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?
Notes and links
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.
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.
Notes and links
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.”
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.
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.
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?
Notes and links
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 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.
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.
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.
Notes and links
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.
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.
Notes and links
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.
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.
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.
Notes and links
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.
In March 2021, the container ship Ever Givenran 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.
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.
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.
Notes and links
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.
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.
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.
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?
Notes and links
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It’s 2006, which is just the time to launch a gritty and adult Doctor Who spinoff — Torchwood, a show with an immortal lead character which is basically about the finality of death. But has Torchwood learned anything from its parent show’s many, many launches and re-launches?
Notes and links
James compares Torchwood to the Virgin New Adventures, a series of original Doctor Who novels launched in 1991, after the cancellation in 1989 and once the full set of novelisations had been all but completed. Like Torchwood, the VNAs initially featured lots of sex and swearing, before settling down a bit and discovering that there were other ways of being adult.
Joseph Campbell was a writer and narratologist who codified the main features of what he called the Hero’s Journey, a narrative framework which is exemplified (he believed) in heroic myths across a range of cultures. He’s a big source of inspiration for George Lucas’s Star Wars films.
One we missed: India Varma played Tala Durith in Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022), blowing herself up (inevitably) in her third episode. (Spoilers, sorry.)
Cucumber was a 2015 drama by Russell T Davies about a gay man in his forties who discovers, after the breakup of his long-term relationship, what gay life is like for young people in their twenties. Its sixth episode focuses on the brutal murder of one of the main characters.
Flight Through Entirety hasn’t covered any Torchwood at all, but for a fresh take on this episode, take a look at this review by friend-of-the-podcast Michael O Sullivan. His blog, Angst and Death and Random Shoes, will be covering as much of the show as he can tolerate watching.
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, and we’ll be covering Peter Capaldi’s final year on the show after that, concluding with Twice Upon a Time at Christmas.
The latest episode of The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire is probably out by now, or if you’re a particularly keen 500 Year Diary listener, it will be out in just a couple of hours. In it, we talk about the two new episodes released on 11 May — Space Babies and The Devil’s Chord. The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire will be covering the whole of the new series, releasing an episode a couple of days after each new Doctor Who episode comes out. Like and subscribe.
Maximum Power will be back later in the year to talk about the final series of Blakes 7.
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 marvelled at the superb Roxann Dawson, as B’Elanna went for another round of overwrought self-examination in Voyager’s Barge of the Dead.
