  makeup. And then that, that, that shot
• 27:25
  there. I think there's something going
• 27:26
  on because Ace is dressed is they they they've essentially
• 27:29
  swapped outfits or they've swapped, they've swapped colour
• 27:31
  schemes. So there's something going on
• 27:32
  here about Gwendoly as a kind of fallen Angel figure, which he's
• 27:36
  going to tie him with light when he appears.
• 27:39
  What happens to Ernest Matthews now?
• 27:42
  And when we see him in the case, it's a wonderful thing the
• 27:45
  Doctor Who does. It's that very fine line between
• 27:48
  being utterly sinister and very funny, and that's a hard line to
• 27:53
  walk. And Platt.
• 27:55
  Platt skirts at various points in this.
• 27:57
  They used to make the point, but he's already been there early
• 28:00
  on, this combination of laboratory and nursery and that
• 28:05
  they're Josiah's toys. But of course, then there's this
• 28:08
  superior figure, the daddy figure downstairs in the in the
• 28:12
  in the cellar, who's going to come and and punish his two
• 28:15
  mystery and children. But here is the mystery and
• 28:18
  child playing that nursery. Grizzly him laughing, but the.
• 28:24
  I mean, it's not the terrace, but it it works.
• 28:27
  Black comedy This is This is Platt as recognised black
• 28:30
  comedy. I think you know, you've got to
• 28:32
  make the point quick. You can't do it subtly, you've
• 28:34
  got to do it instantly also. Of course you you would compare
• 28:38
  I think with Nimrod you're meant again that's a parallel that's
• 28:41
  there that Bernice Matthews thinks he's the sophisticated
• 28:43
  figure but he's from Oxford but of course and he's a Dean of
• 28:47
  college but he's a religious figure and he he's closed minded
• 28:50
  in in in a scene that's been cut a.
• 28:53
  Lot of his stuff was cut, wasn't.
• 28:55
  It holds in to read Darwin, not just denounce him.
• 28:57
  So there's that sense of the Oxford figure with a closed
• 28:59
  mind. And actually there's more wisdom
• 29:01
  to be had from Nimrod. Here's a really interesting
• 29:05
  moment coming up here now, when Ace falls asleep and then a lot
• 29:10
  of things happen while Ace is asleep.
• 29:13
  And it's a way of compressing the plot where you haven't got
• 29:17
  that fourth episode. But I do wonder again if it's a
• 29:19
  subtle reference. Because there's there's a
• 29:21
  academic article from years ago now called Watson Falls Asleep
• 29:25
  and it looks at the number of times that Watson falls asleep
• 29:29
  during a Sherlock Holmes story and when he wakes up, Holmes has
• 29:32
  solved the case. You don't have to sit there and
• 29:35
  Holmes eyes always listen. It's kind of magical and
• 29:37
  rational at the same time. I do.
• 29:39
  It's a suggestion there that the sidekick is there to, you know,
• 29:42
  slow things down a bit. No, the psych is there to
• 29:44
  explain it to us, but of course, when you haven't got the time
• 29:46
  here, it's kind of tedious. You close it down and suddenly
• 29:49
  you can skip straight to the end, which is the climax, and
• 29:52
  it's really well done. Here's the bit we've been
• 29:53
  talking about. Yeah, where she goes to him.
• 29:56
  Are you unwell, uncle? When he goes sick at heart, my
• 29:59
  dear? Oh, it's so.
• 30:01
  Scary. It is and it's it's again, it
• 30:03
  shows she goes from the white dress, this kind of figure that
• 30:08
  we feel is endangered and we can see that Josiah has corrupted
• 30:11
  it. And so then she kills the figure
• 30:14
  that that has subdued as an Angel.
• 30:16
  OK, we're in the daytime now. Yeah, it makes no difference to
• 30:20
  the atmospheres of the story at all.
• 30:22
  Like, normally in a horror movie, you know, when you cut to
• 30:25
  the daytime, you're safe. I just feel like in this the
• 30:27
  atmosphere pervades. But, but, but you.
• 30:29
  You don't realise how late it is though.
• 30:31
  You see the daytime should be safe but by having.
• 30:34
  Oh, it's the afternoon, isn't it?
• 30:36
  Yeah. Late afternoon, so briefly, you
• 30:38
  think it's safe. Here's Mrs. Gross.
• 30:39
  She's this figure of normality. She's bought the Big Breakfast
• 30:42
  for race. We get the joke about Perryvale
• 30:45
  and then we're told what time it is and then the Creep and Dread
• 30:47
  Kicks. It what is it?
• 30:48
  She says. Retro City.
• 30:49
  Oh no, dear. Arable Village.
• 30:51
  Let's see, let's see. Yeah, Oh, it's great.
• 30:56
  But you know, you you said about season 18 earlier, and I feel
• 31:00
  like the Season 18 is a simply smart season, but I just don't
• 31:04
  think there's the smoothness of the dialogue.
• 31:06
  No, no, it's not. It's funky dive.
• 31:08
  It's funky diving. There's no heart.
• 31:09
  This is tremendous heart and endlessly quotable this.
• 31:12
  Is this is stuff that actors can say, you know, and really lean
• 31:16
  to and love doing. But also it's it's
• 31:19
  linguistically clever. This is this is the most
• 31:21
  linguistically clever script since Paradise Towers.
• 31:24
  I think all the repetitions though light control.
• 31:28
  This is very funny stuff now coming up and they they did this
• 31:31
  themselves. This is Frank Windsor and McCoy
• 31:33
  came out of all this spitting themselves.
• 31:35
  This isn't this isn't in the script.
• 31:38
  What else you got Light at the end of the tunnel.
• 31:40
  It's it's it's so slick. Big media is trying.
• 31:44
  But of course he has a horror of techno Babble so he has.
• 31:46
  Yeah. But also they don't they, they
• 31:49
  don't want to do historical. Harry Letts doesn't do
• 31:52
  historical by and large as producer he does, you know, the
• 31:56
  TARDIS doesn't go back in time, I think with Pertwee until the
• 31:59
  time monster and then it's. Carnival monsters?
• 32:03
  Kind of, No, no. But.
• 32:04
  No, but but that time time monster is first, then carnival
• 32:07
  monsters, then oh. Sorry, Alfie.
• 32:09
  He's a time warrior. Sorry.
• 32:10
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and and and similarly.
• 32:12
  So you get kind of pelled on as a kind of pseudo mystery.
• 32:16
  Historical faux medieval. You can see that was state of
• 32:19
  decay. There's a sense in which they
• 32:21
  don't want to deal with time travel going back into the past.
• 32:24
  This shows them they should be doing it luminously.
• 32:28
  Beautiful in this dress. Holmes doesn't write those
• 32:31
  historicals, he writes them as a sitcom.
• 32:33
  Everyone's got snappy dialogue in those, you know it's not,
• 32:37
  it's not that period dialogue you get in the period dramas at
• 32:39
  the time and here as well. I don't think this feels feels
• 32:43
  like any period drama that the BBC has done.
• 32:46
  No, it's not meant to, though, is it?
• 32:47
  Because of course, period dramas are polite and they tend to be
• 32:50
  adaptations, whereas this is original and is making use of
• 32:54
  the idea of the past and and really an idea of the past that
• 32:57
  comes through those early. There's a, there's a kind of a,
• 33:00
  there are two nostalgia memories working in this text.
• 33:04
  It's what Doctor Who was like, but it's also what the classic
• 33:07
  drama serial that Barry Letts and Terence Dicks produced after
• 33:10
  Doctor Who. That's what's working here.
• 33:12
  But you produce something utterly modern, something that
• 33:15
  that's really pulling against the ethos of those texts.
• 33:18
  It's the something nasty that will come crawling out that
• 33:22
  they're focusing on. And but because it's telling you
• 33:25
  that he's been bred by a Victorian ethos, Josiah is a
• 33:30
  product of essentially, human evolution.
• 33:35
  And what it's produced is this figure who has got some weird
• 33:38
  sexual relationship with someone that's pretending to be his
• 33:41
  niece, but also he's a killer. And the the most interesting
• 33:45
  figure, the most humane figure is Nimrod.
• 33:46
  The person died out. So there's a kind of bleak
• 33:49
  message there as well. But then you've got Ace, who's
• 33:52
  our focus. But also Ace learns about We
• 33:54
  learn about the house through Ace.
• 33:57
  A similar description here of waking up in modern society.
• 34:01
  It's great. It's like.
• 34:03
  It's astonishing. Here we go.
• 34:05
  And again, McCoy filling in the gaps of what he's already done
• 34:07
  because because he's already been in discussion with control
• 34:10
  and he's fixed the lift. He's got McKenzie and of course
• 34:13
  it's it's effortlessly done. You could see.
• 34:15
  You could see a clunkier writer would spend most of the episode
• 34:20
  with all of that. You would see all that, he tells
• 34:23
  us him. Would you?
• 34:23
  You mean all that? And it's just gone like that to
• 34:26
  get to where we want to be it. Doesn't feel the need to show
• 34:29
  you the mechanics, doesn't. It it doesn't.
• 34:30
  It's the same way that that that McCoy, the Doctor makes time
• 34:34
  move forward by adjusting the clock and then, as Cartmore
• 34:37
  says, then he stops time and then he restarts time.
• 34:41
  So it becomes a metaphor for this time traveller.
• 34:43
  And when you drop him into this, this kind of insane, what, Here
• 34:46
  he is trying to work things out. We don't tend to get this.
• 34:48
  The Doctor doesn't know we've had too long with Doctor knowing
• 34:51
  too much. There's a mystery here again,
• 34:53
  and it's related to Sophie Audra to X.
• 34:57
  The mystery of Ace and the mystery of the House are all
• 34:59
  tied up together. But I think because all this is
• 35:02
  is mired in very unusual scenes, we need this.
• 35:05
  We need this all to be brought together in this scene to make
• 35:09
  sense. Yeah, it's terrific.
• 35:14
  And then everything starts to come alive.
• 35:16
  And here we've got long Barrow, we've got Gorman gas.
• 35:20
  The notion of of the house is alive, I mean.
• 35:24
  You don't. You don't take when he when he
• 35:26
  when he moves that clock along there.
• 35:27
  He's like, well, we've only got 3 episodes.
• 35:29
  We need to get to the point. Come on.
• 35:30
  Oh, there, there's that. Absolutely.
• 35:32
  I mean, it's working on both those.
• 35:33
  Here we get the two figures about the interior.
• 35:35
  Now this is, this is really interesting there with how
• 35:38
  Redford's retreats back into that notion of the the column
• 35:43
  moving through the jungle and what what do they find there.
• 35:48
  But of course the house is the interior.
• 35:50
  There's there's there's there's there's there's a really
• 35:52
  interesting discussion on dissection of Empire fiction
• 35:56
  going on here and and imperial attitudes and here he is, you
• 35:59
  know he he, he he was free all along.
• 36:02
  But he sits there because Redfuss is learning as well.
• 36:04
  It's to your point earlier on he gives up on himself, gives up on
• 36:07
  that version of himself and finds something more
• 36:09
  interesting. Again, that's that's an
• 36:10
  underlying point in this text, I think.
• 36:12
  I don't. I don't think Josiah can learn
• 36:14
  any more than he's learned or he's missed.
• 36:15
  The important point, which is owning the house or occupying
• 36:19
  the house, doesn't make him the most important figure.
• 36:21
  It's only within the house. The house becomes a kind of
• 36:23
  micropuzzle, but the house is also it's a prison.
• 36:26
  It's an asylum. It's a kind of torture chamber.
• 36:29
  There's kind of Marat Sad coming in there as well, that you don't
• 36:32
  quite know who's running things because there's no organizing
• 36:35
  figure. The the the most important
• 36:37
  figure in the house is the most cruel and the most insane
• 36:41
  figure. What?
• 36:42
  Did you what did you take from this as a kid?
• 36:46
  I I don't I don't I don't know because it's difficult to go
• 36:48
  back. I I I loved it.
• 36:50
  I loved the atmosphere of it. I got I think mostly the the the
• 36:55
  storyline obviously I had. I didn't see this episode.
• 36:58
  I I mean I didn't see this as I was about 20.
• 37:00
  I think it was one of those late night showings on UK Gold in the
• 37:04
  in the late 90s. So all this was was new to me
• 37:07
  and was was and only read it in the book but what I took was I
• 37:12
  can't remember. I just, I just knew I enjoyed
• 37:14
  it. I just knew that even there that
• 37:17
  was kind of precocious one. If you watched and go, yes, it's
• 37:20
  really good and go around quote. Should we?
• 37:23
  Should we go to like as as a television show that is geared
• 37:28
  at kids as well as adults? Should we be going to this
• 37:30
  world? Too often, though, where it is a
• 37:33
  little more ambiguous than usual, it's a little bit more
• 37:36
  obscure. You've sometimes forgot to give
• 37:39
  your own reading on things. I mean, it depends.
• 37:42
  I mean, I always found it a great educative tool.
• 37:46
  I would go particularly with this and talent.
• 37:49
  I remember going to check. I remember that the what is it?
• 37:54
  There's a there's a one eyed yellow idol to the north of
• 37:57
  Kathmandu. There's a little marble cross
• 37:59
  above the town. It's that poem that the Doctor
• 38:01
  starts quoting when he's waking up and it's Mr. Tribute between
• 38:05
  Kipling and and and Harry Harry Champion is it?
• 38:09
  And I went to check that it would intrigue me who it was
• 38:12
  actually by because it turned up in a computer game then that I
• 38:15
  was playing. At some point it ran across as a
• 38:17
  scroll and I recognized that and so you just I would go and check
• 38:21
  thing, but then maybe slightly on the spectrum.
• 38:23
  I was always going to end up in academia.
• 38:25
  I'd have to find out more about this and go and look these
• 38:28
  things up, but I think this, this one in particular.
• 38:31
  If if you're interested in this period or you develop an
• 38:34
  interesting period, you go back to this and you go, oh look
• 38:37
  what's he done here. This is great here as well.
• 38:40
  This kind of the threat to Ace and the fact that Mackenzie
• 38:43
  Mackenzie the the the police inspector, is captured by
• 38:48
  essentially A corpse scratched in the near It's the line coming
• 38:53
  up here now, Sylvia Sims. The music is brilliant here as
• 38:56
  well, of course. Sophie Aldred is great in this
• 38:59
  scene. I just.
• 39:02
  I know. I think as well, given Sylvia
• 39:03
  Simmons really isn't given a lot to do but be a presence in the
• 39:08
  room a lot of the time. That's all she needs to be
• 39:09
  though. That's all she needs to be
• 39:11
  because she's fulfilling a type of role that people recognise
• 39:15
  and so she behaves the way you expect her to behave, but it's
• 39:18
  how they then get her to. To fulfil that role is really
• 39:20
  what what's interesting. The scene where McCoy gives her
• 39:25
  her memories back, when the cuckoo evaded your mind and she
• 39:28
  breaks and he just walks away, it's so cold.
• 39:32
  Well, I mean, what's interesting is then you occasionally get
• 39:37
  victims or families of or family members of victims of Doctor
• 39:41
  Who. And it may just be me where you
• 39:44
  go. It troubles me what happens.
• 39:46
  It really troubles me what happens to Gwendolyn and her
• 39:48
  mother. There's a real sense of finality
• 39:50
  because we know there's no other family members and so they're
• 39:54
  just that and so presumably their statues are there.
• 39:57
  When Ace burns the house down 100 years later.
• 39:59
  I get the same sense with Mike Smith's mother in remembers of
• 40:04
  the dive. So she's presumably at least a
• 40:06
  racist, if not a full on fascist and not.
• 40:09
  Sure, that justifies fighting herself as corpse and.
• 40:13
  And Rex Farrell's mother? I feel really sorry for her as
• 40:16
  well in Terror the Autumns, and I don't particularly like to.
• 40:18
  Hear you could probably go looking for a lock.
• 40:20
  And you? Yeah, but those ones really,
• 40:21
  this, this that really troubles me.
• 40:23
  I'm not sure the acting of the the maid that's holding on to
• 40:26
  Mccoy's left shoulder there. It's not the best actor in the
• 40:29
  world. These were dancers, weren't
• 40:31
  they? And that's how they were to get
• 40:32
  that kind of gliding effect going.
• 40:33
  I adore his line a second ago, where he goes, was a control
• 40:37
  quintessence of wickedness, Corruption in Card.
• 40:41
  I mean, these are lines that the actors won, right?
• 40:45
  See how Ace isn't blinded by the light, but the others are?
• 40:48
  There's something going on there as well about how being exposed
• 40:51
  to like control. Of course.
• 40:53
  At that point, I think is probably meant to be Bertha
• 40:55
  Mason as well from Jane Eyre. I remember showing my friend
• 41:00
  Luke this story. Luke is not a Doctor Who fan and
• 41:03
  I wanted to impress him with a bit of Doctor Who.
• 41:05
  OK, he wasn't. Impressed with what you think?
• 41:09
  It never works. I stopped or the no.
• 41:11
  The worst rule is right, They go right, I'm going to watch the
• 41:14
  next one with you, and the next one's always a dog.
• 41:17
  It happened to me with Rings of Akaten, the Doctor's Daughter.
• 41:21
  I mean, it happened over and over again.
• 41:23
  Anyway, He watched episodes one and two and he was really
• 41:25
  impressed. Really, really impressed.
• 41:27
  The second light came out. That was it.
• 41:29
  It was all over. It's a choice, isn't it?
• 41:33
  That acting? But why I don't I don't
• 41:36
  understand. What To this day he sends me
• 41:38
  voice messages going look at these microbes.
• 41:42
  I just I I think because it's all played very straight up
• 41:45
  until that point and you can almost read that as a bit
• 41:49
  comedic. I, I, I But he he they work on
• 41:54
  what he's going to look like for a long time and what he's going
• 41:58
  to sound like. And I think it's a deliberate
• 42:01
  choice because of course he goes between high pitched and quite
• 42:04
  deep because John Hallam has got a very deep voice obviously at
• 42:07
  this point. I think was he den Cellmate in
• 42:10
  EastEnders by this point down down the line.
• 42:13
  And he's he's really, he's a serious actor.
• 42:17
  I still think the most sinister line he gets is I wanted to see
• 42:20
  how it worked, so I dismantled it.
• 42:22
  See. The voice, the voice is working
• 42:25
  there because he's got that kind of sing song, childlike voice
• 42:28
  and what you got there is the corpse of the maid and the arm.
• 42:30
  I mean it's it's it's very funny but it's terrifying at the same
• 42:33
  time because this is a character who can be as violent as
• 42:36
  possible, but the voice and the image are telling you something
• 42:40
  different. But again, it's playing with our
• 42:42
  expectations because it's a kind of pre Raphaelite angelic
• 42:45
  figure. It's meant to make you think
• 42:47
  about God. But of course, as Mark Platt
• 42:50
  said, years like this isn't a book that you put on the shelf
• 42:53
  at the library next to the Bible.
• 42:55
  It's telling a it's rebutting the tale of the Bible.
• 42:59
  But here you've got actually what what light gets up as a
• 43:02
  kind of God like figure is similar to some of the acts of
• 43:05
  brutality you find at least in the Old Testament.
• 43:07
  But it's playing with again your assumptions around what that
• 43:10
  type of figure would do. Because what you've got with
• 43:12
  Light is this all powerful figure who actually is quite
• 43:15
  stupid because he's. It's a very obvious thing that
• 43:20
  trips him up ultimately. Well, it's also that he's gone
• 43:22
  to sleep, goes to sleep in the ship, he leaves, he leaves these
• 43:25
  two and like, why? Why wouldn't you trust these two
• 43:29
  to pile your ship? For you to be honest, Paul,
• 43:31
  given how much my life is catalogued by my other half, if
• 43:34
  he ever fell asleep for about 10 years, we'd be in the same
• 43:37
  situation. But it did teach me a lesson
• 43:40
  that there is a line between what we and not we can handle in
• 43:46
  terms of pushing the boat out performance wise and things like
• 43:50
  I think we've already crossed that line with things like the
• 43:52
  candy man in has been his patrol, Richard Breyers in
• 43:55
  Paradise Towers. There's things that we will
• 43:58
  watch and we can acknowledge the very clever things that are
• 44:01
  going on, and there are things that people that don't love
• 44:04
  dogs, who will just sort of sit and laugh at.
• 44:08
  I mean Mike, I showed my cousins because my in Ireland they never
• 44:12
  they never showed it. So it's interesting a number of
• 44:15
  Irish viewers on Twitter, some of them really don't like the
• 44:19
  three specials and they they're kind of exposing themselves as
• 44:22
  as as viewers. But we we in a curious movie we
• 44:26
  took a television and a video player to Ireland with this one
• 44:29
  year in the car. It wasn't the strangest thing
• 44:31
  because it was the one year we took a lawn mower with us as
• 44:33
  well and to cut my grandfather's grass like we couldn't have just
• 44:36
  gone and hide it anyway. So I showed my cousins Curse of
• 44:41
  Fenric and Talons of Wen trying, and they hate the Curse of
• 44:44
  Fenric and they really like tons of Wen trying.
• 44:46
  Really. Yeah, I wish I can.
• 44:49
  I can see why. I can see why actually they they
• 44:52
  would prefer one over the other. Interestingly, if I show anybody
• 44:57
  now anyway, I know now classic Doctor Who.
• 45:01
  It just all lumps together for the most part, like, you know,
• 45:05
  and weirdly, what goes down well is the camper.
• 45:10
  The silliest stuff. The more outwardly entertaining
• 45:13
  stuff, less the very like Andrew Zani Genesis.
• 45:17
  That stuff never really goes down.
• 45:19
  Well, I mean, I mean Genesis is terribly overrated though.
• 45:22
  I mean Genesis is is a good four part story trapped in the 6th
• 45:25
  part. And Andrew Zani only makes sense
• 45:27
  when you've seen the rest of season 21 at least, because
• 45:32
  otherwise, what am I getting upset about?
• 45:35
  What? Why do I care?
• 45:36
  Why didn't he drink some of the back cum himself and then give
• 45:39
  it to his companion? I mean, that doesn't.
• 45:41
  Yeah, it doesn't make sense whatsoever.
• 45:42
  I mean, regeneration was always a terrible way to introduce the
• 45:45
  show to people. That's why the McGann thing gets
• 45:48
  it so, so very wrong. You should never be a
• 45:51
  regeneration story. That's what Davis learned that
• 45:53
  you You have to the Doctor and then if you want to.
• 45:55
  Explain it, yeah. As McCoy says himself, but he
• 45:58
  also I'm glad I was in it because, you know, I made nice
• 46:01
  money out of it. But Davis still didn't learn all
• 46:04
  lessons from the TV movie. He had the The Starby start,
• 46:08
  just like the TV movie, with a whacking great ton of continuity
• 46:13
  and explanation. Yeah.
• 46:15
  I was like, what are you doing like?
• 46:17
  But this? But of course the difference
• 46:18
  there is when the McGann thing is on.
• 46:21
  Here's here's the week of it, I think.
• 46:23
  Yeah, it's gone overboard there. It's exactly your point.
• 46:26
  When McCoy tones it down, he's he's a far more interesting
• 46:30
  performance. Sophie Aldrich there says if you
• 46:37
  don't like it, you can bog off, and I well remember we around at
• 46:41
  your nan's. Oh, have you gone into episode
• 46:44
  3? Oh, sorry.
• 46:45
  Yeah I have. I just it just it just rolled
• 46:48
  on. I paused it.
• 46:51
  Oh, I didn't I? Suddenly became aware that you
• 46:53
  were watching it. I remember this goes out as
• 46:54
  three separate episodes, yeah. That's a massive cock up there.
• 46:58
  Well, isn't it? How long am I into?
• 46:59
  I'm only four minutes in. Oh.
• 47:00
  Well, don't worry because I'll find a place to to end it.
• 47:04
  And then and then we'll start. We'll start three now.