You're listening to a podcast of Spurious Morality. Hooray! Marvelous!
Hello and welcome to a podcast of Spurious Morality. This week we are going to start
looking back at the current era of Doctor Who. So that's going from the Star Beast onwards when
Russell T Davies came back to the show and we're going to split this up over three episodes,
starting off this week with a look at the 60th anniversary episodes. We have looked at these
before but we are changing up the people we've got on the podcast and also time has passed
so some of our thoughts about these episodes might have changed over the years as well.
So today you have Mark. Hello. And you have myself. And like I said we're going to start
off by talking about the 360th anniversary episodes featuring David Tennant and Catherine
Tate returning to Doctor Who. But before that we'll start off by going back to before they
were broadcast and I was struggling to remember some of this myself but like what was it like
in that period of anticipation before they actually were broadcast? Like Mark do you remember
anything about the announcement and the
2022 would have been? So the timing felt very on point but it was also just incredibly exciting
because this news just came out of the blue. I don't think anybody was expecting it. It was
just like one minute was not known about the next it was on the BBC website and people were kind of
going mad for it. Like I think it's fair to say that the despite anticipation around Jodie Whittaker's
finale and the return of you know 80s companions which you and I are very excited about and all of
that stuff I think the overall feeling of the Chimneyra was something of Doctor Who hitting
the doldrums for a little while and not quite you know kind of losing its mojo a bit and just this
idea of Russell T. Davis suddenly being back it was like you know the second coming no pun intended
and there he was and he was going to inject this thing with a whole new lease of life and you could
imagine that he's not the sort of guy that would just come back and regurgitate his old stuff. He
would come back having ingested the last lot of years of television and even bring his own
evolution in writing from things like years and years back to which I think you do see
splashes of it in RTD too. So yeah I remember much excitement from well in advance and just thinking
gosh what is this going to be like and then there was rumors of Disney money coming in. I can't
remember at what point that was confirmed but it was this big build of anticipation and he was saying
quite early on I think he was talking about scripts he'd already written for not the specials but
further down the line and he was saying we've never written stuff like this before or I've
never written stuff like this before the show's never done stuff like this before we're going into
whole new areas. Now that led my brain down certain paths that ultimately weren't fulfilled but
that's not to say that what we didn't get didn't impress me because it did. It was just different
to what it led me to believe in terms of how radically different it would be but yeah that's
kind of my little stream of consciousness on that. Yeah I remember yeah I was trying to think back
and think about what the sequence was of like when we found out. So I think there was rumors
about this floating about well before the official announcement and then the stuff about Disney
it sort of came out slowly as well and there was a bit of confusion at first of
oh are they just a distributor or are they actually involved in funding and co-production and
and if that's the case how much creative control do they have. I feel like some of that came out
over time. You're right there was a lot of speculation over many of the podcasts ours and
others about that so yeah it was at forums and things so there was a lot of unknowns but yeah
it was certainly it certainly provided a lot of talking point while we waited for it to
we waited with you know with more impatience than anything for the thing to come along you know
because it always takes time to but then it seemed to be burning no time at all before we were seeing
would that have been when we're seeing footage of Bernard Cribbins and Catherine Tate and David Tennant
or those leaked sets those leaked set stuff quite early on and then yeah so so I don't know it seemed
to be this simultaneously torturously long wait but also stuff seemed to be also happening very
fast as well and it was just a blur of you know that that was the thing I think it was this feeling
of the typical era of Fairdier unfairly garnered itself a reputation as something that would just
you know it became almost a running joke that you know the most publicity you would get before a
season would be them taking the website down or or putting you know one or two little still images
from Legend of the Sea levels out or something and then all of a sudden there was this sort of
when we're back to the era of Russell T. Davis dropping heavy hints early about forthcoming
things and the whole there was felt like a big sea change you know possibly more than it actually
was but he's a very good yeah I felt that and yeah so and and even even the change from Russell T.
Davis to Moffat first time around Moffat you'd see him in press stuff a lot but like Russell T.
Davis was kind of definitely like the most effusive and and like active I think with engaging with the
press yeah but yeah like so that just thinking about how I reacted to it I was excited and I
remember this sort of expectation or assumption I had was okay cool this is going to be a sort of
nostalgic look back with an old doctor coming back and there's a sort of running joke about how like
regardless who's the current doctor David Tennant is often you know the one that you see on merchandise
and games and things and but he's he's he's very welcome because he's he's a he's a very good doctor
so you know I always look towards him when he's on big finish stuff but I was sort of happy with
that of like okay we're going to do like a finite nostalgic look back round off Donna's story which
was you know has some potential there and then my I thought okay then they're going to just go in
like a very sort of radically different direction after that because again like you said with you
know Russell T. Davis has done a load of other stuff years and years and loads of other dramas
and he himself was talking about how he's not going to come back and do the same thing
so maybe we'll get into that more in next week's episode and see like how much of that panned out
with the 2024 season but that was my thought and yeah so I was going into it like I think like a
lot of fans very sort of energized and enthusiastic and I think overall it met my expectations
but before we jump into looking at the specific episodes the three episodes we're looking at here
are the Star Beast, Wild Blue Yonder and The Giggle all broadcast during the 60th anniversary
year 2023 but the Star Beast was interesting in that it was a adaptation of a very old comic strip
which had also been adapted into a big finish story so first question like what were your thoughts
about the fact that they were adapting this quite well known well regarded comic story?
That is one of my least favorite bits of news to hear is when they say we're going to cannibalize
this existing thing that is already well loved and we're going to sort of arguably overwrite
the long-standing thing with a thing that sort of now belongs to the prime canon or whatever you
know. Now I'm somebody who tries to be as generous in what I include within my head canon as possible
so I will do mental somersaults to make sure that for instance human nature really does happen twice
to the doctor and stuff like that and so when I saw that I thought oh no this is the one that's
going to annoy me most just the fact that it is taking something and unless the doctor shows
recognition of the meep as we now call it beep the meep as we were calling it back then, them
sorry to use the proper pronoun, I don't know I just thought chances are it's going to be like
as though the doctor's meeting the meep for the first time I'm going to have to you know fall back
on that final contingency of oh the time war did this or whatever you know so that kind of thing
bugged me a wee bit but I realized that it's Russell T. Davis doing that thing he has form
in this regard so it's not like he hasn't basically done a sort of a redo of a spearhead
you know in rows just to have something reliably iconic against which to play out the new foreground
elements and I know he also did for instance yeah I mean I referenced human nature there before and
we've had a Rob Sherman story which in my opinion was so radically altered it basically has two
stories anyway you know there's no problem accommodating those in one. That's Jubilee
Jubilee being I mean yeah I mean Terry Notion told the same Dalek story several times in
in the classic series if you think that Jubilee and Dalek are the same story and the other little
bit of you know the other little thing that sneaks in a wee bit more under the radar is
and it slightly treads on the toes of of a bit of expanded universe stuff and it's a story that I
particularly love it's one of my all-time favorite big finishes yeah the other one that kind of snuck
in as part of a little bit of expanded universe stuff was Isaac Newton coming into the the pre-title
sequence of Wild Blue Yonder and you know that that one's easier to reconcile for me I can sort
of imagine okay he doesn't look like David Warner but maybe he put 30 years on him and
uh his voice ages up and he becomes more curmudgeonly and you know there you go there's
your there's your circular time uh David Warner and he still he it's you can just about squint
to make that thing about the apples hitting him full on the face um work you know that Peter
Davidson references references in that story he says oh well I'm a very fast bowler but you can
sort of say okay well that's him uh guessing or intuiting that he was the guy responsible and
uh he doesn't know yet what the what what form that fast bowling took but maybe it was via TARDIS
after all you know um so uh anyway sorry that's my other little expanded universe niggle that came
in I was like ah don't don't don't run circular time just carefully there but they just about got
away with not uh absolutely overriding it or anything so um yeah but the Star Beast was the
main but you were asking sort of in terms of the main I guess the main sort of story beats and stuff
there I think it um it pulled in a fair bit of the iconic stuff from the comic the look of the
meep was very much just ripped from the pages of Doctor Who magazine and that ship looks pretty
much as you see it in in the comic strip too a lot of a lot of other stuff I mean there's nods to
count like fudge who was a main player in the comic strip is just a sidelined observer and um
um in the tv one and stuff like that so it's I guess the time war got involved again yet again
and rewrote something there and either that or the doctor's been mind wiped a few times in the
in the end room whatever it is anyway um this this is is happening in a new form um and actually
one thing it sort of seeded in my mind was it took me down a for a long time I started going
down this breadcrumb trail of thinking that the series was going to do something really really
really out there I'll talk about this more next week because I think more of the the apparent
clues which weren't really clues in the end uh jumped out at me from from the main series but
um I I thought they were going down the line of saying Doctor Who will turn out to be a tv
series and the doctor will find that he's he's in this tv series and that will be the finale of
of in judy's first season and um when that didn't turn out to be the case I was a bit
initially disappointed but that's my own fault for building up a whole theory in my head it wasn't
you know seeing patterns and things that weren't there you know um but uh that that seemed the seed
of that maybe came from from watching the starbeast and thinking ah is he sort of suggesting that
you know the doctor who multiverse is pulling in things from all its different media and you know
um well I don't know I'm not saying it very coherently and I might explain myself better
next week when when the more pertinent examples come up but uh yeah so yeah and and and as I
understand it there are 26 episodes of Doctor Who that have been ordered as part of this disney deal
so where 13 of those have been broadcast so it might be that some of the clues and seeds that
we've seen so far um have yet to to actually um be developed and uh be revealed to be significant
but there's stuff again in yeah if we go on to like talking about more about the starbeast there's
things about the meeps boss I don't that's not been does he have a is his boss in common with
rogues is that I did wonder that when it was mentioned in rogue it seemed too big a coincidence
you know that new boss he refers to doesn't he and it's like it feels um almost conspicuously
throw away if that makes sense yeah um yeah that was yeah so there's definitely I think more more
foreshadowing to be paid off but I mean starting at the start of the starbeast we have this this
recap this intro where you have some narration from the doctor and from donna and as I understand
it that wasn't part of the original script and the original production it was added on afterwards
and it's not awful but I think it shows that it was sort of bolted on to the start um what did you
make of that those first couple of shots I noticed that Rachel talla has come out in recent times
like just in the last month or two and sort of very explicitly said that was not me I
it's it it was you know it doesn't bug me the way it's some some other people think it's a
it's a complete travesty and I don't see it that quite quite like that but it does feel yeah very
grafted on you can tell it's a sort of a a bit of a disney had a word afterwards and said like can you
can you do this is sort of a bit of a I don't know it's just just a little bit of an additional
punching up of the bullet points here you know and um I think Russell T. Davis likes to his general
tendency seems to be towards he does a first episode and there's no cold open or
pre-title sequence or whatever you want to call it and he just goes straight into the titles
especially if they're new ones to sort of grandstand those and those titles are beautiful
by the way well I think they're I think they're the the best ones we've had since the series came
back and the version of the theme too um but uh yeah in this case it seems like that's what he
had in mind and Disney possibly had a little word and said could we have just something to
it's not quite in the realms of the the Paul McGowan voiceover at the start of the tvm but it's
sort of nudging into that kind of arena isn't it yeah a little bit I was wondering that like you
know it's there to help new viewers along but how yeah how disorientated might they be if they've
never seen Doctor Who before I think it's fine I'd like the the bit I find most questionable
or that I would change is just that choice of having the Doctor just floating in a starfield
and I would just change that for like have it him standing by the TARDIS console and maybe
because it was like a a pickup that they were limited with access to sets but um then it would
just mirror mirror Donna sitting at the table and it would it would be a nice setup for this like
casual fourth wall breaking that's becoming a bit of a theme of this this era but where you've just
got him sitting like standing in this void I don't know sort of what to to make of that is that like
just uh I can't it's not a sort of it's not representing something literal he's not sort
of casually standing in space is he so like what is it we're seeing I guess it's maybe sort of
saying here's somebody you know of of the stars I guess even though we're not seeing stars we're
not seeing stars we're just seeing void and here's somebody very much within earthbid existence and
the two are going to come together but it doesn't yeah it doesn't quite mesh in the way maybe it
could the other thing that sort of looks a bit janky I think unavoidably is just the um
how would you say the resolution of a picture these days on tv is so immaculate that when
they throw in these things from these quick very quick clips from you know uh donna's
original flashbacks it kind of looks a bit unavoidably grainy by comparison when you're
seeing them at such close quarters but it's it's it's so blink and you miss it it probably only
jumps out to to the fans more than the casual viewers think that stuff um but then coming on
to the main part of the story book uh so we talked about the aspects around adaptation we talked
about the intro we talked about like our expectations going in what did you make of it as an episode of
doctor who I really enjoyed it uh it's not my favorite of the three um might be my second
favorite um but it's uh it it does a great job of just it comes back with real energy
there's there's the doctor he's he's kind of um he's he's he's the 14th doctor he's not the 10th
right you know and they and they kind of show you quite so some little subtle differences there
early on and how he's conducting himself he's more low-key he's uh he certainly looks older um he can
be a little bit more reserved a bit um and he has slightly different attitudes and takes and things
and yet there are familiar uh catchphrases and and modes of behavior there too so it's it's an
interesting hybrid of a thing and um you know just it just seems to flow beautifully from that from
that moment where he lands and then suddenly you you know you're into those beautiful night time
scenes in Camden you've got Donna there you're very quickly introduced to the family um and uh
when the meep shows up um it's it's just it's just really good fun from there because um
it's the meep's so well voiced by um Miriam Markleys and um Donna's comedy timing around
all of that that realization that that it's not a toy at all that is so it's so good i i i love
the stuff there's my favorite favorite moment that's jumping right to the end really is just
that bit where the doctor you know the the the realization has been dawning between
with Donna that the doctor has some significance in her life and they find themselves just in it's
it's that sort of almost it's almost an echo of um you know uh Bernard Cribbins of the you know
the Fornock scenario trapped between the glass um there they are on either side of this this
bifurcated um control room and he has no choice but to get her involved and become the doctor
Donna again and it's just that moment where he starts to recite those um that little sequence
of words that are just total non-sequiturs but there's so much poetry and just the way it's
done and delivered and you know Mexico and Dante grief you know he's he's and he the two of them
just play that so beautifully and it's it's and then and then to manage to tie that into the
relatively arbitrary i imagine at the time binary thing and then make it something much more of
2023 was was genius to do that um i know some people like their roller eyes at that but then
they will roll their eyes at anything these days that even has the same list hint of of uh
walker as they would call it about it but um no i just i just love that um and uh yeah the whole
the whole thing is just just just it rolls along it's got real energy to it Rachel it's an odd
choice for Rachel Talalay to be the director for that but but maybe in hindsight you'd have almost
expected her to be picked as the director for Wild Blue Yonder because it's it's much more of a you
know a high concept sci-fi thing but actually when you think about it she grinds this very
cartoonish thing in a bit more i don't know she just gives it weight and and um i don't know
balances the equilibrium of the whole thing really well um and i guess she just she just knows she
knows Dr Who and she's like she by that point she directed several episodes so maybe it was
this idea of like a safe pair of hands to yeah relaunch this new era as well but no i agree
like everything you've said and i think like in particular you said about it being like getting
going and being it's really tightly structured in the same way that Rose's it's like um i feel
like nothing's wasted everything's there for a purpose um and uh yeah you know like continuity
issues aside i think the way it reuses the meep story as this backdrop but then also tells
like you know continues the story of the Doctor and Donna is all really really good um Rose
Daughter's um Donna's daughter i think um that's i think she's really good in this episode i'm a
bit disappointed that when she came back at the end of season one that we didn't see more of her
i felt she was a bit and we'll get to that when we get to um that episode but i felt like she
was a bit lost when she came back and i was really looking forward to seeing more of her
at that point uh yeah Miriam Margulies like you said was excellent and i thought she she was like
a really good choice to do both sides of the meep really well like do that cute side and then do the
that transition to um like you know meeps true nature and to do that without any kind of
elaborate vocal effects just do it mainly in the performance um and Sylvia Sylvia was another
highlight for me that like recognisably the same character but because uh um she she's obviously
mellowed a bit in terms of how she is with Donna because she was a little bit harsh and abrasive
with her in uh in series four um and then also with like being very sensitive about how she talks
to or talks about Rose um it shows that you just it just feels like realistic in that you could see
how Sylvia from series four got to this point how she's developed and and grown a bit as a as a
person um oh yeah completely yeah that's um that's a really good point and and uh i think Sean's you
know a really good character as well he's he's so um he's so just accepting of everything he's he's
kind of just the guy you'd need in that situation uh and he provides a fair bit of gentle comedy in
it too i just love that bit where he arrives home and everybody's there's just chaos going on in the
kitchen and um that tuna grass life tuna grass moment yeah exactly um just that the comedy beats
in that there's everybody just his own point with that with that and it was incredible later to
realise that house was um the outside of that house was like a set inside studio to me like at
the time i just assumed it was outdoor shots but uh it was really really convincing that you know
some of the stuff they do with the inside studio now and and uh like that's there's a huge difference
from RTD1 is like they were so much about you know their money saving technique in those days
was to go out on location and and you know use a lot of steam and pipes in the factory to replicate
a spaceship and now they're building houses inside inside warehouses to say look there's
there's an everyday house that we could have gone and filmed outdoors but we've got more
control of it here so yeah interesting i thought the the production looked really good like and
and like watching the behind the scenes stuff um you can see how much thought and effort they put
into blending practical effects with cgi and and the big contrast that comes to my mind with things
like the meep and how they've got you know like a practical version and they've got like a cgi model
um like the contrast with how the sleet slitheen were in their first story where you had like
you know a good a good costume and you had a cgi model but just like the way they moved the way
they looked didn't really gel like um whereas here you don't notice the joins unless you watch the
behind the scenes stuff um so yeah i thought like just and the same with the the rough warriors like
the the the set design costumes you could see it had been elevated a little bit from from where
we were before although having said that they they i've been seeing comments from them recently
saying like there's never enough money and that in the grand scheme of things even with disney
support doctor who is still relatively um cheaper to make than other shows yeah um okay yeah you
you will almost certainly have listened to the same recent radio free scarrow that was but where
it would be yeah and all that from gallifrey where steven moffat that bit where he says there
are no cheap episodes like believe me there are no there's no such thing as a cheap episode um
and and and also yeah doctor who should be getting more money than any other show but it it actually
has always had less and there's just never enough time there's never enough money and
time is money and all that sort of thing so i thought it was a really interesting perspective
he brought he said even you know like boom where you've really just got one set and one
scenario you have to do many more cuts and shots and all sorts of things and lighting things
and so the money haven't sent as the other one yeah i think you mentioned yeah so anyway right
um and by the way i really struggle to rank these three because like one of the things i was
observing just re-watching them is that they are like a really expertly boiled down version of a
russell t davis season where you've got your opener you've got your like um weird sci-fi
episode and then you've got your big splashy finale and they're all i think they're all three of them
really successful at each of those things that they're trying to do so in that sense i find it
hard to like rank them in order um yeah i enjoy all of them um and on that on that topic let's go
on to to wild blue yonder our second episode um and again we have some like interesting continuity
issues raised here and also a lot of setup so we have this thing about gravity and maverty we have
susan twists appearing um we have a massive thing around the weakening of the walls of reality with
the salt and all of that that um seems to have triggered this arc that's running through seasons
one and two uh and also we have looks back to the past so we have the timeless child coming up as
well and i think being handled in a really interesting way um bia what were your thoughts on
on wild blue yonder oh i have so much to say about but well i'll have to rein myself in a bit it is
my favorite of the three and um by some margin i just absolutely love this thing and it was the
mysterious one wasn't it you know when they first when they first put the adverts together and
very little in the trailer you know i was like oh what are these titles going to be and then it was
the one that had like little redacted bits and stuff and you were like what is that what's going
and russell did later say he he worried that you know they were overselling the redacted nature of
it as though some big you know there's going to be some big returning villain there and everybody
was going to be guessing what that was and then when it turned out to be essentially a two-hander
or a four-hander depending how you look at it um he was worried that it was going to be an anticlimax
but i i think that was brilliant to do that you just to keep it really mysterious and so that
when it was what it was it just hits really hard and you're like whoa what the heck you know what
is this and the way the realization creeps in slow that that first moment where tenet sort of slides
down the wall and you just see something something different in the body language it's not quite
there yet but your your brain's kind of going this is the slowness that that's the big thing
and like the notes that i made that keeps coming up is like how all of it like the music and the
character moments and the action it builds and builds and builds and builds slowly until you
get to that like um that you know the big horror moment of them being chased down the the runway
but up until that point it's like a very very and even like the sound design and the music
um because i noticed murray gold uh was doing something different from his normal style and he
was doing something i felt that was a bit more like what sega nakanola would do that kind of
atmospheric music using moments of silence to build up the tension um so so yeah i totally
get what you're saying there about that sort of ramping up of tension and uncomfortableness and
weirdness in the first half he brings in this lovely sort of electronic palette to things early
on it's it's subtle but it's there and and then there's this incredible moment where they send
that kind of lonely probe out you know along the side of the ship and explore on the very the very
edge of space and there's a exquisitely melancholy piece of music that plays with that it's just so
it's haunting and it's and the atmosphere and that moment where the doctor just lent right up
against the glass just just almost daring it to break because he's so mesmerized by just being
further than he's ever been i love all that stuff it's really sold so well um the only kind of issue
i it's a tiny little issue on the audio front that i have is the countdown initially is very hard
to hear until the doctor starts repeating the words i couldn't hear at all what those words were
you know fenslaw and colos and bret as it turns out three two one but um i guess he repeats them
enough times in the episode to fix that issue but it is it is hard to pull out of the sound mix
well so sound mix issues would be quite quite a sort of nostalgic
oh that's true
yeah but but i mean there's uh oh yes you mentioned maverick and stuff at the start there i love that
that just is there now you know that it's the butterfly effect isn't it um which we returned to
in um judy's uh first season um be careful what you do in the past because you will affect the
the future but and i know that's a very marmite thing that that maverick thing some people some
people just seem that it seems to make them grind their teeth and then other people
kind of enjoy it i'm personally quite happy to just enjoy it and i think that's a very
interesting thing that i think that's interesting that the first time it's repeated um the doctor
uses the word gravity and uh donna goes what he goes i mean maverick which suggests that he
being the complex space-time event that he is and can hold both versions of the same
thing and then the doctor says i think that's a very interesting thing that he does for the
whole time like if you don't fathom what they have changedh is it seems to imply human activity
things you know for me sitting down in amusic environment a whole dinner or a day that watch
you know that's for me to recall that experience in the movie wanting to remember and used kind
So yeah, but that whole slowness conceit is brilliant.
I love when Russell T. Davis does that sort of stuff,
you know, where he comes up with that,
it's like, I love the fact that the countdown
is thrown in there really early.
It's like stated in a list of five possibilities countdown.
And that's exactly what it was, a slow countdown.
But because it's given to you,
but then you don't have time to think about it
because so much else is going on the whole way through.
And just incredibly creepy moments that the way,
like those two really shine, Tennant and Tate,
because their counterparts are so creepy and eerie.
And they go, sometimes they're standing there
with a really low energy smirk.
And then other times they're just like ferocious,
you know, like animalistic in the way they,
they're kind of spitting out questions and love it.
Love it, just absolutely love the whole thing.
Oh, and then the bit at the end with the TARDIS
is used like a hoverboard.
That was just such a cool little innovation for me.
I just think like, yes, this is, even if that's, you know,
okay, maybe Russell isn't gonna come back
and revolutionize every aspect of Doctor Who,
but if he comes up with original image, 60 years in,
we've never seen an image like the doctor
pushing the TARDIS along like a skateboard.
Like that's just brilliant.
And somewhere along the line that's popped into his head
in the intervening years, he's gone, I have to,
I have to get that on screen.
I just love stuff like that.
I really, I know I'm gonna go away after this
and think about 50 other things I should have said
because I love the story so much,
but I'll let you talk for a bit, sorry.
No, no, again, like agree with all of that.
Like the performances, yeah, that range of like doing
the sort of slightly off, slightly creepy,
uncanny valley version and then doing that ferocious
animalistic one.
And again, on that theme of it building
and it building that sense of unease and wrongness
in the first half, it doesn't take you long to work out
that these are duplicates because, you know,
it's short in a way that you're seeing two sets
of the Doctor and Donna, so it's kind of quite
an obvious clue.
But the way the performances just make you feel
like really unsettled and the fact that the TARDIS
isn't there as well, that adds to it as well,
like that that's just lost at the start
and it makes you think of like classic stories
like is it Mind Robber or Frontier or where the TARDIS
is lost or destroyed or the Impossible Planet,
which I think this has like some things in common
with as well.
And like when that sort of like touchstone of safety
is gone, it just sort of says like, you know,
all the rules are up in the air in terms of like,
you know, threats and stakes and things.
And the ending, yeah, like it's got this,
so this, I think this story's got elements
of Impossible Planet and also elements of Midnight,
but it also has a lot of that money on show
in terms of spectacle and when it does explode,
you have these like big, ambitious,
ambitiously staged moments.
And the ending, like there's that decision, I think,
that generated a lot of discussion about the doctor
choosing the wrong donor at the end
and then going back and correcting his mistake.
And, but I think that's realistic
because if you're dealing with someone who is a duplicate,
then, you know, no matter how well you know that person,
that there is the chance that you would make a mistake.
And it's like, it's quite a classic doctor thing
to be fallible and then to like fix the mistake
in the nick of time.
Yeah, and it's also, it is that thing of,
when I was first watching that, I thought,
yes, that obviously is the right donor
because that feels televisually like the right answer
to give in that moment.
It's funny because it just is, right?
And that's supposed to be the thing that's human,
but what's equally human, as the doctor pointed out
earlier in the story, is contradiction.
And sometimes you could just give the crappier answer,
you know, and for her life to depend on that,
you know, it was quite something.
You know, it was a real shocker of a decision,
like, you know, a risk, a gamble,
but there are moments, by the way, in this episode,
I don't want to go out of my head and not say these.
There's a, there are two beautiful speeches
and they're kind of given as counterpointing sort of speeches
when each of the doctors, sorry,
when Donna and the doctor are each first encountering,
without realizing they have counterparts,
they're counterparts, and Donna's one is to talk about,
you know, this business of, you know,
they'll come back and they'll visit the alleyway over days,
and, you know, Sean will continue to come for us.
He'll never give up coming back to the alleyway
and her grandfather would come back and all this stuff.
And it's really beautifully done and it's so melancholy,
but the other one, the one that really grabbed me
was the doctor talking about him,
how he wonders what happens to the TARDIS
when it does go into its hostile action displacement mode.
He has this whole beautiful romantic scenario in his head
about how the TARDIS goes
and perches itself in a cliff top somewhere.
And then over generations, cities come and go around it.
And then finally, all that fades away
and all that's left is just the TARDIS sitting,
you know, centuries in,
and then it comes back to find him again.
And when I saw the trailer for the 2024 season,
I saw that shot of the TARDIS on the cliff top
with, you know, covered in moss and lichen
and all that stuff.
And I thought, oh, they're actually doing,
that idea was such a, he was seeding that idea
and they're actually gonna do that for real,
which they didn't quite do in the way he projected there,
but it sort of echoed that.
I thought that was really interesting.
But yeah, so I suppose I better wrap up my thoughts on this
or we'd be talking all night.
But you're right, that thing he does with the salt
seems to be absolutely crucial
because that's the moment, isn't it?
That's the moment where what Russell T. Davis
is going to do this time around with Doctor Who,
the doors are thrown wide open
because it's like, okay, in order to give maximum room
for maneuvering about in the ever evolving zeitgeist here,
we can do magic, we can do, you know, godlike powers,
we can do things that Doctor Who could sort of lean into,
but never as fully lean into before.
And now we're not, it's the scale that's different,
you know, and the room to really stretch the elastic on that.
And it gives us a good in-universe explanation
for like stylistic changes, like just like unexplained
fourth wall breaking or just use of music.
And like, you can kind of cover it with this thing of like,
well, the laws of the universe have changed
because of this.
But the Doctor Who said, I thought that was diegetic,
you know, it kind of makes a sort of sense.
Yeah, in a way that it might not have done before.
Yeah, that kind of thing.
Yeah, we should move on to the giggle,
but just like one more thing I wanted to touch on quickly
was the timeless child, because I thought it was
quite a gracious thing on Russell T. Davis's part,
but also a really interesting thing,
the way that they mentioned that.
And I think the way that they build on it
in quite an emotionally rich way.
So he's not just doing like a continuity reference to say,
yes, the timeless child happened.
He's using it in this really key emotional moment
of the fake Donna trying to break down the Doctor
by using it as a, like a fundamental, vulnerable point
to have a go with.
And that has carried forward into season one.
And I think it's really interesting to think about
that theme of, you know, adoption and identity
and all of that sort of stuff,
for the timeless child brings up beyond all the sci-fi stuff
about the origins of the timelines.
And that's right.
I'm glad you brought that up because that sort of ties in,
again, with that sort of anticipatory period that we had
when people were speculating what Russell T Davis
was going to do.
And a lot of people said, look,
see that timeless child stuff?
He'll not address that.
He'll put that to one side and never talk about it again
because it was a failed experiment and this and that.
And in the end, he was actually incredibly generous
in what he did.
He said, no, I'll take the best of that.
I'll take its emotional resonance.
And, you know, as you said,
and really kind of tease it out
and make something even more of it.
And yeah, that has even further aspects down the road
with Nturi and the church and Ruby Road
and moments like that.
He'll talk even more explicitly and very, you know,
to him, that's such a raw and recent revelation
about his own adoption and so on
that it makes the show new again
because it's like, we didn't know these things,
but they somehow feel more.
And this is, I don't mean to be this,
I don't mean this to be a big criticism of Chibnall.
He just seeded it in a softer way
and then didn't maybe use it to its fullest potential.
Whereas Russell T Davis is now sort of saying,
well, how would that feel?
You know, like how would that sit with the doctor
and how does it affect how he engages with people
and all that sort of thing?
So it's, yeah, it's really interesting.
Yeah.
And I said that was the last thing,
but like one more thing we should acknowledge
is like this is the most significant amount
of Bernard Cribbins that we get
like right at the end of this episode.
I thought you were gonna say the most significant
amount of CGI, but that's amazing.
Some people say it looks cheap, I think it looks amazing.
But yes, Bernard at the end there,
he gets a really lovely scene,
just a lovely bookend to his time on the show.
It's so, it's such a shame that at the start of the gig,
it was so clearly not him
and they're having to really just like work around
the fact that he had died or was too ill to continue.
And I don't know what else I could have done.
It's one of those unavoidable things,
but you still look at it and go, oh, that's not, you know,
it feels so flimsy compared to what we had
of him in the episode before.
And that's a shame, but at least he got one final hurrah
at a dedication.
I think the awkwardness of that bit
at the start of the giggle is worth putting in
like the material that they did have with him
at the end of Wild Beyond.
I wouldn't want to have lost that
for the sake of avoiding that.
100%. That cover.
But let's come on to the giggle then.
I mean, like I said, I feel like these three episodes
do a really good job of replicating
the beginning, middle, and end of a longer season.
And the giggle for me felt like almost like a two-part finale
squashed down into one episode in terms of how much happens.
It's kind of got that feature film or feature length
ambition and scale to it with lots of different locations
and stakes and things.
And we'll talk about as well about like the stuff at the end,
which I think again was the thing that was most focused on
in discussion.
But before we get onto By Generation
and all of that sort of stuff,
what were your thoughts about the story as a whole?
I liked it.
I had, I'd find myself in this position,
which I sometimes do,
and you'll understand this is a hardcore fan as well.
A thing that got online, which purported to be the,
basically the sort of storyline,
a synopsis of the overall storyline.
I read this thing at my own risk and found on watching it
that much of it turned out to be true.
Now that didn't ruin the viewing experience for me
because I can handle that.
It's like I said, it was my decision and the telling,
the actual experience of how it's done
is always somewhat different to what you pictured
in your head when you saw the bullet points anyway.
But yeah, so I had that thing where,
why did we leave the honor of being the one that blew me away
with just the unknown, right?
Absolutely captivating me.
Starbeast had been familiar.
The giggle was familiar for different reasons,
but that was my own self-inflicted fault.
But yeah, I thought it was a really good,
solid way to end that trilogy of The Fourteenth Doctor.
And the Toymaker returning was,
wow, it's just one of those things
you just couldn't have anticipated being the case.
And then suddenly it's like, yeah, of course,
it does make sense.
Because if we're in this new era
of there could be God-like beings,
he would be one of the most powerful ones to come back.
The stuff I really like most is kind of the bits
around the bi-generation at the end.
And that whole bit of where the doctor becomes
his own therapist and everything,
all that stuff is where it really culminates
into something transcendent for me.
And before that, it's kind of, I don't know,
in a strange way, the opening, say 15 to 20 minutes
feels most like Russell T. Davis II impersonating RTD1.
That's where it feels like it's like,
oh, we are in a bit of a retread here,
but I guess it's more forgivable
in this context of the 60th anniversary,
sort of playing familiar tropes.
But I'm still not sure what to think
of the massive new unit headquarters.
It works really well for the final scene
with a big laser gun and everything.
But yeah, this big sort of sky palace thing that they're in,
I don't know what I think of that set or the setup.
That bit where I love the fact
that when he first encounters Mel,
he's almost walked right past her
before he twigs who he's just spoken to.
It's a lovely moment of,
because the doctor, he's such a genius,
but he can be so clueless in the moment too,
where it's just like, it takes him 30 seconds to go,
wait, was I just speaking to Melanie Bush?
It's like, I love moments like that
that really kind of break the tension.
And RTD is really good at just putting those in
at exactly the right moments
to sort of just make the thing sing a wee bit more.
Yeah.
Yeah, the new setup for unit is interesting.
And I feel like,
because Russell D. Davis has talked about this
before he came back about how
Doctor Who should be aping the Marvel Studios model,
and it felt maybe a bit on the nose
to evoke Avengers Tower so much with that unit building.
But I think in isolation, it looks really good.
I like the new unit setup.
I think Kate is used
in a really effective way in this episode.
And actually related to that,
one of her best moments is,
I really like just the concept of the giggle.
This idea that it's tapping into modern issues
around paranoia and anger and disinformation
and fake news and all of this,
it was very topical,
but also we mentioned years and years at the start,
I felt it was like pulling on exactly those sorts of themes
about politics and division
and the dynamics of that.
And then the way that that is connected to Kate
is she's used an example of what happens
if you take that inhibitor off.
And that was a really effective way of saying,
look, even good people or people that you like
are not invulnerable to this disease of,
yeah, like anger and division.
Yeah.
So we're sort of peak that right now, aren't we?
In 2025, it feels even kind of prepped.
It does have that years and years thing of saying,
how much worse can it get?
Well, things begin to seem less science fiction
and more, oh my God, that was just around the corner.
But yeah, I agree with you.
Like the bi-generation stuff
and the therapy stuff at the end,
that's the bit that I think of first
and that I find most compelling.
But I think the rest of the story is really good as well.
I think Neil Patrick Harris is really, really strong
with the quite different reinterpretation of the Toymaker.
Like I said, it's got that sort of ambition.
And again, you can see the money with the special effects
and the number of locations and I think it's a really solid
finale that then has this.
And this is like one of the things I was thinking about
looking back on it is that this is like,
and actually I think I thought this at the time,
that it's kind of a really nice coda
to the whole of the Doctor story up until that point,
because you have this bi-generation,
you have one Doctor who goes off to just have a happy ending
and you have another Doctor who carries on.
And that moment when he's sitting around the table
with Donna and her family,
that feels like in another world,
it could be the last ever scene of the TV series,
that it's not this like overly dramatic final battle
with the Daleks and death.
It's just this, what is the line?
He says, I've never been so happy in my life.
And that's, yeah, I think everything that got to that point
in those last few scenes was really incredible.
Yeah, I agree with that 100%.
Although it does, I've been thinking,
obviously since broadcast, I've been thinking,
how does it actually work?
Because in shooting arrives and he's like, okay,
I already have the benefits of your therapy
intrinsically in me.
So when Tennant shuffles off his mortal coil, as it were,
does he just get reabsorbed sort of somehow back into the
regeneration? It's really vague.
Yeah, I had the same question in my notes.
Does the 14th Doctor loop back and get absorbed back?
Because, okay, so there's a couple of things
that imply that.
The fact that the 15th Doctor can just fly off,
it suggests that he has in his own personal past
had that therapy and time to rest and heal.
And also, and I don't know if this is just like
vague phrasing, but Donna has a line where she says,
he's younger because you came after him.
So again, that implies that the 15th Doctor is actually
older than the bio-generated 14th.
Yeah, yeah.
Because.
I think that is supporting evidence.
I'm not completely convinced.
It's ambiguous.
What I mean to say is that that's definitely the way it would,
that's the only way it can work by logical deduction.
I'm not completely sure if Russell T. Davis has thought
that through in exactly that way.
I'd like to think so, but I'm beginning on occasion
to wonder, does he cross all the I's and dot all the T's
on this stuff?
He said some very confusing things at the time, I remember,
because he was, and this might have just been like hyperbole
and just like getting carried away in that, again,
that thing of like engaging really well with the press.
But I remember him saying things about, oh yeah,
it's retrospective and there's all these like
bio-generated classic Doctors out there.
And on one level, that's quite a lovely idea
because you could have like those classic Doctors
coming back to film new stories and it doesn't matter
that they look older because it's the bio-generated version.
But then also it raises like a million questions
and it doesn't answer that central question of like,
yeah, does the 14th Doctor loop back into the 15th
when he dies or does he continue off as a separate branch
and you end up with like infinite Doctors
because you're just doubling every time.
Yeah, does Tom Baker really get up and just wander off
into the dark dimension or something?
I don't know.
And also it kind of, maybe if I think about this,
over a longer time I'll become more accepting of it.
But it slightly cheapens the idea of,
you have your Doctor and then that Doctor,
death does claim a part of the Doctor each time.
The emotional impact of that Doctor dying and regenerating
is you will never see them again.
They've had their time and there isn't this sort of
bonus version sort of thing.
Does the bonus version bio-generate again as well?
Or do they have a different status from the main version
or the new version?
I don't know.
I love talking of doubling up though.
I love that thing with the mallet, just creating,
you know, you get a prize honey and then the second
TARDIS and all that.
Love it, absolutely love it.
It's such a Russell T. Davis idea.
You can just see, I think he's a very visual thinker
sometimes, before he puts words to the keyboard
he just says this, he'll see something like that in his head
and the kinetic energy of it.
He's like, I've got that.
He'll have drawn it before he's written it,
you know what I mean?
And it's one of those.
And I just thought that that really worked so well on screen.
So yeah, and then just that parting of the ways
of the two Doctors and I guess by implication
in the looping back to become, so yeah,
presumably the 14th Doctor's TARDIS has kind of a limiter
on it where it knows to take him only
to the non problematic places.
Do you know what I mean?
Like he's no longer the cosmic player.
He's the guy that nips off to New York for the weekend
and does a bit of shopping and it's nice.
Yeah, am I imagining it or was there some comment
like some behind the scenes comment about the significance
of which is the original TARDIS and which is the copy
and how that will come back at some point?
What was that like fan discussion?
What's this spit?
Well, it's the other thing.
Like, you know, we have these completely unsubstantiated,
unconfirmed rumors that Shruti is leaving.
But then that raises the question if that is true,
is David Tennant gonna pop back in to close that loop
or resolve that plot thread or we just never gonna see
David Tennant's 14th doctor again?
I think if you're gonna repeat that thing,
yes, David Tennant was exactly the right guy
to guarantee the bums on seats and all that for the 60th
and he deserved his lap of honor and all the rest of it
before taking a plunge into the new stuff.
But I think if you were going to have to,
and in this case it would be a contingency plan
rather than a sort of a celebratory thing,
to fill a void between why they work out what to do next.
I think you would go for,
you'd bring back Matt Smith, wouldn't you?
Or you, do you know what I mean?
You'd think for that next one.
That's interesting in itself,
but my thought was more about closing the loop
on some thing of like,
the 15th regenerates into the 16th,
but in that process of that happening,
somehow the 14th is involved and how do you do that?
And I don't know how it would work.
But yeah, that's another really interesting question.
If there was like a transition period again,
yeah, I agree, but Matt Smith.
The fact that they've supposedly unlocked a finale
to do a significant reshoot suggests something,
whether it's, a lot of dramatic deductions could be made
and I'm not saying that Jidi hasn't sort of said,
like I've waited long enough and I have to get on with my
career, but it could be just, you know,
Disney had some notes and those notes take time to film.
Right.
Yeah, and as I say, it's all speculation at the moment,
but interesting speculation.
Oh, one slide.
I love the 15th doctor's theme that gets introduced.
I think that's maybe my favorite doctor's theme
that's been introduced since the series came back.
I just absolutely adore that piece of music that is now
his iconic leitmotif or whatever you call it.
Yeah, it's so good.
It fits him spot on.
It feels like chaos or something.
It's really good.
Yes, and we don't get loads of him,
but I feel like we get enough to get a good sense
of who he is and obviously that gets picked up
in the next Christmas special and season one,
but I thought they did a good job of,
because it's a delicate balancing act to not overshadow
your brand new doctor by overlapping so much
with David Tennant, but I think they pulled it off.
Okay, let's do some final looking back then.
I think we've talked a bit already about like how we've
sort of thought about this stuff and how our views
on some stuff might have changed,
but anything more you wanted to say on that?
And also like how well did these three specials work
as a celebration of the 60th anniversary?
Because I've got some thoughts on this that basically
Power of the Doctor I think is a better
anniversary celebration, even though it was a year early,
but what are your thoughts?
Yeah, it was notionally the, ironically it was
the 100th anniversary of the BBC celebration, wasn't it?
It might've been the one where Stokey Bill
could have been more appropriately put in,
but although I suppose we haven't yet reached 100,
well, I mean this year we wanted 125 years
of television stuff from the BBC,
but yeah, I see what you're saying,
and to some extent you're right,
but I do think that if you're,
one doesn't want to be too backward looking,
even in celebrating, so it's kind of like,
okay, here's David Tennant taking a bite,
but he's not the 10th Doctor, he's the 14th Doctor,
so there's the new, the old, it's all mixed together,
there's a feeling of this show has energy left in it,
it's creative, tanks are not empty,
they're very far from empty,
and there's a little balance between
celebrating the things you know
and moving on from the things you know,
and I thought that was pretty perfectly judged,
it's kind of a bit like when Big Finish did Zagreus
instead of the light at the end or something,
it's more that kind of vibe when you wanna kind of go,
let's not do too much of what we've done before,
let's give it a flavor of the now as well,
I guess it's a bit of a
as well, I suppose it's RTV coming back
and giving more of a spotlight to his era
than Doctor Who overall as a 60 year thing,
but he's not not doing that because he's,
William Arnold actually appears in there
and we've got things like that,
so it's pretty balanced for anyone, yeah.
Because the whole thrust of these three specials
was wrapping up Donna's story,
or one big thrust of it was,
so in that sense, it's like,
it isn't covering the whole history of the show
and it's just picking up on that one particular
very important thread,
but actually the thing that we were talking about before
about how it's this kind of like,
in a really nice happy ending for the Doctor,
I think that's one way that you can tie it back
to being a celebration of the whole show,
that it's like a full stop or a coda
to the whole 60 year story that we've heard so far.
Yeah, I think that was a really nice thing to say about,
it could literally, that scene with Henan
around the table with Mad Auntie Mel and all those ones,
could really just genuinely be where it all stops,
and it would feel nice, it would just be a nice,
a nice thing to do, but yeah,
one other thing I was just gonna say,
in terms of high anticipation ultimately resolved in,
what's the kind of retrospective feeling
about how it turned out?
There's a, this is gonna maybe seem like an odd thing
to pull in at this point, but there's a sort of
a long running thing on YouTube where every so often
somebody will put together a little red dwarf titles version
of the Doctor Who, of a particular Doctor Who season,
with the little clips, put to the red dwarf music,
and some of those work better than others,
but one of the best ones I've seen,
maybe one of, maybe the best one I've seen is,
there's one for an insure-y season,
and there's one for these specials,
and the imagery in those just somehow seems to fit perfectly.
There's something big and cartoonish and bold,
and the spaceships feel cavernous,
but also there's little studio bound bits,
and something about the feel of it feels like,
I don't know, it's a universe in which you wouldn't be
surprised to see Starbuck turn up in or something,
it's that kind of vibe, and yeah,
so I just wanted to throw that in because I'm not sure
how to describe the overall vibe of what we've had,
and there's a full, further eight episodes of Chitty
in the tank to really get the overall flavor,
but some of the big swings in it feel really like, yeah,
you can absolutely imagine a red dwarf season where,
it goes between doppelgangers looking at each other,
and then somebody being sucked into a musical instrument,
or the meat being poked in the eye,
and reacting with a big flourish,
do you know what I mean?
It feels, when you see it done like that,
it's like, yeah, there's something,
there's a particular flavor to it
that's kind of freewheeling and fun,
but also, it's still got deep emotional heart to it,
and there's big stuff going on,
and actually just, I know this is sort of retreading
back into the giggle, but I meant to say,
I love the thing about how the toy maker,
he wasn't just into games as games,
he was into the games of ghosting, and mind games,
and all the things that people do to each other
in the modern era.
Sorry, I meant to mention that at the time,
because those things are so damaging,
and I know we talked about the more political side of it,
but yeah, just, as I say,
I think a lot of the modern zeitgeist
has already been captured pretty well by Russell,
and that very concise way that he does,
he's able to throw out a phrase and cover a lot of ground.
I think all that stuff about taking big swings
and interesting ideas, I think we can totally come back
to that next week when we start talking about season one,
because yeah, there's definitely lots of those in there.
I think we'll leave it there for this week,
but there's a load of stuff I think we can pick up
when we start looking at Church and Ruby Road,
and the first half of season one in next week's podcast.
I think one of the things that I was thinking about
is where would you tell a new viewer to jump on?
Would it be the Starbeast?
Would it be Church and Ruby Road,
or would it be Space Babies?
And maybe we can have a discussion about the arguments
for and against each of those,
or would you tell them to go back
and watch some of the classic series first?
But we'll leave it there for this week,
and I'll say, I think we'll leave it there for next week,
and thank you, Mark, for joining me.
Well, thank you, I've enjoyed it.
Yeah, no, it's been really good, I think,
having that distance to reflect on
how we feel about this stuff,
because I think your views on things can change over time,
as well as when you get the context
of what's come since as well.
And thank you to everyone for listening,
and we will see you next week.
Bye.