You're listening to a podcast of Spurious Morality.
This is a podcast of Spurious Morality.
Hello and welcome to a podcast of Spurious Morality.
I'm Johnstone and with me this week I have Gareth.
Hello, hello.
And I have Mark.
Hello.
And we're back for more Unbounds.
So we talked about the, well some of the original Unbounds.
We're focusing on like the original run of Unbounds which,
it was a 40th anniversary range wasn't it?
Wasn't it like a special 40th anniversary thing originally?
I wasn't really with Big Finish at the time paying attention,
but yeah I believe so.
I like to think I've not just made that up anyway.
Oh no, it definitely was.
I remember well going down to the BBC shop in Belfast
to get my actual physical copies of that as they were coming out.
And yeah, it was definitely an anniversary year thing.
Very, very different approach to what we're more used to.
These days it's more an obvious celebration really
where you kind of get everybody together.
Whereas with this it was like let's do something really weird.
Well it was sort of similar when we had Joe Lidster on
and we were talking about how Big Finish celebrated the 40th anniversary
by not just doing the five doctors again or whatever.
They really did do a different and wonderful thing.
So we had that villains trilogy, we had Zagreus
and I guess this falls in as part of it as well, which is great.
I do seem to remember Gary Russell at the time was very much strongly of the view
that he did not want to do three doctors, five doctors type things.
He was very much like if we're going to do something we take a new approach.
I think there's been so many permutations of the opposite,
the more traditional approach since then that I don't know what he makes of it.
But certainly he was very adamant that if it was to be worthwhile
it shouldn't be a sort of get all the doctors in one room kind of thing.
And even Zagreus was a very intentional sort of sidestep to that.
It was kind of that for about five minutes, you know,
but otherwise very oblique in its approach to the whole thing.
I think it makes sense to behave like that though because it's,
in a sense we've all got the five doctors, you know, we've all got a company.
So we all know what it looks like when you get them together
and it's so much fun that they bicker and all of that.
But yeah, you know, I think it's really great that they were able to kind of ask like,
well, what else can you do?
Well, not everybody likes Zagreus and most people, including me, don't get it at all.
But yes, it's interesting that they were happy to go weird just before as well,
before the license became more BBC kind of centric and Cardiff centric,
which I imagine has had a kind of levelling effect on the whole thing since.
But yeah.
Yeah, I suppose Zagreus was for all intents and purposes the 40th anniversary Doctor Who story,
whereas obviously everything since, you know,
Light at the End had to play second fiddle naturally to Day of the Doctor
and we had the Tenant trilogy that once and future plays second fiddle too.
So it's nice that there was something else underneath Zagreus.
Like I'm not Zagreus' biggest fan.
I do find actually that I appreciate it more and more with every listen.
But it's...
I'm glad it exists.
I'm glad it is what it is.
And I'm glad that they at least attempted to not just do the eight doctors or whatever
because they didn't have four of them to start with.
So it wouldn't have been great.
But yes, we've digressed somewhat.
So The Unbound are another way of celebrating Doctor Who.
And I guess it's kind of what if Doctor Who is placed into unfamiliar situations,
situations that the Doctor could never be placed into.
And I think that the first two, the two doctors that we discussed in the last episode,
I think they're sort of quite simple, evil, not evil.
Where did that come from?
Yeah, I think I'm thinking about Fall Five and Five already.
No, they were quite simple, traditional what ifs.
What if the Doctor hadn't left Gallifrey?
What if the Time Lords had sent the Doctor to Earth at the wrong time after the war games?
And as we move into these other ones,
and we've sort of very deliberately kept these back for a different episode
because the what ifs seem to become a little bit more blurred or open to interpretation,
interesting or questionable or insert your word here.
Like Full Fathom Five, which is the first one we're moving on to.
See that little segue there?
Full Fathom Five, as it begins, we don't really know what it's a what if of, do we?
The mystery of Full Fathom Five is what is the what if?
And it turns out what if the Doctor's a bit of a nasty piece of work, really?
And the first thing about Full Fathom Five is it gives us the Doctor we never had.
Like if you were to say to me, name somebody, any actor at all ever,
who has been in Doctor Who, but wasn't the Doctor and should have been, who would it be?
I would say David Collings.
That would be my first and only answer.
And that's what Full Fathom Five, I mean, Mordred Undead proves it.
I think Mordred Undead is just proof that David Collings should have been the Doctor.
And Full Fathom Five, we get that and it's great.
And I think, am I right in thinking with most of these, Unbound, it is actors that were considered for the role at some point,
or something like that, not so much maybe with Arabella Ware, but otherwise.
I don't know how deliberate it is, but I know that Belden and I don't know about David Warner.
I mean, they would have been crazy not to consider that, but...
I think David Warner was considered at some point.
So it's people that you'd, I don't know what's the best way to word it, associate with the role.
People that at least must have gone through a production team's head at some point, I guess.
It is an immaculate piece of casting for that particular brief, that particular story, the Full Fathom Five,
because I was actually listening to David Warner recently.
Sorry, not David Warner, apologies, David Collings narrate some M.R. James stories.
I don't like to catch up with them at this time of year, just to listen to a couple on YouTube and whatever.
And he obviously recorded a batch of them, but he has this voice and carried in that voice is somehow a very precise balance between somebody that...
There's a warmth in it, but there's also a kind of a gentle menace in there.
And it's like he seems to carry these two things in perfect equilibrium.
And for that story where you do have the twists at the end and you have a little sense of it creeping in throughout,
and when you think of his television roles, like playing silver and sapphire and steel, there's a benevolence, but there's also something...
I don't know, he seems to be perfect at those sort of roles where there's ambiguity, initial ambiguity about a character.
And we certainly get that here.
And yeah, I agree with you.
And I've always put his voice up there with sort of Tom Baker and David Warner and Jeffrey Beaver's, Terry Malloy,
voices that just completely sort of capture you, voices that you listen to. There's something wonderful and powerful and unique about them.
And we're so lucky that all the people I've mentioned there have done big finish and we've got some wonderful, wonderful audio content from them.
And I'm really, really glad we got to have David Collings as the doctor, even if it was only for 50 minutes and even if he was a bit of a nasty doctor.
I think it really is wonderful that that happened.
So let's take turns. Gareth Uge first, talk to us about Full Fathom Five.
OK, well, I think there's an interesting kind of, I would say accidental, but who knows, theme to the first sort of four or five of these unbounds
of what I think is a kind of gradual worsening of the doctor's character, kind of pushing him further and further away from what he is.
So with Old Mortality, he's this, you know, just wonderful kind of almost, I think Mark previously said, kind of Christmassy figure.
Everything you want from the first doctor is embedded in there.
And then with David Warner, there's this urgency to him because the story had kind of placed him late and made kind of made him sort of tacitly responsible for a lot of awful stuff.
So there was an urgency to him, which I kind of think towards the end of the story manifested in him, not caring, but kind of maybe letting some bad things happen because he's like, I'm too busy.
Got to go. Got to keep going with this one. It's subtle, but it's it's a distinctly kind of broken doctor.
So he's he's actively capable of evil, as you were saying earlier.
But it's interesting because you've got this character and we've got no idea what did this to him, which I think is an interesting bit of restraint.
You could easily have written something in here to go, oh, well, after the Pelladon incident went the wrong way, this is what happened.
You know, all of that. They don't do anything like that. They just go. He's he's worse.
So what it what it comes down to is he he doesn't have scruples with with letting innocent lives kind of get in the way of the goal.
So he still wants to achieve the same stuff. Basically, he wants to, you know, save everybody.
But only now he's not going to have a crisis of conscience if it involves, you know, it's like he no longer struggles with the trolley problem.
You know, that that whole philosophical thing where it's like I can save these people, but I have to run over this guy.
Now he's fine with it. So the whole drama is the doctor's in this situation where he's actively manipulating people.
He has actively left people to die. He's done all of this stuff.
Again, essentially for what he would say is the right reasons overall. So he's still not, you know, your master or anything.
He's still the doctor doing, you know, good work and stuff like that.
But he's yeah, he's he's capable of worse stuff than that for some reason.
And but he's still kind of clinging on to a little bit of himself, which is to say he is he keeps his promises.
So very much to his detriment by the end of the story, he promised to look after Ruth, who is the daughter of a scientist he let down very much.
So he's promised to look after her towards the end of the story. He's you know, that promise has really come back to bite him.
And yeah, that feels like the kind of last lingering piece of the doctor has kind of blown up in his face because he can't be this.
If he wants to be the doctor, he has to be better than that.
Yeah, so I just think that's that's a fascinating kind of journey into this character to be like he's worse.
He's not a villain, but he doesn't have that nuance anymore.
It's almost sort of like the doctor. If Ian Chesterton had never said you're not allowed to, you know, cave that guy's skull in with a rock because it would just make our journey easier.
You can't do it anymore.
So from a character point of view, I think it's fascinating.
And yet Collings is remarkable. I mean, we were saying about him doing other big finish work.
I would very much point to Jago and Lightfoot because he plays Sanders in that, who is this obviously sinister figure who is presented as possibly a new ally to Lightfoot to investigate a series of vampire attacks.
And David Collings plays it as, you know, he's your mate, but he's tremendously full of menace as well.
And in this, it's very it's similar. It's not quite as full blown, but, you know, he's got that menace about him.
So I think it's a tremendous performance from him.
And it builds to possibly one of the most, I think, unforgettable endings of a Doctor Who story.
Even like whether or not you happen to think it's a good one, I think it's going to lodge in your head and you'll never forget it, which is the general who he's with on this base.
We haven't even said the plot. He's in this underwater base and he's secretly trying to recover the TARDIS key, which he left there, which is really partly a major reason he's still even bothering with any of this.
So there's a selfishness to him as well that wasn't previously there.
And he's with Ruth, who's the daughter of this scientist who he previously abandoned.
And he's with this general and we're gradually unpeeling what's actually happened before, along with what's happening in the present.
It's quite a complex kind of story, really, and it builds to eventually all of the cards are on the table and the general kills the Doctor.
And then to make matters worse, Ruth by this point has learned of the Doctor's betrayal and just keeps killing him.
So the story ends with the Doctor having regenerated, then getting murdered again.
And that sequence will just keep going round and round.
So it's tremendously impactful as a story.
The sound design is brilliant. I mean, I always, you know, it's almost like a sense memory, this story.
I'm always, you know, just thinking of it kind of puts me in a headspace of a kind of horrible, dank, dripping underwater place.
The only kind of drawback for me, and it's really just a subjective thing, is just the tone of it is a bit kind of B movie at times, which is not really a criticism.
It's just that's the kind of thing it's going for.
It's very scientific experiments that have gone horrifically awry, which is sort of Doctor Who, to be honest.
The dialogue sometimes leans a bit kind of melodramatic.
So there's things like one of the scientists is like, we're going to do this, but at what cost, Lee? At what cost?
That kind of thing. But it's just kind of a mood.
And it's interesting because it kind of makes the story almost a bit lighthearted in a way.
Maybe it's a deliberate choice, I don't know, to kind of make it not quite as bleak as all that.
But yes, so that's the only thing about it where I come away from it and kind of go, not 100 percent sure about that.
But I think it's just really impactful.
Collings is, you know, he had one shot and completely made it.
And yeah, obviously, shout out, Ed Bishop is in this.
Captain Blue himself murders the Doctor, which if you're a big fan of Captain Scarlet is barely upsetting.
But yeah.
It's I mean, I mean, that ending, there's no way to talk about this without talking about the ending.
It's brutal. It's fantastic. And I think you're onto something there actually about the tone of it not being that dark until we actually hit that moment.
And as a result, it really does sort of have more of an impact.
And it's the one thing I knew about this story before I listened to it was, oh, my God, you've got to hear the ending.
I didn't know what the ending was. It was just, oh, my God, the ending.
And I can see why. And it certainly deserves to be remembered for more than that, but certainly for that as well.
What about you, Mark? Talk to us about Fallen Five.
Yeah, I think, Gareth, you've talked about it so comprehensively and eloquently there.
I'm not sure if I can top what you've already said. I'll just I'll just try and think of it.
I certainly agree with you that that initial maybe quarter to a third of it is a bit eggy.
It's like it's kind of I think I think you have it right with the sort of B movie type dialogue.
It's a little bit cringy at times, at least it was to me on this listen.
And I don't remember that hitting me quite so hard on previous listens where I had this done as a very strong story and still do, by the way, overall.
I think I think once you're into that second half, that stuff is left behind.
And the more interesting dimensions of it come to the fore.
It's interesting you said and I hope this doesn't sound too on the nose, but I imagine it must have been intentional.
And I can't remember on which listen because I've heard this thing a few times over the years. This hit me.
You know, you're talking about this doctor who's kind of he's more amoral than immoral.
Right. Like you were saying, he's kind of like the ran away a bit, you know, in that sense, you know, the end justifies the means.
But he does keep promises. He has certain, you know, justifications for what he does.
And he has a sort of big picture view of why what he's doing is right.
But in keeping that promise, I think you're right.
It's Ruth who keeps him kind of grounded and sort of most like the doctor for a time.
I think he's enjoyed being and this is the bit I was saying is possibly a bit on the nose.
But without Ruth, he is ruthless. Right.
So, you know, I don't know. I don't know how much that was in the writer's head to literally phase.
But, you know, this is clearly what happens, you know, when he waves her off of the dock at the outset, she she says this quite heartfelt goodbye, even though there was a deception going on and she will be a stowaway and so on.
She gives him a heartfelt goodbye and she starts to walk off and is just out of earshot.
He gives her the most ambiguous goodbye I've ever heard. It's like, OK, bye.
You know, it could be that's it. I've fulfilled my promise. I'm done with you and I feel nothing.
Or it could be, you know, just his doctor being like Tom Baker, the end of Hand of Fear, you know, controlled and aloof, but emotional.
You know, and you don't know which it is, but by the end of it, you think probably the former, you know.
But by the way, that the other piece of casting in this that I love is Siri Neal as Ruth because I have very fond memories of watching a thing called Moondile back in the 1980s, which was a brilliant thing for sort of like the Century Falls of its day.
Is that what you call the thing that Russell T. Davis wrote? Yeah, it was sort of in that vein, you know, spooky thing for children. And she was brilliant in it.
I think she's retired from acting, although she came back to do one look through Arkwright I think earlier this year as a presumably as a favor, you know, to maybe she just wanted to work with David Tennant again.
I don't know. Anyway, I'm getting off track.
So, yeah, Ed Bishop. And I'll tell you, there's a slightly odd acting choice that Ed Bishop makes in this, which is every time he says the name of the scientific facility, he insists on pronouncing the actual full acronym at length.
So he'll say the D-E-E-P like that. Having established that once, we don't really need him to keep doing that.
I've never noticed that, but yeah, you're right. Yeah.
I think a director could have stepped in there and gone, yeah, once was enough. Just say the deep from here on and we get it. We know what we're talking about.
But his voice is so creepy in that. He's creepy enough, like he's unnerving enough as the general, like he feels like this guy that's positively sadistic and enjoying pulling the rug from under, is it Matthias? Is that what you call them?
I'm sorry, I forgot the name of the more ethical scientist. Anyway, he pulls the rug from under his feet and you can sort of feel him kind of revel in this, you know.
But then by the end when he's been at the bottom of the ocean for 26 years, which is an interesting figure to have come up with, I thought, given that that's how long the series originally ran for.
I don't know if that was a conscious thing as well.
But yeah, you hear that voice come out of the shadows and he is, and it's really interesting that that deeply creepy character, you know, what he's become is nevertheless the more moral of the opposing voices at the end of it.
You know, he's the one that Ruth ends up standing with and saying, you know, let's see how many lives this B word has left.
There's a note of pity to him as well.
That was one rare instance.
And I forgot Nick Briggs has some swearing later on as well, but we'll get to that.
Yeah, so I think you're absolutely right. But when you say sense memory and how much it leaves an impression, I think it's one of those things where the mood of it just stays with you so heavily for a long time after you listen that even though it's not a perfect thing,
it has some really impressive stuff going on in it.
Yeah, it's definitely one of the it's definitely one of the good ones in the range.
But it's I think it's fascinating the way that we're kind of asking these questions about the doctor and saying, well, what if he was more like the Rani?
You know, and then he didn't have those ties anymore. But by the end, we're asking the same sort of questions about the general and Ruth. So Ruth is very much this kind of horrifying avenging angel by the end.
And as an audience member, we're in this position of kind of like, well, it's hard to disagree with the logical reasoning that she's got.
But what she's doing is such an affront to like Doctor Who fans and the general, you know, he's literally killed the doctor. I mean, that's it doesn't get much worse.
But at the same time, he's become this kind of pitiable figure. And I think one of the last things he says is that he'll just float off into the kind of deadly black smokers.
I think they're called and he's just like, oh, it'll be over quickly.
Like, yeah, you're in this position where you finish it and you just go, God, what a kind of moral bloodbath this has been.
And yeah, there is a moment where I always kind of think maybe the next doctor was going to be really nice, actually.
But maybe that would have course corrected and Ruth's like, don't care, blam. So yeah, my God, it's a fascinating series of choices.
But to great effect, I'd say it's as Mark said, it's definitely one of the good ones. It's one I will always enjoy.
One I will always look forward to going back to when I do relisten to The Unbound and that kind of thing.
And like I say, David Collings as the doctor is just such an excellent starting point.
And, you know, it's a great story with some very, very interesting moral implications sort of woven throughout.
So we move on to He Jess at Scars. We're moving on to He Jess at Scars then, which is different.
Two Shakespeare quotes. Am I right in saying that? Four fathom five, He Jess at Scars.
Am I being appallingly cultureless? Is that wrong? No, I think you may be right. Yeah, I think you're right.
Just a weird coincidence. It's the second one I'm not too sure on and I should be.
You know, it's. Oh, no, you're right. It is. It is. I did look it up. Was it from Romeo and Juliet?
I looked it up when I listened to it a couple of months ago and I think it was from. Now I've probably made it a real tool of myself here if I've got both the.
Oh, I haven't got a clue which play we're talking about. You're far well better read than I.
I doubt it. So the titles have come from a mixture of Shakespeare and The Rolling Stones.
You know, that famous pairing. So He Jess at Scars is not fandom's favourite.
Shall we? Should we say it's interesting. It's a very interesting concept.
And it's a story that has been done a few times since. I think Turn Left is probably the most obvious sort of example.
But He Jess at Scars kind of takes it a hell of a lot further and references pretty much every Doctor Who story it possibly can.
If there's an opportunity to reference something, it takes it.
Now, I really like the premise for this one, which is obviously what if the Valiard had won?
Like we give the Valiard his hour as the Doctor here, which has also been done since to much, much greater effect.
But I like what it's trying to do. I'm not sure I like the way it does it.
I can see why it does it the way it does it. I like what it's trying to do, though.
And it's basically, well, if the Valiard had won in the Trial of a Time Lord, what would the implications across the wider universe have been?
And basically it explores how piece by piece the universe and history will unravel without the Doctor present.
And that is an idea that's been done again since, as I've said.
I think it's been done more effectively since. There's no kind of personal impact in this.
It's all very much here's a series of events, here's a reference to the Gopolis, here's a reference to this, here's a reference to that.
This is a documentation of how the universe collapses because the Valiard won in Trial of a Time Lord.
And yeah, we do have Mel there as potential, I guess, human emotional interest.
And that is not how Mel is used in this story.
And I kind of feel the key to maybe making this a little bit more of a successful story is Mel.
But that's where I'll leave that anyway. Gareth, you talk to us about Hegesta's scars.
Well, I think it's very openly a very literal approach to the what-if.
And it's easy and not invalid to kind of point at that and say, well, that's less interesting than something like 4, 5 and 5 where you go,
we don't know what literally made the Doctor like this. We're just going to explore it.
Hegesta's scars is tremendously literal about it.
And I think, to be honest, we got eight original unbounds, six really, if you consider the other two, they came along quite a little later.
I think it's sort of fair that at least one of them took the approach of I'm going to get this list and I'm going to say Y instead of X for all of these different events.
And I think there's interest to be found here. I think that it's interesting the fact that it's not the Valiard, not really.
It is this kind of amalgam of the two characters. You've got the being that is the Valiard, whatever you want to call him.
He is now the Doctor. He has won. He has absorbed that life force. And he's not running around in a black cloak going,
ha ha ha, being evil. Not really. He's sort of trying to compete.
And it's a little bit like Fall Fathom V in that he kind of has, in this case, much more twisted, a kind of view of, well, I can make things better.
It's a bit like the Meddling Monk in a way, where he's kind of gone. I've got all of this power. I don't have any inhibitions anymore.
Let's just do it my way. And it's not it always strikes me that it's never outright evil. It's more kind of uninhibited power.
So he's cackling around, not cackling, going around in his TARDIS doing awful stuff.
But essentially just because he thinks that's the proper use for it. I mean, the Valiard is essentially just this kind of ball of potential.
He's this frustrated being that wants to exist. Now he's got a chance. So I think as a concept, that's all very interesting.
Where it falls down, I think, is that literal approach where it's very difficult to sell lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of events having gone differently in an hour.
So essentially, we spend a lot of time kind of hearing that list I sort of alluded to, where it's like Y instead of X or X instead of Y.
So there's a lot of, yeah, I went to Logopolis and actually I did this. Isn't that interesting? And it's sort of like, well, you know, I appreciate we're kind of preaching to the converted with this release.
Obviously, Big Finish itself is a niche product. So this is going to find the people who will find that really interesting.
But dramatically, it's a little bit inert, to be honest. So I struggle with it on that front.
I kind of feel like I'm hearing about an exciting story, not so much seeing it. And to be quite honest, I don't think that's even necessarily just he jests at Scar's fault.
I would even say there's a little bit of that in Turn Left, to be honest. I mean, it's a bit sacrilegious, I suppose.
But I'm not Turn Left's biggest fan because I feel like you kind of hit a point of like, well, yeah.
Like if you, you know, not to rag on Turn Left, but you're telling us, you know, if you take the doctor out of this equation, this will happen.
And to me, that always seems like, yeah, that's the plot. Like the plot is if nobody stops this, this bomb will go off.
So to me, saying, well, the bomb went off, there's nothing massively interesting about that to me because I feel like, yeah, I know that's what the stakes were.
Obviously, there's more to it and you know, you make it about the characters. So in that case, you've got Donna.
In this case, not really much you can do. You do have Bonnie Langford.
And this is where I think the by far the strongest thing about this.
And really, I think it's enough of a strong thing to recommend at least hearing this.
Like I doubt it's a lot of people's favorite release, but you know, I think it has strengths and Michael Jason and Bonnie Langford are absolutely the biggest one.
Bonnie Langford, by that point, I incorrectly thought this was her first big finish, but I checked the other day and it's sort of her fifth, I think.
She'd already done Fires of Vulcan, the two comedy ones, The One Doctor and Bang Bang A Boom and Flip Flop.
So she'd actually had quite a lot of variety before getting to this point.
And I think that's great because the Bonnie Langford we kind of hear in this is just the absolute kind of male unbound in a way.
You know, she's not she's she's absolutely not got time for any of that bouncy aerobics, fearful attitude.
That's all jettisoned in this.
She is this worn down kind of almost warrior person who's just she's got sort of mercenary task ahead of her.
And yeah, I think she really sells it.
And it's a very strong performance and a good showcase for what big finish does, which is you can take someone who on television might not have been given the most wonderful material because of politics of the time or whatever.
Character like Mel, some would argue, is a little bit misbegotten in the first place.
But put her in audio, give her, you know, an open playing field and she can do whatever.
And in this case, she becomes this kind of darker sort of less upbeat character.
And she's she's got to deal with the worst of The Doctor.
And it's like I was saying earlier, I felt anyway that this range was kind of showing a decline of The Doctor.
Rock bottom here, where we've literally got a villain has taken over The Doctor's body.
And the two of them make a kind of interesting pairing where you've got Mel, who is sort of on the face of it, the most cheerful Doctor Who companion, literally like a kind of panto presence, talking to this colossal villain who in his head he thinks he's doing useful things in some way.
And I think that's such a crazy pairing, even though, you know, it's era appropriate. But there's something very funny about that to me to have like the Valyard finally getting a shot at being The Doctor and kind of I would argue being a bit less evil than he was before.
And Mel joining him and just being far less herself as well.
And both of them just give such good performances. I mean, Michael Jason has this, to be honest, unflattering kind of very, very list heavy dialogue to be dealing with.
But he's telling us all of this stuff that's happening and not necessarily relating it in the most kind of dramatic way, is my opinion anyway.
But he's so, Malifluous is the word, you know, it's like the word that could be invented to describe Michael Jason and Jeffrey Beaver's just their voices are just like these slithery things that you could just listen to all day.
Yeah, I mean, he's fantastic in this. He gets across this great sense of kind of panic about the fact that he's messed up.
And Johnson, you were saying that this is a story that's been told. It's quite a popular big finish one, really. I think this was the first one where we have the villain who succeeds too much.
Traditionally, it's like they got rid of The Doctor and then they go, oh, whoops, I don't know, therefore you wish for.
So I won't list them because I might spoil them. But there are several other examples throughout big finish of this happening.
I think this is a good example of that to the extent of we can really hear the Valyard gradually kind of bricking it and realizing he's bitten off so much more than he can chew.
And the ending is quite strong. I mean, it's got sort of a lot to live up to, really, because you've had Full Fathom V with this kind of brutal, stark kind of ending.
This one's quite similar in tone where they're both trapped in the TARDIS and they can't move and that's it forever because of his mistakes.
So it's dark. It's very well cast. I mean, it's largely a two-hander, although there are other parts.
I have to squeeze this in just because this is a bit of trivia.
There's the plot from Gary Russell's new adventures novel, Legacy, receives a nod in this. We were talking about stuff that gets referenced.
He manages to squeeze in the diadem from that book. Sorry, had to mention that as well.
Oh, God, I was so sick of that diadem by the end of that book. I never wanted to hear another reference to the diadem again.
I prefer this to Legacy, I'll say that.
Yeah, no, a tremendous solid duo at the centre of this, but I would not begrudge anyone kind of going,
I feel like I've read a list rather than heard a dramatic piece.
So yeah, it's hard to disagree with people who don't like it, but I'll always kind of, I'll find it listenable, at least.
There are definitely things to enjoy in there, even if it is just sort of continuity reference bingo, I think.
And as you say, we have got Bonnie Langford and Michael Jason in the lead roles, and they are both absolutely fantastic.
And it's a really good voice like Michael Jason, like David Collings, like David Warner, etc. can actually save something
if it's not quite where it needs to be beforehand.
And at least the continuity heavy lists are read very well by a very good actor with a great voice.
Mark, go ahead.
Well, Gary Russell clearly adores Pip and Jane Baker, and this thing is, I would say, I was going to say a love letter to Pip and Jane Baker,
I would say it's an attempted love letter to them that doesn't quite go right, because they would be more cognizant of the old maxim, show don't tell, you know,
I think there is a lot of stuff going on there that Gary has put a lot more articulately than I will.
It clearly doesn't quite work as interestingly as it should.
I think, well, here's the real Pip and Jane flavor to it, since we haven't really touched on that aspect of it.
I think Gary Russell maybe thinks it's enough to have Michael Jason given a lot of alliterative sequences of words to say, and he does them very well, but by the time you get to the 15th or the 20th or the 60th or whatever it is, you are going,
something has gone wrong here where even one of the most interesting to listen to voices that you could put to audio is making me zone out, and it feels at times unrelentingly one note.
Even, sometimes it feels to me like the entire thing has taken place in the console room of the TARDIS and I know that that's not the case.
It just feels like that, you know, like he's literally stood there just describing things going on outside the console room, which is a fair percentage of it as well.
That moment at the very end, it's funny that you said about, you used the word inertia.
I think you can have, there's the most dramatic use of inertia you could have where literally moving a single finger will now cause molecules to move in the universe in a potentially catastrophic way that even the Valleyard now acknowledges is bad news, you know.
So they're literally paralyzed, and I think there's a moment in Gary Russell's head, probably borrowed from the end of, is it the Mark of the Rani where, you know, the master and the Rani are immobilized in the TARDIS there, you know, it's that and he's going, oh I love that.
Can we do something a bit more, you know, universe shattering with that moment.
And it is, that particular thing does stay with you. It haunts you in a way that the rest of the story doesn't.
It's like he's, he's thought of that really good moment. And then he's had to just sort of reverse engineer further 60 minutes out of that, and just said this will do this will do this will do.
I sound like I've been really on Judy harsh here and I didn't really intend to be because I think it's right to say that you can listen to it agreeably enough for the hour and then say, I'll put that away for another decade and there'd be no real significant appetite to go back to it.
So,
it's, yeah, it's a first.
It's a frustrating one to listen to because you can hear its potential kind of sapped away by the way it's done it's just a few tweaks and it could have been much more much more interesting.
There's a character in this, who we haven't mentioned thus far I think.
And, and it was only halfway through listening this time around that I remembered, oh, that's Ellie Ellie Martin she was in the Sarah Jane spin off wasn't she like an environmental campaign or something from there.
So, it's like, that's kind of an interesting idea lift, lift somebody from one of the other spin off ranges and sort of say look, their life took this divergent turn because, you know, the value of cumin and lifted them out of spin off land.
That's quite interesting. But as for the sort of the rest of it.
It's, it's, it's kind of how much sort of how many spoonfuls of melodrama to the pond do you want. I was listening to this thing in the car.
About three months ago, when, when I was given that re listen. And I had to pick my dad up from somewhere unexpectedly and I forgotten that I'd left the CD player playing in the car. And it's, you know, those those moments come up in life, where a rare intersection
between a member of your family and doctor who comes up, and you want it to be one of those profound moments or something that really impresses them. And what actually came on was exactly this dialogue from from the backyard.
I just need this piece of equipment. And then I'll be able to take over the universe.
And it was delivered in the most. And this is of course.
Michael Jason and his most you know millifluous as you say, and melodramatic tones, and I just quickly switched that off. And there was five seconds of silence and then my dad just was shook us.
We said no more about it, you know, and that's, that's how that made me feel. So, thanks. Thanks, Gary. Actually, in terms of I feel like a bit a bit harsh and Gary Russell here.
He is somebody who I think has some real strengths that I admire.
And those strengths I think are in his generosity in terms of, you know exactly what he likes and wants out of Doctor Who for himself and he will write that as he has done here.
Continuity heavy.
There's another word for that that we won't use right now.
And,
you know, and, and very sort of steeped in like this, let's put person with you, but, but, but he's very, he as a, as the runner of Big Finish he was very generous about saying, that's my flavor of Doctor Who, but it's really important that we have other voices
and more iconoclastic approaches and all sorts of things going on that wouldn't necessarily be my bag but what should be there.
And so that I think, you know, to talk about but we've been having slightly mildly denigrated in there.
I feel like it's a really important thing to recognize in him.
And I think you know, he does what he does very well it's just not, it's the least interesting flavor of Doctor Who for me, but I can understand why it's an important string to the bow because without that as a baseline what do you, what do you surprise people with or, you
know, so he's, he's maybe generous in two ways he's laying down the baseline.
And then then letting you know other voices sort of saying and all sorts of interesting divergences from that.
So, that sounds like a very backhanded compliment I didn't really mean it to come across that way but I should press stop talking now but yeah it's not it's not one of my favorites out of the rage.
I think, I think it's absolutely worth underlining that Gary Russell is very generous as a producer I think he's got great instincts as someone who fosters storytelling.
I mean we're listening to this range, you know, that's, that's an example of that.
And I think that's tremendous that he can, he can separate. This is my kind of Doctor Who, which is a very very, you know, kind of arguably quite insular listy kind of Doctor Who that we've all, you know, fallen in with now and again.
But he's very clear that it is only one flavor.
And I think as a storyteller, like, when it's literally just down to him. He does sometimes fall into a kind of tell don't show trap, and I think this is an example of that, where it's just, you know, it's, I think there probably is is a much more exciting version of this story out
there in the ether, where you kind of make us really feel these things happening but yeah, maybe it's just the sheer scale of it is we can't because we have to hear about all of it first.
By the way, I sometimes think that show don't tell gets a bit overused because it is actually possible to tell and not show in really interesting ways, but he just doesn't pull it off here so.
There are great examples of tell. I would say they're out there. Yeah, I mean, just totally totally random one there's a bit in It's a Sin, where they're waiting, the group of Richie's friends are all waiting to kind of meet up with him again.
And there's the bit where he leaves his character as his mom just says oh he's dead.
You know, that's that's a tell, rather than a show, but it's devastating. So yeah, absolutely. There is there is a time and a place I think.
Sorry, very off topic.
I think that if tell was, I don't know how are you going to make this work with show you've got one hour to basically deconstruct the universe through the history of Doctor Who.
It would have to be a series to work with show and don't get me wrong, you know, I'd be there for series where the Valiada Mel went to the Gopolis and watched it all fall apart again and all that kind of thing.
But I'm not entirely sure it needs to exist.
I think you're right though. I think it kind of from what I've heard about the Seventh Doctor's last day, that kind of maybe I'm way off here but I think that kind of follows a sort of loosely similar concept to this, where you would have characters having to work together to kind of fix this mess.
Yeah, that would be the good part of this. It's a reasonable comparison, but the last day is three hours long, no six, six hours long in total. So it has more room to breathe and I think the way it breathes is interesting, but ultimately it's not a million miles away from this in terms of what it does and how it ends up.
I don't know, is this a story that there's a good version of and can be saved or is it just a listicle of how the universe would fall apart if Doctor Who wasn't there?
It's a question for the ages.
But we'll move on for now and we'll move on to the most, is interesting the right word? Strange? I don't know.
Perhaps the most standout story from this range, just purely based on what it does and how it does it. And this is Deadline.
And we have Derek Jacobi in the lead role. The lead role is not the Doctor.
And what's the what if here? What if there was no Doctor Who? What if? I don't know. It's a good one though. Rob Sherman, really strong script. Derek Jacobi is fantastic.
Jacqueline King is fantastic. But it's definitely it's such a curio of the range. I don't have much to say about it apart from I really like this. It's such an interesting experiment.
And there really is nothing else like this, I think. So I'm going to let you take over from me on this one, Gareth, go ahead.
Well, this is definitely the weird one. And I was meant to say earlier on that we didn't originally plan to break up the episodes the way we have done.
But I really like the fact that we have because we kind of did what I think of as the sort of prestigious unbounds first.
You know, those were the kind of obvious, but not in a nasty way. Kind of that's how you do an unbound story that you can really hopefully sell.
And these ones I kind of think of as the like weird and wonderful bunch. And these are the ones where they go, let's just be as odd as we can with this, which sometimes pays off, sometimes not so much.
And Deadline is just odd, odd, odd, just just very strange. And I can absolutely imagine there are Doctor Who fans who think this is absolutely incomprehensible.
Why on earth would you listen to this kind of thing? I just I bet they're out there because this is so out of step with everything we know about what a Doctor Who hour of drama should be.
But this is Robert Sheerman being granted license to not worry about, you know, quarks or Daleks and stuff. He doesn't have to do any of that.
He can write a play, basically. This is a play. It's largely two characters, but you know, it's sort of the third one comes into the mix and then there's a kind of imaginary fourth one.
You can absolutely imagine this one being staged. This is the story of the man who created Doctor Who.
I think I'm right in saying that in this fictional context, he might have just been a jobbing writer who was given the he might be the Anthony Coburn of this universe.
I don't know. But he had the task of writing the first Doctor Who story anyway, and it just never got picked up in this universe.
So for him, Doctor Who itself is a great what if. He is a lonely, lonely old man who's kind of losing his grip, frankly, and he's starting to kind of hallucinate and imagine that he is in.
He's still trying to write that Doctor Who script, which is a kind of writerly fixation that anyone creative can kind of empathize with.
You know, there's that script that you're always tinkering with and he's still trying to get it right.
And he kind of drifts off in his head and imagines that he is Doctor Who and it becomes this kind of very sinister preoccupation he has.
And there's all sorts of things kind of gradually beginning to bother him.
Like he he finds himself hearing words that he shouldn't be hearing. Like there's a bit where the I want to say nurse Jacqueline King's character refers to TARDIS blue.
And he kind of goes, where did you get that word from?
And he starts to imagine there's something sinister about his wardrobe, which we can all, you know, Doctor Who obviously is very fixated on a wooden wardrobe type object.
And this is a very disturbing version of that where there's something creepy in there.
And yeah, he's just losing his grip. But so you sort of have that kind of creepy radio drama thing that you would kind of expect with Doctor Who.
So I think to an extent, this does scratch that itch of being like an enticing mystery of like how far is this character going to go?
But it's really about the human drama.
So when his son comes back into his life, it's a estranged son and he hates him because they've got this broken down relationship and his son is dreadfully afraid that he's going to repeat all of his father's mistakes and become him.
Which which tremendously, you know, a lot of this feels very Robert Sherman because he has certain kind of themes that he likes to to write and to go back to in Doctor Who.
In Doctor Who anyway, I've got a book of his plays, which I keep meaning to read and I've got a book of his short stories.
I only really know him from Doctor Who. But yeah, he really likes kind of repeated patterns being trapped in a cycle that he wants to break out from.
So, you know, skirt. So they're kind of literally trapped in the loop. The Chimes of Midnight is a loop.
The Holy Terror. That's a loop. And in this one, it's a more kind of subtle variation of that where.
Oh, and Jubilee as well. That's that's history repeating itself over and over again.
In this one, it's a family history repeating itself.
And it's an incredibly kind of toxic cycle between these two people that Derek Jacobi's character is trying to break out of.
But he can't really because he's he's kind of inside it. So it's this kind of tremendous bitter family drama at its heart.
But the thing about Robert Sheerman is that he's incredibly funny, even possibly especially when he's being incredibly dark.
So this is very funny kind of throughout. And it's often bleak, dark humor.
But a lot of it is quite, you know, there's there's some very, very well aimed kind of goading of Doctor Who fans in this in a way that only a Doctor Who fan could write, I think.
So you've got this guy who comes in and he loves this writer for writing Juliet Bravo.
Juliet Bravo is the sort of equivalent of Doctor Who in this world that did take off to the extent that it's like a cult hit.
And it's got people writing articles about it years later, pouring over the scripts, collecting the videos, all your Doctor Who stuff.
And there's this glorious sequence where Derek Jacobi's character is being interviewed and he's just disgusted by this.
He's sort of like, why are you people wasting your lives with this? You know, I'm a jobbing writer.
I did this script up to 2000 years ago. I don't remember anything about it.
It weren't Earth you asking. And it's there's something kind of hilarious, first of all, at watching this this whole atmosphere of utter affection for a thing be just brutally skewered by someone who just doesn't care.
You know, it's a bit like that Clive Swift interview we've all read.
Except this one's not quite so mean.
Yeah, it's just it's really quite nasty and but in a very believably kind of Doctor Who way.
And it's something we're sort of not allowed to hear, you know, with whenever you whenever you interview people, not that I have, but whenever someone from the world of Doctor Who is interviewed,
including in Big Finish, you'll say things like, well, what's your favorite episode and things like that.
And they always have to be quite polite about it.
And sometimes the answer is going to be I don't really have one, to be honest, but you get the sense that they have to kind of tiptoe around that.
Anyway, this is a tremendously funny example of just going right for the jugular on that whole thing.
But I mean, there's just so much to enjoy about this.
There's the kind of fractured father-son relationship.
There's the kind of awkward bitterness of Jacqueline King's character and the kind of horrible, kind of almost accidental kind of I think there's a kiss at one point.
Her reaction to that is just this viciousness.
And it's just you get such a strong picture of that character, even though she's really quite minor in the whole thing, of just this, you know, lonely person who for whatever reason sees a kindred spirit in this awful writer.
Not like he's a bad writer, but like he's a he's a really troubled person who's done some bad things.
Yeah. So, I mean, it's it's very out there as far as a piece of Doctor Who media goes.
But in a way, every time I hear it, there's a kind of a feeling of like, wow, they really they really let us have this.
But we can have this.
Like, I'm not saying this is automatically better than the usual stuff we get from Doctor Who is so different.
But the idea that we could just have a play like this where people just get to not be concerned about, you know, ray guns and buggered monsters and stuff is just like.
So refreshing, you know, I wish there was one of the many reasons I wish there was more of bounce, just kind of any excuse to kind of really push aside and kind of just do a play or something like that.
And I know that they do they do make efforts now and again, you get some very strong kind of concept pieces from Big Finish now and again.
So I do appreciate that they do that.
But yeah, this is absolutely crazy, beamed in from the moon pitch of an idea.
It's dark and it's funny and it's horrible.
Yeah, I think it's it's my favorite of the whole bunch.
But in a way where I would hesitate to describe it as fun, but now just an incredible piece of work.
And yeah, I wish we had more Robert Sheeran, but I don't think he's ever he's ever, you know, anything less than 100 percent committed to what he's doing.
So I suppose what we've got of his.
It's all great.
And it would be wonderful to see him come back with something at some point.
I'm never saying never. We'll see.
What about you, Mark? What are your thoughts on deadline?
Oh, I absolutely adore it.
And I think, yeah, it was one of those things.
I know it was easier in the early days to do something kind of revolutionary and groundbreaking.
And this was like probably the most unique thing Big Finish done that you said at the you said at the outset, Johnson, like, what is the what if of this one?
And I guess it's basically just what if Doctor Who was, you know, you you're what if Doctor Who was just a TV program and that's, you know, you can't enter its universe and suspend your disbelief.
You're just always outside the box.
And, you know, that that leads to all sorts of really interesting permutations and as Gareth was saying, all these this this interweaving of the fiction on the reality as as the character of Martin Bannister.
Interesting name that by the way, Martin Bannister.
I'm trying to I was trying to think of the way up the road tonight. Was there some particular reason for that? Is there some significance to Bannister? And then I think it just came to me.
I think it probably just echoes the rhythm of David Whittaker. You know, it's just it's just two syllables, three syllables.
You know, it's like that. And but but at the same time, he's also isn't he? It's it's the idea is because that that that guy you were talking about that comes to do the interview with that brilliant scene, the Juliet Bravo enthusiast.
I think not only is it a joke at fandoms expense to some extent, you know, of which, of course, Rob Sherman is one. So it's a sort of, you know, it's a not unfawned poking fun.
But I think to some extent, I'm not sure what that actor normally sounds like. But to me, it's almost as though Rob Sherman said, can you do my voice?
Because the guy has a sort of a like a speech impediment and I don't know whether it's performed or it feels like it's performed and it sounds very like the way Rob Sherman speaks in many respects.
But but he also talks about this guy being the holy grail of interviewees. And the first thing that comes into my head is Christopher Bailey.
I mean, if I said the right name there for the guy that kind of and and snake dance. Yeah. Which I also know as a very fond place in Rob Sherman's heart.
But it's almost like he's gone. OK, what if you took somebody like Chris Bailey, who was a really serious theater guy and just dipped into Doctor Who once.
But he somehow got sort of trapped there and he became a journeyman. You know, and he lost his his mojo.
You know, he just became he paid the mortgage and he lost all his creativity.
And it's it's simultaneously it's so melancholy because it's kind of going that there's all this wonderful, imaginative stuff here.
But it could also become a treadmill for somebody. It needs all these different voices in the mix and it needs to be many different things.
And one of the things that impresses me every time is.
I've heard it said that it's really hard to be simultaneously scary and funny.
And I don't mean moments of humor providing levity or light relief amongst the scary scenario.
I mean, both things function at once. And there's a scene in that where he's writing late at night and the ghost of Sidney Newman comes and stands over his shoulder, you know, or he's in his head or whatever it is.
And he keeps drifting. He keeps going in and out of this like he spends fifty fifty percent of the time being Canadian and fifty percent of the time Australia.
And he slips in and out of these and some heads really unsettling. It's funny, but it's also deeply. And then he suddenly becomes this grading dialect voice.
And it's it's it's in such mocking tones because he'd be like, you know, he talks because he had talked in the interview about whether his writing career was a symptom or a cause.
And then this guy suddenly goes into was it a symptom or a cause like it goes into that dialect voice.
And it's really I don't know. It gives me goosebumps every time because it's so strange. And one of the things this guy is supposed to have been hot on, you know, that sort of failed as he sees it writer is his main theme was to always write on the horrors of isolation.
You know, here he is trapped in this kind of in his head. He's the only person and he he's trying to break out of his bubble and even connect with the I think that's the final straw is when he tries to connect with the grandson and the grandson is just awful.
Like he's just like, what would happen if a child had been given nothing but the PlayStation or I don't know what kids play these days Xbox or whatever. And and and and no doctor who you know are no no ability to sort of think beyond just like, oh yeah, because he's trying to explain, you know, what's this computer game about the chances.
Does it matter like I'm just shooting things you know he goes but why you know what's your what's the motivation what's the reason. And this this total disconnect between generations. It's just like, it's maybe a bit too cynical on what modern children are like because I think there is still
imagination in there.
But it's like worst case scenario and then he's he'll he retreats back into the land that he needs which is he is Dr. Who you know, I guess that's the doctor that we have and this is the doctor that exists solely in his head really he's the only person with any
memory of this character.
And then he gradually sort of needs to become him to retreat into something away from the horrors of isolation.
And this sort of imaginative Susan that he experiences is it. Oh, and then you get that.
There's a great line in it you know where all his guilt and stuff comes in you know and you end up with Ian and Barbara. I think it's the end that says to him.
I'm going to earn you an explicit time but so I'll be careful but he, he says, Dr. Who you utter. And so and so, you know, there's a swear word in there and it's like, yeah, that's that that moment really hits hits hard.
There's so much to talk about in this and I haven't, I know I haven't remotely done it justice which I knew it wasn't going to be able to do.
I think it was going to get to be by the way, because that was the starry a bit of casting.
We'd had to that point I think I think he and David weren't Warner jointly, but then David Warner became so much a part of the furniture that Derek sort of felt like the, the, you know, the, the real thing that started to come in, you know, just made
everybody gasp and then got home again you know, and now we have him as part of the furniture so it's, yeah, it's been an interesting journey.
If, if there was one of these unbound we could dedicate just an entire episode of this podcast to it would be this one.
I said I couldn't find anything to say and you two have found absolutely tons.
It really is a wonderful wonderful piece it really does do.
I mean, you said that at the time, it was something very very unique, I'd say even now I'd say even 20 years later. There's nothing else with the Doctor Who logo attached to it that is anything like this at all.
It's a really interesting sort of, sort of concept piece.
When you think it came about before, before there was, I guess, a particular amount of interest in the origins of, of Doctor Who, you know, since we've had, we had an adventure of space and time as part of the 50th and there's been
sort of legal stuff going on, rights battles, that kind of thing. It's all of a sudden the origins of the show over the last sort of 12 years or so have been just a little bit more in fandoms consciousness I guess.
Whereas when this came out, we probably had Doctor Who magazine which printed facts that were definitely facts honest and that's, you know, that'll have been mainly the extent of it. We've not had, you know, we've had 20 years of the internet compiling information and we've had DVD releases and Blu-ray releases and all of this since.
You know, it's so much easier to, to learn about Doctor Who now. So to kind of play with that idea, to play with its origins being a bit misty and that kind of thing here. It's such an interesting thing to do.
And yeah, they even, oh, they touch on the business of what a crazy idea it was to sort of spend three weeks with cavemen barely able to communicate instead of doing his idea which was Hannibal traversing the Alps, which of course we get in All of Mortality.
So it's kind of the first real callback of the range I guess in a way. Yeah, in that sense.
It's fascinating as well because we were saying that it's an unusual approach to the anniversary generally just this whole range is an unusual approach and you look at something like Zagreus, that's like your textbook example of an unusual approach to an anniversary.
And in this story, the ending, which is another bleak one, all four of these stories today, bleak endings. There's that moment where he becomes Doctor Who effectively the TARDIS so called dematerializes because he's just committed to this, this image in his mind, and the kind of what you're left with is this tremendously uncomfortable idea that Doctor Who could be a negative or Doctor Who could come to symbolize somebody losing something.
And I don't think that's meant in a kind of any kind of finger wagging way, you know, Rob Sheerman is as big of a Doctor Who nerd as any of us really probably bigger.
But I just think that to even approach that note in a range that is sort of celebrating Doctor Who by casting up a negative Doctor Who is fascinating in itself just what a feeling of discomfort.
You finish this one with. It's like it's kind of saying, you know, there are very, there is something very nurturing about fandom. And there is something very destructive about fandom and you had better have that equilibrium right in your life.
If you want to stay healthy. I mean, obviously the sky is retreated into total psychosis by the end.
So, you know, that's the bleakest place it could go in that regard. But yeah, there's there's it's a double sided coin you're being presented with at the end really isn't it.
Okay, so let's move on to the final, the final unbound release that we're looking at across these two episodes.
We've not quite done it in order because we lumped together those who the doctors who got two stories in the last episode. But the one we've got last now is of course Exile, which was the last of the original run I guess before the two bonus ones came along.
Rather good concept for the time. What if the doctor was a woman? And our Bella Ware is absolutely great, you know, brilliant bit of casting, really, really good choice.
But there's just too much of this story that's just a little bit.
It's unfortunate the right word.
The concepts of gender swap is a punishment by the Time Lords for a Time Lord killing themselves is a bit yuck.
I think it's fair to say.
And it kind of it takes various sort of sensitive topics and approaches them with the subtlety of a inflated comedy mallet.
And I don't want to say it completely and totally doesn't work for me because like I say that I'm really glad that they went in 2003.
Let's explore the doctor being a woman.
It's a really good start and it took way over 10 years after that for it to actually happen on TV.
And it's probably something, if we're all honest, that should have happened in the 80s. They should have given it a go and rip the bandaid off back then.
And, you know, it tries to do something interesting with it.
It tries to create a situation where something is done with that concept outside of the doctor is a lady now.
And I'm not convinced the TV show did that when it came along.
It was just business as usual.
Whereas this didn't go down the business as usual route.
This went down the well, let's try and pin it to a concept route.
I'm just not convinced it's the right concept and I'm not convinced it's executed in the right way.
It's the other thing that's worth mentioning is it's got David Tennant in it, but that's all I've got for exile, I'm afraid.
Gareth, do you want to pick up the baton?
So I think when you break this down into atoms, right, when you break it down to its all its little bits, I think there's plenty about this that could have worked.
So we've got the doctor as a woman. We know this found an audience because it did when they eventually did it on TV.
The doctor in a domestic setting, because that's a major part of this.
We know that works. We've had episodes about that.
I tend to find them very enjoyable as it happens.
You know, I thought the power of three was very good.
I didn't particularly love the ending of that episode, but I thought the domestic stuff in that was really fun.
And also kind of the major one is what if Doctor Who was a knockabout comedy, just like full on, it's a comedy.
That's been done before. It's been done very well. It's been done by Big Finish, so it can work.
The problem, I think, and of course this is all subjective, so there are people out there who love this and that's good for them.
I'm glad somebody likes everything.
The kind of humor in this, I think, falls flat.
I think it comes down to it's a very mean-spirited kind of humor.
And I don't think it's trying to be, you know, I think it's trying to be a good time. It's a comedy.
But I think we're generally invited to be laughing at everyone in this.
And there's this kind of accidental kind of nastiness to it.
And kind of what I mean, I mean, you've touched on it already, kind of talk about ripping the bandaid off.
I mean, the worst joke in this is that the doctor's sex change is a result of suicide.
I mean, it's just that's, you know, that's not that's something that needed to go through more people.
I think I don't know what the creative process was like on this story.
What it reminded me of was creative writing classes and things by which I mean, sometimes a person,
and I include myself in this, would come up with something that they think is incredibly funny.
And they have every reason to think it's funny. They've written it. They've made themselves laugh.
They thought this is great. And then they hand it in and it just dies.
Like no one laughs. And you kind of immediately go, oh, right.
This is this is 2am funny. This isn't actually funny.
And I feel like a lot of this is it needed that kind of stony faced response to kind of go,
we could take another whack at this. Like, is this funny or is this kind of so?
So case in point, you know, you've got the unfortunate, very unfortunate change of sex for the doctor.
We don't need to keep going back to it.
The main gist of what's happening to the doctor in this is that she is doing a menial job in a supermarket,
which is I don't think there's a tremendous amount of comic fodder there.
But, you know, there could have been. I don't think we really get much out of it.
The doctor drinks a lot constantly. And drinking a lot means burping a lot means throwing up a lot.
Now, from a production point of view, I can think of fewer greater turnoffs just just for me,
you know, listening to that as I was the few weeks ago when we went round to listen to this again.
Yeah, there were moments where I'm just like, oh, take the headphones off.
Like, stop this. And it just really made me think this feels like out of time.
This reminds me a lot of kind of late 90s sitcoms, which, you know, and I don't say that in a kind of derogatory way,
like, oh, so therefore it equals bad. I just mean it's a style that has really gone away.
Like, it's a laddish humor where people are kind of way getting drunk is, you know, it's like this.
And talking about the fact that we got so drunk that we threw up is inherently funny. I don't think it is.
Yeah, I don't think there's a lot of inherently funny stuff happening here.
There's a lot of kind of flailing and kind of trying to be funny and like, you know, loud noises and burping and puking.
And that means spiritedness as well. I mean, you've got these two Time Lords, Toby Longworth and David Tennant,
and they're kind of walking around the countryside dressed in these silly 70s outfits, trying to look for the doctor.
And even their dialogue, you know, some of the things they say, there's some obviously I'm not going to say it because we don't really do swear words on this podcast.
There's a bit where one of them refers to President Flavia as a B word, and it just feels tremendously like, oh, like, why are we saying that?
That's just feels I'm not like, how dare you say that about my Flavia? I don't care about that character.
It's just it feels like a randomly nasty thing. And it's supposed to be funny because we're like, oh, I can't believe a Time Lord said a rude word.
But I don't think it's earned. Like we're talking about swear words. Deadline has a fantastic example where there's a bit where I might get the scene wrong.
Sorry if I do. Derek Jacobi's character is talking to his kind of imaginary Susan,
and she's trying to endear herself to him because she is just this kind of projection of everything that he wants in like a granddaughter figure.
And she says, oh, don't you know me? I'm your granddaughter.
And he's not going to say a swear word, but he says, well, I don't know you. So bleep off.
And that moment is so inappropriate. And, you know, kind of the worst thing he can say to that character at that time,
that is very funny because it's, you know, it's it's inappropriate in that context.
But you can imagine that character saying it. All of the the kind of equivalent stuff in Exile,
I feel is just kind of there because it's meant to be just like a surface level of funny.
And that's it. You know, you're surrounded with all this this kind of laddish stuff, burping, puking.
I barely remember the plot. I just don't think there's much to it.
And it ends with another of our kind of bleak endings.
And I, you know, I think they've all got something to really say, you know, like four, five and five.
Even he jests at scars, which you know, had had criticisms of and deadline.
They've all got these kind of, oh, God, kind of, you know, pausing for thought endings where you're like, wow,
Doctor Who doesn't normally end here with this one.
It's the doctor getting kind of tricked into vaporizing herself and the other two characters just laugh.
And that's it. We're just kind of invited to find that funny.
And it's just. You know, it's not a very nice reading of the character.
It's a strange reading of the Time Lords.
And it's just that's that's how that character goes out.
And it's a very uncomfortable moment, to be frank.
And yes, so it's great to have Arabella here.
But I kind of feel like, well, we're not serving her terribly well with this,
because we're kind of saying this is the doctor as a woman.
What an abject failure, you know, because she gets, you know, whoopsie poo tricked into vaporizing herself.
Yeah, I mean, it's it's it's it's something I really I really struggle with with trying to kind of describe in a in a positive context.
And, you know, it's not fun to kind of just beat something up.
But it's genuinely without I don't mean to be malicious,
but genuinely I think this one should have gone back to the drawing board and just been like, what's you know, all right, we can have the doctor.
Because I think there is a tremendously good piece of irony buried in this, which is the whole purpose of this.
Right. The actual what if not the comedy, not the female doctor, the actual what if, which I think is printed on the back is the doctor has avoided her exile at the end of the war games.
Right. And in doing so has exiled herself.
And I think there is something to that.
There's there's something bleakly funny about the fact that the doctor has honestly got so much of a worse existence
because of the choice that she made than if she'd just gone along with it and become John Pertwee and met Joe Grant and all of that.
That would have been more fun. I think there's a tremendous irony to that that could could be funny.
I don't know what exactly you do with it, but I don't feel like the story really even notices it.
I don't think it's really picked up, particularly in the story.
So, yeah, it's as a as a treatment, I think it probably had promised.
But I think it feels like a not great draft that, you know, just just start again, really.
And I know that sounds awfully pompous coming from, you know, fans.
What do we know about professional writers?
But it's just one of those things where I'm surprised no one on the production kind of went, are we sure about this?
I don't know if this works.
But, yeah, maybe that's that speaks to Unbound and kind of says, well, they took swings and this is a very big swing and a miss.
But, you know, I'm still glad they made crazy choices like this.
And maybe law of averages, one of them was bound to Unbound to lose me.
But, yeah, it's a real uphill one, this.
Yep, can't disagree on that.
I think the big the big point to take away from it is that at least the experimental range is doing something experimental.
So I think that that's sort of the best swing.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And it's at least they took the swing.
At least they have tried it.
It's just it is a miss.
Yeah. Mark, add anything you want to.
Yeah, a couple of mild positives, just 11 things.
Although I think I think you did a good job of emphasizing a few positives yourself there.
Gareth and Johnson both but minor slightly more frivolous perhaps.
But I'm or at least this one is kudos to Nick Briggs for managing to sneak in a little stealth reference to the TV movie because he the doctor at one stage talks of how because they spot this guy in the pub.
the pub you see. And she has suspicions that this guy is the master. And I listened to
this like a couple of months ago. That's my recollection anyway. So I've listened to it
back in 2003 as well and not in between. But yes, so she's listening. She says something
like, oh, he has many, he goes by many names, John, Eric, Robert, Sam. And it's like, oh,
hold on. He just said Eric, he got Eric Roberts in there by stealth, which I thought like
big tick for that. That was clever, you know, and subtle. In a play of non-subtle, that
was superb. But also I have to say like on a slightly more serious note, it was a laudable
thing to do, A, to have a first serious go to female doctor and B, to make that first
female doctor somebody who's not a grand standing presence. You know, I'm not saying, you know,
you could risk sort of doing gender essentialism here and saying, oh, you know, all men are
this and all women, you know, men are from Mars, women are from Venus and whatever. But
at the same time, it is quite an interesting approach to say, let's not just do a female
doctor who is, as you were saying, business as usual, but let's make her somebody who
has the wit to be low profile and incognito and, you know, under the wire and prepared
to sort of go deep cover domestic life and so on, albeit in a state of misery, abject
misery. But then you have to wonder why she's hanging out with these people because they're
absolutely intolerable. I mean, I understand the intention was to sort of say, look, these
are real earthy, the early 21st century people, they work in Tesco, they like their Friday
night binge drinking and they go home and they watch the X-Files and bat on whatever
that means. And they have a guy whose name is Cheese because he, if he gets past the
sixth pint, all beer starts to taste like cheese to him. And this is supposed to be
hilarious. And we've talked about, we've already talked about the objectionable burping and
vomiting and all the rest of it. Very, oh, and one of the things I think that's hard,
even the very, very best of actors would struggle. I think they probably hate doing drunk acting
because it's an incredibly difficult thing to do well. And they will usually do it in
small doses. And this thing is so much drunk acting in it that it is just like cringey
from nearly minute one. I will confess though, that pre-titled sequence, when I started listening
to this again after many years, I listened to that pre-titled sequence and I laughed
straight away and I thought, oh, maybe I've misremembered this. Maybe this is actually
hysterically funny. Or maybe it was just me at the time. And now I'm about to just spend
the next hour just absolutely corpseing here. But no, it really was just that first bit
with the, I think it was sort of the fastidious admin of those two time lords and the kind
of embarrassed, oh, we have to do this. And then the guard comes in and it turns out she's
escaped and they're like, oh, into the title sequence. And then that little bookend at
the end where they're having been through all the sort of pursuits and traps and all
the rest of it, they're like, they give this little embarrassed, oh, hello again. It's
that kind of, that side of it made me, the mannered sort of side of it made me laugh
much more than the really broad brushstrokes, like as you say, late 90s kind of laddish
humor. I think I remember at the time, I could be, no, I'm pretty sure this is the case.
I do remember there being, because you tend to think of it as a revisionist view of it.
I don't think it went down particularly well at the time, but I don't think some of the
criticisms that would be leveled out at night in terms of, how would you put it? That thing
about the suicide causing the gender change being problematic, I can actually see, because
in my head, I was carrying that around for the last few years anyways, well, that's a
misogynistic thing. Although I know Nick Briggs isn't himself inherently misogynistic or anything
like that. I know that's not who he is, but something in the script ended up that way.
And yet, presumably that gender change could go in either direction. So it's not, I don't
think his intention was to sit, so it's just unfortunate that it's problematic. And yeah,
as you said, it should have maybe gone through a few other checks and balances before it
was done that way. But yeah, overall, the thing is, I'm not sure, to be honest with
you, I'm not sure whether this is the worst one for me or whether, because at least it
feels like it has compared with, I'm so sorry, it's names gone out of my head now, the Michael
Chastain one. He just had scars. He just had scars. Compared with that, it at least feels
like it has tonal shifts, changes of scene, a variety of voices, even if some of those
voices are grating. I say that consciously, maybe my own voice is quite grating to some
listeners, I don't know. But I'm talking as a listener to an audio drama, so I have to
be honest about that. But yeah, I don't know, something just, oh yes, what I was going to
say was I seem to remember Nick Briggs writing sometime afterwards that he had been so hurt
by reactions to, I think it was exile, that he was very nearly ready to quit writing altogether.
And he came back and wrote something else. And he was, I think this is in either the
liner notes for something, or maybe in one of those big Finnish CD magazines back in
the day. I certainly remember either hearing or reading him say that it had affected him
badly, the very negative reaction to this thing. Some kind of voice has coaxed him back
to have another go and he was happy. And so he was ready to fight or write another day.
So I suppose it's one of those things where he wrote it, thought it would go down a storm
and find it was like a lead balloon. And obviously took that to heart a bit, and you can understand
why, but it's, yeah, it's just not good. So nobody sets out to write anything awful, just
ends up that way sometimes.
Yeah, I mean, it's worth saying that I've enjoyed lots that Nick Briggs has written.
So I find it quite sad to think that he could respond to the feedback to this.
For me, Creatures of Beauty is a 10 out of 10. That was one of my very favorite early
big Finnish's, Creatures of Beauty. And it still is, that's still a 10 out of 10 story
to me. So he absolutely has his good days.
I think that's what it is. It's just sometimes, and this can go for any writer, sometimes
there are scripts that are just, well, I guess that wasn't the one. I think anybody is capable,
any good writer is capable of handing in something that just doesn't work. I mean, I always think
of an example of this is Strangely Back to the Future, which I think most people universally
love. But if you ever hear the production of that, there are these elements to it that
got pruned and taken out. And this includes terrible jokes. There are some really, really
there's some rough stuff on the deleted scenes for that movie and there are ideas. And you
just imagine, so many things had to go right for that to be as good as it is. I mean, it's
weird how many things had to go right. You could throw it off balance. And it's just
the inverse of that is that sometimes there are ideas where there weren't all those corrections
and it's just, you know, it's a shame. But I think sort of as a company producing off
audio drama, eventually there'll be one that most people tend not to like. So yeah, you
know, I'm glad he didn't stop and I've enjoyed it. I mean, I'm a mutant phase man myself.
I think that's probably one of my favorites of his, but, and Dalek Empire. But yeah, you
know, sometimes it's a miss. Yeah, that's hopefully he's okay with it now.
Like you say, you know, it's easy for us as fans. I certainly couldn't do any better myself.
I couldn't write a story to save my life. But, you know, I guess one has to be honest
about exercising critical faculties in terms of, you know, you can, hopefully at this point
I can tell good writing from bad and good days from bad in terms of what went right
and what went wrong. And, you know, everything's a learning curve. You know, he wrote some
great stuff around that time. And maybe just, maybe ironically, it was a deadline thing.
You know, you had to get something in. So that's what it was.
Sorry, I thought you meant literally deadline.
No, I see what you mean. Yeah, it could have been a, we've got a certain window to work
with. Yeah, maybe.
Well, if nothing else, you know, it does get points for trying, like I said before, to
do something different and to at least, you know, one thing it can't be accused of is
being a generic Doctor Who story or, you know, another run around for the Daleks or a rom
or any of these words that are thrown to sort of categorize Doctor Who stories. It's very
unique. It's trying to do something different. But ultimately, I think we've just, it's missed
the mark.
We'll never forget it. It has that going for it.
That's, yeah, absolutely. But that's, I mean, this has become another long episode. So we
could probably discuss it further for hours, but I suspect the best thing for everybody
involved is to leave it there. But it's a thoroughly interesting range, Unbound, and
I'm glad it exists. I'm glad it does have its ups and downs, because I think that in
a range like this, I would much rather see experimentation that goes wrong and doesn't
quite produce the results we want than what if a normal Doctor Who story happened, but
it was a different act of playing the Doctor. And that's not what we've got here in any
of these stories at all. They're all very different. They all do something interesting
with their concepts. They all try and, I guess, kind of really play up to it. And as a result,
it is very, very unique. We've not got much other Doctor Who like this. You know, I said
he just had scars, is a little bit turned lefty and big finish, you've done elsewhere
as well and blah, blah, blah. But ultimately, it's still a pretty unique approach even to
that idea. And as we've pointed out, it did it first. So yeah, that's that's that's
podcast Unbound complete. We've we've sort of it has been a bit of an odyssey, hasn't
it? It's been two very long episodes, but we've it's been nice to sort of deconstruct
a very unique piece of big Finnish history. And we have had other Unbound stuff. We have
had other things released under that label. We're going to have more things released under
that label. But I think ultimately, the original six that became eight adventures do something
that we hadn't seen before. And I think it's fair to say we haven't seen since, for better
or worse in some cases. So I will say a huge thank you to Gareth. Thank you. Bye for now.
And a huge thank you to Mark. Cheers. Bye. And we will be back for more spodcasting back
in the normal universe very soon. Goodbye now.