Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Talks to Jack Coyer about his choice of Last Christmas

Transcript

Talks to Jack Coyer about his choice of Last Christmas · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:33
  Hamster with a blunt pen knife for doing Crooker.
• 0:37
  Last Christmas I gave you my heart, but the very next day you
• 0:43
  gave it away. This year, to save me from
• 0:47
  tears, I'll give it to a hamster with a blunt pen knife.
• 0:52
  The Doctor Who Commentary podcast.
• 0:55
  My name is Jack Claire, AKA Andrew Richley AKA the other
• 1:02
  one. And joining me as always is the
• 1:05
  man we all know as the George Michael of the Doctor Who found
• 1:09
  him. If it's the Joe Ford.
• 1:11
  Actually, I'll do do some charity work, you know, like
• 1:13
  George Michael, you know. Yes, I'm sure you do plenty of
• 1:16
  things just like George Michael. A lot of sex and toilets as
• 1:20
  well. Yeah, George, we're here today
• 1:25
  to talk about our hits Christmas song Last Christmas, which is 40
• 1:29
  years old this year. I I would like to just say to
• 1:33
  you that this will be absolutely my final episode of a hamster
• 1:39
  with a blunt pen knife. I'm done, I'm ready, My contract
• 1:44
  set an end. I feel as if this episode has
• 1:46
  written itself and I will not be making any last minute.
• 1:50
  Please to continue at the end. That's good, because whatever
• 1:54
  happens, you've made a decision. You've got to skip to it.
• 1:59
  We've written all of the others hamster with blunt pen knife
• 2:02
  episodes. We've already predetermined all
• 2:06
  of the struck to come hamster winners.
• 2:08
  They're going to be the correct ones from now on and we can't go
• 2:13
  back on anything else. We're not going to do any
• 2:17
  rewriting have. You found my replacement in this
• 2:19
  episode. Well, I'm sure in the comments
• 2:22
  section below, we'll probably find your we'll probably find a
• 2:27
  replacement somewhere. But yes, just in case you were
• 2:32
  listening at home and you were worried that you've had a stroke
• 2:37
  and were accidentally listening to one of thy hearts Friday
• 2:43
  night. Top of the pots watching on
• 2:45
  Twitter threads. You're not.
• 2:47
  We're a hamster, a blunt pen knife and we're doing a
• 2:51
  commentary on the most awful of things, a Stephen Moffatt.
• 2:57
  So the Joe Lights Joe Stephen Moffatt, Clara Oswald.
• 3:03
  You know Christmas is the time of the year for storytelling and
• 3:09
  storytellers, and one of my favourite Christmas stories is
• 3:13
  that one where an old, miserable, uncharitable Scrooge
• 3:19
  right figure is visited by 3 ghosts of the past who come to
• 3:26
  tell him to mend his ways. On a completely unrelated note,
• 3:31
  Joe Ford, Are you ready for Stephen Moffat, the 12th Doctor
• 3:35
  and Claire Oswald to show you the other audio ways?
• 3:38
  I mean, let's be honest, it's not really my wheelhouse, is it,
• 3:41
  this particular? No.
• 3:43
  What I will say before we go in is I had a very after a terrible
• 3:48
  reaction to Seven, I had a very favourable reaction to Series 8
• 3:55
  and I I really like the tone of it.
• 3:59
  I really like the dark fantasy of it and I really liked the
• 4:05
  just to link it into our last episode 6th Doctor and Perry
• 4:08
  esque toxicity between the Doctor and companion.
• 4:11
  I thought, I thought that Moffett moved the series away
• 4:14
  from fairy tale back into sort of horror and in a really
• 4:18
  interesting way. So I was sort of prepared to
• 4:23
  step into this positively when I first watched it.
• 4:27
  And let's be honest, Jack, let's be honest, we've just had two of
• 4:30
  the worst Christmas specials of all time, the Doctor and the
• 4:33
  Widow and the Wardrobe and Timer.
• 4:35
  The Doctor back-to-back Will. The snowmen in the middle of
• 4:38
  that. Oh, so we did.
• 4:40
  Oh there we're doing those wretched half seasons, weren't
• 4:43
  they? Yeah, Took.
• 4:45
  A whole year? Sorry.
• 4:47
  I did forget about the snowman. That was rather a good one
• 4:50
  actually. Yeah.
• 4:51
  And that was interesting. I think it's probably fairly
• 4:55
  totally similar to this. It also goes through the sort of
• 4:59
  horror elements of the creepy creepy snowmen and the great
• 5:03
  intelligence stuff. Not as gooey gooey or as face
• 5:08
  huggery. Is this though?
• 5:09
  Is it? No, not quite.
• 5:10
  But so Christmas specials. Not even just Doctor.
• 5:18
  The sort of programming that has Christmas specials is usually
• 5:22
  lighter, fair. You know, sitcoms, variety
• 5:26
  specials, charity things, you know, Christmas quiz shows.
• 5:30
  They do a lot. Now.
• 5:31
  I seem to notice them popping up the term in dramas.
• 5:36
  Maybe not quite as frequent with Christmas specials when
• 5:42
  obviously we had the fable 5th Stephen that was just sort of
• 5:45
  accidentally on Christmas. And then there's all time stitch
• 5:50
  back together and they reacts for Christmas by sort of just
• 5:54
  throwing out the Darwin stuff and going and doing a, you know,
• 5:58
  little panto thing. What when you heard that Doctor
• 6:03
  Who was coming back for for Christmas, specials were going
• 6:06
  to be a part of it? What do you think about
• 6:09
  Christmas specials in television, and what do you hope
• 6:13
  for from a Doctor Who? Absolute horror.
• 6:17
  When I heard they were going to do Christmas specials, I was
• 6:21
  like, oh God, what? But I did always watch sitcom
• 6:24
  Christmas specials like Fools and Horses, Vicar, Dibley, Foot
• 6:28
  in the Grave, things like that. And so I was like, what on earth
• 6:31
  are they going to deliver? Then I watched The Christmas
• 6:34
  Invasion and I was like, OK, that was actually very, very
• 6:39
  good. And I do think they're hit and
• 6:44
  miss and I do think they're a little bit indulgent.
• 6:46
  This one I think is an absolute outlier from all the others
• 6:53
  because this one is absolutely arc based and all the rest are
• 7:00
  stand alones pretty much with just one or one little mention
• 7:03
  of why he's travelling alone or whatever you know.
• 7:05
  Or a little tag scene with Amy and Rory or a starting bit where
• 7:09
  they're on a spaceship that's going to crash and then it's
• 7:12
  just a stand alone adventure. Whereas it's such a bizarre
• 7:16
  decision to on the day when you're going to get the largest
• 7:22
  amount of non Doctor Who fans watching that you would make
• 7:26
  them watch an hour that is essentially a coder to the last
• 7:29
  season. It's odd.
• 7:33
  Yes. Well, I think a lot of the
• 7:35
  Christmas specials sort of accidentally have other things
• 7:38
  in their mind. So David Tennant comes in and
• 7:42
  you know, David Tennant leaves, you know, or if preparing to
• 7:46
  leave because obviously End of Time Part 2 isn't it.
• 7:50
  Or Part 1 is the Christmas Day of one.
• 7:52
  Matt Smith leaves, probably probably will will leave in the
• 7:56
  future. And Jenna Coleman was almost
• 8:01
  going to leave and then doesn't leave more than that later
• 8:07
  because that obviously fundamentally changes the end of
• 8:10
  this episode. So Series 8 was obviously, well,
• 8:17
  I can't remember when every series was broadcast, but let's
• 8:20
  say the first sort of five series will all sort of spring
• 8:25
  into summer based. You know, they might start in
• 8:29
  March or May. This season started towards the
• 8:34
  end of August and was my first year at university.
• 8:40
  So I went off to university probably around the time of
• 8:44
  let's say robot share word or listen.
• 8:47
  It's probably 1 of you know in that period.
• 8:50
  Could you please be more specific than that, because one
• 8:52
  of those would herald a great future in university and another
• 8:56
  one well. Well, I am a big fan of both of
• 9:01
  those stories, so I won't take any slumber on that one.
• 9:04
  But Sir, yeah, so and by the time I left the university, it
• 9:09
  probably was about the time that Christian mind, everyone was
• 9:12
  looking up to it. So you know this.
• 9:14
  Happy days. Sure.
• 9:19
  And so, you know, this Christmas special comes what, six weeks,
• 9:26
  if that, away from death in heaven.
• 9:29
  So I think there is and obviously the code that has
• 9:34
  Santa Claus coming in at the end.
• 9:38
  So there is obviously unfinished business at the end of Death in
• 9:41
  heaven. I don't know if there's anyone
• 9:43
  who could reasonably be expected to watch that story and go,
• 9:47
  well, that's the end of Chlora. We're never going to see you
• 9:50
  again. You know I.
• 9:52
  Literally watched a reaction video of last Christmas before I
• 9:57
  came on this call where the person who watched it thought
• 10:00
  Clara had left in Devon heaven and was shocked at the start of
• 10:04
  this. I, I don't understand that, but
• 10:08
  you know, it's because of course she comes in right at the
• 10:11
  beginning of this, so it's not as if they're holding her back.
• 10:18
  If only, Jack, if only. Well, I mean you Mummy.
• 10:22
  Obviously I'll lay my cards on the table right now.
• 10:24
  I love the 12th Doctor and Clara, one of my favorite Doctor
• 10:30
  companion parents. Depending on what?
• 10:33
  I knew I was on the floor somewhere with you.
• 10:36
  I mean, you've been so perfect until now.
• 10:38
  Well, yeah. Well, I think if you keep those
• 10:42
  comments in mind, audience, I think within the next hour or
• 10:46
  so, we might be hearing some different sentiments than Joe
• 10:49
  Moore's about. But maybe in the same direction
• 10:52
  this episode, maybe in the same direction during this.
• 10:57
  Episode so there one depending on what day of the week you
• 10:59
  asked me they may even be my favorite.
• 11:01
  So I'm not sure, but I think the difference is, but Russell
• 11:08
  Christmas specials and the Moffat ones is the Steve Davis
• 11:13
  is often held quite rightly as being a very character focused
• 11:18
  storyteller. But I think really when it comes
• 11:22
  down to that, a lot of his Moffat finales and even
• 11:26
  Christmas fish episode in Big Ground are actually very
• 11:31
  character focused around the Doctor and companion.
• 11:35
  You know, Name of a Doctor, It's just them and with a song
• 11:40
  running around doing stuff. Hell Bent and Edward Sent.
• 11:44
  It's just them running around doing stuff well.
• 11:47
  Enough in time these episodes beautifully.
• 11:49
  Well, well enough in time, it's just them with the Masters
• 11:53
  running out. Wedding with a song, Pandorica
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  opens Big Bang. Every Moffat finale is really
• 12:01
  just the Doctor and companions almost on their own, running
• 12:06
  around doing little character focused things.
• 12:09
  I. Wonder they're reliably ghastly
• 12:11
  then, given it's those characters we're digging with.
• 12:14
  Well, you know, where's the Russell ones or obviously
• 12:19
  there's a lot, you know, Ecclestone goes into it's one.
• 12:23
  Obviously there's a lot of character in the sense that
• 12:26
  that's usually is that all of them, including this 15th
• 12:32
  Doctor, Ruby Sunday one, all of them feature a member of the
• 12:36
  TARDIS team leaving, but they also have a lot of spectacle and
• 12:44
  action. And you know, the world's in
• 12:46
  danger, this planet, this, this, that and the other with the
• 12:51
  Moffat ones shrink right down and just become the Doctor and
• 12:58
  the companion and maybe a one or two villains are sort of running
• 13:03
  round in in circles, you know, doing things.
• 13:06
  And it's almost as if there's no other people in the store at
• 13:09
  all. Which, I mean, technically you
• 13:14
  could say about this episode, obviously we'll get into the
• 13:16
  twists and turns that this takes, but on one level, you
• 13:20
  could say that this episode is almost entirely just the Doctor
• 13:25
  and Clara. I mean, I'm doing things on
• 13:27
  their own and we'll sort of explain what that means as me as
• 13:31
  the plot unfolds. It would be a fitting end, I
• 13:35
  think, for Clara, if you know her last episode would feature
• 13:40
  just her and the Doctor, you know, sort of coming to
• 13:43
  understand each other. Well, I mean, it does in Hell
• 13:47
  Bent, everyone's favorite doctor's toy that is basically
• 13:51
  just Clora and the Doctor, isn't it?
• 13:53
  Really? And then, oh, that might be some
• 13:55
  Time Lord stuff. Me from the End of Times in
• 13:58
  there as well and. Yeah, of course.
• 14:00
  Well, of course. And you know mother, everyone's
• 14:03
  favorite from the last of. Con Oh, Russell, Yeah, I mean,
• 14:06
  there's a few other people in that.
• 14:08
  One and that Time Lord that we made you know, there's there's
• 14:11
  some other people technically, but really it's just.
• 14:15
  I mean Jack, she doesn't actually occur in Tail Bent
• 14:17
  until halfway through the episode.
• 14:19
  Oh, of course. And maybe you could argue
• 14:20
  wherever she even occurs at all, because you know she's sorting.
• 14:24
  We could only hope not yeah. You know, and obviously, yeah,
• 14:30
  like you say, the end of this episode basically mirrors Time
• 14:33
  of the Doctor because that's obviously very old and frail.
• 14:37
  Dr. and Clara, they do I think may pull a Christmas cracker or
• 14:42
  something like that. They do a bit of Christmassy
• 14:44
  bits in. A moment of in a moment of
• 14:49
  praise to Jenna Coleman, she out old axe Matt Smith 12:50 in this
• 14:55
  episode. She's so convincing as that.
• 14:58
  I mean, all right, she's got the terrible latex on her face,
• 15:01
  which is not convincing, but her body language is incredible.
• 15:07
  Oh, yeah. I mean, we, you know, in some of
• 15:12
  your comments on Suicam Hampstone and these comments
• 15:18
  we've we've had comments from viewers of a certain romantic
• 15:24
  persuasion to myself who have obviously had comments to make
• 15:28
  about Gemma Coleman. I won't be making those comments
• 15:32
  because I keep those thoughts internal and don't share them on
• 15:35
  Internet podcasts, but you know. Sorry, I don't know what you're
• 15:39
  talking about anymore. I like this character for
• 15:44
  reasons that we'll get into in the story because she's a good
• 15:47
  actress. Sam is well written, part by a
• 15:49
  very small man, Stephen Moffatt, which I'm sure is sentiment
• 15:53
  You're. Well, I can't even do agree with
• 15:57
  you, and I'll disagree with you as well.
• 15:58
  I'm glad we're sort of covering this before we go in.
• 16:00
  I think she's a stunning actress Jenna Coleman absolutely
• 16:04
  stunning with direction, but I feel as if in seven she had no
• 16:08
  direction whatsoever and scripts that I'll defined her
• 16:12
  deliberately because of the arc. So she was floundering in seven.
• 16:16
  In eight, she had an absolute character arc in place that how
• 16:21
  Danny Pink romance arc and she thrived in a absolutely thrived.
• 16:27
  The scene at the end of kill the moon is one of the best active
• 16:30
  scenes in dogs. Whoever is incredible moment of
• 16:33
  drama in Nine, she's not supposed to be there.
• 16:39
  And you can tell she's not supposed to be there.
• 16:41
  And you can tell that this very smart writer that you're talking
• 16:45
  about is flopping about and improvising and desperately
• 16:49
  trying to shoehorn her into scripts by making her the
• 16:52
  companion of Missy or writing her out and having her as a
• 16:55
  Zygon double, or writing her out all together in their Shield A2
• 16:59
  parter. And she just makes no impact in
• 17:01
  that season whatsoever. It does make perfect sense that
• 17:05
  she should have ended here and the end of that season where
• 17:09
  that well written character between two heartbeats heads off
• 17:15
  in a time travelling flying diner with an immortal being
• 17:19
  from the end of time. What the fuck am I supposed to
• 17:23
  think about that? What am I supposed to think?
• 17:25
  How am I supposed to be emotionally invested in that
• 17:28
  nonsense? Whereas in this episode where
• 17:32
  she lived her life, where the end of death in heaven had
• 17:35
  absolute meaning because they genuinely said goodbye and she
• 17:38
  was an old lady and she lived her life and you know, nobody
• 17:43
  lived up to the doctor and Danny Pink.
• 17:44
  And that's fine. And he comes back to visit her.
• 17:46
  It's it's emotionally satisfying.
• 17:49
  It's almost a perfect ending for her character.
• 17:51
  So I kind of agree and I disagree.
• 17:54
  Yeah, I think the Capsi move I'm I'm possibly the proper move or
• 17:59
  there's some stuff in series 9. I wouldn't want to give up.
• 18:02
  You know, I I think despite being incredibly bumpy ride, I
• 18:07
  do think heaven sent and held them both stick the the landing.
• 18:12
  It's just the journey maybe is a is an odd one, but by the time
• 18:18
  we arrive, I'm like, OK, we've arrived.
• 18:21
  You know, I'm not sure how we got here.
• 18:23
  I think I was sort of hallucinating for a few weeks,
• 18:25
  but we have arrived. I've got to be.
• 18:27
  Honest Jack, I do think she was going to be back again.
• 18:30
  After she went off in that diner, I thought, well, we've
• 18:32
  got her for another season now. Yeah, well, back again.
• 18:37
  I mean, she technically was also very briefly back again in post
• 18:41
  on time, but she. Yeah, well, I mean, we'll get
• 18:48
  into it, particularly in the final scene.
• 18:50
  But I think the thing with Clara is she's almost the reverse of
• 18:56
  Rose. Obviously we've spoken about a
• 18:59
  Series 1 episode then Quite dead and we've spoken that about how
• 19:03
  people like Rose Tyndall and Jackie Tyler are like real world
• 19:08
  people who have been pulled into the world of Doctor Who in the
• 19:13
  sort of meta level. And Clara is almost like the
• 19:17
  inverse that in series 7. She's very much I don't I don't
• 19:23
  know whether they didn't expect to lose Karen Gilliman or for
• 19:26
  Darby or what, but they get Stephen Moffatt goes, OK, we
• 19:31
  need a companion because we're going to head to the 50th.
• 19:36
  So she's very much a double who compound character, you know, is
• 19:41
  that. What you're saying?
• 19:43
  Yeah, and series 8 is very much about the struggle of a Doctor
• 19:49
  Who character to fit into the real world in this old inverse
• 19:54
  of that verse toilet Jackie Tyler model.
• 19:59
  And we'll get I'll explain more when I get to the end of this
• 20:02
  episode. But I think that that is the
• 20:04
  tension of Danny Pinnock resembles more a real world, you
• 20:10
  know, home base that you can cross onto.
• 20:14
  But really, what we decided that this is a character who loves
• 20:19
  the this and the thrill and the everything that comes with being
• 20:25
  in a Doctor Who stole him, a Doctor Who world.
• 20:28
  And obviously that's the choice that it's made at the end of
• 20:31
  this episode. Does she?
• 20:32
  Does she, do we ever see her truly as a reckless thrill
• 20:38
  seeker? Until we face the Raven, when
• 20:41
  it's, you know, relevant to the story and she's hanging out of
• 20:44
  the TARDIS. I see someone who enjoys
• 20:46
  travelling through time and space.
• 20:47
  But that's every Doctor Who companion in the new series.
• 20:51
  Well, obviously, I mean, to some extent, it's almost every Doctor
• 20:54
  Who companion and the ones that aren't, you know, while you're
• 20:58
  there, you know, or Perry, you know, and we've spoken about
• 21:03
  those characters and their sort of flaws, but.
• 21:07
  Do you not think she feels like free people though?
• 21:08
  I feel, and Jenna Coleman, like, is such a good actress.
• 21:11
  She plays them all absolutely convincingly.
• 21:14
  But the generic companion in Seven, the romantic lead in A,
• 21:19
  and then the apparently reckless Clara 9, they feel like
• 21:23
  completely different people to me.
• 21:25
  Like we've got a new splinter each season.
• 21:28
  Yeah, I mean, ultimately, we'll never know how much of Series 9
• 21:32
  was written before Gemma Coleman.
• 21:34
  You know, we'll never know if it's just scratch out that new
• 21:37
  person's name and write Clara and we'll just go with it.
• 21:41
  And ultimately, it's difficult to know where the responsibility
• 21:46
  lies with that. Obviously, as an actor, actors
• 21:50
  can go, well, do you want to do this job?
• 21:53
  Oh, actually, I'm. I'm done with this job.
• 21:56
  Oh, actually, I really like being here.
• 21:57
  I want to continue working here, you know.
• 22:00
  Whose decision is it then? Is it Moffat's decision or the
• 22:04
  producers to put their foot down and go?
• 22:08
  No, Gemma, we're sorry. We love working with you, but
• 22:11
  we've got stuff ready for a new character now.
• 22:14
  And, you know, we're parting amicably, but we're going to
• 22:19
  have to part because we've got these new scripts ready to go.
• 22:22
  Or are they sat there going? We would love Gemma to come, but
• 22:28
  we've got to make a Plan B. Oh, Gemma's come What?
• 22:31
  Throw out the Plan B and you know we'll just rock'n'roll with
• 22:35
  with Gemma. I think.
• 22:37
  I do think the show suffers for the latter choice, though, in a
• 22:41
  way that it wouldn't have done if they'd gone down the first
• 22:44
  route. And I am going to spread a tiny
• 22:45
  bit of gossip now. You know, I'll do this sort of
• 22:47
  thing occasionally. But I do hear reliably from
• 22:50
  people I know who know people within the series that Moffett
• 22:54
  was very fond of Jenna Coleman. And I'm not saying that in a
• 22:56
  scurrilous way. He was very fond of the
• 22:59
  character. And you can tell that it's the
• 23:01
  writing, but also the actress. And if she said I want to do
• 23:06
  another year, he was always going to give her another year.
• 23:08
  And it was absolutely last minute.
• 23:11
  Yeah, I think Clara in that obviously Stephen Moffat will
• 23:15
  get him to him a little bit. Now of the three modern showroom
• 23:20
  is obviously we know that Christiano did the whole Pippin
• 23:24
  game open air thing. But I think if you put that to
• 23:28
  one side, I think Stephen Moffat is maybe the one who's the most
• 23:32
  obsessed with Doctor Who as like her property as a, you know,
• 23:37
  that fits in with the sort of boys own weekend reading.
• 23:43
  But you know, you could put Sherlock Holmes in that category
• 23:46
  and Robin Hood and for Christmas, you know, you could
• 23:50
  put these sort of boys own adventure heroes in a box, but
• 23:55
  still not that is clearly very fun of.
• 23:58
  And we get the genesis about his first companion of the Amy Pond.
• 24:04
  He's definitely younger. Not only is it Amy younger than
• 24:07
  Clive, I think probably more immature in personality as well.
• 24:11
  I think we can all agree with that, whether we like Amy or
• 24:15
  not. I mean, he likes them young,
• 24:17
  Jack. He does age them up, usually to
• 24:19
  an appropriate age. Yeah, Amy's whole thing was
• 24:22
  about obsessing with the Doctors like a child.
• 24:26
  It's fantasy and image and that sort of thing.
• 24:29
  And after a few years of being a showrunner, we've grown out that
• 24:33
  sensibility. So here's Clara as a sort of
• 24:36
  fully formed companion in Series 7, you know?
• 24:41
  Sort of an avatar, isn't she an avatar to insert?
• 24:44
  Well, yes. Any Doctor Who story he wants
• 24:47
  to. Definitely, Yeah, yeah.
• 24:49
  And obviously there's 2. Mark got his scripts and
• 24:51
  there's, you know, all sorts of scripts in that back half of
• 24:55
  Series 7. Then you could go, yeah, you
• 24:57
  could put that in basically any era of the show.
• 25:02
  Then we'll get to the 50th, and then after that, I think there's
• 25:06
  more of an attempt to explore in a similar vein to Amy Ponds, but
• 25:11
  both the writer and the character have sort of matured
• 25:15
  and grown up and trying to find their place in the world or in
• 25:20
  the show, you know? Do you think that?
• 25:23
  Do you think that after the 50th, half the time with the
• 25:26
  Doctor? But, and those are all sort of
• 25:29
  things that are thrust on him. It's the 50th.
• 25:31
  So we've got to do something. And Matt's decided to leave
• 25:34
  early because he was going to go on do another season, wasn't he?
• 25:37
  Shit, you've got to rot him out. That's the Christmas special.
• 25:39
  So he's got these massive constraints on him in those two
• 25:43
  episodes. And you know, whether he does
• 25:45
  well or not, that's absolutely subjective.
• 25:48
  But now he's got a new season, he's got a new Doctor, and he's
• 25:52
  got his existing companion that he hasn't had the chance to
• 25:54
  really give any time to, and he just does a course correction
• 25:58
  with her and goes, right, how do I turn this generic avatar into
• 26:03
  a fucking person? And that's what he does in
• 26:06
  Series 8. Yeah, and maybe that gap between
• 26:10
  time and a Doctor, and I'm going to say deep breath, but maybe
• 26:14
  even into the Dalek is where we're sort of getting more of
• 26:18
  the, because we had the Cole Hill School in place.
• 26:21
  Because we do that in bed with Doctor, don't we?
• 26:24
  Or was it night at the Doctor, Name of the Doctor?
• 26:27
  I don't know, somewhere at the Cole Hill School.
• 26:30
  Cole Hill School was in bed with Doctor.
• 26:32
  So we're getting that sort of put in place.
• 26:35
  And yeah, you're right, almost as if we need another four or
• 26:39
  five episodes in between that and like sort of into the Dalek.
• 26:44
  And by that point we strip get this character set up so that
• 26:50
  when we're hitting listen and you know, the wander is there
• 26:56
  and we get more of an idea of of who this character is, as you
• 27:02
  say. But I think Clara at her peak,
• 27:06
  he is one of my favourite companions because I really like
• 27:10
  that idea of the of the characters who actually have
• 27:16
  conflict. I suppose we've cupboard time
• 27:19
  Ash which is obviously shipped off from Perry and that's not
• 27:22
  really conflict, it's not character based.
• 27:26
  It's just we want two people to kind of bicker.
• 27:31
  And I think regardless of your opinion, just in Moffat, I think
• 27:34
  compared to the same word, perhaps it's grasped of their
• 27:38
  plot and characterisation, you know, perhaps song.
• 27:43
  Would you care to admit that on my accord?
• 27:45
  Is indeed. Indeed.
• 27:47
  No problems with saying that at his best, Steven Moffett is the
• 27:51
  best writer that Doctor Who ever had.
• 27:54
  Unfortunately, he was given the show for six years and during
• 27:58
  that time he was really at his best.
• 28:00
  But at his best, he is absolutely the best writer the
• 28:04
  Doctor Who about. I can point out five episodes,
• 28:06
  which I think are some of the best scripts we ever saw.
• 28:10
  Would you put this script amongst them or is that a matter
• 28:13
  for? Possibly before rewatching it
• 28:16
  this time and now I've got some issues, but it's it's a very
• 28:20
  strong script I think and I think it's his best Christmas
• 28:23
  special bar the country mile. Yeah.
• 28:26
  But yes, I am in agreement with that.
• 28:29
  I think partly because of the color to stop.
• 28:33
  You know, I think Doctor Who has always been very obviously in
• 28:38
  the classic era, very, what do you call it, serialized,
• 28:43
  episodic, you know, like individual adventures.
• 28:48
  And sometimes you get a kind of snake and snake dance or you
• 28:52
  get, you know, the keeper times and you know, stuff like that or
• 28:57
  time the Time Lord. But largely there's a separate
• 29:01
  serials that you could buy on their own and and watch on their
• 29:04
  own and go. That was a fun adventure.
• 29:07
  So when not due this Christmas, there's that tendency to go, Oh,
• 29:12
  let's just have a single adventure.
• 29:15
  We can hire, you know, Kylie or Michael Gambon or whoever and
• 29:20
  you know, and or you know her from outnumbered or Bill Bailey
• 29:27
  and you know, we can sort of shove them in there and stitch
• 29:32
  something fun together, which can eat, you know, cheese and
• 29:36
  ports and you know, off along with whatever.
• 29:39
  Watch the ratings fly. In fact, two of those you just
• 29:42
  mentioned there, The Gambon 1 and the Kylie one, are two of
• 29:45
  the highest rated Doctor Who's episodes ever.
• 29:48
  Yeah, well, I think this one was the decent numbers.
• 29:52
  I think, bear in mind how woven into the story arc it is.
• 29:56
  I think the numbers were OK for it.
• 29:58
  I think it was what, 8 to 10/8 to 10 million somewhere around
• 30:01
  that. Which was?
• 30:02
  Strong, but not as strong as some Christmas specials.
• 30:07
  Yeah, I think, I think a portion of the audience had gone that
• 30:10
  hadn't taken to Kapoor DNA, I think at this point.
• 30:13
  Yeah. And it's a shame because I think
• 30:16
  the Doctor's characterisation in this is almost a little bit
• 30:19
  different as well. He's dressed him differently,
• 30:22
  he's acting a little bit more, not family friendly, but you get
• 30:30
  the sense that the Doctor's shaking something out of the
• 30:33
  system and that this is going to be more of the character we're
• 30:38
  going to get in the next couple of years.
• 30:42
  Yeah, I mean, if if there any other territory you want me to
• 30:48
  come before we get into it? We've only been going half an
• 30:53
  hour. Listen, if my, you know, if we
• 30:55
  might you hit play on the on the episode, Yeah.
• 31:00
  All this extra material, they should be bloody grateful.
• 31:04
  No, what I will say is before we go in, because I'll probably
• 31:08
  forget to say it when we're in there or at the end when we do
• 31:10
  our three things, is I think this is a super confident
• 31:15
  episode. I think it is incredibly well
• 31:19
  realized and I think it it walks between being a psychological
• 31:28
  horror, a actual Horror Story itself, which is the bit on the
• 31:33
  base and being a Doctor Who Christmas special.
• 31:37
  And that shouldn't work. Those three things should not
• 31:40
  dovetail as effectively as they do in this.
• 31:44
  And he managed just to pull off in the the whole Inception.
• 31:48
  Is this a dream thing? And I've seen that genre done so
• 31:52
  many times in so many genre shows to the point, and he does
• 31:57
  it so effectively here because he keeps doing the rug pull that
• 32:01
  by the end of the episode, the first time I watched it, I had
• 32:04
  no clue what was real and what was not anymore.
• 32:07
  And I always know with because I usually plot them to the point
• 32:11
  where that's, yeah, can you hear that someone's drilling?
• 32:17
  I'm sure we won't ever hear it because those genre shows always
• 32:21
  do the oh, actually there's still one more rug pull, but
• 32:25
  whilst making you think that we're back in the real world
• 32:28
  again. And this does do that.
• 32:31
  But I I was sold on the old Clara, so I was totally fooled.
• 32:36
  And I think that's part of the, you know, people say, oh, this
• 32:40
  is too lot based. It's not very stand alone.
• 32:43
  I think that is part of the stand alone Christmas Day nature
• 32:46
  of it is that you can sit here, be thrilled by it and maybe not
• 32:52
  quite nowhere. Every Lewisham's ties up.
• 32:56
  And when were they in the dream, in the dream, in the dream?
• 33:00
  And when were they just in the second layer, In the first
• 33:03
  layer, all these things you're eating cheese and pork, you're
• 33:07
  having fun watching them with alien face huggers and all of
• 33:11
  these things. And I think that is part of the
• 33:15
  nature of sweeping you along with the programme.
• 33:18
  And at the end of it, the Doctor and companion go off again and
• 33:22
  Hooray, you know, I think, I think it fulfils that.
• 33:27
  Or Boo. Well, or Boo?
• 33:30
  Yes, or Boo, Should we go in? Because there's plenty to talk
• 33:34
  about in the episode. Yes, well, OK.
• 33:40
  Give me just a second. OK, Yes, I'm ready.
• 33:43
  I. Am OK?
• 33:44
  Well, all of you ho ho ho's out there in the ham firm wishing
• 33:48
  you a Merry Christmas or depending on Joe's schedule, you
• 33:53
  know, if I'm just before we start, I'm going to throw you in
• 33:56
  a few alternatives, Joe, depending on when you happen to
• 34:00
  arrive. This thank.
• 34:01
  You. Thank you.
• 34:02
  Happy New Year. Happy Easter, Happy Halloween.
• 34:09
  So sorry to hear about the sad passing of people.
• 34:12
  Paul B. And a final one, an individual
• 34:20
  happy birthday to each and every single person listening to this
• 34:24
  because Joe could believe it on literally any day of the year.
• 34:29
  So it's all of your birthdays, but hopefully it's a Merry
• 34:33
  Christmas in 321. Go ho ho.
• 34:40
  It's coming out on Christmas Eve, you bastard.
• 34:44
  That'll be really awful here. Call me guys on Christmas Eve
• 34:47
  it. Will, Yeah.
• 34:49
  At the time of the Corbyn, Peter probably had not passed away.
• 34:52
  We just. Say that we like we like dark
• 34:54
  comedy, Jack, and you started us off well.
• 34:56
  Well, in Steven of that fashion, so oh, OK, well, first little
• 35:06
  bugbear with the episode, the repeated oh, you can't call me
• 35:11
  elf. You know the space racist
• 35:13
  because you're calling me now? That joke was a little bit thin.
• 35:18
  And they do it a couple of times in this episode and it's like,
• 35:21
  OK, we get it. Yeah, racism.
• 35:23
  It's all bad. But they are positive in this
• 35:28
  episode's favour. Santa Claus is given a number of
• 35:32
  incredibly meta and ridiculous things to say in this episode.
• 35:37
  Nick Frost delivers it all just sublimely.
• 35:42
  Like, like, that is an impossible role to play
• 35:44
  convincingly. And because he's playing well.
• 35:47
  Definitely. He's playing like the man down
• 35:49
  the pub, so naturalistically that I just.
• 35:52
  Buy it. And it's the only character
• 35:55
  who's been played more times than the Doctor.
• 35:57
  So, you know, it's a bit more. There's so many, many ways to go
• 36:01
  around it. And it's it's really nice
• 36:05
  performance. Because of course he is.
• 36:08
  Is he a dream? He's supposedly a dream
• 36:12
  representation of Father Christmas.
• 36:14
  And I suppose is that level of of having to play it, you know?
• 36:20
  What this scene is, this scene is a good example of the first
• 36:24
  watch, right? And on the 1st watch, I was
• 36:26
  just, you know, you watch it all and all the surprises hit you as
• 36:31
  they should. And then you go back and rewatch
• 36:33
  it and, you know when you're being tricked, right?
• 36:35
  Especially in an episode like this where they're trying to
• 36:37
  trick you all the time. So when I was watching it this
• 36:39
  time, I was going, well, yeah, of course.
• 36:41
  When he reveals that they're still dreaming.
• 36:43
  Well, this happened right at the start of the episode.
• 36:45
  Santa Claus is at the start of the episode.
• 36:48
  You know, he was in death in Heaven.
• 36:49
  He's in. He's been dream crabbed in death
• 36:51
  in heaven, for God's sakes. Yeah, exactly.
• 36:54
  And obviously we set that up earlier in the series in the
• 36:58
  previous episode, Don't water the idea that you can have the
• 37:01
  dream patches put on you and not realise it.
• 37:04
  And Claw is in that dream, but the beginning of the water when
• 37:08
  she doesn't realise it. So you know, we later to seven a
• 37:12
  bit. Later on, where the drain caps
• 37:13
  come down from the ceiling. And then we just cut to Santa
• 37:17
  Claus coming in. Yeah.
• 37:19
  I'm like, well, yeah, of course. Why did I forget about that?
• 37:21
  Oh, I was distracted by all those bloody springs coming in.
• 37:24
  That's why. And those robots.
• 37:27
  But my first watch, none of this occurred to me.
• 37:32
  So going on my first watch, it was a huge success.
• 37:37
  Yeah, so here we're doing the same joke that's doing more fat
• 37:41
  did in The Empty Child and I think in the 11th Hour and
• 37:45
  possibly even in The Curse of Fatal Death, we've had a lot of
• 37:49
  comparisons between the Doctor and Sam.
• 37:52
  So obviously the 9th doctor does that whole red bicycle when you
• 37:57
  were 12, you have. And this is kind of that same
• 38:00
  theme, except now it's supposedly the real Barbacus.
• 38:04
  And I could look at how Chloe just said because you're a fairy
• 38:08
  tale. I grew out of fairy tales.
• 38:11
  Divya Chlora, here comes the TARDIS.
• 38:14
  You know it's the Doctor as mythological folk hero I.
• 38:19
  Mean he does. He does that no matter which
• 38:22
  Doctors involve Moffat. He loves doing that.
• 38:25
  Yeah. But I think probably Doctor
• 38:29
  perhaps goes a little bit better with it because he is that sort
• 38:32
  of reluctant. I thought it was a bit obvious
• 38:35
  here, but I thought at the end when they're on the sleigh and
• 38:39
  he says, do you still believe in Santa?
• 38:41
  And she puts her arms around him.
• 38:42
  That just sold it. That was perfect.
• 38:47
  And here, obviously, we had this idea that the doctor thinks that
• 38:54
  Santa's fake but doesn't have any evidence of it, whereas
• 38:58
  normally you'd think this doctor would be very, Oh yeah,
• 39:03
  obviously lying to me, you know? It's all gone to the opposite
• 39:07
  end, haven't we? We've got this lovely cuddly
• 39:11
  figure Santa Claus, you know, and then we've got this sort of
• 39:14
  evil looking blokes, you know, this sort of villainous looking
• 39:18
  man being horrible. And yet that's the Doctor, and
• 39:21
  that's the. Yeah, that's, that's the awful.
• 39:26
  But the the skeleton man, if he's about to get called in a
• 39:29
  few minutes, I really like a lot of this soft lighting and the
• 39:34
  TARDIS that he adds to between like atmosphere.
• 39:38
  We're again getting close to comment on things like all the
• 39:42
  sound of the TARDIS. You know, I really like that,
• 39:45
  you know, you know, enjoying the sort of meta elements of Doctor
• 39:54
  Who that we all enjoy. It's sort of a part, definitely
• 39:57
  part of these characters. And we're about to launch into
• 40:03
  the worst version of the title sequence.
• 40:06
  You mean the tortured cat version of the theme shooting?
• 40:10
  Yes, now have have we done anything Christmas Eve?
• 40:16
  Oh, there we go. Bit of snow at the TARDIS.
• 40:20
  You know, the bit there where Clara sort of had tears in her
• 40:23
  eyes and she said, yeah, I do believe it today.
• 40:26
  And she got a smile on her face. That's the stuff I think Jenna
• 40:29
  Coleman plays beautifully understated.
• 40:31
  It's like the bit with the leaf in The Rings of Accatane.
• 40:34
  When she comes in and goes the most important leaf in human
• 40:37
  history but downplays it. That's when she's brilliant, I
• 40:41
  think. Yeah, so this Arctic base, which
• 40:48
  is the real sort of Doctor Who mystery that we have to solve
• 40:51
  today. Oh, and three years early is the
• 40:56
  13th Doctor. Hello, Jodie Whittaker.
• 40:59
  What's? She doing here?
• 41:01
  Three years early. How dare you make a comparison
• 41:05
  between my Jodie Whittaker and that irritating Shona.
• 41:10
  I mean, viewers at home can can work out for themselves whether
• 41:14
  these characters are similar but.
• 41:16
  Can you ask me a question? People say that they think they
• 41:20
  can see how she would have been a companion by how she's
• 41:23
  characterized here, but she's just another gobby Moffett girl.
• 41:28
  Well, I hate to admit it, but I may somewhat be in agreement
• 41:32
  with you on this one. And I actually prefer the other
• 41:36
  character than Natalie. Who made it is actually my no no
• 41:40
  no. The matalie who made these
• 41:42
  character whose name escapes me is the more science you want.
• 41:46
  Oh, I would have liked a couple. Yeah, I mean, I'll tell you who
• 41:51
  I wouldn't like the 500th Padford Sound offspring to be in
• 41:57
  this show. Yeah, I know.
• 42:01
  Even sounds dislike sound doesn't mean with this.
• 42:04
  Yes, we're we're going to take good care of you, Shona.
• 42:07
  And you're like, oh, that's the Padford Sound.
• 42:09
  What's? Capaldi should have gone at some
• 42:11
  point. I mean, it's very unlike Moffett
• 42:13
  to not choose to do a meta joke. He should have gone.
• 42:17
  You remind me of somebody. You.
• 42:19
  Know yes you you look like just like that man I met on the
• 42:23
  midnight train yes yeah and the king peloton man was that him or
• 42:30
  the. Yeah, that's him as well.
• 42:32
  Yeah. And when were you the next doing
• 42:35
  The Walking? I think you may have turned up
• 42:38
  in a couple of those BBV stranger videos when when I was
• 42:42
  doing those for a little while. And you found just like me when
• 42:47
  I went to season 6 BI have to say all.
• 42:54
  Of this base under siege stuff, it's so ironic that it's not
• 42:57
  actually a real base under siege because I think this is the best
• 43:01
  base on base under siege in the Moffett era.
• 43:04
  This base. This.
• 43:06
  Yeah, I love the snow outside. I think the lighting is perfect
• 43:10
  in here. It's very the thing, the
• 43:11
  lighting. I like the fact that you go
• 43:13
  outside into the snow as well. You see the exterior of the
• 43:16
  building and I love the face huggers.
• 43:18
  I think they're a really genuinely chilling design.
• 43:21
  The direction of it. I love it.
• 43:23
  I just this is meat and potatoes.
• 43:25
  Doctor Who for me. Yeah, and this is the Christmas
• 43:28
  Eve bit, isn't it? Is someone dancing to Merry
• 43:32
  Christmas? So every party and it's, you
• 43:36
  know, it's a bit of Christmas silly.
• 43:38
  That's what you can imagine being clipped and put in a
• 43:41
  commercial. And don't do this Christmas.
• 43:45
  I don't mind this bit, but this was the bit where my other half
• 43:49
  when he was watching the swimming last night went.
• 43:51
  Oh God. Why is he dancing into?
• 43:55
  This ridiculous. I mean, it's a very odd dance,
• 43:57
  isn't it? Yeah, and it's a very, well, I
• 44:00
  think it's deliberately odd because the whole point is
• 44:02
  you're meant to be thinking about it.
• 44:04
  So I suppose you're meant to be a bit self-conscious and sort
• 44:07
  of, you know, it's a very Stephen Moffat monster, isn't
• 44:12
  it? It's you know they can only see
• 44:15
  you if you look at them or think about them.
• 44:18
  What isn't this? Don't think, yeah.
• 44:21
  Yeah, don't, don't think. Yeah, whenever you do.
• 44:27
  Don't think, don't think. This Christmas, don't think.
• 44:33
  They this is a really facetious point to make, but I'm going to
• 44:35
  make it. They do snow so well in the new
• 44:38
  series, right? And they do it especially well
• 44:41
  in this episode. It feels cold there.
• 44:44
  Oh yeah, I mean, in the classic series, it's probably just, you
• 44:48
  know, asbestos. And that's why I've won a
• 44:50
  classical dog so young. Look at his.
• 44:53
  Face huggers, Oh my God. Yes, it's very empty child,
• 44:57
  isn't it? This is very very empty child,
• 45:00
  you know, builds it up and. But clever because there's four
• 45:05
  of them and they're wearing their clothes.
• 45:07
  Yes, they look just like them. Yeah, it's one of those in plain
• 45:12
  sight solution for five. They're walking around wearing
• 45:15
  the exact same clothes. But of course, because, and
• 45:19
  that's why it's got to be face hugger, right?
• 45:21
  A dream crowd. A mask.
• 45:23
  Over the face, yeah. You don't see them, but you
• 45:25
  don't even think about that because it's a really creepy,
• 45:28
  icky design. Yes, and because as we've said
• 45:32
  before, it's very self consciously something that you
• 45:35
  recognise, you know, but alien me.
• 45:37
  But it's a bit I've been seeing them off face them.
• 45:43
  It just feels like in a way that a very often mafia who feels
• 45:46
  like it's pushing away from traditional Doctor Who a lot of
• 45:50
  the time and trying new things. This just feels so trad to me.
• 45:54
  Capaldi on a base, up the stage monsters.
• 45:57
  And you know what? A Christmas.
• 45:59
  Thank you very much. That's the best gift you could
• 46:01
  have given me. Yeah.
• 46:02
  And we've just had them speaking them.
• 46:06
  We've just had a bit of a non trad moment.
• 46:09
  Well A slaps the Doctor, which I'm not really on board with
• 46:14
  some of the slapping, but obviously the Doctor making a
• 46:20
  Dick. It Danny Pink there.
• 46:22
  Oh, he must be texting women of low moral character.
• 46:28
  But it is great because I like how they deal with the the end
• 46:32
  of death in heaven here. So quickly she goes, you saying
• 46:35
  that about Danny Pink? That's not right.
• 46:38
  And then he goes, well, Gallifrey is not back either.
• 46:40
  So no. And we've just that's it.
• 46:42
  We're right. We understand each other now.
• 46:44
  I'm a liar. You're a liar.
• 46:46
  Let's get down. Now we I just talked all over
• 46:49
  the bit where the crabs came down.
• 46:52
  Yes, quite, quite scary sheep. And these awful CTL, Yeah.
• 46:59
  Oh I love. Them, they they're.
• 47:03
  Real robots though, surely. No, they're little slim peas
• 47:06
  that were they must be fake. Yeah, again.
• 47:11
  You know, when Santa turned up, this is where my Roth was sort
• 47:14
  of going. I'm going to make the tea, all
• 47:16
  right. He must have been making a, he
• 47:19
  must have been making a lot of tease because he's in this
• 47:21
  episode quite constant. He needed a pace at the end of
• 47:26
  the episode. Well, where's the whole hour
• 47:30
  long? You know when it comes but.
• 47:34
  I wonder if we needed the elves like on this watch.
• 47:37
  I was like, I could have just done with Santa.
• 47:38
  I don't really need the elves. Yeah, well, maybe just one of
• 47:42
  them. I mean, to Stan Stark, you don't
• 47:44
  get enough work. He's already at some time and
• 47:50
  every other episode at this point.
• 47:52
  But what I like or I love about this yet is Doctor Who does
• 47:56
  Santa Claus right? It is the most absurd premise.
• 47:59
  And I remember going into this going, there's no way he's going
• 48:02
  to pull this off. How is he going to pull this
• 48:04
  off? I'm just making it all a dream.
• 48:07
  And the dream is seeded in the end of the last episode.
• 48:11
  I thought you're a bloody genius.
• 48:14
  Yeah, it's so this is obviously where we're setting up the
• 48:18
  states. So we've had the two stories,
• 48:21
  we've had the Doctor Clara and Santa, and maybe it's all fake.
• 48:26
  And we have the scientists and the real, you know, real people
• 48:32
  with really a minister, the traditional Doctor Who's then.
• 48:35
  And we're this is the scene where we saw jam in these two
• 48:39
  bits together. It's not a two though.
• 48:41
  The juxtaposition of two disparate things.
• 48:46
  It is, yeah, but it's so rare to see the two of them go right.
• 48:50
  Plot A, me Plot B. Here's the most of the episode.
• 48:55
  I hate this line. Jack, I hate this line.
• 48:58
  I. Will.
• 48:58
  Mark you, Sansa. Oh boy, those are the lines that
• 49:02
  just made me want to slap Steven Moffitt.
• 49:07
  See, you're going to hate me for this, but that was the one line.
• 49:10
  I was like, Oh my God, she is just like the 13th Doctor.
• 49:17
  And just the way she did it, with her hands, I was like, Oh
• 49:23
  my God, she was just like Jodie. I don't know, I just, I, I mean,
• 49:31
  I think Shona serves this story well and I really like the
• 49:34
  ending when she's in her flat, but I don't see it companion.
• 49:37
  Yeah, no. Were they planning on it
• 49:41
  actually being? Yeah, yeah, he said that in
• 49:44
  Doctor Magazine. It was going to be Shona and
• 49:47
  they were going to try and convince the actress, who did go
• 49:49
  on to do a lot of work. She, you know she.
• 49:51
  Was yeah, she's in Star Wars now.
• 49:52
  She didn't mean all rubbish, but this character who the Doctor's
• 49:56
  talking to now, his name escapes me.
• 49:59
  She's the one who had Jimmy wanted us to or would have had
• 50:04
  his companion come in office. Because you could still tell the
• 50:07
  series 9 story with a new companion, couldn't you?
• 50:10
  You just have them in nine episodes and have them die in
• 50:13
  the 9th episode. Possibly.
• 50:15
  I mean, heaven sent him help then would have to be a lot more
• 50:20
  effecting if we're starting with a new companion for that series.
• 50:24
  I think we'd have to do, I think.
• 50:25
  That would be worse. They're just getting in their
• 50:28
  stride. They absolutely love each other.
• 50:30
  She takes her risk, she dies, and then the doctor feels
• 50:34
  terrible guilt. Now, so whilst we're doing the
• 50:39
  smarter, how do the dream clamps work?
• 50:43
  You know, the telepathic fields, psychic projections, that's all
• 50:48
  thing that the audience can wrap their head around and get the
• 50:53
  stakes of, right? I need to pay attention to this
• 50:57
  bit over here and this bit over there.
• 51:01
  Unfortunately, all the other characters are sort of shelved
• 51:05
  to the side a little bit whilst we're doing whilst we're doing
• 51:10
  this, obviously. So this bit with Shona and Sam
• 51:16
  Fermi elves, it's just such a out of left field.
• 51:21
  Like why are these scenes here? Because we're not doing anything
• 51:25
  else with these parodies. Exactly that.
• 51:28
  And I was just like, come on, let's get back to the monsters.
• 51:31
  Is to see my cut scenes where like we haven't used mint frost
• 51:35
  enough. And again, maybe this is from
• 51:38
  the periods where we're going to have shown that being the show
• 51:43
  and we've we've got to have a shown a bit and then we'll cut
• 51:47
  back to him actually doing it's like, oh.
• 51:51
  There's probably a there is probably a 50 minute car of last
• 51:54
  Christmas where you could excise a couple of the more indulgent
• 51:58
  moments. Definitely Ashley is Netflix and
• 52:02
  maybe he's character now I've done some frantic Wikipedia.
• 52:06
  Ashley is the name of this character who I like and should
• 52:11
  have been the companion. Moment in a minute, right?
• 52:15
  And it's one of my favorite Clara moments because we've had
• 52:17
  all of this sort of smug, smug Clara.
• 52:21
  Oh, you know, I'm the Doctor, Clara.
• 52:23
  I'm in the title sequence. Clara flatline, I'm taking over
• 52:27
  the show, Clara. All of this fucking confidence,
• 52:30
  but not really enough of her being the companion and actually
• 52:34
  being scared at the appropriate moments, which is part of the
• 52:38
  companion role. It is part of the companion
• 52:40
  role. Donna did it, Martha did it.
• 52:42
  You know, you need that part of it as well.
• 52:45
  So the bit in a minute where she's under the table and the
• 52:47
  dream crab is attacking her. Yeah, she is so scared.
• 52:52
  It's the first time you've seen her be properly, properly scared
• 52:55
  like that. And Coleman just delivers it
• 52:58
  beautifully. It's a great moment.
• 53:01
  Yeah, I think that's that's part that does the mirror these
• 53:04
  characters. You know, realistically, if it's
• 53:07
  only going to be two or three main actors in modern Doctor
• 53:12
  Who, the doc, so I'm one or two companions.
• 53:16
  So these, they have to be actual characters who are capable of
• 53:19
  holding the scenes on their own rather than just distractions
• 53:25
  whilst we wait for the doctors to come back.
• 53:29
  So I, I, I actually don't mind the confidence and the
• 53:33
  brashness. I'm actually fine with it.
• 53:35
  I like the confidence, I just think it needs to be mirrored
• 53:38
  with some realism of the danger of what they're going through,
• 53:42
  which is dangerous. Yeah.
• 53:46
  And I guess part of that is the thing that we do lose when we
• 53:50
  move to Russell to is that sense of a base back home, a Jackie,
• 53:58
  Tyler, Sylvia and wealth for, you know, Martha's family.
• 54:03
  Not to say there has to be a family, which is again, where we
• 54:06
  get that me pin coming in, but there should be that, you know,
• 54:11
  here's what the doctor can offer.
• 54:13
  Well, what else would he bet if if he didn't have the doctor?
• 54:18
  And at the end of this episode, everything else, the chlora has
• 54:22
  gone and we're, you know, going into the Doctor Who world, you
• 54:27
  know, oh, so we just have another clue for the puzzle here
• 54:34
  where the Doctor says, oh, So what is this mission that you're
• 54:38
  actually here for? And this old Scottish woman
• 54:42
  goes, oh, it's a long story. Anyway, he's back to the aliens.
• 54:47
  And that's a little indicator for the viewer of these people
• 54:51
  aren't actually real. I didn't spot it in my first
• 54:55
  watch until it was pointed out and I I knew this time.
• 54:59
  So when I was watching yesterday I was like fuck me, everyone's
• 55:03
  saying it, why didn't I notice? Yeah, where are we?
• 55:11
  But the pay off to that, Jack, the pay off to that, the way he
• 55:13
  paces it when, you know, he wants to make the point about
• 55:17
  that. And he has all of the characters
• 55:19
  say it's a long story, it's a long story, it's a long story.
• 55:22
  And you think, OK, you've made the point.
• 55:23
  And then he makes Clara say it and you're like.
• 55:26
  Oh my God. Yeah, they're all dreaming.
• 55:31
  Oh, so here we've just done the face huggers bit and they go,
• 55:34
  oh, it's like Alien, you know, there's a horror movie called
• 55:37
  Alien. No one bit of one kid saying
• 55:40
  baby. That's a funny.
• 55:41
  Joke. That's a funny joke, and it's a
• 55:43
  not only a funny joke, it's a funnier version of the elf.
• 55:49
  That's racism. It's a funnier version of that.
• 55:54
  That's the way he says it. That's so offensive.
• 55:57
  Funny. It took them quite a while to
• 56:03
  realise that Peter Caldi can actually play comedy because
• 56:06
  they didn't give him much in the first couple of years.
• 56:08
  But when they when he does, he flies.
• 56:10
  That's. Why I like Robert Sherwood so
• 56:13
  much? Because it's just like you're
• 56:16
  the grumpy clown, that's why, you know?
• 56:19
  That's why I like the the first shielder episode the girl died
• 56:22
  because he gets great comedy and that.
• 56:25
  The more miserable the Doctor, the happier and more joy
• 56:29
  everything else has to be in in letter steps.
• 56:32
  Yeah, but not in series 8, Jack. Jesus Christ is very dark.
• 56:37
  Yeah, well, but. Don't cremate me, Jack.
• 56:40
  Don't cremate me. Don't cremate me.
• 56:42
  Oh, don't worry, here comes Mary Poppins to turn everyone into
• 56:45
  Simon Men. What a strange.
• 56:51
  Yeah, that's an awful, but then it's a serious finale.
• 56:56
  That's not really a finale, because this is the finale you.
• 57:01
  Know a bit like the battle of Ramscore?
• 57:02
  Have Kolos you mean? Sure.
• 57:08
  And no, I think you know what, it's funny.
• 57:12
  I mean my brief 1 some sentence comments I'm about 1 square
• 57:17
  price. I think my reactions to it are
• 57:21
  the opposite where I think the best parts of it are the parts
• 57:24
  that are the serious minority bits and the rubbish bits of it
• 57:28
  are the fact that it has to try and be about to store and it
• 57:31
  doesn't really do that. But I think as a climax to some
• 57:34
  of the thoughts and concepts that she was 11 have been going
• 57:39
  for, I think there's some interesting stuff in there.
• 57:43
  But some, yeah, Interestingly, it's a week.
• 57:46
  I think that both on terms of emotional conclusion and as a
• 57:50
  Doctor Who story, resolution succeeds on both parts.
• 57:55
  Yeah. Oh, so we've come into a back
• 57:58
  home. What's going on?
• 57:59
  But. It all just seems a bit odd and
• 58:02
  skewed, you know? The lighting don't seem quite
• 58:05
  right. Speaking of all the skillet is
• 58:09
  Samuel, do you? Know what I mean?
• 58:15
  I'm reliably informed he isn't wearing anything underneath that
• 58:18
  Santa Claus costume. I don't know where you got that
• 58:22
  information. He says it in the episode.
• 58:24
  Oh, does he? Oh well, he made it's a dream
• 58:27
  that so maybe he has no body. Maybe if that was my present on
• 58:31
  Christmas Day. Sanyo Anticlo.
• 58:33
  Maybe he's gonna be about that cliffhanger from 4:00 to
• 58:37
  Wednesday. He just sort of opens up his
• 58:39
  chest and his smell of robot fan so.
• 58:42
  Oh no, what a disappointment that would be.
• 58:47
  So this is great because it's a sort of idealized version.
• 58:53
  It's the Danny Pink control that we've never yes, got flap series
• 58:58
  very physically. Hang on, don't backtrack.
• 59:04
  I'm sorry. No, no, no, no.
• 59:06
  This is the Danny Pink and Clara we should have had in series 8.
• 59:10
  He was so fucking boring. I didn't believe him as a couple
• 59:13
  for one second. If they'd have been like this
• 59:17
  domesticated, I absolutely would have bought it.
• 59:21
  And this scene is great work for Murray Gold, who I think is on
• 59:25
  fire in this episode. And he's just had that turn that
• 59:29
  we mentioned at the beginning, from Christmas to psychological
• 59:33
  horror stuff. He did that turn in the music,
• 59:37
  which we can't hear because we're doing this comedy track
• 59:41
  and we get the sort of heaven sent blackboard femme, which we
• 59:47
  obviously get emission, which was about, you know, if it's
• 59:51
  really happening, if it's not. And this is going to lead to the
• 59:55
  version of Chlora in Heaven Fen, who is of course not Chlora.
• 1:00:00
  It's the doctors remembrance of Chlora, just as this is Chlora's
• 1:00:06
  remembrance of Danny Pink and I suppose the doctors remembrance
• 1:00:10
  of Danny Pink as well chemically.
• 1:00:12
  But. So, yeah, this, this lighting
• 1:00:18
  about, you know, here, here's what your actual thoughts are,
• 1:00:21
  that you're dying, you know, I think.
• 1:00:23
  That's really scary, the way she rubs it and it's like you are
• 1:00:27
  dying. And then she turns around and
• 1:00:29
  all the walls and keeps on the little 1 split, you know?
• 1:00:36
  Muffin does. His cameras do.
• 1:00:38
  It, he does this psychological horror stuff so brilliantly.
• 1:00:41
  He did it in the second-half of what is it, Day of the Moon with
• 1:00:46
  her in the orphanage. He did it in God, what's the
• 1:00:51
  other one I'm thinking of? You know, you know the one
• 1:00:53
  where, where she's got all the writing on her, Amy.
• 1:00:57
  And he? Did it in The Doctor's Wife as
• 1:01:01
  well. I know it's got gamers name on
• 1:01:03
  the script but I don't with, you know, Die Amy, all of that on
• 1:01:08
  the all over the TARDIS. He does that so well.
• 1:01:12
  And again, we're back to the Christmas event.
• 1:01:14
  We're back to Clara. What I'm going around?
• 1:01:17
  Look at the board, Clara. He's trying to warn you.
• 1:01:21
  Clara So we're back at the base. We've had that little sort of
• 1:01:27
  transition wipe them to show how the dream cramps are working.
• 1:01:35
  And it's interesting that the Doctor when it comes.
• 1:01:39
  Clara, as we're going to see next year, it gets a lot more
• 1:01:43
  desperate and it's going right. We've got to kill this thing.
• 1:01:47
  You know, we've got to kill this alien because it's on Claw's
• 1:01:49
  head and I've lost her once and I'm not going to lose her again.
• 1:01:54
  Kill this creature. How many dream crabs are in
• 1:02:00
  operation at the moment? I mean like there's only like 6
• 1:02:03
  of them here, does that mean? There's a right now.
• 1:02:05
  Green dream crabs around the earth, on people's faces.
• 1:02:09
  It's not much of A force, is it? Well, they are quite disperate
• 1:02:13
  as well, because we never find out who Pat, the town's son is,
• 1:02:19
  do we? We never cut to him, so we don't
• 1:02:21
  know who he is or what he's doing.
• 1:02:23
  What? I'm sort of saying is, is why
• 1:02:25
  just, I mean, I'm assuming there are more dream perhaps in
• 1:02:28
  operation. Why just these six people are
• 1:02:31
  here in this made-up dream rather than everybody that
• 1:02:35
  they're invading? Yeah.
• 1:02:37
  I mean, the real question is what kind of flat is Gemma
• 1:02:41
  Coleman living in? Is this a Clara?
• 1:02:44
  Is this a flat? Is it a house?
• 1:02:48
  Is it the same flat that she had with?
• 1:02:50
  You. I'm not.
• 1:02:51
  Quite sure. In seven, she was living in as a
• 1:02:54
  nanny. In eight she was in a house.
• 1:02:56
  At some point, she's in a flat. I don't think they are paying
• 1:02:59
  attention to any of those details anymore and it's a
• 1:03:01
  dream. Too, But this is the same house
• 1:03:05
  that she had to begin. Then listen out.
• 1:03:08
  I think it's the same house and caretaker, isn't it?
• 1:03:11
  Yeah, so the Doctor has burst into Clara's dream, and you'll
• 1:03:20
  notice that now the Doctor is here.
• 1:03:23
  This version of Danny gets a little bit.
• 1:03:25
  It's not OK with him, which bear in mind, is not the real Danny.
• 1:03:29
  Is that is that the Doctor's personality leaking into Danny,
• 1:03:35
  or is that Clora remembering that the Doctor and Danny used
• 1:03:40
  to be opposed a lot and so now this version of Danny is getting
• 1:03:44
  a little bit? I think the wrong Jack within
• 1:03:47
  the dreams are a bit ambiguous because, you know, Santa Claus
• 1:03:52
  is absolutely there to help them, you know?
• 1:03:55
  And yet Danny Pink seems to be in the opposite direction.
• 1:03:59
  So I'm not entirely sure how this anaesthetic within the
• 1:04:03
  dreams actually works, whether it's a foe or whether it's a
• 1:04:06
  friend. Depending.
• 1:04:08
  On what the plot needs or the emotional needs of the character
• 1:04:11
  are at the end of the arc. Yeah, well, the anaesthetic of
• 1:04:15
  these people are the characters showing them.
• 1:04:18
  Ashley and everyone else has put them as scientists on an Arctic
• 1:04:24
  base, which isn't very comforting.
• 1:04:27
  But Clara gets Christmas Day with her boyfriend and the other
• 1:04:31
  ones get You're being menaced by Doctor Who.
• 1:04:35
  Monsters do. You know, I've got to be honest,
• 1:04:38
  You know, if I was going to have a dream crab on my face, all I
• 1:04:43
  would really want would to be on a Zoom call with you talking
• 1:04:46
  about a doctor. Whoever.
• 1:04:47
  Oh my God. Oh my God, I'm being just so
• 1:04:52
  mean. Are you anesthetic, Jack Coir?
• 1:04:56
  Yeah, I might be. Is my brain being sucked as we
• 1:04:59
  speak? Well, well, let me ask you one
• 1:05:01
  question to determine this is the real Joe Ford.
• 1:05:04
  Yes. OK.
• 1:05:05
  What's your opinion on this Stephen Moffatt script?
• 1:05:09
  This glorious. Oh God.
• 1:05:14
  No, it's a nightmare. But actually though I I
• 1:05:23
  genuinely meant what I said as well.
• 1:05:25
  I think I weirdly enough fake Danny and Clara I believe more
• 1:05:29
  than real Danny and. Clara Well, yeah, Say, say Danny
• 1:05:32
  just had that great rhyme of oh, I didn't die mucking dark water
• 1:05:37
  where the Doctor does that goes to hell and that becomes we're
• 1:05:40
  going to go to hell. Say Danny.
• 1:05:43
  Danny does the I didn't die to save Clara.
• 1:05:47
  I sorry, I didn't die to save the world.
• 1:05:50
  I don't say Clara and the rest of you not.
• 1:05:52
  Got lucky. I mean, didn't he say at the end
• 1:05:55
  of Death in Heaven though? I do this to save the world.
• 1:05:58
  Well, because that was Danny Pink.
• 1:06:00
  This is not Danny Pink. What an arrogant invention.
• 1:06:04
  She's remembering him and she thinks it's all about it of.
• 1:06:07
  Course. Or is it the doctor being an
• 1:06:09
  arrogant bitch? I'm thinking, Well, Danny Pink
• 1:06:13
  would never actually to do something good.
• 1:06:15
  He must have been doing it to, you know.
• 1:06:18
  Jack the Doctor is the most arrogant bitch of.
• 1:06:20
  All I mean the dolph is already accused Danny of being with
• 1:06:23
  women with low moral character. Step up to replace Chloral.
• 1:06:29
  What he did still. Say PE, didn't he?
• 1:06:32
  I really hate that. I really hate that.
• 1:06:37
  It's funny. Obviously it's difficult.
• 1:06:42
  It must be difficult for the character, for the doctor to be
• 1:06:46
  saying, right, you know, we've got to be coming out of this
• 1:06:49
  dream now. But I'm sorry, but this isn't
• 1:06:51
  the real world. But it's not.
• 1:06:53
  And you're going to have to deal with it.
• 1:06:55
  And I've been. Yeah, No, go on.
• 1:06:58
  No, I was just going to say I have to.
• 1:07:00
  And that's how what marks this doctor away from other doctors
• 1:07:03
  is that, you know. I'm I'm sold on Clara's pain
• 1:07:08
  having to say goodbye to Danny again.
• 1:07:10
  I'm sold on Danny saying we got this last fake Christmas as an
• 1:07:15
  extra gift, which which we shouldn't have had.
• 1:07:18
  I absolutely buy it because I buy the performances.
• 1:07:22
  I'm so unsold on their relationship last year that I
• 1:07:25
  was like, well, OK, we're tidying that up.
• 1:07:28
  Good stuff. Oh, Chloe also had a really good
• 1:07:32
  time in the dream where she said don't where the doctors
• 1:07:36
  explaining what's going on. And Chloe said don't treat me
• 1:07:39
  like a beginner, which is like that great.
• 1:07:43
  I'm trying to be more like the Doctor.
• 1:07:45
  That hubris, which I think in the same way of like a Rose
• 1:07:49
  Tyler, I think that's very deliberately rare as part of the
• 1:07:51
  character. That sense of I've been here for
• 1:07:55
  two years now, you know, you treat me, but why am?
• 1:07:59
  Which is the second main character on this show, you
• 1:08:03
  know? I wonder if Jenna Coleman's come
• 1:08:05
  to his office. The script's all ready to go.
• 1:08:07
  The directors books. No, no, I want to stay in extra
• 1:08:11
  fuck. 'S sake.
• 1:08:12
  You're going to be reckless next year, and I'm going to put in
• 1:08:15
  that line in the middle of last Christmas about don't treat me
• 1:08:17
  like an amateur, all right? It was even worse, wasn't it?
• 1:08:22
  I believe for for this episode, was it not?
• 1:08:24
  I believe for for this episode where she said she wanted to
• 1:08:27
  stay for. God's sakes.
• 1:08:30
  Would you like so late in the game?
• 1:08:33
  It's like, what? What are we doing?
• 1:08:35
  Well, that's more annoying feels the way it does.
• 1:08:38
  Yeah, well, I mean, you know. I wouldn't lose Missy throwing
• 1:08:42
  Clara down the hole like a Canary for anything.
• 1:08:47
  Well, yeah, I mean, we'll talk a little bit at the end of how
• 1:08:50
  this links up would be Series 9 opener, I think, but.
• 1:08:56
  I do like all. The So now the doctors.
• 1:08:59
  You know, when they get the, the, the base manuals and they
• 1:09:02
  do like the first, the first word on each page.
• 1:09:07
  I think that's all clever stuff, yeah.
• 1:09:11
  And now we're sort of doing our Sherlock flashback through the
• 1:09:15
  films that we've done already in the episode to work out where we
• 1:09:20
  are, and it's pitting all of these characters against the
• 1:09:25
  ultimate villain for the Christmas.
• 1:09:30
  Evil. Yeah, awful, awful man do.
• 1:09:34
  You know what? Do you know what Mark said to me
• 1:09:36
  at this point in the episode? He went, do you know, this would
• 1:09:39
  be a great episode with the 6th Doctor and Perry, wouldn't it?
• 1:09:41
  I went, yeah, it would. It would.
• 1:09:44
  That that he's my car. Moss Brian, bless it.
• 1:09:56
  Oh yes, I'm not wearing anything underneath the sun.
• 1:10:01
  Oh, gold. Absolute gold.
• 1:10:07
  Oh, here we go. There's a bit with the manuals.
• 1:10:10
  Yeah. So this is, again, this is a bit
• 1:10:14
  like the blackboard thing, isn't it?
• 1:10:18
  The idea of these messages coming through in the writing
• 1:10:24
  episode. Did you get the second?
• 1:10:26
  You know, the second time we do this with the manuals and he's
• 1:10:29
  got Clara. Make it a good number.
• 1:10:31
  What does she choose? Is it 12?
• 1:10:34
  It's 12. OK, they do that a lot. 11
• 1:10:41
  nothing. Thor in the complex don't they
• 1:10:45
  do 11 and stuff like that? Oh, oh, yeah.
• 1:10:54
  So OK, we're going to We are All dead is obviously what the books
• 1:11:03
  revealed to them, which is, I suppose not to.
• 1:11:06
  Is it really? Well, it's a Steven Moffett
• 1:11:09
  script. No one ever dies, really.
• 1:11:13
  But you know, they're quite strong words.
• 1:11:16
  Yeah, so now for Christmas, reveals himself.
• 1:11:25
  Oh God, he's just the Ghostbusters line, don't he?
• 1:11:28
  Who are you going to call? Yeah, so do we need?
• 1:11:37
  That to go out to us, this is a dream.
• 1:11:40
  We're sort of figuring it out. Well, well, Father Christmas has
• 1:11:44
  arrived in the sort of sense of, you know, the hope of the season
• 1:11:50
  and the sense of someone has to step up and be a hero in this
• 1:11:53
  story. In the way that the more fat
• 1:11:56
  doctors, particularly couple of this with this last series, have
• 1:12:01
  struggled with their status as a hero and a shavier.
• 1:12:07
  And we've had the links to Robin Hood and you know, all this.
• 1:12:12
  So I think it's interesting for Christmas steps up and goes one,
• 1:12:16
  I'm going to be the hero because the doctor's not doing a good
• 1:12:20
  job of it. I.
• 1:12:21
  Think you know Hartnell was a total prick and yet he never had
• 1:12:24
  any issues with all of this. He didn't have him sitting
• 1:12:27
  around the TARDIS going well Barbara my dear am IA good
• 1:12:30
  person. He just went get out of my
• 1:12:33
  TARDIS you pricks. Remember, he just had Bob with
• 1:12:36
  point blank say to him, Doctor, you're not a good person.
• 1:12:40
  I do think I know you, to be honest, if you want to.
• 1:12:43
  I think it's a detriment to the show that during this era, the
• 1:12:47
  show became as introspective as it did about the Doctor.
• 1:12:54
  I mean, technically all knew who that's that really, but I would
• 1:13:00
  say a lot of the best Doctor Who, but a lot of the most well
• 1:13:04
  recorded periods of the show are those periods where the Doctor
• 1:13:08
  he's looked on critically. I mean the Perth we don't do
• 1:13:12
  they do it quite a lot in let's and Dicks McCoy stuff like ghost
• 1:13:18
  light and femric is very critical of the doctor.
• 1:13:21
  A lot of those. Two eras that you just.
• 1:13:24
  A lot of you who those? Two eras per Wee and McCoy are
• 1:13:28
  more divisive than perhaps you're suggesting there.
• 1:13:32
  I'd say that the the most popular period of classic who is
• 1:13:36
  Hinchcliffe? And there's no fucking
• 1:13:38
  introspection at all in that period.
• 1:13:41
  There's no intersection from the Doctor, but I think particularly
• 1:13:45
  in Hinchcliffe 4 thought there's a bit an arsehole isn't he
• 1:13:50
  really? Wonderful, isn't he?
• 1:13:52
  He's arguably the most arsehole, most doctor of all of them.
• 1:13:55
  That sort of early Tom Baker. That line, gentleman, this
• 1:14:01
  lighthouse is under attack and by morning we'll all be dicked.
• 1:14:04
  Any questions? Yeah, that's from Kevin Stints,
• 1:14:08
  Mr. Never Crawl or Cow. So what are we doing here?
• 1:14:18
  Oh, OK. What are we doing here?
• 1:14:22
  Are we here? Are we here?
• 1:14:23
  Really. I think.
• 1:14:25
  I think it's because we spent maybe a little bit too long
• 1:14:28
  spelling out what's happening. I did feel that this time I
• 1:14:33
  actually felt that we were a bit too long on the base here and
• 1:14:37
  when they go outside in a minute, I was like, OK, we
• 1:14:39
  needed a change of location. And this is a great bit where
• 1:14:42
  the doctors going, I'm not going to hold anyone's hand.
• 1:14:45
  OK, I'll hold Clora's hand, but that's it.
• 1:14:49
  I don't do this. In fact, it's not as funny as
• 1:14:52
  the bit in under the late episode though, is it where he's
• 1:14:55
  got the cards? Yeah, sorry for the death of
• 1:14:58
  your spouse or pet or. That is gold.
• 1:15:02
  Now, if Perry had given the 6th Doctor cards, if they don't have
• 1:15:05
  humor like that, it would have been great, wouldn't it?
• 1:15:09
  Yeah, but the 6th Doctor wouldn't have been.
• 1:15:11
  Sorry but people couldn't even get the card.
• 1:15:16
  Go Perry. I'm not reading this.
• 1:15:18
  Sorry. Fuck off.
• 1:15:20
  Although if it's an Eric's favorite card, it'll probably
• 1:15:22
  say you know, salutations and commiserations on the sad Parson
• 1:15:28
  of your beloved family heirloom or some shit.
• 1:15:32
  Is that Pip and Jane version? Did you say?
• 1:15:34
  Yeah, wonderful. Imagine if Pip and Jane had
• 1:15:40
  wrote a new series episode. Oh, imagine Pip and Jane at
• 1:15:45
  first clip Empty by Stephen Moffat.
• 1:15:49
  The Doctor would The Doctor would work out the solution in
• 1:15:52
  the 1st 30 seconds and then spend the remaining of 44 1/2
• 1:15:57
  minutes. Do you get it?
• 1:15:59
  Do you get it? Do you get it?
• 1:16:02
  I mean that isn't Stephen popping screen, what are you
• 1:16:04
  talking? About no, but normally they do
• 1:16:06
  that about 20 minutes, yeah. Oh, OK.
• 1:16:12
  Yeah. See.
• 1:16:12
  No, look, we're still in the base.
• 1:16:14
  We're still in the same setting. Move it on now.
• 1:16:17
  Come on. So we believe, go with this
• 1:16:21
  Santa. So there's the idea of, OK,
• 1:16:24
  maybe the dream has stopped because all the Christmas isn't.
• 1:16:29
  This is great. I'm sorry.
• 1:16:31
  Jesus Christ. Capaldi is just like, right?
• 1:16:33
  I'm off. Come on.
• 1:16:34
  Let's. Go Father, Christmas is gone, so
• 1:16:38
  this is over. We're out of the.
• 1:16:39
  Dream now, Yeah. And then this is where she drops
• 1:16:42
  it, isn't it, Doctor? How come Santa Claus was on my
• 1:16:46
  roof? Yeah, which again, is part of
• 1:16:51
  Julie because of the doctors met, the whole not remembering
• 1:16:56
  and not focusing on things. And you'd be like, yeah, doctor,
• 1:16:59
  you both met for the Christmas before we got this.
• 1:17:03
  All the best. But that, that's the plotter
• 1:17:06
  that everybody laws Moffitt for, right?
• 1:17:09
  He's dropped it in plain sight in the very first scene.
• 1:17:12
  Yeah. And then he's distracted you
• 1:17:14
  with all this other stuff that's going on, dream crabs and
• 1:17:16
  Christmas dancing and all this stuff.
• 1:17:18
  Yeah. Then halfway through the
• 1:17:20
  episode, he explains what it's all about.
• 1:17:22
  So he explains the method of how their injuries have been dreams.
• 1:17:26
  And then he drops Clara saying, but Santa Claus was in the first
• 1:17:30
  scene. Yeah, and then the doctor had
• 1:17:32
  that. Wait, do you know what I hate
• 1:17:36
  about obvious missing it? Which is like, yeah, that's
• 1:17:40
  basically what every Stephen Moffat script is, that one line
• 1:17:44
  and yeah, that great. And the Doctors have that great
• 1:17:47
  bit when he goes in and goes will you?
• 1:17:49
  The same people who were here before.
• 1:17:52
  I believe you all from my memory.
• 1:17:55
  Am I am I wrong in thinking that I think this is the most trad
• 1:18:01
  Doctor Who Christmas special since the Christmas Invasion?
• 1:18:05
  And I think that's why I like it, because I love the Christmas
• 1:18:07
  Invasion, because it's an alien invasion story, and I love this
• 1:18:10
  because it's a fake based on the siege story.
• 1:18:13
  Possibly, I'd say this moment was quite planned.
• 1:18:16
  Probably. I mean, maybe it's just because
• 1:18:18
  it besides the whole great intelligence and all that sort
• 1:18:21
  of thing. But yeah, I would say it
• 1:18:25
  remembers to do this small Doctor Who thinks correctly
• 1:18:30
  whilst also advancing the continuing version of this
• 1:18:34
  story. I just really hate it when they
• 1:18:36
  lean into the Christmas so wholeheartedly, like Widow in
• 1:18:40
  the wardrobe, that sort of saccharine, you know, going
• 1:18:44
  through the present into a magical, yeah, God almighty.
• 1:18:50
  So I hate Christmas movies. Thank you.
• 1:18:53
  I mean, Russell, obviously this used to throw the Christmasy
• 1:18:56
  bits like the Christmas Invasion.
• 1:18:58
  It's just like, Oh yeah, robot Santa, whatever.
• 1:19:00
  Yeah. Anyway, onward before we do.
• 1:19:05
  That we'll do a disaster movie and we'll murder off all the
• 1:19:08
  nice people. The runaway.
• 1:19:11
  Bride is like what? Logically, no one would ever get
• 1:19:16
  married on Christmas Day. But Michael, we need to put the
• 1:19:20
  thing on on the Christmas and we need to have the bride and so
• 1:19:23
  on. Just sort of, you know, we'll,
• 1:19:25
  we'll pretend that domino, but whatever.
• 1:19:28
  Want to get married on Christmas Day?
• 1:19:31
  I mean, don't you think she's egotistical enough?
• 1:19:33
  Christmas is going to be all about me.
• 1:19:36
  Yeah. Oh, Donna, Jack.
• 1:19:40
  Oh, you do remind me of good times whilst I'm watching Clara.
• 1:19:45
  I'm going to leave that comment there and I'm going to move on
• 1:19:48
  to so the big reveal that you know, format yours, but there's
• 1:19:56
  8 of you and the reveal is obviously there's not 8 of you.
• 1:20:00
  There's only four of you because you're all the you're all the
• 1:20:05
  dream crap. You are the dream crapper
• 1:20:09
  people. Again, that's a plain sight
• 1:20:13
  twist which I didn't get on the first watch.
• 1:20:16
  Yeah, yeah. It's like the yeah, they've all
• 1:20:20
  been, they've been sat there like the empty child patients.
• 1:20:24
  Oh, he loves doing. He loves doing the Grudge, don't
• 1:20:26
  he, Jack? He loves things coming out of TV
• 1:20:28
  screens. Yes, well, this is the time of
• 1:20:32
  angels does that, of course, the old you know, the image of an
• 1:20:36
  Angel becomes an Angel. The image of the nightmare
• 1:20:40
  becomes fennel from the nightmare, and now he's been
• 1:20:44
  sucked into the TV screen just like one of the Nightmare on Elm
• 1:20:49
  Street films, I think, which are produced by swimming Doctor Who
• 1:20:54
  Rachel Pinelli. I think that's the same thing
• 1:20:56
  with sucking people into the television screens.
• 1:21:00
  And now we're running away from monsters.
• 1:21:03
  I mean, what can get more dog doing?
• 1:21:05
  One possible criticism about the dream logic is like, you could
• 1:21:12
  up the horror here, like, Right. You could do any sort of
• 1:21:15
  nightmarish thing. Yeah.
• 1:21:17
  And what do we do based on the story with monsters?
• 1:21:20
  That's what we do everywhere. You.
• 1:21:22
  Know monster club attacking us that's.
• 1:21:26
  I think, I think that that him being sucked into the TV, that's
• 1:21:28
  the ones sort of extra we get. Yeah, but even my favorite
• 1:21:35
  space, it's very, it's very season 5, isn't it?
• 1:21:39
  That's called a lot of snow and stuff, or you know that.
• 1:21:46
  Is fabulous. I love Capaldi and Clara coming
• 1:21:49
  out of the TARDIS with the green crabs on their faces.
• 1:21:51
  Yeah. That's a great image.
• 1:21:54
  And then this, when they when they break open the flare and
• 1:21:58
  the whole thing's lit with the snow going around, this is just
• 1:22:02
  superbly executed. Oh yeah, yeah, it's a, you've
• 1:22:06
  got a really great colour palette today in this episode.
• 1:22:09
  And again, we're going back to like the thing, obviously the
• 1:22:13
  salt, you know, lighting up the flares and the altered base.
• 1:22:19
  And it's a very emotivety work around, isn't it?
• 1:22:21
  The idea of the power of, you know, thoughts and dreams and
• 1:22:26
  imagination. You know how we're going to get
• 1:22:29
  out of this? By by willing our way out.
• 1:22:33
  By full force of will. And life was like that, Jack.
• 1:22:38
  If only yes, one day a year it. Can be hard, dream really hard.
• 1:22:42
  Then if I do have a dream crab on my head and this is all your
• 1:22:45
  body anaesthetic, will Santa come along and save me?
• 1:22:49
  Well, unfortunately, you might dream too hard because I've just
• 1:22:53
  got ABBC breaking news on my phone.
• 1:22:57
  Stephen Moffat has replaced Russell P Davis as an ABC
• 1:23:01
  showrunner. Again, Dream too hard?
• 1:23:04
  Yeah. It must be a nightmare.
• 1:23:06
  It must. Be it says here, Russell was so
• 1:23:11
  impressed with Boom that he quit on the spot, and actually,
• 1:23:15
  Stephen Moffat goes with the rest of the episodes in that
• 1:23:18
  series. That ice cream pain in my heads
• 1:23:20
  getting worse and worse. You know my hippocampus has
• 1:23:25
  almost been sucked out by a straw.
• 1:23:27
  Thank God this will all be over soon.
• 1:23:33
  Oh, that great line where Claus just said, you know, I've I've
• 1:23:40
  always believed in Santa Claus, but he looks a little different
• 1:23:43
  to me. And then hugged the doctor and
• 1:23:46
  here, you know, Murray Gold is on full pump.
• 1:23:50
  We're driving a slave of this diamond.
• 1:23:53
  Word. This is where you fall with
• 1:23:57
  Murray Gold, right? You're either going to be in
• 1:23:59
  love with this Christmassy music or going Don't tell me how to
• 1:24:03
  feel. Murray, Go.
• 1:24:05
  Well, I mean, it's a musical composer.
• 1:24:07
  They all do that. You know what?
• 1:24:09
  Canola does it with some subtlety.
• 1:24:12
  I'll go watch Jimmy Bloody Kev McCullough, doctor, and then
• 1:24:15
  tell me, but he's not telling you how to feel.
• 1:24:19
  Imagine if this had the score of time in the Ronnie.
• 1:24:21
  It would be wonderful, wouldn't? It Oh my God, the only ever
• 1:24:25
  Christmas. Imagine if Katie Amorla played
• 1:24:29
  former Christmas. Oh please, the only way this
• 1:24:34
  could possibly be any better. Who are you going to call,
• 1:24:39
  Doctor? She.
• 1:24:43
  Could have like a skimpy outfit that really accentuates her too.
• 1:24:46
  She can look great. You noticed as well, when she
• 1:24:51
  hugged him, he still was a bit tight and uncomfortable with the
• 1:24:55
  touching. Yeah, and now he's driving the
• 1:24:59
  sleigh, which is arguably the first moment where the 12th BOP
• 1:25:02
  has actually been happy for this, the whole incarnation.
• 1:25:06
  Yeah, and. I'm totally behind him going.
• 1:25:09
  I'm riding a sleigh. I do like that line.
• 1:25:11
  But, and I, I will very rarely say this, Yeah, Capaldi does a
• 1:25:17
  terrible line reading of Yippee Ki yay because who the fuck can
• 1:25:23
  deliver that line? Also because we're not allowed
• 1:25:26
  to follow it up with motherfucker, so we can't.
• 1:25:31
  So we can't even do the full line.
• 1:25:35
  And do you know what some of this some of these backdrops and
• 1:25:38
  then fly the sleigh. It isn't great, I've got to be
• 1:25:42
  honest. But do you know where my head I
• 1:25:43
  was going? Well, it's a dream.
• 1:25:44
  It don't have to look great. You know their imaginations
• 1:25:47
  don't stretch to the CGI. Yeah, like they don't actually
• 1:25:51
  act like this in a dream. Oh.
• 1:25:55
  Everyone's going home, Jack. Yes, so this poor woman who it
• 1:26:00
  turned out is in a wheelchair but has imagined herself not
• 1:26:06
  being in a wheelchair. So actually, the dream crabs
• 1:26:10
  gave this woman one last moment of, you know, freedom.
• 1:26:14
  Do you know what's funny? Yeah.
• 1:26:16
  You only think about these things in the aftermath.
• 1:26:18
  If that if the she hadn't woken up like 2 seconds later, that
• 1:26:23
  little girl would have walked in and she would have had that
• 1:26:25
  massive dream crab on her head. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:26:29
  Now this moment. I like to imagine that when I'm
• 1:26:32
  watching this the first time, I thought, oh great, Ashley, I'm
• 1:26:36
  shown rather last to the left for the last 1 remaining.
• 1:26:39
  Must be the companion. So if I was like great, we'll
• 1:26:43
  get rid of Shona and then we'll continue with Ashley.
• 1:26:47
  Now as we've gone, Shona's the last one now Joe is Shona or
• 1:26:51
  Clara. Which one are you picking,
• 1:26:55
  companion? That's my choice, is it?
• 1:26:58
  Well, if the choice the episode leaves you ever.
• 1:27:01
  Unless you want Father Christmas to be a new companion.
• 1:27:03
  I think I'd rather he was on his own.
• 1:27:05
  In fact, if you go to The Magician's Apprentice, which
• 1:27:09
  takes place exactly after this episode, after they've run into
• 1:27:12
  the TARDIS, he is on his fucking own.
• 1:27:15
  It makes no sense. Well, we're not there yet.
• 1:27:18
  We're. Still on Christmas, he's forgot
• 1:27:21
  on the bloody episode he wrote last.
• 1:27:24
  And now this is the most audacious list moment in the
• 1:27:27
  episode. This is the most.
• 1:27:28
  Audacious list. This is like that being Dead the
• 1:27:35
  Doctor where you can see Matt Smith's script on the on the
• 1:27:39
  monitor. This is Shona accidentally
• 1:27:42
  reading the script from the story.
• 1:27:45
  That's right. Did that say forgive Dave or
• 1:27:48
  forgive Larry? He's coming in now with the
• 1:27:50
  DVDs. Yeah, I think, I think you said
• 1:27:56
  that Clara put her in the next episode and then cross that out
• 1:28:01
  and then you OK. What I think is genuinely
• 1:28:04
  audacious, yeah, and would have been genuinely audacious would
• 1:28:08
  have been had throughout this entire episode we had a young
• 1:28:13
  avatar of Clara in the dreams who had been old.
• 1:28:16
  That just would have been beautiful, absolutely beautiful.
• 1:28:20
  And it is a shame that a last minute decision spoil that.
• 1:28:25
  OK, so the door So if you wake him up on the dark water, he.
• 1:28:30
  Absolutely. Is waking up on the water planet
• 1:28:32
  Yes. So that's saying that episodes
• 1:28:37
  didn't happen. Cyber Brick never existed.
• 1:28:41
  You remember when all of those people came out of their graves
• 1:28:47
  and turned into Cybermen? And then at the end we didn't
• 1:28:50
  really find out what happened to any of them?
• 1:28:52
  Yeah, yeah. But that didn't happen.
• 1:28:53
  It don't matter anymore. Oh, great.
• 1:28:55
  So does that mean that performance that Jimmy Redgrave
• 1:28:58
  was doing was all because, I mean, she was acting like
• 1:29:02
  someone in a tweet. In a tweet.
• 1:29:04
  In a trance? Yeah, in a coma.
• 1:29:07
  Oh, it means the Doctor wasn't president of Earth.
• 1:29:09
  Oh my God, it's so, so many things make me Jack.
• 1:29:13
  It never happened. And Osgood never died.
• 1:29:16
  And unfortunately, that means Danny Pink never died.
• 1:29:20
  He's still alive. Well, you know, there's always a
• 1:29:25
  few loose Fred's that are disappointing.
• 1:29:29
  So we're going Clara, who we can now see has different coloured
• 1:29:34
  hair. Pulling off that face like a
• 1:29:40
  mask. Why isn't she covered in sort of
• 1:29:43
  KY Jelly when she wakes up? They're all very gooey, aren't?
• 1:29:48
  They Yeah, her hair's. Although, I mean, that's great
• 1:29:54
  as well because he's again used the fact that it's a mask to
• 1:29:58
  hide A twist. Yeah, it's a shame that we could
• 1:30:01
  see her Gray hair underneath the mask.
• 1:30:03
  She didn't quite hold it. It was quite dark, you know, you
• 1:30:07
  didn't have the contrast up on your TV.
• 1:30:08
  You might be all right. Yeah.
• 1:30:11
  Oh God that fucking makeup is so terrible.
• 1:30:16
  So the question is, how long has this been happening for?
• 1:30:20
  Has it only been the one day? Presumably I'm.
• 1:30:24
  Too sure, are we? Oh no, look, in real life,
• 1:30:29
  right? She had that fabulous house with
• 1:30:31
  all those lights everywhere in a huge tree.
• 1:30:34
  But now look where she's living, this tiny little house in the
• 1:30:37
  middle of nowhere. Yeah, it's a bit like at the end
• 1:30:40
  of Titanic, where Kate Winslet lived this whole fabulous life,
• 1:30:44
  and then at the end of In the Half Life, where We Should go,
• 1:30:48
  that boat that sank, she was on for two days.
• 1:30:53
  That's the greatest time in her whole life.
• 1:30:57
  Look, we should know it's not a dream because it's still fucking
• 1:31:00
  snowing everywhere. Oh, I thought you could say,
• 1:31:04
  because it's still going. No.
• 1:31:06
  I mean, I'm sorry, nobody old looks like they've been in an
• 1:31:10
  oven for 15 years. I mean, look at.
• 1:31:13
  Her face I mean. Now the episode has
• 1:31:18
  unfortunately delayed for me so I've got no clue what's
• 1:31:24
  happening because my iPlayer has not loathing so.
• 1:31:29
  I would know. If I might have to guess, Oh no,
• 1:31:35
  we're back. I was going to say I was going
• 1:31:37
  to have no, no, no, I shall just be a bit behind it.
• 1:31:40
  But I I thought I was going to have to make up what happened in
• 1:31:42
  the last four minutes. Joe Nathan Bottomley did that
• 1:31:45
  once. It stopped halfway through and I
• 1:31:47
  could never tell. It just literally took my cues.
• 1:31:50
  It stopped for me a little bit, very briefly on one of our
• 1:31:53
  episodes of The Time Monster. I was making stuff up for about
• 1:31:56
  5 minutes before I continued a. Superb improviser.
• 1:32:01
  You So this is what this era, this show is really all about,
• 1:32:07
  isn't it really? These two characters having a
• 1:32:10
  discussion about their lives and their feelings towards each
• 1:32:14
  other. Finally, yeah.
• 1:32:16
  Oh, every Christmas is lost Christmas, you know.
• 1:32:20
  If it were, no Jack, because it's not that at all.
• 1:32:24
  Here comes Santa, although you're not there yet.
• 1:32:27
  No. What?
• 1:32:29
  No, I'm not there. No, I'm still I'm.
• 1:32:32
  I'm. I'm way back.
• 1:32:34
  I'm in Christmas Eve still. I'm.
• 1:32:37
  I'm going to press backwards a couple of times.
• 1:32:39
  OK, so Santa Claus has turned up for me.
• 1:32:45
  It's a shame. Way too.
• 1:32:47
  It is a shame. It's a shame, but it also means
• 1:32:51
  we go back to the Dark Water planet again.
• 1:32:54
  That's right. Does that mean he filled it last
• 1:32:58
  season? That bit.
• 1:33:00
  Possibly. I mean, I can't imagine.
• 1:33:02
  They erected the set just. For that because Nick Frost is
• 1:33:05
  in death in heaven, isn't it? So we must have some stuff that
• 1:33:09
  you. Clever sort.
• 1:33:10
  Of course he is. Yeah, it's thinking ahead.
• 1:33:13
  It's before. Where have I got a cheap planet
• 1:33:16
  I can use? Yeah, OK.
• 1:33:18
  Thank. God, she looks young after that
• 1:33:20
  hideous makeup. What about bear in mind the 12
• 1:33:23
  foot? There's made a lot to look at
• 1:33:26
  through comments about Clora's appearance.
• 1:33:28
  I thought he was going to go for another one there and go.
• 1:33:30
  Oh no, Clora, you're still a hideous old hack.
• 1:33:35
  Although the the I have to say we talked over it, but the bit
• 1:33:38
  where he helps up all the cracker is so.
• 1:33:41
  Beautiful. That's gorgeously and again,
• 1:33:43
  it's a it's a flip of the time of the Doctor, isn't it?
• 1:33:46
  Because they do the same thing with the 11th Doctor.
• 1:33:50
  And you know, I will say the first time I watched this
• 1:33:52
  episode, yeah, the two of them grabbing each other's hands and
• 1:33:56
  running off to the TARDIS filled me with joy.
• 1:33:59
  I was like, yes, finally. Now we've just had the 12th
• 1:34:02
  Doctor do the bit he did at the start of the episode.
• 1:34:06
  Clara go into the TARDIS, don't argue with me.
• 1:34:09
  He's done that same the first time he did it is in anger.
• 1:34:12
  This time is in joy. But.
• 1:34:15
  And this is the really interesting bit, but I thought
• 1:34:18
  when we watching this episode again, you know, do you know
• 1:34:21
  what's second chances we're going to do this all again?
• 1:34:26
  I think this ending is actually meant to be a quite harmonious
• 1:34:30
  and not the happy go lucky thing because obviously we see the
• 1:34:35
  tangerine, which is almost a nod to the inception.
• 1:34:40
  You know, it's the stage 3 going on.
• 1:34:44
  Oh, good news. Joe the Doctor and Chloe will
• 1:34:47
  return them. Oh.
• 1:34:51
  Wait, are you telling me it could still be a dream and
• 1:34:54
  series 9 doesn't exist? Oh well, joy.
• 1:34:57
  We'll have to find out who the magician is in the Maybe the
• 1:35:01
  magician in the Magician's Apprentice will help them get
• 1:35:04
  out of the dream. Who?
• 1:35:05
  Is the magician's apprentice. I would have thought that the
• 1:35:08
  magician is the doctor and Chloe is The Apprentice and then the.
• 1:35:13
  Witch is familiar then? Well, the witch will be Missy
• 1:35:15
  because Chloe and Missy are together.
• 1:35:17
  Aren't they a lot in that episode?
• 1:35:19
  So the witch is Missy and Chloe's are familiar.
• 1:35:23
  Come on, maybe if you like to see what I want.
• 1:35:27
  Well, maybe you can answer this question for me then.
• 1:35:29
  So obviously Doctor and Clara are off into the universe to
• 1:35:32
  have joyful adventures. Why?
• 1:35:35
  Why are they not having joyful adventures at the start of the
• 1:35:38
  next season? Good question, Sir.
• 1:35:42
  We remember a few minutes ago we said.
• 1:35:45
  But what I was trying to make the point that the end of this
• 1:35:50
  episode is actually a lot more ominous than my initially people
• 1:35:54
  trained. There's a really interesting
• 1:35:59
  moment in the adult sci-fi cartoon Rick and Morty where
• 1:36:05
  about Rickford grandson father and Morty is his grandson.
• 1:36:09
  And they go on all sorts of wacky space adventures.
• 1:36:13
  And there's a great bit where the show's been going for a few
• 1:36:17
  years now and they make lots of method jokes.
• 1:36:21
  And one of Rick's method jokes is that she's quite a rocky,
• 1:36:25
  dangerous character, a bit like the 12 doctor.
• 1:36:28
  And there's a great bit because of Rick and Morty 100.
• 1:36:32
  It's like 100th episode or something like that, because
• 1:36:35
  Rick and Morty 100 more episodes, we're going to go
• 1:36:39
  forever. And the music is very much
• 1:36:42
  ominous and dangerous and like, should these people really be
• 1:36:46
  doing this sort of thing? And I think that's a similar
• 1:36:49
  sort of tone at the end of that episode in that last scene.
• 1:36:54
  Peter Kapovic got this off. Why live manic?
• 1:36:58
  Like, yes, Clara, let's go. We're getting a second chance.
• 1:37:03
  We're going to keep going. You know, the Doctor and Clara
• 1:37:07
  100 more episodes forever. We're going to, you know, and
• 1:37:11
  that's the drive of Series 9 is that these people are fully
• 1:37:17
  abandoning. And again, we talked about Clara
• 1:37:22
  being the reverse of Rose, Rose being the real character in the
• 1:37:26
  Doctor Who world, and Clara in Series A being the Doctor Who
• 1:37:31
  character having to balance the real world with the Doctor Who
• 1:37:35
  world. Or the real world represented by
• 1:37:39
  Danny is now dead. It's a fun memory, but it's
• 1:37:43
  gone. The Doctor Who world,
• 1:37:45
  represented by the Doctor, is what remains, and Clara and the
• 1:37:50
  Doctor are going to run into Stephen Moffat's Doctor Who
• 1:37:54
  world forever. And what happens in the first
• 1:37:59
  story after last Christmas? Now that we've decided we're
• 1:38:03
  going to go into the Doctor Who world, what's the first story we
• 1:38:07
  get? The Master, The Daleks Scar, The
• 1:38:11
  UNIT, a remake of Backbeat in Genesis of the Daleks, where the
• 1:38:16
  hands come out of the thing. It's full on Doctor Who world
• 1:38:23
  that we're going into in the next story, isn't it?
• 1:38:26
  And that I think is the sort of, on a meta level, I think that's
• 1:38:33
  what this is about. It's about these characters
• 1:38:37
  launching themselves into the world of Doctor Who to their
• 1:38:42
  detriment, because we obviously find that Laura flies a little
• 1:38:46
  bit too close to the sun in Faith and Raven.
• 1:38:51
  And it's about this character has been pushing her luck a
• 1:38:55
  little bit too much and when it comes back to bite her.
• 1:39:00
  But you know, I think the message you miss story is that
• 1:39:05
  you know, on some level this is a wrong headed decision that's
• 1:39:10
  going to bite them any ass. But it is done in the spirit of
• 1:39:15
  knowing that life is short, but life is brutal.
• 1:39:20
  You know, we've just seen, we've just seen Danny Pink, who's
• 1:39:25
  dead. We don't know what happened to
• 1:39:28
  the Patrick town's son. He might be dead.
• 1:39:31
  Maybe we don't know, you know, even though chasing your dreams
• 1:39:39
  might get you in trouble and might even kill you or not kill
• 1:39:45
  you and, you know, leave you in the permanent state of the
• 1:39:50
  second between life and therefore, whatever that was,
• 1:39:54
  that those dreams are still worth chasing.
• 1:39:57
  And I think it's for you. I think that is meant to set up
• 1:40:04
  what's coming next in that this is going to be.
• 1:40:08
  A series about two characters who should probably have called
• 1:40:13
  it quits by now but haven't. And this is what happens if you
• 1:40:18
  stay on Doctor Who for too long is that you're going to care.
• 1:40:23
  You're going to. Fate is going to catch up with
• 1:40:26
  you. Yeah, that's what I think the
• 1:40:29
  ending of this episode is is leaving towards in the future.
• 1:40:36
  Well, do you know, I'm reminded of Running Through Corridors,
• 1:40:40
  which is a wonderful review book by Toby Haydock and Robert
• 1:40:45
  Shearman, where they take episodes that were knocked out
• 1:40:51
  by professionals, but sort of knocked out in a hurry and
• 1:40:55
  trying to desperately put something on the screen, family
• 1:40:59
  entertainment for people to watch.
• 1:41:01
  And they sort of take that, and they do incredibly smart, witty,
• 1:41:09
  you know, readings on these things, you know, meta readings
• 1:41:13
  and things like this where it all feels like it's tonally and
• 1:41:18
  thematically all tied together with some great master plan.
• 1:41:25
  And I don't buy it in that book. And I'm not sure I'll buy what
• 1:41:28
  you just said there. I think it is a very, very smart
• 1:41:31
  reading. You've just given all of this.
• 1:41:33
  Yeah. I don't buy that.
• 1:41:35
  They're supposed to be ominous at the end because I refuse to
• 1:41:37
  believe that Murray Gold would not be in on the joke.
• 1:41:40
  And at the end of this, it's off we go.
• 1:41:47
  Excitement. All balls to the wall.
• 1:41:50
  Yeah, optimism. And it it would, Murray Gold
• 1:41:53
  would absolutely be telling you that this is supposed to be an
• 1:41:56
  ominous lead into the next series.
• 1:41:59
  Yeah. I mean, maybe that's maybe more
• 1:42:01
  with hindsight that we know where the next series is going.
• 1:42:05
  So obviously we can make comments on it as a matter of
• 1:42:09
  retrospect. But yeah, I do get what you mean
• 1:42:13
  in the sense that in this episode, it's Christmas Day, we
• 1:42:17
  have to leave people thinking, great, the problem is solved,
• 1:42:21
  The thing is over. Or maybe it's not with the, you
• 1:42:25
  know, tangerine thing, but ultimately with the doctor and
• 1:42:29
  companion have done a good job and they're often more
• 1:42:32
  adventures. That's but you say that's the
• 1:42:35
  ultimate conclusion that this has to reach.
• 1:42:39
  And Marie Gold is absolutely on that level.
• 1:42:42
  I just think that with the knowledge of what's to come and
• 1:42:46
  I think the performances, I think Peter Paul in particular
• 1:42:51
  is giving that manic, you know, swantic, giddy school boy.
• 1:42:59
  But the 12th doctor hasn't really given up until this
• 1:43:02
  point. That's not been the sort of
• 1:43:04
  performance that we've been used to over the last year.
• 1:43:09
  And I think that spirit is definitely what's covered in the
• 1:43:15
  next year to come. Although as you say, in the
• 1:43:18
  moment, as this story we've just been watching, it has to hit
• 1:43:22
  that moment of job well done. Merry Christmas.
• 1:43:27
  You know it's. Almost shackled by the date it's
• 1:43:31
  going out. Possibly, Yeah.
• 1:43:33
  Well, although that is part of the spirit of Christmas, isn't
• 1:43:36
  it? You know, you get to people with
• 1:43:37
  your loved ones, and you decide that to me.
• 1:43:41
  Yeah, this life is worth it. And, you know, we're looking
• 1:43:46
  forward to the next year, Christmas Eve.
• 1:43:51
  I figured the tangerine was just another well, this could still
• 1:43:55
  be a dream, you never know. Yeah, I think it's meant to be a
• 1:43:59
  fun little, like, say, whether it's a specific call back to the
• 1:44:04
  end of Inception, I don't know. But yeah, it's meant to be a
• 1:44:09
  nice little one. You know, maybe it's still going
• 1:44:12
  on in the same way, but a lot of obvious stories will have that
• 1:44:17
  little end moment that goes. The story doesn't quite stop
• 1:44:21
  here, even though we're probably not going back to it.
• 1:44:25
  The the the trouble is I will say it again.
• 1:44:28
  I I think this is such a perfect end for Clara.
• 1:44:32
  It caps off the story in Series 8 so effectively, so emotionally
• 1:44:39
  and so satisfyingly that for us, we can have another season after
• 1:44:44
  this and get, you know, yes, maybe Heaven Sent does it, you
• 1:44:48
  know, face of Raven murders off Clara effectively, I say
• 1:44:52
  possibly too mellow dramatically.
• 1:44:54
  And Heaven Sent, as boring as it is, does deal with grief.
• 1:44:57
  I mean, grief is quite boring actually, let's be honest.
• 1:45:00
  So he does that quite well. I don't know, really.
• 1:45:04
  I don't think the ending of Hell Bent is in any way as affecting
• 1:45:08
  as what the ending of this would have been.
• 1:45:11
  I think you're like my my biggest issue, I suppose, with
• 1:45:15
  hell bent is maybe, although it's not so that I like is maybe
• 1:45:21
  the but you say the absolute end, which is Clora and and Macy
• 1:45:28
  Williams going off in the film. Maybe that obviously doesn't
• 1:45:32
  have quite as much emotional resonance because we've not
• 1:45:36
  really seen Clora and Macy Williams do as much, you know,
• 1:45:41
  because obviously she's not in the woman who lived and she's
• 1:45:45
  you know, but if you took if you sword the end off of last
• 1:45:53
  Christmas, So we just watch, let's say the last three or four
• 1:45:57
  minutes, you just sort of sawed it off and just hit end.
• 1:46:02
  You know, it ends with them splitting the cracker or
• 1:46:05
  whatever. And maybe, you know, out of the
• 1:46:07
  cracker falls a tangerine and they go, you know, that crazy
• 1:46:13
  event we just had and end credits.
• 1:46:17
  Do you do you think that's a full satisfying ends to the
• 1:46:22
  character? Yeah, I mean.
• 1:46:23
  Definitely. And do you know what I think?
• 1:46:25
  I think I would be much kinder towards her if that had been her
• 1:46:29
  run. Yeah.
• 1:46:32
  Just describing maybe it's but if that was to be her end, maybe
• 1:46:38
  I'll just want more from the loss of 10 minutes.
• 1:46:43
  Might take the last 10 minutes to make it 20 to 30, maybe I
• 1:46:47
  don't. Just think they overdo it though
• 1:46:49
  in the new series and Russell Davis and Chippers, they're all
• 1:46:52
  guilty of it. In the stories where people
• 1:46:55
  actually know Chippers not it's like we've had enough, we're
• 1:46:57
  off. But Moffett and Rusty Davis both
• 1:47:02
  just the endings just go on forever.
• 1:47:04
  Whereas that a small scene between two friends saying, do
• 1:47:09
  you know what? I did meet this guy once.
• 1:47:11
  He was amazing. That was you by the way, Doctor,
• 1:47:13
  I love you. Pull the crack at the end.
• 1:47:16
  Oh my God, it would be lovely. Yeah, because he is.
• 1:47:19
  Not so. Here we are.
• 1:47:21
  Well, and what you're saying, you know, that's the other big
• 1:47:24
  thing of this episode is that it's not just a Christmas
• 1:47:28
  episode. It's not just the end of the
• 1:47:30
  day. It's basically a reunion
• 1:47:33
  episode. So a lot of times if a show has
• 1:47:36
  been away and then then come back, there's a lot of things
• 1:47:40
  dealing with the fallout, these characters getting used to the
• 1:47:45
  thing happening again. So we'll see.
• 1:47:49
  Chlora wakes up, the Doctor's back and it's all, you know, oh,
• 1:47:53
  I miss the noise of the TARDIS, you know.
• 1:47:56
  Oh, you know, the theme of this episode has been Chlora going,
• 1:48:01
  oh, I didn't realise how much I missed this.
• 1:48:05
  So in a way, the natural conclusion of that is her going,
• 1:48:10
  yeah. Do you know what?
• 1:48:12
  I've made my peace with damage passing, and I really do miss
• 1:48:16
  this, so I'm going to keep doing it.
• 1:48:18
  You know, I So there's that that part of the character that I
• 1:48:24
  think, you know, there's nothing holding her back anymore.
• 1:48:28
  You know, her Jackie Tyler or her Wilf and has gone.
• 1:48:33
  So there's nothing that's keeping her on the earth base
• 1:48:36
  anymore. So she just goes off and you
• 1:48:40
  know, so on Master Dablo Scarlo unit next week or not next week,
• 1:48:48
  but you know, next episode. And you know what, I'll, I'll,
• 1:48:51
  I'll sort of bring us around to our free fabulous scene.
• 1:48:53
  But but no, no, no, no, not at all.
• 1:48:55
  Not at all. Because we started off talking
• 1:48:57
  to Clara. We've finished talking to Clara
• 1:48:59
  because this technically was Clara's last story is I do think
• 1:49:05
  there is a feeling from a large portion of fandom that the
• 1:49:09
  character did linger on beyond her life.
• 1:49:14
  You know, like, like maybe it was a season too much.
• 1:49:19
  Yeah, I think, I think there there is a 20% portion of fandom
• 1:49:23
  that go well, no, we just didn't have enough Clara Oswald. 2 1/2
• 1:49:26
  seasons wasn't enough. I could have done with 3 1/2,
• 1:49:29
  you know. Listen, if Jenna Coleman was
• 1:49:32
  still on Doctor Who to this day and had been on for the last 10
• 1:49:36
  years, I wouldn't have had that much wrong to say about it.
• 1:49:39
  But. I would literally be living my
• 1:49:43
  worst night. The ice cream paint in my head
• 1:49:48
  would be unbearable. I mean the only way the Internet
• 1:49:53
  would hate Empire with Death more is if Clara was in it.
• 1:49:59
  And on that note, let's go to our three fabulous things about
• 1:50:05
  last Christmas, which, you know, we provoked a lot of discussion.
• 1:50:08
  Yeah, I think we can both agree. We really both.
• 1:50:10
  Enjoy. Oh yeah, definitely.
• 1:50:12
  Well, I'm going to leave you to take to compliment some of your
• 1:50:16
  mortal enemies of Doctor Who, so I'm going to think a little bit
• 1:50:20
  more outside the box. Mortal enemies.
• 1:50:25
  I'm going to start with Murray Gold, who has not been able to
• 1:50:28
  hear because of the nature of Dilemma commentary track, but I
• 1:50:32
  think has some excellent work yet, particularly in the Clora
• 1:50:38
  Danny Christmas dream stuff because, as we said, the tonal
• 1:50:42
  balance between, you know, psychological horror based on
• 1:50:47
  the siege, typical Doctor Who music, typical Christmas music
• 1:50:53
  and those transitions. I think the scene transitions
• 1:50:58
  are handled really well. The very in tones are handled
• 1:51:02
  really well. Obviously, we're not that fond
• 1:51:05
  of the people called the title music, but let's pretend that
• 1:51:09
  that you know, that's not specific to this episode.
• 1:51:12
  So let's not hold that against him for this episode.
• 1:51:16
  And let's just say the actual music generated for last
• 1:51:19
  Christmas, I think is is one of Murray's best stories in his
• 1:51:25
  whole time on the show, I think. I couldn't disagree with her,
• 1:51:29
  you know? You know when she's wiping the
• 1:51:30
  blackboard? Yeah.
• 1:51:32
  And then he goes boom, boom. With each one, it's like a slap
• 1:51:36
  in the face, isn't it? And then when that the last slap
• 1:51:38
  is dying. Oh, my word.
• 1:51:41
  Yeah. Well, of course, my first praise
• 1:51:45
  must go to the superb scriptwriter showrunner that is
• 1:51:51
  Steven Moffett, who has created my favorite Christmas special of
• 1:51:58
  all the Christmas specials. I mean, if Chibnu had done a
• 1:52:01
  Christmas special, obviously he would have.
• 1:52:03
  Super. And obviously you're referring
• 1:52:05
  to to the world. The horror, dear.
• 1:52:12
  Yeah, that's my present on Christmas Day apparently.
• 1:52:15
  But I don't know, I think. I think this is a really
• 1:52:18
  terrific script. I think he plays about with
• 1:52:23
  cliches of the genre really cleverly.
• 1:52:28
  He manages to fool me on several occasions.
• 1:52:32
  He manages to put twists right in my face and I don't see them
• 1:52:36
  because he distracted me with other things.
• 1:52:38
  He adeptly juggles his character work for his regulars and give
• 1:52:44
  some material that brings out the best of their performances.
• 1:52:48
  And he writes a fabulous traditional Doctor Who story as
• 1:52:52
  well. I think it is a really
• 1:52:54
  accomplished script. This and yes.
• 1:52:56
  So Steven Moffett is my first thing.
• 1:52:58
  Then I guess I'll pick, oh God, I guess I'll pick the, well, the
• 1:53:07
  direction by Paul Wilmhurst and I would say the general
• 1:53:12
  production design, lighting. I think the lighting would be
• 1:53:15
  said so we could as well. Every visual component of this
• 1:53:20
  episode I think is really strong because it's different.
• 1:53:25
  Again, a clashing of different tones.
• 1:53:27
  The Arctic base, the alien stuff, the dummy pink, you know,
• 1:53:33
  the house being lit up in the middle of the day versus being,
• 1:53:38
  you know, the, the dark Christmas night, you know, the
• 1:53:44
  atmosphere of the when the chalk boards are there are around the
• 1:53:49
  walls of Chloe's house. You know, I think there's a lot
• 1:53:53
  of different visual palettes to play within this story.
• 1:53:58
  And I think it's a really strong design.
• 1:54:01
  I think the CDI at the base and the aliens holds up pretty well.
• 1:54:08
  So yeah, I think it's a strong visual palette that reminds us
• 1:54:13
  not only of Christmas come by, but of Doctor Who gone by, which
• 1:54:18
  is, I guess, in keeping with a lot of Stephen Moffat's general
• 1:54:23
  ethos and his way of running the show.
• 1:54:27
  Paul Wilmhurst, I think this is his last one.
• 1:54:30
  I think he did a couple of Series A ones and didn't come
• 1:54:34
  back after this. But yeah, I think it's a really
• 1:54:38
  strong visual episode. My second then will be the love
• 1:54:46
  of my life. You know, the the bitchiest
• 1:54:50
  bitch conventions. So take your £50 and barely give
• 1:54:54
  you a photograph. Jenna Coleman herself, well,
• 1:54:59
  according to Luke Malloy anyway, she was like, get in to get in
• 1:55:02
  there, right? Cheers £50 Go.
• 1:55:05
  Well, I'm sure Luke Malloy was happy to hand Jenna Coleman £50
• 1:55:09
  to. Who knows what they did in that
• 1:55:11
  place? Oh, no, right, no.
• 1:55:14
  But it's a script that it was supposed to be Clara's last
• 1:55:18
  script. So it gives Clara the biggest
• 1:55:20
  opportunities in the episode. She opens the episode, she
• 1:55:24
  closes the episode. She has a wonderful dream
• 1:55:27
  sequence within the episode. She gets to be scared, she gets
• 1:55:30
  to be emotional, she gets to have heart warming scenes with
• 1:55:34
  her doctor. It absolutely presents Clara our
• 1:55:38
  absolute best, which means we're getting Jenna Coleman our
• 1:55:41
  absolute best. And Jenna Coleman at her
• 1:55:44
  absolute best is very good indeed.
• 1:55:48
  Yeah, I mean, some people would argue with Gemma Coleman when
• 1:55:51
  she's half awesome it or Gemma Coleman, you know, just on the
• 1:55:55
  screen is generally a good thing for the show.
• 1:55:58
  That would not. Be one of those people.
• 1:56:01
  No, a lot of people on this call might be, but Jesus.
• 1:56:04
  Christ, do you remember her in highs to talk about sabotaging
• 1:56:08
  the atmosphere on that one? I mean, that's great, stupid
• 1:56:11
  little girl. Do they do the Ghostbusters
• 1:56:13
  reference in that as well? I think they did.
• 1:56:16
  They must have surely. Oh, third.
• 1:56:22
  So what am I doing for my third? OK, I'm going to say third.
• 1:56:29
  Is this is what the 7th or 8th Christmas special at this point?
• 1:56:37
  And so I think my third one is the keeping the spirit of
• 1:56:44
  Christmas in this Christmas doctor's story, keeping it fresh
• 1:56:50
  because obviously we've done, you know, we've lent on the
• 1:56:54
  conventions of big budget spectacle, Hollywood cinema, you
• 1:56:59
  know, for each of the damned is very, you know, towering and
• 1:57:04
  firm and all that sort of thing. We've done A Christmas Carol,
• 1:57:08
  which you know, we've done the Doctor, the Widow and the Lion
• 1:57:12
  and the Witch and the Wardrobe, you know.
• 1:57:17
  So I think there's, we're starting to run out of things
• 1:57:21
  that we could do it with Christmas maybe at this point.
• 1:57:24
  But this story is really strong because it's thematically about
• 1:57:30
  the things that we're thinking and feeling when it comes to
• 1:57:34
  this time of the year. You know, it's not just the
• 1:57:39
  December 25th, then it could be watched at any point towards the
• 1:57:44
  end of the year where you're thinking to yourself about your
• 1:57:47
  family and friends, about the good times you've had with them,
• 1:57:52
  the impact you've had on them and that they've had on you.
• 1:57:56
  You know, mourning Love's lost and you know, mourning the
• 1:58:01
  things that you've had to leave behind, but embracing a new
• 1:58:05
  adventure that the new year can bring.
• 1:58:08
  And that's something what the Christmas season is about
• 1:58:11
  really. And that's, and that's what the
• 1:58:16
  spirit of this episode is about, you know, getting together with
• 1:58:19
  your friends, watching, you know, Alien or Miracle 34th St.
• 1:58:26
  or whatever. I'm laughing at all the silly
• 1:58:29
  plot holes and things. But but ultimately, yeah,
• 1:58:33
  getting together with your loved ones, embracing what you've had,
• 1:58:38
  I'm looking for to continue your adventure together.
• 1:58:42
  And that's what this episode does really well.
• 1:58:44
  And it's hot. Beautifully put.
• 1:58:48
  I'm not going to choose Peter Capaldi as my last thing because
• 1:58:51
  I I always say Peter Capaldi is probably the best actor to ever
• 1:58:56
  play the Doctor. He had to plenty of shit
• 1:58:59
  writing, but he was the best actor to play the Doctor and
• 1:59:03
  would often overcome those creative hurdles.
• 1:59:07
  But what I would like to point out is the the rest of the
• 1:59:10
  actors in this. So the guests asked because
• 1:59:13
  they're being asked to play caricatures without a back story
• 1:59:18
  and without any motive whatsoever.
• 1:59:23
  So they've literally got nothing to hand their characterization
• 1:59:27
  on. Yeah.
• 1:59:28
  Just sort of their sheer them, just them.
• 1:59:31
  Yeah. And they're really fun to be
• 1:59:34
  around. You know, David Troutton's
• 1:59:35
  gnawing away on his chicken bone being a bit pretentious, shown
• 1:59:38
  as Moffett's, you know, Linda Day avatar for this particular
• 1:59:43
  episode. You're the base controller who's
• 1:59:46
  a calm, collected sort of person and then the scientist who's
• 1:59:50
  there to help with the exposition.
• 1:59:53
  I think they they are really great characters to be around.
• 1:59:56
  And it is really nice that they all get a little pay off at the
• 1:59:58
  end, except for poor old. That's some, yeah.
• 2:00:03
  No, I think they do a really great job and it's really hard
• 2:00:07
  ask as well, so. Yeah, but, well, definitely,
• 2:00:10
  particularly if you bear in mind the other people who you've not
• 2:00:14
  mentioned yet, you know, special guest star Mick Frost playing
• 2:00:19
  for the Christmas. But you've got quite a lot to
• 2:00:22
  grab hold of there. Is that and Demi Pimp who again?
• 2:00:26
  Oh, not quite as much for Grab Hole.
• 2:00:30
  If you plot characters and at one end you have the characters
• 2:00:34
  in The Last Christmas, the guest cast of The Last Christmas and
• 2:00:38
  on the other end you have 60 years of the Doctor and hundreds
• 2:00:43
  of years of Father Christmas. I think the characterisation
• 2:00:46
  given to Danny Pink is a little bit more on the gift cast in the
• 2:00:51
  Last Christmas scale than the the other scale.
• 2:00:56
  But yeah, no, you're right. I my, I was thinking, oh, should
• 2:01:00
  I make my last one every guest character?
• 2:01:03
  But I thought I'll just leave some of them for you.
• 2:01:06
  So I thought it's quite, I'm quite glad that you picked all
• 2:01:09
  of them. But yeah, you're right, it's
• 2:01:11
  really difficult because this era and this story in particular
• 2:01:16
  is so heavily Dr. And companion focused that it's difficult for
• 2:01:22
  anyone else to get a look at. Very often the guest characters
• 2:01:25
  in in the Moffy era are quite. And because a lot of the time
• 2:01:31
  this is still the Stephen Moffat who you know, it's about, How
• 2:01:37
  did Stephen Moffat become? What was he well known for in
• 2:01:42
  Doctor Who circles before doing Doctor Who?
• 2:01:46
  Well, he was that guy who said that Peter Davidson was the only
• 2:01:50
  good doctor because he was the best actor and William Hartman
• 2:01:54
  was no good and Patsy Town and whatever.
• 2:01:57
  He's that same guy who went to the Big Finish meeting and
• 2:02:01
  stormed out the Big Finish meeting because they weren't
• 2:02:04
  doing any Paul Mcgahn. And he wanted to write for a new
• 2:02:08
  Paul Mcgahn Dr. So for years, for decades upon decades,
• 2:02:13
  Stephen Moffat's obsession has been the character of the Doctor
• 2:02:19
  and his status even in those statements before he did any
• 2:02:23
  writing on the show. So he might say this is an era
• 2:02:28
  that's heavily focused around the Doctor and the companion and
• 2:02:34
  their story roles and all that, sort of the intertextuality of
• 2:02:38
  all that. So when when the guest
• 2:02:42
  characters in this era shine, I think it's commendable that
• 2:02:46
  they're they're able to give those performances.
• 2:02:49
  Are you suggesting that had Steven Moffett maybe just had
• 2:02:53
  the opportunity to write 1 new adventure and get it all out of
• 2:02:57
  his system, I wouldn't have had to suffered six years of
• 2:03:01
  introspection about the Doctor? Well, maybe.
• 2:03:06
  I mean, all I will say is that Christian will also know new
• 2:03:09
  adventures and look what happened there.
• 2:03:12
  I know three incredible years of Doctor Who.
• 2:03:16
  Oh my God, sure. It just goes to show people take
• 2:03:19
  different approaches. Can I just finish those up on
• 2:03:23
  one last thought on Danny Pink, please?
• 2:03:26
  Yes. Because, you know, I have said
• 2:03:27
  many, many unpleasant things about that character and I think
• 2:03:32
  he is absolute proof as to why you shouldn't have an
• 2:03:36
  uncharismatic romantic lead in anything, right?
• 2:03:40
  Because like, usually, you know, you get the comic leads like Roy
• 2:03:43
  Castle and Doctor Who and the Daleks, you know, the bumbling
• 2:03:45
  buffoon. But you fucking love him.
• 2:03:47
  He's such an idiot. You absolutely love him.
• 2:03:49
  Danny Pink's the antithesis of that.
• 2:03:51
  He's just a really nice, boring bloke who Clara falls in love
• 2:03:55
  with and as a result it's an incredibly dull, boring
• 2:03:58
  relationship to watch and very hard to be emotionally invested
• 2:04:01
  in. But I'm so pleased to say that
• 2:04:04
  here it is very last episode that we got a peek into what
• 2:04:10
  Danny Pink and Clara could have been like, dressing up as Santa,
• 2:04:13
  but naked underneath. You know, he's the Christmas
• 2:04:15
  present, cuddling on the sofa, having a good life.
• 2:04:19
  I mean, there was potential. So you're saying that for this
• 2:04:23
  entire series, Danny Peng would have been better if he was just
• 2:04:27
  Clara's imaginary friend who she had sex with occasionally?
• 2:04:31
  Imagination. I'm basically saying if Clara
• 2:04:35
  Oswald had written the series 8, we would have been in better
• 2:04:38
  shape. Yes.
• 2:04:40
  But not only have we now discovered the Clara Oswald is
• 2:04:44
  the best character and Doctor Who.
• 2:04:45
  No, no, no, Charlotte Oswald should be the Doctor Who
• 2:04:49
  showrunner. I'm glad that that's the
• 2:04:52
  conclusion with our wish. You've heard it here.
• 2:04:55
  First time Joe Ford advocating for Clara Oswald to be the
• 2:05:00
  Doctor Who showrunner. The thing is, because she's so
• 2:05:04
  obsessed with herself, series 8 wouldn't be much different than
• 2:05:08
  actually, except she'd be the one on her face coming out of
• 2:05:13
  the screen in every episode in the top sequence.
• 2:05:16
  Every episode would be flat, Flat line would be starving
• 2:05:20
  people could probably that's. Right, Clara, who it would be
• 2:05:24
  called. And people are probably walking
• 2:05:27
  around going I'm Clara Oswald. Being a smug or so Jack, where
• 2:05:37
  are you and I going next? Well, see now listeners, we've
• 2:05:42
  not decided that yet. So if we're going by our rule of
• 2:05:46
  trying to go through different areas and different.
• 2:05:49
  So OK, I have a suggestion with, with I, I, I back chatted them a
• 2:05:59
  little bit. During this commentary, we saw
• 2:06:02
  her starring as Shona. In this episode, it's the 13th
• 2:06:08
  doctor, Jimmy Whittaker. Now, viewers, listeners, I'm not
• 2:06:16
  wearing a Christmas hat, but imagine I'm taking off my
• 2:06:21
  fictional Santa Claus hat and I'm throwing it to the side and
• 2:06:25
  I'm picking up a different hat and putting it on my head.
• 2:06:29
  And you might think to yourself, Jack, do you know what that hat
• 2:06:32
  looks like? It looks a lot like the Witch
• 2:06:36
  Finder General Hat, the Bradley Marsh, the Witch Finders.
• 2:06:43
  Now hang on a minute before we this is determined, because
• 2:06:46
  that's a great choice of episode to choose.
• 2:06:49
  Don't tell me someone else's pip.
• 2:06:52
  No, not at all, not at all. No, no, no, I just want to say
• 2:06:55
  you're not going to be coming on this just a shit all over this
• 2:06:58
  era are. You no I OK rule #1 apart from
• 2:07:02
  time lash being foisted upon me. That's right, my only pick
• 2:07:06
  stories to do on the show, which I do you like because what would
• 2:07:10
  be the point of not doing that? It would be absolutely like,
• 2:07:14
  well, this is a dubious story. I'm not a fan of.
• 2:07:18
  I fit well. Obviously I've read the book,
• 2:07:21
  which is also very good, but we can talk about that when we get
• 2:07:24
  into it. But I.
• 2:07:27
  Reread that, Jack. You know, ahead of it.
• 2:07:30
  It's yeah, it's a it's a ban. And more importantly, I think
• 2:07:34
  it's one of these strongest performances which we'll get
• 2:07:39
  into more. And I think Series 11 is got
• 2:07:45
  some points I'm not fond of, but has also got a lot of strengths
• 2:07:50
  to it. And I think at the end of that
• 2:07:52
  year I went well, you know, it's the first year, first
• 2:07:57
  government, not bad. Some great stuff in it, some
• 2:08:00
  lots of great stuff, but definitely some great stuff in
• 2:08:03
  it such as the Witch Finders. And then we get to, well, we'll
• 2:08:09
  see where it goes in the future. And then work goes out and
• 2:08:14
  they're like, oh, OK, You. Someone in the production office
• 2:08:18
  has panicked and just gone. Should we do the Rusty Davis
• 2:08:23
  thing again? Yeah, let's just do the Rusty
• 2:08:25
  Davis thing again. Glorious, isn't it?
• 2:08:27
  Absolutely glorious. You know, we've talked a lot on
• 2:08:31
  the show about great creative minds like Stephen Moffat or
• 2:08:36
  like Gemma Coleman, who you want to be the showrunner, Dr. and
• 2:08:40
  someone. And no, not Jenna Colton.
• 2:08:46
  No, not in. The only role she hasn't taken
• 2:08:52
  in Doctor Who. Well, she almost did in Name of
• 2:08:56
  the Doctor because she went in for the Doctor's timeline and
• 2:08:59
  almost died rewriting. That's right, she put herself in
• 2:09:02
  every single classic story. And been listened.
• 2:09:06
  She she wrote the Doctor's fear of the superpower.
• 2:09:09
  She fear mates, companions of all of us.
• 2:09:12
  She wrote that line. You're right.
• 2:09:20
  Everywhere you can't escape the bloody woman.
• 2:09:25
  Well. He's even in the fucking Witch
• 2:09:28
  Finders novel. That's why it all comes back
• 2:09:34
  around and on the last page of The Witch Finders target
• 2:09:42
  novelisation and you go to the acknowledgements in the back
• 2:09:46
  you'll find it says to Jack Choir.
• 2:09:49
  I hope you enjoyed this story and I look forward to hearing
• 2:09:53
  your commentary on the hamster with blunt penmark.
• 2:09:57
  Lots of love. Clara Oswald, Doctor Who
• 2:10:01
  Showrunner, 1963. This is 2017.
• 2:10:05
  And so we're going to boil, boil, hoof, crack.
• 2:10:08
  And we'll, we'll dunk some witches.
• 2:10:13
  You can dunk so and I'll dunk. I mean, I don't know.
• 2:10:21
  I was trying to think of who I wanted to dunk.
• 2:10:25
  And then I thought, best not for optics.
• 2:10:30
  Well, at the risk of dunk becoming a euphemism for
• 2:10:34
  something quite unpleasant, I will cut it there.
• 2:10:40
  I mean, I didn't know you did euphemisms.
• 2:10:42
  That's quite some character development.
• 2:10:44
  Oh. You bitch, I'll cut it there.