Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Talks to David Gillespie-Pratt about his choice of Underworld (1/4)

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Talks to David Gillespie-Pratt about his choice of Underworld (1/4) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:22
  None. A hamster with a blump.
• 0:34
  Pen Knife For doing quicker, quicker, quicker.
• 0:40
  Welcome back to our hamster with a blump pen Knife.
• 0:42
  The Doctor Who commentary Podcast.
• 0:45
  David, Hello. Hello and good evening.
• 0:49
  I've got a question for you. Go for it.
• 0:53
  Well, because, you know, we've already recorded unreleased, but
• 0:57
  recorded a commentary on The Unquiet Dead, you know, a very
• 1:02
  highly regarded episode of the new series.
• 1:06
  So I think to myself, well, this fella's fantastic.
• 1:09
  I'll have to have him back to talk about the classic series.
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  What would he possibly want to talk about?
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  Off you go. We're talking about Underworld
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  and who would want to pick Underworld?
• 1:23
  Poor, Unloved. I'm looking at him.
• 1:26
  Yeah, I to be honest, I'll be really frank.
• 1:29
  I thought, anybody can talk about Genesis of the Dialects,
• 1:34
  all all the perceived classic. They've been done.
• 1:37
  And I and I did go into thinking we could have a bit of fun with
• 1:41
  Underworld. And then I watched it.
• 1:46
  I read up on it, I read the target novel and I've got a
• 1:50
  slightly different appreciation of it.
• 1:53
  This is a this is an unloved story There.
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  There probably are a handful of people who do love it.
• 2:00
  But it doesn't seem to provoke the same passionate defence that
• 2:04
  things like Twin Dilemma or Time Flight, even, you know, they
• 2:08
  they loads the stories with some real champions.
• 2:12
  I never really see anybody championing Underworld.
• 2:15
  I can kind of see why, but the more I looked into it, the more
• 2:20
  I watched it again. Did a bit of digging going this
• 2:25
  is a problem, child, but it's and it's consistently voted the
• 2:32
  the bottom Tom Baker story in so many of these polls.
• 2:37
  I don't think it belongs at the bottom of those polls.
• 2:39
  Yeah. Now you said this to me off,
• 2:40
  Mike a second ago did this. So what's the bottom Tom Baker
• 2:43
  story then? This is coming from somebody who
• 2:48
  pretty much I can find the positive I love.
• 2:50
  All the classic series is for me to say.
• 2:53
  There's nothing I hate. Yeah, I don't hear anything.
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  You just like some more than others.
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  I would watch this ahead of something like Keeper of Track.
• 3:01
  Oh, interesting. Because at least in this, I feel
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  like you're getting something from Tom.
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  Whereas there are bits of track and where Tom Baker has clearly
• 3:11
  just switched off, there is a scene, I think it's in part
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  three of Keeper of track of where he's just standing there
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  while things are happening around him.
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  Because when we watch my husband and I watched that a couple of
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  years ago and he was just like, what's he doing?
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  He's not doing anything. He's just bored and.
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  I can actually see those scenes. I remember there's scenes in
• 3:32
  episode 4 where Milk was going on and Tree must have been
• 3:36
  forced to do things and Tom was just sort of staring off camera
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  somewhere. And so at least here he's trying
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  and so there's there's. And the more I looked at this
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  like it's a mess. Underworld, a mess.
• 3:51
  But it was either that or nothing.
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  And I think the more as we watch it a lot of that will come out.
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  But I thought so I've kind of come a bit full circle from not
• 4:02
  not talk about full circle from yeah, let's give it a bit of a
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  you know fun kicking to actually I'm coming out slightly on the
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  side of defending it. I've.
• 4:14
  Always criticised this story. I've always said it's the most
• 4:17
  boring doctor story ever. And then a couple of weeks ago I
• 4:22
  read the Target novel by Terrence Dicks which was as I
• 4:26
  said on Twitter today, concise, dramatic, ambitious.
• 4:30
  You know, and I did a lot of work in my heads to make it look
• 4:33
  big budget and and you know like a movie and and it really came
• 4:37
  alive in a way that the TV episodes never had.
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  Then I watched the TV episodes again with I sort of pushed the
• 4:46
  production to one side and focused on the ambition of the
• 4:49
  scripts and I was like, there's actually a lot here.
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  It's it's just the sort of desperation which which came
• 4:57
  with The Executioner and like this is I think one of the best
• 5:01
  documentaries on a DVD detailing the production nightmare behind
• 5:06
  Underworld. I agree with you.
• 5:09
  Now I think it worth it's worth defending because it's just a
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  fucking miracle this thing ever made it to the screen.
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  And there's things that they were doing for the first time,
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  particularly, you know, shooting an entire studio against Blue
• 5:24
  Screen, which now is. Just the norm.
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  It's the norm. And they were breaking their
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  necks to get this done. And in almost inventing new ways
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  of making this technology work, it it doesn't always work, but
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  there is some ambition going on and I was listening to you and
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  Cytok, right? Twin dilemma.
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  And I think one of you said that there was a complacency behind
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  the scenes. There is no complacency behind
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  the scenes here. This is a production team
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  sweating the the guts out to make it work doesn't necessarily
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  succeed. But you know when you watch that
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  documentary, when you read the production subtitles and look at
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  all the background going, they are trying.
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  They are really trying to make sure that there is not a 22
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  episode season instead of 26. The best bit of that
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  documentary, right, is Dick Coles.
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  The, I think is he's the special effects guy, isn't he?
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  He's talking a lot about, you know, doing it all on the blue
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  screen. He said, like the first half of
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  the day, we did this and you know, we're expected to get half
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  an hour in a day and we've got like 2 minutes worth of material
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  in the first half of the day. And if I was looking at their
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  clocks going, this is just going to be a disaster.
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  This isn't going to work. And then by the end of the day,
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  they were getting one shot after another and they realized the
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  technique was working like it was nowhere near to the sort of
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  sophistication that they needed to be.
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  And then they were talking about adding laser effects, which was
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  degrading the picture and things like this.
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  So like the technology really wasn't there, but they were sort
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  of pioneering what they had and making way for what came.
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  It's. I think it's quite like the
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  behind the scenes of this. It's really exciting, I think.
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  The behind the scenes story of this is sometimes more
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  interesting than the action story that we got on screen, but
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  there was, there was this ambition I think, but there are
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  some weaknesses in some of the direction and not in the CSO
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  scenes. I think Norman Stewart is
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  probably not one of Doctor Who's strongest directors.
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  I think we see that again in Power of Crow, but there are
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  times in some of the studio sequences where it's just not
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  the best. But considering all those
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  challenges, the fact there was just no money left and there are
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  some really good production things in here as well, I think
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  there's some really good choices.
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  People always point to Doctor Who as being a a cheap show, but
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  I think this is the only time where the purse is so dry we
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  can't even afford to make sense. You know, like.
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  I mean I I did the same. I think we because we were
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  talking about it and I got the target novel and I I was reading
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  that on holiday because that's what you do when you go on
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  holiday, you go and. I mean so brisk Reed.
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  You must have read it quick. I read it in about two hours.
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  I read, I read it in the afternoon and the thing was, I
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  wasn't so much imagining big budget.
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  I was imagining it is if they actually had the budget they
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  needed. So all The Cave stuff was on
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  film in a location somewhere because.
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  I was thinking of the mutants. You know those things.
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  And the mutants in the case. Yeah, that's that's all.
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  In a way. If they just had that money to
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  go and do some of that on location, there wouldn't have
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  been a problem. But you've got no money.
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  You've got enough money for either your spaceship set or
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  your cave set. You're going to have to.
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  It's better they did the way around they did because Can you
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  imagine the CSO spaceship set? Oh God.
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  And you know, that would have been even worse.
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  So they went with the only option that they had.
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  And so do we judge it harshly because they tried to make it
• 9:01
  work. I think you and I are going to
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  come out on the positive side of this.
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  I certainly think we've got a lot of points to talk about.
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  Should we jump into episode one and see what Underworld has to
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  offer? I'm ready when you are.
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  Okey dokey, then. Oh, I introed you callousing.
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  Go on, you do. In 54321.
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  I'm just excited, you know that after your I'm Quite Dead
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  commentary, you were willing to come back.
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  I enjoyed that so much. I'm so pleased you're here.
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  That was great. I really enjoyed it and it was
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  like when you're given the chance between classic or new,
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  it's like because I'm a I'm a classic fan first.
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  So it's like pick a story and it's like something to talk
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  about. There is definitely something to
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  talk about with Underworld, I think and.
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  It's. And things I've got out here on
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  my iPad and for some reason the version on iTunes is the VHS
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  quality. So this is like UN unrematched.
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  It's all the CSO and everything. I don't know if they did much
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  for the DVD. I've got Brit Box, so I think
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  that's the that's the VHS version as well I think.
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  And you know the the opening space * field space target the
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  model work. Is exceptional.
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  I think this. Is one of the highlights.
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  I mean, there's some odd bits like there's this, there's this,
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  you know, you start with a shot of leader at the console, which
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  seems to go on forever. But she's sort of just twiddling
• 10:27
  knobs and she like she's flying the TARDIS.
• 10:30
  I They're suggesting that she's she's flying the TARDIS and then
• 10:34
  it's all gone a bit wrong and then you've got canine putting
• 10:37
  out more noise than an entire factory because this is the mark
• 10:41
  one. Oh, the Season 15 canine.
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  Yeah, you're very aware when he's there.
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  It's like loud and then you know Doctor has just entered scene
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  wearing a pint of smock covered in paint.
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  None of that was in the script. Tom was just like, oh, this
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  would be fun. I I think this is Tom beginning
• 11:04
  to get a little bit out of control because I seem to
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  remember it's in one of the documentaries where they're
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  talking during season 16 about having to rein him in from some
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  of his excesses from the year before.
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  And I think we see some of that in Underworld.
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  I think if people haven't seen it.
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  And I would highly recommend watching the studio recordings
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  from Underworld that are on the DVD because they are such an
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  insight into the making of this story.
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  Obviously they'll deal with all the CSO stuff, but it's seeing
• 11:42
  Tom between scenes, and while the Doctor on screen in the
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  story is nice and affable, there are times in the studio where he
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  is pissed off and in a mood. I don't think that's unusual,
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  no. I think I do think though, this
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  is a stressful production as well.
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  So like, I've almost be prepared to give anyone the benefit of
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  the doubt because for once, they're not actually acting in
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  studios. They're just acting against a
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  black, a blue cloth and they've got a clue what they're doing.
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  And doing something, you know, normally you do blue screened
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  CSO for an afternoon or a couple of hours.
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  This was a whole studio. I think it was 2 studio days.
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  They were doing nothing in front of nothing but.
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  Louis Jameson says actually that it was very tense behind the
• 12:32
  scenes, working with Tom Baker, and she left the series with a
• 12:35
  chip on her shoulder that didn't go away until they work together
• 12:38
  again on Big Finish. And you're right, you can see
• 12:41
  that. You can see some of that on the
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  behind the scenes. And there is a moment and it's
• 12:47
  it's from recording in Episode 4.
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  And they there's a they have to do a retake and Tom makes a
• 12:55
  remark because they all have to get down and he said you make
• 12:59
  some I come with the exact wording but basically he's like
• 13:01
  I didn't think Louise would be so slow to lie down and and
• 13:05
  basically like everybody everybody picked up on it and he
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  tries to go no, no, no because you're you're like asleep and
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  but it's like I think that model shop there model work in this
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  it's great and then we cut to bridge set and what to my eyes
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  looks like they haven't keyed in a CSO effect.
• 13:27
  It looks like it, doesn't it? I do like the set though.
• 13:29
  I like a split level set. I think this is more impressive
• 13:32
  than the spaceship set in Planet of Evil, which is doing the same
• 13:36
  sort of thing with a raised deck.
• 13:38
  It's a it's a good set. I I don't like the costumes.
• 13:42
  Well, no, It's very bling, isn't it?
• 13:45
  It's it's all they just look a bit, Even though they've
• 13:49
  probably been made for this, they just look a bit tatty now.
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  Maybe they're supposed to? They've been going around a long
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  time, haven't they? Eons and eons.
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  Although they can still do their hair.
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  I mean, you bet they're right. But I've been wearing nose.
• 13:59
  Curry Elms. They must absolutely stink if
• 14:01
  they're wearing those costumes that whole time.
• 14:04
  When were we were getting ready for this?
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  I watched this with my husband over the weekend when Alan Lake
• 14:09
  came on screen. He's like, is that a wig or is
• 14:12
  that his hair? And he's like, no, I think
• 14:15
  that's his hair. He's fresh from the Timothy
• 14:17
  commercial that he did in the last studio.
• 14:19
  Voluminous. And actually we've got, you
• 14:23
  know, a four of our, Yes stars turning up and you've got James
• 14:29
  Maxwell as Jackson, who I think in part one does a pretty good
• 14:33
  job but then ends up just fading into the background.
• 14:37
  Orph and Tala practically might as well not be there, because
• 14:41
  apart from Tala's regeneration, she does nothing in this.
• 14:46
  Talk. Do you think it's a great
• 14:47
  moment? We'll talk about that.
• 14:48
  Great moment and Orph again. Orph has a nice little couple of
• 14:52
  character bits in the first episode where he's kind of a
• 14:55
  little playful with Leela and stuff like that, and again in
• 15:00
  the later episodes, completely forgotten do.
• 15:02
  You know what the trouble is with those those characters is
• 15:05
  they're all supposed to be very tired and weary and, you know,
• 15:10
  lacking energy. And that's not fun to watch.
• 15:13
  You know, like normally we talk to the guest actors, come on,
• 15:16
  and they've got tons of character and they're a bit
• 15:18
  playful. This bunch are supposed to be
• 15:20
  bored, so we're a little bit bored watching them.
• 15:23
  And the only one who I think is bringing some character to it, a
• 15:26
  bit of life is Alan Lake. And I think a lot of that is
• 15:28
  coming from the fact that he is a big personality with a big
• 15:31
  personality in real life and he's over the four.
• 15:34
  He's the one who gives the most interesting performance,
• 15:36
  particularly in some of the later episodes where I think he
• 15:39
  gets it, He gets what he's supposed to be doing and.
• 15:41
  Actually, a lot of weight, isn't he, in this.
• 15:43
  And it's one of his more restrained performances, because
• 15:45
  certainly by the time he turns up in Blake 7, he's eating the
• 15:49
  senior. Is he on the beach trial of
• 15:51
  murder, Ricky? Shouting at the sky, having a
• 15:55
  whale of a time, but he he's, he's almost a little bit
• 15:59
  restrained. I like a bit later on where he
• 16:01
  picks up the communicator and goes, This is Troke Herrick here
• 16:04
  speaking, You know, like. And so in the book, Terence puts
• 16:11
  in this prologue which is kind of covering this this part where
• 16:14
  the Doctor explains it to Lena. But he does this fantastic
• 16:16
  prologue, which is just the history of the Minions.
• 16:19
  And it's like it sets the scene up and it's really kind of a bit
• 16:23
  of world building as well. And it's just that extra layer,
• 16:26
  layer of detail that's kind of missing in the TV version.
• 16:30
  He did exactly the same thing with the Horns of Nimon.
• 16:34
  He did a A Game of Thrones S Rise and Fall of the scorn on
• 16:37
  Empire at the beginning of Horns of Nimon, and it just adds a ton
• 16:41
  of context. In fact, he does a lot of this
• 16:44
  when the characters are introduced, such as when we when
• 16:47
  we first go into The Cave. He basically explains the entire
• 16:51
  power structure there. You've got the computer and then
• 16:53
  you've got the Sears and then you've got the guards and then
• 16:57
  you've got the the Trocks. And he and he just spells it all
• 17:00
  out to you and he doesn't even wait to sort of introduce people
• 17:03
  and do. All it's done so economically
• 17:06
  and done so well. And that page, that book is
• 17:07
  about 120 pages. It it doesn't stop.
• 17:11
  It is so short, but it just tells the story.
• 17:14
  Because for me, Underworld is one of those stories where I
• 17:18
  have watched. I've watched it more than a few
• 17:20
  times, but it's never made a huge impression.
• 17:24
  You know, there are times we'll be like, I could even now, I
• 17:27
  probably still couldn't name all of the guest characters,
• 17:30
  particularly the the guards and the seers and stuff like that.
• 17:34
  You know, normally I'm really good for remembering character
• 17:36
  name, but the ones in Underworld just never stick.
• 17:40
  There's only a small number of stories from the classic series
• 17:43
  where it just doesn't leave a massive impression.
• 17:46
  I would never get to the end of this one.
• 17:48
  I'd always get somewhere in sort of part three and go, oh God,
• 17:52
  and just turn it off. And that's why I got the book,
• 17:55
  because I thought, I want to try and actually work out what the
• 17:58
  story is here. Because knowing that it came
• 18:02
  from that era where basically it was, you know, the target novels
• 18:06
  were basically just the script with some prose added here and
• 18:09
  there going, well, it's not a massive reinvention of the
• 18:12
  story. It'll be enough to kind of go
• 18:14
  right. This is actually what they were
• 18:16
  trying to do. And it made, it made me
• 18:19
  appreciate, OK, this is what the story is supposed to be.
• 18:23
  I mean, I think Bob Baker and Dave Martin have put in every
• 18:29
  single reference to mythology that they can think of
• 18:34
  everything, you know, P7, E and Herrick, all these references.
• 18:38
  And it's very clever. It's probably not theirs.
• 18:41
  It's probably their weakest script of the six or seven that
• 18:46
  they did. I think that Dramatically is
• 18:48
  their weakest script because there is just a load of
• 18:51
  wandering around after episode one.
• 18:53
  I think in terms of ambition of ideas, this might be one of
• 18:57
  their strongest scripts. And I think this comes to one of
• 19:01
  the because here we are towards the end of season 15, Graham
• 19:05
  Williams's first season. And when I was reading up, it
• 19:09
  was like he wanted to, you know, move away from the Earthbound
• 19:12
  stuff. He wanted to go out there and do
• 19:14
  big and bold, but that's big and bold on a Doctor Who budget
• 19:18
  before we got into some of the problems that season 15 ran into
• 19:21
  with inflation. And it's like should should
• 19:25
  Doctor Who be pushing at what it can do in its budget?
• 19:28
  Because then when the money runs out, what can you do?
• 19:31
  And that's what this the challenges story faced.
• 19:34
  I think when you look at the poetry era and some of the
• 19:37
  Hinchcliffe era, you get the idea that they understand OK,
• 19:41
  the money. Isn't great.
• 19:43
  How can we make this work? So you know, with in, with,
• 19:46
  under barrel, let's. I know he inherited it, but it's
• 19:48
  like, OK, earthbound, lots of location, lots of real world
• 19:51
  settings, probably a lot of costumes and sets from either
• 19:54
  stock or quite easily assembled. Hinchcliffe kind of did a lot of
• 19:58
  earthbound stuff as well again. Hinchcliffe's starting line was
• 20:03
  he said this in a convention I went to recently was can we do
• 20:06
  this? Yeah, and wasn't that the story
• 20:09
  behind Planets of Evil? Which is what can you do
• 20:14
  annealing with a bit of a budget.
• 20:15
  It's like, I'll give you a jungle, right, Let's do a jungle
• 20:17
  story. And then now it's like we're
• 20:20
  having spaceships and invasions of Gallifrey and all these
• 20:24
  really big ideas. It's a bad.
• 20:25
  Example, we're going to have a a a spaceship which rocks a track
• 20:31
  towards and create a new planet. Now that's a terrible example
• 20:35
  because I actually think they pull that off rather well.
• 20:37
  I think they do, but like like a lot of the other ambition,
• 20:40
  especially I do think Graham Williams does learn because 1616
• 20:45
  I think is very ambitious in what it's trying to do.
• 20:49
  But he he spreads some money out, a lot wiser.
• 20:52
  He does run out of money at the end of the season again, but I
• 20:54
  think overall visually it's it's a lot stronger than 15. 16
• 20:58
  Stronger 17 is doing well because the plan was we'll
• 21:03
  spend, we'll keep some money back to spend on our final story
• 21:07
  because we want that to look really good.
• 21:09
  I felt like this poor fella had no luck at all.
• 21:11
  Graham Williams. I think, I think he came in at a
• 21:14
  time where you've got a star who's increasingly his ego's on
• 21:19
  the rise. The money's not going as far as
• 21:22
  it used to be. There's industrial action.
• 21:25
  This is probably one of the most difficult periods for making the
• 21:30
  series. I think this and some of the
• 21:31
  early 80s when they were getting the industrial action, was
• 21:34
  starting to affect what was happening on screen.
• 21:35
  I think for me, having just watched the Season 20 box set,
• 21:38
  there's some parallels in Terminus to this, which is short
• 21:43
  on studio time. We have to get it done, probably
• 21:47
  short on time for things like retakes or anything like that.
• 21:49
  So it's like do a take. Is everybody kind of on script?
• 21:52
  Yes. Right, move on.
• 21:54
  Because when I was reading up on Terminus going, OK, that
• 21:57
  explains why some of these performances aren't as great as
• 22:01
  they could be, because they've probably probably got one take
• 22:04
  and that's it. And I think that's the same,
• 22:07
  especially when we get to the later episodes on the blue
• 22:09
  screen. It's like, right?
• 22:11
  Did it work? Yes.
• 22:14
  Next one. Let's keep going.
• 22:16
  That Did you see that that shot there of Tyler on the bench?
• 22:20
  Yeah, that's a really good CSO shot because it it gives her the
• 22:24
  clearly there's just one bench, but they they've kind of matted
• 22:27
  in the rest of the set and it looks vast.
• 22:30
  So that's really well done and I think that whole sequence where
• 22:32
  they're talking about perpetual regeneration, all of that, I
• 22:35
  think that's probably one of the best directed moments of the
• 22:38
  story. Dudley's in there with a sort of
• 22:39
  mournful piano score at the same time as well.
• 22:43
  And I think this is also like James Maxwell here is really
• 22:45
  selling this. These are tired, you know,
• 22:48
  they've been what, 100,000 years, which is sounds just a
• 22:52
  little bit too long, you know, 100,000 years they've been on
• 22:54
  this one ship, but fair enough. But he, I think he's selling it
• 22:58
  and he's doing a, you know, a really good job between him and
• 23:01
  he's working with Tom. I wonder not Tom like to respect
• 23:04
  to James Maxwell because he's not trying to overact with him.
• 23:07
  He's actually given quite a good solid performance.
• 23:11
  He's not hamming it up or or taking the piss.
• 23:13
  Absolutely loved Alan Lake. There's a an outtake of a behind
• 23:17
  the scenes outtake of Tom Baker going.
• 23:19
  Alan Lake was on fine form this morning.
• 23:21
  What a. Wit, they were talking about
• 23:24
  being in the bar of. Course they were.
• 23:27
  I mean that's that sort of personality comes across as well
• 23:32
  now connecting canine up to this 100,000 year old spaceship with
• 23:37
  bulldog clips. Now that's Doctor Who in a
• 23:41
  nutshell. That is massive ideas done in
• 23:43
  the most mundane way possible. And yeah, it's it doesn't
• 23:49
  matter. No, it's like they're telling a
• 23:51
  story. I mean, it is quite slight in
• 23:54
  part one. I think it's mostly a bit of
• 23:56
  peril and an escape, and then then going back into the peril
• 24:00
  again. But the model work is selling
• 24:03
  it. The set is actually quite
• 24:05
  decent. I say some of the strongest
• 24:06
  direction stories in this episode do.
• 24:08
  You remember you said earlier about how this leaves very
• 24:10
  little impression on you. I think one of the reasons this
• 24:13
  leaves very little impression on me is the colour palette of this
• 24:15
  story, which is beige. Everything's very.
• 24:18
  Beige. It is a brown story following
• 24:23
  and I like sun makers, but that's another very brown story.
• 24:27
  And raise. In fact, you said Terminus on
• 24:29
  it. It reminds me of the colour
• 24:30
  scheme of Terminus. Yeah, there is no, there is no
• 24:32
  colour in some of these later Season 50.
• 24:36
  I think Invasion, Invasion of Time is another beast entirely.
• 24:39
  I think there's some colour in it.
• 24:41
  Yeah, there's a tin foil. There's a.
• 24:44
  Massive vacuum form plastic sofas all around Gallifrey which
• 24:48
  are very colourful. We should like later on, you
• 24:52
  know that bit where they're floating away down the lift, but
• 24:54
  it's green and I'm like, Oh my God, another colour.
• 24:57
  Colour. I mean, that is, I will talk
• 25:00
  about that when we come to it, because my God, that scene.
• 25:03
  I do need to warn you, I will sing the music of that sequence.
• 25:06
  OK, but you have to. I mean, putting the lift music
• 25:09
  on the lift scene, I think. I can't decide if that is
• 25:12
  inspired or just really stupid. But now, again, Louise Jameson
• 25:18
  is acting her socks off here, because this again, she doesn't
• 25:22
  get much to do. There's a couple of nice bits in
• 25:24
  the second, third and 4th past, but she doesn't get a huge
• 25:27
  amount to do. And she's got this bit where
• 25:30
  she's upset because she thinks they're all laughing at her and
• 25:33
  she sells that and. Well, I thought she was going to
• 25:37
  murder one of them. She will.
• 25:39
  I mean that There's that bit of saying like with off, like he's
• 25:41
  got a nice little. He's playing with her a little
• 25:43
  bit and you know, he's kind of got a little bit of cheeky
• 25:46
  charm. Doesn't she go oh off.
• 25:48
  What a lovely name. What a lovely name.
• 25:51
  And and now she's having A and it.
• 25:53
  They don't do anything with it, but it's just a nice bit.
• 25:55
  It's it's actually a bit of character for.
• 25:59
  Her as I was watching 2-3 and four, I was like, she knows how
• 26:03
  dreary this is. She's doing a bit of business in
• 26:05
  it. So there's a bit where she's
• 26:06
  sort of holding Edas's hand and like she's always sort of doing
• 26:10
  something in the seams, even if on the page she's not doing
• 26:14
  anything in the scenes. She's trying.
• 26:16
  She's trying her best to to to make it work.
• 26:18
  I think it's one of those stories where for the most part,
• 26:22
  she, she and the Doctor don't really separate.
• 26:24
  So it's one of those rare things where the companion of the
• 26:26
  Doctor together for almost the entire story, and therefore she.
• 26:31
  Was He's so stroppy he never liked Leila in the 1st place.
• 26:34
  Didn't like Leah. In the first place.
• 26:35
  And therefore she's got no plot line of her own.
• 26:38
  Because you think like even in some makers she's off, she's
• 26:41
  greater. Than that, yeah.
• 26:42
  And same in Invasion of Time where she's kind of leading the
• 26:45
  rebellion and everything here that would that would that is a
• 26:49
  storyline made for Leila is to because I think she even
• 26:52
  mentions it saying revolution but that's about it it it's they
• 26:56
  don't do anything interesting with her in this and.
• 27:01
  I do wonder if the writers were boxed into a corner a bit as
• 27:03
  well, because like, they clearly had big ideas.
• 27:05
  And I do want to talk about those ideas because they are
• 27:08
  massive ideas. They like they they need a
• 27:10
  cinematic budget to put them on the screen.
• 27:12
  But, but they are good ideas. But they were told, you know,
• 27:16
  like can you just have us, can you just have 2-3 and four
• 27:20
  running around loads of corridors?
• 27:22
  Because we're going to be doing it this way and we can't give
• 27:24
  you any scenery. So, oh Jesus Christ, you know,
• 27:27
  like what the hell are we supposed to do?
• 27:28
  Fine. We'll gas people.
• 27:30
  Fine. We'll go into these weird train
• 27:32
  carts and put blankets over our heads and all this.
• 27:36
  Like, I don't think. I don't think they wrote the
• 27:40
  scripts they they could have written if they'd had the
• 27:44
  opportunity. This would have been an
• 27:46
  interesting exercise if somebody were to go and redo the target
• 27:49
  novelization as not just a direct lift from the script, but
• 27:52
  kind of how it would originally envisioned it envisaged it
• 27:58
  because I think sometimes because one of the other books I
• 28:00
  read on holiday and I don't know what, I read Time flight as
• 28:03
  well, because I thought it did take it.
• 28:06
  Was in a particular mood. Weren't you on your own?
• 28:09
  It was taking, you know, these derided stories and going, you
• 28:12
  know, is there actually something good?
• 28:14
  And then time for the answer is no because.
• 28:16
  The novel of time flight is almost worse than the TV one.
• 28:19
  It is. It is basically the script with,
• 28:22
  he said. She said around most of it, they
• 28:25
  dedicate less than a page to Addrix Death, because I also
• 28:28
  read Terror of the Autons as well, because I thought I'd read
• 28:30
  a good one. And there's actually more about
• 28:32
  Luigi Rossini in Terror of the Autons and there is dealing with
• 28:35
  Addrix Death time Flight. So it is one of the the quirks
• 28:40
  of the the novelisations and this there's the effect when the
• 28:43
  screen goes down and they've got the rocks.
• 28:44
  Great. That's a great ship.
• 28:47
  You know what? Because it suddenly feels very
• 28:49
  claustrophobic, doesn't it, That they all these rocks are
• 28:51
  pressing in on the ship? And then they've got canine
• 28:54
  saying that the ship thickness is increasing and the the lights
• 28:59
  go down low. So this is a good example of a
• 29:02
  strong first episode. And unbelievably, they took out
• 29:06
  a line of dialogue which explains what's going on.
• 29:10
  They took out the line where Tom Baker goes, we're turning into a
• 29:13
  planet. Yeah.
• 29:15
  Why would they excise that line? Because it basically explains
• 29:18
  what's going on instead of just going, oh, yeah, well, gravity
• 29:20
  works this way. The rocks are coming towards us.
• 29:23
  We're still like, well, yeah, but what?
• 29:24
  What's happening? Like it?
• 29:27
  It it's it's a really good build up to a cliffhanger as well and
• 29:32
  there's a, you know, the tension is building and everyone's
• 29:34
  getting a bit shouty and Alan Lake starting to, you know,
• 29:38
  inject a little bit of his personality, I think as he's
• 29:41
  firing these laser cannons. I think we've barely started
• 29:43
  talking, and there's only two minutes of this episode left to
• 29:46
  go. They're.
• 29:48
  Also short. They are very short, yeah.
• 29:50
  They are very short, I mean. Look at that though.
• 29:52
  Look at the the rocks going towards the ship.
• 29:55
  And that I mean. That's where they've spent their
• 29:57
  money, isn't. That's where their money went.
• 29:59
  I mean they don't do many spaceship model effects.
• 30:02
  Could have been this period. They they they do the odd short
• 30:04
  ones as couple invasion of time and the invisible enemy.
• 30:08
  This is kind of the era of spaceship shots.
• 30:11
  This this story has probably some of the best spaceship model
• 30:14
  work in the 70s. Well, they do the sort of Star
• 30:17
  Wars over the camera past, don't they?
• 30:20
  Yeah, the documentary was said that Star Wars hadn't hit the UK
• 30:24
  yet. It was just about to when this
• 30:26
  was broadcast, but it certainly hit the.
• 30:29
  US and it was people. People were talking about it and
• 30:33
  I think this is the thing of hand.
• 30:35
  Doctor Who compete with Star Wars should it try to compete
• 30:37
  with Star Wars And if you haven't got that money it's
• 30:43
  really daft to try because like in in the late 80s with like
• 30:48
  such a next generation was coming around with these big
• 30:50
  budget sci-fi television shows. Doctor Who didn't try to copy
• 30:55
  you know let's do space operas. It's like what can we do within
• 30:59
  the budget and the limitations. And I think that's why some of
• 31:02
  those later seasons work, because they recognise we can
• 31:06
  only work with what we've got because the 2nd we try and do
• 31:11
  model spaceships. I mean you have model spaceships
• 31:14
  extensively in Trial of a Time Lord in Terror, the Nervoids.
• 31:19
  Oh yeah, Or or you have the special effects shots of the
• 31:26
  trial spaceship, which are incredible, but you've blown 2/3
• 31:30
  of the story's special effects budget on 10 seconds of footage.
• 31:34
  You have probably one of the best model shots of the whole
• 31:36
  series and then you cut to one of the most dreary sets.
• 31:42
  Again, it's like Doctor Who coming in to remind us just how
• 31:45
  tacky it all is. Oh my, yeah, you're right.
• 31:49
  That's a solid episode one, though.
• 31:52
  It is. I think it it tells the story,
• 31:54
  it sets the scene. I think if, you know, when I was
• 31:58
  growing up, it was always talked about Underworld was the CSO
• 32:02
  cave story and everything. So when you come to watch it for
• 32:04
  the first time and you go that first episode's quite good, you
• 32:08
  know, it's certainly not betraying any of the, you know,
• 32:11
  one of the worst produced or one of the worst looking up two
• 32:14
  stories ever done, certainly during the classic era that's
• 32:17
  not apparent here. But the trouble is, the second
• 32:20
  episode two starts and we're in those caves and they're all
• 32:23
  going. The first of those CSO shots is
• 32:31
  terrible. But I do.
• 32:32
  I do think some of those CSO shots work as well, and some of
• 32:36
  them do offer a sense of scale. There are a couple of shots in
• 32:40
  particular. There's one in Part 2, which I
• 32:42
  think was ambitious, and they just about get away with it.
• 32:47
  Oh. You intrigued me.
• 32:49
  Well. Shall we skip on into Episode 2?
• 32:52
  Then we can skip. Clearly we've got, we've got
• 32:55
  loads more to talk about still.