Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / SCH 2 - Strictly Come Hamster - Christmas and New Years Specials

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SCH 2 - Strictly Come Hamster - Christmas and New Years Specials · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

0:19
Welcome back to Strictly Come Hamster.
0:22
My name is Joe Ford. I am the host that does
0:25
absolutely nothing at all but turn up on this podcast.
0:28
I'm going to hand you over now to the host that schedules, puts
0:32
together a view of comments, and does all of the hard work for
0:35
absolutely no recompense whatsoever.
0:38
Mr. Rod who? Hello, Rod.
0:40
Oh, well, that's that's made me feel really good, Joe.
0:42
Thank you for pointing out. Yeah, that's a good point.
0:44
Actually, I I demand an increase in my salary, which is currently
0:47
0. Yeah, thank you.
0:51
And we're on to our second episode of the podcast.
0:53
I think the first one went down a storm last week on Christmas
0:56
Day and we're back here on New Year's Day.
0:58
So happy New Year to everybody that's joining us today.
1:02
So Joe, you're absolutely right. This is strictly come Hamster.
1:05
This is the championship podcast in which every two weeks Joe and
1:08
I will be chassis our way across the Toy Makers dancing floor,
1:12
accompanied by two very special guests.
1:15
And together we're going to be ranking, congratulating,
1:17
possibly condemning a range of stories to decide which is going
1:21
to pick up the Lucursion Glitter Ball and which is going to get
1:24
sent home to Peas Pottage. So on this very special New
1:28
Year's Day, let's not waste any more time and welcome today's
1:31
Dancing Hamsters. Gentlemen, would you like to
1:33
introduce yourself? Let's start with Johnny.
1:36
Hello, I'm Johnny Morris and I wrote No, so I do so many of
1:41
these big. Things.
1:42
We haven't got that long, all right.
1:45
And I wrote most of Doctor Who's spin offs.
1:47
I think. I think over 50% is is pretty
1:50
much the the score so far. So all the good ones.
1:54
I write all the stuff which isn't on television.
1:56
And I'm Jason Thompson, and I don't write any Doctor Who
2:00
whatsoever, but I have been on several of these podcasts and
2:05
generally I think people have enjoyed them, So hopefully
2:08
you'll enjoy me here as well. Jason is the monopoliser of 60s
2:12
Dalek stories on a hamster with a blunt penknife.
2:15
Because he's done pretty much all of them now, including
2:18
thirteen episodes of Mission to the Unknown and Dalek's Master
2:21
Plan, which was a heroic commentary, may I say.
2:24
Yeah, I mean, if you count it in terms of stories, I've only done
2:27
half of them. But in terms of episodes, the
2:30
long ones, because Master Plan Mission to the Unknown power of
2:33
the Daleks and Evil of the Daleks.
2:35
So yeah. So you've done volcanoes, so you
2:38
are used to New Year's Special, which segues us beautifully.
2:41
That was beautifully done, well done.
2:44
So great. I tell you, I'm learning from
2:45
the best. So what we're going to do today
2:49
is similar to last week. We're not going to look at a
2:51
series, but because it's New Year's Day, we're going to look
2:54
at some of the modern New Year's stories but also a couple of the
2:57
Christmas episodes. And like last Last unlike last
3:00
week where we did the stand alone Christmas specials, today
3:03
we're looking at those that are a bit more arch heavy.
3:05
So we are going to be looking today at the Christmas Invasion
3:08
and The End of Time with David Tennant, The Snowman and Time at
3:11
the Doctor with Matt Smith, Twice Upon a Time with Peter
3:14
Capaldi and the three New Year Jodie specials Revolution
3:18
Resolution and Eve of the Daleks.
3:21
But before we get into those stories, Johnny and Jason, we
3:26
have placed a great burden upon the pair of you.
3:29
We ended our last episode of Strictly on a cliffhanger
3:33
because we couldn't decide which was the best Christmas special
3:37
between Last Christmas and Voyage of the Damned.
3:40
So at the moment I'm Pro last Christmas and Joe is Pro Voyage
3:45
of the Damned and our guests were also equally divided.
3:49
So can we ask you 2 gentlemen please to fight it out between
3:52
you? We need a winner.
3:56
Well, I think I was talking about Doctor Who and my son the
4:00
other day and he mentioned that Voyage of the Damned is his
4:03
favorite story of all time. Though I'm going to go with my
4:07
son. I'm not going to disagree with
4:08
him. I think.
4:10
I think it has Kylie Minogue, Bernard Cribbins, Clive Swift.
4:15
It's just a ridiculous sort of surfeit of Doctor Rich's.
4:21
It's very funny, very clever. And yeah, I mean, the other
4:26
one's good as well. So, Jason?
4:31
Well, I can safely say the deadlock is broken because I
4:34
would choose Voyage of the Damned.
4:36
Oh, yes. Because for the reason for,
4:41
among others, the reasons that that Johnny mentioned Kylie
4:44
Minogue and the Cribbins, etcetera, but rather rather Last
4:52
Christmas didn't really grab me. I'm not a huge fan of dream
4:57
reality confusion stories where basically you can do whatever
5:02
the hell you like because it's a dream and I wasn't terribly
5:06
impressed with Danny Pink throughout the series at all, so
5:10
having him shut up again just made me groan.
5:13
That said, I've, you know, there are episodes I'm going to tear
5:17
into in this podcast and Last Christmas is obviously a a good
5:21
starting point. But with all of them, there is
5:24
always something to enjoy. And I do love all these specials
5:28
in different ways. And for me, I mean last
5:32
Christmas, the scene where they're riding a sleigh and the
5:34
12th Doctor, who has been a grumpy git up to that point,
5:38
just revels in the joy of enjoying the absurdity.
5:42
And riding Santa's sleigh, I think, is a beautiful moment.
5:45
And the bit with Clara about when did you start believing in
5:49
fictional or, you know, people like that.
5:52
And she's like, can't you guess? Or something like that.
5:54
And it's, you know, that that is a lovely moment.
5:56
I do like that bit. But overall, the whole story
5:58
just didn't grab me. And as I say, I'm not a fan of
6:01
dreamscape stories where the laws of reality can be ignored.
6:05
And so you can have silly things like messages appearing on
6:07
blackboards and dead boyfriends turning up to tell them, tell
6:10
you that they died for you and things like that.
6:12
So no. I mean, I don't know what Danny
6:14
Pete can't ever, but he's a very hot man, Samuel Anderson, and
6:17
he's naked in a Santa costume in that one, so I can't ride it off
6:21
entirely. Fine.
6:25
So we have a very clear winner that we have Voyage of the
6:27
Damned as our first winner. Thank you.
6:30
Right. Well, let's get on to today's
6:32
episode then. So let's go straight into round
6:35
one. So this is the first knockout
6:37
stage. So each of us will be picking
6:39
two stories from the eight that we're covering today.
6:42
And in good old time honoured Hamster tradition, we're going
6:45
to pick the three reasons either why we want to champion a story
6:48
or why we want to reject a story.
6:51
And your job will be to persuade and control the rest of the
6:54
panel to your way of thinking. The rest of us, after your
6:57
presentation will will think and consider your opinions and then
7:01
go with what we thought about anyway.
7:03
But let's kick off and see how we roll.
7:06
So last time we spun a wheel at random, the hamster wheel, to
7:09
decide who was going first. But I think it's only fair that
7:12
we start with our guests. So Jason, would you like to kick
7:16
us off please by picking the story you either want to I'm on
7:19
Jason, or you want to condemn? That means you get the choice of
7:23
the a here. Exactly.
7:25
I'm just. Getting the dregs.
7:29
OK, I am going to start then with I'm going to start at the
7:35
beginning. I'm going to pick the Christmas
7:36
Invasion. The Christmas Invasion is one of
7:40
my favorite stories. I absolutely love it for a
7:46
number of reasons. Is it objectively the best story
7:50
in the in the Canon? I don't think so.
7:53
Is it really blatantly obvious that it's an episode that was
7:55
already written that was padded out to be Christmassy?
7:58
Yes it is, but who cares because I love it.
8:01
It's really Christmassy. And one of the reasons I love it
8:06
is because casting your mind back to 2005, Doctor Who has
8:12
come back. And not only has it come back,
8:15
it has stormed into the public consciousness.
8:18
Everyone is watching it. It's got Doctor Who merchandise
8:21
in the shops again. You see people in Tesco's
8:24
arguing over the last three Daleks on the shelf and things
8:27
like that. And it has become so successful
8:31
that after one series it's got a Christmas special episode.
8:34
And that's a mark of success for any series.
8:39
To suddenly get a Christmas episode, that's brilliant.
8:42
And so when it was announced that there was going to be a
8:44
Christmas special, I was over the moon.
8:48
I had Christmas with with Zoe. We weren't married at this
8:54
point, but we had Christmas Day together, and we sat and watched
8:57
the Christmas Invasion on Christmas Day, new Doctor Who on
9:00
Christmas Day at Christmas. Because, you know, there's the
9:04
Robot Santas, there's the Christmas decorations.
9:07
Oh, it was. It was fabulous.
9:09
I really, really enjoyed it. It's a really Christmassy
9:13
Christmas special before this was a thing and before it became
9:17
apparent that Christmas was kind of being shoehorned into a few
9:19
of them with varying degrees of success.
9:24
And I think one of the reasons this one is so successful is
9:28
that it wasn't supposed to be a Christmas special.
9:30
It was hastily rewritten. Because I believe I'm right in
9:34
saying that. Obviously Christopher
9:38
Eccleston's decision to depart at the end of series one meant
9:40
that series two had to begin with a post regeneration episode
9:45
and I believe that was going to be the Sikoraks invasion.
9:49
But then the BBC said we need a Christmas special from you, but
9:53
it's going to follow passing of the way.
9:55
So that still has to be the post regeneration story.
9:59
So to make it a Christmas special, it's a 45 minute Doctor
10:02
Who episode about the Sikaraks invasion with 15 minutes of
10:05
extra stuff with Christmas with robot Santas and deadly
10:07
Christmas trees which are dealt with very early on and are
10:11
called Pilot Fish referring to. And then we move on to the
10:14
Sikaraks, and the fact that it happens to be on Christmas Day
10:17
for the rest of the episode is really beside the point.
10:21
Jason, that killer Christmas tree is the best thing in that
10:23
episode. What are you talking about?
10:26
It's fabulous. I love it.
10:29
And if I'm going to go in and put in some reasons for
10:33
championing in terms of the fictional structure of the story
10:37
as well, the Doctor is not in it for a large part of the episode.
10:42
Which gives us a chance for Rose to explore her feelings around
10:46
what the hell has happened, because, as is important in a
10:49
post regeneration story, the companion is the identification
10:52
figure for the audience who were not familiar with it.
10:55
For us jaded old farts who've been watching Doctor Who for
10:57
years and years and years, we know what regeneration is.
10:59
We know this new guy is is the Doctor.
11:01
We just have to decide whether we like him or not.
11:04
But we know there are people who came to Doctor Who in 2005 with
11:08
no idea of what all this regeneration stuff was like.
11:12
So they got the explanation that the 9th Doctor gave about Time
11:15
Lords having a little trick to cheat death and then he turned
11:20
into David Tennant. And these people must have been
11:22
going, what the hell is this? They're not.
11:24
Having him in the episode for ages and focusing on the other
11:28
characters was brilliant. And that allowed at the very end
11:31
the 10th Doctor to emerge, save the day, and convince us all
11:34
that yes, he is the Doctor. Absolutely.
11:37
And David Tennant storms onto the screen and apart from those
11:40
couple of minutes where he deals with the Christmas trees and
11:42
then collapses again, basically convinces us he's the Doctor in
11:46
5 minutes of screen time. And it's brilliant.
11:50
I love it So. The Christmas Invasion is just a
11:53
superb story. Not because it's a particularly
11:57
brilliant story, It's fairly basic.
11:59
There's an alien invasion, the Doctor deals with it at the end
12:01
and there's all the post regeneration shenanigans in
12:03
there. But because it was chucked on at
12:05
Christmas and had all the extra Christmas trimmings added, it it
12:10
just it was an experience watching it that is just
12:13
brilliant. So I love the Christmas Invasion
12:17
and I defy any of you to disagree with.
12:21
Your. Opinions are available.
12:23
They are wrong, of course. Well, I, I, I've, I've, I've,
12:28
I've prepared my list of three things about the Christmas
12:31
invasion. They're all, they're all largely
12:33
positive, I think, because I think it's as you say it's it's
12:39
the wonderful Russell Christmas special thing of 15 minutes in
12:44
everyone forgets it's Christmas. You know something 50 minutes
12:47
in. Oh, it's just a normal it's a
12:49
that's when the normal Doctor Who story begins and you can see
12:52
that format is followed with The Runaway Bride the following year
12:56
and so on. What I say, I think one of the
13:02
things I I love about it is it starts this sort of thread of of
13:10
secret bases on the London landmarks.
13:13
And I used to joke that Russell had a tea towel of London
13:18
landmarks, all the different places you could go, and he was
13:21
just ticking them off as he went along.
13:26
So you have a secret base under Canary Wall, you have a secret
13:28
base under the Thames flood barrier and then he's sort of
13:32
going, he's getting a bit stuck secret base under Trafalgar
13:36
Square, I don't know, based under Abbey Road crossing.
13:40
I think he's running out of tourist hotspots, but I love
13:45
that I love them. There's lots of, there's
13:48
actually one of those great things is when you can watch it
13:51
again and there's a lovely detail that when the Doctor
13:55
wakes up after the Christmas tree and and Jackie Taylor goes,
14:01
what do you want? And she offers him a cup of tea.
14:03
And you're just going, That's so clever because that's what
14:07
actually would have killed him at the time.
14:09
And Jackie Taylor got it right straight away.
14:12
And it seems like that what, you know, Russell's gone back in and
14:16
put that in as a little detail, just to give that character an
14:19
extra sort of little little Gold Star.
14:23
See. And I think Jason's right.
14:25
You can see the sort of the confidence that they have.
14:29
They have a hit on their hands. And one of the ways I think
14:34
that's reflected among, I remember enjoying the time is
14:37
that it has UNIT in it. And that was I think the first
14:44
thing that had been brought back ever from the old series.
14:49
You know, up until that point they'd, I think they'd mentioned
14:52
the planet Lucifer in Bad Wolf, which had been in a book or
14:56
something, you know, really unintentional, not even a
15:00
reference. But because there's been a whole
15:02
year of people going, is it a reboot?
15:04
Is it actually linking to the old series?
15:09
And then you have UNIT and then opens the floodgates.
15:12
Then you have Sarah Jane Smith and Canine, and you have, you
15:15
know. Everything the.
15:17
Macro the macro within a couple of weeks.
15:19
So it has that. You can see that that sense of
15:24
relief and joy coming through it.
15:29
So yeah, I I'm, I I love it too. Go for it.
15:34
Well, while while I while you mentioned details in there,
15:36
there was a little detail that I particularly enjoyed throughout
15:40
the Christmas invasion which followed on from the events of
15:44
Aliens of London and World War Three.
15:46
When they find or when the when the government aid is murdered
15:51
by the Slovene and the doctor asks Harriet what was his name
15:54
and she says I never asked him. And if you watch the Christmas
15:57
Invasion, she makes a point of asking everybody's name.
16:00
Everyone she's introduced to. She asks their name.
16:02
She introduces herself and kicks off the Yes, we know who you
16:05
are. Gag.
16:06
Which is? Which I love.
16:08
I mean, it's silly, but I love it, you know?
16:11
And but yeah, I love that little detail that the previous time
16:15
some poor government dog's body was murdered and she had no idea
16:18
what his name was, and now she's making a point of asking names
16:21
and getting to know people. I really like that.
16:23
The best version of that gag is the Dalek in the Stolen Earth,
16:26
isn't it? Who says, yes, we know who you
16:28
are. Yeah, that's great.
16:31
Well, I'm also going to keep this in one, because I think
16:33
Jason is very convincing as ever.
16:36
And two, because there's two line readings in this episode,
16:40
but I think are two of the best line readings ever.
16:42
One is I'm going to get killed by a Christmas tree, which never
16:46
fails to make me laugh every time I hear it.
16:48
But as a sort of, say, subtle, it's not really subtle at all.
16:52
But the bit where she's given the speech, Harriet Jones and
16:55
she asked about the royal family and then she just goes, oh,
16:58
they're on the roof. Ah, this makes me howl as well.
17:02
Awesome, Great comedy. Ali's got that brilliant sting
17:04
in the tail at the end where she gets tortured to destroy the
17:07
ship. So just when we're relaxing,
17:10
Russell sort of thrusts a knife at ya, which I really, really
17:13
like. So yeah, definitely going
17:15
through to two to me. Love it.
17:17
It's it's four because I'm also going to champion Christmas
17:20
Invasion and Jason pretty much summarise what I had on my
17:24
notes. Apart from sitting with your
17:26
wife watching it, which I didn't do so.
17:28
But apart from that I pretty much had everything you read on
17:31
your list. The only other one thing I'd
17:33
probably bring up, which I really like about it, is that I
17:37
kind of watching it again at the heart of this story of two
17:40
middle-aged women, Our heroes or not, the doctrine rose to me.
17:44
They're Jackie and Harriet Jones and and Jackie's really.
17:48
She's really strong in this story.
17:49
I think it's really telling the beginning.
17:51
We do the zoom down that we had at the beginning of Rose, but we
17:54
end up zooming on to Jackie and Jackie is that absolute heart of
17:58
that. Certainly for the first half of
17:59
the story she's absolutely the heart of it, Roses falling to
18:03
beds. And actually, I was quite
18:04
surprised again, watching it in the context of these how little
18:08
Rose does. And she's quite petulant and
18:10
she's upset that the Doctor's changed his face, even though,
18:13
you know, the world's going to hell in a handbag.
18:15
She's kind of just obsessed with what?
18:17
She's obsessed with Jackie, a broad perspective on things.
18:21
And Rose says, oh, let's run back to the TARDIS and hide.
18:24
And even Jackie said, is that it?
18:25
Is that what we're doing? She's got more about it than
18:28
Rose has got. And and she's absolutely the
18:30
heart of that beginning. She's the one that gets
18:32
threatened by the by the revolving Christmas tree.
18:35
She's the one who looks after the Doctor.
18:37
Interestingly, she's the one who's actually asleep on the
18:39
Doctor's bed, not Rose. So she's doing everything to
18:43
look after him. She kind of she's our our lead
18:46
for our first half and then we get Harriet Jones who I think is
18:49
magnificent. Penelope Wilton plays the the
18:52
confidence that characters had like growth between aliens of
18:56
London and here she's completely different.
18:58
Coach, she's got all that confidence becoming Prime
19:01
Minister even though she's still done well, going to show her ID
19:03
badge to everyone including the sicker acts say Harriet Jones,
19:07
Prime Minister. I'm not sure what they made of
19:09
her ID badge. But yeah, she's she's Absolutely
19:12
Fabulous and I think she leads the second-half of her and she's
19:15
our hero for that second-half. Until, if you rightly say, Joe,
19:20
the there's always a flaw in a in a hero and her floor is to,
19:23
yeah, allow Torchwood to blow up the ship.
19:26
And that created a world of controversy.
19:28
I mean remember it being in the papers.
19:30
I think even before the episode had had there was an allusion to
19:33
Margaret Thatcher bombing the Belgrano in the Falklands.
19:37
So you know, Russell was was causing controversy and stirring
19:40
the pot even in 2000 and. Five like to say that Harriet
19:43
Jones is ultimately proved right, you know, in the stolen.
19:46
Oh, absolutely. She redeems herself in the
19:47
stolen earth. Absolutely.
19:49
I. Still like to believe a trapdoor
19:51
fell away? You know when that darling shots
19:52
her and she escapes in a cab somewhere?
19:54
Like, I don't think she's dead. But isn't it interesting when
19:58
she goes into units, we hardly get to know any of those unit
20:01
personnel. There's one major who we don't
20:03
really get to know and he's he's not written particularly in an
20:06
exciting way. It's Harriet Jones that
20:08
completely leads that. She takes complete control of of
20:11
unit, which again watching it now in retrospect knowing you
20:14
know we've had Kate Lethbridge, the Osgood, all the various
20:18
personnel, we don't really get anybody quite a nameless bunch
20:20
in this and Harriet Jones absolutely steals that lead.
20:23
So I completely agree, but that's my that's my other add
20:26
on, but I think it's it's 4. I'll take a pun and say if the
20:31
Christmas Invasion wasn't oh, Jason's cat's come and say
20:34
hello. If the Christmas Invasion wasn't
20:36
as successful as it was, I don't know if it would have put into
20:39
jeopardy further Christmas specials.
20:41
I think it's almost sort of unanimously agreed, not just
20:44
amongst ours, but that is a solid episode of Doctor Who, and
20:47
I'm not sure all the Christmas episodes are considered that
20:50
way. 9.8 million viewers watched at that point.
20:53
So yeah, it was a big hit. I think as I think I still think
20:57
that one of the reasons it's still so popular and still so
20:59
successful as a Christmas special is that it wasn't
21:01
supposed to be one originally. Whereas when it's very clearly
21:06
been written as a Christmas special, I think some of them go
21:09
a little bit overboard with shoehorning Christmas into them.
21:13
So with some degree of success. I mean, Christmas Carol is a
21:15
super. It's one of my favorites, but
21:17
it's very obviously just let's tell A Christmas Story, whereas
21:21
The Christmas Invasion is we've got a Doctor Who story that just
21:24
happens to be set on Christmas Day.
21:26
Oh, you like the Christmas Carol?
21:27
Oh, don't listen to all of those.
21:29
Episode. Then we'll go back there again.
21:32
Excellent. So Christmas Invasion stays in
21:35
till round two. So.
21:36
So for our second story, Johnny, would you like to champion or
21:40
condemn the story? I'm going to be, I'm going to be
21:42
very, very naughty here. And I condemn the end of time,
21:48
1:00 and 2:00, because all right, I'm second to none in my
21:55
admiration and my love for Russell D Davis and everything.
22:01
So this is clearly devil's advocate.
22:03
This is. But anyway, when you mentioned
22:07
the stone on Earth and journey's End, I think that is his finale.
22:10
I think that is his sort of coup de grace, sort of he's brought
22:15
back all the old companions, He's sold everything, He's
22:18
written everything out. And the question is, does he
22:22
have anything left to say or anything left in the tank, as it
22:27
were, with Doctor Who? And while there, there's stuff
22:32
in End of Time, which I love. I love the multiple John Sims as
22:35
the Master. I think that's gorgeous.
22:37
And you can, you can rewind it and see one in the background
22:41
doing something differently. And it's just that's a genius
22:44
idea. There's parts of it where I
22:47
think, OK, well, if that had been done four years earlier,
22:52
Russell wouldn't have let that through.
22:56
Like the character Nesmith, who wants to give his daughter
23:01
immortality. It's a really interesting idea,
23:04
but we never really get any sense of why he wants to do
23:09
that. Or, you know, you sort of think,
23:12
well, if she had some sort of, if she was had a terminal
23:17
disease, basically that she only has six months to live, you'd
23:20
absolutely understand where it was to give them immortality.
23:23
Or if her mother had died a tragic accident or anything, if
23:27
there'd been any reason for it. But you're sort of watching it
23:31
going where he's sort of been sketched in.
23:34
He's a kind of generic baddie. Most, you know, he's the
23:38
businessman who just wants to do stuff because he's got more
23:42
money than cents. So there's that aspect which I
23:46
think is showing a bit of fatigue, I don't know, easing
23:55
the foot off the pedal I think is the way of putting it they.
23:57
They They barely feature, do they, that, those two.
24:00
The Naismith. And the daughter.
24:02
And it's because you've got a more interesting villain in The
24:04
Master, I think. Yeah, yeah.
24:05
I think it's you can sort of tell when Russell is less
24:08
interested in cap because because they do just sort of
24:11
fade into the background. And with those two if you you
24:16
have to try and watch and very very carefully to see them
24:18
actually running out of the building before it explodes at
24:20
the end because they're in it's so they're barely and barely
24:24
glimpse and so that that aspect is sort of under under baked I
24:29
think undercooked and when I when I watch it I'm sort of
24:36
doing the thing I sort of mentally editing it.
24:39
I'm sort of Ben Cook there with my little sort of kit going.
24:43
How can I make this shorter and better?
24:47
Because watching it, it's like watching the extended version of
24:50
a Doctor Who story. And you know, when you when
24:54
you're used to a shorter version of silver Nemesis, whatever,
24:57
have an extended version is lovely as you can go.
25:00
Here's the extra bonus bits that don't really add much but are
25:03
very lovely. But with this there's bits where
25:08
you go you sort of go get on with it.
25:11
You're going this scene has gone on too long or we've we've
25:14
already got we've already done this bit you know like I mean
25:18
with this sort of kind of is the master eating all the Turkey
25:22
really fast and stuff and which is a good beat.
25:26
It's a good thing. But it happens twice, and it's
25:28
like that doesn't need to happen twice in the story.
25:32
And the third, the third thing, which I think is again, the sort
25:37
of thing that Brussels would not, not, would not have let
25:40
through four years earlier, is a burger van being open in this
25:46
sort of industrial wilderness on Christmas Eve.
25:51
Whereas only two customers are too trapped.
25:55
And I'm going, where's, OK, where's the reality, Russell?
25:59
I've never. Thought of that.
26:03
So you've got you've just included this so you could have
26:07
a master eating burgers and killing someone.
26:09
But I'm still going. Why isn't you know that Burger
26:14
Van is not going to be doing a lot of, you know, there's nobody
26:17
around for miles in any. Direction.
26:20
Aren't the two of them supposed to be homeless anyway?
26:22
Yeah. And so I just watch that bit and
26:26
go this I want, I want Russell from 2005 to turn up.
26:32
That's TJ. This makes this doesn't make
26:35
sense in its own terms. Cut it.
26:37
We'll save time. Move on.
26:39
So that's why, despite loving everything else about it, I
26:46
think the end of time is not as great as the Christmas Invasion.
26:53
OK, Chancellor, are you convinced?
26:57
Jason. I agree entirely.
27:02
The End of Time is again. I love it.
27:05
I love the story, I love the the two-part finale for David
27:08
Tennant's Doctor. But I agree, I think that
27:10
Russell T Davis finished everything with Stolen Earth and
27:13
Journey's End. That was a superb finale.
27:16
And then this was a mess. It it had things like, I mean,
27:23
the Master's resurrection is just gobbledygook rubbish, you
27:28
know, the potions of life and, oh, I can work out the opposite
27:31
of the potions of life and what they're and oh, and extracting
27:34
and there had to be one moment of me being a picky scientist in
27:39
this. If just just one Jason.
27:43
Just this one. If the Master had kissed Lucy on
27:46
the cheek, which undoubtedly he did because they were married,
27:49
what have you? She's been sat in that jail for
27:52
What, about a year or so at this point?
27:55
Human skin regenerates much quicker than that.
27:57
There would not be any trace of the master left on Lucy's face
28:01
by that point. Certainly not enough to make a
28:04
lip shaped imprint on the napkin that they press against her
28:06
cheek. I'm surprised you managed to
28:08
enjoy any doctor. Who do you know?
28:12
So, but that's just me being picky.
28:14
The Master had to come back. And you know, let's face it, the
28:16
series is quite happy to bring back the Master, even though
28:19
he's quite definitely dead. And this is just the kind of
28:23
latest in a long line of that, but it has a couple of other
28:26
bits in it, one of which actually kind of impacted my
28:31
enjoyment and my thoughts about the Star Beast just a couple of
28:35
weeks ago. Because nobody mentioned the
28:38
fact that if Donna remembers me, she will absolutely die.
28:41
Except that time that she didn't.
28:46
Because at this point they go on and on and on about Donna never
28:49
being able to remember. Never.
28:50
Never, never. And then she just goes boom,
28:52
shoots out all that regeneration energy, knocks out the Master
28:55
and the Doctor is like I left with the defence mechanism.
28:58
OK, but you never mentioned that, you know, and and so this
29:02
time round again, if Donna ever remembers me, she will die.
29:05
Except, of course, she's already remembered once and didn't die
29:07
so. Russell lies.
29:09
Well, I'm going to argue and say she didn't remember the Doctor.
29:12
She remembered the aliens. Because we see the montage of
29:15
aliens. We don't see the Doctor in that
29:18
montage. So that's my it's.
29:19
Exactly the same way that her daughter remember the aliens
29:22
when she made all those little toys.
29:24
Exactly. OK.
29:25
I will, I will, I will. I will concede that point.
29:29
Largely. Hell.
29:30
Well, we've done well here. The other thing that The End of
29:33
Time started the trend for which has gone on all the way until,
29:38
well, basically until the giggle, is the protracted
29:41
regeneration where the Doctor suffers A lethal injury,
29:48
recovers from any war wounds they may have sustained during
29:50
the course of the episode, and then spends as long as whatever
29:54
indulgent plot requirement there is before he actually
29:58
regenerates. So in this case, he's absorbed a
30:02
massive lethal dose of radiation.
30:04
His face just makes itself all better.
30:07
He resets to his lovely because we don't want him to have to be
30:10
made-up with cuts and bruises because he forgot he wasn't
30:13
Superman and jumped out of a spaceship and crashed through
30:16
the roof of the come. On say what you really feel.
30:21
And and then he has time to go and visit all the companions
30:27
that we've. Come on, come on.
30:29
That's beautiful. And as we find out in The Sarah
30:32
Jane Adventures later, all the other companions as well,
30:35
because he said he tells Joe that he looked in on everybody
30:38
and yes, it's beautiful. It's a lovely montage of of
30:41
sequences. I, you know, it's brilliant.
30:43
And I particularly love his sequence with Wilfred and Sylvia
30:48
in the church at Donna's wedding.
30:50
That is absolutely beautiful, especially when he says he
30:52
borrowed a quid from Jeff Noble. And that every time that gets
30:56
me, I have to say. And so it's beautiful, but it
31:00
then becomes a thing that the Doctor will suffer whatever
31:03
lethal thing is going to trigger their regeneration, and then
31:06
they can go on a bit longer. So Matt Smith is ancient and
31:11
regenerates on top of that tower.
31:13
Except that's just the reset for him to have that long
31:15
conversation with Clara about what it's like and for Amy to
31:19
appear in. His We're not there yet.
31:20
We're not there yet, right? And then he just sneezes into
31:23
Peter Capaldi. He does sneeze, doesn't he like,
31:25
oh, I think he's there. You know, And then Peter
31:28
Capaldi, the 12th Doctor, spends three whole episodes holding
31:31
back his regeneration. It feels like it.
31:35
It is because he comes out at the beginning of World Enough in
31:37
Time. That's the teaser for World
31:39
Enough in Time. Is him regenerating.
31:41
Oh. I thought you just meant that
31:42
speech at the end of Twice Upon a Time it.
31:44
Felt like that speech goes on and on and on and on as well,
31:47
but so it's not until the end of Twice Upon a Time when he
31:49
actually regenerates. Then in The power of the Doctor,
31:53
the 13th Doctor gets zapped by that laser beam, is unconscious
31:57
for God knows how long, and then wakes up and then, oh look, I'm
32:00
going to regenerate. Never mind, let's have an ice
32:01
cream. Oh, that's lovely as well.
32:04
What's wrong with you? We've got some very heartless
32:07
people on this. Oh no, Joe, I'm not sure.
32:09
Who invited to this? I'm coming with the heart in a
32:11
minute, Yeah. It's.
32:12
Just that I just think the whole point of regeneration is the
32:16
Doctor is dying and the regeneration is the biological
32:20
last fix when they can't recover on their own.
32:24
So just change everything and there we go.
32:26
We can have a instead of which we get the Doctor is dying, but
32:29
they're OK for a bit longer, so they can have these long
32:31
goodbyes which are beautiful. I agree but.
32:35
I just, I do like the idea that he's he's like he says he's
32:37
regenerating, but he's then spends half an hour in a queue
32:41
waiting for his book to get signed.
32:44
If John Pearl. Not yet, Not yet.
32:46
Give me some. More when he's left Metabilas 3,
32:49
we don't know how long he was in that time for attack.
32:51
That's very true. So you know, it's not the first
32:53
time, it's. Asked.
32:53
I think it was interference, Booker one and two.
32:56
That's how long it was between that and when he got back to,
32:58
you know, HQ. Right.
33:00
Well, I'm going to jump in. I completely disagree with your
33:03
pair of you. I think it's lovely.
33:07
I thoroughly enjoy. I think it's the kind of Doctor
33:10
Who that you can just literally kick back and just revel in it.
33:13
Yes, it's RTD, full pelt, madcap.
33:19
Murray Gold turned everything up to 10.
33:22
Yeah, it's huge. It's noisy, it's loud, It's got
33:26
everything you want. Earth's in peril.
33:27
You've got roller coaster plot. You've got so you're literally
33:30
booing and cheering at the Master.
33:32
You've got you've got everything in there.
33:34
I think it's great. I love that last reunion as he
33:37
goes around to see them all. I definitely cry at the Sarah
33:40
Jane Peace where Sarah sees him and knows what's going on.
33:43
Definitely the Wilson and Sylvia scene as well is absolutely
33:48
beautiful and even the just kind scene I think is is clever
33:51
because it's a it's a much quieter moment than all the
33:53
others. We wouldn't have necessarily
33:55
expected her to be included by the fact that she is kind of
33:58
shows the importance of the human nature story.
34:01
So I love all that bit. I think that's great.
34:04
But the bit that all, the one reason above all I think I'm
34:08
going to really champion this is that Wilfs the companion.
34:10
Oh God damn it. That was my thing.
34:13
You know you cannot get enough of Bernard Cribbins, and he is
34:16
the companion. His name's in the opening
34:18
credits. He gets some beautiful scenes
34:19
with the Doctor. You've got the scene in the cafe
34:22
in episode one where the Doctor says he's going to die and you
34:24
get them bonding. Then you get the scene on the
34:26
spaceship in the second episode where Wolf gives him his surface
34:30
revolver. And then obviously, I mean that
34:32
moment at the end did anyone's. I certainly didn't see it coming
34:36
when the he will knock four times when the Time Lords are
34:38
finally vanquished. I thought, hang on, are we
34:40
actually going to get regeneration?
34:42
And then you just get that quiet little knock and Bernard cribbet
34:45
as he stood there looking all sad for himself in a cubicle and
34:48
your heart just breaks from it. And you know what's?
34:50
I just think that's lovely. It's.
34:52
How it goes from that heroic music.
34:54
You know the doctors won gallop phrase gone, wrestle on is
34:57
defeating and then it just goes and you just hear the it's so
35:03
well done about that. It is it.
35:04
Is so I'm I'm keeping it in so. It it is brilliantly done and I
35:09
I I can't disagree with any. I mean Bernard Cribbins, yay
35:13
Hooray fabulous. I also love almost the
35:17
rehabilitation of Sylvia Noble because she was awful in series
35:21
four. She understandably to a degree,
35:24
but she was not a good character in in series four she was not
35:28
pleasant to anybody. Whereas at this point she's much
35:35
more kind of nice about it and she does request, you know she
35:40
does beg for the Doctor's help when Gallifrey appears in the
35:42
sky. And so yeah, there is a there is
35:46
a lot to to recommend. I may be wavering on this, but
35:49
I'm also going to throw in the He Will Knock four Times is
35:52
absolutely fantastic, but it also relies on an absolutely
35:56
ludicrous piece of design technology, of a device that
36:00
saves you by venting radiation into a case that you cannot get
36:04
out of. I've.
36:06
Heard isn't. It there's one little When
36:08
you're talking about Sylvia, I've just got to note the scene
36:11
because I thought, it's just so good.
36:13
I'm just so human when the Doctor and will for hiding
36:16
outside the patio doors. And Sylvia comes out and she's
36:19
about to absolutely lay into him and he just says Merry Christmas
36:22
to her and she can't start shouting at him because she just
36:25
got to say, oh, Merry Christmas, she's got back.
36:29
I've got to be so well mannered and just say Merry Christmas
36:31
before I start absolutely slugging you off.
36:34
Love life. So yeah, Joe, you've got the
36:36
casting oats. I've.
36:37
Got the swing? We've got Jason.
36:39
Jason is wavering. I'm wavering.
36:42
I've got some. I've got some more criticisms,
36:44
if you want to. No, we've had enough.
36:48
Otherwise, we've got eight stories to win.
36:52
OK, well, I I gave three reasons if I was going to champion this.
36:57
I gave three reasons to champion here, and they were all to do
37:00
with Wilf. You've already named two of
37:01
them, but the other one was Wilf inside that bubble, shooting the
37:04
laser, which is one of the most genuinely joyful sequences in
37:08
Doctor Who. It's old war hero, far and away,
37:12
like it's a character in Star Wars.
37:13
It's wonderful, but I am going to to go against the end of
37:19
time, I'm afraid, because I do think it's too long.
37:21
I think the first episode, it could be half the length.
37:24
You could tell the same story in half the length.
37:27
And there are, I find the first episode pretty interminable,
37:31
like so slow. In new who terms, it's so slow.
37:35
And the second episode, the second, the Doctor is rescued.
37:39
From that point on, I think it's pretty much all gold.
37:42
Like, there's logical inconsistencies.
37:43
Like the like you pointed out, Jason, and certainly all three
37:47
of your reasons, Johnny. But like, the sentiment is
37:50
great. Like all the way through.
37:52
And Russell brings so much heart to that last story and the last
37:55
sort of 15 minutes, that whirlwind tour of the RTD era.
38:00
But it gets me every single time.
38:02
But it's too long, it's too indulgent and I don't think it
38:06
would have cut the mustard in 2005.
38:08
So yeah, end of the time, end of time is out.
38:13
Wow. First one to fall.
38:14
End of time. OK.
38:16
So Joe, it's you and me to pick ours.
38:18
Do you want to go first or second?
38:19
Go on then. No, I'll go first because
38:21
everyone's been very, very tripadacious to go to the Jodie
38:25
Whittaker era. So I'm going to head straight
38:27
across to Eve of the Daleks, which I would like to champion
38:33
because I think it's marvellous. Now.
38:36
I can never say her name. Can somebody correct me, please?
38:38
Is it Alan B? Ashley.
38:40
Ashley, one of the best guest turns ever in Doctor Who.
38:46
She has her own little sort of redemptive art because she's a
38:49
terrible person at the beginning of the episode, and I think
38:53
she's still a bit of a terrible person at the end of the
38:55
episode. But she's a lot more funny and
38:57
she's sort of found love and it's wonderful.
39:01
She somehow manages to be cowardly and brave in that
39:05
episode and I just think she's, she's so funny at somewhere
39:11
around Flux. I don't know if it's John Bishop
39:13
coming in and going, you know what, Chris, this ain't very
39:16
funny because I feel as if he's sorry.
39:18
What? Was that?
39:19
What was that? Oh, I should face you.
39:21
Suddenly I feel like the ear was a lot funnier from flux onwards,
39:24
and even the diox is one of the funniest episodes.
39:26
And the running gag of her ringing her mother up and her
39:30
mum saying the lions will be busy and she's like, no, they
39:32
won't Mummy, See, I'm doing Irish now you've.
39:36
Insulted everybody now. Right.
39:39
And the lions. She has where she goes.
39:41
What is it? If we're relying on my mother to
39:43
ring us to get us out of this, we're all going to die.
39:47
She's a brilliant character. Another criticism is Chip Will
39:51
can't write great guest characters and I think she's a
39:55
brilliant guest character. So that's my first reason.
39:58
My second is, is the direction of that episode.
40:01
It's a one shot director that we never ever see again.
40:04
I can't even remember her name. How embarrassing.
40:07
Thank you very much. She's stuck with a ton of COVID
40:11
regulations and one setting and boy does she make the most of
40:15
it. She she shoots the Daleks in a
40:17
brilliant way. There's like over the shoulder
40:19
shots, lots of low angle shots. She likes the episode
40:23
brilliantly. It's it's a visual feast, given
40:26
that it's set in a warehouse. It never ever gets visually dull
40:30
and it's a time loop episode, so she has to pace this well as a
40:36
time loop episode where the loop is shrinking as it goes along.
40:39
So the episode has to get faster and faster and faster, and I
40:43
just think she paces the whole thing brilliantly.
40:44
So the direction is my second choice race set pieces.
40:49
And my third reason is Jeff, who's one of the best ever,
40:55
never seen Doctor Who characters who informed so much of this
40:58
story. He's a fellow that's living in
41:01
the warehouse. He's the fellow that's storing
41:03
his business in the warehouse. He's the fellow that is
41:06
essentially the resolution of the plot.
41:08
We never meet the guy and frankly, he's painted in with
41:11
more depth than most of Chipman's characters put
41:14
together. I think that's a really great
41:17
running gag. Again, I could say 100 things
41:19
like this episode. Yasi's The revelation about Yas
41:23
having feelings for the Doctor, which feels very natural and
41:26
comes in a wonderful scene where she confesses that she doesn't
41:30
understand what she's feeling, which I think reached out to a
41:33
lot of people that were watching it.
41:36
The ending, the the warehouse going up, the fireworks.
41:40
I love it. I love this episode.
41:42
It's probably the best of the three New Year's specials We.
41:47
Don't give anything away yet, Cher.
41:49
I think it's funny. It's clever, it's tightly
41:53
plotted, it's scary and it's heartfelt.
41:57
I think it's brilliant, Doctor. OK, gentlemen, what?
42:03
Should I go first this time? Yeah, it's.
42:06
I'm going to broadly agree with Joe.
42:09
I think it's might well be Christian's best episode.
42:15
And what I kind of like about it is it's almost like the opposite
42:20
of flux, because the flux is such a sort of expansive story
42:25
that it's constantly cutting away to another characters or
42:30
the other side of the universe or a different time zone.
42:34
Whereas this is very discipline and it's very sort of, it
42:38
actually has a the time loop, it actually gives it a structure.
42:42
So the fact that the time loop is getting shorter does all the
42:46
work of creating pace and tension and jeopardy for you.
42:53
And the other thing I like about it is because I I watch a lot of
42:56
science fiction films, I've seen, I've seen this story done
43:00
about 30 times, often in Portuguese, normally sat in a
43:06
wood, wood or somewhere or a disused bunker.
43:09
And it is a genre in its own right.
43:11
You know the idea of Groundhog Day start with an explosion at
43:16
the end or with guns. And I'm a sucker for those
43:21
music. I've seen it this story another
43:22
30 times. I could watch all of those films
43:25
again and again because I just love I'm Luke stories.
43:31
And I think this works really, really well and and I think kids
43:39
can get it because it has the grammar of a computer game.
43:45
It's a puzzle where you have a, you have a certain number of
43:49
lives, you go have a a safe position you go back to and you
43:53
have monsters that learn from each time as well as you
43:59
learning from each time. And I think that is actually
44:03
quite savvy for Chris Chubbin to sort of tap into something that
44:06
kids really understand in a way that wouldn't have worked 20
44:12
years ago. I think actually that's that
44:15
shows he's in touch with the younger generation.
44:17
I think so, yeah. I think it's going to get more
44:21
the thumbs up and some other stories I could mention.
44:26
Jason. Yeah, I completely agree.
44:28
I think Eve of the Daleks is a fantastic New Year's special.
44:32
When you consider, especially when you consider the
44:34
circumstances under which it was made, you know I got, I got
44:39
really irritated while getting really on Twitter in particular
44:42
when people going you know Doctor Who is it's terrible,
44:45
it's dying. It's you know the BBC wants to
44:47
kill it and it's like they want to keep making it during a
44:50
pandemic with all these restrictions and all their
44:53
limited resource and all the things they can do, they want to
44:56
keep making this series. And I think especially in
45:01
contrast with Legend of the Sea Devils, where I think the COVID
45:04
and everything else really harmed that episode.
45:07
The output of that was not great.
45:11
They make a virtue of it here. You've got a very small cast in
45:14
a limited setting. You've got the time loop getting
45:17
shorter, You've got the characters learning from the
45:19
time loop, including the Daleks. You've got the Dalek machine gun
45:24
fitting, which I quite like, cuz what the hell, It's fun.
45:28
Ashling B, yeah, she's brilliant, she's absolutely
45:31
superb. The bit that got me that really
45:33
got me is in one of those time loops where she's just basically
45:36
slumped in that freight lift and just says I'm so tired before
45:39
she gets shot. And I really felt for her at
45:41
that moment. There's one bit in the corridor,
45:43
isn't it? Where she goes.
45:45
She begs the darling not to kill her.
45:47
So she's not just a comic character, she she's nuanced.
45:51
But it's also also fun. I mean who?
45:54
Who among the long term Doctor Who fans didn't laugh when the
45:58
doc when the Dalek said I am not Nick and we all know that it is
46:03
Nick? Twice over.
46:06
And it's Nick Pegg inside it. And Nick Pegg inside it.
46:10
Yeah, exactly. And yeah, little bits like that.
46:14
It's fun. I mean, it came in for a lot of
46:16
stick because the Daleks keep missing people in long, straight
46:19
corridors, but you know, they, they always do that.
46:22
But other people? Watch Doctor Who.
46:25
Well, I I put together a video of Daleks missing things from
46:27
three feet away. It just it, but it doesn't
46:32
matter. It's, you know, it's fun.
46:34
And yeah, I I really, really enjoyed it.
46:37
It was good. I watched it at we were at a
46:39
friend's house actually, for New Year's Day that year, and we
46:43
watched it there and it was it was great fun.
46:45
So there's something about it. Watching Doctor Who on your own
46:48
is fine, but there's something about watching it with friends.
46:51
And in this case, it it it certainly improved the
46:55
experience of watching this episode.
46:57
And yeah, I I think it was great fun.
46:59
I enjoyed it. I've said shippers can write
47:01
lots of great comedy lines in this, but in every episode he
47:05
just gets a terrible gagging, doesn't he?
47:07
It's not quite to the level of the Wi-Fi family from the other
47:10
special we're going to talk about, but that bit where he
47:13
goes exterminated, I was like, oh Chipnall, what are you doing?
47:19
For God's sakes? Sorry, Rod, over to.
47:22
You. No, no, no.
47:22
I'm going to surprisingly also give this a pass.
47:26
So yeah, it works for me for all the reasons you said.
47:29
I think you've pretty much covered everything that was
47:31
going to cover. I will do.
47:34
I loved what Toby Haydock mentioned on our last podcast.
47:38
He rang the Cloister Bell of caution and there are a couple
47:41
of things in here that just kind of nickeled me a little bit.
47:46
One is Nick. I find him quite an odd
47:48
character and and again, chippers just throws things and
47:53
you think, why? So Nick is storing in this
47:56
warehouse the remnants from past relationships that he doesn't
48:01
throw out. But he's filled an entire
48:04
warehouse room, so he must be a very, very busy man because he's
48:08
clearly having lots of relationships and he fills that
48:12
room with things past girlfriends have left behind,
48:15
which is very odd. So I was thinking, okay.
48:18
I get that clearly at least one of these items is going to come
48:21
back as the resolution to the plot, but it doesn't.
48:24
They do hang out on that though, don't they they?
48:26
Because then they go, what? They are alive, aren't they?
48:29
Because yeah, of course they're like, oh.
48:31
Yeah, but then it finishes. I was expecting that to be kind
48:33
of a day, you know, a smoking gun and we were going to come
48:36
back to that and one of those would solve the plot.
48:38
But that's a very odd thing for Ashland B to them get in a
48:41
relationship with him. It's there for.
48:44
It's there for the doctor and Yaz because he is the good
48:48
hearted weirdo. And there's that secretary.
48:50
Oh, the good hearted weirdos are the keepers.
48:51
And that's what Yaz thinks about the Doctor, So that's the whole
48:55
point of that. But I do think that yeah, they
48:57
they beard a bit from weirdo to actually this guy's a bit of a
49:01
stalker because he keeps coming. He gets his ex's things and he
49:06
goes to the place where he knows this woman he fancies works
49:10
every time and she's clearly on to his game and she's fed up
49:14
with it. So the fact that they ended up
49:15
switching that from what's a really weird stalkerish
49:18
relationship to actually just aren't they happy together was
49:21
it didn't quite sit right. Within 9 minutes, yeah.
49:24
But I understand what they were going for.
49:26
I just think they didn't quite get it right on that one.
49:28
She does scream at him, Sarah, Sarah, and say, like, you know,
49:31
you're bloody old, I can't remember the exact line.
49:34
And then Jas goes, look, he's, he's standing just there.
49:36
And she goes, yeah, well, I still mean it, you know, even
49:39
though he's. Just.
49:41
There. And then the only other thing
49:43
that kind of me a little bit was escaping through the warehouse
49:46
doors at the bottom in the basement just seemed a little
49:49
bit easy. There was nothing that prevented
49:51
them opening those doors before so that that final minute of
49:56
escape just felt a little bit too easy and not earnt enough.
50:00
But generally those are just cautions.
50:02
Generally, I think it's really good episode, thoroughly
50:05
enjoyable for the reasons you've said.
50:07
So I'm going to give it a pass as well so it goes through.
50:10
I'll tell you what. The other thing about it is that
50:14
Sarah's mum is played by Mrs. Doyle.
50:16
Absolutely right. She was just playing.
50:19
Go on, go on. Go on, she goes.
50:22
Mum, I love you. Oh God, are you dying?
50:27
Why do you always go to extremes?
50:29
Mothers, do you know what I'll tell you, The episodes last week
50:32
were far more contentious, weren't they?
50:34
They were. Mind you, we've.
50:35
Got We haven't got such shit yet, have we?
50:37
No, we're we're through the gold.
50:39
I think we did this. No, actually we didn't.
50:40
We got rid of some early on but we're sticking with gold and I'm
50:43
going to stick with gold because it's my turn.
50:45
So I am going for twice upon a time become.
50:49
Reef Oh, sorry. I think we know where Joe's
50:52
going. Did you say gold?
50:55
Gold. Oh, OK.
50:56
Sorry. Continue.
50:58
Thank you. This is my favorite of the
51:01
episodes that we're talking about today.
51:03
Yeah, Joe's jaws just dropped it open.
51:06
I absolutely love Twice Upon a Time and I will tell you some of
51:09
the reasons why I love her. So first of all, I love the fact
51:13
that we actually haven't got a big there's no big bad in this.
51:17
And if you listen to last week's podcast, you'll probably say,
51:20
oh, he's being a little bit contradictory.
51:22
X last week I criticized the Doctor, the Widow and the
51:25
Wardrobe for not having a big bad or a tangible threat or
51:28
menace of any sort. But here I think, why?
51:31
Why I like it here and I didn't like it there, is because
51:35
although we haven't got a big bad, we've got a big central
51:37
mystery. And I think the mystery is
51:40
enough for me. Isn't mystery that's worth
51:42
investigating. And the mystery ties into the
51:45
theme of the episode. So Testimony, who is to all
51:49
intensity and the villain of the piece we think is the villain of
51:52
the piece to to begin with, is just gathering memories so that
51:55
people can be remembered and you can have a tribute and a
51:59
recognition of someone when they died on all their memories
52:02
stored. And last episode I also talked
52:05
about Moffett riffing on a lot of Christmas stories.
52:08
So obviously we've got Dickens and Christmas Carol, got CS
52:11
Lewis and what he's riffing on here, it's a lot more subtle
52:14
than some of those others. But he's riffing on It's A
52:17
Wonderful Life, which is a very popular Christmas film, and
52:20
that's all about a man at the point of suicide realizing the
52:23
impact that he's had on others and deciding to continue living.
52:27
And that's really what we're talking about here, is Hartnell,
52:29
the Hartnell Dr. and the Capaldi Dr. thinking is it worth going
52:33
on? And then coming to the
52:35
realization that yes, they need to continue and go on their
52:38
journey. And if that's not a good message
52:40
for Christmas, I don't know what it is.
52:42
So that's that's my first point. Second point is yes, this
52:46
absolutely is a multi doctor story and I won't hear a word
52:50
against her. So Joe, stop shaking your head.
52:53
It is so I know there's a it's very off putting when you're
52:57
just sitting here with Joe shaking his head at you.
53:00
And I know there is a lot of negative response because of
53:02
David Bradley's doctor, and I don't think it's about the
53:05
portrayal, it's about the character that he's given.
53:08
But I would turn around to you and say look at Richard Herndl
53:10
and the Five Doctors. Is that a true reflection of
53:13
Hartnell? No, it isn't.
53:15
Is he sexist? Yes, he very much is.
53:17
First thing he does when he walks in the tart is he's told
53:19
Tegan to go and make make refreshments for him.
53:22
Packs her off straight away. But does anyone complain about
53:25
that? No, they don't.
53:26
So just. Because they're as unbearable as
53:28
each other, that doesn't cancel them out.
53:31
But nobody tries to cancel Richard Herndl from The Five
53:34
Doctors, so why do we try to cancel David Bradley?
53:37
So not having it. Dave Bradley's in a similar
53:41
event. He is a slightly different,
53:42
yeah, he is a different take on the 1st Doctor and we know that.
53:45
But he's actually only exaggerating what we saw in the
53:48
60s. The Doctor did say that he would
53:50
give Susan a smack bottom just as he does to Bill, and I'd
53:53
rather Bill's response to that than Susan's.
53:56
And equally even the clip that we see at the beginning of the
53:59
episode. What Hartnell doing, he's
54:00
chiding for bringing him his coat.
54:03
He's not speaking to Ben. He's saying come on, get my
54:04
coat. He is quite innately sexist and
54:08
he's got lots of good points. But and that's what we're
54:10
playing up to. And yes, a lot of it is done for
54:12
comic effects and I get that and we're highlighting the
54:14
difference in 1960 sensibilities and modern day sensibilities.
54:18
But I think it's quite funny and it works for those two
54:22
characters. And Bradley isn't just played
54:24
for laughs. He has lots of times that he
54:26
comes to realizations that Capaldi's Doctor hasn't, and he
54:30
recognizes the asymmetrical face of testimony and notes of
54:33
something going on. He absolutely punctures all this
54:37
pomposity in his Sonic sunglasses and his electric
54:40
guitar. So equally, you know, there's
54:43
plenty of Mickey taking on on both sides, both sides of it,
54:46
but ultimately he's there to kind of give texture that
54:48
argument about, you know, do we continue with our lives.
54:52
And I love the the counterpoint of those two.
54:54
I think they work really well together.
54:56
He's, he's humorous, but he's also deadly calm and serious.
54:59
So I think, I think David Bradley gives a bravado
55:02
performance and my third reason for recommending this is it's
55:07
just an amazing adventure in time and space.
55:09
We start off at the South Pole. We go to beautifully designed
55:13
spaceship, we go to a World War One trenches, we go to centre of
55:18
the universe over and by dialects.
55:21
I'd often thought that kind of Christmas Armistice 1914 would
55:24
make a great setting for a Doctor Who story.
55:26
But like when you talk about, you know, would World War 2,
55:29
would Nazis working Doctor Who. I thought it was probably
55:32
something that you couldn't do and certainly not if the Doctor
55:35
intervened to to allow the kind of German and English groups to
55:38
come together and play football. But that doesn't happen here.
55:41
The Doctor's an onlooker and what what the importance of that
55:45
is, is it helps the Hartnell Dr. or the Bradley Doctor, the 1st
55:49
Doctor to realize that Capaldi Dr. is not a Doctor of War.
55:53
He's a Doctor in a time of war and he helps people.
55:57
And again that's a lovely realisation.
55:59
So we get, you know, full journey through time in space.
56:02
We also get a lot of riffing on the history of Doctor Who.
56:04
I mean what other Doctor Who story would have the balls to
56:07
start with previously on Doctor Who 709 episodes ago.
56:11
I mean if that is not a laugh out loud moment, I don't know
56:14
what is. And obviously we get the
56:16
recreation of the 10th Planet scenes.
56:18
We get Lethbridge Stewart or a Lethbridge Stewart relative,
56:21
which I think Mark Gatiss does a damn good job on, and I'm sure
56:24
Joe will have some things to say on that.
56:25
But I think he portrays him very well and we get to say goodbye
56:28
to Bill, Clara and Nardo. So I think Twice Upon a Time is
56:33
beautiful for those reasons, and I dare anyone to argue with me.
56:39
I'll argue with you, this episode was not supposed to
56:44
exist. Like there wasn't supposed to be
56:47
a Christmas special. So this was sort of hastily
56:49
written because Chris Chipman wasn't ready to take over the
56:52
show and you really can tell this feels like Moffett running
56:56
on the spot. And I'm going to argue your
57:00
point, saying that there isn't an antagonist in this, that it
57:04
doesn't make a difference. It does.
57:06
It's very boring because of it. It is a lot of sort of talking
57:11
and not a lot of suspense and not a lot of action and not a
57:14
lot of all those things that we love in Doctor Who.
57:17
It's something that bothers me about in the Forest of the Night
57:19
as well, where there isn't really a threat in that aside
57:23
from the environment. I do think that the 1st Doctor
57:28
is hideously misremembered. It's like a grotesque parody of
57:33
what we think is the First Doctor, and Bradley does.
57:36
He just plays what's on the page.
57:38
But it's so embarrassing in places.
57:40
The bit about Bill being bisexual, the sexist bits, all
57:44
of that, the sunglasses like, oh, it's just agonising to
57:48
watch. It's.
57:52
On the fence by the. Way It's a moot point, but the
57:54
Christmas Day truce was better executed in the Sainsbury's
57:57
advert than it was in the Doctor Who's special, which I'm sure
58:00
had a bigger budget. And Jesus Christ, that last
58:04
speech, agonising last speech about avocado pears and being
58:10
kind. When did we ever get to this?
58:13
Where the Doctor literally has this just hideous monologue at
58:19
the end of his life? I thought Matt Smith was bad
58:21
enough, but this feels like it goes on forever.
58:24
When David Turner was stumbling around that counsellor state in
58:26
The End of Time, I was literally screaming at the telly.
58:29
Why don't you just die already? And in Twice Upon a Time I was
58:33
just like, why don't I just die? Because the lines aren't even
58:37
Gray. Oh, Capaldi dance great.
58:39
When Jodie Whittaker comes out and just goes, oh, Matt, you
58:42
know, what does she say? It's brilliant.
58:43
Brilliant or amazing. I'm just like, yeah, let's go,
58:46
Jesus, kick out that old git. And let's let's get going.
58:51
I don't know it it it just feels like a lot of nothing.
58:54
I think bringing Bill into it guts.
58:57
The Doctor falls. But it's not Bill.
59:00
It's the memory of Bill. It's testimony.
59:02
He's an Avatar. We see that really clearly early
59:04
on. But.
59:05
It's played as if it's Bill. It's played.
59:08
If it's Bill in the story, yeah. And Moffett does this a lot.
59:11
You know, he he, I'm going to kill off the companion.
59:13
I'm going to do something terrible to them.
59:14
And then he double S backs on it and and it loses any of the
59:18
dramatic worth it might have had.
59:20
I don't like Clara, so I don't want to see her again.
59:22
I was happy to see Nardol. That was quite nice.
59:25
I don't mind Mark Gates's performance in this.
59:27
I think he's pretty good. But again, it's more of
59:30
Moffett's obsession with the Brigadier, and I'm not sure why
59:34
is that. I just don't think it should
59:35
exist this episode, and it feels and it feels like it shouldn't
59:39
exist. It's just it's like a a breath
59:43
between like the end of The Doctor Falls and the Woman Who
59:47
fell to Earth and it's just an hour long breath that's a bit
59:52
tedious to endure. Well, let's.
59:53
Move on swiftly, sorry. Sorry.
59:56
Jonathan, Jason, after you, Johnny.
1:00:00
OK, well. This did.
1:00:02
I'm going to start name dropping really sort of egregiously.
1:00:05
So, so brace yourselves because I'm.
1:00:09
I know Stephen quite well. I've run him for about 20 years
1:00:13
and I think about 2008 when he just got the job.
1:00:18
We went for a Curry to celebrate or something and we were just
1:00:24
sort of joking about coming up with ideas.
1:00:27
And I said, and Nick Pegg was sitting next to him.
1:00:30
He'll be my witness. And I said, oh, you should do
1:00:32
something about the Armistice and the first rule.
1:00:35
That'd be cool. And Stephen goes, if I'm still
1:00:38
around in 2016, kill me. But eventually I think that just
1:00:43
sort of went, I don't think he consciously remembered that
1:00:46
because obviously he was too drunk to remember anything.
1:00:48
But I think that might have, that idea might have been
1:00:52
seeded. And the other idea, I think
1:00:56
about five, about 2016, should we say, oh, we're doing the same
1:01:01
thing again. And me and Neve are talking
1:01:03
about this idea that Douglas Adams had had for Doctor Who.
1:01:07
They had never been able to write where Douglas Adams idea
1:01:11
was. That Doctor arrives in a
1:01:12
situation and he just constantly assumes that there's evil at
1:01:17
work and there's a threat to the planet because that's what
1:01:20
always happens. So he's going, oh, there must be
1:01:23
a sinister thing here. There's a spaceship advocking,
1:01:25
and again, Stephen went That's the worst ideal I've ever heard
1:01:28
from a doctorate story in And yet, oh.
1:01:33
Right, yes. And yet, Twice Upon a Time is
1:01:36
that story. It is the Doctor assuming that
1:01:39
everything is threatening in some way known as an evil plan.
1:01:43
When there isn't, it's just it is that it is.
1:01:45
Finally, the Douglas Adams story and two more things is I
1:01:55
obviously I make up ideas to talk two stories myself and what
1:01:58
I do I had years ago was a thing called Father Christmas where
1:02:04
there's a knock on the TARDIS door and it opens and this sort
1:02:07
of old guy comes in and the Doctor goes Dad.
1:02:11
It's about the Doctor, his father arriving in the TARDIS
1:02:15
and they have an adventure a bit like Indiana Jones and the Last
1:02:18
Crusade, where the dad is this sort of grumpy Sean Connery
1:02:21
figure, and I'm going to be. Will you write that please?
1:02:26
But I can't. Because vice upon a time has
1:02:28
already done it, that is. Badly.
1:02:30
You could do it well. Well, well, maybe.
1:02:33
I mean what I also two tiny details is I'd like that in A
1:02:39
Christmas Carol, which I gather you not keen on, but has the bit
1:02:42
where the young Zardik sees what his future self is to become and
1:02:48
decides and that affects his outlook and changes it.
1:02:52
And Twice Upon Time is doing that story again because it's
1:02:55
the young Doctor seeing the old Doctor speed herself and going,
1:02:59
oh, I'm going to become that person or I don't want to become
1:03:02
that person. So I think that's a nice subtle
1:03:05
sort of repeat, maybe unintentional.
1:03:08
And you've already mentioned it, the bit where the Doctor says
1:03:14
that Bill needs a jolly good smack bottom.
1:03:19
Now I I've looked at the scripts of Dark Invasion of Earth and
1:03:23
that line isn't in there. Oh, that live.
1:03:26
That line was added by William Hartnell and Sir.
1:03:28
How so? That line being in Twice Upon a
1:03:32
Time. I mean, it's it's a bit of a
1:03:34
cheap joke, but that's a bit of William Hartnell's voice in the
1:03:38
actual story. That's his.
1:03:39
His line. That's not Moffatt's line or
1:03:42
Whittaker's line or Termination. That's a little bit of William
1:03:45
Hartnell and the story, and I'd love it for that.
1:03:49
So I would say. Anything.
1:03:50
You're losing it. Well, keeping it, definitely
1:03:54
keeping it. Excellent.
1:03:55
I would go to an odd say, though I think that is probably the
1:03:58
only part of William Hartnell in this story.
1:04:01
The only lie, you know, I just he just wasn't this person.
1:04:05
So OK, I'm going to shut up. Well, on that, I mean, it's also
1:04:09
out of context in this because in The Dalek Invasion of Earth
1:04:12
as an ad Lib from William Hartnell, it's a man admonishing
1:04:15
his granddaughter, not some random woman who's just met.
1:04:20
So I don't think it fits. But I do love Bill.
1:04:24
And the Doctor's reaction to it was like, can we never talk
1:04:27
about this? And he was like, I hope we spend
1:04:29
years laughing about this. I love that moment, you know.
1:04:35
Yeah, there is a lot wrong with Twice Upon a Time.
1:04:37
Yes, it shouldn't exist. It was written hastily and what
1:04:40
have you. But I'm going to argue in favour
1:04:44
of keeping it for a number of reasons, one of which is however
1:04:50
badly, the Doctor's sexism was overplayed in this.
1:04:54
The fact that the 1st Dr. appeared at the end of The
1:04:56
Doctor Falls caught me completely by surprise and I was
1:05:02
really excited for this Christmas special, more so than
1:05:07
I have been since 2005 when the very fact that we were getting a
1:05:10
Christmas special was exciting. To get one with the 1st Doctor,
1:05:15
meeting the 12th Doctor, I was like, oh, this is the great
1:05:18
fantastic. I love that it's going all the
1:05:20
way back to the beginning. Fantastic.
1:05:23
And David Bradley is superb and I think he's probably unique in
1:05:29
that he has now played a character, he has played the
1:05:33
actor who played that character and he has played the actor who
1:05:36
has played that character, playing that character on the
1:05:39
screen. So I think that's, I think
1:05:44
that's, I think he's great and I really liked some of his scenes,
1:05:48
especially a scene with Bill testimony about, you know, when
1:05:52
she says why did you run away and oh, that's a very good
1:05:54
question. I think that's really nice.
1:05:57
I like that it's not an evil plot.
1:06:00
I love the Doctor's complete confusion at the end where it's
1:06:02
like, well, I don't know what to do if it's not an evil plot.
1:06:04
I think that's that's great. I really enjoyed that.
1:06:10
And it it got me, it absolutely got me.
1:06:14
I didn't see it coming when the Doctor nudges things forward a
1:06:18
bit to save the life of the two soldiers by nudging them into
1:06:21
the Christmas truce. And part of the reason that got
1:06:24
me is because the actual story of the Christmas truce is just
1:06:29
wonderful. You know the reality of the
1:06:32
situation, these two armies on either side of a huge war that
1:06:36
had been going on for months at that point.
1:06:39
For one day, the guys on the front line put down their guns,
1:06:43
put down their differences, and they just enjoyed each other's
1:06:46
company. And then the twist in the the
1:06:49
horrible sting in the tail, of course, is that the very next
1:06:51
day they were back to shooting at each other.
1:06:53
But the idea of the Christmas truce, I really, really love
1:06:57
that story. Of course, by the time the war
1:07:01
had gone on, another couple of years, if that was never going
1:07:03
to happen again, but that one moment is.
1:07:06
It's a great moment in history, and I love that it was included.
1:07:09
I don't think you could do a whole story about it.
1:07:11
I do. I I think you could tell a
1:07:13
brilliant story around that and that it feels a little
1:07:16
gratuitous, I think. I think it's a pivotal moment of
1:07:20
the story, so I think it works. It's just, yeah.
1:07:23
And as you say, it's. Years ago.
1:07:25
Yeah, but. But as you say, it's the moment
1:07:28
where the 1st Dr. realises that the toilet thought he's not the
1:07:31
Doctor of War. He is a doctor in war who helps
1:07:33
people and does what he can and just that little nudge into the
1:07:40
Christmas truce was was really good.
1:07:42
And Peter Capaldi plays the Doctor's exhaustion and despair
1:07:46
about the situation and the fact that his life is basically an
1:07:50
empty battlefield because everyone he knows ages and dies
1:07:53
and he just goes on and on and on and he has to come to terms
1:07:58
with actually. Well, yeah, OK, we can, I can, I
1:08:01
can do it again. But all that being said, I
1:08:05
cannot disagree with a lot of the criticisms of it.
1:08:08
The Doctor's final speech before he regenerates is agonising.
1:08:12
I kept waiting every time it's about to finish.
1:08:14
He then starts up again. Oh, and this other thing.
1:08:17
Trouble is, he's got that set to walk around, so he starts going
1:08:20
upstairs, walking around the libraries.
1:08:22
I'm like, oh, good grief, it's a tour of the TARDIS.
1:08:25
It's the it's the absolute nadir of the extended regeneration
1:08:30
sequence. It's like, oh, for God's sake,
1:08:31
just get on with it, for heaven's sake.
1:08:35
The weird. I found it slightly odd the way
1:08:39
it was directed, the regeneration where we spend a
1:08:42
long time. I mean, is it Rachel Tulile who
1:08:45
directed this? Her direction is superb.
1:08:47
She's brilliant. I I think she's great.
1:08:50
But we spend ages panning around the dark console room with the
1:08:53
silhouette of the Doctor and the ring falling off the finger, as
1:08:57
if we don't know who it's going to be.
1:09:01
And it just seems a really odd choice to do that, because we
1:09:04
all knew it was going to be Jodie Whittaker.
1:09:05
It had been announced, it was in, it was done on television,
1:09:08
it was in the press. Why then spend all that time
1:09:12
before we even see her face when we know?
1:09:15
Maybe on Christmas Day there appear.
1:09:17
I mean, we're absolutely wedded in this stuff, aren't we?
1:09:19
I'm sure there were a proportion, probably a small
1:09:22
proportion, of the audience watching on Christmas Day that
1:09:25
didn't know. I think you'd have to be very
1:09:29
media blind not to have known by that point that it was going to
1:09:32
be Jodie Whittaker because it was literally headline news, you
1:09:36
know, for months. So there are some odd choices in
1:09:39
it. And yeah, OK, the fact that it
1:09:45
was written hastily, I think it shows, but I'm still going to
1:09:47
keep it because I got excited for it.
1:09:51
I love David Bradley. I think he's brilliant and I
1:09:54
really like the Christmas Truce inclusion, so I don't disagree
1:09:59
with your criticisms, Joe, no. I just.
1:10:01
I want to wait. I just want to I.
1:10:02
Cannot. I cannot in good conscience
1:10:05
jettison this one. Because it's going through
1:10:07
anyway. But a word of caution from me
1:10:09
then as well, and that is, what on earth do the kids think about
1:10:13
this like? It is so slow, It's so
1:10:17
reflective. It's effectively about two old
1:10:21
men at the end of their lives, You know, the Doctor feels
1:10:25
exhausted. There's no sort of zest or zeal
1:10:28
or zip to any of it, like what the kids must be like.
1:10:33
When Jodie came along at the end, the TARDIS started
1:10:35
exploding and she's smiling. She's actually bloody smiling.
1:10:39
They must have been like, yeah, let's go.
1:10:40
We're back having an adventure again.
1:10:42
I mean, that's that's another criticism I've got, and I
1:10:45
mentioned this on my Cliffhangers thread as well, is
1:10:47
that every bloody time Moffett writes A regeneration, he
1:10:49
crashes the TARDIS. Yeah.
1:10:51
It is kind of miserable this, you know and I just don't like
1:10:55
and I don't think, I don't think this is.
1:10:58
This is like you, Joe. This is Christmas.
1:10:59
A Christmas Carol by Dickens ain't exactly a barrel of
1:11:02
laughs. It has spectacular highs in it.
1:11:05
A Christmas Carol, that's what. That's what Dickens does, isn't
1:11:08
it? It takes you high and then drags
1:11:10
you down again. I don't know.
1:11:12
I. I I I think actually, Joe, I
1:11:14
think you make a fair point there.
1:11:15
And I think to my mind, the more I look at it, back at it,
1:11:19
especially with the Capaldi era, I think that if I'm honest,
1:11:25
Moffett lost sight of the fact that this is really supposed to
1:11:28
be for kids as well. But you said that, Johnny, about
1:11:32
Doctor Who fans. I feel like this is a point
1:11:35
where we've lost the general audience as well, because I live
1:11:39
in the general audience. Switch on Doctor Who to see two
1:11:41
exhausted old men holding back death like that.
1:11:45
I think there's certainly, I think the under 10s had sort of
1:11:50
gone more or less by this point because it was just too dark and
1:11:57
in Capelli's year it gets quite slow.
1:12:00
Anyway, sorry, right. Should we put this back on to
1:12:02
the Yes? We've we've wandered off off
1:12:05
tangent before. But it's going.
1:12:07
To convince everybody too much to change.
1:12:09
Their mind, but it's going through.
1:12:10
Staying with twice upon a time. Staying in.
1:12:14
Don't worry, we'll knock it out round two.
1:12:18
Johnny, we are back to you to pick your second choice.
1:12:24
OK, well, I'm going to be controversially positive about
1:12:31
the Time of the Doctor. A few things I love about it.
1:12:39
I think it's a great story for kids.
1:12:40
I think it has. Oh, it has monsters galore, And
1:12:46
I think kids, that is what they prioritise about going.
1:12:49
It has Daleks, Silence, wooden side men, some tyrants weeping
1:12:55
angels, and it's just full on and gorgeous for that.
1:13:01
I think that works incredibly well about it.
1:13:05
I think this is the first iteration of the Doctor being
1:13:11
sort of the lone soldier defending a town, which
1:13:15
obviously then becomes in World Enough and time the Doctor
1:13:19
falls, it becomes revisited. But this is the first time I
1:13:26
will. What I appreciate as someone
1:13:28
who's been writing these Doctor Who books over the years by by
1:13:31
Doctor Utopia, by The Monster Vault, is having spent hours
1:13:36
trying to understand what the Silences plan is and what the
1:13:40
what the difference between Silence Will Fall and The
1:13:42
silence and all of the Silences. I am probably the only person
1:13:48
who appreciates The Time of the Doctor for actually, it does
1:13:50
actually explain everything. It does make as much sense as
1:13:55
anything else in Doctor Who. So I'm not saying it makes
1:13:57
complete sense, but by the low bar, which Doctor Who normally
1:14:01
takes for making sense, it does actually pay off everything
1:14:05
that's been set up, which is an which is an expected
1:14:09
achievement. But those are sort of fan
1:14:14
reasons. The reason I will always love it
1:14:19
is because when it was on, my wife was in labour.
1:14:25
She just went into labour about two hours before.
1:14:28
So I was. So my memory of watching it is
1:14:34
every sort of three minutes, my wife screaming basically, which
1:14:40
I think some fans probably did when they're watching it as
1:14:42
well. But it was a sort of thing of
1:14:48
without wishing, I can be more curious at the same time I'm
1:14:52
going my, my son wants to, he wants to come out and watch
1:14:55
Doctor Who because he he wants to see the new Doctor.
1:14:58
He wants to see the monsters. I don't want to be disingenuous.
1:15:02
He had a little peek at time with the Doctor and then.
1:15:04
Pop back in again. Yeah, but no, I I so I associate
1:15:09
with that. Now that's this is sort of dad
1:15:13
emotion, but that's such a sort of an emotional and magical time
1:15:16
in your life. And the fact that Doctor Who was
1:15:18
part of it and a sweet, silly, frothy, ultra Christmassy,
1:15:27
slightly messy, slightly indulgent, but any Doctor Who
1:15:34
story which is associated with that is going to be a thumbs up
1:15:37
for me. So you know it'd be awful if,
1:15:41
you know if I, if my wife got his labour during in the forest
1:15:44
of the night could be like, oh God, you know late Ray Moore oh
1:15:48
God. But I think it's it's harmless.
1:15:54
I mean it's also it's got the problem that it comes after the
1:15:58
day of the doctor and that was you know world shatteringly a
1:16:04
huge event you know and it didn't drop any balls.
1:16:06
It was. It pleased everyone.
1:16:09
It was an extraordinary achievement and it's like A now
1:16:14
after we've had the A side and here's the B side and you go,
1:16:17
well, it's never going to be as good as the Day of the Doctor,
1:16:22
but I think on reflection there's a huge amount of love in
1:16:26
that. OK, well Johnny, I'm going to
1:16:30
agree with you. I think The Time of the Doctor
1:16:33
is a great episode. I think you're absolutely right.
1:16:36
I've kind of written down as one of my notes that it finds the
1:16:39
right balance. So you're right, you've listed
1:16:41
off all the aliens that are in it.
1:16:43
We go to the Find my new shy again of trying to fill in the
1:16:47
dots, even to the extent that we see what was in Room 11 in the
1:16:50
God complex and the Doctor saw the crack.
1:16:52
So we we answer every little and they're all quite small,
1:16:56
throwaway lines, but it's all in.
1:16:58
Then it's surprising how much they pack in.
1:17:00
Hang on a. 2nd May I disagree with you for one second, please.
1:17:05
Because in order to pay off all those plots, we have to have the
1:17:09
Doctor and Clara come away from the planet Christmas to sit down
1:17:13
with Tasha Lev for A5 extended 5 minute scene where they take off
1:17:18
every unresolved arc plot from the Steve.
1:17:23
Oh yes, you remember Madam Kavarian?
1:17:24
Well, that was that. Remember the silence?
1:17:26
Well, they were a church. Remember the Oh, it's so
1:17:29
terribly dull. Sorry.
1:17:30
Please continue. Thank you.
1:17:33
I think it's quite eloquently done.
1:17:35
I love the fact that everything gets gets answered whether you
1:17:38
find it satisfactory or not. At least we've gone to the
1:17:40
extent of trying to put a bow on this present.
1:17:44
And of course it's a regeneration story.
1:17:46
So the stakes are high, probably higher because and I did find
1:17:50
this a little bit odd that we suddenly introduced the fact
1:17:53
that this is the docs, what he thinks is the final regeneration
1:17:56
that was a little bit crow barred in probably at about the
1:17:59
30 minute mark we suddenly find that out because David Tennant
1:18:03
took up two. So that that's a little bit odd
1:18:06
that that suddenly gets brought in at that point.
1:18:08
But nevertheless, we've got all this high stakes.
1:18:11
We've got spaceships, we've got every alien going.
1:18:15
But at the heart of this story, it's a very small story about
1:18:17
the Doctor protecting a town. And I think he gets the balance
1:18:20
right between those two. The original Russell's original
1:18:23
idea for End of Time was going to be a small story.
1:18:27
Was the Doctor on the spaceship with one family saving that
1:18:30
family and sacrificing himself to save that one family on a
1:18:33
spaceship. Obviously, as we've already
1:18:35
discussed, he didn't go down that route.
1:18:37
He went large instead. So this kind of revisits that
1:18:40
same idea that this is quite a low key story.
1:18:43
Is the Doctor looking after after one small village on on
1:18:46
one world and and protecting it throughout his life.
1:18:50
Because we we see him age before us and I think I think it's a
1:18:54
toward force performance by Matt Smith.
1:18:56
I think he pretty much shows every nuance of the Doctor.
1:18:59
We get the madcap at the beginning, running into the
1:19:02
Dalek and Cyberman spaceship. We get the silly comedy bit with
1:19:06
him going to dinner with with Clara's family and being naked
1:19:10
and Nan wanting to play Twister with him whilst he's naked.
1:19:13
Lovely Sheila Reid. Then we get this.
1:19:18
Joe's pointing at me. We got the point of Jason.
1:19:21
He looks as pained as I do. We we get the flirty bit with
1:19:25
Tasha and what did Toby call it last week?
1:19:27
The sexy waxy bit. But I mean, the Doctor does
1:19:30
actually say he talks to Clara afterwards and we realise what
1:19:33
he's doing is a facade. He's not really playing Sexy
1:19:36
Waxy with her at all. It's just because he wants to
1:19:39
know what she knows. So I think we get all of that.
1:19:41
We get some grandstanding on top of the watchtower, but we also
1:19:44
get some really calm and quiet in those moments in his barn
1:19:47
when he's aged. So I think we get, we get the
1:19:50
full range of of Matt Smith and visually it looks lovely.
1:19:53
I think Stephen Moffitt said he actually wants to film a
1:19:56
Christmas episode in a proper village rather than sets, and
1:19:59
this is in a. It's in a in a mock German
1:20:02
village somewhere in in Wales and it it looks lovely, so I
1:20:06
think it's quite it's a visual feast as well, so I'm I'm voting
1:20:09
to keep it in, but I am feeling that my two Co panellists are
1:20:14
not going to be quite as generous.
1:20:17
No. If that makes you think that,
1:20:19
let's go to Jason. Right.
1:20:22
I am going to say again, I can't argue with some parts of it
1:20:27
because yeah, it looks gorgeous and the village setting is
1:20:30
beautiful. And yeah, I I absolutely love
1:20:34
how it looks and how Christmassy it feels.
1:20:37
I mean, you can't argue with, with Johnny's thing about, you
1:20:41
know, the the association with an important, wonderful moment
1:20:45
in his life. Absolutely.
1:20:47
That's fine. And again, you know, no problem.
1:20:50
But I think this is a mess of a conclusion to the Matt Smith
1:20:57
era. I believe that the plan was to
1:21:02
do a season, or at least multiple episodes of the Doctor
1:21:06
Defending Trenzalor and condensing it to an hour harms
1:21:10
it to the extent that we have the Doctor and Clara arrive,
1:21:13
then they go somewhere else, then Clara goes back, then she
1:21:15
goes back. Then she goes back home.
1:21:17
Then she goes back. She's back and forth all over
1:21:19
the place. It's a mess.
1:21:20
Tasha Lem is a River Song substitute, brilliantly
1:21:25
portrayed by Orla Brady. But you know, still, and I'm
1:21:30
sorry, the nudity gags, What the hell were they doing in Doctor
1:21:34
Who? That is just ridiculous.
1:21:37
Especially when you know the Doctor is.
1:21:39
I'm Naked because I'm going to church and I've got hologram
1:21:43
clothes, but no one else can see them.
1:21:45
The Doctor and Clara arrive on Trendsalor and end up rolling
1:21:49
around in the snow in hologram clothes.
1:21:51
So it's kind of Steven Moffat having his cake and eating it by
1:21:54
having two people rolling around naked.
1:21:56
But they're not naked. But they are naked, but they're
1:21:58
not because we can see their clothes.
1:22:01
But then everyone else on the church can see through them
1:22:03
anyway, so who cares? The whole nudity stuff is no, I
1:22:10
I don't. The doctor says, though Jason,
1:22:12
We're all naked underneath. Yeah, underneath.
1:22:16
I don't think Doctor Who is a place for nudity.
1:22:19
Gags. I'm sorry, I don't think it fits
1:22:22
at all. What the hell are you doing on
1:22:25
this podcast then? It just seems it just seems
1:22:29
puerile and immature and I didn't care for it at all
1:22:33
because there was no need for it.
1:22:34
That's the thing as well, you know.
1:22:36
It wasn't required and I don't want to think about the doctor
1:22:39
being naked, thank you very much.
1:22:41
I think it probably is all it is, a bit forced, but I think
1:22:44
it's there to explain why he's got no hair later on because
1:22:47
obviously he shaved his head for a film.
1:22:50
Yeah, we have to. I mean, it does introduce the
1:22:52
the, the, the quite amusing thing that at the end of it,
1:22:55
both he and Karen Gillan are wearing wigs because they both
1:22:58
had to shave their heads for for movie roles that they were doing
1:23:01
at the time. But no, the nudity gags, no, I
1:23:06
don't like it. I don't really care for the
1:23:08
chucking all the monsters into it bit, because we've done that.
1:23:11
Already. Steven Moffat just loves
1:23:14
chucking all the aliens together, even though there's no
1:23:16
reason for them all to be together and cooperating with
1:23:19
each other. And it leads into the most
1:23:22
egregious example almost of the thing that really bugs me
1:23:25
throughout Doctor Who in the new era in particular.
1:23:29
Just shoot the bastard. I am really not taken with the
1:23:35
Doctor standing unarmed in front of a whole group of aliens that
1:23:39
could kill him in seconds and just going.
1:23:42
You can't do it, can you? The Daleks are hovering with
1:23:45
their mothership opium. They could obliterate the entire
1:23:48
surface of the planet but the Doctor.
1:23:51
Wouldn't have a. Chance to answer the question
1:23:53
and bring the Time Lords through because he would be atomized in
1:23:56
a fraction of a second and they still can't do it and it's.
1:23:59
You would be ending Doctor Who there, Jason.
1:24:02
Yeah, but this is what I've they're.
1:24:04
Nervous because they don't know if he's got a plan.
1:24:07
It doesn't matter if you can obliterate him in .3
1:24:09
milliseconds. It was the same problem I had
1:24:12
with the end of the Forest of the Forest of the Dead when the
1:24:15
Vashta Narada backed off because he told them to read up on it.
1:24:19
Oh, I love. That.
1:24:20
Scene. But you can strip his flesh in
1:24:22
less than a second. He'd be dead.
1:24:24
It wouldn't matter if he had a plan, because he'd be dead.
1:24:26
But he looks so cool, so who cares?
1:24:29
You could obliterate him just and and so and I you know the
1:24:33
arguments about things it's it's almost like Steven Moffat
1:24:36
constantly not killing anybody and bringing them back when he
1:24:40
has killed them. Because Doctor Who is about
1:24:41
happy endings and escapism. Fine.
1:24:43
Give them their happy endings by just not killing them in the 1st
1:24:46
place And you know, yeah we have to have the Doctor can't be
1:24:50
obliterated by the Daleks because that would end the
1:24:53
series. Absolutely.
1:24:54
So don't have him standing under a mothership going you can't do
1:24:58
it can you, without a single weapon in his hand.
1:25:02
That's just terrible. I I didn't care for that at all.
1:25:06
And again, it's a protracted regeneration.
1:25:08
He has a massive regeneration that blasts all the alien ships
1:25:11
to pieces on top of that tower. And then it turns out he's just
1:25:14
gone back to his young face and he's just waiting around in the
1:25:18
TARDIS for Clara to come back so he can have a bit of a speech
1:25:21
with her. And then just oh, I'm peace
1:25:25
Capaldi suddenly. It's a great speech, though,
1:25:27
Jason. It is and and.
1:25:30
He does. He delivers it brilliantly.
1:25:31
That's good Jacob Dublin delivers it especially well.
1:25:35
I have to say, I nicked part of that speech because a few years
1:25:39
later I was made redundant from a job.
1:25:41
And on my last day I posted on the work Facebook group,
1:25:44
basically modified that last speech about we're all different
1:25:47
people and we've got to keep going and remembering who we
1:25:49
used to be. And I will always remember this.
1:25:52
So, you know, there's some gorgeous dialogue in it and
1:25:55
wonderful moments, but it just for me is a mess of things being
1:25:59
chucked in. It's got the doctor being a bit
1:26:02
of a Lech, you know, emergency. Or my boyfriend.
1:26:04
Oh Ding Dong. Well, I'll glance at a manual.
1:26:06
Oh, for God's sake, please, let's.
1:26:09
Let's not let's not do this. Let's not do this with the.
1:26:13
Doctor. Hello.
1:26:14
Hello. Yes, I feel like this is the
1:26:16
Pandorica Open has done, but really shit.
1:26:20
So you do have a bit with the doctor railing at the sky.
1:26:23
That was done brilliantly in The Pandorica Opens but it's done
1:26:26
terribly here and I'll come back to that in a second.
1:26:28
You got all the monsters coming together like in the Pandorica
1:26:31
Opens, but it was done it exceptionally well there and
1:26:34
you've got the culmination of well, it's an era here, but it's
1:26:37
a season there and it's done amazingly well in the Pandorica
1:26:40
Opens of that pre title sequence.
1:26:42
But here you say it's elegant. I think it's possibly the most
1:26:46
inelegant culmination of an era I've ever seen that that tick
1:26:51
box scene is really badly done, but actually I've got a personal
1:26:54
story to tell as well. But it's unfortunately not as
1:26:56
charming as Johnny's. And that is the end where the
1:26:59
Doctor with about 15 layers of latex on his face, I just can't
1:27:04
do old age makeup. Well, he looks hideous, doesn't
1:27:07
he? And he's struggling out and he's
1:27:08
going to the top of that bell tower and he's throwing out
1:27:12
regeneration energy and destroying entire Dalek armies.
1:27:16
I was watching this with my family and I could feel the
1:27:20
collective like breath being taken whilst that was all going
1:27:24
on. And I'll turn around and looked
1:27:25
at them and they all just burst into laughter and I thought that
1:27:28
was the point. I'll stop watching Doctor Who
1:27:30
with my family. I can't take it anymore.
1:27:33
I'm so embarrassed. It's so indulgent.
1:27:37
It's so messy. There's some nice bits I like
1:27:42
Handles. Handles is done brilliantly.
1:27:44
I think the the emotion around that Cyberman head is is sort of
1:27:49
judged better than pretty much anything else here.
1:27:51
I do like the final scene, and Amy coming in weirdly moved me
1:27:54
because I never liked Amy, but I thought that was done really,
1:27:57
really well. But it's a mess.
1:28:01
So no, I'm kicking it out, I'm afraid.
1:28:04
Sorry I was with you, but no, it's Johnny Votes.
1:28:07
I'm with Johnny. So you 2 have voted out.
1:28:09
So unfortunately, Time of the Doctor is the second one to
1:28:12
fall. OK.
1:28:15
So we are back to Jason for your second nomination.
1:28:21
My second nomination? I'm going to head back to the
1:28:24
Jodie Whittaker era and I'm going to say why I love
1:28:28
Resolution because I feel I should be positive.
1:28:32
After just tearing the Time of the Doctor to shreds, I thought
1:28:36
Resolution was excellent. I really enjoyed that as a New
1:28:40
Year's Day episode. Daleks do not work in large
1:28:45
numbers. As far as I'm concerned, the
1:28:48
more Daleks you have, the more ludicrous the situation has to
1:28:52
be To explain why they're not just shooting everybody under
1:28:55
the sun and just getting on with the thing and being an
1:28:57
unstoppable army of killing machines.
1:29:01
A single Dalek done well is a marvellous threat.
1:29:05
Rob Shearman did it superbly in Dalek.
1:29:07
I don't think anyone's ever bettered that, to be perfectly
1:29:10
honest with you. He did brilliantly with Dalek,
1:29:13
and here Chris Chipnall has sort of taken that as a sort of
1:29:16
inspiration, I think, and gone back to it.
1:29:18
We have one Dalek that has to put itself back together over
1:29:23
the first half of the episode. The way it takes over Lin is a
1:29:30
nice little addition to Dalek Law, the fact that the creature
1:29:33
itself can actually do something like that.
1:29:36
I love the redesigned Recon Dalek Scout because I think I
1:29:40
think a lot of people miss the point of that redesign because
1:29:43
loads of people I've seen online have said, oh, this is what
1:29:45
Recon Daleks look like now. This is what a Dalek cobbled
1:29:48
together in a human factory that vaguely resembled the Dalek
1:29:52
shell. It wasn't.
1:29:53
This is the actual design that left scaro, you know, and I
1:29:57
really like that design. The one Dalek is a real threat.
1:30:02
Now, I have seen criticism of the threat being portrayed in
1:30:06
that everything, everybody the Dalek kills is introduced in the
1:30:09
scene. It kills them.
1:30:11
So the Dalek doesn't actually kill anyone.
1:30:12
We give a toss about. It just kills people that we've
1:30:15
just met. But at least it's killing
1:30:17
people, right? I don't think that Dalek killed
1:30:19
people for years. That sequence with the army
1:30:23
attacking the Dalek is absolutely brilliant.
1:30:27
I love it. It's, you know, it's just about
1:30:29
a minute long, you know, a bunch of soldiers.
1:30:33
And I. One of the things that gets
1:30:36
criticised and doesn't make an awful lot of sense is the
1:30:38
dissolution of UNIT in this episode because it's old.
1:30:42
UNIT has been closed down because of funding issues and
1:30:44
what have you. And that became a plot point in
1:30:48
flux, which frankly didn't make a job of sense there either.
1:30:53
But I think for this episode it was absolutely essential because
1:30:56
UNIT know what Daleks are. If UNIT had engaged the Dalek,
1:31:00
it would have been less satisfying.
1:31:03
But this thought, it's the regular army.
1:31:05
They turn up, they go, what the bloody hell is this?
1:31:07
Did it just speak? When they realise that they
1:31:10
can't actually damage it And then it unleashes all its
1:31:13
rockets and the commander just goes run.
1:31:15
But that's an order. I mean that sequence is
1:31:18
brilliant. The way it's done visually.
1:31:22
Get a real sense of the power of the Dalek weaponry as well, just
1:31:25
from silly little things like the fact that they shake the
1:31:27
camera when it fires it's gun to give you an impression of the of
1:31:30
the power. So I really, really like that a
1:31:33
single Dalek is a threat. And yeah, once again, yes, a
1:31:37
single Dalek should be a threat, and it takes a lot to actually
1:31:41
trash it. The other thing I'm going to say
1:31:44
I quite like in this, and I know not everybody does, and it does
1:31:48
suffer from one of Chris Chidnell's big flaws as a
1:31:52
writer, I think is the bit with Ryan's dad and everyone's
1:31:56
reaction to him and the conversations they have with
1:31:59
him. One of the things that I've
1:32:01
commented on a previous podcast about with Chris Chidnell is he
1:32:04
writes superb character moments. But you can hear the brakes
1:32:07
squealing on the plot as everything stops so that we can
1:32:11
have these character moments rather than actually having them
1:32:14
generally blended into the plot. But I think that the way people
1:32:18
react to Ryan's dad turning up here is great.
1:32:20
Graham is obviously protective of Ryan because his dad has
1:32:25
buggered off and done the whole hey, I'm back in your life.
1:32:27
Well, actually, no, you haven't done enough here to warrant it.
1:32:32
A lot of people don't like it, but I really like the scene with
1:32:35
Ryan and his dad in the cafe where Ryan tells his dad what he
1:32:38
wants his dad to say, what he thinks he should say, and how
1:32:43
he's feeling. I think that's really nicely
1:32:45
done. And I even like the doctor's
1:32:47
just casual. Oh, you didn't turn up to his
1:32:49
gran's funeral, which immediately puts him on the back
1:32:53
foot and says oh, OK, so even this strange person I met before
1:32:56
has heard something about me. Oh, crap, I've got a lot of work
1:32:59
to do here. And he does try.
1:33:03
He does try and he has check off the microwave with him as well.
1:33:09
It's so subtle, isn't it, The way you carry it around with
1:33:12
him? From Yeah, absolutely.
1:33:14
There's, you know. I don't want it saying plot
1:33:17
point, plot point. Yeah, I honestly, I don't think
1:33:20
Chris Chibnoy is great at plot at all.
1:33:23
I think some of his plots are absolutely dire.
1:33:25
He's good at. Spectacle.
1:33:28
He's good at spectacle and I love the fact that this one,
1:33:31
this episode makes 1 Dalek a real threat because we've had
1:33:35
repeatedly we've had monsters ganging up on the Doctor and not
1:33:39
actually just shooting the Doctor.
1:33:42
At this point, the only time the Doctor actually spends any time
1:33:45
standing in front of the Dalek, it's made clear it's literally
1:33:48
only just rebuilt itself and it's weaponry is not active yet.
1:33:53
So that's the only reason it doesn't just kill her straight
1:33:56
away. And they actually explain that,
1:33:58
which makes more sense than having the Doctor stand in front
1:34:01
of a bunch of fully armed Daleks going, come on then, and then
1:34:04
just going actually, let's have a chat and we'll explain our
1:34:07
plans and we won't kill you and we'll get distracted at the last
1:34:11
minute by something. So I I love resolution.
1:34:15
I think it was great. OK.
1:34:18
I'm going to jump in. I'll go on, Johnny.
1:34:21
OK, well, I'll be brief. I'm always very brief.
1:34:26
I know. I noticed Jason didn't mention
1:34:28
the the most famous scenes in the episode.
1:34:32
Tactfully ignored it. I think is the expression.
1:34:35
We're just going to have to talk to each other, Johnny.
1:34:38
Which I mean there's there's there's several reasons that I'm
1:34:44
I'm not keen on that scene. I don't think it's very well
1:34:46
written or very well played, but I think it's it's exactly the
1:34:49
wrong point in the episode because we've just had the Dalek
1:34:54
has taken over GCHQ. It's disconnected the Internet
1:34:58
dand dand terrible thing happening.
1:35:00
Oh no. And then this jokey scene
1:35:03
undermines the threat and I think that's it's not
1:35:08
contrasting, it's not doing. Sometimes you throw in a bit of
1:35:11
comedy as a contrast to the drama and it works, but here
1:35:14
you're just going, it's a fuss about nothing.
1:35:17
It's just oh people having to talk to each other.
1:35:19
So I I think that was a huge misstep.
1:35:24
See, I have a different view on that scene, if I may, because I
1:35:31
see that as, yeah, we know there's a threat, but most of
1:35:34
the people in the world don't. Yet this one Dalek is not known
1:35:37
about. No one knows what's actually
1:35:39
going on. And I think that's a very, very
1:35:41
true response. Whatever is actually going on.
1:35:45
If all the Wi-Fi went down, suddenly families would be a bit
1:35:48
kind of oh God, what have they done now, etcetera, etcetera,
1:35:51
so. But they don't react as if it's
1:35:52
a threat. It's just.
1:35:54
And they don't know it's a threat that's even.
1:35:55
Inconvenient. But they don't know it's a
1:35:57
threat. That's the whole point.
1:35:58
They have no idea that an alien creature has just attacked GCHQ
1:36:02
and taken out all the country's Wi-Fi.
1:36:04
Or they believe there's jokes. On the most contentious point, I
1:36:08
cannot. We haven't got that yet.
1:36:09
I mean, I love this episode, Jason, but that's a terrible
1:36:12
joke. It's a terrible.
1:36:13
It's a terrible joke. It's a terrible but I don't.
1:36:17
I don't think it's. I don't think it's as out of
1:36:19
place or unnatural as is being suggested because for everybody
1:36:24
who doesn't know, why would they think, oh, there's a terrible
1:36:27
threat going on when their Wi-Fi goes down.
1:36:29
My Wi-Fi goes down periodically. I don't think oh a Dalek must
1:36:32
have appeared and attached GCHQ. We're all in terrible danger.
1:36:35
I just think oh for. You should.
1:36:36
I can't. I can't record my podcast now or
1:36:39
something like that, so you know it's.
1:36:42
I think you could, you could have fun by taking the climax of
1:36:45
any Doctor Who story and having a bystander going, oh, it's
1:36:48
probably nothing. And I think I think, well, that
1:36:54
might be fun. I think that's it's only the
1:36:58
wrong place. That's my, my.
1:37:01
And the other point is, you mentioned the scene with Ryan
1:37:04
and his dad in the cafe, which I I think it's perfectly well
1:37:10
written and played, Well played. But I just remember watching
1:37:15
that on New Year's Day and I start looking at my phone, you
1:37:19
know, I start messaging Joe Lister going get on with it.
1:37:22
When are they going to get out of that cafe?
1:37:25
And my son starts picking up a book and starts reading or
1:37:28
starts doing something else as well.
1:37:31
And it's like you've you've you're doing one thing at a
1:37:35
time. And when we start that scene, we
1:37:38
know what that scene is going to be doing for the next two or
1:37:40
three minutes. And there's a Dalek on the
1:37:45
loose. You know, the Dalek's got
1:37:47
Charlotte Ritchie from Ghosts. So he's taken his his, possessed
1:37:50
her, and he's doing a terrible thing.
1:37:51
He's killing characters that we've barely met.
1:37:53
Police tell me you think all that stuff's great.
1:37:56
Yeah, that's all good. That's all going at the same
1:37:57
time. And it's like you can't.
1:38:00
Not sure you can pause it for that long.
1:38:02
What you need is Ryan and his dad exploring a dark tunnel
1:38:07
together, thinking there's a Dalek on the loose, and they're
1:38:10
having that conversation as they're walking through the
1:38:12
spooky tunnels. But then they just do what they
1:38:14
did in the Saranga conundrum and just stand still for 5 minutes
1:38:18
in a tunnel and talk. Another classic.
1:38:21
Rod Yeah, but you need something else going.
1:38:24
You need some something else going on.
1:38:27
There needs to be another sort of element of the story.
1:38:28
And the fact that they are just sitting in a cafe on the side of
1:38:32
the table to each other is, I don't know, it's it doesn't seem
1:38:37
very it did stop the story for me.
1:38:40
Hang on a second. Just just just like those
1:38:42
characters sitting around a table when time with the Doctor
1:38:45
bringing up all the plot points of the era for 10 minutes.
1:38:48
Sorry. Yeah, we've rolled up.
1:38:49
I care. About Oh yeah, I'm sorry, sorry,
1:38:51
where? Are we going with?
1:38:52
It I think, I think I I mean I agree.
1:38:54
I think, as I say Chris Chipnall does tell us, grind the plot to
1:38:58
a halt so he can have his character means.
1:38:59
I think his his era of Doctor Who has gone more for sort of
1:39:03
the more naturalistic conversations between the
1:39:06
characters and the way they're portrayed.
1:39:08
And I think it's done very well, but I think it loses the kind of
1:39:11
the heightened. Yeah, for sure.
1:39:13
Stuff that you actually need in a fantasy sci-fi series.
1:39:15
That people have come to expect. As well, yeah.
1:39:18
It's not a soap. It's not a yeah that that kind
1:39:21
of drama. It's kind of fantastical
1:39:22
situation. So it there should be a little
1:39:24
sort of heightened edge to everybody's performance I think.
1:39:26
And it's not there necessarily. So yeah, the.
1:39:29
Other thing I'd say is I've I've seen three or four 80s science
1:39:34
fiction films which have this sort of broad storyline of an
1:39:39
alien is possessing people and popping from body to body and
1:39:47
which is fine. So you know, you can nick from
1:39:49
anywhere and that's a sort of classical.
1:39:51
But I think this has a fundamental problem for the
1:39:54
first half if it's trying to find reasons to keep the Doctor
1:39:58
away from the story. And you know, we've all.
1:40:02
Lamented the Colin Baker era and stuff and going get out of the
1:40:06
TARDIS, meet people, do something.
1:40:09
And this is a story where the Doctor is in the TARDIS for the
1:40:13
first half of the story. I mean, she's met the characters
1:40:16
and then she's in the control room dealing with a force field
1:40:20
and phoning unit and stuff. And it's like, but this is, this
1:40:25
is, you know, her name is in the title.
1:40:27
This is the Doctor Who show. You need to structure it so that
1:40:32
the Doctor is doing something. The Doctor needs to be working
1:40:35
stuff out on the trail of the Dalek.
1:40:38
So even though there are things I love in the store, I do love,
1:40:42
like I said, Charlotte Ritchie, I love the Dalek on her shoulder
1:40:44
and possessing her, I think that's wonderful.
1:40:47
I think the new design of the sort of knock together Rusty
1:40:52
Dalek is fun and stuff like that.
1:40:54
That's all good, but I think I don't know.
1:40:59
It's it's one of those ones where I can see how I'd read,
1:41:03
how I'd just how I'd fix it. And that just bugs me all the
1:41:06
way through. So I'm going to now that goes
1:41:09
that goes down the chute on the frame.
1:41:11
Well, I'm going to jump in and I'm also straight down that
1:41:15
chute. So I've done the I've been
1:41:18
watching these for this podcast, I've been watching the Christmas
1:41:21
specials, and last week we did a load more RCD and Steven Moffett
1:41:25
Christmas specials and there's good and there's bad in there.
1:41:29
But then coming to this, this just felt so leaden and clunky.
1:41:34
I just could not get past the clunky moments.
1:41:38
And the more I saw irritants in there, the more things irritated
1:41:42
me. I just couldn't get past them.
1:41:45
So I mean, just how come a Dalek, which is an organic
1:41:50
being, is cut into three pieces buried in the 9th century and
1:41:55
then in the 21st century it manages to come back together
1:41:59
again because of ultraviolet light?
1:42:02
Don't really get. How it's an alien.
1:42:04
They just happen to do that sort of thing.
1:42:06
That is just a bit nonsense. And we have already established
1:42:09
in the magician's apprentice and the witches familiar that the
1:42:11
Dalek creatures don't actually die.
1:42:14
What when they're cut into 3? Well, why not?
1:42:18
There are creatures that can be cut into three and survive.
1:42:21
OK, OK. Put a sponge through a through a
1:42:25
through a sieve and it will reform.
1:42:28
Yeah, but I don't want to think about that one and what?
1:42:30
It just doesn't make much sense. There's no.
1:42:32
There isn't even a a pseudo explanation for it, it's just
1:42:35
some. Colony soft like a load of
1:42:37
snakes that comes together. They're not.
1:42:40
Discussing that Joe well. No, no.
1:42:41
But I'm just saying that's an alias.
1:42:43
This is an alias. Why can't this point be the
1:42:45
same? Rubbish Jason, I hear what
1:42:48
you're saying and the scene with the Dalek Massacre in the Army,
1:42:51
Yes, that looks fantastic. Can't argue that Wayne Yips
1:42:54
direction beautiful, looks really good, establishes the
1:42:57
threat. But visually I'm watching it as
1:43:00
a regular audience member with how come the Dalek can
1:43:03
completely annihilate that army? And then in the very next scene,
1:43:07
the Doctor very slowly slides on the floor past her and it's
1:43:11
firing at her, but misses every single time.
1:43:13
And always said about missing before.
1:43:15
Or the juxtaposition of those two scenes, one straight after
1:43:19
the other, when we've seen it completely destroy an army, and
1:43:22
then very slowly fires at Jodie as she slides across the floor.
1:43:27
She's even given it warning that's what she's going to do,
1:43:30
and it misses her every time. That's just can't get past that.
1:43:34
It's called You Can't Watch. Many Dalek stories in they all
1:43:37
have that problem. But it's so Labour that at
1:43:40
least. It's fire on this gun.
1:43:41
They never fire their guns. In the Moffett stories, it's.
1:43:44
So well made by the Army scene and then so completely pulled
1:43:48
away. The next scene, it's called
1:43:51
Resolution. So obviously the resolution is
1:43:53
Ryan and his father. There's not what the Resolution
1:43:56
is. I'm used to Moffett, you know,
1:43:58
having a theme and tying the whole episode together with you
1:44:01
like it or love it. He's very clever that there is a
1:44:04
theme throughout the thing. There's no resolution in the
1:44:07
Dalek storyline. Maybe we should have had the Tim
1:44:08
Shaw storyline, God help us in this episode, because then at
1:44:13
least there would have been resolution for Graham with Tim
1:44:15
Shaw and resolution with Ryan and his father.
1:44:17
Thematically, that would have made more sense.
1:44:21
There's no sense calling it resolution with the Dalek
1:44:23
plotline just doesn't work. So that irritates me.
1:44:28
UNIT being disbanded? Yeah, that's a great idea.
1:44:30
We ruin it because the Doctor phones David Walliams pretty
1:44:34
much from Little Britain. The woman saying computer says
1:44:37
no. She put even puts the silly
1:44:39
voice on say Oh no, Eunice has been disbanded.
1:44:42
It's just awful, the Wi-Fi scene.
1:44:44
Let's not even go there. A police woman that watches her
1:44:49
colleague getting pulled into a car and murdered sits and goes
1:44:52
that. Is hilarious when his legs are
1:44:54
hanging out the window. Yeah, but she.
1:44:57
Goes flipping heck, it's like strike me pink from blooming
1:45:00
black orchid. It's just awful.
1:45:02
The Doctor says she has. There is tech skills.
1:45:05
Yes, that's with a Zed. I mean talk about cringe Joe.
1:45:08
You mentioned I was dying the cafe scene.
1:45:12
I mean, we talked about the cafe scene before with Will from the
1:45:15
doctrine. End time.
1:45:16
Beautiful. This is just tortuous is
1:45:18
EastEnders. I'm not invested in Ryan.
1:45:23
His story doesn't do anything for me.
1:45:25
I don't think he's the greatest companion.
1:45:28
So I just don't feel it. Sorry.
1:45:30
Oh, you're mad. You need to find a bit more fun
1:45:32
in your life. You know, there's absolute fun
1:45:35
and sort of New Year's spectacle going on in this episode.
1:45:38
Fun. Oh, that's marvellous.
1:45:40
You know, you said about Jodie being sarcastic now.
1:45:43
No, not at all. You got Jodie being kept out of
1:45:45
the action. She is.
1:45:46
I do love all those tardy scenes though, because she is running
1:45:48
them. But then it leads to that
1:45:50
excellent confrontation with the Dalek where she gets to be Sarky
1:45:54
as hell. And we've talked about the
1:45:55
terrible Wi-Fi family joke. But that leads.
1:45:58
That confrontation leads up to a brilliant joke where she runs
1:46:02
away, the Dalek shooting at her, the music's rising, and then she
1:46:06
just sort of goes and the music stops and she just goes.
1:46:08
How long is a rail? And she just punches the, the,
1:46:11
the mad melodramaticness of all of it.
1:46:14
It's very, very funny. The scene with Ryan and his dad,
1:46:18
it does go on too long. It's a very personal scene to me
1:46:22
because I've had that moment with my dad and it played out
1:46:25
almost beat for beat. So I was watching you there
1:46:28
talking about that being ridiculously unrealistic.
1:46:31
Although I've been in that scene in a situation where I with my
1:46:34
dad and I think he gets, he gets the emotion of it, the sort of
1:46:38
the subtle emotion of it. And there's nothing wrong with
1:46:42
that. We've had so much melodramatic
1:46:44
emotion in the previous areas, actually showing somebody that's
1:46:48
not coping with a dysfunctional relationship with their father
1:46:53
in a subtle way. I think it's really beautifully
1:46:55
done. It is too long.
1:46:57
But I really like that thing because I can see me in it.
1:47:01
I love the fact that the Dalek is beaten into shape out of
1:47:04
Sheffield Steel, which is an exact copy of the sequence where
1:47:08
she makes a Sonic Screwdriver and The Woman Who Fell to Earth.
1:47:12
Like you said, Jason, the bit with the army is absolutely
1:47:14
spectacular. I love the microwave.
1:47:17
Jesus Christ, so many Doctor Who's have had ridiculous
1:47:20
resolution. The fact that I can see what's
1:47:22
happening throughout the episode, it doesn't spoil my
1:47:24
enjoyment at all. I think it does build the threat
1:47:28
builds throughout the story, from the mutant to the Dalek to
1:47:33
the world. Really.
1:47:34
Really. Well, you said Wayne Yips
1:47:37
direction is great. I think this looks terrific all
1:47:40
the way through. Charlotte Ritchie is amazing in
1:47:42
this. I don't know what the other
1:47:44
fella's name is, the sporty guy, but I think he's great as well.
1:47:50
Yeah, I just. I think, you know what?
1:47:51
I was in a pretty low place when this came on.
1:47:55
I'd gone from owning a house to living in somebody else's house
1:48:00
in a single room and single for the first time in my life in
1:48:03
about 20 years. I was bloody miserable.
1:48:06
And I remember resolution came on and for one hour I was just
1:48:10
blown away by this mad spectacular New Year's action
1:48:13
special Doctor Who with again and it's got a brilliant score
1:48:17
as well. This it's got a like a very
1:48:19
dramatic custody of score. Move over.
1:48:22
Murray Gold, second acadolas here.
1:48:26
Yeah, I mean, it's not going in because we're 22, but I would
1:48:29
absolutely put it through. I think it's, I think it's
1:48:33
refreshing after so many dreary Christmas specials where we've
1:48:37
had to beat a Doctor Who story into that sort of shape to just
1:48:41
do like a holiday, just an action romp as a special.
1:48:46
It's refreshing. So I'd keep it.
1:48:48
Well, sorry, can I change my vote in favour now?
1:48:52
Yes. Because I I, I remembered
1:48:53
something else I love about it. Which?
1:48:55
Is course you can Johnny just against.
1:48:57
The rules you said I write. The rules, right?
1:49:01
Well, I'll just mention it. The opening sequence, which is
1:49:03
this sort of medieval battlefield, and then it's the
1:49:06
bit of the Dalek being taken away in a bag and stuff.
1:49:09
And then it cuts to the archaeologist.
1:49:13
I'm just going, that's bone kickers.
1:49:16
That's that is, that is what Bone Kickers did every week.
1:49:20
And unintentionally or very, very intentionally, Chris
1:49:24
Chiblow has given us Doctor Who meets Bone Kickers with this
1:49:26
episode, and it's the crossover we always dreamed we could have.
1:49:31
We could always dream. And you want to put it back in
1:49:33
again. For that reason, yeah, I think,
1:49:35
I think he, he's always wanted to do a crossover with bone
1:49:38
kickers and this was the this was the golden opportunity, a
1:49:42
bit of Dalek in Bone kickers, which I think would have saved
1:49:44
that shit. Oh, Johnny, I loved you before,
1:49:47
but I love you even more now. Thank.
1:49:48
You. I'm resigning my position on
1:49:50
this. That's 2 Whitaker specials for I
1:49:54
never thought we'd see the day. OK, OK, Right.
1:50:00
Let's move. On two lifts, I forget we're.
1:50:02
We've got two left. It's my turn first this time.
1:50:04
So I'm going, unsurprisingly with Stephen Moffitt and I can't
1:50:09
believe it's not come up so far. The Snowman.
1:50:13
And unsurprisingly, I'm going to say I love the snowman.
1:50:17
That's that's a shock. Lots of lots of reasons.
1:50:21
If I was to be Clara for a day and be given the one word
1:50:25
challenge by Madam Vastra, my one word for the snowman would
1:50:28
be majestic. I think it's a beautiful
1:50:31
episode. So my three reasons.
1:50:34
The first one is the Great Intelligence.
1:50:38
And I'm not talking about the great intelligence here.
1:50:40
I'm talking about Stephen Moffat because I'm going to call him
1:50:43
the Great Intelligence. I think his script here is
1:50:46
absolutely spot on. We're in the middle of Series 7
1:50:50
and I think a lot of people are saying he was running on empty.
1:50:53
Series 7 does have its issues, but I think this is an absolute
1:50:57
cork of an episode. I don't think any any we're in
1:51:02
us with the show that he might have been experiencing shows
1:51:05
that it's a great episode. In the cold open really sets the
1:51:08
scene. The factory workers, Doctor
1:51:11
Simeon promises they will be fed and they are fed to the snowman.
1:51:15
There's lovely typical Steven Moffett word prayer play You get
1:51:18
right at the beginning. There's great stuff in there.
1:51:21
Scripting is lovely. Got a staircase up to the clouds
1:51:24
we talked about. I talked about the one word
1:51:27
scene between Faster and Clara before, and that one word when
1:51:31
she asks Clara to come up with one word that will get the
1:51:34
Doctor involved. And I was thinking, is it going
1:51:37
to be danger, peril, threat? And the word is pond.
1:51:40
Of course it had to be pond, because that's what brings the
1:51:43
Doctor back. But in Clara's case, she's
1:51:45
referring to the frozen pond in the governess's house where the
1:51:49
where the governess is frozen. Lovely.
1:51:51
Very clever. I love the fact that the Pattern
1:51:54
Osters are allegedly the inspiration for Conan Doyle, for
1:51:57
Sherlock, and then later on Matt Smith comes in as Sherlock.
1:52:01
Obviously Sherlock was huge at the time of a Steven Moffat
1:52:04
Baron Stormer at that point and he really plays up to that, but
1:52:08
it also ties together really well, and this was what I meant
1:52:11
about his kind of elegant writing beforehand.
1:52:13
So the beginning we get the comedy moment, which strikes in
1:52:15
the memory worm, which I do find it's extremely funny, even
1:52:19
though you can see it coming a mile off.
1:52:21
It's still very funny with straps on the glove and the
1:52:24
memory worm, this terrible puppet worm.
1:52:26
But it's incredibly funny. But that comes back again right
1:52:30
at the end of the episode where the doctor used the memory worm
1:52:33
to try to incapacitate Dr. Simeon.
1:52:36
Similarly, we get right to the very beginning of these even
1:52:38
before the credits have rolled. We get the doctor explaining
1:52:42
that thoughts can disrupt the snowman, and again, that's kind
1:52:46
of things hiding in plain sight, because the plot is ultimately
1:52:49
resolved by the family crying at Clara's death and that their
1:52:53
tears washed the snowman away. So again, we kind of laying all
1:52:56
those seeds early on, tying it together at the end.
1:53:00
Mr. Moffitt is the Great intelligence, so my second point
1:53:04
for recommending it is the great intelligence.
1:53:07
And in this case, I'm talking about Victorian Clara.
1:53:11
I think she's a wonderful character.
1:53:14
You've really thought about this, haven't you?
1:53:16
I did. I did see.
1:53:19
She gets us right from the start.
1:53:20
I mean right from the very first scene in the cold open.
1:53:22
She's funny, she's clever, she's inquisitive, she's bright.
1:53:26
I think Jenna Coleman's a fantastic actress throughout her
1:53:29
entire time on Doctor Who. She's probably not loved because
1:53:33
she has quite different arcs and different trajectories in the in
1:53:36
the three seasons that she's in. So we don't necessarily get to
1:53:40
know are Clara that well. But this version of Clara, this
1:53:43
splinter as we find out later on, I think is really strong and
1:53:47
I know Steve Moffett wants to go with this idea Before they kind
1:53:50
of balked a bit at having a historical character.
1:53:53
But I think this Clara is lovely should Cockney barmaid who
1:53:57
what's on an act as a as a Victorian well spoken governess.
1:54:02
You know she's she's brave she's resourceful and it's great shock
1:54:04
when she dies. That's another great moment to
1:54:06
the episode because I don't think any of us at that point
1:54:09
were expecting that version of Clara to to die.
1:54:13
That's a great plot beat. And then finally my third choice
1:54:16
is the great intelligence and in this case I am actually talking
1:54:20
about the great intelligence. If you're going to bring back an
1:54:24
old villain I think this is a great way to do it.
1:54:27
It's not so confusing that the the not we audience watching on
1:54:31
Christmas Day won't get it. I think there's plenty of
1:54:33
explanations there, but for us fans, there's plenty of lovely
1:54:36
nods the past, such as obviously the biscuits in with the map of
1:54:39
the London Underground on a seeding the web affair.
1:54:43
We get the whole business about how the Great Intelligence kind
1:54:47
of uses avatars and mirrors what people are thinking about, which
1:54:51
is why the snowmen, which then kind of makes sense why we've
1:54:54
got Yeti in Tibet, because they're mirroring what's around.
1:54:58
And I think the Great Intelligence is a great villain.
1:55:01
And obviously Ian Mccullen's voice is exemplary and really
1:55:04
brings the the fruity plumminess that you need to a proper Doctor
1:55:08
Who villain, particularly on Christmas Day.
1:55:11
So those are my three reasons. Great Intelligence Times 3
1:55:14
we've. All gone.
1:55:17
Quiet. I'll tell you what.
1:55:18
Let's flip the trade. I'll give the the swing vote to
1:55:22
one of the two gentlemen below. So I'll go next, but I can't
1:55:25
disagree with the thing you've said, apart from one thing.
1:55:28
I think that Sherlock joke is, oh, it's so Steven, but it's so
1:55:31
meta. It just makes me want to crawl
1:55:33
into a hole and die. But apart from that, you've
1:55:36
actually got the one, the only version of Clara I can tolerate
1:55:40
in this episode. She's only in one episode, but
1:55:43
gosh, she's wonderful. I really wish we kept Beryl the
1:55:47
whole time. You know, it's beautiful to look
1:55:50
at. It's so Christmassy.
1:55:52
This isn't it. And the sequence where we go up
1:55:54
the stairs into the clouds, it's got harking back to that sort of
1:55:58
magic that was in series five that he he just did so well.
1:56:04
I I think that sequence is brilliant.
1:56:06
I like the Passenoski gang in this as well.
1:56:09
I don't often like them. Yeah, I I just think I I really
1:56:12
love Series 7A and this continued the trend, that sort
1:56:17
of upward trend I felt. I know a lot of people don't
1:56:19
like that period. I certainly don't like B, but
1:56:22
no, I think, I think, I think this is a solid Christmas
1:56:25
special. I don't think it's like it's not
1:56:27
going to rock your world. The plot isn't that incredible.
1:56:30
It does move me at the end as well.
1:56:31
I think Clara's death genuinely moves you and the mystery around
1:56:35
the two Clara's and then him going off.
1:56:38
It does kick us into the next half season really well.
1:56:41
Yeah, it's fun. So yeah, it's Stadium.
1:56:45
I'm going to. I'm going to vote for this not
1:56:50
to stay in go down the chute, much as it pains me, because I
1:56:56
love Rich D Grant in it. And I love Cockney Clara who
1:57:01
I've stuck with. Cockney Clara and I love the
1:57:04
singer's tracks and the memory worm and all that stuff is
1:57:07
lovely. But my understanding is it had a
1:57:12
he has a slightly had a slightly troubled production in the what
1:57:16
was written and what was ended up on screen.
1:57:20
What ended up being quite different for various reasons.
1:57:24
I can't remember. I don't I'm sure it's on Andrew
1:57:27
Pixley's guide whatever it is whatever.
1:57:29
But so you end up with very odd bits like the scene where the
1:57:35
doctor is to investigate the Pom, he's he's told one word Pom
1:57:42
and you probably remember that again.
1:57:44
And then we cut to him investigating the pond, but we
1:57:47
don't we cut to him going to see the institute.
1:57:51
It's like this this scene has been just stuck there.
1:57:53
And then after the institute he then goes to investigate the
1:57:56
pond and I'm just sort of looking again.
1:57:59
That's really odd. Something's been that that scene
1:58:02
looks like it was stuck in with like staples the day before the
1:58:06
read through because it interrupts the flow of the story
1:58:12
so there's old structural things of the little boy at the
1:58:15
beginning seems important but then vanishes and but I think I
1:58:22
think it has a sort of fundamental problem which is
1:58:26
Doctor Who as we all know it stands or and falls on its
1:58:30
monsters and with the snowman there was I think there's a
1:58:35
problem with the crop but even then with snowman Doctor has
1:58:40
invented another monster that can't move did the snowman.
1:58:45
When you're not looking, they go shuffle, shuffle, shuffle and
1:58:52
that's that's that's slightly rubbish.
1:58:54
I'm sorry, these are not very and obviously you just turn up
1:59:00
the heap. They turn to turn to.
1:59:01
Water. They're literally, you know,
1:59:06
very, very unthreatening monsters.
1:59:10
And then there's the ice governess, governess, which I is
1:59:18
one of those things where it could have gone either way.
1:59:20
That could have been something absolutely terrifying on screen.
1:59:24
But you're just looking at it and going the technology wasn't
1:59:28
quite there for that to work where I don't know how they did
1:59:33
the motion of the character or whatever, but it just looks like
1:59:37
something from A to Gabriel video from 1987.
1:59:40
It's like it doesn't work. And when you're in a story which
1:59:47
has got two monsters in it and neither of them are remotely
1:59:51
sort of threatening or scary, no matter how good the script is an
1:59:56
actress are you're just sort of going there is a this is Doctor
1:59:59
Who, you're tuning in for the monsters and so for that reason.
2:00:04
That cruel, unfair reason? I'm going to say it should be
2:00:08
rejected. I think the snowmen look great
2:00:10
when they rise up. Yeah, we don't see them move and
2:00:13
you've identified the obvious reason why we don't.
2:00:16
But when we see them rise up with their teeth, I think
2:00:18
they're very well realised and obviously we we kind of that
2:00:21
first scene where they eat all the factory workers kind of
2:00:23
establishes them as a that's a threat.
2:00:25
I think they look lovely but. When that ice woman is sort of
2:00:28
stalking them through the house, Yeah, I never really thought.
2:00:31
Just stoke the fires, everybody. You know, let's make it a bit
2:00:33
warmer. Jason, you've got the the swing
2:00:37
vote, therefore. In that case, it's going, Oh my.
2:00:42
Goodness. No, I I again, there's lots in
2:00:47
this to enjoy. You know the Strax and the
2:00:50
memory worm scene is hilarious. So Emergency, I've been roved by
2:00:53
a cab, you know it's brilliant. But that also had AI had an
2:00:58
issue with that at the time, which is that Strax was
2:01:00
introduced in A Good Man Goes to War and given a very moving
2:01:05
character arc where he's contrasted with Rory.
2:01:08
So Rory is the nurse who is becoming the Centurion, and
2:01:12
Strax is the warrior that's become the nurse.
2:01:14
And he has that lovely moment where he dies and says it's not
2:01:17
as much fun as I thought it would be, etcetera.
2:01:19
And he's dead. And then he's just back to life
2:01:22
because Steven Moffat can't bring himself to actually kill
2:01:25
anyone off. And now he's an even more
2:01:28
overtly comic character than he was in A Good Man Goes to War.
2:01:31
So he's just been brought back as being basically the Silly
2:01:33
Goblin. And as much as I love straps,
2:01:38
yeah, as much as I love straps, it just didn't.
2:01:42
It didn't work for me at that point.
2:01:44
But he was just brought back because Stephen Moffitt doesn't
2:01:47
like killing anyone off properly.
2:01:50
The TARDIS on a cloud. I'm sorry, I just cannot.
2:01:54
No. Come on, find your inner child,
2:01:57
Jason. The the the TARDIS on a cloud
2:01:59
with the spiral staircase and the extending ladder that he
2:02:02
uses A. And the fact that it's not only
2:02:05
is it the TARDIS on a cloud, but it just happens to be at the top
2:02:11
of the house when he needs it to be.
2:02:13
And that whole test scene, the whole thing seems to be Moffett.
2:02:17
One of the things that Moffett does is tries to be clever
2:02:21
without actually making any sense in doing so.
2:02:25
So yeah, the whole thing about the test with the Doctor
2:02:28
bringing the umbrella so that Clara can hook it and get the
2:02:32
ladder. Fine, except that the TARDIS
2:02:34
wasn't there when we last saw it.
2:02:36
It was in the middle of a park. What's it?
2:02:37
Why is it now suddenly exactly where it needs to be on top of a
2:02:40
cloud? When did that all that stuff he?
2:02:43
Did say he's parked at that There is a line.
2:02:45
Yeah, but and, and, and the whole thing about the Madam
2:02:48
Ambassador's one word answers thing is just, yeah, trying to
2:02:52
be clever. Because there is absolutely no
2:02:55
reason why the word pond should be significant to Clara in the
2:02:59
way that it's significant to the Doctor.
2:03:01
Just because, oh, there's a frozen pond and the Doctor has
2:03:04
just recently is mourning the loss of a person called Pond who
2:03:07
isn't actually called Pond. She's married, she's Amelia
2:03:10
Williams, and he's refused to address her, you know, married
2:03:13
name, except in that scene in the God complex, he's constantly
2:03:17
calling her by her unmarried name, which is just rude to
2:03:20
Rory, frankly. So it's just like it's trying to
2:03:25
be clever but not really working.
2:03:28
Because as I said, there's no reason why Clara should think
2:03:31
the word pond would actually be significant to get the Doctor
2:03:34
involved at all. So that doesn't make any sense.
2:03:39
And I you know the OK, fine, I'm going to do it since I'm
2:03:45
chucking the story out. If Clara fell from that height,
2:03:49
she would be in bits. He wouldn't see his Doctor Who
2:03:53
at 6:00 on Christmas Day. Plugged back in, but he was
2:03:56
rare. As his magic, remember, he did
2:03:57
bring back the, you know, all of the dead and turn them into
2:04:00
Simon men. He's not incapable of him.
2:04:03
So you know that there's that and I don't, you know, oh, oh,
2:04:06
they're all they're all crying so the snow all melts and it's
2:04:11
just. And why is Clara a cockney
2:04:15
barmaid and a refined English governess?
2:04:19
There doesn't seem to be any particular reason why she's
2:04:21
doing two different things at all.
2:04:25
It's fun. It's just Yeah.
2:04:27
But why it doesn't, it doesn't fit.
2:04:30
It doesn't work for me because they just they never explore why
2:04:34
Clara is doing I. Suggest you try and lead a
2:04:35
double life. You know, you'll find it is
2:04:37
quite fun. So, well, you've broken my heart
2:04:40
because snowman's gone. Sorry, there's there's lots in
2:04:44
it that I like, but I just, there's so much in it that is
2:04:48
just to me is just Moffett trying to be clever and not
2:04:50
really succeeding for my money so.
2:04:54
Sorry, we're on. We're on to our last story,
2:04:57
which is a revolution of the dialects.
2:05:00
I'm getting this is a dog that nobody wanted to touch.
2:05:04
Revolution of the Dialects. I actually came up with three
2:05:08
reasons as to why I would keep it in, but I'm actually going to
2:05:11
improvise 3 reasons to Kick It Out because I don't just want to
2:05:14
be that person that defends a load of Jodie Whittaker stories.
2:05:19
So I'll be contrary here because I love Chris Noth in this, and I
2:05:23
love the Daleks going into the TARDIS at the end in this.
2:05:27
And I love the Daleks on the bridge in this.
2:05:29
And I love Yas, his obsession with the Doctor being missing in
2:05:32
this, and I love all the aliens, the petting turning up in the
2:05:35
prison in this. I love all of that.
2:05:38
However, let's say I I think the Drone Dalek thing is a good
2:05:43
idea, but it doesn't go far enough.
2:05:46
It seems like it's on a hiding to be like a really scathing
2:05:49
sort of political story. And then the second they reveal
2:05:52
themselves, they're just Daleks. And so that doesn't really go
2:05:55
anywhere. And I think it probably could
2:05:56
have done. I think Chipnall is possibly the
2:05:59
least political of the three showrunners, and I think Russell
2:06:05
would have gone to town with this idea.
2:06:10
John Barrowman is fun in this, but I don't know, it feels a bit
2:06:14
gratuitous. I don't feel like we need him in
2:06:17
it. I feel like the Doctor should
2:06:18
probably get herself out of prison instead of just hanging
2:06:22
around and waiting for an ex companion to get her out.
2:06:26
As fun as that sequence is, and I do like the chemistry between
2:06:28
the two actors, yeah, like it feels like, what is it?
2:06:33
She's just been hanging around in prison, mulling over the fact
2:06:36
that she's found out that she was adopted and then waits for
2:06:38
somebody else to break her out. I don't.
2:06:40
It just doesn't feel proactive enough.
2:06:43
And my third thing for getting rid of it, oh, grief.
2:06:48
I've only got reasons for it. Somebody help me out here.
2:06:52
Chris. No, Jack Robinson.
2:06:54
I think Chris Noff is the best villain of the era.
2:06:57
I think he's fabulous. That's the point.
2:07:01
That is the point. But the rest of it's trying to
2:07:02
be realistic or realistic as you come with.
2:07:05
Are you kidding me? I think there's a greater
2:07:07
realism to Chipnall stuff and I think Jack Robertson just and
2:07:11
he's played so badly. His His comic villain that's
2:07:16
come straight out of season 17, in the middle of the very pious
2:07:20
Chris Chipnall era. I think he's wonderful as a as a
2:07:24
rip on these, you know, crazy American politicians to be.
2:07:28
I think he's very funny, although we'd like to talk about
2:07:31
him anymore. Has he been cancelled?
2:07:32
I think he's been cancelled. There's no.
2:07:34
He's on the verge of being cancelled.
2:07:36
I'll give you another reason and Joe, it's lacks any sort of
2:07:39
uniqueness. I think about, I mean, Russell
2:07:43
and Stephen Moffatt done different things every
2:07:45
Christmas. Between Chipmel's three New Year
2:07:48
Day specials, there's a lot of overlap.
2:07:50
So you've got the dialect mutants in Resolution, We've got
2:07:53
the dialect mutants on their backs in Resolution and
2:07:57
Revolution. It's difficult to get them
2:07:58
around the first two. We've got kind of an awkward
2:08:01
romance in Eve of the Dialects, and we've got it in Resolution.
2:08:06
We've got lots of things kind of overlapping.
2:08:08
This feels like it's trying to take bits from all of them.
2:08:12
The Emily Maitlis appearance, trying to bring it back to News
2:08:15
Night, feels very RTD. Dalek saucer feels very old
2:08:19
school. I mean, they've resolved the
2:08:20
plot by planting bombs, then transmitting out.
2:08:23
It's not exactly a very original.
2:08:26
In fact, Graham even references the fact that we just did this
2:08:28
to the cyber ship. So we're kind of just repeating,
2:08:31
we're retreading into Dalek wars, You know, we've been
2:08:34
there, seen that, done that. Back to the old series.
2:08:37
It just feels like we're going over.
2:08:39
We're treading over very familiar water and just
2:08:41
rearranging the pieces into a slightly different jigsaw.
2:08:45
It just doesn't particularly work for me.
2:08:47
You've talked about a couple of things I was going to point.
2:08:49
I think Jack is completely wasted.
2:08:51
There's no point to him being you're right about the doctor
2:08:53
should have had agency by escaping at the beginning.
2:08:56
Equally it should have been Graham and and Ryan taking the
2:08:58
ship down at the end, not Jack leading the assault.
2:09:01
Although they just wander around a few corridors very quickly
2:09:04
then transmits away. And the only thing really he
2:09:06
brings is that conversation with Yas about leaving the doctor
2:09:11
which feels a little bit shoehorned and and I think he's
2:09:14
done 1000 times better the following year in Eve of the
2:09:17
dialects that we've talked about.
2:09:19
That conversation between John Bishop and Mandip Gill is so
2:09:23
much more realistic than it is here.
2:09:26
It just feels very shoehorned in.
2:09:28
We're walking to the the base but we're just going to stop and
2:09:31
talk for 5 minutes and and have this emotive scene just doesn't
2:09:34
particularly work. Again, it's not overly earned.
2:09:38
Yeah, it's it's not not a favorite of mine, So I am just
2:09:42
singer. I've got to say though, sorry
2:09:44
guys, before you jump in, I think to make a comparison like
2:09:48
it is fun and it is energetic and it is action-packed.
2:09:54
And so comparing it to something like Twice Upon a Time, this is
2:09:58
far better family entertainment than something like that.
2:10:03
So I I think on those merits of it just being a fun 50 minutes,
2:10:09
Oh well, no, I'm against it, aren't I?
2:10:11
You're a gangster. Yeah.
2:10:12
Yeah. Even so it is still have.
2:10:14
A lot in it, but it's empty. It just feels empty to me
2:10:16
sometimes. That's fun though.
2:10:17
It's nice to watch a Marvel movie that's a bit empty but
2:10:19
action-packed. Oh well.
2:10:22
Johnny. Johnny.
2:10:24
Well, I I think this is the thing.
2:10:26
It's quite it has, it has, it's a it's a cure.
2:10:29
It's egg, you know, I think or mixed bag because there is,
2:10:34
there is stuff and I really like.
2:10:35
I like the sinister Dalek sort of gestation facility in a Sark.
2:10:43
I think that's nice. Traditional spooky Doctor Who
2:10:46
and works really well, some from the West Country.
2:10:50
I love it when we go to somewhere other than London and
2:10:54
so the Clifton Suspension Bridge being iconic is appreciated.
2:10:59
I love that a great deal. But sort of.
2:11:06
I'm going to say no to it going through because I was watching
2:11:11
it this afternoon as revision because I haven't.
2:11:14
I don't watch it that often. And just there's scenes at the
2:11:18
end of Daleks arguing with each other and there's a reason why I
2:11:24
think Gary Gillick used to call it squabbling rubber.
2:11:27
And it's like 2 Daleks arguing each other is just death on the
2:11:31
ears, you know? It's just and on television
2:11:34
you're going you've got 2 pack of static bins arguing with each
2:11:38
other. You know this is the opposite of
2:11:41
drama. It just doesn't work.
2:11:42
And so, but I'm I just really don't like the as you've already
2:11:49
mentioned, that we've got our first sort of female doctor and
2:11:57
she's stuck in prison. Well, actually, I thought of
2:11:59
another reason not to like it. But anyway, I'll come back to
2:12:01
that. But first year, my doctor, she's
2:12:03
stuck in prison and she needs rescuing by a man.
2:12:07
And I'm just going, no, have her work out.
2:12:12
Have her do something incredibly clever, have her lead a
2:12:15
jailbreak with all the different monsters, you know, have her do
2:12:18
something where it's her intelligence, her bravery, her
2:12:22
her daring, whatever. And her give her a great moment
2:12:28
and that isn't there. And I feel that absence because
2:12:33
I want that doctor to have those moments so much.
2:12:38
Although Captain Jack turning up in his sort of giant force field
2:12:43
hamster ball is fun. You just came.
2:12:45
Well, have her. I don't particularly like the
2:12:49
character Captain Jack, but have her do that.
2:12:51
Have her be the one stuff and the other.
2:12:55
The other reason is a couple of around the same time.
2:13:00
I did the Monster Vault and then this came out on television
2:13:05
afterwards, I think. So for about a week afterwards
2:13:08
my son was just pointing out mistakes.
2:13:10
In my book going, I think you'll find a batting also returns in
2:13:15
Revolution of the Daleks. I think you'll find the Weeping
2:13:18
ages also returned in. Yeah, I didn't know.
2:13:24
I think your book's wrong. Now your book's out of date.
2:13:26
Oh, bless you, I. Think they can't sell your book
2:13:28
anymore? I think the shops will have to
2:13:29
stop selling your so I, I, I obviously I hate it and despise
2:13:37
it for that. Well, don't you know about the
2:13:43
prison scene? I'm going to sort of contradict
2:13:45
that because you go back today at the Doctor, you had three
2:13:47
versions of the Doctor and that stuck in prison and they
2:13:50
couldn't figure a way out and they needed Clara to come in and
2:13:53
open the door for her. So it's not like all the other
2:13:55
Doctors are immune as well. No, I think.
2:13:59
I think it's just because it's it's the big set piece that
2:14:01
opens the episode. I think during the course of her
2:14:04
adventure, having companions or other characters rescued the
2:14:07
Doctor from jeopardy is absolutely fine.
2:14:09
I think it's just that we've had the Doctor stuck in this prison
2:14:11
for 100 years where it's like she's been completely beaten by
2:14:18
the the Jadoo, basically, and they're not even a particularly
2:14:21
good monster. The Jadoo have been the ones to
2:14:24
finally defeat the Doctor. And it's like, I think it's just
2:14:28
because she's so defeated. And I don't like that because,
2:14:32
well, have her defeated, but then have her win, have her come
2:14:35
up with a clever way of doing it.
2:14:37
And that's what it's just because it's the big part of the
2:14:40
episode, I think later on, fine. Especially annoying because she
2:14:44
comes up with that great conceit at the end of the episode to
2:14:47
trickle with those darlings, to going into that TARDIS and then
2:14:50
having it self destruct. I love that bit.
2:14:52
Sorry Jason. Hate that bit.
2:14:54
Please have your say, Jason. I absolutely hate that bit.
2:14:58
Two reasons, two very good. You're.
2:15:00
Going to say what a waste of a TARDIS, aren't you?
2:15:03
I'm going to say for two very good reasons.
2:15:04
One, we have established that Tardises are to some degree
2:15:09
partly sentient, and yet the Doctor just casually trashes
2:15:12
this one. But two more egregiously, the
2:15:16
Daleks grab the idiot ball with all their plungers.
2:15:20
Every single bloody one of them goes into that TARDIS.
2:15:23
Not even. One stays behind, in case it's a
2:15:27
trap or anything like that. And it's just and we haven't
2:15:30
seen the Daleks do anything that stupid since the Dalek Invasion
2:15:33
of Earth when they. No excuse.
2:15:35
Me hovered over the place where the Earth's core was about to be
2:15:37
blasted out. Going to go back to.
2:15:39
The Doctor again, when all those bloody Daleks were around that
2:15:42
planet, And somehow when the planet vanished, every fucking
2:15:46
Dalek destroyed every other Dalek around the planet and left
2:15:49
none of them. I think they have been stupid,
2:15:51
isn't? It.
2:15:52
But yeah, so they grab the idiot ball and do and do that.
2:15:55
And that's just a very glib way of eliminating this massive
2:15:59
Dalek force. Every single one goes into the
2:16:02
TARDIS. It's not like, you know we've
2:16:04
got 3 Daleks. Let's see if we can trick all
2:16:06
three of them. We've literally said we've got
2:16:08
hundreds of the fuckers and they all fly into the tie.
2:16:12
It looks glorious. I love that shot.
2:16:14
The TARDIS hovering in the air with all those Daleks just
2:16:17
piling into. It looks gorgeous, but it is
2:16:19
absolutely nonsensical that not even one stayed behind.
2:16:24
And then but then we also have there's lots of bits in it that
2:16:28
don't quite tie up. Like, why did Captain Jack spend
2:16:34
ages trying to get to the cell next to the Doctor when he broke
2:16:38
her out from that communal area that they were all in with his
2:16:42
little gadget? Why did he need to be in the
2:16:44
cell next to her when he didn't actually have it?
2:16:46
Why didn't he use his gadget to just pop through the wall into
2:16:49
her cell? You know, that's that's
2:16:51
ridiculous. The the whole bit about Captain
2:16:54
Jack having that conversation with Yaz where he says being
2:16:56
with the Doctor is really intense and you don't get to
2:16:58
decide when that ends. And then we end the episode with
2:17:01
the other two companions doing exactly the thing that Jack said
2:17:04
you don't get to do and going actually, we'd rather stay here.
2:17:08
Thank you very much, Doc. We'll see you later.
2:17:10
So there's all sorts of bits in it.
2:17:12
And yeah, the rehashing of everything from Revolution
2:17:15
Resolution was just as soon as you, you know, we saw, OK, we
2:17:19
saw the man called Remains of the Recon Scout Dalek casing,
2:17:23
and they using that as a model for a drone.
2:17:26
OK, I love that. But the second somebody said
2:17:28
there was some organic material in there, oh, we know where this
2:17:31
is going. And conveniently, there's now
2:17:34
exactly enough Dalek creatures to inhabit all the drones.
2:17:38
Were they all fitted with those funky colour changing lights
2:17:40
that went red? An actual Dalek that you took
2:17:42
over them? Yes, Yes, they were.
2:17:44
You know, so it's just there's lots of, there's lots of bits in
2:17:48
it that don't that don't line up.
2:17:50
And I agree completely with the doctor's lack of agency in
2:17:53
getting herself out of prison. It is another.
2:17:55
It's just a way of keeping her out of the way of the story for
2:17:57
the beginning part. And so yeah, it just there's
2:18:04
there again there's there's plenty in it to enjoy.
2:18:06
And I I do like the new Dalek drone designs and I love the
2:18:11
fact that they sound like the ones that are remembrance as
2:18:12
well. The vocal modulation.
2:18:14
Just a little thing that you know the knot we won't care
2:18:17
about but we're hang on. I like that.
2:18:20
But yeah, there's just it's just it's just a silly resolution at
2:18:24
the end when they just all the Daleks just pile into a spare
2:18:28
TARDIS and get blown up. I don't like the muted ending
2:18:31
for the two companions, though. Finally, two people just decide
2:18:34
to go, like, this is our time. We thank you very much.
2:18:38
It's been a marvellous adventure.
2:18:39
We're off instead of, you know, flying around the universe in a
2:18:42
diner or heading off and having a lesbian relationship with a
2:18:45
puddle or or whatever. All those I mean in the Muffet
2:18:48
era. It's still, It's still 10
2:18:50
minutes of the episode. So it's still.
2:18:54
I do. I do like that departure scene,
2:18:56
and it makes a nice change that that in the in the Chibnall era
2:18:59
that the Companions just decide, you know what, we're done.
2:19:04
We've had fun, but OK, I'd rather stay on Earth as opposed
2:19:07
to being ripped apart by two universes being separated from
2:19:11
the Doctor, or having their mind wiped or or being killed and
2:19:16
resurrected somehow and going off with a puddle or whatever.
2:19:20
And it's just like, no, these guys have just said, actually,
2:19:22
you know what, Yeah, that's enough.
2:19:24
And I like that she leaves them with the psychic paper and the
2:19:27
and the things like that to to to sort of allow them to go and
2:19:30
do their own thing later on. And I I I like that.
2:19:34
And also I'm sorry. I'm a sucker for the line. 2
2:19:37
hearts, 1 happy, one sad. Yeah, that's nice.
2:19:40
But seeing Grace in the sunlight, I mean, please, that's
2:19:43
a bit much, isn't? It but that is that is one of
2:19:47
those things where because Doctor is a sort of show where
2:19:51
things can materialise and aliens can appear and stuff all
2:19:54
the time Anyway, having that sort of moment in it, well, I
2:20:00
just, my son found that confusing going.
2:20:02
But she's back. She's coming back to her life.
2:20:04
She's evil. Because in Doctor Who, when
2:20:08
things appear like that, we don't think, oh, it's what the
2:20:11
character's imagining. We think that's in the world,
2:20:14
Doctor Who. So I find that I find that just
2:20:18
sort of hawkish. That's what I have no no soul at
2:20:22
all. Right, we have concluded round
2:20:26
one, round two. Glad to know. 2 1/2 hours in,
2:20:30
we've concluded round one. So we've got we've got rid of
2:20:33
four stories, though we've got rid of End of Time, Snowmen,
2:20:36
Time of the Doctor, and Revolutions.
2:20:38
We've only got 4 left, the two of which are Chipnall stories,
2:20:41
which is quite shocking. So what I'm going to do now is
2:20:46
I've got the four names in a random generator.
2:20:50
I'm going to spin it. Pick two between us.
2:20:52
We just need to agree which of the two is best.
2:20:55
We've properly explored most of the reasons, but let's go for
2:20:58
this. So the first one is Twice Upon a
2:21:02
Time and Twice Upon a Time is up against Eve of the Daleks.
2:21:14
Eve wins that one for me, yeah. I'm going to go for EVE 2.
2:21:18
I'm going to go for EVE 2. Looks like I'm I will say Eve is
2:21:25
by far the best of the the three chibnall so but I'm very sorry
2:21:29
to see twice upon a time ago so that lands in our 4th place
2:21:33
Craig that was very quick. I wasn't expecting to be quite
2:21:36
that reason. You can't give reasons why you
2:21:37
want to, but hey, that was, oh, it's fairly speedy.
2:21:41
So we're down to three. So we are down now to
2:21:45
resolution, and resolution is going to be playing Christmas
2:21:53
Invasion. Oh, bugger.
2:21:59
I have to keep Christmas Invasion.
2:22:01
I have to vote Christmas Invasion on top of over over
2:22:05
resolution just because it is just because it's the first
2:22:09
Christmas special and it was such a special time at that
2:22:12
moment to know that our silly little blue box show had come
2:22:15
back and been so successful that the BBC wanted a Christmas
2:22:18
special. So yeah, I'm.
2:22:20
I'm going to vote for Christmas Invasion.
2:22:22
Well, I've been quite scathing about Resolution, so it's
2:22:26
absolutely easy one for me. It's every time Christmas
2:22:29
Invasion. Yeah, I think Christmas Invasion
2:22:33
has the Doctor accidentally quoting The Lion King, which I
2:22:37
just find his. It is the IT is a brilliant
2:22:43
moment of undercutting. Whereas Resolution has that
2:22:46
family. It should not be mentioned.
2:22:49
So Christmas Invasion comes down.
2:22:51
I'm going to say Christmas Invasion as well because I think
2:22:54
it's the first time we get a cop joke in Doctor Who when Jackie
2:22:58
says as he got two of anything else as well, which is a great
2:23:02
line and that's a good as reason there's any keeping it I
2:23:05
thought. She was talking about brains.
2:23:07
Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah.
2:23:10
OK. Right.
2:23:10
Well, that was. I'm surprised it's taken this
2:23:13
long for you to make a comment along those lines, Joe, to be
2:23:15
honest with you. But I I will add a caveat and
2:23:18
say what? Yeah, I've got distinguished
2:23:19
guests here today on my best behaviour.
2:23:22
I do love resolution, but Christmas Invasion is better.
2:23:26
Yeah, same. So we have really swiftly kick
2:23:29
two out, so we are left now just with the final two.
2:23:32
So it's Eve of the Daleks versus Christmas Invasion.
2:23:37
I'm going to be controversial and say Eve of the Daleks
2:23:40
because I think it's, I think it's one of Chris Chipnall's
2:23:44
best ever scripts and I don't think the Christmas Invasion is
2:23:47
one of Rusty Davis's best ever scripts.
2:23:51
I watched Eve of the Daleks five times, The wicket came out.
2:23:55
I loved it so much and every time I watch it, I enjoy it
2:23:59
more. I find more to enjoy.
2:24:01
It's it's a lot smaller than a Christmas invasion, but within
2:24:06
that I think it's doing some very special things.
2:24:08
So yeah, I'm going for even the Daleks.
2:24:14
Jason. I'm I'm going to go for
2:24:17
Christmas Invasion for all the reasons I said in the previous,
2:24:22
Previous Knockout is just either.
2:24:24
The Daleks is fantastic and I love it, but I just cannot help
2:24:28
loving Christmas Invasion because it's just so Christmassy
2:24:32
and fun and an affirmation that what we all knew, which was that
2:24:37
Doctor Who is fantastic and now here we are.
2:24:40
The public and the BBC in 2005 agreed to the point where they
2:24:44
said OK, we want a Christmas special and Russell T Davis took
2:24:48
a story that wasn't the Christmas episode, Bung some
2:24:50
Christmas trimmings on it, and gave us something that was just
2:24:55
absolutely perfect for December 25th, 2005.
2:24:58
And I love it and it's always going to be up in the top for me
2:25:02
for that, even though I agree Joe.
2:25:04
It's not one of Russell T Davis best stories, but it's just
2:25:08
everything about the context of that story puts it in the top
2:25:12
place for me. Hey, how was the special place
2:25:13
in your heart? Absolutely.
2:25:16
There's one apiece, Johnny. Well, I think although as we've
2:25:23
mentioned before, by the time Christmas Invasion came around,
2:25:27
they knew they had a hit on their hands.
2:25:30
They also had a show which didn't have a leading man.
2:25:33
And actually I think the Christmas Invasion has a really
2:25:36
hard job to do in terms of reselling a new Doctor after
2:25:41
we've lost someone who's very popular.
2:25:45
And I think Russell makes it look easy and that's his genius.
2:25:51
And I also, that's one of the reasons for keeping it.
2:25:55
The other one is I I love the fact that it's doing a sort of
2:25:59
topical gag about the Beagle frame to Mars failure, which was
2:26:04
what happened Christmas Day two years earlier, I think.
2:26:07
And it's just nice to see Doctor Who referencing the real world
2:26:10
in a way which hadn't happened for decades.
2:26:15
And the third one is, I love the gag with the Sikoraks rock.
2:26:20
I mean, they literally rock. And it's like, OK, that's funny,
2:26:26
silly, but it still makes sense in terms of the program.
2:26:29
So it doesn't. So Eve, I think was a very good
2:26:35
show. I think it was obviously done.
2:26:38
To fulfil that during lockdown is an extraordinary achievement.
2:26:43
I think the Sea Devil story after it shows how it could have
2:26:48
gone wrong and being how it went right, he's actually going OK
2:26:51
this was not an easy, this is not a sort of a cakewalk to make
2:26:55
this and like I obviously I was arguing for it to go through to
2:26:59
begin with. So there is a lot there that
2:27:02
works really well. And I think actually, I mean I
2:27:06
think Christian Law does his best work under pressure with, I
2:27:10
think he is prone to, I don't know, losing, doubting himself I
2:27:22
think as he writes and changing his mind about things and second
2:27:25
guessing the audience. Whereas I think we're actually
2:27:30
with either the Daleks, he didn't have time for that.
2:27:34
He just had to go for it and write by the seat of his pants.
2:27:37
And I think actually he's really good at that, I think because.
2:27:43
So I think we're actually getting showing what he can do.
2:27:47
And yeah, but no, Christmas Invasion definitely has to go
2:27:52
through. Sorry, wow, I've got the casting
2:27:53
vote. Well, I'm not going.
2:27:57
To hang on, somebody else has joined this podcast now.
2:27:59
What do you think? This is the second time this has
2:28:03
happened. Toby was the last week.
2:28:04
Oh, is the dogs? Yes, sorry.
2:28:08
I'm just going to mute myself. I agree that Eve is probably one
2:28:13
of Chip Mills best scripts and I think it is lovely, but I think
2:28:18
I'm going to end up siding with the Christmas Invasion.
2:28:21
I think we've we've touched on a lot of the reasons before.
2:28:23
You know, I grew up in an era when you know, the thought of a
2:28:26
Christmas Day special for Doctor Who was just completely
2:28:29
unimaginable. And here it is, front and centre
2:28:32
in the BBC schedules, Radio Times, cover press, shouting
2:28:36
about Doctor Who everywhere, shots of robot Santas.
2:28:39
It's just, you know, it is a true Christmas present for us
2:28:44
that we've been waiting. Not a long time for it to come
2:28:46
back, but. Those of us who went through
2:28:48
school being ridiculed and picked on because our obsession
2:28:52
with ATV show that wasn't even on anymore and is absolutely sad
2:28:56
and silly and dodgy special effects and everything it.
2:28:58
Was even silly when it was on, Yes.
2:29:00
Yeah, so I can hear it. Now the best you know a a a
2:29:03
recognised hit? Absolutely.
2:29:06
It was just such a Christmas present.
2:29:09
Absolutely. So I think for that reason and
2:29:11
we not even touched on the don't you think she looks tired line
2:29:15
which I think is one of the classic lines of Doctor Who
2:29:18
very, very clever. So I am going to end up with the
2:29:22
bravado performance introduction of David's and and say the
2:29:26
Christmas Invasion wins. But.
2:29:28
I don't want to say we're an obvious podcast, but that means
2:29:30
2 Russell T Davis Christmas Specials one the day.
2:29:33
Goodness it is. Yeah.
2:29:34
Yeah. Wow.
2:29:36
I don't think that's necessarily expected.
2:29:38
I think probably people were expecting Christmas Carol last
2:29:40
time. And I must admit, I thought the
2:29:41
snowman would ace at this time. So the surprise that fell early
2:29:45
on. But we have a we have a clear
2:29:47
winner to go through to the next round.
2:29:48
So thank you, gentlemen. Thank you for your time today.
2:29:52
Would you like to plug, I guess. Would you like to plug anything
2:29:56
or point people in your direction on social media or
2:30:00
take the stage? Well, I'll start plugging first.
2:30:07
Please everyone join Blue Sky. It's it's much nicer than
2:30:10
Twitter and we have much more detailed Doctor Who
2:30:13
conversations there. So it's it's really welcoming
2:30:17
place for Doctor Who fans in terms of plugging stuff.
2:30:22
By the time this comes out, I think my Ronnie takes on the
2:30:25
world audio would have been released to widespread acclaim
2:30:28
and. I'll let you know, all right.
2:30:32
I think Joe Joe will give it. He'll give it a 7 hour turn and
2:30:39
then I've got a a little classic monsters thing with Invasion of
2:30:45
the Body Stealers, with the Return of the sinister Harmony
2:30:50
Show. And then I've got Fugitive, the
2:30:53
Daleks with Vicky and Dodo and the Daleks, and I think there's
2:30:59
something else, but I've forgotten it.
2:31:01
And and John Poe. One.
2:31:03
Yes, Revolution in Space, which is also a surefire classic.
2:31:08
They're all great. No, man.
2:31:10
That's a lot of listening, but. I can't wait.
2:31:12
They're all great when I left my computer.
2:31:13
What happens to them after that is my responsibility.
2:31:17
We said this an interview, didn't we?
2:31:18
It's the fault of the director. It's the actors.
2:31:22
So Jason, you've got the audience got for that.
2:31:24
You've got a lot to live up to there, Jason.
2:31:28
Yeah, Bye. No, I'm not gonna.
2:31:32
I don't have much to plug. Except, I mean, by the time this
2:31:35
goes out, my, my, my Christmas Doctor Who 70s quiz with Cy
2:31:39
heart will have happened. So maybe the three of you.
2:31:44
I'll see you there. I'll definitely be there this
2:31:47
time, all right. OK, and there will be future
2:31:50
quizzes during the during the course of the year.
2:31:52
I'd also like to plug Robots In Your Eyes, my podcast with Steve
2:31:57
Alexander. We have been taking quite a bit
2:31:59
of an extended break, but I can assure you we have more in the
2:32:03
can and we will be returning in the new year to record more
2:32:06
material with Transformers Series 3 and a few other bits
2:32:09
and bobs. So Robots In Your Eyes will
2:32:11
return in 2024, so look out for it.
2:32:15
Fantastic. And for us, I'm going to plug
2:32:19
our next episode of Strictly Calm Hamster, which will be in
2:32:22
two weeks time. After these first two, we're
2:32:24
going fortnightly, fortnightly on Mondays and the next season
2:32:28
we will be covering, we're going back to normal seasons now is
2:32:32
season 11 with John Pertway is the next one that you will be
2:32:36
hating. So I think that's all.
2:32:39
Thank you gentlemen for joining us today and your excellent
2:32:41
views and insights been fantastic to have you on and we
2:32:44
really appreciate your time and until next time thank you for
2:32:48
listening and we have to do the corny line.
2:32:51
Joe. What do I have to say again?
2:32:53
Keep. Listening.
2:32:54
Oh, thank you. OK, let's go.
2:32:55
Appreciate well. Keep listening.
2:32:58
Thank you and good night.