From the people who brought you Flight Through Entirety.

Saturday 4 June 2005

Boom Town

Aliens Are Posh

The Second Coming, Episode 9
Sunday 22 June 2025

This week, a New Series villain returns for the first time just six weeks after her first appearance — it’s Blon Fel-Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen, wonderfully played by Annette Badland. Hannah Cooper and Pete Lambert join us.

The entire UK bans smoking in pubs and restaurants from the middle of 2007, but the ban is announced just a couple of months after Boom Town airs, in October 2005.

Cordelia’s “it’s all about me!” realisation comes in the Series 1 Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode Out of Mind, Out of Sight way back in 1997.

Annette Badland plays Hazel Woolley on The Archers. She’s known as Poisonous Hazel, and she visited Ambridge in summer 2005, perhaps watching Boom Town on BBC1 while she was there.

The dialogue Nathan tries to remember from The Parting of the Ways is actually Rose responding to the Doctor’s claim that this new race of Daleks was made from dead human beings. Rose says, “That makes them half human,” to which the Dalek Emperor replies, “That is blasphemy.”

Flight Through Entirety discussed Boom Town in Episode 142: Going One-on-One.

Follow us

Nathan is on Bluesky at @nathanbottomley.com, James is @ohjamessellwood.bsky.social, Hannah is @hannahcooper.bsky.social, and Pete is @quiteamess.bsky.social. The 500 Year Diary theme was composed by Cameron Lam.

500 Year Diary shares a social media presence with Flight Through Entirety, which means you can follow us on Mastodon and Bluesky, as well as on X and Facebook. Our website is at 500yeardiary.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll invite you to join us for some ice-skating. In a very suspicious way.

And more

You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s where we’re up to right now.

Yesterday, we released another episode of Startling Barbara Bain. Christopher Lee makes a terrifying visit to Moonbase Alpha, but it’s terrifying mostly because he’s so unexpectedly nice, and one of the Alphans is keen to be awfully mean to him.

And this week, we released another episode of our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford, who watched a funny and likeable episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine — The Forsaken.

Season 2, Episode 9: Aliens Are Posh · Recorded on Sunday 25 May 2025 · Download (59.5 MB)
Subscribe:  Apple Podcasts · Overcast · Pocket Casts · Castbox · RSS

Monday 7 September 1987

Time and the Rani

An Even Bigger Eyeroll

The Second Coming, Episode 8
Sunday 15 June 2025

Another classic 80s villain makes her first reappearance on Doctor Who this week. But what will four serious teenage fanboys make of the fact that she has decided to dress up as Bonnie Langford?

In Dynasty, Kate O’Mara’s character Caress Morrell is the younger sister of Joan Collins’s Alexis Colby. She was in 19 episodes of Dynasty in 1986.

Mel’s delightfully overplayed line in The Reality War comes in just before the Rani beams into UNIT HQ: “She’s ruthless. Worse than ruthless. She’s indifferent to any pain or morality or humanity. The whole universe is just an experiment to her.”

Bonnie Langford’s interview with Benjamin Cook in Doctor Who Magazine appears in Issue 595 from October 2023. Here she is talking about her performance as Mel in the 1980s: “I read Russell’s scripts and thought, ahh, glorious! It is glorious, isn’t it?” says Bonnie. “I just feel really personally grateful, and delighted, and lucky to be able to revisit something that I didn’t necessarily think I did very well before.” Did she really not? “I just thought, oh God, I was really awful in it back in the day. I tried too hard.”

Bondfinger’s short series of commentaries on some of Kate O’Mara’s television performances can be found here.

Just a few days before the broadcast of The Reality War (and the recording of this episode), Russell T Davies posted on Instagram an introduction to the Rani and an explanation of the elements of her character he thought it was important to bring back.

Flight Through Entirety discussed Time and the Rani in Episode 116: Terrified of Tinsel.

Follow us

Nathan is on Bluesky at @nathanbottomley.com, Simon is @simonmoore.bsky.social, and Todd is @toddbeilby.bsky.social. The 500 Year Diary theme was composed by Cameron Lam.

500 Year Diary shares a social media presence with Flight Through Entirety, which means you can follow us on Mastodon and Bluesky, as well as on X and Facebook. Our website is at 500yeardiary.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll hang you upside down from the ceiling until your face is really, really puffy.

And more

You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s where we’re up to right now.

This week, we released another episode of our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford, who watched a top-tier episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation — Tapestry. There will be a new episode released next Friday.

Season 2, Episode 8: An Even Bigger Eyeroll · Recorded on Sunday 1 June 2025 · Download (72.9 MB)
Subscribe:  Apple Podcasts · Overcast · Pocket Casts · Castbox · RSS

Saturday 4 October 1986

Mindwarp

Capturing and Escaping

The Second Coming, Episode 7
Sunday 8 June 2025

This week, the 1980s brings back its most iconic original villain (possibly) to face off against the Sixth Doctor for the second time. But is the reunion a success? Kate Orman joins us again, to discuss Mindwarp.

Sigourney Weaver in Aliens (1986) and Linda Hamilton in The Terminator (1984) are both mid-80s female leads who are strong and independent without being primarily sex objects.

Paul Cornell, Martin Day and Keith Topping’s The Discontinuity Guide has this to say about Mindwarp: “Crozier’s sip of tea before saving Kiv is way-cool.”

The music for Mindwarp was composed by Richard Hartley, who had a long career composing film scores, including the incidental music for The Rocky Horror Picture Show (and its much less well-known sequel).

Dudley Simpson used a gong to herald the appearance of Ginka, one of Servalan’s henchmen, played by Malaysian-born Ric Young, in the Blake’s 7 episode Children of Auron. We discuss it on Maximum Power, in Episode 38: The Ginka Show.

During the production of Trial of a Time Lord, Eric Saward quit as script editor, taking with him his script for Part 14. However, the script exists online, and it was performed as a radio drama by the Flight Through Entirety team in Episode 112: Time Inc.

Trials and Tribulations is a documentary on the history of the Colin Baker era, focusing on the cancellation and the hiatus. It can be found on the DVD of The Ultimate Foe and in the Season 23 box set.

Flight Through Entirety discussed Mindwarp in Episode 109: Dark Colours.

Follow us

Nathan is on Bluesky at @nathanbottomley.com, Simon is @simonmoore.bsky.social, and Kate is @kateorman.bsky.social. The 500 Year Diary theme was composed by Cameron Lam.

500 Year Diary shares a social media presence with Flight Through Entirety, which means you can follow us on Mastodon and Bluesky, as well as on X and Facebook. Our website is at 500yeardiary.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll do a very slipshod job of planning your next surprise party.

And more

You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s where we’re up to right now.

The final episode of The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire (perhaps) was out on Monday, discussing the last Doctor Who story of this entire era The Reality War.

Last week saw the release of the latest episode of Brendan, Steven and Richard’s Avengers podcast The Three-Handed Game. It’s the final episode of their triptych This Green Unpleasant Land, Wish You Were Here, in which Tara King finds herself in a parody of The Prisoner featuring a number of Doctor Who guest actors from the 60s and 70s.

And there’s also our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. We’ll be returning this week — God willing — with a random episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. (Spoiler alert: it’s Tapestry.)

Season 2, Episode 7: Capturing and Escaping · Recorded on Sunday 6 April 2025 · Download (74.9 MB)
Subscribe:  Apple Podcasts · Overcast · Pocket Casts · Castbox · RSS

Thursday 5 January 1984

Warriors of the Deep

A Full Front-On Shot

The Second Coming, Episode 6
Sunday 1 June 2025

This week, the Earth’s original inhabitants wake up from hibernation after about a decade, put on their best fibreglass vests and samurai outfits, and invade an undersea base at 0.5× speed. The Silurians and Sea Devils are back — but why?

In the first season of Space: 1999, Moonbase Alpha’s operations were run from Main Mission, a spectacularly huge and beautiful set at Pinewood Studios. Seabase 4’s bridge is similar (but smaller and cheaper).

The actor who plays Bulic, Nigel Humphries, appeared in an episode of Blake’s 7 called Mission to Destiny, which we discuss in Maximum Power Episode 7: Jeopardy Space Meteorites.

The memory cheats. The book Doctor Who Special Effects by Mat Irvine (1986) features an extreme close up of a Silurian mask from 1970’s Doctor Who and the Silurians.

Room 101 (1994–2018) was a talk show in which a celebrity guest would discuss the things they hated most. In the episode broadcast on 15 April 2002, former Controller of BBC One Michael Grade appeared and nominated Doctor Who. You can see the relevent clip from the episode here. (He also nominated Shirley Bassey, so he’s clearly a monster.)

These days we think of the Cold War taking place in the 50s and 60s, but it was still going strong in 1984. We mention a few relevant films. We already talked about Threads (1984) in our discussion of The Dalek Invasion of Earth: it was a British TV movie depicting Sheffield in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust. The Day After (1983) was an American TV movie depicting a nuclear strike on the United States. And WarGames (1983) was a popular Hollywood movie about a teenage computer enthusiast whose hacking nearly kicks off World War III.

Flight Through Entirety discussed Warriors of the Deep in Episode 92: Is Ichtar Okdel?.

Follow us

Nathan is on Bluesky at @nathanbottomley.com, Simon is @simonmoore.bsky.social, and Todd is is @toddbeilby.bsky.social. The 500 Year Diary theme was composed by Cameron Lam.

500 Year Diary shares a social media presence with Flight Through Entirety, which means you can follow us on Mastodon and Bluesky, as well as on X and Facebook. Our website is at 500yeardiary.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll enter your house uninvited and very very slowly and fill your bed with goannas.

And more

You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s where we’re up to right now.

The final episode of The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire (perhaps) will be out on Monday: we’ll be supplying you with our urgent hot takes on the season finale The Reality War.

Today sees the release of the latest episode of Brendan, Steven and Richard’s Avengers podcast The Three-Handed Game. It’s the final episode of their triptych This Green Unpleasant Land, Wish You Were Here, in which Tara King finds herself in a parody of The Prisoner featuring a number of Doctor Who guest actors from the 60s and 70s.

And there’s also our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. This week, we roared with laughter watching the astonishingly boring Season 6 Star Trek: Voyager episode Alice.

Season 2, Episode 6: A Full Front-On Shot · Recorded on Sunday 18 May 2025 · Download (64.6 MB)
Subscribe:  Apple Podcasts · Overcast · Pocket Casts · Castbox · RSS

Monday 17 January 1983

Snakedance

Baleful Gaze

The Second Coming, Episode 5
Sunday 25 May 2025

This week, the people of the planet Manussa are about to discover that all their ancient myths are true, and that their own thirst and dissatisfaction are rearing up to strike them in rubbery serpentine form. Kate Orman joins us to discuss the second coming of the Mara.

Tanha is the Pali word for thirst or craving. It is associated with dukkha, (“dissatisfaction”), which is the subject of Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths.

The bhavachakra is the Wheel of Life. In Tibetan Buddhism, depictions of the wheel are used as a focus of meditation; the wheel itself is an image of samsara, the cyclic nature of existence. Hence the visually striking imagery at the end of Part 3 of Kinda.

According to the readership of Doctor Who Magazine (Issue 69, October 1982), Kinda was the least popular story of Season 19. From best to worst, the results were Earthshock, The Visitation, Black Orchid, Time-Flight, Castrovalva, Four to Doomsday and Kinda.

Flight Through Entirety discussed Snakedance in Episode 85: Tiny Little Petty Flaws.

Follow us

Nathan is on Bluesky at @nathanbottomley.com, Simon is @simonmoore.bsky.social, and Kate is is @kateorman.bsky.social. The 500 Year Diary theme was composed by Cameron Lam.

500 Year Diary shares a social media presence with Flight Through Entirety, which means you can follow us on Mastodon and Bluesky, as well as on X and Facebook. Our website is at 500yeardiary.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll start making rude remarks about how fat you look in that distorting funhouse mirror.

And more

You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s where we’re up to right now.

The next episode of The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire will be out on Monday: we’ll be supplying you with our urgent hot takes on Wish World.

Last week, we released an episode of our Space: 1999 commentary podcast Startling Barbara Bain, in which Helena’s zombie husband turned up on the base to warn everyone not to settle on the poisonous planet nearby that everyone was so excited about.

And finally there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. This week, we said a heartfelt farewell to Star Trek: Lower Decks as we watched its finale The New Next Generation.

Season 2, Episode 5: Baleful Gaze · Recorded on Sunday 6 April 2025 · Download (63.6 MB)
Subscribe:  Apple Podcasts · Overcast · Pocket Casts · Castbox · RSS

Saturday 22 February 1975

The Sontaran Experiment

Exaggerated Military People

The Second Coming, Episode 4
Sunday 18 May 2025

It’s cold and rainy this weekend, and so we’ve decided to catch up with Mark McManus and spend the day larking around Devonshire, falling down holes, and generally hiding from Kevin Lindsay while he brings the Sontarans to the screen for the second time.

As we discuss right off the bat, much of the TV of this period was shot on videotape in the studio and on film on location, giving it a very distinctive look. This look is remarked on by Graham Chapman in this sketch from Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

Naturally, Nathan mentions El Sandifer about fifteen mintues in. This time, it’s her essay on The Time Warrior, surprisingly. (And although Nathan doesn’t mention it, her essay on The Sontaran Experiment has a lot to say about the use of video cameras on location in this story.)

Every imaginable detail of the history of the screening of Doctor Who on ABC-TV is recorded on the BroadDWCast website, which chronicles the history of the broadcast of Doctor Who round the world. Go to this page to learn about the airdates that were so formative for Simon, Peter, Todd, Richard, Nathan during the 1970s and 80s.

Flight Through Entirety discussed The Sontaran Experiment in Episode 34: Choc Bit Breast Plates.

Follow us

Nathan is on Bluesky at @nathanbottomley.com, Mark is @quarkmcmalus.bsky.social, Simon is @simonmoore.bsky.social, and James is @ohjamessellwood.bsky.social. The 500 Year Diary theme was composed by Cameron Lam.

500 Year Diary shares a social media presence with Flight Through Entirety, which means you can follow us on Mastodon and Bluesky, as well as on X (for now) and Facebook. Our website is at 500yeardiary.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll call up your boss and tell him about all the Balatro you’ve been playing during work hours.

And more

You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s where we’re up to right now.

The next episode of The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire will be out on Monday: we’ll be trying keep it together as we discuss The Interstellar Song Contest.

Yesterday we released an episode of our Space: 1999 commentary podcast Startling Barbara Bain, in which Helena’s long-dead husband returned to life to warn the crew not to settle on that nearby idyllic planet and start eating all its antimatter vegetables. With only moderate success.

And finally there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. This week, we watched a gentle and hilarious Star Trek: Lower Decks episode called Fully Dilated.

Season 2, Episode 4: Exaggerated Military People · Recorded on Saturday 12 April 2025 · Download (59.5 MB)
Subscribe:  Apple Podcasts · Overcast · Pocket Casts · Castbox · RSS

Saturday 25 January 1969

The Seeds of Death

The Costumes Are in the Cupboard

The Second Coming, Episode 3
Sunday 11 May 2025

It’s Invaders from Mars this week, as the terrifying monsters we thawed out in 5000 AD last year make an early appearance on the Moon just sixteen years after the visit of the Cybermen. Their goal: to cement their position somewhere on the top ten list of recurring Doctor Who monsters. Jeremy Radick joins us as we try to work out exactly where.

Peter mentions that the 2003 DVD release of The Seeds of Death was the first DVD release to use VidFire, a technology that uses frame interpolation to restore the videotape look to episodes that now only exist as film recordings.

Nathan is thinking of Gary Russell’s 1994 Virgin New Adventures novel Legacy, a sequel to the two Peladon stories that heavily features the Ice Warriors.

Of course, we mention H G Wells’s The War of the Worlds (1898) again, particularly the red weed, which is a Martian plant that starts spreading across the countryside after the invasion.

Jeremy suggests that the first transporter-focused Star Trek story might be James Blish’s Spock Must Die! (1970), in which an evil Mr Spock is created when an experiment with the transporter goes horribly wrong.

Inevitably, Nathan mentions El Sandifer’s TARDIS Eruditorum essay on The Seeds of Death.

In March 2021, the container ship Ever Given ran aground in the Suez Canal, blocking it completely for six days. The BBC reported that it was holding up USD 9.6 billion worth of goods each day.

Toby Hadoke can be heard praising Ronald Leigh-Hunt’s performance in the Blakes 7 episode Children of Auron in Maximum Power Episode 59: Snogging & Nihilism.

Flight Through Entirety discussed The Seeds of Death in Episode 18: Sideburn Trouble.

Follow us

Nathan is on Bluesky at @nathanbottomley.com and Simon is @simonmoore.bsky.social. The 500 Year Diary theme was composed by Cameron Lam.

500 Year Diary shares a social media presence with Flight Through Entirety, which means you can follow us on Mastodon and Bluesky, as well as on X (for now) and Facebook. Our website is at 500yeardiary.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll break into your house, fiddle with the settings on the air conditioner, and make off with all your woolly jumpers.

And more

You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s where we’re up to right now.

The next episode of The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire will be out on Monday: we’ll be trying to work out what we thought about The Story & the Engine.

Last weekend, Brendan, Steven and Richard’s Avengers podcast The Three-Handed Game released their take on the New Avengers episode Emily, Part 2 of their triptych This Green Unpleasant Land.

And finally there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. This week, we watched a bafflingly undercooked Star Trek: The Original Series episode called The Empath.

Season 2, Episode 3: The Costumes Are in the Cupboard · Recorded on Sunday 23 March 2025 · Download (73.3 MB)
Subscribe:  Apple Podcasts · Overcast · Pocket Casts · Castbox · RSS

Saturday 11 February 1967

The Moonbase

The Show as We Know It

The Second Coming, Episode 2
Sunday 4 May 2025

We’re walking on eggshells this week as we await the arrival of an army of marching Cybermen, approaching the Moonbase with a dastardly plan to change Doctor Who for ever. For the better, on the whole.

The Moonbase was novelised by Gerry Davis as Doctor Who and the Cybermen, published in 1975. The audiobook is read by Anneke Wills and was released in 2009.

The article Peter cites as a source for the phrase “behind the sofa” was called “The metamorphoses of Who”, written by Stanley Reynolds and published in The Times on 9 April 1973.

If you want to hear more of Adam’s theories about the world of Doctor Who, and of course you do, you can tune into his daily Doctor Who podcast Adam Richard Has a Theory.

Follow us

Nathan is on Bluesky at @nathanbottomley.com, Todd is @toddbeilby.bsky.social, and Adam is @adamrichard.com.au. The 500 Year Diary theme was composed by Cameron Lam.

500 Year Diary shares a social media presence with Flight Through Entirety, which means you can follow us on Mastodon and Bluesky, as well as on X (for now) and Facebook. Our website is at 500yeardiary.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll go through all your cupboards and drink everything with even a hint of hydrocarbons.

And more

You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s where we’re up to right now.

The next episode of The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire will be out on Monday: we’ll be offering our lukewarm takes on Lucky Day.

Brendan, Steven and Richard’s Avengers podcast The Three-Handed Game has just released their take on the New Avengers episode Emily, Part 2 of their triptych This Green Unpleasant Land.

Our Space: 1999 commentary podcast Startling Barbara Bain has reached Episode 12, End of Eternity. Plans are underway to record Episode 13 some time this month.

And finally there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. This week, we watched a classic Star Trek: The Next Generation episode from the show’s imperial phase, The Drumhead, guest starring Jean Simmons.

Season 2, Episode 2: The Show as We Know It · Recorded on Sunday 23 March 2025 · Download (59.8 MB)
Subscribe:  Apple Podcasts · Overcast · Pocket Casts · Castbox · RSS

Saturday 21 November 1964

The Dalek Invasion of Earth

Daleks Daleks

The Second Coming, Episode 1
Sunday 27 April 2025

This week, we launch the second season of 500 Year Diary with the first of our Second Comings — Doctor Who’s second ever Dalek story, The Dalek Invasion of Earth. How will the Daleks survive leaving their city on Skaro and subjecting themselves to the public gaze just before Christmas?

Nathan mentions guesting on a podcast to discuss The Chase. That podcast was the All of Time and Space podcast, and the episode was called Scooby Who. It was released in June 2021.

The only way you could buy a copy of Remembrance of the Daleks on VHS back in 1993 was in the Dalek Tin, which included a VHS copy of The Chase and a commemorative booklet by Andrew Pixley called Daleks: A Brief History.

Simon remembers being shown an episode of Homicide when he was at university. This was a well-known Australian police procedural on the Seven Network, which ran from 1964 to 1977, and which featured somewhere on the resumés of most Australian actors of the period.

In The Reign of Terror, the role of Doctor Who on Location was played by Brian Proudfoot.

We mention a number of post-apocalyptic dystopias relevant to this story: Threads (1984) is a terrifying TV movie depicting the effects of a nuclear holocaust on Sheffield. On the Beach (1957) is a novel by Neville Shute, depicting the lives of a few survivors of a nuclear holocaust living in southern Australia, waiting for the fallout to reach them; a film adaptation was released in 1959. The Day of the Triffids (1951) is a novel by John Wyndham set in England after an accident blinds most of the population and lethally venomous walking plants start wandering around killing people. And The War of the Worlds (1898) is a novel by our very own H G Wells, depicts a temporary successful Martian invasion which results in the collapse of human civilisation.

Later on, Terry Nation will get to create his own post-pandemic apocalyptic dystopia, Survivors (1975), which ran for three seasons, even though Terry himself left the show after Season 1. It was mostly about how great lovely middle-class people would be at mucking in after the entirety of civilisation collapses.

Flight Through Entirety discussed The Dalek Invasion of Earth in Episode 3: Bernard Cribbins in Vinyl.

Follow us

Nathan is on Bluesky at @nathanbottomley.com, Todd is @toddbeilby.bsky.social, and Simon is @simonmoore.bsky.social. The 500 Year Diary theme was composed by Cameron Lam.

500 Year Diary shares a social media presence with Flight Through Entirety, which means you can follow us on Mastodon and Bluesky, as well as on X (for now) and Facebook. Our website is at 500yeardiary.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll sell you out for a few root vegetables and (hopefully) a bar or two of soap.

And more

You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s where we’re up to right now.

The next episode of The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire will be out on Monday: we’ll be offering our lukewarm take on The Well.

Since we last met, our Space: 1999 commentary podcast Startling Barbara Bain has reached Episode 12, End of Eternity, in which an aggressively upper-middle-class Peter Bowles plays the Devil, who (understandably) offers the crew of Moonbase Alpha an eternity of conscious torment.

And finally there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. This week, we watched the second last episode of the Xindi arc from Series 3 of Star Trek: Enterprise, Countdown.

Season 2, Episode 1: Daleks Daleks · Recorded on Sunday 16 March 2025 · Download (78.8 MB)
Subscribe:  Apple Podcasts · Overcast · Pocket Casts · Castbox · RSS

Monday 1 January 2007

The Sarah Jane Adventures: Invasion of the Bane

Where Kelsey Went

New Beginnings, Episode 6
Sunday 19 May 2024

We bring our first season to a close with the new beginning of Doctor Who’s most successful spinoff, in which a beloved TV heroine from our childhood was given one last chance (or twenty-seven last chances) to save the world.

Kelsey Hooper is played by fifteen-year-old Porsha Lawrence-Mavour, who had been in Stars in Their Eyes Kids at the age of nine. You can see her in action here.

Nathan mentions a couple of children’s TV shows which are formal influences on The Sarah Jane Adventures, including Chocky (1984) and Children of the Stones.

Adam alludes to a theory by friend-of-the-podcast Gary Russell, which he outlined in a tweet in 2022: the third bedroom was actually locked, bolted and then the door bricked over, making it airtight. Behind it was Kelsey. “I wonder whatever happened to her?” SJ would ask - and Luke and Maria would look at each other knowingly… and say nothing. It was “the pact”.

Wētā Workshop in Wellington, New Zealand, were the design studio for the gorgeous miniatures in Thunderbirds Are Go (2015) (among countless other things).

Flight Through Entirety did its first commentary on the first Doctor Who spinoff K9 and Company (Episode 76: K9 and Commentary), in which Todd first notes writer Terence Dudley’s relentless obsession with phones and doors.

Follow us

Nathan is on X as @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, Richard is @RichardLStone, and Adam is @adamrichard. The 500 Year Diary theme was composed by Cameron Lam.

For now at least, 500 Year Diary shares a social media presence with Flight Through Entirety. So you can follow us on Mastodon and Bluesky, as well as on X and Facebook. Our website is at 500yeardiary.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll be weirdly cold to you for no reason the first time we meet in person.

And more

You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s where we’re up to right now.

Flight Through Entirety will be back at Christmas in July to discuss The Return of Doctor Mysterio; after that, we’ll be covering Peter Capaldi’s final year on the show, concluding with Twice Upon a Time at Christmas.

The next episode of The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire will be out on Monday. In it, we talk about Steven Moffat’s return to the show in Boom. We’ll be doing weekly episodes until the end of Season 1 of the new era.

Last week saw the release of Episode 3 of the new Avengers commentary podcast, The Three Handed Game, featuring our very own Brendan and Richard, as well as frequent-guest-of-the-podcast, Steven B. In Episode 3, they conclude their Reach for the Stars triptych, with a Cathy Gale episode called The White Dwarf.

In news just to hand, Brendan and Bjay have just dropped another episode of The Bjay BJ Game Show. This month, they played Cat Quest, a cheerful and cartoony action RPG featuring an alarming number of cat-based puns.

And finally there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. This week, we watched one of Nathan’s all-time favourites, a relaxed and genuiunely funny episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called Disaster.

Season 1, Episode 6: Where Kelsey Went · Recorded on Friday 19 April 2024 · Download (54.0 MB)
Subscribe:  Apple Podcasts · Overcast · Pocket Casts · Castbox · RSS