Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Talks to the Lee, Cam & Andy about their choice of The Mind Robber (1/5)

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Talks to the Lee, Cam & Andy about their choice of The Mind Robber (1/5) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:33
  Hamster with a blunt pen knife for doing quicker.
• 0:36
  Welcome back to a Hamster with a Blunt Pen Knife, the Doctor Who
• 0:40
  Commentary podcast. Now, rarely have I been in a
• 0:45
  Zoom call with such attractive, such charismatic, such
• 0:50
  intelligent and, oh, just beautiful heterosexual men in my
• 0:55
  life. I mean, I'm truly thrilled
• 0:58
  tonight to be presence of Lee Mcnetamy.
• 1:02
  Hello, Lee. Good.
• 1:04
  Evening, Joe Ford, How are you? Well, a bit hot right now if I'm
• 1:07
  honest. Looking to go.
• 1:09
  Cameron, how are you doing? Tonight, I'm all right, Joe.
• 1:12
  How's yourself? Yeah, not bad.
• 1:14
  You know, it's Bank Holiday Monday.
• 1:16
  I've been in the sea today, having a nice time swimming with
• 1:18
  the fishes. You've been in in the salty,
• 1:21
  salty sea. Maybe later, mate.
• 1:25
  All right, maybe later. I'm just saying, I just just.
• 1:29
  Setting the tone as ever. Making his hamster debut in a
• 1:34
  beautiful shirt. May I say good grief with the
• 1:37
  top button open as well. Very impressive.
• 1:40
  Andy, hello. Hello.
• 1:42
  Hello. Hello.
• 1:43
  Can I just say straight off the bat, you know, that was a lot of
• 1:47
  compliments getting condensed down in a wonderfully short
• 1:50
  period of time. I don't even get that in my
• 1:51
  private life. Fantastic.
• 1:53
  Oh my God, bring it in. Can you bring it in?
• 1:56
  I. Didn't I?
• 1:57
  I, I I'll. Tell her the.
• 1:59
  Next time, the next time someone passes the door, I'll hijack
• 2:02
  them. But I didn't actually know if we
• 2:04
  were recording just the audio or if it was a video as well.
• 2:07
  So I did like spruce up just for you mate.
• 2:09
  Man, oh man. I mean, you all look amazing.
• 2:12
  Yeah, bring her in here and I shall say, will you have a look
• 2:15
  at him, please, and just see how lucky you are.
• 2:17
  Good grief. Isn't there's an overwhelming
• 2:19
  feeling of the smell of Old Spice coming from Andy's We
• 2:22
  Corner of this? My dad used to wear Old Spice.
• 2:26
  You know it reeks, doesn't it? Well, you know.
• 2:31
  What do you tell us Spritz with? Can I ask you what do you put
• 2:34
  on? You know, are you just sort of
• 2:36
  under the arm, roll arms or do? You I'm pretty much a sure,
• 2:40
  pretty much a sure spray sort of guy.
• 2:42
  Sure. Yeah, that's because I usually
• 2:44
  borrow my wife's if I've run it myself so I can.
• 2:47
  That's pretty that's. For Andy.
• 2:50
  Yeah, pretty much the same with a little squirt of pack a Rabani
• 2:53
  excess. And I do, you know, I know
• 2:54
  that's like been kicking about for the past 30 years.
• 2:57
  But, you know, once you get stuck in your ways, you know,
• 2:59
  it's very difficult to change. My man knows what he likes that
• 3:03
  that kind of thing. So.
• 3:05
  And Cameron like. I said I work, I work from home.
• 3:07
  So, you know, who have I got to impress?
• 3:10
  Well, your wife. I forgot about.
• 3:12
  That sorry, what do you spray all over yourself mate?
• 3:19
  I I just have a like a ball kind of like deodorant that just
• 3:23
  duffed it under the arms and the old, you know, and the lower
• 3:26
  back as well. Could I find a sweater in lower
• 3:28
  back? A lot of these do high.
• 3:29
  What about the itching? That forex?
• 3:30
  That's an image. Yeah, I know what I mean.
• 3:33
  Sweaty backs, are we there already?
• 3:35
  OK, well fellows, we're here today to talk about the mind
• 3:39
  rubber and I, I believe two people on this call have
• 3:45
  experienced this story for the first time this week or
• 3:49
  certainly recently, and one person on this call absolutely
• 3:52
  adores it. I'm really quickly going to jump
• 3:54
  across to Andy because I have no idea what your Doctor Who
• 3:58
  journey is, how much you've seen.
• 4:00
  So please enlighten me. So it's a bit of an eclectic
• 4:05
  journey, I would say. So both my wife and I are Doctor
• 4:08
  Who fans. We have been Doctor Who fans in
• 4:13
  the passing for quite a long time through Lee having been on
• 4:17
  the the, the the Polish box. Yeah, I guess from my
• 4:21
  perspective, I, I kind of like living in the persona of I know
• 4:25
  nothing about what is happening, what's going on.
• 4:27
  But slowly but surely going through each of the different
• 4:30
  episodes that we've done, It's been it's been a bit Moorish,
• 4:33
  it's been quite enjoyable. And there's obviously going to
• 4:35
  be a great part of that is the camaraderie with these kind of
• 4:39
  these kind of podcasts. But yeah, my, my Doctor Who sort
• 4:42
  of experiences have been relatively limited.
• 4:45
  So think I'm going to use Cami as the example.
• 4:49
  Cami was pretty pleased the last time it was on on a podcast with
• 4:53
  him because it gave him the opportunity to explore all the
• 4:56
  things that you might not be able to explore with a grizzled
• 5:00
  to who fan. So yeah, it's it's it's, you
• 5:03
  know, you're more than happy for you to pop my podcast Cherry,
• 5:07
  mate. You'll have a great time.
• 5:10
  And yeah. My second question to you.
• 5:12
  That's been my journey so far. Did you just call him Cammy?
• 5:18
  That's a wonderful name. Does he get?
• 5:19
  Does he get upset? No, Did I?
• 5:22
  All right. That's why I'm going to call you
• 5:24
  from now on then. Even Joe doesn't get to call him
• 5:26
  that. And they're podcast married, so
• 5:28
  you know. Is is there an is there an
• 5:33
  etiquette? Is someone going to be demand
• 5:34
  like slapping me in the face with a glove and demanding
• 5:36
  recompense? Don't worry, you, you, your
• 5:39
  cards may come in still, we're sort of polygamous at the
• 5:42
  moment, so you know. OK, right, right, right, right.
• 5:45
  Well, you never told me that bet.
• 5:46
  Yeah, it's used to come. Sorry.
• 5:49
  Sorry, Cam Lee, I believe you're a big fan of this and this was
• 5:52
  sort of your request. Well, I mean, it kind of wasn't.
• 5:57
  It wasn't. I mean, you asked me quite a
• 5:59
  while ago when you were wanting me to come back on Hamster what
• 6:04
  sort of era I'd fancy doing. I absolutely love and adore
• 6:07
  1960s Doctor Who above all else. And then when we're on the
• 6:12
  Enlightenment episode, you dropped a delightful bombshell
• 6:15
  that you wanted to come back and talk about this story, which is
• 6:18
  genuinely one of my top five Doctor Who's of all time.
• 6:21
  So it'll be a delight to sit here and talk about it tonight.
• 6:25
  And Cameron, I like calling you Cameron.
• 6:28
  It's sort of formal actually, within our relationship.
• 6:31
  I get calm, I get calmie, I get Cameron and he's good.
• 6:36
  It's fine. Yeah, OK.
• 6:39
  This is the first time you've watched it as well, isn't it for
• 6:41
  this? And did you feel as if you'd
• 6:43
  taken a sort of a huge amount of mind altering drugs by the time
• 6:46
  you'd finished? There's a certain element of
• 6:49
  that because it kind of starts off on a sort of like single
• 6:54
  plane and then, as we'll see, goes all kinds of roads and
• 6:59
  almost until the ending where it's kind of just throwing
• 7:02
  anything in there. But we'll see.
• 7:05
  Let's see, Gulliver's Travels, d'artagnan, BlackBerry, the
• 7:10
  Pirate will do whatever you want.
• 7:12
  Andy, can I ask you for your initial impressions for this
• 7:15
  before we even press play? Like what on earth did you think
• 7:17
  of this madness? Where do I begin?
• 7:22
  So initially I didn't think it was as bonkers as perhaps Lee
• 7:27
  was portraying it. And then as Cami said it from my
• 7:30
  perspective, kind of snowballed the, the, the, the more you go
• 7:34
  into, the more episodes about. And so by the end of the last,
• 7:37
  by the, the time you're into the last episode, it's like a train
• 7:41
  that's careering down a hill, completely and utterly out of
• 7:43
  control. And you don't know what's coming
• 7:45
  next. And like, I'm not just waxing
• 7:48
  lyrical here. I really enjoyed it.
• 7:49
  I really enjoyed it. And for me, I, and again,
• 7:52
  they're coming in with a fresh pair of eyes.
• 7:54
  It's so easy from an outside perspective to go, well, Doctor
• 7:57
  Who looks crap, therefore it is crap.
• 7:59
  You look trust all that and you start looking at the actual
• 8:02
  story itself. And there was just so much going
• 8:04
  on. But yeah, it was it was like a
• 8:07
  runaway train towards the end. That was that was my
• 8:10
  interpretation of it. I was like, I, I, I did watch
• 8:14
  this again, although I've seen it a million times from white
• 8:17
  back into my childhood. And towards the end I was kind
• 8:20
  of like, OK, Doctor Who's companions have been turned into
• 8:22
  fictional characters. Are we trying to say the Doctor
• 8:25
  Who's companions are actually 1 dimensional and suddenly Doctor
• 8:29
  Who is improvising the story as we go?
• 8:31
  Is that a meta commentary on how shit some of these scripts
• 8:33
  actually are? Like, I think sometimes you can
• 8:36
  read too much into this stuff, but I wonder if we'll explore
• 8:41
  some of that as we go in. Well, look, should we go in and
• 8:44
  watch Episode 1? Which is as unnervingly weird, I
• 8:50
  think, as. I mean, do you know the history
• 8:52
  of Episode 1, Andy? No, please expect right.
• 8:56
  OK. Can we just call this one out
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  just that I want you guys to call out the obvious because a
• 9:01
  I'll need to know and BI can I can see the look on your faces.
• 9:04
  You want to do that? Well, Lee does.
• 9:07
  Well, let's see, what better hands?
• 9:09
  Press Play. Actually, actually.
• 9:11
  So I have a question for Lee and I want you to think about this
• 9:13
  for later on. You said right at the start
• 9:16
  there, you said the 1960s Doctor Who's are your favorite?
• 9:20
  I really want to know why, so hold that thought.
• 9:23
  I won't hold the show up but I really want to know why.
• 9:25
  I we will get to that. I'll have something prepared for
• 9:28
  later on that explains also fabulous.
• 9:30
  Yeah, you'll get your answer, Andy.
• 9:31
  Don't know a. Feeling we're all going to know
• 9:32
  each other really well by the end of this call.
• 9:35
  You know, naked if, if possible. Well, look, Lee, will you count
• 9:40
  us into episode 1? Everyone's fingers on balance.
• 9:44
  For five points, let's start the Mind Robber and 321-GO.
• 9:51
  Off we go. Oh look, so everyone else saying
• 9:53
  don't have the sound on and I've got the sound on.
• 9:55
  There we go. Will you educate everybody about
• 9:58
  Episode 1? So episode 1 is a bit of an
• 10:02
  anomaly because it shouldn't really exist.
• 10:05
  The story before this, which I believe is Fraser Gregory's
• 10:08
  favorite sorry of all time, The Dominators.
• 10:10
  Madman, yeah. Madman.
• 10:11
  Yeah, that was supposed to run into 6 episodes, but then got
• 10:15
  cut down to five when they discovered they didn't have
• 10:17
  anywhere made enough script or ideas to stretch out over six
• 10:20
  weeks. And because they can allocate
• 10:23
  budgets in a different way, they were going to stop with that's
• 10:26
  your budget for one story, that's your budget for another.
• 10:28
  They had to do another episode tacked on at the start of this
• 10:32
  with no budget, no money for new sets or supporting artists,
• 10:36
  anything at all. So it's a short episode of
• 10:40
  Doctor Who. It's 20 minutes.
• 10:41
  It's probably the shortest it's ever been I think.
• 10:43
  One off? Yeah, definitely a.
• 10:45
  Master class in making use of what you have to hand, which is
• 10:48
  the. Three actors and the TARDIS set
• 10:50
  and that's pretty much it. Yeah, and a white.
• 10:52
  Black back cloth, that's all they've got to play with.
• 10:56
  I mean, were you a bit confused Andy, going into this?
• 10:58
  They seem to be in the middle of an adventure.
• 11:01
  Well, so I've done enough episodes now that I, I feel like
• 11:05
  I do get pitched in. So for me, that's actually part
• 11:08
  of the fun, but where you get thrown in without any sort of
• 11:10
  context as to what's going on and then trying to swim along
• 11:15
  with the tide to figure figure it out.
• 11:17
  So that's actually quite enjoyable seeing them getting,
• 11:19
  you know, we're watching it just now, but seeing them getting
• 11:21
  pitched in to begin with and working out how this is going to
• 11:24
  flow through. It's, it's actually quite fun.
• 11:27
  So to be honest. Yeah, it was, it was, it was
• 11:30
  easy enough to pick up. And, you know, as Lee was
• 11:32
  talking about there, the bit that I like is the, the, the
• 11:36
  context and the back story. So I mean, I did a little bit of
• 11:38
  reading, found out they'd written what was it was 4
• 11:40
  episodes they wrote. And then it was almost like a
• 11:43
  holy shit, we need one to round it off.
• 11:45
  And it was brushed and thrown together at the end, paraphrased
• 11:49
  badly. But does that sound about right
• 11:50
  in terms of how they did it spot?
• 11:52
  On I mean, what's interesting is I think if you go from the end
• 11:55
  of the last story, which is a very stayed B movie, Doctor Who,
• 12:00
  straight into episode 2 of this, which is where it would have
• 12:03
  started, straight into the fairy tale lands or the land of
• 12:06
  fiction. It's like tonal whiplash.
• 12:08
  I think you almost need this episode in the middle as a bit
• 12:12
  of a buffer. You get it from 1 tone to the
• 12:14
  other. Cameron, I've got a really
• 12:16
  important question for you. A highly intellectual one at
• 12:18
  that. Go on.
• 12:19
  Which of Zoe's costumes do you prefer?
• 12:21
  The sort of the darkest one which shows off her boobs, or
• 12:24
  the fabulous spangly cat suit that shows off her arse?
• 12:28
  I. Thought the Spangly cat suit was
• 12:30
  quite the thing because, you know, it looks like she's going
• 12:32
  on for a sponsored parachute jump.
• 12:37
  I can I? Like I said, I have a load of
• 12:39
  questions and the disco suit was one of them, right?
• 12:42
  And I'll save that for for later on.
• 12:44
  But yeah, it was like, where? Why?
• 12:46
  How? It's basically a space wardrobe.
• 12:49
  That's what it is, you know, like, yeah, I mean you.
• 12:52
  Should say not to ask questions Andy and just enjoy.
• 12:55
  I don't. Know Andy?
• 12:55
  If you've ever seen The Twin Dilemma, but all three
• 12:58
  characters in the title, it's in The Twin Dilemma.
• 13:00
  Head into the wardrobe and you should see the camp disco gear
• 13:03
  there. Of course I'm out wearing.
• 13:07
  It's amazing, though. It looks like yeah, marshmallow,
• 13:11
  isn't it? Yeah.
• 13:12
  It's weird that. Is that the phone machine again?
• 13:15
  Lee, I think. That probably is, yeah, because
• 13:17
  you can every single last sign out of that before it goes back
• 13:20
  to the shop I was. Going to say that that's kind
• 13:22
  of, you know, so like again, approaching it from an outside
• 13:25
  perspective is easy to go or Doctor Who looks cheap.
• 13:28
  You look past that. It's like they're trying it's
• 13:30
  easy enough to look at that and go right there.
• 13:32
  The TARDIS is getting covered in lava.
• 13:34
  I can accept that on face value based on what you know, You
• 13:37
  know, they've got £2020.00 and a Curly Worley as a budget and
• 13:42
  that's what they're going to go with.
• 13:43
  I'm fine with that. Well you.
• 13:45
  Say it looks cheap. I mean it was bloody cheap,
• 13:47
  wasn't it? It was made on Frappums and the
• 13:49
  goodwill of the But you, that person then that can sit there
• 13:52
  and watch something and if the actors are selling it then you
• 13:56
  just go with it. Yeah, I just, so I think it was
• 13:59
  on one of the original Polisbox episodes I was invited into.
• 14:03
  One of the points that I made is I love indie computer games.
• 14:08
  So independently made guy in the basement.
• 14:11
  The game doesn't have to look good, but if it's got heart,
• 14:14
  soul and content, you can totally immerse yourself out.
• 14:17
  So immersion for me is a really, really big thing when I'm
• 14:19
  watching stuff like that. So you can kinda look past.
• 14:23
  I don't need to be wowed or titillated by by what's been put
• 14:27
  on screen, as long as it makes sense what's being done.
• 14:31
  And the by the end of this you will be a most antisolated, I
• 14:34
  promise. You that is.
• 14:36
  That is a she'd never. Give me word so she's.
• 14:39
  So she's in the disco suit now, right?
• 14:41
  Yes. Oh, fabulous.
• 14:43
  So what? What?
• 14:43
  What was the context? You know, it's like, well, I
• 14:46
  don't want to jump ahead too far, but the one of the points I
• 14:48
  wanted to make is this scene here is possibly one of the only
• 14:52
  scenes involving Zoe where she's not being touched in some manner
• 14:56
  or form. No.
• 14:58
  Something's always. Someone's always got their hands
• 15:01
  on her and they're like always like touching her and nothing,
• 15:04
  nothing bad, but just like it's almost like a bit possessive and
• 15:08
  a bit. And then she's in the sparkly
• 15:09
  suit and, you know, then there's Jamie and he's like, oh, I think
• 15:12
  I will get changed too. Oh no.
• 15:14
  Why don't you just slip into something more vaginal, Zoe?
• 15:16
  You know, it's like just that. Where does the disco suit comes
• 15:19
  from? Doesn't make any sense.
• 15:21
  I mean, she's. From the future, so I'm assuming
• 15:23
  she's just used to wearing garish clothes like this all the
• 15:25
  time, but there is certainly something a little bit
• 15:28
  exploited. In the 60s.
• 15:30
  Yeah. Especially.
• 15:32
  Later on, because Jamie, I mean, I was trying to establish
• 15:35
  whether it's just like Jamie the character being protective or
• 15:38
  just Fraser Heinz speaking out from behind the curtain every
• 15:40
  because he's got his hands around her shoulders, on her
• 15:43
  heads, just like, you know, ask Fraser.
• 15:46
  Heinz left. Yeah, No, I was.
• 15:47
  Going to say no. That's just the bit that I was
• 15:51
  hoping for, the context in the background, but I'm watching
• 15:53
  this going like, you don't need to be touching her right at that
• 15:57
  moment in time. Trouble is.
• 15:59
  So Andy Fraser, Heinz looks like that in the 60s.
• 16:02
  So the women don't tend to mine too much.
• 16:04
  He's still at, he's not sure and he don't look like that anymore.
• 16:07
  I'm telling you, Lee, what is this, one of the single greatest
• 16:10
  episodes of Doctor Whoever? Always of the opinion that
• 16:13
  Doctor Who is at his best in his backs against the ball.
• 16:16
  And this episode in particular when we're watching right now is
• 16:19
  a slight perfect illustration of that.
• 16:21
  Like I said earlier on, they've been put into this position
• 16:24
  where they have to come up with something and yet end up with
• 16:29
  one of the perhaps outside of like the age of destruction
• 16:32
  probably. There was weird and unsettling
• 16:34
  little episodes of Doctor Who. You've got, you've got all this
• 16:36
  strange outside forces coming into the TARDIS, people seeing
• 16:41
  things, imagining things, conflicted, whether they're
• 16:43
  actually real or not. So yeah, it's in that sort of
• 16:47
  same sort of mould. And that's entirely A budgetary,
• 16:50
  financially outside source thing coming in.
• 16:52
  But I mean, you have to give credit like Derek Sherman,
• 16:55
  right? You have to give him credit for
• 16:57
  writing this script because he's not a, a proper, I see a proper
• 17:01
  script right here. He was script editor at the
• 17:03
  time. It's not his job to provide
• 17:05
  scripts for the show. He's just chopping down, make
• 17:07
  sure they're functional and run to a certain time.
• 17:09
  And he doesn't really deserve that much credit elsewhere
• 17:12
  because, you know, I've read his autobiography.
• 17:14
  Oh. He's a prick, isn't he?
• 17:16
  Oh just, you've only got to listen to him on the
• 17:18
  commentaries, man. He loves him.
• 17:19
  He's got that fella. But it props to him, he's pulled
• 17:22
  it out of the bag with this. You mean that?
• 17:24
  Quote he has about Trouten, because Trouten's whingeing in
• 17:26
  this one, especially this episode where they're having to
• 17:30
  do every single scene. That's unusual in Doctor.
• 17:32
  Normally you've got guest characters in and you're not
• 17:34
  literally holding up the whole episode.
• 17:36
  And Trouten's already exhausted because he's working 48 weeks of
• 17:40
  a 52 week year and Derek Sherwin is there on the set going, well,
• 17:44
  you don't like it, then go, we'll find someone to replace
• 17:46
  you. And he did, yeah.
• 17:48
  But this is one that's kind of broken, Patrick Trout.
• 17:50
  And because like having to carry all this work unexpectedly on
• 17:54
  top of you, your fifty week a year job that you got to do, you
• 17:58
  can understand that. Yeah, that's going to change
• 18:00
  things from now on, but. If we are to assume that the
• 18:03
  TARDIS is their home in this, then it's that nightmarish idea
• 18:07
  of being lured out of a safe space, isn't it?
• 18:10
  That's what seeing all the images of their house is all
• 18:13
  about. Into that wheel.
• 18:14
  Now, Cameron, what would it take to lure you out of your house if
• 18:18
  I was trying to entice you out? Then taste me out.
• 18:22
  Oh God. But Michelle Rowan is always cat
• 18:26
  suit, surely. Yeah, let's do.
• 18:28
  That let's do. Andy, Andy, what would it take
• 18:31
  to lure you out? Not much I'm making.
• 18:36
  A leg. Show me a bit of leg and buying
• 18:38
  me dinner and I think we're done.
• 18:39
  I'm in. Shorts tonight, right?
• 18:41
  OK, you'll be out of your house by the end of the night.
• 18:43
  Lee, how about you do? You know what, even though I
• 18:46
  suggested that I'd probably just Zooey in the cats, it would be
• 18:49
  enough if you put that image up on a screen.
• 18:51
  I just play some mist and then some sort of, you know, ambient
• 18:55
  music. It's because it's.
• 18:56
  Happening at the moment, sorry to dive in across just because
• 18:59
  it's playing out at the moment, so again, no context.
• 19:03
  The Phil the Doctor came across as a bit almost panicky and and
• 19:11
  and a little bit less assured or a less less assured version of
• 19:15
  the Doctor is that. That is, yeah.
• 19:17
  Is that? True.
• 19:18
  Right? OK, 'cause he was.
• 19:19
  Running stories and goes Oh my goody gum drops, you know, and
• 19:23
  he's yeah, but basically. Basically, there's moments for
• 19:25
  his that he puts his hands together and almost in a sort of
• 19:28
  bringing his hands in a oh, I'm not really sure.
• 19:31
  Oh, go back, please. Rather than the the assured
• 19:34
  doctors that you get later on where you know, they would take
• 19:37
  control of that situation, you know?
• 19:38
  Yeah, I've said it a million times.
• 19:39
  I I always have bit of a problem with the Doctor being a prick at
• 19:42
  times. His character didn't look like
• 19:45
  he had that element to him. He's.
• 19:47
  Incredibly, but he's the doctor that's willing to show fear the
• 19:52
  most of all of them. Yes.
• 19:54
  And I think This is why, because in his middle season they did a
• 19:57
  lot of sort of horror stories, right?
• 19:59
  Really scary horror stories, and the doctors terrified within
• 20:03
  them. In these in these horror stories
• 20:05
  and the kids were bloody God the doctors terrified there's
• 20:08
  monsters everywhere we're trapped in the dark like and it
• 20:11
  was it was sort of genuinely chilling stuff at the time you
• 20:15
  probably watch it an hour ago OK does help the.
• 20:17
  Stories. Well, I like it when he gets
• 20:19
  into a bit of a flap like that Panic because like Andy says,
• 20:22
  he's not the calm assured the doctor that, you know, he maybe
• 20:24
  should be. So I'm basing more human in a
• 20:27
  way I want. Yeah, I want.
• 20:28
  A bit of jeopardy I want, I want to know that you know, you've
• 20:31
  not got a character there that you know they're in this bloody
• 20:35
  Salvador Dali esque nightmare that's going on here and you've
• 20:38
  got 1 character that's like I don't even need to think about
• 20:41
  what's happening. In actual fact I'm getting quite
• 20:43
  frustrated because you guys can't keep up.
• 20:45
  You've actually got 3 characters going.
• 20:47
  Don't know what's going on. I don't know what's going on.
• 20:50
  And you see the doctor going through this going right, I'm
• 20:53
  figuring it out this little like, ah, right.
• 20:56
  OK. Now all we'd need to to do is
• 20:58
  imagine that, you know, accept that this is our imagination and
• 21:01
  the thing loses its power. You know, I just, I thought that
• 21:05
  was great. The whole thing about you don't
• 21:07
  know what's going on narratively, this is just unlike
• 21:09
  any other Doctor Who story episode.
• 21:11
  This because normally they land somewhere, they're treated with
• 21:14
  suspicion, there's something to investigate, but here they're
• 21:17
  being alert out of the time. There's weird white space with
• 21:19
  these rando robots that pop out of nowhere.
• 21:22
  Suddenly there's a noise invading the TARDIS, the bloody
• 21:24
  thing explodes, and then the consoles flying through the
• 21:26
  mist. At no point can you go, Yeah,
• 21:28
  I'm going to predict precisely, but I know this is going to end
• 21:30
  with the TARDIS console flying away through space and Zoe's ass
• 21:34
  shooting off with it. Like what the hell?
• 21:38
  The kids must have just been like, I don't know what I've
• 21:40
  just watched. A fever dream, I think.
• 21:45
  Look, the fact that Joe has picked this story of all
• 21:47
  stories. You know when a Scotsman
• 21:50
  wistfully looks into the screen? Big distance and bagpipe music
• 21:54
  to do with the other Scotsman. I'm just walking stereotypes,
• 21:58
  this man I'm that. Music.
• 22:00
  Yeah. I was like, should we be
• 22:02
  standing for this national anthem?
• 22:05
  I thought he would have seen like a Scots distillery, you
• 22:07
  know, like whisper distillery something.
• 22:10
  Like that I. See.
• 22:10
  With all alkies, Joe. Well.
• 22:13
  More touching, just as the. Point here you.
• 22:17
  Know just yeah drag those guns will be a little.
• 22:19
  Too close as well, you'll notice those.
• 22:21
  Robots. Now remember we said we had they
• 22:24
  had no budget. So how on earth did they create
• 22:26
  those robots? I hear you asked.
• 22:27
  Well, they've nicked them from another TV show.
• 22:31
  At the time. And spray painted them white,
• 22:33
  yeah. OK, so I've got.
• 22:35
  Another question, I've got another question for you guys.
• 22:38
  Do you think that the background knowledge of what's happening
• 22:42
  off screen, so budgetary cuts that you were talking about,
• 22:45
  they're using props from other places.
• 22:48
  Does that make Doctor Who more engaging in terms of like trying
• 22:53
  to to like figure out all the little bit, right?
• 22:55
  So this plot line has been rushed because of him getting
• 22:58
  fired and then this happened and then this happened.
• 23:00
  Does that add an extra bit of spice to it or is that just an
• 23:03
  inconvenience? What?
• 23:05
  What? What do you think?
• 23:06
  I've never. Thought of that.
• 23:07
  I'm going to hand that over to you guys while I think Cameron.
• 23:12
  Was he what I think as in is Doctor Who better when it's kind
• 23:17
  of like trying to like stretch resources?
• 23:20
  Is that no? No.
• 23:21
  No. It's good.
• 23:22
  Drama if you know there's drama. Off Yeah, yeah, exactly you know
• 23:25
  why this episode has been constructed in a particular way
• 23:28
  and as you said there's. Well, from every time I've
• 23:31
  spoken to you guys, there's an element of drama that's going on
• 23:34
  in the background with people falling out with different
• 23:36
  people. As just as I'm taking the piss
• 23:39
  out of Jamie and you've said, yeah, he's basically a big
• 23:41
  pervert off screen, and that's fine because that's part of his
• 23:44
  character. Yeah.
• 23:44
  OK. You can see that coming through
• 23:46
  is. We can't deny it.
• 23:48
  It's true. Does.
• 23:51
  It does that. Does that add to it or does that
• 23:53
  just complicate things? It definitely.
• 23:56
  Does, I mean, we're quite lucky as Doctor Who finds that
• 23:58
  everything's meticulously documented.
• 24:00
  There's like camera scripts, there's a lot of lots, hundreds
• 24:04
  of books about, you know, what was happening behind the scenes
• 24:07
  and so on. It's like we had Toby Haydock on
• 24:09
  the post box. He made a point about what was
• 24:12
  it? He said.
• 24:12
  I'm going to paraphrase, but it was something like Doctor Who's,
• 24:14
  like an excavation site. You can appreciate what's going
• 24:17
  on in the surface level, but if you scrape it with a spoon,
• 24:19
  you're going to find layers upon layers upon layers of stuff
• 24:22
  underneath. And that's part of the deal
• 24:25
  with. I don't know, I'm starting to
• 24:28
  wonder if you're in like Cam and Andy's position where you don't
• 24:32
  know, you're sort of more intrigued because you're like,
• 24:34
  well, why did they make those creative decisions?
• 24:36
  That's so weird. Whereas we're sitting there
• 24:38
  going, well, I know that. I know that, you know, like I
• 24:41
  always. I always have a singles like, I
• 24:43
  mean, I am not into the depth and backstage Lord of Doctor Who
• 24:50
  at all to the point where like if someone mentions like
• 24:53
  scriptwriters and like producers and things like that, sometimes
• 24:55
  I have to like Google them or find out which episodes I did
• 24:57
  because I can't be sure. So sometimes get a little bit
• 25:01
  left behind in those kind of conversations because I'm kind
• 25:03
  of more concentrating on the story about, you know, and
• 25:06
  what's kind of like, you know, how does it work on a kind of
• 25:08
  story level and on a presentation level as a show.
• 25:12
  And that's my main concern. Hello.
• 25:14
  How does this work on a story level?
• 25:16
  On a presentation level for you. On a story level as well, as I
• 25:21
  kind of alluded to when you asked of the WhatsApp group we
• 25:25
  had for this and I got fire bomb for it.
• 25:29
  Don't give an opinion about a Doctor Who story then.
• 25:31
  All right, You don't want a response.
• 25:34
  This story. To me is a little bit 1 trick.
• 25:38
  It's a little bit once you've got to the whole, oh, it's not
• 25:42
  real, Just imagine it's not real, it's not real.
• 25:45
  Just tell yourself it's not real.
• 25:46
  That happens about 3 or 4 times in this entire 5 episode run and
• 25:51
  it kind of gets a bit kind of garbage.
• 25:55
  I will I. Will hold my hands up even
• 25:57
  though this is one of my favourite all time Doctor Who
• 25:58
  stories. You are right.
• 26:00
  I mean, that's a bit of A1 trick pony, but there's just so much
• 26:04
  mental stuff going on it you can absolutely yourself get swept
• 26:07
  along with it. You've said that so perfectly
• 26:11
  because I get what Kami's saying and I'm calling you Kami.
• 26:14
  We're sticking with that. I get what you're saying.
• 26:16
  It's like we all watch these things for a different reason.
• 26:18
  Like I said, I want to get immersed Cameras looking at the
• 26:21
  storyline lead likes the the the construct in the background of
• 26:24
  how we got to this particular place our fancy.
• 26:28
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 26:30
  So I can see where I can see where you're coming from.
• 26:32
  When you you, you say that, you know, it's a bit of A1 trick
• 26:35
  pony, but as Lee said, it's like it's you're almost like, OK,
• 26:39
  it's a 1 trick pony, but there's not many fucking ponies.
• 26:43
  It's just they keep throwing them on this like a Lord.
• 26:45
  Mir even had. Even had a pony with a fucking
• 26:48
  ice cream cone on its head. Oh.
• 26:50
  Wait, should we talk about the behind the scenes of that?
• 26:55
  I mean, they, they, I mean, I'm not saying that anybody, this
• 26:57
  episode's kind of bad overall. You know, it's still
• 27:01
  entertaining enough. It's, you know, it is what it
• 27:04
  is. It's it's fun.
• 27:05
  And I think if you were watching this in what, 196768, this was
• 27:09
  broadcast, yeah. Yeah.
• 27:11
  I think, you know, it would be kind of like mind blowing
• 27:13
  because there probably wouldn't have been anything else like
• 27:15
  this. You know, it's all like, you
• 27:16
  know, look, all these fantasy figures and these literary,
• 27:19
  literary figures are popping up on this screen.
• 27:21
  Oh, it's amazing. But I think if you look back on
• 27:24
  it now, you know, I, I, we are as an audience far more tuned
• 27:30
  into how media works now than any audience back then.
• 27:35
  And it kind of doesn't quite maybe hit as much as it would
• 27:41
  have done. Well, you've got.
• 27:42
  To remember as well in the previous season, again, this is
• 27:45
  behind the scene knowledge, so you know, go with it.
• 27:49
  They just had a whole season where it's the same format in
• 27:53
  every single story. It's a base under siege, they
• 27:55
  land, it's one set, monsters come in and attack and there's
• 27:59
  an intransigent base commander. The doctor defeats the monsters.
• 28:03
  The end, right? And it's that for about 6
• 28:05
  stories on the trot. And then this hits, which is
• 28:08
  totally out-of-the-box and imaginative and wacky and weird
• 28:13
  and I and suddenly you do. So why?
• 28:15
  Was it different? Because as you said there it's
• 28:17
  you've got you, you've got a, a construct where it's like the
• 28:20
  monster of the week 1 set and again, budgetary complete and a
• 28:23
  boss at the end of the level as it were.
• 28:26
  And today you can go on to the next level.
• 28:27
  So why one was, why was this one so different, do you think?
• 28:31
  2 reasons. I think 1 is Patrick Trout and
• 28:33
  said these stories are starting to, we've done this, we need to
• 28:38
  try harder. And two, there's a new script
• 28:40
  editor who's just come in two stories earlier, and that's
• 28:43
  Terrence Sticks. And he's the man that's probably
• 28:45
  had the most profound effect on Doctor Who in its entire run.
• 28:48
  And and he comes in this season and suddenly the stories
• 28:52
  literally bounce between B movie to this, which is kind of
• 28:55
  literate to alien invasions on the Earth, contemporary stories.
• 28:59
  And it's just all over the place.
• 29:01
  And it's far more diverse than it was before.
• 29:03
  So I think it's it's Terror Sticks.
• 29:05
  And that's the reason I agree. Yeah.
• 29:08
  What the Hell's going on now? Everyone's grabbing the Reds.
• 29:11
  It's like a Panadol advert. The migraines are kicking in
• 29:15
  you. Know they need they need they
• 29:17
  need some peptic abysmal. I've.
• 29:20
  Got to say though, props to the people doing the special sound
• 29:22
  because I was watching this earlier and I was like, yeah,
• 29:24
  well, this is creepy. Sound effects that they're
• 29:26
  pumping into this story. I mean it's.
• 29:28
  Patrick Troughton and Fraser Heinz.
• 29:29
  Is that the chance that they're just hungover?
• 29:31
  That's a. Bit yeah, they just come back
• 29:33
  from the Guinness distance from the advisor, yeah.
• 29:37
  There we go. And and.
• 29:40
  And I guess, and I guess you have to say, you know, it's like
• 29:43
  with what the with the resources that were at their disposal,
• 29:48
  I've done a pretty good job. It's kind of like the A-Team
• 29:50
  being stuck in a shed with a Kirby grip and a box of matches
• 29:56
  and asked to make an armored car.
• 29:58
  You. Say resources that they're, I
• 29:59
  mean, can. I just, I know I was trying to
• 30:03
  call out the bad behaviour earlier, but she has got a
• 30:06
  cracking arse, don't you agree? Oh.
• 30:08
  My God. Well look, we celebrate tits
• 30:10
  last time, let's celebrate arses this time men's and women's.
• 30:14
  Not diverse, aren't we? I mean, it's a great end.
• 30:17
  Sorry to the end I mean. Can I ask you fellas, are you
• 30:20
  more sort of tits people or arse people?
• 30:23
  Let's start with. I would, I would probably see
• 30:26
  tits. We'll go, we'll go.
• 30:28
  With tits. Yeah, but but however, however,
• 30:30
  I mean, let's, you know, let's let's be diverse here, you know,
• 30:34
  we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll quite happily look at an arse as well,
• 30:37
  OK. Cameron.
• 30:39
  I am of an age where I'll just take whatever I can get.
• 30:45
  That's why he was saying to me last night, Lee.
• 30:48
  I'm more of a knee, heads, heads, knees, shoulders, toes
• 30:51
  man. Oh, really?
• 30:52
  Which would have. Been funny had I got them in the
• 30:54
  right order? Yeah.
• 30:55
  What? You what?
• 30:56
  You were trying some. Chests and bums.
• 30:58
  His eyes. I think eyes are so sexy.
• 31:02
  Am I mad? No.
• 31:03
  No. No, no.
• 31:04
  When you when you look at them all day, every day.
• 31:06
  Oh. Yes, sorry, I have to diagnose.
• 31:11
  You have to diagnose medical conditions, Yeah.
• 31:15
  Yeah, you're sexy, doesn't it? Yeah, I'm going to.
• 31:18
  Out episode 1 by asking you all do you think that's an
• 31:21
  intriguing scene sets up like if you were just watching this for
• 31:24
  the first time would you want to keep going to find out what was
• 31:28
  going on Lee. Do you know what?
• 31:31
  I would, because it's such an odd episode that if your joke's
• 31:34
  coming in, that is entirely fresh, you want to get the
• 31:36
  answers to what's going on. It's not.
• 31:39
  There's nothing. A bit of running the middle.
• 31:41
  So yeah, but Andy's probably the best position to answer this
• 31:44
  question I've been, well, like I said.
• 31:46
  Right at the very start, it's like, I have so many questions
• 31:49
  and it was there was just as I said, it was just so many things
• 31:52
  going on. And again, I can understand it
• 31:55
  from you guys perspective. So if you if you put it into the
• 31:57
  context of you've had six things that have been exactly the same
• 32:01
  or near enough the same and then you're presented with this, you
• 32:04
  would be automatically intrigued by going, well, this is
• 32:07
  different. I want to know why it's
• 32:08
  different than where it's going from my perspective.
• 32:10
  Honestly, it was, it was more shit the, the, the more it went
• 32:14
  on, but I think that was sufficiently backed shit to
• 32:17
  begin with to go, Oh, okay, I'm, I'm, I'm intrigued.
• 32:20
  So yeah. And especially right at the end,
• 32:22
  even if you're not a Doctor Who fan, right at the end of that
• 32:25
  episode, the the, the TARDIS blowing up or like imploding or
• 32:30
  whatever it was that it did there, it doesn't happen.
• 32:32
  Every week you're going to. Well, yeah, I was going to say
• 32:35
  that's going to that's, that's not going to be a 1 trick pony.
• 32:37
  That's not going to be something they're going to do every week.
• 32:39
  That's going to, you're going to look at that and go, well, that
• 32:41
  must be fairly significant, you know, otherwise, you know, if
• 32:45
  they blew up the TARDIS every week, right.
• 32:47
  Well, where's the, you know, where's the mystery in it?
• 32:49
  It's just, it's, it's in the way, you know.
• 32:52
  So you look at that and go, there's enough there, there's
• 32:54
  enough upper hook right up to the very end.
• 32:57
  The funny. Thing is, is they don't really
• 32:58
  deal with the TARDIS blowing up, do they?
• 33:00
  They just go, it did what? And then that's it.
• 33:02
  We don't talk about it till the end where it just comes back
• 33:04
  together again. You know, if you're going to
• 33:08
  like destroy, albeit as we know temporarily, like a fundamental
• 33:13
  core part of Doctor Who, IE the TARDIS is your safe space, then
• 33:19
  yeah, it's going to be a fairly intriguing thing going in
• 33:22
  episode 2. I remember watching this as a as
• 33:25
  a nipper and just finding the atmosphere of this first episode
• 33:30
  really sort of creepy and invasive and like, the TARDIS
• 33:35
  was my safe space when I was a kid.
• 33:36
  Yeah, I used to love scenes in the TARDIS.
• 33:38
  No more. Actually, that's a good point.
• 33:40
  So like the bet at the very end where they're clinging onto the
• 33:43
  the control panel, right? And they're like hovering in the
• 33:47
  abyss of nothingness, right. The first thing that made me
• 33:49
  think of, do you ever like, did you ever go like open water
• 33:53
  swimming when you were a kid? Right.
• 33:55
  And they're like the the thought you're swimming and you know
• 33:59
  what's beneath you could be 100 feet down.
• 34:02
  It's quite an existential crisis that it engenders.
• 34:05
  And the we scream from Zoe's Carrick.
• 34:07
  Well, not we scream. If I had to take my fucking
• 34:09
  headphones off when she started screaming there.
• 34:11
  But like that, that scream is was quite believable because
• 34:14
  it's like you're literally floating in the abyss, holding
• 34:18
  on to this one thing and there is nothing that's that's quite
• 34:21
  the existential crisis that it could engender.
• 34:24
  My wasn't. Wolsey though, I think my first
• 34:26
  big existential crisis as a kid was was when I saw a picture of
• 34:31
  the Earth in relation to the rest of the Galaxy.
• 34:34
  And I was like, oh God, I used to think down the end of the
• 34:37
  street was a long way away. I'll tell you what, I'll tell
• 34:41
  you what an existential crisis is my son Arthur, who's 10 years
• 34:44
  old and he loves Terminator and aliens and all the things I
• 34:47
  love. He's he's a wee sci-fi now.
• 34:49
  Oh, he hasn't, he hasn't been on Doctor Who yet.
• 34:51
  But we'll, we'll work on that. And he wanted.
• 34:54
  He wanted to watch The Matrix, so I explained simulation theory
• 34:58
  to him, and it was the moment of which he understood or he got
• 35:02
  what I was saying. And it was, oh, it was a Yeah.
• 35:06
  Well, welcome. Welcome to the big boy world.
• 35:08
  This is This is. That's that's existential, yeah.
• 35:11
  Exactly. You're not real.
• 35:15
  He doesn't exist. He's not real.
• 35:17
  Exactly Cameron I'd. Like to end this episode please
• 35:20
  with your first existential crisis.
• 35:22
  Tell us please. 1st next is to ensure crisis.
• 35:25
  That's right. Yes, well as.
• 35:27
  In realizing of your own significance.
• 35:30
  Have you yet realized your significance?
• 35:33
  Your insignificance, rather, that was a question to expect to
• 35:39
  come up tonight. I think there was like, I've
• 35:43
  always had a kind of weird fear of like open sea war, you know,
• 35:48
  So like, I don't know, in the in like the hotel I used to sort of
• 35:56
  grew up in because my dad was a Tele manager downstairs.
• 35:59
  I remember someone had put a poster in like the staff rooms
• 36:02
  of like a kind of battleship at sea and it was quite like this
• 36:07
  massive. Well, I thought it was massive
• 36:09
  at the time I was a kid. Like, you know, I was just a
• 36:10
  kid. I remember being really scared
• 36:12
  of it because it's like it was like really open water and I
• 36:15
  just didn't like the idea. Is Cammy's got a point?
• 36:20
  I relate to that. One of my recurring rights to
• 36:21
  here, Joe, we're just giving you stuff, right?
• 36:24
  Stuff to keep it coming here. You're going right.
• 36:27
  So when I have a recurring dream and I haven't got a clue what it
• 36:30
  means, but I constantly have dreams of I'm on a boat on calm
• 36:33
  water and the boat is sinking. Now you have to you have to say
• 36:37
  that that has to mean something. So Cam's point about, you know,
• 36:41
  but it's like open, open water, open sea.
• 36:43
  I can relate to that, that my dream.
• 36:46
  Diary here. Hang on.
• 36:47
  Ohh. Don't don't don't tell me it's
• 36:50
  like ohh. My God no it hasn't.
• 36:51
  Sexually frustrated. Yes.
• 36:54
  I wish to leave my wife and move in with Joe Ford.
• 36:57
  Well, there we go. Well, I mean, who's to?
• 37:00
  Who's to argue with the unknown, you know?
• 37:03
  I mean, my, the the biggest terror from when I was a kid and
• 37:07
  to this day is still Freddy Krueger.
• 37:09
  All right, I can't go back to those movies.
• 37:11
  The thought of falling asleep and this man with a bloody light
• 37:14
  razor fingers coming at me. Oh.
• 37:17
  Boy. Once again, you're listening to
• 37:19
  on the Psychiatrist's Couch, Joe Ford.