Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Talks to Paul Quinn about his choice of Orphan 55

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Talks to Paul Quinn about his choice of Orphan 55 · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:22
  None. A hamster with a blump pen knife
• 0:35
  for doing quicker. Quicker, Quicker.
• 0:40
  Welcome to Hamster with a Blump Pen Knife, the Doctor Who
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  Commentary Podcast. I'm here today with a fine
• 0:48
  gentleman from Crawley, my hometown.
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  Mr. Paul Quinn. How are you doing today?
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  Hello, Joe. Pleasure to be back.
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  How are you in lovely sunny Eastbourne?
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  Yeah, do you know, As the train screamed through Gatwick the
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  other day, I saw a snowstorm blowing up and the hills were
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  thick and by the time I got to Eastbourne it completely
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  cleared. So there definitely is a weather
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  disparity between the two of us. It says you can't hear the
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  downs. It was the same between
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  Chichester and Crawley the same day, I think.
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  They say we get a lot of sun, but I don't really see it.
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  Well, it used to be the the tagline that council was the
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  Sunshine Coast, but the last time.
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  But they've also now get some in or get it into you or something.
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  Something like something vaguely threatening.
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  Since I moved in, yeah. Or maybe sexual, you know, get
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  some into you. I love lovely saveloy somewhere
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  around the round, the round, the front, around the back.
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  I am not saying a word. Well, talking of rude humour,
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  today, we are here because there are some pretty rude jokes in
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  this episode. We are here to talk about
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  everybody's favorite episode of Doctor Who, Orphan 55 from
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  series 12 of the new series. Before we skip into series 12
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  and Orphan 55, I've got a couple of questions for you about
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  Chipnall, about Jodie, about the era.
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  I really would like to figure out what your stance is.
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  So question #1 is this. Why did Chris Chibnall ruin
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  Doctor Who? He ruined it by his unwarranted
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  attack on Pip and Jane Baker in about 1995, when he appeared
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  with the drunk Paki Caldwell and whatever that BBC Right to Reply
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  show was. And he fulfilled every bad
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  cliche about Doctor Who fans at that point in time.
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  And quite rightly, Jane pulled down his trousers and gave him a
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  jolly good smack, smack bottom. He didn't ruin Doctor Who.
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  I mean, this is this is madness. These these people who've got
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  RIP, Doctor Who, Doctor Who 1963 to 2017.
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  No one should pay any heat, these people at all.
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  I Chip was the obvious choice for showrunner.
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  I wasn't hugely surprised when he got it.
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  I wasn't particularly pleased because at that point what I
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  could see was that he had a history of right in bad Doctor
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  Who tortured OK, Doctor Who, the first half of that Solorian
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  thing in in series 5, which is then followed by the single most
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  boring episode in You Who, The second-half of that Solorian
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  story which is only enliven by Rory dying and some amazing eye
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  acting from Karen Gillan. And then Dinosaurs on the
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  spaceship and the Power of Three made me think, actually, he's
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  alright. Can I actually write this?
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  I'm. I'm enjoying this.
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  This is fun. And given that Season 7 as a
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  whole isn't particularly fun or particularly enjoyable in
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  places, it's pretty good. I mean, I could have done
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  without that massive cop joke in Dinosaurs in the Spaceship.
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  The other thing was, it's Broadchurch.
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  I really like Broadchurch. I think.
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  I think Broadchurch was massively overrated and became a
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  thing in a way that it didn't need to be.
• 4:01
  Is this the fabled water cooler television?
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  It's just a basic who done it? And the resolution isn't
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  particularly good. I suspect that the original
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  resolution is what's in Grace Point, the American version.
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  I think ITV probably went, oh, we can't have this.
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  And so you get in Grace Point, the Jenna Coleman and what's her
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  name? Olivia Coleman.
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  Olivia Coleman's son the the the detective son is the killer and
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  the husband covers it up and takes responsibility.
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  It makes far more sense than the son has done it and there's some
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  business there in which some of the clues only make sense in
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  relation to the son. Stuff about the computer it it
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  does make a huge amount of sense.
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  Tennis very good in it though, he.
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  Captured. Something though, because I
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  remember it was on everybody's lips when that was all those 10
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  weeks. I suppose because Church, it's
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  because I by that point, I think we got too used to watching
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  multiple episodes, You know, Netflix, Netflix and chilling.
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  Was that a thing by that point? I can't remember.
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  I think so The. Fact that you you had to watch
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  it week on week and and I mean it's well made Broadchurch, but
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  I don't I don't think it's it's meant to be you know it's not
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  this probing depiction of what grief does to a small town which
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  is what some people tell you. It's got weird things like all
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  the clocks stopped when Danny Lachman died.
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  Well, that's not naturalistic drama.
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  That's. Fairly lazy stuff that you'd put
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  in somewhere, but. And a ton of weird subplots that
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  don't go anywhere. That's because he's got to, he's
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  got to flesh it out of this town for the extension.
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  I mean the second one is is horrible and he's got this
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  terrible retconning going on to to connect to, to reconstruct
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  the the case that we discover that Alex Hardy, David Turner's
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  character, hadn't cocked up, that he kind of had to cover it
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  up because we've wisen fidelity. The third season is kind of
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  unnecessary and you kind of think that because and Olivia
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  Coleman's son is tied up with the exchange of pornography at
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  school, that maybe you're going to reveal that he's the rapist
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  unless he was the killer all along.
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  But he doesn't do that. I mean, what's weird in that one
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  is that they're swapping videos. I think the type of stuff he
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  used to be getting the Daily Star.
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  And there's like they've still got the the type of calendar it
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  used to get in pubs where the as the peanuts were taken off, it
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  would slowly reveal the nipples. There's a curiously old
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  fashioned thing. But that's.
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  Chip knows quite an old fashioned Riker in in that
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  respect but when he gets to he's cracker Doctor Who.
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  I think it's really good. I mean I I didn't watch it in a
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  way. I'd watched New Who up to that
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  point And then I said to you before our our, our second son
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  was born just before this started and our door was a
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  preschool by then and that shift from Saturday to Sunday means
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  you don't have the Sunday night to catch up on the television
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  and so you you kind of break the tradition up.
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  I have to watch it now. And he gets pushed back further
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  and further into the week and kind of tiredness.
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  You don't really follow. But having gone back and watched
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  it from the start now, there's a lot of good stuff there and the
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  people who are objecting to it, I'm not sure the objections are
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  even all from 55, which I understand is hated.
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  People are very, very wrong about that and and there's
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  something odd going on there anyway.
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  I think as I'll get into, I'll get into the podcast, but he
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  didn't ruin Doctor Who. What you've got.
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  There are two very different seasons.
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  And then the fact that flux exists always is kind of a
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  miracle given the backdrop it was it was made.
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  Yet I compare it to say trial of a Time Lord, which I like.
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  Trial of a Time Lord, I'll defend it all day long.
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  But the the state it's in, given the time they had to work on it
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  and given they essentially have the same amount of time as
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  they've had for previous seasons, which are nearly twice
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  the length they're sitting around playing Willy Banjo in
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  that office or going off to America.
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  Whereas flux is made in the teeth of every conceivable
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  problem sparked by the pandemic. And actually it holds together
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  really, really well. I think this season 12 bar a
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  couple of episodes which unfortunately are at the top end
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  of it, is a really great season which you people watching it
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  with less kind of prejudice. They would recognize it for what
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  it is. Which is a season that is on a
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  fair old crack and and introduce some really interesting new
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  ideas to Doctor Who mythos. Which, if it had been done it
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  any other period, wouldn't have prompted the kind of vitriol
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  that the Timeless Children and the Fugitive Dr. seem to have
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  prompted in in people who maybe should know better.
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  Is it possible to not appreciate this era and have no prejudices
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  of the type you're describing? Oh, just say it's just bad
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  writing it. I mean, that's where people go
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  to. But when you ask, I've seen this
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  online recently. When you're asked what do they
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  mean by bad writing, they can rarely say what they mean by bad
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  writing, and it's a repeated meme.
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  I think it's bad writing because it's just coding for, not
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  because you don't like a woman playing the Doctor.
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  I mean, there are, there are some issues.
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  I mean, in terms of resolution, I think the Tardis is probably
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  overpopulated for the first season.
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  I don't know that they do enough with maybe Ryan's dyspraxia,
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  which is highlighted quite early on.
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  But you can make those cases about other seasons.
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  I mean, classic news. There are certainly, yeah.
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  Season 20, as as you know, I think is the worst season in the
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  entire history of Doctor Who. I think there's very little to
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  redeem it. There's nothing as bad in Chip
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  Mills run as you find in in in season 20 bits of season 15,
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  which of course is in the news now because it's coming out on
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  DVD. Yeah, I think this I there's a
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  sense I think of long hours. I think.
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  I think there's suffer as well from the fact that the breaks in
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  season really do have an impact. I think that's a great mistake.
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  I think. I think, I think the the
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  specials between 4:00 and 5:00 aren't that special.
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  Maybe would have been better to have got Smith in earlier.
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  I think those split seasons that Moffett's got, I think that long
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  gap between season 10 and season 11, people get out of the habit
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  of Doctor Who and there are all these other factors.
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  And then you've got this vociferous gang in in in fandom
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  who haven't gone away. Of course, like the IRA, they
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  haven't gone away. They're still there now.
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  It's just they've got another objection now.
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  And I think we can see what it is that they're objecting to
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  this time because bad writing to comment on.
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  Well, let's take it in the other direction then.
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  What are the strengths of the era?
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  Was it doing well? What do you think his game plan
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  was? I'm not sure.
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  I think to produce radically different series seems to be
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  what's panned out there. I don't.
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  I don't know what 13 would have been, what he would have done in
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  terms of a third, ten part season where he would have gone
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  with Division, where we've got more of Joe Martin.
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  I think he really wants to shake things up.
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  I think nothing that's there in Fugitive of the Judoon or The
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  Timeless Children is inconsistent with what we've
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  seen thus far. I think Chip now is too old a
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  fan, too good a fan to have done anything like that.
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  He knows as well as we do that the original plan for those
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  flashbacks in Brain Amorbius was for those figures.
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  The production team, of course, in funny hats, words have been
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  previous lives to the Doctor. And of course it's only in
• 11:40
  Deadly Assassin When we get this nonsense about you can only
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  regenerate 12 times, therefore they're going to be thirteen
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  Doctors, and that then plagues Doctor Who.
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  Look at 5 Doctors. That idea, which one are you?
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  Oh, I'm Doctor 50. That's 5 of me now.
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  An entirely unnatural piece of dialogue.
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  Possibly Terrence Dixie's worst piece of dialogue because he's
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  locked into these lunatics who are running the show.
• 12:01
  Robert Holmes, of course, famously wouldn't take the gig
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  in the end because he used to hide enough rubbish into it and
• 12:06
  and then come Moffitt gets locked into that Moffitt.
• 12:08
  That's why we get the that's why we get the War Doctor much.
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  Nor as I love John Hurt. He's up there with Peter Cushing
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  is the big names. They get to play Doctor Who.
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  The only reason he's there is because Moffett wants to resolve
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  this issue. Even though Terrence Dixon
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  giving him a solution. You, the Doctor will get a whole
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  new regeneration cycle. Chipman wants to get away from
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  that and suggest there's something more to that.
• 12:27
  And of course, the Timeless Children are we.
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  Look, yeah, you can get from the Timeless Children to Hartnell
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  stealing the TARDIS or going to exile because people tend to
• 12:36
  forget there are two very different reasons why the Doctor
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  leaves Gallery. To start with, there's the
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  illusion to going into exile or running from something in an
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  unearthly chart and the far more definitive I was bored that you
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  get in the war games. Chipnall knows all this.
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  So he's not, he's not. He's one of us.
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  Whether people like it or not. He is another one of the fans
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  who's who's got the race and what he was.
• 12:56
  Season 11 is a quiet season compared to some of the the
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  frantic seasons and previous and what you get there is a
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  consistent run by and large of of well written, thoughtful
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  stories. What he really should have done,
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  I think, because I, I I think that's where he's going to Rosa
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  really could have been a straight historical.
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  I don't think you need the time agent or whatever he is there
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  unless unless you made him into a terrible racist and he'd come
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  back in time to kill this figure at the forefront of of racial
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  equality in America. There's no need for him to be
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  there, no. I'd also say I think there's
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  probably something to a point that a couple of my students
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  made when we were doing our podcast that it becomes a white
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  saving narrative, even though it's meant to be all about Rosa
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  Parks. And there is something to that.
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  There's kind of a not thinking through there, but I think what
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  he wants to do is make the best TV he can because very few
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  creative set out to produce rubbish.
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  The only person I can think of is Roger Coleman, who writes
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  that terrible version of the Fantastic Four, as well all the
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  other terrible versions of Fantastic Four.
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  But he does it deliberately because they have to make a
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  version of it in order to keep it right.
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  All the other Fantastic fours are shit because people can't
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  make Fantastic Four. Chipmel's not setting out to
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  make bad television. This is broadly well written.
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  I think Whitaker at her best is as good as anyone else.
• 14:12
  It looks beautiful. I mean, Praxis, some of the
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  shots in practice are as good as this cinematography has ever
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  been in Doctor Who and I think it's it's it's a labour of love.
• 14:21
  I know you're you're not the finest advocate of Spy Fall, but
• 14:25
  I watched that recently for and it looks stunning.
• 14:28
  It looks like a movie. Yeah, yeah.
• 14:31
  There's a sense that they want they want it to look different.
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  And it does. From that beautiful credit
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  sequence to, which is one of the best arrangements of the theme
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  tune of all time. And it's such a shame that as
• 14:43
  part of this kind of the return of Russell T Davis and his gang,
• 14:47
  it's this kind of celebration of Murray Gold, who's good.
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  But there's a sense in which you're kind of forgetting who's
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  been working on the show for the last five years and producing
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  this amazing version of the theme tune and some really great
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  music in there as well. I think it's really well made.
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  I think it's a it's a creative team who are really putting
• 15:05
  everything into it. I heard that lovely story that
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  the the Chipman was suggesting people that they they could keep
• 15:10
  on with the new production team. He goes out of his way to make
• 15:13
  sure that some of that family he's assembled stay there.
• 15:15
  I I think Jodie Whittaker clearly loved her time on it
• 15:19
  from all the the interviews and I think some of her material
• 15:25
  there. I think the business when she
• 15:27
  was in the cupboard, when she filmed the video during
• 15:28
  lockdown, I mean Capelli, just similar things, obviously not on
• 15:32
  the cover because he's not doing lockdown.
• 15:33
  But it's those type of touches that you can tell this is
• 15:35
  someone who's in by this role because I I saw Diggs there.
• 15:40
  She didn't know the history of the show.
• 15:41
  Neither did Matt Smith. But he grew to love the show and
• 15:43
  he like Matt Smith kind of the forgotten man in all the 60th
• 15:46
  anniversary conversations. There's kind of connections
• 15:48
  there between those two. I I, I, I think I I'm really
• 15:51
  haven't gone back over it now and watching it properly.
• 15:53
  I've really this is a season I think that people come back to
• 15:57
  and go. We missed a lot of the really
• 15:59
  good stuff here. There's some shit like Witch
• 16:01
  Finders really annoys me on one level, Although actually
• 16:05
  watching it. Well, we nearly did.
• 16:06
  That one didn't. We I I think, I think there's,
• 16:09
  as we've all talked to here, there's much to admire here.
• 16:12
  I like the fact that Whitaker's Doctor is a scientist.
• 16:17
  There's some really nice moments where she's talking about
• 16:20
  pseudoscience in a way that you don't often find with Capaldi
• 16:24
  and you don't always find with Smith.
• 16:26
  Yeah, you can see it there in the Sangara can then conundrum
• 16:29
  again another episode I like that nobody likes when she's
• 16:32
  described in the anti macro engine.
• 16:33
  It's beautifully understated there and it's here is a
• 16:36
  scientist and I think that, yeah, that's a really.
• 16:39
  Say this is another one where she really lives and she's she's
• 16:42
  talking about loving being around other scientists as well,
• 16:44
  yeah. What do you think?
• 16:47
  What do you think is is? Her.
• 16:50
  Well, what Her. Her.
• 16:52
  Best episodes Where's she at her best?
• 16:55
  When she does Cold Fury, she's very very good because you can
• 16:58
  see they slip into the lazy temptation of let's just do some
• 17:01
  tendon silliness and that he's kind of like a a default.
• 17:04
  I think Smith as well they kind of let him loose that
• 17:08
  particularly after series 5 which I think it may be my
• 17:12
  favorite series in you who I think Cold Fury.
• 17:15
  I think when she's confront in the messed up Cyberman India
• 17:20
  Dante when she's going up against Sasha Dewan who is a
• 17:25
  brilliant master And along with Michelle Gomez they're two of
• 17:29
  the best version of the Master in any version of Doctor Who
• 17:32
  they really get to dangerous psychopathic figure the kind of
• 17:36
  model that Eric Roberts is working with.
• 17:38
  And Eric Roberts is brilliant as a Master and I'll fight anyone
• 17:40
  on that ground. You'll get no fight from me.
• 17:43
  John Sims isn't great as the Master the first time round, but
• 17:46
  he's very good when he's comes back with Gomez.
• 17:50
  But those two, as he's kind of dangerous psychopaths, I think.
• 17:54
  I think that the the pair of them really get that part, the
• 17:57
  fact that it's really well written and you can see they're
• 17:58
  really enjoying it, But I think there's a real spark between
• 18:01
  Wicker and the one that it's. You can't look away from the
• 18:05
  screen when they're on there together.
• 18:06
  And there's again, the students just did something uncomfortable
• 18:09
  when she's forced to kneel in front of him, it's kind of a bit
• 18:13
  sexualized. I think there is kind of an
• 18:15
  undercount to that. But I think in Time as children,
• 18:17
  I mean, my issue with time as children is that the doctor has
• 18:19
  to be told all of this. The Doctor doesn't discover
• 18:23
  which. Is why a big objection with it
• 18:24
  as well? It's how it's a basically a
• 18:26
  PowerPoint presentation rather than a piece of drama.
• 18:29
  Yeah, but I think there's something really interesting
• 18:32
  going with the One. And again, it's someone who
• 18:34
  knows the show, who's looked at this character, Muff.
• 18:38
  It's the same with Missy as well.
• 18:40
  Again, it's a deep engagement with that character across the
• 18:43
  history show and what it would be if that character lived with
• 18:47
  the Doctor. And of course this is there's a
• 18:50
  debate online, obviously, is Does Dewan's master come before
• 18:53
  or after Gomez? That doesn't really interest me
• 18:58
  is how these characters appear. And actually, having sat through
• 19:02
  Ainley's, Anthony's terrible mostly version of The Master,
• 19:07
  here is here's a master that you could imagine is Peter Pratt or
• 19:12
  or or Delgado Gone mad. Tell me if I'm way off base, but
• 19:15
  I'd say with Capaldi and with Jodie Whittaker, the fact that
• 19:19
  they cast such stunning masters to go against those two
• 19:24
  characters, it almost. It didn't make the era, but it
• 19:29
  sort of fused it in a way though those the contrast there though,
• 19:32
  those were the moments I was really looking forward to
• 19:35
  getting back to you. I knew we were going to see Dwan
• 19:36
  again after the Timeless Children, and I was sort of
• 19:39
  waiting it out until we did. And obviously we all love seeing
• 19:41
  Missy, the wee thing about Matt Smith and you know I don't like
• 19:44
  Matt Smith so much and that's an unpopular opinion.
• 19:46
  There's no master there at all, and it feels like this gaping
• 19:50
  chasm in his era, but that isn't there.
• 19:53
  Which every other Doctor has had.
• 19:55
  Obviously Ecclestone because he hadn't come back yet, but apart
• 19:58
  from that, I don't know. I just feel like the second
• 20:00
  Dejuan came in, he didn't save the era for me because I already
• 20:03
  love Jodie Whittaker and I enjoy the storytelling.
• 20:06
  Something locked into place that I've just.
• 20:08
  It just felt complete. I I think it's all so indicative
• 20:12
  of just how herpes ear is becoming a touchstone and has
• 20:17
  become the touchstone again and. Again.
• 20:20
  More so, maybe, than some of Tom Baker, which is surprising I
• 20:23
  suppose, given the generation who are now writing for Doctor
• 20:26
  Who they are looking to to partly.
• 20:29
  And that sense of a larger ensemble cast with Whitaker is
• 20:33
  maybe a throwback to UNIT Capaldi in 10, when he's kind of
• 20:38
  partly Earthbound with, again, a larger Crew.
• 20:42
  And Missy, that's UNIT as well. That's a new version of UNIT,
• 20:45
  which is why Chipple messing around with UNIT the way that he
• 20:48
  does in Resolution is such a strange move.
• 20:51
  Because I think actually the version of UNIT that we see
• 20:55
  Moffitt developing around secret bases, the Tower of London, Kate
• 21:00
  Stewart, Oswin, that's the version of UNIT.
• 21:04
  I think that works. And that's really more so than I
• 21:07
  think than than when when Davis brings them back in in series
• 21:10
  four, that doesn't really work as well I think.
• 21:14
  But again, it's this relationship with Perkwee.
• 21:18
  I always thought in Resolution that was, you know, that's
• 21:20
  another episode we were going to talk about.
• 21:21
  Maybe we'll get around to it one day was it was just to isolate
• 21:25
  the Doctor and have her have to sort out that problem on her
• 21:27
  own, which kind of worked for that episode.
• 21:30
  And he did say, didn't he? He always intended to bring it
• 21:32
  back. It was just sort of like a
• 21:34
  stopgap to let her settle without sort of leaning on the
• 21:37
  military. I mean I think, I think where he
• 21:40
  was going with it or where it might have developed in 13, if
• 21:44
  we got a full season, you might see some hints of that in Power
• 21:47
  of the Doctor. I'm not sure about UNIT now
• 21:51
  having a Tony Stark Avengers style basically you know London.
• 21:55
  I'm not sure that quite works as as one of as one of my students
• 21:58
  who doesn't know old who as well.
• 22:01
  And I sent them a link to some story about units, various bases
• 22:05
  over the years, and they didn't know about any of these, like
• 22:07
  the unit headquarters secret key power, like that's the way to
• 22:11
  keep secret this. Unit.
• 22:15
  Not this behemoth in London, you know, yeah.
• 22:18
  I wish I assume it was on sale. Definitely, yeah, definitely in
• 22:23
  the new series, well. We'll see that that's that's
• 22:25
  going to hit. But I think yeah that that was a
• 22:27
  that was a curious misstep I think.
• 22:28
  But yeah, as he was going to bring them back.
• 22:30
  I mean the the the major point is he's such an unfunny joke and
• 22:34
  that wretched Family Resolution are so unfunny and it is.
• 22:39
  Is the worst joke in the new series, isn't it?
• 22:42
  I can't almost love it for how bad it is.
• 22:45
  Because I mean I mean again I'm popular but I I I love Battle of
• 22:49
  Ranscol of Kolus and so it wasn't great having the rubbish
• 22:53
  jokes in resolution particularly when that she's it's showing
• 22:57
  again chip noise very good when he he's working with the
• 23:01
  established monsters and villains very good and I think
• 23:08
  he's he's he's he's fucked up half side man who's half face
• 23:11
  look of course has been lifted for Darth Vader in the Obi Wan
• 23:15
  Kenobi. So effective though Asha act and
• 23:20
  the performance as well. Just everything about that.
• 23:23
  I always feel like ascension is our modern day Earth shock
• 23:26
  ascension of the Cybermen. See.
• 23:31
  Yeah, I think I, I I I think that's right.
• 23:33
  I mean I prefer the stories on either side of it I'd have to
• 23:36
  say I think the Horn Havia Diodanti is a far more
• 23:40
  interesting episode and it's kind of genuinely scary in
• 23:42
  places where the cyber there's a kind of a logic in ascension
• 23:45
  cyber because the cyber need bodies so why they're destroying
• 23:48
  everyone they actually need people to convert that that's
• 23:50
  their central horror which knew he'd been very good at in a way
• 23:54
  old who kind of kept away from at various points.
• 23:56
  And that's why that comment that they're the obvious Robert
• 23:59
  Holmes monster. So why doesn't he do it and
• 24:01
  properly revenge the Cyber, He is so strong.
• 24:04
  That's the moment where they just clearly just robots where
• 24:07
  the thing here what what you would say the other interesting
• 24:11
  with you is that when he doesn't have any established monsters or
• 24:15
  villains in series 11 there's real hot star there and then you
• 24:18
  get Tim Short who's kind of rubbish but actually it's really
• 24:22
  interesting attempt to establish a new figure and because he's so
• 24:26
  more dangerous when he comes back he's a kind of a seen that
• 24:29
  kind of God line role. And I I'm spoiler in here
• 24:32
  because no one's watching this he hasn't already seen it and
• 24:34
  made-up their minds. But that's one reason why I
• 24:36
  think Batley is such a good episode is the doctors having to
• 24:39
  tidy up the mess they've made and you're now facing a far more
• 24:42
  dangerous dangerous enemy. And with with kind of God
• 24:46
  delusions. It would be good to see think
• 24:49
  about this week how Nikki hasn't really got a great track Rd. of
• 24:52
  establishing new monsters you can keep coming back beyond the
• 24:55
  angels and maybe the Ood although they're everyone's
• 24:59
  friend now the Silence as well. But there's a basic logic to the
• 25:02
  Silence. It doesn't really work.
• 25:03
  Too new, essentially. Comedy characters, aren't they
• 25:07
  on the whole? Rhino police and the Slovene.
• 25:09
  But I don't like Slovene. They're a particularly gruesome
• 25:11
  idea, but I don't think they're done particularly well.
• 25:14
  And it's in. And of course, and no, no kind
• 25:17
  of villain. You'll have to go back to the
• 25:21
  Master. There hasn't been maybe that
• 25:23
  kind of Trump esque figure that the chip was working with there.
• 25:26
  But he's not a villain. He's just a problem to be dealt
• 25:28
  with. So that would have been nice to
• 25:30
  see if they're going to do that, I suppose with the return of the
• 25:33
  toy maker and the Davis, maybe they're looking at that type of
• 25:36
  figure. I don't.
• 25:37
  I don't know. But I think what you've got is 3
• 25:41
  radically different seasons with a lot of heart, a lot of skill,
• 25:47
  a lot of love to the show in them, and they were met with
• 25:50
  hate in a way that they shouldn't have done.
• 25:52
  Just don't watch. Go away.
• 25:53
  Can't listen to the big finish. Have a.
• 25:55
  Wank. Have a wank?
• 25:57
  Yeah, that's always good advice. My last question before going
• 25:59
  in, because there's one thing we haven't really covered there,
• 26:01
  talking about the ERA as a whole.
• 26:03
  Is. The historicals, because he was
• 26:07
  doing something very different with them to what we'd had
• 26:10
  before and I think superior, but I'll be interested to see what
• 26:14
  you think. I think so.
• 26:15
  I mean, I think, I think the historicals in 11 Rosa is partly
• 26:24
  reflective. I think of what they know
• 26:27
  children do at school. You wouldn't get a Rosa Parks
• 26:31
  episode, I don't think, in old Carmel, possibly, given his.
• 26:36
  Interest, yeah, actually. Yes, I never thought.
• 26:38
  But because Rosa Parks is is done at school now, despite the
• 26:43
  madness. I saw online a few weeks ago
• 26:46
  somebody talking about historicals and I hadn't heard
• 26:48
  of Rosa Parkson, Lord Byron before I saw those episodes.
• 26:51
  Really. Which rock have you crawled out
• 26:54
  from under that you have no basic historical or literary
• 26:57
  knowledge? How old was this person?
• 26:59
  I don't. Well, they were old enough that
• 27:00
  they should have known better. So I think, I think Rosa does a
• 27:04
  Punjab again. You know the kind of the end of
• 27:08
  empire is, is a GTC topic that you wouldn't have seen it up in
• 27:12
  old and it's it's really interesting discussion about
• 27:15
  Yasi's family and about migration experience that's
• 27:18
  really what that's doing. It's about someone whose home
• 27:22
  has another home as well, and you don't tend to get that in
• 27:25
  Doctor Who. There's a toned, there's a toned
• 27:28
  Punjab, though, that I don't think we've seen since the
• 27:31
  massacre. Those kind of historicals, that
• 27:33
  that mad panic at the end. We've got to get away.
• 27:36
  History's bloody dangerous and it's coming for us.
• 27:39
  We haven't done history like that since Hartnell's time.
• 27:42
  I I think what you I think what you can say though is that the
• 27:45
  shift in the historicals in 12 is partly reflective of the
• 27:48
  Julie Gardner moment in. Yes, definitely.
• 27:52
  We've we've got to, we've got to make these a bit more
• 27:54
  entertaining and a bit less serious, yeah.
• 27:57
  Which I think I I think. I think witch finds of course
• 27:59
  isn't really historical. If you go to Witch Finders
• 28:03
  expecting to find the Pender Witch trials, you will be
• 28:06
  disappointed. Witch Finders is folk horror and
• 28:10
  so it's much closer to an idea of history that's something you
• 28:13
  see in which find a general. Whereas once you get into 12, I
• 28:18
  mean Tesla against the type of he's now known in a way that he
• 28:22
  wasn't 25 years ago always it's more widely done And so he's
• 28:27
  kind of an obvious figure there. But I.
• 28:29
  Think the depiction of Tesla is about as accurate as the
• 28:31
  depiction of Churchill in Victory of the Daleks?
• 28:34
  You know, it's a bit romanticized.
• 28:36
  Yeah. But then he's he's a kind of,
• 28:39
  he's a romantic failure. And what's interesting is, you
• 28:42
  know you then get the actual romantics in the other
• 28:44
  historical in in that season and there is that sense of romance
• 28:47
  running through that romance is an adventure but also
• 28:52
  romanticism as well. I think he, he, he, he's coming
• 28:55
  to play there as well. So, so, so, Deodante, let's take
• 28:58
  this key moment in the development of the Gothic, which
• 29:01
  of course comes out of has a relation with romantic
• 29:03
  literature, but let's turn it into a Horror Story or a ghost
• 29:07
  story. Of course, to pick up a point
• 29:08
  you made in in in our Ghost Light epic, this starts off as a
• 29:12
  haunted house and then it becomes something else.
• 29:14
  Then the slasher enters in. So it's a fascinating
• 29:17
  combination of genres, both liquor and and cinematic.
• 29:20
  So I think these are the historicals that you take notice
• 29:24
  of because, yeah, they are much closer to the kind of
• 29:28
  historicals that you find in Harlow, as you rightly say, and
• 29:32
  more particularly those Season 3 historicals.
• 29:35
  Yeah. Where you've got a juxtaposition
• 29:38
  of lightness and absolute brutality in the myth makers,
• 29:42
  just brutality in in in the massacre.
• 29:45
  But then of course when you get into the gunfighters, which is
• 29:48
  kind of a parody of the genre because they're moving by that
• 29:51
  point into Doctor Who is now responding to other texts.
• 29:54
  It's not just itself, it's responding to other films and
• 29:57
  other cinema. So of course you get a West and
• 29:59
  famously whether they told it's really well done, you shouldn't
• 30:02
  have done it, but it's really well done and the smugglers as
• 30:04
  well of course. And so, yeah, you can see that
• 30:06
  relationship that I like I said, I think I think Rosa would have
• 30:09
  been great as a as a straight historical Punjab as well could
• 30:14
  have worked because there's nothing as alien as the past to
• 30:17
  people who don't really know that well.
• 30:18
  And particularly it's about not just people now responding to
• 30:22
  another country but to another culture as well, which has got a
• 30:26
  significant population in this country.
• 30:28
  I think, I think Punjab is really interesting and it's
• 30:31
  doing something really important there.
• 30:32
  So both of them are so beautifully done as well.
• 30:36
  Oh mate, like so beautifully put together.
• 30:39
  Yeah. And then flux, of course you've
• 30:42
  got history. But again, it's, it's the type
• 30:45
  of history you're getting in in 12.
• 30:47
  So the Crimea and the nineteen 1960s is history again, which
• 30:54
  because the show's been on so long now you can do that.
• 30:56
  You can go back to the decade in which it began when it would
• 30:58
  have been current and you can do the past.
• 30:59
  And of course the BBC has the 60s really well and of course
• 31:02
  you've got it going further back in time.
• 31:05
  The jumping of history has taken place.
• 31:07
  But again, it's not quite as I suppose intellect was maybe the
• 31:13
  word I'm looking for that you get in in 11 that there's
• 31:16
  genuine thought, heart and an idea about recreating somewhere
• 31:20
  two places very straight, which finders I would discuss
• 31:23
  separately, which finders is close to what you get in in 12
• 31:27
  and 13. I think that's the model they're
• 31:29
  moving towards. So before then, we move on to
• 31:32
  Orphan 55, which is another whole conversation in itself.
• 31:35
  I very quickly I've heard you say this is where you swear a
• 31:39
  bit now because obviously I do pay attention to your social
• 31:41
  media. I have heard you say that
• 31:44
  Village of the Angels is as close to a perfect episode of
• 31:50
  New Who as you're going to get before.
• 31:53
  So explain yourself, Sir. I mean, I love it, but I.
• 31:57
  Stand by that. I stand by that.
• 31:59
  I I think Village of the Angels is is, is brilliant.
• 32:02
  It's absolutely brilliant. I know people don't like flux.
• 32:04
  I know people pull individual episodes of it.
• 32:06
  But I can believe you're the Angels.
• 32:08
  It's it's scary where it needs to be.
• 32:13
  You've got multiple time zones. It surprises.
• 32:16
  It's got one of the best cliffhangers of all time.
• 32:19
  It's got Kevin Bloody McNally in it.
• 32:21
  What? And because nature fucks, he can
• 32:27
  be in more than one episode, which we don't often get in you.
• 32:30
  Yeah. And it's.
• 32:32
  And you don't get an old who hardly all, but here he is and
• 32:35
  you're kind of a tragic figure then as well.
• 32:37
  I I love religious danger. And it's not a particularly
• 32:40
  analytical description of why I love it.
• 32:42
  I watched it. See, I was spoiled, I think,
• 32:45
  because I. Walked in What the end did.
• 32:46
  Oh no. Went back and watched it.
• 32:50
  I mean all the interplay. It's kind of, yeah.
• 32:52
  The psychic research makes me think of Hyde and I love Hyde.
• 32:56
  Apart from the last minute or two of it.
• 32:58
  I think the Hyde in In a season That's not brilliant, Hyde
• 33:01
  really stands out, along with Crimson Horror, which is clearly
• 33:05
  Mark Gates's best script. Yeah, Village of Angels.
• 33:09
  It it just it it does the Angel. It takes the angels back to
• 33:15
  being scary in a way they hadn't been for a while.
• 33:18
  It does something new with them. It brings Division back in.
• 33:20
  Or, you know, Division might well just be a reconfigured
• 33:23
  version of the CIA. But I think it's really
• 33:26
  interesting to bring them back and that they're so deranged
• 33:29
  that they're really behind all of this.
• 33:32
  And yeah, Tayan Barbara Finn is brilliant when she turns up
• 33:36
  Village Angels, kind of the still centre flux is.
• 33:40
  You really pinpointed something there that I absolutely adore
• 33:43
  about Flux, And that is the fact that he managed to assemble such
• 33:47
  a vivid collection of characters and then just let them play out
• 33:50
  over six episodes and you just don't find it anywhere else in
• 33:53
  the new series. Not even with the River Song
• 33:54
  stuff, because that's so piece meal and all over the place and
• 33:57
  different doctors. It's so contained the Flux and
• 33:59
  you have the, you know, the goodies, the baddies.
• 34:02
  Brilliant bad guys in that. The issue?
• 34:04
  The issue with flux of course, and it is a problem with
• 34:08
  chipper's run. There's too much influx and it's
• 34:11
  indicative, I think, of it was meant.
• 34:13
  He's throwing too much in there. Yeah, well, that's that was the
• 34:16
  idea. I think it was supposed to play
• 34:17
  out over the 1011 episodes and he brought it all in.
• 34:22
  His Azure. And what's the other one called?
• 34:24
  Swarm. Yeah, they're brilliant.
• 34:27
  They're absolutely brilliant. They their outlets are amazing.
• 34:31
  Out of this. World.
• 34:33
  Poetry is absolutely awesome. The fact that they've got this
• 34:36
  old relationship with the Doctor, you know, you can see
• 34:40
  where this is all meant to pan out and just just it just it
• 34:42
  doesn't quite land because it's squeezed in there too much and
• 34:45
  you've got, what's his name out, A line of duty rewriting the
• 34:49
  unit timeline in a way that shouldn't work, that shouldn't
• 34:53
  work at all, and basically don't work.
• 34:55
  It works. That feels like it's supposed to
• 34:56
  be over a season as well, doesn't it?
• 34:58
  Although I'd rather have too much than too little, I've got
• 35:01
  to say there's just too much that's that is startling in that
• 35:05
  miniseries to dismiss it. Yeah.
• 35:08
  Yeah, I I, I don't. Again, I don't understand the
• 35:11
  dislike towards it. There are bits of it you can go
• 35:13
  and then quite work. But the kind of the kind of
• 35:16
  dismissal of it, there's more going on there.
• 35:19
  It's kind of past reason, hatred or if there's another one.
• 35:22
  Of course the dislike for this is, is disproportionate to
• 35:25
  what's there. It's crime is there's too much
• 35:29
  in it. We'll discuss and then the
• 35:31
  objections to the environmentalism.
• 35:34
  There's something else going on there behind some of those
• 35:36
  objections as well. Oh, interesting I.
• 35:39
  Don't prove it yet. I'm so, so pleased we've managed
• 35:42
  to talk about so much of this era and just get the, you know,
• 35:46
  the objections to a female doctor and and all that out of
• 35:49
  the way in the 1st 2 minutes because usually that dominates
• 35:52
  the conversation and you don't ever talk about the content or
• 35:55
  the era. I will say that I do have a
• 35:58
  friend who I mean, I always remind him at this moment the
• 36:01
  moment she was cast. Yeah, I remember it went out.
• 36:04
  Was it after the football or after?
• 36:06
  The rugby. Just before.
• 36:07
  Wimbledon because I think it was about to leave.
• 36:09
  I was in Oxford. I was in a summer school.
• 36:11
  I was at work. Me to say it's Jodie Whittaker
• 36:14
  and I thought, shit, that's so obvious.
• 36:17
  I should have put money on that because I had money on my.
• 36:21
  I prefer my preference at that point was Hayley Atwell,
• 36:25
  actually, But it would have just been Peggy Carter.
• 36:28
  Yeah. And what's interesting, between
• 36:29
  that trailer where she's revealed and when actually the
• 36:33
  season turns up, there's a subtle shift.
• 36:35
  I think there's a far more kind of androgynous figure at play in
• 36:40
  those woods than what we eventually get.
• 36:41
  So I It's fascinating whether they rushed that out because it
• 36:45
  was going to leak and they hadn't quite landed.
• 36:47
  Whether. I received I received a message
• 36:49
  from a friend that said I feel as if one of my children has
• 36:55
  died. That was how he described a
• 36:57
  woman getting the role of the Doctor and I and I I said to
• 37:01
  him, You really need to think about what you're saying.
• 37:04
  Absolutely astonishing. Tom Baker was floating the
• 37:07
  possibility of a woman doctor in 1980.
• 37:10
  For JT, I mean I was never going to go there, but.
• 37:13
  But the the Miss the Minute Missy appeared that said it in
• 37:19
  that, I mean for all people's problems with Moffett, Moffett
• 37:21
  is thinking does. And of course, he'd already done
• 37:23
  it in Curse of Fatal Death. Part of his fetishizing around.
• 37:26
  We must get through these regenerations.
• 37:27
  You have a woman there now. You can dismiss it because it's
• 37:30
  a joke, but the idea is seated there.
• 37:32
  Why is it so outlandish? You might object to Jodie
• 37:34
  Whittaker, but I don't know why you would.
• 37:35
  Because of all the people in Broadchurch, she really stands
• 37:39
  out. She can do.
• 37:39
  This. Honestly.
• 37:41
  Well, she's very funny in that thing that was on Netflix about
• 37:44
  the woman living in her. She's really, really good
• 37:46
  actress. And what my one complaint,
• 37:48
  though, is that we never saw that visceral rawness as the
• 37:52
  Doctor. We did see the anger and the
• 37:54
  indignation and all of this stuff that we're going to talk
• 37:56
  about in this episode. I was waiting for the one
• 37:59
  episode where we were, she was going to just tear out the
• 38:02
  screen. And they never took.
• 38:04
  They took her up to sort of nine and they never took her to 11.
• 38:08
  Yes, yeah, I there, there is that.
• 38:10
  I think. I don't know what's there
• 38:11
  because of course her relationship with with Chipman I
• 38:14
  think is is similar to to Moffett and Capaldi.
• 38:17
  But the difference there is that they've got a longer history
• 38:19
  with the show that they could talk about Modasi and Seidman,
• 38:23
  they get it and other people who might go what what are you
• 38:25
  talking about? And so that meant that they're
• 38:28
  kind of driving each other on and I think you can see Capaldi
• 38:31
  get some astonishing performances there.
• 38:33
  I mean, I know, I know he's not everyone's favorite and and on
• 38:36
  one level I think probably he's casting as a mistake because
• 38:40
  it's difficult to go from Matt Smith to Capaldi.
• 38:43
  He is brilliant and on his form he's as he's as good as you're
• 38:46
  ever oh. I think on form, he's the best
• 38:48
  we got. Yeah.
• 38:50
  Trouble is, I don't think, I don't think the writing was
• 38:52
  always there. It's a trouble.
• 38:53
  Well I I think I think the longer seasons are are damning
• 38:56
  them and what's good with these ten part seasons that that that
• 39:01
  Chipman has of those first two there's a problem with 13
• 39:05
  episode docs who's there's always at least three of them
• 39:06
  are the dogs or the budget's not there Yeah you might go well
• 39:10
  there there's three dogs in these seasons I wouldn't agree
• 39:12
  with that at all but you can see that the reduction in seasons
• 39:16
  much as we don't like it because it's kind of a throwback to the
• 39:18
  80s and like Ian Levine standing up denouncing this what what's
• 39:21
  good what is going to happen it enables you to cut your cloth
• 39:25
  and you can see that on the screen the effects of their the
• 39:30
  cinematography is there and and you're right there's some that
• 39:34
  there's a kind of a step back in those scripts which were wicket
• 39:37
  isn't given absolute free reign to do what we know she can do
• 39:41
  but my God on her form she's very good she's brilliant.
• 39:45
  In and I think she's on her form 55.
• 39:49
  That was a keyboard falling down in the.
• 39:50
  Background. I'll say that again, I think
• 39:54
  she's on form in all from 55. Oh yeah.
• 39:57
  She's she's given an awful lot to do it.
• 39:59
  Like you said, she's probably given too much to do in this
• 40:02
  because she's she's got to improvise.
• 40:04
  She's got to be angry with people.
• 40:05
  She's got to do comedy scenes with Ryan like there's so much
• 40:09
  going on. But I just feel like she brings
• 40:11
  the energy to the dynamism to it that it needs and.
• 40:14
  Crucially, as well, she has to do with the doctor, Ray does.
• 40:17
  She has to talk to the audience. Yes.
• 40:21
  Which is very, very unusual. And I and I I don't mean in
• 40:24
  terms of even a Sonic screwdriver won't Get Me Out of
• 40:26
  this one, Tom Baker or a happy Christmas to all of you at home.
• 40:29
  Pert we innovation? Of dinosaurs?
• 40:32
  What's that? You talking about PERT, WE
• 40:33
  innovation of dinosaurs. I can't remember what's he
• 40:37
  doing? He sort of looks almost at the
• 40:39
  camera and says, you know, it's not, it's not the the chemicals
• 40:43
  that are the problems, Brigadier, it's human greed.
• 40:47
  Which with this is this, we've had this conversation before,
• 40:50
  the people objecting to the environmental message and this
• 40:52
  Did they miss everything that was going on in the 70s, Doctor
• 40:55
  Who? Were they too busy perming their
• 40:59
  hair to look like Purpley and looking for some type of
• 41:02
  crumpled leather jacket? And they actually missed the
• 41:05
  there's a serious environmental message there alongside Malcolm
• 41:09
  Hope's communism. And this is this is a a clear
• 41:13
  line that because there's an absolute striking anti
• 41:15
  capitalist message in Northern 55 that doesn't get muddied in
• 41:18
  the way it gets muddied in Kablam.
• 41:21
  Where Kablam's not. Isn't space Amazon terrible?
• 41:25
  Oh look, the anarchist is worse Space.
• 41:27
  Amazon's given everyone a paid holiday and it it kind of sinks
• 41:31
  into kind of centuries. That's what they thinking this.
• 41:34
  Is absolutely clear who's to blame.
• 41:37
  What's to blame? Now we will press play at
• 41:39
  Northern 55 shortly. And before we get there, because
• 41:44
  this goes by so fast, we're going to have to talk fast on
• 41:47
  this one because so much is going on.
• 41:49
  Also just give me sort of 5 minutes of what is going on
• 41:53
  here. What is that?
• 41:54
  How I'm doing like this is so different from what he did with
• 41:57
  It takes you away. Don't you?
• 41:59
  It is. In some respects, you'd expect
• 42:01
  this to be the first script, because it's far more
• 42:04
  conventional than it takes you Away.
• 42:05
  I was watching It Takes You Away again last night.
• 42:07
  It's a very strange episode there, man.
• 42:10
  Like that whole bloody red balloon with the the weird man
• 42:13
  wandering around the rap, man. It's kind of like it went down
• 42:17
  to Zaha Doom to take Sheridan around for a week.
• 42:20
  Oh, you brought 2 references together beautifully there.
• 42:23
  Well. Done.
• 42:24
  Where is this is about environmentalism.
• 42:28
  It's a a zombie film. It's a horror film.
• 42:32
  It's partly a comedy, I think, although I don't know that I
• 42:35
  laugh the way that you do. When that woman got killed, I
• 42:39
  was laughing my head off. It's it's partly Alien.
• 42:43
  It's partly Aliens. It's partly A homage to, in a
• 42:48
  pastiche of disaster films in the 1970s.
• 42:53
  So I think we're meant to look at Benny and what's her name?
• 42:56
  Velma. Velma.
• 42:57
  Yeah. And we're meant to think in
• 42:59
  terms of Fred Astaire and Shirley MacLaine and the cat in
• 43:05
  the tower in Inferno. The difference is that Fred
• 43:08
  Astaire survives at the end of wandering around looking for his
• 43:12
  fiance, I think, or his wife, but she's dead.
• 43:15
  And this is brutal in a ways that Doctor Who rarely becomes,
• 43:19
  and it doesn't have a comforting ending whatsoever.
• 43:22
  Our last shot isn't Jodie Whittaker, it's what mankind
• 43:25
  could become, and it's part of what you rarely see in Doctor
• 43:29
  Who, But it is there, even in surprising places.
• 43:30
  I was reminded of this week in a Season 15 story.
• 43:33
  In fact, there can be a dark, pessimistic moment in Doctor,
• 43:38
  not just Eric Sayward stuff, where actually they look at
• 43:41
  mankind and they think we can't do it.
• 43:44
  Usually Doctor Who is predicated on mankind can get out of this.
• 43:46
  This offers you both possibilities, and it's utterly
• 43:49
  fascinating for you. What's the one in 15?
• 43:54
  Invisible enemy, what do you want do?
• 44:00
  You want to do I? I was in the universe like a
• 44:02
  plague of. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
• 44:05
  I was going to do it on the mine dump, but I'll give you the
• 44:08
  precis here. Invisible Enemy is essentially a
• 44:11
  remake of Arc in Space, but it's shitter.
• 44:14
  And it's less hopeful because you've got a medical
• 44:18
  establishment, you've got a chief medic helping the Doctor,
• 44:22
  you've got the Doctor being possessed by these things that
• 44:24
  call themselves a swarm. Hands being transformed is
• 44:27
  crucial. And the Doctor talking about
• 44:29
  mankind as a swarm corresponds to the Doctors homo sapien
• 44:33
  speech in Arkham Space. But weird enough giving it to
• 44:37
  Williams era our invisible enemies, far less optimistic
• 44:40
  about mankind at that point they're also meant to be the
• 44:42
  great jumping on points Arkham space is meant to be.
• 44:44
  The the new Who? This is Baker and it's.
• 44:47
  The second story in the two, yeah.
• 44:51
  An invisible enemy is meant to be jumping on point for
• 44:53
  Williams. The problem is that image of the
• 44:54
  Fendal is next, and it's kind of a throwback to Hinchcliffe.
• 44:57
  But in terms of space opera, and in terms of canine, and in terms
• 45:02
  of the way Heart O Air Baker's going, it's really looking
• 45:06
  forward into this, this new run. So there you go.
• 45:09
  No one has to listen to the Mind Dome, because I've given it to
• 45:11
  you. There Invisible enemy shit, A
• 45:13
  remake of Arc in Space. But it's that level of pessimism
• 45:16
  about mankind. The potential of mankind can be
• 45:19
  bad, which you don't always get. In Doctor Who, there's always
• 45:22
  that sense of that man can get himself out of it.
• 45:24
  And this isn't this isn't sure. So here is we could be bad.
• 45:28
  Make better choices. Well, I mean if you look, if you
• 45:31
  think about cursive, Henrik, half a million years of
• 45:35
  industrial progress, that's where the human was come from.
• 45:38
  But of course, the potential that it doesn't happen because
• 45:43
  of the paradox of the Ancient One not taking the pollution,
• 45:47
  the the poison into the future he uses to kill Fenrick, who's
• 45:51
  trying to cause that future. So that ultimately becomes
• 45:54
  hopeful, because as we said before Ace emerged from the
• 45:57
  water, her angst about her mother is gone.
• 46:00
  This it doesn't have a comforting ending.
• 46:02
  Whittaker certainly leaves it That that you know you have to
• 46:06
  do is 1 possible future. But our final shot is not trees
• 46:09
  growing, although there are trees growing in where they
• 46:11
  shouldn't be an all 55. What you've got is one of these
• 46:14
  deranged human mutants staring down at the camera screaming at
• 46:17
  you. It's very, very unsettling.
• 46:19
  Well, she's almost like saying make a better choice.
• 46:21
  We cut to the creature and oh shit, we didn't make the right
• 46:24
  choice. It's still there, you know.
• 46:27
  And also, and I do want to talk about this at the end, is the
• 46:31
  bold move to just ZAP away from the action and not get any kind
• 46:37
  of answers as to what happens to those characters at the end,
• 46:40
  Which again is a really unusual sort of way to end the Doctor
• 46:44
  Who story. Narratively, it's fascinating
• 46:46
  and it's more about the the doctrine and the commands have
• 46:49
  to escape, the crew has to escape.
• 46:51
  It becomes really a fight for life and and Kane and her
• 46:55
  daughter, well, you know, good luck.
• 46:57
  They're going to make it. What are they going to make?
• 46:59
  It it's like a loving therapist, I'll tell.
• 47:02
  You Kane has presumably died once already and she's come back
• 47:04
  now. There are there are issues
• 47:05
  there. I think of that then that's a
• 47:07
  plot element. Too much Kane and and and Bella.
• 47:10
  Having that relationship and Kane I think is probably 2
• 47:13
  characters combined, I think is meant to be some vicious
• 47:17
  management type and then the head of security, the
• 47:19
  combination that in one character doesn't quite work I
• 47:22
  don't think, but you can see what he's trying to do there and
• 47:25
  you. Wonder if Bella does have a gift
• 47:27
  for a sort of overreaction as well.
• 47:31
  Not. So let's take all of this
• 47:38
  knowledge we've amassed about Series 12 and the era and watch
• 47:43
  Orphan 55. Are you ready?
• 47:46
  I'm ready. Let's go.
• 47:48
  Give us count in. 321. Oh Blimey, I've still got the
• 47:55
  sound up. So what is so great about this
• 47:57
  sort of sequence? I don't know.
• 47:59
  It's just it's just it's awesome, isn't it?
• 48:01
  I mean it. It's it's strange.
• 48:04
  You know, The original one is meant to be strange and
• 48:06
  discomforting. And it is.
• 48:07
  And it doesn't have things that go boing, boing, boing, boing,
• 48:11
  Boing Boing in the way that Moffett's does.
• 48:13
  There's no kazoos or anything like that.
• 48:15
  It's just it. Tear it back.
• 48:18
  It's I love. The key drop.
• 48:19
  You know the key drop. Yeah, I love.
• 48:21
  That it's it it it it suggests mystery and adventure and danger
• 48:26
  and this is an episode that is very dangerous.
• 48:29
  It's it's an unusually brutal as we already said and it's just a
• 48:33
  kind of is it space is it interior you know it could be
• 48:36
  the bloodstream in fantastic void.
• 48:38
  I just it's it's fabulous. I it it struck me the mid the
• 48:41
  first time I saw it and I thought oh here we go this is
• 48:44
  something good. I.
• 48:45
  Haven't listened. I love this big tentacle.
• 48:48
  What are you talking? About It's like that Japanese
• 48:53
  tentacle sex stuff. Is this a?
• 48:54
  Kind of. So you surprise you that I like
• 48:56
  a giant tentacle in the zealous. Well, I like the joke.
• 48:59
  I do like the joke because I feel like this is this is doing
• 49:02
  a sex gag riot about the mating system and that they're mopping
• 49:05
  something up. It's a bit gross, but it's
• 49:07
  quite. Funny, and it's a lovely homage
• 49:09
  to Spearhead. From space, of course.
• 49:12
  Oh yes, a little. It's rubbery.
• 49:14
  Joe Joe doesn't get a hairy tentacle in her mouth the way
• 49:17
  that Pertwee does when he's gunning away on it.
• 49:20
  We're we're not here for long. So can I ask you about this
• 49:22
  Tardis? Yeah.
• 49:25
  I don't like the the pillars. I like the console.
• 49:28
  I don't like the pillars. I like the sense of scale.
• 49:31
  Bradley Walsh course. I will just say a word of He is
• 49:34
  the most reliable man on British television.
• 49:36
  He's one of those old school figures who can do everything.
• 49:38
  And it was genius to bring him into this.
• 49:41
  I love Graham. Yes, really coming into her own.
• 49:45
  Once you start to pair down that that, that team.
• 49:48
  But in this first batch of stories, yeah, Graham is is
• 49:52
  awesome. Ryan, not.
• 49:54
  Sure about the weird hairy person that turns up there, but
• 49:59
  it's part of the joke I think, isn't it?
• 50:01
  There is, there is a joke running through this.
• 50:03
  Please is meant to Well, I hope it's meant to look like a bad
• 50:07
  idea of bad Doctor Who or bad. Side Oh, that looks like
• 50:10
  something that has stepped out of season 24 to me.
• 50:12
  Yeah. That was mine.
• 50:14
  I've heard, I have heard the, the, the comment that this is
• 50:17
  very like a McCoy story. What's that all about?
• 50:20
  Because I've heard that a lot. I think, well, it depends on you
• 50:23
  take it. You either take it that you hate
• 50:25
  McCoy and thus it looks like the worst success of McCoy, or that
• 50:28
  kind of politicized Doctor Who, which we've said at various
• 50:34
  points is is a hallmark of Cartwell the.
• 50:37
  Sort of the broad strokes visually.
• 50:40
  Yeah, yeah, your point. I think how McCoy would work as
• 50:44
  a comic strip. I think there were somebody this
• 50:46
  would work as a comic strip. I think particularly some of the
• 50:48
  the brutality around the the the dregs here we get our first
• 50:52
  indication something is wrong and that they know that
• 50:55
  something's wrong. So because already we're into
• 50:57
  that McCoy notion of corrupt institutions, which, if you find
• 51:02
  Season 22 as well, of course, I mean vengeful Varos, the sense
• 51:05
  of a society has gone wrong. Again, it reminds me of Makoydo.
• 51:08
  It's something nasty in the linen cupboard in Paradise
• 51:11
  Towers. It was something nasty in the,
• 51:12
  you know, in these sort of domestic spaces.
• 51:15
  And and it's something about brutalist architecture and about
• 51:18
  modern architecture. But here's this kind of pitiless
• 51:22
  satire, I think, on a particular type of holiday camp, I mean.
• 51:25
  Would happily. Let the the dregs loose on some
• 51:27
  of the people at Centre Park. But this reminds me of the on
• 51:32
  the beach advert with that fat family that seems to play TV for
• 51:35
  the month of January. And again, I'd happily let the
• 51:37
  dregs loose on that family, particularly the sun.
• 51:39
  I find him repulsive. Do you know when they let?
• 51:43
  Ryan. Toes and cold do comedy.
• 51:45
  I think he's great. They just don't give him enough.
• 51:48
  He's very I. They're wary of it though, I.
• 51:50
  Think there's a problem making him into some type of of comedic
• 51:53
  figure. But actually here's a nice touch
• 51:56
  as well. This kind of this kind of
• 51:57
  throwaway business, all this, this worm, thin as him and and
• 52:00
  it can infect him. It's really nasty but it's quite
• 52:03
  light as well and it's kind of building towards the the supreme
• 52:06
  nastiness in it. And here is here is Whitaker as
• 52:09
  scientists but also doctor as well-being funny.
• 52:12
  More importantly, just being. Very funny.
• 52:15
  She is very funny and she very. Quickly just goes, yeah, don't.
• 52:18
  Worry about the hallucinations. They're not bats and just walks
• 52:20
  away. I mean, the script.
• 52:22
  The script is very good. I think on that and and it
• 52:24
  invites that type of quick wickedness and the suck in the
• 52:28
  thumbnail, get him inside of the background just.
• 52:31
  Waving his arms about. Oh, I love it.
• 52:34
  And that there that. Pitiful bar that they're at.
• 52:37
  Reminds me very much of dragon fire.
• 52:39
  Yeah, there is an issue. There's not enough.
• 52:42
  There's they've spent money, but they can't spend it on cars.
• 52:45
  So the cast isn't big enough for the type of holiday resort
• 52:48
  that's being suggested here. Here's Come on in, give us a.
• 52:52
  Give us a reading on Benny and Velma, the most notorious couple
• 52:56
  since they're an older and Merrick.
• 52:59
  It's very touching. I think Benny's desperate to
• 53:01
  propose to the woman that he's been with for 46 years.
• 53:04
  He's clearly very unwell. Yaz gets in the way and of
• 53:08
  course then the last thing he does, second last thing he does
• 53:10
  of course is will you marry me? And then that horrible
• 53:13
  desperation and kill me as well. This kind of the sense of the
• 53:15
  Britannic going on outside that tank is I was watching that with
• 53:20
  my Ralph earlier going. Bask, They're taking a piss out
• 53:22
  of something. They're surely having those two
• 53:24
  lines next to each other. Oh absolutely.
• 53:27
  But it's it is. That juxtaposition of of.
• 53:31
  It's not comedy. You're not, you know, I don't
• 53:33
  think you're meant to laugh. I think the problem is that the
• 53:35
  performance isn't quite right. Well, it's inviting you not to
• 53:38
  take it seriously as. Well, which is a dangerous line
• 53:41
  to cross I think because a lot of people didn't.
• 53:44
  Well, giving it central message is absolutely.
• 53:46
  Serious, I think again. I I don't know.
• 53:49
  I don't know that you're meant to not take it seriously.
• 53:51
  I think the problem is the performance is the issue.
• 53:54
  The line itself is. Meant to, you're meant to be.
• 53:56
  Quite touched by them. You're also meant to go.
• 53:58
  At least one of these is going to die.
• 54:01
  What's interesting? Both.
• 54:02
  Them die. Yeah, it's vicious.
• 54:05
  It is at the, I mean the. Only one, I think, who's
• 54:07
  absolutely safe is the child, I don't think.
• 54:11
  The. Children, I mean, they make the
• 54:12
  suggestion that he goes out. There with the drinks, doesn't
• 54:15
  he? In the last third.
• 54:15
  But I you kind of know they're not going there.
• 54:21
  This, this is cheap. We can see that this is, this is
• 54:23
  McCoy levels of production value.
• 54:25
  So the money is run up. The money can't stretch to do
• 54:28
  this. There's an argument, I suppose
• 54:30
  if they don't leave the Dome, they can spend the money on the
• 54:34
  Dome. The movement they go.
• 54:36
  Outside and they go. Overseas as.
• 54:37
  Well don't they? So the money and say, oh, I did
• 54:40
  like that line though another rude joke where she says I
• 54:43
  pulled this out of my friend and Hyphen River three says, well we
• 54:46
  don't judge here at all 55 like. This is the rich and.
• 54:50
  Moffett. Levels of cheekiness, Whitaker,
• 54:56
  The kind of. Everything.
• 54:57
  'S spilling out of her there. There's no kind of filter that
• 55:01
  it all has. The idea is too many ideas going
• 55:04
  on in her head and then she just has to just have to express
• 55:07
  them. I mean it's kind of similar to.
• 55:12
  Some of. Capelli and Season 9, when he
• 55:16
  has the cards that Jenna Coleman gives him when he's in South,
• 55:19
  which is very very good, this idea should have wrong with.
• 55:22
  There's something about social awkwardness here.
• 55:24
  I, I, I I think the Wick is very good at, but she's just so much
• 55:27
  more likeable that. She like instantly.
• 55:29
  Like, well, that's because they don't.
• 55:31
  They don't wait. They don't.
• 55:32
  Wreck the first season my having her going.
• 55:34
  Am I am I am IA good man or am IA good woman?
• 55:39
  Word of it. This is that.
• 55:40
  Top layer over there, yeah. Yeah, Kane now is.
• 55:46
  Clearly 2 characters combined this.
• 55:48
  This is a what? The security officer and the
• 55:51
  mother. Of Bella?
• 55:52
  No, the mother of Bella. I think that plot.
• 55:54
  Line is redundant. I think you could do something.
• 55:56
  Bella could be some type of environmentalist to expose it.
• 55:59
  I think is a better way to go with it.
• 56:01
  But Kane is the business executive, but also the soldier.
• 56:05
  So we're thinking about in terms of Alien, they've combined a
• 56:09
  kind of Ripley or one of the Marines with that, that fella
• 56:14
  from the management who goes off on the mission with them.
• 56:16
  He was one of my two dads, and he seemed to be in all those
• 56:19
  wretched and unfunny American comedies in the 1990s.
• 56:23
  He gets killed, obviously. That's both funny and scary at
• 56:28
  the same time, him being dragged away there.
• 56:29
  I I I certainly get the sense of conflation of characters here to
• 56:33
  get the plot moving along in a way it isn't necessarily
• 56:36
  consistent with with the characters.
• 56:37
  You are right there because I was like, OK, are you trying?
• 56:39
  To save this place and save everybody and keep it stop, you
• 56:43
  know, keep the status quo going. Or do you want to sell this
• 56:45
  place and make a mint out of it? Like it's very confusing.
• 56:48
  It's telling two different stories.
• 56:50
  Her. Role is clearly the management
• 56:52
  figure wants to sell it the security person.
• 56:55
  I really think they get the dregs right though.
• 56:57
  The horror, the dregs are amazing.
• 56:59
  The. The.
• 57:00
  The, the, the, the makeup and the costume is brilliant.
• 57:03
  The shoot, Speaking of it as well, so you don't see them
• 57:05
  fully at this point. It's absolutely brilliant that's
• 57:08
  why. Again that's another McCoy in
• 57:10
  issue. Is, is the kind of inconsistency
• 57:12
  in tone is it commonly, is it horror and that that is 24 that
• 57:16
  is paradise towers all over I think.
• 57:18
  But I do sort of like how uncomfortable that is.
• 57:20
  Sometimes I always cite, I always cite Shearman because he
• 57:24
  does that really well. Comedy and horror so well.
• 57:27
  It's a bit, is it Colours. They're strange bedfellows here,
• 57:30
  but I it's still quite enticing. I know, I I think so.
• 57:34
  And of course, what? What?
• 57:34
  You get is the the move away from the comedy.
• 57:37
  The problem is that the Velma character isn't directed a
• 57:40
  particular way, or the actress herself isn't good enough.
• 57:42
  I mean, it's terrible, is James. Buckley, the.
• 57:46
  Wretched figure from The Inbetweeners and Delboy, of
• 57:49
  course, Young girl, he's playing a straight.
• 57:52
  Yeah, I don't. Know if he's playing.
• 57:54
  Particularly well, but he is playing it straight.
• 57:56
  I mean, I know. I quite like the kid, though.
• 57:58
  We've we've suffered all those terrible kids in the Moffett
• 58:01
  era, and then finally there's a kid who's quite nice.
• 58:04
  Yeah. Oh, Graham.
• 58:11
  Do you think we needed the the? Older man in the ensemble.
• 58:15
  I don't know. We needed it or we didn't.
• 58:17
  Know we needed it, but I think a different actor.
• 58:20
  It wouldn't work as well. I think a lot of it is because
• 58:23
  Bradley Walsh on the telly every day and Bradley Walsh had worked
• 58:27
  with Chipman of course in in Law and Order UK which Chipman would
• 58:31
  essentially been given by Dick Wolf in the age of 1 season four
• 58:34
  and then continue. The other thing with Bradley
• 58:36
  Wolf is that there was a it was a terrible Christmas thing of
• 58:40
  three or four years ago with the wretched Olly Murs.
• 58:43
  He was well out of his depth and Bradley Wolch just rocked up and
• 58:46
  just took over and and made the show because he is the
• 58:49
  consummate professional. So he can do this and we go with
• 58:52
  of Graham becomes one of the everyman figures.
• 58:56
  But what I like about? Graham.
• 58:57
  Is he always? Defers to the Doctor.
• 58:59
  There's never a time where he tries to take control of the
• 59:02
  series, but in fact, even in the Witch Finders where he's given
• 59:05
  control, he's out. He's out of his depth
• 59:08
  completely, I I think. Because what?
• 59:10
  What, Chipnall? Is working with is a phrase I've
• 59:12
  only just come across, which is positive masculinity.
• 59:16
  We hear a lot about toxic masculinity, but what?
• 59:18
  And and you know this this long running discussion which is
• 59:21
  usually from people who are vaguely misogynistic about, you
• 59:25
  know what about what about what about boys or about men?
• 59:27
  Will this actually positive masculinity I think and you can
• 59:31
  see here in Bradley, you can see in in Ryan as well.
• 59:35
  I think what what's interesting is that Chipman doesn't go down
• 59:38
  the kind of typical route which would be let's do about race and
• 59:42
  about difficulty. Actually for Ryan the issue is
• 59:46
  his dyspractia when his dad comes in.
• 59:47
  Of course that and of course that's that's that relationship
• 59:51
  is dictating how Ryan responds to the situation in it takes you
• 59:56
  away that having been abandoned by his father that he sees
• 1:00:00
  that's how he reads that situation.
• 1:00:01
  I didn't. There's lots, there's lots of
• 1:00:03
  really nice character work going on.
• 1:00:06
  What I love is you. You suddenly get Graham.
• 1:00:08
  Doing the heartfelt moment. So you think about the scene in
• 1:00:11
  Punjab the day that Prem is getting married, he knows he's
• 1:00:14
  off to die. Or the scene in Praxayas where
• 1:00:16
  1/2 of that gay couple is really struggling on the bit and it's
• 1:00:20
  Graham sitting him down and it's two men talking.
• 1:00:22
  Yes, in such a positive, like emotional way.
• 1:00:25
  It's great. I think you need that figure to.
• 1:00:28
  Happen because what what they do, Whitaker is she can't have
• 1:00:30
  those conversations and I've seen criticisms of that in that
• 1:00:33
  conversation with with Graham when he's when he's cancelled.
• 1:00:36
  I love that bit. I've dealt with some of those
• 1:00:39
  situations. And I've seen those reactions.
• 1:00:41
  Yeah. And and I think because.
• 1:00:44
  They've set in the This doctor up is kind of socially awkward
• 1:00:49
  and and and can't. Really deal with.
• 1:00:51
  That I don't think that might link in with your comment about
• 1:00:53
  when when with there isn't given.
• 1:00:55
  This is really genuinely scared yourself, isn't it?
• 1:00:58
  The gums and the teeth are amazing the the saliva coming
• 1:01:01
  from his. Teeth.
• 1:01:05
  That isn't given that that that full vent because of how they're
• 1:01:08
  characterizing that that that figure.
• 1:01:10
  And so for those type of conversations, Graham takes up
• 1:01:13
  that slack. He doesn't become a kind of
• 1:01:15
  pseudo Dr. but he functions in a way that sometimes the Doctor
• 1:01:19
  has to function. It would be the obvious one
• 1:01:21
  would be Charlton to Victoria and Tomb of the Cybermen talking
• 1:01:25
  about the dead family. That's Whittaker.
• 1:01:28
  I don't know they would give her that because that's not how this
• 1:01:31
  Doc for version of Doctors function.
• 1:01:33
  Graham could do that because of his lived experience.
• 1:01:36
  I just think it was really interesting they gave an older
• 1:01:39
  male figure and that he doesn't respond in the ways that he
• 1:01:44
  would in another show. Because this is Doctor Who, and
• 1:01:47
  it's a positive message, which is why this pessimism is for
• 1:01:51
  potential. Pessimism makes it such a
• 1:01:53
  striking episode, particularly in this run.
• 1:01:56
  Again, I'm seeing 24, you know. Paradise Tower has dealt with
• 1:02:00
  the Banner Men, disparate groups of characters all coming
• 1:02:02
  together to defeat the villain. It just feels so McCoy, yes, to
• 1:02:06
  me. But then they.
• 1:02:07
  But then they're butchered, of course.
• 1:02:08
  That's not the McCoy moment. They can't and like, to your
• 1:02:11
  earlier point, the Doctor, essentially they they they skid
• 1:02:14
  Apple. But you can see how it's moving
• 1:02:17
  away from the comedy that they've got here by voucher,
• 1:02:19
  which is a brilliant moment there.
• 1:02:21
  And they assemble the cube like Stratton does in the War Games
• 1:02:25
  and the zaps them here, but it drops him into this.
• 1:02:28
  Oh, there's a bit here. Where back Bradley?
• 1:02:29
  Walsh literally headbutts the camera.
• 1:02:31
  I love that bit of direction, yes.
• 1:02:36
  He's basically looking out at us I.
• 1:02:38
  He's He's top. Notch stuff, Bradley.
• 1:02:40
  So I don't, I don't tend to have crush on people on TV.
• 1:02:43
  I don't got a crush on Bradley Walsh.
• 1:02:44
  But he's the most reliable man on TV and you can put him in
• 1:02:48
  anything and he and he does it. You don't get that money all
• 1:02:52
  round performers anymore I don't think.
• 1:02:54
  And it's it's a it's a shame but yeah but it's continuing that
• 1:02:59
  what we've seen in you who you put someone in there you don't
• 1:03:02
  necessarily expect will will work.
• 1:03:04
  Billy Piper in the obvious case of what or someone who's got a
• 1:03:07
  well established career behind Jenna Coleman and they they do
• 1:03:10
  really, really well and they they if you give them the
• 1:03:13
  material or even if they haven't got the material, they're such
• 1:03:16
  professional they can do something rise above it.
• 1:03:17
  Yeah. And of course.
• 1:03:19
  With with Ryan. In the eyes, because they're
• 1:03:21
  not. They weren't as prominent
• 1:03:22
  publicly. You get with what you had with
• 1:03:24
  Karen Gillan and Arthur Darfill, where they really establish
• 1:03:29
  themselves as genuine talents. Here I think knew who's been
• 1:03:33
  brilliant for that. None of them tend to disappear
• 1:03:35
  in a way that old Who's companion did, because yes,
• 1:03:38
  needed that last season, though I think to.
• 1:03:40
  Truly prove what she could do? Absolutely I I think.
• 1:03:43
  I think that it was so. Good to see that because you
• 1:03:45
  your echoes of it. You saw hints of it in in Punjab
• 1:03:48
  in particular. But just to be able to front and
• 1:03:51
  center and such a such a such a different relationship with the
• 1:03:54
  Doctor. It was so good and they are so
• 1:03:57
  good that that that's something across the board.
• 1:03:59
  When you hear that you you get the companions, you give them
• 1:04:02
  material, you boost their characters.
• 1:04:04
  You look to as you said what they do with Ace.
• 1:04:07
  They have a back story and you can build on and you make them
• 1:04:10
  real characters and you give it to decent actors, established
• 1:04:13
  actors, up and coming actors and you you get you get golf.
• 1:04:17
  I was trying to figure out why this might piss.
• 1:04:20
  People off not. Because I'm not enjoying it.
• 1:04:22
  It's because it is. It's, it looks like it's going
• 1:04:24
  to obey the rules of certain Doctor Who stories and then
• 1:04:27
  utterly refuses to do it. So it looks like it's going to
• 1:04:29
  be based on the siege and then the camera literally went
• 1:04:31
  through the hole then to say no, no, we're going outside now,
• 1:04:34
  yes, but it has to go outside because.
• 1:04:36
  You have to see the devastation. That's why the trees in the
• 1:04:39
  shot, I think is probably a mistake, because then nothing
• 1:04:41
  narratively to suggest a return of nature.
• 1:04:46
  Yeah, that all you've? Got now are are.
• 1:04:48
  The dregs and this kind of more lucky and style horror of what
• 1:04:53
  mankind will become. You know, this is, this is The
• 1:04:56
  Time Machine elements here, I think here obviously the
• 1:04:59
  elements of Alien as well of course.
• 1:05:01
  I mean, this looks really good as well, I mean.
• 1:05:05
  It's kind of the the. The anti.
• 1:05:06
  Type to the ghost machine, which looks alive, But again, that's
• 1:05:10
  some kind of sense of scale. And look, we've actually gone
• 1:05:13
  out and film this. This isn't CGI.
• 1:05:15
  We've actually physically doing this.
• 1:05:17
  I mean, it's kind of redundant. You could have done this inside,
• 1:05:20
  but I think they need to go outside to show just what Earth
• 1:05:23
  has become, or for you to realize what Earth has become
• 1:05:25
  when you realize what it is. Now my problem.
• 1:05:27
  As I said earlier on, I wasn't watching this live so kind and I
• 1:05:31
  saw the kind of affected fury. Around this environmental
• 1:05:35
  message, so I. Kind of knew it was Earth
• 1:05:37
  anyway, but I don't know how obvious it is that it's Earth.
• 1:05:41
  I suppose it is on. You know the worst part of that
• 1:05:43
  was, yeah, because I quite. Like the twist?
• 1:05:45
  I certainly like the message at the end, but being a Doctor Who
• 1:05:48
  fan, what did I think? Oh, this is just like mysterious
• 1:05:51
  Planet. Underground.
• 1:05:52
  Side by system, of course you would.
• 1:05:55
  Of course you would. I got again and I.
• 1:05:56
  Don't know. Again, is there a problem that
• 1:05:59
  the message is now front and centre?
• 1:06:01
  Because we've seen this before. We've seen Earth destroyed.
• 1:06:04
  Of course it's not mankind that destroys Earth and that it's the
• 1:06:06
  time or to die, but you know the future vision of Earth that.
• 1:06:09
  Malcolm Holt suggests. That's to do with industry.
• 1:06:13
  I do wonder if it's I said this. Is an old.
• 1:06:15
  Going woke episode that the problem is, is that people don't
• 1:06:19
  like the message because they're not doing the right things.
• 1:06:22
  It's a it's a reminder. It's a very unsubtle reminder
• 1:06:25
  that people aren't doing the right things.
• 1:06:26
  Practsayers then goes to show you very striking visuals of
• 1:06:31
  what's happening if we don't do the right thing.
• 1:06:33
  I mean, I do wonder whether this should have.
• 1:06:36
  Been in Series 11 and it takes you away.
• 1:06:38
  We had environmentalism in 11, didn't we?
• 1:06:40
  And. Arachnis in the UK Yeah, that's
• 1:06:43
  true, yeah, yeah. And of course the anti
• 1:06:46
  capitalist message as well. That woman is so terrible, the
• 1:06:49
  woman playing. Vilma she she is.
• 1:06:51
  But this is a really important point because.
• 1:06:53
  Kane is viable. The point made here is she's his
• 1:06:57
  absolute mercenary figure and she can be bought.
• 1:07:00
  She wants to go back because she knows it's dangerous.
• 1:07:02
  She knows it's potentially legal, but she picks up the
• 1:07:04
  chain the the actress is. So terrible.
• 1:07:08
  Is it someone's mum and they just brought her along for the
• 1:07:10
  day? I think she has that other work.
• 1:07:13
  But. Yes.
• 1:07:14
  When she dies, she goes waving down that corridor to the
• 1:07:17
  dreams. It's it's very funny.
• 1:07:19
  It does. But it's not meant to be funny.
• 1:07:20
  That's the point. It's meant to be really horrible
• 1:07:24
  and, you know, because we've had so much comedy in the episode.
• 1:07:26
  Today, sort of peppered in you think or is this supposed to be
• 1:07:29
  funny? Yeah, yeah, I.
• 1:07:32
  Is. It meant to be.
• 1:07:33
  A black comedy. I don't.
• 1:07:34
  I don't think it is. I think it is just down to the
• 1:07:37
  fact that the performance isn't isn't brilliant.
• 1:07:39
  But then you've got the squirrel servant thing.
• 1:07:44
  What is it? That one.
• 1:07:46
  There heightened with a three. Yeah.
• 1:07:48
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:07:48
  I mean that's. Can't be taken.
• 1:07:50
  Seriously. Surely.
• 1:07:51
  And then it gets butchered again.
• 1:07:52
  It's really it's. It's.
• 1:07:54
  It's your. Point it's.
• 1:07:55
  Pulling against your expectations, Well it's like
• 1:07:56
  it's like think of think of a really cute like.
• 1:07:58
  Alpha Centauri. You know, this cute ridiculous
• 1:08:00
  looking character. And if Alpha Centauri got
• 1:08:03
  murdered in the monster a peloton, we we just being bold.
• 1:08:06
  There are certain rules to Doctor Who, and this just ain't
• 1:08:09
  obeying them. Yeah, that's very true and it's
• 1:08:11
  important. That it mixes things up is there
• 1:08:16
  too. Much here though, is it?
• 1:08:17
  Is it? Problem that we're moving so
• 1:08:20
  fast because I said to Mark after watching, I said look, you
• 1:08:23
  know what That was too furious for me.
• 1:08:24
  That was a bit too fast-paced. But I didn't stick around on
• 1:08:27
  anything long enough to make any complaints like the out the out
• 1:08:30
  went by and lick. I mean, I suppose they had to
• 1:08:34
  see the. Outside was important, but also
• 1:08:36
  the fact that Benny's been dragged out there and we know
• 1:08:39
  Benny's fairly infirm it when you stop and think about it and
• 1:08:43
  when you it's horrible. They'd like they put tight
• 1:08:48
  pulling his limbs off or something like that, but anyone
• 1:08:50
  taking the piss out is think of your granddad.
• 1:08:53
  OK, dragged out there and butchered.
• 1:08:56
  Because of course, the point is the the oxygen canister.
• 1:08:58
  Means that he's still alive and he's taken out there.
• 1:09:01
  He should be dead when they take him outside, and therefore
• 1:09:04
  whatever they do. I mean, do they eat the bodies?
• 1:09:06
  Do they have sex at the foot not to think about?
• 1:09:09
  His medical history. Which is?
• 1:09:11
  Killing him probably means that he's still alive when he should
• 1:09:15
  be dead outside it. It's really, really dark, isn't
• 1:09:19
  it? It's.
• 1:09:19
  Really. Bleak.
• 1:09:20
  Because it's the oxygen. Canister there because they've
• 1:09:22
  got, yeah that's the business with the the sensor on the on
• 1:09:25
  the arm which of course is your kind of classic countdown.
• 1:09:27
  I like the fact as well because I really figured these.
• 1:09:30
  Young hot companions. We're going to get sort of a lot
• 1:09:33
  of romances because that was the form with Doctor Who right in
• 1:09:36
  the series. This is the closest that Ryan
• 1:09:38
  gets, and she's a bloody nut case and she probably dies.
• 1:09:43
  Probably so. It's much closer to.
• 1:09:45
  Old who it's much. Closer to Ace's various deemed
• 1:09:47
  romances. I mean, it's not like.
• 1:09:50
  Mel having. Lots of sex with Savlon Glitz in
• 1:09:53
  the back seat of the Nosferatu. There's there's nothing here for
• 1:09:57
  Ryan except Trixabelle I. I thought it was a shame that.
• 1:10:02
  Whitaker went outside here. Because suddenly I got this sort
• 1:10:04
  of midnight vibe of them being trapped inside that box.
• 1:10:07
  And I think you see that. Doesn't the Drake, like, scrape
• 1:10:10
  his finger along the hole? It's it's a repeated shot just
• 1:10:15
  to show. How dangerous their claws are, I
• 1:10:17
  don't know. I mean, I don't like Midnight,
• 1:10:19
  so any relationship with Midnight I don't want.
• 1:10:22
  I think I because the point they've gone out into the
• 1:10:26
  Drake's territory, those trees and mistake.
• 1:10:28
  They should have been taken out in prose production to go into
• 1:10:31
  the dregs territory. The dregs invade the the camp.
• 1:10:35
  Then of course the camp is unsafe once the the shield is
• 1:10:37
  down. But you need to see how bad
• 1:10:39
  these things are and how many of them are as well.
• 1:10:41
  Of course, there is a awesome shot of.
• 1:10:44
  Hundreds of dregs coming in on where you know, you think, well,
• 1:10:48
  how the hell are they going to get out of this?
• 1:10:49
  And guess what? They don't.
• 1:10:52
  And again, it's your it's pulling at.
• 1:10:53
  Your expectations? Yeah, I don't.
• 1:10:56
  I'm not convinced. Those trees, Maybe.
• 1:10:58
  Maybe it's meant to be an indication that that life is
• 1:11:01
  returning to 155, but it's pulling against what the
• 1:11:04
  narrative is telling you. I do love the fact that Vilma.
• 1:11:07
  Just has soap. She's got nuts and she like.
• 1:11:09
  She don't care that they're surrounded by monsters.
• 1:11:11
  She she's the bravest one there. But that's that's realistic,
• 1:11:15
  surely? Isn't it?
• 1:11:16
  This is, this is, she's the only one who has lost someone, but
• 1:11:22
  the centre says they're still alive.
• 1:11:24
  They're so good coming out of this.
• 1:11:26
  That could be. Something from like Resident
• 1:11:27
  Evil or something like that, yeah, I mean, it's all of that
• 1:11:30
  is working through. That Resident Evil, aliens.
• 1:11:34
  Rocky Horror Picture Show. It's all it's all running
• 1:11:37
  through this show. All those references are there.
• 1:11:41
  You're a cheeky man. And then of course.
• 1:11:45
  Because the budget doesn't stretch what you get.
• 1:11:46
  Is the old standby of the the centres.
• 1:11:49
  But think back to part of the ways how just Linda with AY
• 1:11:55
  watching that screen and tell us what's happening is so more
• 1:11:58
  effective than them attempting to do what the budget won't
• 1:12:00
  allow them this once they get up, actually once they get out
• 1:12:04
  and get into this type of vessel, which yeah, it is like
• 1:12:06
  midnight, it's kind of like that thing.
• 1:12:13
  I shouldn't love. It's kind of like that thing in
• 1:12:15
  time. Of Angels, whether it's Angels
• 1:12:16
  coming out of the screen with Amy, that kind of enclosed
• 1:12:19
  space, that kind of claustrophobia is working really
• 1:12:21
  well, and it kind of always does with Doctor Who doesn't.
• 1:12:24
  It yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
• 1:12:27
  The trouble is in like a. Trout the story You suddenly?
• 1:12:30
  Wouldn't be out. Well you would actually.
• 1:12:32
  The moon basically go out onto the moon.
• 1:12:34
  In Ice Warriors you go out onto the Tundra Fury from the deep.
• 1:12:37
  You've got the sea in the rigs, our share, our shared cultural
• 1:12:40
  memory of. Trouting is usually wrong
• 1:12:43
  because usually doesn't work. Oh.
• 1:12:47
  This bit where he's talking to, I just think.
• 1:12:52
  I just think those two lines. Marry me.
• 1:12:55
  Kill me. That's the darkest this show.
• 1:12:58
  It really is. Unbelievably dark, but the the
• 1:13:01
  way it's the way it's. I love that moment where Mika
• 1:13:07
  smashes that. I love that moment of that kind
• 1:13:10
  of absolute panic and we've got to get out of here.
• 1:13:13
  I because because the character can be so light and fun loving
• 1:13:18
  and this is a holiday camp to actually put her in this
• 1:13:21
  situation really very clever and to show kind of desperation
• 1:13:25
  there and then now they're now they're they're killing a
• 1:13:28
  squirrel can I can I make another comparison with.
• 1:13:31
  McCoy Yeah, because we are, absolutely.
• 1:13:34
  We know that these deaths are occurring.
• 1:13:36
  They're probably horrific, but like, great show in the Galaxy
• 1:13:38
  we're cutting away. So we're not seeing them.
• 1:13:41
  Our imaginations are far worse. Whatever happens in that ring in
• 1:13:45
  Greatest Show is far worse than anything they could have ever.
• 1:13:47
  Oh, absolutely, Yeah. And it's the same here as Well
• 1:13:49
  I. Figured they're being.
• 1:13:51
  Dismembered something. Of course they are.
• 1:13:52
  They're being splayed and they're being.
• 1:13:54
  Eaten they've been fucked and their own bits torn off them.
• 1:13:57
  And then then they're just dead. And then they yeah, then they
• 1:14:01
  they must, they must do because they're, we're told the food
• 1:14:03
  chain has collapsed. And in that type of scenario,
• 1:14:05
  then you do turn to cannibalism. Now what's interesting here is
• 1:14:09
  it. This is Siberia, isn't it?
• 1:14:11
  Yeah. So I think whether he knows it
• 1:14:15
  or not, he's. Intersecting.
• 1:14:17
  Heinz with There's a series of books on my students was telling
• 1:14:20
  me about about a post apocalyptic world which is set
• 1:14:23
  in the Moscow underground. And the various stations,
• 1:14:26
  they're kind of like the way he described it.
• 1:14:28
  They're like the Kangs various gangs have developed.
• 1:14:32
  But. There's a there's a a a video
• 1:14:35
  game as well. I think about mutants on the
• 1:14:37
  Moscow subway system. I think that's working here as
• 1:14:40
  well. I know nothing about video
• 1:14:42
  games, but occasionally students from philosophy write about them
• 1:14:44
  for a colleagues postmodern module, and I end up second
• 1:14:47
  marketing really very well. I was going to.
• 1:14:51
  Have a slot in the third year. I would love to have seen what
• 1:14:54
  Elsie would have done after these two.
• 1:14:56
  Yeah, yes, I think he would. Have been that that right you
• 1:15:00
  can't pin down. You can't say he does that
• 1:15:02
  thing. I mean that they emerged.
• 1:15:04
  Don't they knew here I. Think Jamie Matheson is one
• 1:15:06
  there late in Moffat's run. Mctag as well, but depends what
• 1:15:12
  you Yeah. And Maxine Alderton, Yes, yes.
• 1:15:16
  I I think why oh. Yeah, you really want to see
• 1:15:18
  what they would have done there. There's a sense in which that
• 1:15:21
  cartel third season and then Chip will leave him as.
• 1:15:26
  Really. We don't see.
• 1:15:28
  We're not going to get that. Opportunity.
• 1:15:29
  Because I don't. I don't.
• 1:15:30
  Think they're going to be brought back.
• 1:15:31
  I the sense I get is they run. They're racing through at such a
• 1:15:35
  pace of production for Shiki Gatwa to get everything in
• 1:15:40
  before he leaves because like there is something I think to
• 1:15:42
  that suggestion that they're both off fairly soon.
• 1:15:46
  And so I think you may well have that.
• 1:15:47
  He's there for Four Seasons, but they'll be filmed back-to-back
• 1:15:50
  and it will maybe a two year gig.
• 1:15:51
  Because of course there's short seasons aren't, well, Millie
• 1:15:54
  Gibson's already saying that she's looking for.
• 1:15:56
  What works out there? So we know she's done her bit,
• 1:15:58
  Yeah, Yeah. And again, we know that two
• 1:16:00
  seasons have been. Banked, yeah, this tricks are
• 1:16:04
  obviously. Doesn't really work.
• 1:16:06
  I don't. Think, OK, so I said to you
• 1:16:08
  earlier about it being super. Busy, but like here we've got,
• 1:16:11
  we're setting up for the environmental message, we've got
• 1:16:14
  the emotional drama of mother and daughter, we've got a
• 1:16:17
  monster movie taking place, we've got the the relationship
• 1:16:22
  between Benny and Vilma working out.
• 1:16:25
  But it is a lot to be. Side by side it is, but of
• 1:16:29
  course it's those type of vignettes.
• 1:16:30
  That you find in disaster films in the 70s where you always get
• 1:16:35
  that type of story, that type of intersection and then someone
• 1:16:38
  dies both and die. I am Terry Fern is the obvious
• 1:16:42
  one. Poseidon Adventure as well.
• 1:16:43
  I I I think you can see all that coming into play.
• 1:16:46
  I think even like for a song like Voyager Damned, which is.
• 1:16:48
  Playing on one of those sort of disasters, yeah, there's a sense
• 1:16:51
  of hope that someone's going. To make it out of.
• 1:16:53
  This I'll never feel That. It's always feel like they're
• 1:16:56
  doomed. No.
• 1:16:57
  Because of course you've. Got a horror film?
• 1:16:59
  Aesthetic coming into this as well, and in modern horror often
• 1:17:03
  no one gets out when you're into The Descent at this point.
• 1:17:07
  I think at the time, this type of pale creatures like you've
• 1:17:09
  got a kind of 100 years worth of sci-fi horror into horror
• 1:17:15
  working through this, this, this particular sequence and and it's
• 1:17:19
  just part of the kind of mixed bag of sauces that that Hymes is
• 1:17:22
  working with. It's doing that sort of myth
• 1:17:24
  maker things, isn't it? Introducing all these sort of
• 1:17:26
  fun, quirky characters and then just got not.
• 1:17:30
  Not in an Eric say. Say with sort of way.
• 1:17:32
  Where it just feels like they can't be asked to tie it up.
• 1:17:35
  So let's just murder everybody. Yes.
• 1:17:37
  In what feels like a very deliberate way of making you
• 1:17:39
  comfortable with these people and then shocking you when
• 1:17:42
  they're sort of wrenched away. Yeah.
• 1:17:43
  And I think. I think it's.
• 1:17:45
  More realistic, let me say what it's how many are killed because
• 1:17:50
  they haven't got the budget to have those numbers.
• 1:17:52
  And it's it's it's pips disappearing off the screen.
• 1:17:55
  What you have got then is a focus on a small group and you
• 1:17:58
  get to know them. Now there might be broad cliche
• 1:18:00
  there, but because the scenario is so horrible, this is very,
• 1:18:04
  very different to say them getting shot by a darling the
• 1:18:07
  close. I think in terms of say what is
• 1:18:09
  the faces melting in resurrection, That kind of
• 1:18:12
  visceral nastiness and that suggestion of hopeless.
• 1:18:15
  Now here again more hopelessness.
• 1:18:16
  Here is the the old woman who is slowing them down realistically,
• 1:18:20
  she is slowing them down and they need to move because these
• 1:18:22
  things are quick. They're like the they're like
• 1:18:24
  the 28 days later they move very quickly.
• 1:18:27
  They're not. That kind of the darkest thing
• 1:18:29
  would be for somebody to say. Go on, push her into the tracks.
• 1:18:33
  Let's get rid of her. It's.
• 1:18:34
  It's what Avon would do if. It was Blake, 7, totally.
• 1:18:38
  And probably Fire Villa in there as well, because he'd be
• 1:18:40
  complaining and being too slight.
• 1:18:41
  But it's not how This is how she she makes a choice, doesn't she?
• 1:18:45
  Yeah, she does. Make a choice because the.
• 1:18:47
  Doctor's not going to leave behind, even if it is going to
• 1:18:50
  slow them all down. And possibly, oh, I liked
• 1:18:53
  Whitaker's sort of panic here when.
• 1:18:55
  She realises they're going to find out this is Earth and she
• 1:18:57
  tries for a second, doesn't she? She tries to and look at the
• 1:19:02
  nice I. Work there on on on Yaz.
• 1:19:05
  The kind of realization of what the implication are that it's
• 1:19:08
  Siberia. Look at that.
• 1:19:10
  That's beautifully done. I think she does reaction shots
• 1:19:13
  better than. Just about anyone else in the
• 1:19:15
  news series. I've now go to another episode
• 1:19:17
  here, but Karen Gillan is very good at it as well.
• 1:19:19
  Even the Daleks. Where she sees a Dalek coming.
• 1:19:21
  Out of the shadows and village of the angels where she's got
• 1:19:24
  tears in her eyes when she could see the Angel behind Dan.
• 1:19:28
  She's so good at sort of silent acting.
• 1:19:30
  Yeah. Oh, here we go.
• 1:19:35
  I mean. The sentiment.
• 1:19:37
  The sentiment? Is heartbreaking.
• 1:19:39
  And and the sense of you have to stay alive.
• 1:19:42
  Yeah. And then look at Yasi's.
• 1:19:45
  Reaction. Yeah, horrible.
• 1:19:46
  I mean, that's strong stuff, actually.
• 1:19:48
  Wish you. Hurt my.
• 1:19:49
  Benny, I mean, all joking aside that's horrific.
• 1:19:52
  And and and yeah, it's showing. It's showing what people do in
• 1:19:58
  extreme reaction into extreme circumstances, I think, and and
• 1:20:01
  it's it's fascinating, Whitaker. Whitaker's Doctor put into that
• 1:20:04
  type of scenario. With Capaldi, it'll be
• 1:20:06
  different. I think with Matt Smith, I think
• 1:20:09
  Capaldi would just move on and go, Oh well.
• 1:20:11
  You know, or he'd get very angry about it.
• 1:20:13
  Whereas Whitaker, there's the. Desperation there, but also now,
• 1:20:17
  alongside trying to stay alive, the realisation of what this is
• 1:20:20
  really Do you know what she needs to say?
• 1:20:22
  She needs to say even though. I can't play this many games at
• 1:20:25
  once. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:20:27
  But again. It's not how this version the
• 1:20:30
  characters work, and I don't think there's a sense of taking
• 1:20:33
  on too much or trying to do too much because.
• 1:20:36
  You can't let people down. I know that kind of the It's a
• 1:20:41
  single game. Tag you're it.
• 1:20:43
  That's the crucial line at the end, isn't it?
• 1:20:45
  Tag You're it. You're now the Doctor.
• 1:20:47
  It's a single game. It's a it's an ongoing chase.
• 1:20:50
  McCoy, chess and drafts and Sudoku and whatever else is.
• 1:20:55
  But here the the piece is what's important here.
• 1:20:58
  This is great. Now here with the with the the.
• 1:21:02
  Dregs to get get the air from. It it's it's a beautifully done
• 1:21:05
  scene because it what this does so well is it moves between the
• 1:21:09
  frantic and stillness and but the stillness is as as dangerous
• 1:21:13
  as the as the as the the franticness.
• 1:21:16
  I actually think the suspense and the stillness is.
• 1:21:18
  Even better. Yeah.
• 1:21:19
  You know, I think you're right. There was that that bit with.
• 1:21:22
  Ryan and Bella. In the sauna and the drag there
• 1:21:26
  just bouncing. Around.
• 1:21:27
  And it's brilliant. It does say oxygen supply level
• 1:21:30
  1%. There are flames going in that
• 1:21:32
  room though. Yeah.
• 1:21:34
  Also, when did the lack of oxygen?
• 1:21:35
  Really be a problem for the doctor, secondary cardiovascular
• 1:21:40
  system and all that. She's thinking of her mates,
• 1:21:43
  though, you know this is. This is brilliant now.
• 1:21:45
  I mean, it's kind. Of a throwback to the Tetraps
• 1:21:48
  when the pitch, when it was upside down on the the
• 1:21:51
  novelization of time of the run, the detail in that mask.
• 1:21:57
  And you just. You think any second it could
• 1:21:59
  literally? Just devour her.
• 1:22:01
  We're together some amazing facial.
• 1:22:03
  Act in there as well. Well, she.
• 1:22:07
  Does that wonderful thing. I think that Colin does.
• 1:22:09
  As well of appreciating the horrific, you know, or
• 1:22:13
  appreciating things that aren't beautiful, there's a potential.
• 1:22:18
  Problem here. Because the implication.
• 1:22:19
  Is that's the memory of the creature.
• 1:22:21
  But then we're also assuming a much longer period of time from
• 1:22:24
  the disaster to the mutant, so I don't know that quite works.
• 1:22:28
  He can literally pick she was kicking her legs.
• 1:22:30
  In the air and still away, it does the, the.
• 1:22:34
  Tableau makes me think about. When Capaldi is faced by the the
• 1:22:39
  thing that's causing all the trouble in Before the Flood, you
• 1:22:43
  know it comes out the crib. This is better.
• 1:22:46
  This is much better. There's a real sense of threat
• 1:22:50
  here in a way that once you get into the second episode of that
• 1:22:53
  two-part of me too, he's like the threat is kind of
• 1:22:55
  diminished. So it's a brilliant end of
• 1:22:57
  episode compelled with the black eyes getting more brilliant
• 1:23:00
  facial acting from Wicker. Though another cliche, this
• 1:23:02
  avoids because I figured that. Her and oh God, what's the
• 1:23:06
  woman's name? A woman.
• 1:23:08
  Her and Kane. They they go into this tricky
• 1:23:10
  situation now. They work together.
• 1:23:12
  This is where they're going to bond.
• 1:23:13
  It never happens. Kane.
• 1:23:15
  Of course. Another 24 reference.
• 1:23:17
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean.
• 1:23:22
  It's a holiday camp under siege that's still.
• 1:23:24
  In the Bannerman, yeah, yes. And whilst I do think 24.
• 1:23:31
  Is dark. It has dark undertones.
• 1:23:33
  It's surface light. Is it surface candy floss?
• 1:23:37
  Yeah, but then, you know, you get things like Kendall.
• 1:23:39
  Being shot in the back and Kane's face melting, I interest
• 1:23:46
  in the suggestion that it was it was meant to Bob Monkhouse
• 1:23:49
  playing the towel master. This is this is clumsy now.
• 1:23:58
  This is the. You wouldn't do it at this
• 1:24:00
  point, would you? Not Not the end the.
• 1:24:02
  End bit, I think that's. This is the clumsy section.
• 1:24:05
  I mean, it's only a few lines, but you really.
• 1:24:09
  Wouldn't start talking about, yeah he doesn't got exhaust
• 1:24:11
  thumb and there there are other ways of.
• 1:24:13
  Doing it I think, although I can't think off the top of my
• 1:24:16
  head and that's why I'm not a well paid scriptwriter.
• 1:24:22
  Do you think this script could be improved?
• 1:24:24
  I think another edit might improve.
• 1:24:27
  It but my God looks. Amazing.
• 1:24:30
  And so it's the. Kind of the.
• 1:24:32
  Utter inability of a small group to stop these things.
• 1:24:36
  Again, it's his sense of despair is kicking in.
• 1:24:38
  This is the only way to survive now is to escape.
• 1:24:41
  There's no resolution puzzle. It's not like they're going to
• 1:24:44
  now terraform the planet and bring everyone back to life that
• 1:24:46
  this this isn't everybody lives a small group of people under
• 1:24:50
  threat from. Terrifying monsters that are
• 1:24:52
  closed. This is what Doctor Who fans lap
• 1:24:54
  up people like this, I think. People are Dicks is part of the
• 1:25:02
  also the blood was on this by this point, but I think what
• 1:25:07
  really? Wraps it up.
• 1:25:09
  Is the environmental message, and I think, but I can't prove
• 1:25:13
  it, that some of the complaints are coming from Tufton St. and
• 1:25:18
  Tufton St. aligned figures who are getting their money from
• 1:25:21
  fossil fuels, who are desperate to shut down.
• 1:25:23
  This environmental message particularly mustn't take root
• 1:25:26
  in the young, because if you look at pollings, the right are
• 1:25:30
  fucked because the only group who are consistently voting toy
• 1:25:33
  over 65 young people aren't doing it.
• 1:25:36
  Now the electoral system is counting against it, because of
• 1:25:38
  course if you want to vote Green, that inevitably cost
• 1:25:40
  Labour votes under the the the current system.
• 1:25:43
  If you have proportional position it's different.
• 1:25:45
  And I suspect something like this had to be shut down and
• 1:25:51
  practice as. Well, and is that not like?
• 1:25:53
  It all the more vital that it takes place.
• 1:25:56
  Absolutely you you must. Never chase.
• 1:25:58
  What's popular doctorate at its worst is always trying to be
• 1:26:02
  something else. And when it's pretends to be
• 1:26:04
  another program, when it loses that sense of social
• 1:26:07
  responsibility and education now.
• 1:26:11
  The complaint you'll get from. People is why it's not.
• 1:26:14
  It's not proven climate change? Well, I don't know.
• 1:26:16
  Most reputable scientists would accept that and would would
• 1:26:20
  agree with those arguments. And here we see this is
• 1:26:22
  speculative. This is if if mankind doesn't
• 1:26:26
  change, if you don't try and keep the temperature under
• 1:26:28
  control under though that that sort, that 2% rise, this is what
• 1:26:32
  happens. This is what good science
• 1:26:34
  fiction does. This is this is its debt to
• 1:26:36
  Wells. What does Wells do?
• 1:26:38
  You go into the far future, what's mankind become, What's
• 1:26:40
  evolved into this defeat group and this dangerous group who eat
• 1:26:44
  the defeat group. That's essentially what we've
• 1:26:46
  got playing up here. So at the very least, it's part
• 1:26:49
  of that tradition. But I suspect because they'd
• 1:26:52
  already been a turn against the show because of Whitaker, this,
• 1:26:58
  this. Became red, red blood for the
• 1:27:00
  people. Who do already decided to give
• 1:27:01
  it up on it and that was then. That was then picked up on.
• 1:27:05
  By by some of these. These players in the in the in
• 1:27:09
  the. Background Who?
• 1:27:10
  Who? Who?
• 1:27:11
  Don't like this message. Even that, though.
• 1:27:13
  Even the complaints about Whitaker.
• 1:27:15
  It would have been very. Easy, because clearly that those
• 1:27:18
  people were vocal. The BBC knew that some people
• 1:27:21
  weren't happy. They could have just got rid of
• 1:27:23
  her if they wanted to and brought in a man.
• 1:27:26
  They doubled down. In fact, they doubled down and
• 1:27:28
  started having all these historicals about these
• 1:27:30
  incredible women. They were putting lots of
• 1:27:32
  powerful women on the screen. That that, of course, is a clear
• 1:27:35
  trend in children's. Publishing because there's
• 1:27:37
  there's there's several books where you have Rosa Parks, you
• 1:27:40
  have a media air heart. Coco Chanel weird enough if you
• 1:27:42
  like a bit of fascist inspired clothes design, but it it's very
• 1:27:46
  much as I've said before, Rosa Parks, an obvious figure to look
• 1:27:49
  at. It was a necessary figure to
• 1:27:51
  look at, but it's an obvious figure to look at because it's
• 1:27:53
  what children are doing at school.
• 1:27:54
  All the trend is in those books. You look at Horrible Histories
• 1:27:57
  in the second version of it, the the, the, the second run where
• 1:28:01
  you really do get a ration up of historical women, even the first
• 1:28:05
  lot where you get the songs about the suffragettes.
• 1:28:07
  So you can see there's an awareness there of what the
• 1:28:09
  children know and what you build on on on that knowledge, I
• 1:28:13
  think, yeah. I mean and like Cathcart in in
• 1:28:18
  Skyfall, of course it's got a crawly connection.
• 1:28:20
  They enjoy her. Her daughter is married.
• 1:28:25
  To. A Lumina up in Worth, the family
• 1:28:29
  they're all buried down in. Town.
• 1:28:31
  There is, there is that. There's that Byronic link there.
• 1:28:35
  And here is the the child now saving us all.
• 1:28:38
  Yeah, it's Wesley Crusher. No, it's not because I care.
• 1:28:42
  About this figure. In a way, I didn't really care
• 1:28:44
  about Wesley Crusher. And like, that's not Wil
• 1:28:46
  Wheaton's fault, because you look at him and stand by me and
• 1:28:48
  he's very good. It's just that it's another
• 1:28:50
  program where they can't write for a child without making them
• 1:28:53
  a precocious prat that you don't care about this now with them in
• 1:28:57
  the cage. Her trying to figure everything
• 1:28:59
  out, explaining that they've got the perfect ecosystem.
• 1:29:02
  This is what you were saying about her using science.
• 1:29:04
  I love this and just how it's shocked point of views.
• 1:29:08
  The Dreg. Looking in the cage at them.
• 1:29:10
  Them looking out of the cage at the It's so brilliantly done,
• 1:29:13
  yeah, and it takes you back to the use of.
• 1:29:16
  This room early on, where they're still vaguely in
• 1:29:19
  control, The fact that the drag has made its way in here and the
• 1:29:23
  humours are now in the cage, shows you how everything has
• 1:29:25
  gone so badly wrong in this episode.
• 1:29:27
  And the figure in the cage is the doctor and you know from
• 1:29:31
  Davis, and Davis has been locked in a cage for whole episodes of
• 1:29:36
  Kinder and Snake Dance. It does look a bit like the
• 1:29:38
  Cajun Snake dance. The doctor that that kind of
• 1:29:41
  hopeless helplessness, but. Here the Doctor trapped, but
• 1:29:45
  knowing everything and having all the information held to
• 1:29:49
  hand. And yeah, he's.
• 1:29:51
  It's doctor as scientist, and so it's woman as scientist.
• 1:29:54
  It's terribly, terribly important, I think.
• 1:29:55
  And shame is that the audience wasn't necessarily there.
• 1:29:58
  You can see how children were responded to, which on things
• 1:30:01
  like children in need, of course there was still that instinct
• 1:30:04
  there. I think it goes back to your
• 1:30:05
  point about Moffett forgets he's writing for children.
• 1:30:10
  I don't think Capaldi forgets. I think there's an incredible
• 1:30:13
  moment very early in Capaldi's room where he meets a boy on the
• 1:30:15
  autistic spectrum. He's very concerned that Matt
• 1:30:17
  Smith is gone. And Capaldi says to Matt's asked
• 1:30:20
  to look after the the show and the role, and he showed that
• 1:30:23
  that connection was still there. But the issues in the writing,
• 1:30:25
  whereas this this kind of becomes obvious, becomes too
• 1:30:31
  obviously this environmentalism. But I think it's it's necessary
• 1:30:35
  in a further edit, I think you. Wouldn't need those lines.
• 1:30:37
  Because that point would be made within the actual narrative.
• 1:30:40
  It wouldn't need that speech there.
• 1:30:42
  But when you just sit there, woman, a woman.
• 1:30:44
  As a scientist. Forefront of this show, Yeah.
• 1:30:47
  Vital. I don't think the kids aren't
• 1:30:49
  ready for that. I think so.
• 1:30:50
  The adults are. It's the adults.
• 1:30:52
  The kids are, well, are attuned to that.
• 1:30:54
  It's the adults who are watching like we was.
• 1:30:56
  We was doing women as scientists way.
• 1:30:58
  Back. Star Trek.
• 1:30:59
  Voyager. Catherine Janeway, things like
• 1:31:00
  that. Yeah.
• 1:31:01
  Yeah. No, no, It's men.
• 1:31:04
  It's men who think they have an ownership of the show because
• 1:31:06
  they've watched it since about 1967.
• 1:31:09
  I think I might know who you're talking about.
• 1:31:11
  There, not just him, but I think no.
• 1:31:14
  But it's it is. That.
• 1:31:16
  Yeah, it's that. It's the same person, you know
• 1:31:22
  that. Asked why we were animating the
• 1:31:26
  Abominable snowmen to be. Racially.
• 1:31:28
  Acceptable. What are we doing now?
• 1:31:30
  I I still think, of course, Davison.
• 1:31:33
  Davison kind of complaining about wicked Cos Gaston because
• 1:31:35
  we were the heroes for his for his sons with grandsons.
• 1:31:38
  It was such a strange moment for him to to to say that.
• 1:31:41
  I mean I don't know if he stuck to a reversed it by just I
• 1:31:44
  don't. I'm sitting here watching it as
• 1:31:47
  as a you know in his 40s CIS white male and I don't see what
• 1:31:53
  your objection is the doctor being a woman and I don't see
• 1:31:57
  what the problem is in this episode.
• 1:31:59
  There are far far it's not the best episode of the season but
• 1:32:01
  it looks amazing and it's it's doing something different and
• 1:32:06
  it's well acted by and large it's playing with genre.
• 1:32:09
  It's playing with expectations. It's playing with the
• 1:32:11
  expectations of the of the programme.
• 1:32:13
  The money is there on the screen.
• 1:32:15
  There's AI think it's it's full of great set pieces.
• 1:32:18
  It's kind of danger. It's got great monsters.
• 1:32:21
  Yeah, it it it looks great the way.
• 1:32:24
  That this run looks really good. I do think it has something
• 1:32:28
  important to say. Absolutely.
• 1:32:29
  I think people don't want to hear it, but it does.
• 1:32:31
  That's not important to say if they if you have to grab hold of
• 1:32:35
  the. Camera and literally.
• 1:32:36
  Scream the people then. Then that's what we have to do.
• 1:32:40
  It's this. Weird idea that the BBC.
• 1:32:43
  Is just I mean it's all there's always been that complaint I
• 1:32:45
  think. I think social media has made it
• 1:32:48
  worse. I think lockdown has made it
• 1:32:49
  worse. I think a lot of people
• 1:32:50
  radicalise going online in lockdown.
• 1:32:53
  I think around 2016 as well, people got radicalised and this
• 1:32:56
  notion of this constant search for enemies, this kind of
• 1:32:59
  nostalgia porn. So you go back into the bus and
• 1:33:03
  doctor then becomes part of that because it's not as good as it
• 1:33:05
  was in the old days. Well, you know you will.
• 1:33:07
  You might well have said that in 1967 that it wasn't as good as
• 1:33:10
  in 1964, but it's also engaging with the real world.
• 1:33:14
  Because to to not engage the real world, to not go to the
• 1:33:18
  outside is, is to deny a central tenant that's in the program.
• 1:33:22
  Not all the time, not all the time at all, but it is a product
• 1:33:25
  of the here and now. And we're in the here and now.
• 1:33:27
  We can see hyper capitalism has. Led to where?
• 1:33:32
  We are in this country. Dark forces within politics have
• 1:33:36
  led to where we are, and the world is burning.
• 1:33:38
  You know, look at the floods that are taking place.
• 1:33:40
  That's not happening by accident.
• 1:33:41
  And I don't think there's many people complain about this who
• 1:33:44
  think it's an act of God. Is it because it's a woman
• 1:33:48
  telling them? Is that the other issue as well?
• 1:33:50
  Of course. I think you may have something
• 1:33:51
  here. This is.
• 1:33:52
  So bleak this is. As bleak as Doctor Who?
• 1:33:55
  Gets the potential. That you didn't listen.
• 1:33:57
  This is you looking back, because then the screen becomes
• 1:34:00
  a mirror. You're not watching it, you're
• 1:34:02
  seeing yourself or seeing a version of yourself.
• 1:34:04
  Do you think that's what people don't like?
• 1:34:07
  Potentially, you know, it's the rage of Caliban.
• 1:34:09
  Seeing himself in the mirror or the rage of Caliban not seeing
• 1:34:11
  himself in the mirror. So you see yourself.
• 1:34:13
  It's the the drag. You look again.
• 1:34:16
  It's jolly Wicker. So it's not you, because it's
• 1:34:18
  not the stereotypical man in his 40s or 50s.
• 1:34:21
  It's that sketch from Mitchell and Webb.
• 1:34:24
  Are we the bad guys? And can I just ask you?
• 1:34:30
  Is it OK? To cut away from those remaining
• 1:34:33
  characters and not see where they end up.
• 1:34:36
  Yes, it is OK because that that is.
• 1:34:38
  Very unusual for a Doctor Who. Absolutely.
• 1:34:40
  It it is very unusual, but it it.
• 1:34:42
  Is enticed as we're given the nature of the story and we don't
• 1:34:45
  we know they're going to die. How are they not going to die?
• 1:34:47
  We've seen the mass groups of Dregs and.
• 1:34:53
  Bella is. Sucking her thumb.
• 1:34:55
  Again, in a way that we've seen. Throughout the show, which is a
• 1:34:57
  harbinger of of of doom, essentially, she's reunited with
• 1:35:02
  her mother. So of course it's it's riffing
• 1:35:04
  on parents, which we see with James Buckley and his son, but
• 1:35:09
  also lurking behind this, of course, is Ryan's relationship
• 1:35:13
  with his father, his dead mother, his dead grandmother,
• 1:35:17
  with his pseudo grandfather. So it's all coming to play
• 1:35:19
  there. And of course it highlights the
• 1:35:21
  fact that this isn't a safe world.
• 1:35:24
  This isn't. It's essentially the televisual
• 1:35:27
  equivalent. If you think back to, say,
• 1:35:29
  interference, where he gets shot in the stomach and he dies there
• 1:35:33
  on dust, that's not season 11. Season 11 has that elegant
• 1:35:38
  quality to it. It's building towards the end,
• 1:35:40
  but it's not as some as brutal as a figure from a western
• 1:35:43
  gunning down the most elegant of docks up to that point.
• 1:35:46
  That's an intrusion of a different type of world, and
• 1:35:49
  that's what we've had here. Let us not forget Paul, that
• 1:35:51
  interference. You know, came bottom of the
• 1:35:54
  populist pole. That's wrong as well.
• 1:35:57
  People can't handle. It can.
• 1:35:59
  They like they. They they can't.
• 1:36:00
  Handle and and it deviates. From the mode and that of course
• 1:36:03
  is a deeply political text as well, of course because we think
• 1:36:06
  the doctors in some alien prison and he's in a prison in Saudi
• 1:36:10
  and it's about the arms trade and it's as politically acute as
• 1:36:13
  this is interference is. And yeah, I.
• 1:36:19
  Lawrence was what was amazing in that run.
• 1:36:22
  I think he was doing things with the novels and then again you
• 1:36:25
  can see people couldn't always cope with it.
• 1:36:26
  They couldn't cope with this. The the hatred towards this is
• 1:36:29
  is bizarre like as this is the run I'm kind of relearning or
• 1:36:35
  engaging with in a way that I didn't engage with properly the
• 1:36:37
  first time round for for various reasons and and and I just don't
• 1:36:41
  see why people dislike this episode so much.
• 1:36:45
  It's not perfect but it my God, it's good.
• 1:36:48
  I mean, we've already said about how it isn't playing.
• 1:36:50
  By the rules. Is it?
• 1:36:53
  Because this is an extreme example of that?
• 1:36:55
  Like, you know, the whole thing about, Oh no, no, Doctor Who's
• 1:36:58
  so safe is doing the same thing all the time.
• 1:37:00
  Do something different. Oh my God, no, don't do that.
• 1:37:02
  Jesus Christ. Let's go back to being safe
• 1:37:04
  again. I mean this.
• 1:37:06
  This is the season that. Really is pushing the rules
• 1:37:09
  because you know time is Jordan, huge doctor this type of story
• 1:37:17
  he really say he played it safe. It's battling.
• 1:37:21
  He doesn't play it safe and I and I think again.
• 1:37:23
  Come back to the question you put earlier.
• 1:37:26
  What's he trying to do? Very different types of season.
• 1:37:29
  I don't flux isn't quite what it would have been but but it it is
• 1:37:33
  what it is and you know bits of it are very very good. 11 but
• 1:37:38
  far more gentle to the wrong word.
• 1:37:40
  But but but this really is kind of a the season where he
• 1:37:43
  ratchets everything up. Yeah this is Chipman as the fan
• 1:37:47
  moving the show, making use of the continuity, making use of
• 1:37:50
  the established missiles, doing something different with that's
• 1:37:52
  the crucial thing. This isn't fan wank.
• 1:37:55
  Do you not think that 12 might have been a bit of a slap in the
• 1:37:57
  face? After because I think 11 has a
• 1:38:00
  slower pace. It is more thoughtful, even the
• 1:38:03
  music, it's calmer. It's it's more sort of
• 1:38:06
  atmospheric rather than in your face.
• 1:38:07
  Whereas suddenly spyful. Well actually, I think maybe
• 1:38:10
  resolution, suddenly everything ratchets it up.
• 1:38:13
  Suddenly we're getting lots of community continuity, huge guest
• 1:38:17
  cast. We're going all around the world
• 1:38:19
  in every single episode. The pace is furious.
• 1:38:22
  Suddenly we've got set piece after set piece.
• 1:38:24
  It is so different from 11. But that's good thing, surely?
• 1:38:27
  Yeah. That's what you want.
• 1:38:29
  I think people had to come to expect that they.
• 1:38:31
  Thought that's what they were getting.
• 1:38:33
  Suddenly they got this. It's like going from dragon fire
• 1:38:36
  to remembrance. Another McCoy.
• 1:38:38
  That's. True though I.
• 1:38:41
  I. And you know.
• 1:38:43
  It's the same showrunner. It's the same.
• 1:38:44
  It's the same Doctor. Now, what's interesting, of
• 1:38:46
  course, is the Doctrine 11 is still the Doctrine 12.
• 1:38:50
  The Doctrine 25 has moved along from the Doctrine 24.
• 1:38:54
  McCoy has really started to get into what he wants to do.
• 1:38:57
  But you can see it. It varies.
• 1:38:59
  Bits of 24, I think. I think.
• 1:39:00
  Paradise Towers, you can see it there, and certainly down from
• 1:39:04
  the Bannerman. This, this takes the doctrine,
• 1:39:07
  puts the Doctor in very different, difficult scenarios,
• 1:39:11
  and then ultimately confronts the Doctor about themselves.
• 1:39:15
  That they don't really know themselves, or they don't know
• 1:39:17
  an earlier version of themselves, just as here they're
• 1:39:20
  now on Earth, but it's not on Earth they've ever actually
• 1:39:23
  really had to deal with. Maybe perseverant, but.
• 1:39:26
  Then that's the sense. In which that that then doesn't
• 1:39:28
  happen. That is a potential that that
• 1:39:30
  shut down. But this is takes its cue
• 1:39:34
  shortly from Pyramids of Mars and going into potential time
• 1:39:38
  and to see the Earth absolutely ruined.
• 1:39:40
  And in in that the Doctor doesn't leave the targets.
• 1:39:43
  He puts Sarah in the doorway with Lawrence Garmin.
• 1:39:46
  The link is established with with HG Wells, but here the
• 1:39:51
  Doctor doesn't realize that's where they are and then has to
• 1:39:54
  engage with their favorite planet.
• 1:39:58
  But it's not a. Version they recognize obviously
• 1:40:01
  I would question whether going back to what you.
• 1:40:03
  Were saying a minute ago, I would question whether 25 is so.
• 1:40:08
  Different from 24 because I. Do think McCoy actually has some
• 1:40:11
  very dark moments in 24. Very thoughtful moments.
• 1:40:14
  Sometimes I think he's surrounded by so much camp.
• 1:40:17
  He is sort of the most toned down part of most stories.
• 1:40:20
  Yeah, I think that's right. What happens here is yes.
• 1:40:22
  That sort of likeable. Funny, quirky, energetic.
• 1:40:26
  Jodie Whittaker skips into Season 12 but by the end of the
• 1:40:29
  season, you know Gallifrey's gone.
• 1:40:32
  She's suddenly had these huge revelations about her life this.
• 1:40:34
  And then she's to a point where in dear Darty, she's talking you
• 1:40:38
  know about the flat cheese. Such a, you know, bugger off you
• 1:40:40
  guys. I've got to make this choice in
• 1:40:43
  ascension of the side men. I've played so many risk of your
• 1:40:45
  lives. I'm so stupid.
• 1:40:47
  She's furious. In the timeless children, she's
• 1:40:49
  shoving the masters to the floor and saying show me the rest.
• 1:40:52
  Like we see this sort of darkness creep in and just blow
• 1:40:56
  in those last couple of episodes.
• 1:40:57
  It's great. I think.
• 1:40:59
  I I think it's. And we we talked about this as.
• 1:41:03
  A as a potential what you. Could have done 2122 that that
• 1:41:06
  you you have 21 as dark as it is and that the Doctor responds to
• 1:41:10
  that in 22 which of course is what they they they don't do
• 1:41:13
  that. So just it's like the Doctor is
• 1:41:14
  this kind of brutalized figure and there is that that sense
• 1:41:17
  that I think maybe partly issues because there's a a sense of
• 1:41:20
  fun. And then you put them through
• 1:41:23
  this relentless rigor through this, they're put through the
• 1:41:26
  rigor throughout this at various points and it becomes they can
• 1:41:30
  no longer really trust themselves.
• 1:41:31
  So they can't trust their own history is wrong.
• 1:41:33
  But what's really interesting in flux is when given the chance to
• 1:41:37
  get the watch, the Doctor puts the watch away, doesn't, you
• 1:41:41
  know, doesn't open the watch. And the sense in which that that
• 1:41:45
  past is the past and they don't need to know about it because
• 1:41:48
  then they're moving forward because Doctor Who's always at
• 1:41:50
  his best when it's moving forward.
• 1:41:51
  And so I think because he knows the show better than most
• 1:41:56
  people, Chipman doesn't get into the track of producing the same
• 1:41:59
  season over and over again. In a sense, it's what Graham
• 1:42:03
  Williams does accidentally between 1516 and 70.
• 1:42:06
  Totally. Those are very similar, but
• 1:42:08
  they're very different seasons as well.
• 1:42:10
  Now part of it is because you've got to Hinchcliffe hangovers in
• 1:42:14
  in in in 15. But there's that sense with
• 1:42:18
  Williams that he is trying to do something different with the
• 1:42:20
  program to extend the mythos, Make the time was less dominant
• 1:42:25
  for a God system in there, really interrogate the notions
• 1:42:28
  of time wars and Galloway that never really pans out, in part
• 1:42:31
  because they lose. Sharda Chippenham is doing
• 1:42:33
  something here of kind of interrogating the character and
• 1:42:37
  and and so you get a very very different season.
• 1:42:40
  You know 11 in some respects is back to 24 because other than
• 1:42:45
  the right 24 doesn't have any references to the past 23.
• 1:42:52
  Till the Master turns up they're all new monsters and then you
• 1:42:56
  bring back the continuity but what you do is you you, you,
• 1:43:00
  you, you change it. You make it unfamiliar for us as
• 1:43:03
  viewers but also for the Doctor themselves.
• 1:43:06
  I think. I think one of the one of the
• 1:43:07
  really great bits in is Timeless Children, the Brendan business
• 1:43:12
  and Timeless Children, you know, because it's island, it's a
• 1:43:16
  throwback to all those jokes in 1450 about his Galifian Island.
• 1:43:20
  But also there's they're really moving, actually kind of needs
• 1:43:23
  Superman as well the the child as couple find this child with
• 1:43:27
  this, this extraordinary power. But I'm still not quite sure
• 1:43:31
  narratively where it sits who who that narrative is for.
• 1:43:34
  But it it, it confuses us while moving the story along.
• 1:43:38
  Or it introduces a mystery to us which has to be told to us, but
• 1:43:42
  it's been told to the Doctor. Which comes back to the problem.
• 1:43:45
  I think that might be what people pick up on the the Doctor
• 1:43:47
  is in control of the narrative at that point.
• 1:43:49
  Isn't discovering it. It's only been told to the
• 1:43:51
  Doctor. But it's a rare misstep I think.
• 1:43:54
  I don't know. I did those scenes, yeah.
• 1:43:56
  And then when I, when we. Find out that that's what
• 1:43:58
  happened to the Doctor and we've seen it via that storyline.
• 1:44:02
  I just thought that was a really different way of yeah I know we
• 1:44:05
  don't know that that the the all the answers are being spilt out
• 1:44:08
  in essentially an assignment They're actually going to hit us
• 1:44:10
  in the time as children in a in a visually interesting and like
• 1:44:14
  you said quite a moving way. I mean that the the idea I mean
• 1:44:16
  it's horror when the clothes. And they put the thing on.
• 1:44:20
  It's really it's it's as horrible as some of the stuff
• 1:44:23
  that you find around Bill in world enough in time it's not
• 1:44:28
  safe in. Terms of what he's doing with
• 1:44:30
  the show in. Terms of the content he's put.
• 1:44:32
  On in terms of how far he's willing to push the violence.
• 1:44:36
  The the problem is we we don't. Because.
• 1:44:38
  Because Chipman works for Moffett and he works for Davis,
• 1:44:43
  we don't know what he would have done with those stories.
• 1:44:46
  We don't know what he would have done with 42.
• 1:44:49
  I don't know if he writes Rory's death in cold blood or if that's
• 1:44:53
  Moffett puts that on to the end. Probably Moffett, I think.
• 1:44:57
  And so we only. Really get a sense of his
• 1:45:00
  lighter touch. I think in in Dinosaurs and
• 1:45:04
  Power of Three. But we don't know how dark it.
• 1:45:06
  I suppose you do have some sense how dark it would have gone.
• 1:45:09
  It's something like Cyber Woman, which is a fundamentally stupid
• 1:45:13
  piece of television in total. It's really wretchedly awful for
• 1:45:16
  television. But there is a kind of really
• 1:45:19
  bleak story in that and amongst like the the the metal bikini
• 1:45:24
  and which is some of the shittest stops who of all time.
• 1:45:29
  But actually the idea that and because it doesn't make any
• 1:45:32
  sense, because we don't, we don't see them revert into that
• 1:45:34
  mode of conversion in the battle of torture because that's not
• 1:45:37
  what the cyber Cybermen do. So you have to go back to the
• 1:45:40
  other version of Doctor and also it's kind of Superman 3 is
• 1:45:43
  coming into play there as well. But you can see is there in that
• 1:45:46
  torture material that he's produced, if you can there to
• 1:45:50
  watch it because it is shit. But it is coming to play here,
• 1:45:53
  here I I I don't understand the dislike towards children except
• 1:45:57
  older fans. Remember when he went to town on
• 1:46:00
  the programme in season 23 and there is a sense of you're a
• 1:46:04
  bloody hypocrite. There is an irony, you.
• 1:46:06
  Know because you did make a comparison.
• 1:46:07
  Between flux and trial of a Time Lord.
• 1:46:10
  But he did produce exactly the same thing, and I can't remember
• 1:46:13
  what you said at the end. It didn't.
• 1:46:15
  It didn't deliver, but there wasn't much to it.
• 1:46:16
  And then suddenly people were quoting that back at him at the
• 1:46:19
  end. Yeah, Which was, you know,
• 1:46:21
  probably poetic. Justice.
• 1:46:23
  It is, but I I go back to my original point.
• 1:46:25
  If Flux is can made, the fact that it's made it always a
• 1:46:29
  miracle trying Time Lord should be much better than it is
• 1:46:33
  because they don't have a global pandemic and they do have plenty
• 1:46:36
  of time. What they've got is a
• 1:46:38
  dysfunctional relationship with the production office.
• 1:46:40
  Robert Holmes dying and right he's who can't work for the
• 1:46:43
  programme. Flux is produced against a once
• 1:46:47
  in a lifetime set of circumstances, the fact that
• 1:46:51
  it's on the screen at all and as sharply.
• 1:46:55
  Good. Places and the begrudges.
• 1:46:58
  Are just. Begrudges and I I think she just
• 1:47:00
  go and watch something else. Because the way they're going,
• 1:47:03
  the way they're talking about that, the way they talk about
• 1:47:06
  the specials, the way that they're extrapolating what the
• 1:47:09
  new season is going to look like, they're not going to be
• 1:47:12
  happy until it's gone. And then they can just go back
• 1:47:15
  and they can they can fantasize about what they would have done
• 1:47:18
  or go and watch the DVDs. So they they clearly are in
• 1:47:21
  enthralled with the journey sort of you've got on with the.
• 1:47:25
  Chris Shibnow Era and that is going back and sort of
• 1:47:27
  rediscovering it. Yeah, I feel like those people
• 1:47:30
  are going to do that, but it's going to be a long time coming.
• 1:47:33
  When this was the now they just, I just don't think they can ever
• 1:47:36
  be happy with what's now. You know, there's the
• 1:47:39
  expectations are too high. Everything's going to be great.
• 1:47:41
  All this cancellation anxiety, you know, if it isn't the best
• 1:47:44
  thing ever, getting huge ratings and public recognition, then you
• 1:47:48
  know it's doomed. It's nostalgia.
• 1:47:52
  Again. And nostalgia.
• 1:47:53
  Is always a trap. It wasn't, I'll tell you.
• 1:47:56
  And you know this is going. Way off pace.
• 1:47:57
  But I I've had a similar conversation with Marva Rob
• 1:48:00
  yesterday when we did a recording about a recent Big
• 1:48:03
  Finish featuring the Lizard Careers.
• 1:48:06
  OK. And nobody loved that character
• 1:48:09
  back in the day. It was universally panned beyond
• 1:48:11
  the good performance. The writing was universally
• 1:48:14
  panned and everyone's hailing is returned as the second coming of
• 1:48:17
  Big Finish. Now, I listened to the story and
• 1:48:19
  it was perfectly average, You know, it was competent, but it
• 1:48:21
  wasn't exceptional. And everyone's going declaring
• 1:48:24
  this is the best thing the big finisher brought out in years.
• 1:48:26
  No, it just reminds you of a time when Big Finish were doing
• 1:48:28
  better things and that's it's the nostalgia factor.
• 1:48:32
  It's so powerful. Yeah, yeah, it's too powerful.
• 1:48:36
  Because the minute you start feeding on.
• 1:48:38
  Yourself. You're you're done.
• 1:48:39
  Because in the end you'll just eat yourself.
• 1:48:42
  Just like look look at power of the.
• 1:48:44
  Doctor which you know. Some people were more excited by
• 1:48:47
  the trailer of A Power of the Doctor that featured Janet
• 1:48:49
  Fielding and Sophie Aldridge than they were by Legends of the
• 1:48:51
  Sea Devils. Fair enough.
• 1:48:53
  It wasn't great. It was OK.
• 1:48:54
  It wasn't great. And then, but they're
• 1:48:57
  forgetting, you know, Janet Fielding, she ain't much of an
• 1:48:59
  actress. You know, she didn't deliver
• 1:49:01
  much back in the day. Sophie Aldridge.
• 1:49:02
  Yeah. OK, good character, Ace.
• 1:49:04
  That's when the show was on a precipice.
• 1:49:06
  You know, you're looking back to times where the show was on
• 1:49:08
  death row. Yeah.
• 1:49:10
  And in fact, the figure that they really.
• 1:49:12
  Need for the public to recognize is Bonnie Langford, which is
• 1:49:15
  what I said all along. And then here she turns up and
• 1:49:18
  she turns in the type of performance that she was doing
• 1:49:21
  anyway but the script and the kind of the assumption around
• 1:49:24
  the type of character that she would be based on her previous
• 1:49:27
  work because Bonnie Langford has a career unlike most Doctor Who
• 1:49:31
  companions from classic Who much closer what we see in new Who.
• 1:49:34
  And here she is again now maybe not a companion but certainly
• 1:49:37
  important figure in that and an important reminder of of of that
• 1:49:41
  connection. I think it's great that she's
• 1:49:42
  back and I don't think it's just based on nostalgia because it's
• 1:49:46
  for the same reason. Just given that there's no great
• 1:49:49
  sense of affection for those two seasons amongst fandom, and
• 1:49:53
  certainly amongst the general public, Bonnie has status.
• 1:49:55
  Bonnie's worked. In the entire interim of her two
• 1:49:59
  Doctor Who, you know, stints and has become a massive public
• 1:50:03
  figure, her being in Doctor Who is a statement.
• 1:50:06
  Yeah, I mean, Bonnie Langford and and Louis.
• 1:50:08
  Jameson are the. Only two companions from Classic
• 1:50:12
  who have got major careers that you could look back on.
• 1:50:17
  I'll stand. By that statement, no one.
• 1:50:19
  Else has got that type of and Bike Me.
• 1:50:21
  Mel's not brilliant because of what she's got to work with, but
• 1:50:25
  Louise Jameson's lead is one of one of the great performances in
• 1:50:28
  Doctor Who at it's best and particularly in those first
• 1:50:32
  three stories I was certainly robots are different and talents
• 1:50:34
  when there's a quite noted from my problems.
• 1:50:38
  With the script for talents when?
• 1:50:39
  I am. But her performance there that
• 1:50:42
  kind of childlike learning about the world.
• 1:50:45
  It's beautiful to the whole. It really is it's it's an
• 1:50:48
  exceptional piece of acting and you don't tend to find it in in
• 1:50:53
  old who because often the material is not there new He's
• 1:50:56
  very different as we just was we described here there's some
• 1:50:59
  brilliant work a springboard for your career new yeah.
• 1:51:02
  Absolutely. It makes me think of.
• 1:51:04
  That sequence and tell us. When Cheyenne, you know where
• 1:51:06
  you've got Tom Baker and Trevor Baxter.
• 1:51:10
  Trevor Baxter. What's it, Trevor?
• 1:51:13
  Professor Lyford the Doctor in. Lyford, they're having fabulous.
• 1:51:16
  Dialogue exchange. She's sitting there on the table
• 1:51:18
  looking at her chess board and I can't take my eyes off her as
• 1:51:21
  she's trying to think around the strategies of chess.
• 1:51:24
  Yeah, incredible. Well look, we should probably
• 1:51:27
  round off all from 55 with our three fabulous reasons as to why
• 1:51:31
  people should go and watch this. And I feel like more than ever
• 1:51:34
  on a ham sewer blood pen dive. This is important.
• 1:51:37
  This is why you should go and watch it.
• 1:51:39
  So I need 3 reasons for you. Why?
• 1:51:41
  Off you go. It defies your expectations.
• 1:51:44
  In terms of Doctor Who, but also the genres of which it's making
• 1:51:47
  use, it's a brilliant piece of horror.
• 1:51:52
  It's unafraid. To kill off.
• 1:51:54
  Characters and it's a brilliant showcase of wizard that's very.
• 1:51:59
  Extremely good reasons. Oh, where are we heading next?
• 1:52:04
  I don't. Know where do you want.
• 1:52:04
  To go well, I know, I I know. Where I'd like to take you.
• 1:52:07
  And that is right the way back to season three.
• 1:52:11
  To experience, I won't say watch, but experience a pure
• 1:52:16
  historical that you, I believe, have claimed probably shouldn't
• 1:52:20
  be a Doctor Who story at all. But we're very pleased that it
• 1:52:24
  is the massacre. Oh yes.
• 1:52:26
  Oh good. Goody.
• 1:52:27
  Goody. Goody I feel I.
• 1:52:30
  Mean I feel all these stories. Play to your strengths, but I
• 1:52:32
  feel that will particularly play to your strengths.
• 1:52:35
  Massacre in its relationship with Christopher Marlow.
• 1:52:38
  Oh, oh, yes. I've never even heard that.
• 1:52:41
  Reading. Oh, there you go.
• 1:52:44
  Every. Day is a learning day before we
• 1:52:47
  out, because I've never done this with you.
• 1:52:48
  Before. If people should wish to find
• 1:52:50
  you on social media, where are you at?
• 1:52:53
  I am on Twitter. Despite saying I wouldn't be on
• 1:52:56
  it as much, I am there if people need to contact me.
• 1:52:58
  What is my Twitter handle? Paul.
• 1:53:03
  Oh, Paul? Paul L Quinn?
• 1:53:04
  Something like that. I've also got an Asian YouTube
• 1:53:08
  channel, Paul Quinn's Mind Dump, where there are are videos of
• 1:53:13
  like the collective thoughts of a middle-aged academic, but
• 1:53:17
  there's some more material due to go out there in the next
• 1:53:18
  couple of weeks or so. Wonderful.
• 1:53:20
  I I the the first one I. Saw and it was so concise and
• 1:53:25
  yet packed full of substance. Well, I said.
• 1:53:28
  There's a great piano to. Keys of Mariners on There and
• 1:53:33
  Electro go for work, so it's crossover with work.
• 1:53:35
  As for some of you will know I am an academic, I'm the director
• 1:53:39
  of the Chichester Centre for Fairy Tales, Fantasy and
• 1:53:43
  Speculative Fictions at the University of Chichester.
• 1:53:46
  We've got a Twitter feed as well.
• 1:53:47
  I can't remember what the handle is, but if you if you Google
• 1:53:51
  that, you'll find us. And we've got a YouTube channel
• 1:53:55
  that's even more nascent than mine.
• 1:53:58
  But there'll be some stuff going on there.
• 1:53:59
  Although there's a feeling that there's too much Doctor Who.
• 1:54:03
  Although my head of the apartment has.
• 1:54:05
  He assures me he's got every Target novel ever published and
• 1:54:10
  he was at long lead. So maybe we'll get Hugo on here
• 1:54:12
  to talk about graphic novel because he's great.
• 1:54:14
  He's not graphic. People sniff Dr. Content online,
• 1:54:17
  they'll. Be there.
• 1:54:18
  Tell him that. Well, I'll tell you, it's Doctor
• 1:54:19
  Who, but also talk him. You never go wrong with a bit of
• 1:54:22
  talking, so that's why I combine talking Doctor Who and CS Lewis
• 1:54:25
  in a particular lecture. So yeah, I am there and, you
• 1:54:28
  know, liverish comments about going aside.
• 1:54:31
  I'm on Blue Sky as well, and no one seems to be on there, but I
• 1:54:34
  think I'm the same name as well. You'll find me somewhere.
• 1:54:38
  I'll be on here. What?
• 1:54:40
  I'll leave as a small enticement.
• 1:54:42
  For the future, I'll put this on record.
• 1:54:44
  So then we have to actually do it.
• 1:54:46
  Paul and I are, if you've enjoyed Paul on these podcasts
• 1:54:49
  when you're about to hear a lot more of them, we're about to
• 1:54:52
  step into a venture of our own. I know what you're all thinking.
• 1:54:55
  Not another fucking podcast, but this will be something.
• 1:55:00
  A bit different from. The hamster commentaries
• 1:55:02
  certainly different from the strictly come hamster seasons.
• 1:55:05
  We'll be approaching Doctor Who in a we'll be analysing it
• 1:55:09
  critically, but not story by story in a very different way.
• 1:55:13
  But I'll leave that there coming soon, hopefully this year.
• 1:55:18
  Oh, definitely this year. If we don't do it, we'll never
• 1:55:20
  do it. Oh, then let's get going.
• 1:55:22
  Let's go. Let's come on it as someone used
• 1:55:25
  to say. On CNN before.
• 1:55:26
  There was some type of sex scandal around it, so make it so
• 1:55:30
  if you want a different a sci-fi thing or punch it on another
• 1:55:33
  one. The quote I'll get back at me as
• 1:55:35
  the line. Must be drawn here.
• 1:55:39
  Well needs more podcast what you're talking about, it's like.
• 1:55:43
  It's we're now in franchising with Doctor Who.
• 1:55:45
  So yeah, the Hamster franchise must continue.
• 1:55:48
  It will never end right.