Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to 500 year diary.
The only Doctor Who podcast that can't bring itself to be a little
less astringent, thank you very much.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Todd.
I'm Peter.
And I'm Simon.
It's the 3rd of January, 1970.
About 8 months ago, Doctor Who got cancelled, and today something
strange and different is taking its place.
The TARDIS is here.
The brigadier is here, and someone who claims to be the doctor is
somehow walking around as if he owns the place.
But does he?
Let's find out as we discuss spearhead from space.
Naturally, last week, we spent a lot of time talking about the
introduction of Patrick Troughton as the doctor, let's talk a
little bit about how they go about introducing this new 3rd doctor
to us.
I'm quite fascinated that they fall into the same trap that I
think they later fall into with Castra Valva in that the doctor is
basically effectively absent from episode one, which is a big
call.
I mean, I think he's only line of dialogue is shoes or possibly on
hand to me, madam, or something.
But there's no, there's very, very little dialogue from the
doctor.
You don't see him.
He just basically commentates into bed for most of the time.
Whereas with Troughton, you had he's still driving the show. in
that 1st episode.
And in Tom with robot.
There's a little bit of eccentricity, but then they kind of get on
with it pretty quickly.
I mean, if you compare it to, say, the Christmas invasion and the
church on Ruby Road, both of them give the doctor a thing to do
before their big entry.
Yes.
And because it's only one episode, you know, you're tuning in that
night to see the new doctor.
I mean that's really why you're there.
In the classic series, I think, making your weight more than 25
minutes is a bad idea.
In the new series, you just give us a taste, but still make us
wait for them.
So they can get their big hero moment.
Church on Ruby Road is a bit different too, though, because it is
kind of also a soft relaunch for the entire series. anyway.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So you're kind of trying to, in that, you're kind of trying to
introduce the doctor as a character anyway, rather than this is
the new doctor.
Yes, and we did see 20 minutes of him, the previous episode.
I'm not sure that I would characterise it as a trap.
I think it's quite brave to set up the new format and then put the
doctor in it rather than leading with the doctor and the show
follows.
I suppose it's like unethly child one then.
It sort of is, yeah.
But also thinking of the Christmas invasion.
It follows that same format.
The Christmas invasion.
They added in the scene where David Tennant wakes up and fights
the Santas for that scene, and that was added in at the behest of
I think, Lorraine Heggesi, the controller of BBC One, who said you
can't keep the doctor out of the action for so long.
Now, here, what they do is you just get, you write, Simon, the
doctor has very little dialogue in the 1st 2 episodes, very little
but there is the one scene, which is the really important scene in
episode one where the brigadier comes to the hospital and the
doctor wakes up and recognises him and the brigadier starts to
realise that this might be the doctor.
And so apart from those startlingly brief shots at the start where
the TARDIS materialises on model work, the doctor falls out, and
then you get the reverse shot.
The entire front half of the episode is reintroducing unit in the
brigadier and introducing Liz Shaw.
I think that's intentional.
And I think it works.
It brands it as this is a new program.
Yeah, I have to agree.
You have got that scene with the doctor in the bed, right?
And that's really important.
But up to that point, you really don't see him, they don't really
show his face.
It's almost this softly, softly approach and this show is about
unit and investigating strange new objects or whatever and and
introducing this show and setting up the brigadier Liz Dynamic
which is very prickly.
And I actually found the very 1st scene with them very stilted and
quite, um, they looked uncomfortable.
You know how actors like have worked together before or whatever
and they have a have a chemistry or there's certain ease.
They looked quite uncomfortable throughout that entire 1st
sequence.
I felt.
Do we know anything about the shooting order, Peter?
So they did all the stuff that was meant to be on location first
so anything that you would reasonably expect was a location
outdoors was shot on film.
They then paused and they were going to go into their usual kind
of rehearse record.
They had about 2 weeks off and Derek Sherwin had already seen that
there might be problems with strikes.
And so he'd put in place a backup plan earlier than any other
production to say, look, we can shoot all of this on film.
And it actually happened.
There was the strike and they already had the plan and the
facilities ready to go.
So they came back 3 weeks later and just started shooting
everything on film on BBC property.
So let's talk about the effect of that on how the show lands a
little bit later on.
I am still interested in the fact that, as Todd said, we seem to
be introducing a new show.
It's the unit show.
It's like a spinoff in some ways, isn't it?
And then the doctor drops into the spinoff.
And once we hear about the doctor.
Like once the brigadier hears about the doctor, the thing becomes
largely about the doctor, maybe more than anything else.
And so there's the mystery of who the doctor is, there's all the
stuff at the cottage hospital, about, you know, his strange
physiology, which is absolutely kind of new, isn't it, to the
show?
I don't think we've had 2 hearts before, have we?
Yeah, Bob Holmes World building.
Well, is it world building or is it just Bob Holmes saying we need
to find a way to get the brigadier here?
I don't know.
Let's say he has 2 hearts.
You know what I mean?
there's a way in which that's made available to the show now
because we've had the doctor's origin revealed, but it is
absolutely arbitrary.
Like, he's not intending to, you know, I think the thing that has
a bigger impact on the Pertuy era is the coma that we get the 2nd
episode after he's been shot, where he goes into a sort of one
knee for perch twin.
You know, self-induced coma.
But it just feels like a different show.
It doesn't even feel like 1970.
Like, I think this feels like 1969, the Avengers or the prisoner
or carry on films.
And it's something that you could stumble across, like, on PBS or
Channel 7 in the afternoon and it's some sort of movie that was
filmed at that time and you didn't have to know anything about
Doctor Who.
And it's just this strange man's turned up and I found it quite
interesting rewatching it like last week, just to see how, like, we
don't even get the Tartis interior.
Like, it's just, like, that's all just pushed to one side and it
just feels so different.
And the production team's new, isn't it?
Like Derek Sherman's only done one...
Well, he did the war games.
Well, one story and Terrence Sticks is now script editor.
I just felt like it's finding their feet.
I think some things work really well and there's other sequences
or shots or performances where I kind of think, oh, that's a bit
rushed and a bit, you know, how's your mother, really?
That's how I feel.
I think its newness is underscored by the way that we watched it
in Australia.
It's impossible to divorce Spearhead from space from its repeat
screenings in Australia. fans of a certain age, and that would
include all of us, I think.
It was the earliest Doctor Who story shown.
So we never saw any of the black and white stories on their 1st
transmission.
And in 1978 and 79, it heralded a small repeat run of the existing
625 line Pertweis.
So they were spearhead, and then it would jump today off the
Daleks.
You'd have a couple of season 10 stories and then most of season
11.
So everything that existed on 625 line at the time.
And so this to us was the beginning of Doctor Who.
We would watch Tom Baker stories, you know, sometimes going up to
the Keats time and sometimes up to seasons 18 and 19 later on.
And then it would come back to this and this always served as a
cold open to unit and the brigadier.
We had no knowledge of the invasion.
We didn't see it.
We didn't get the book until like 1984 or whenever that came out.
And so this felt like the start of the show.
This felt like an opening episode.
My experience is a little different.
Similar but different in that when I picked up Doctor Who, it was
at the end of one of those 65 line pert we repeat runs, the Planet
of the Spiders.
And Spearhead was shown at the beginning of that block.
That was the last time they showed Pertwiz.
So I think that would have been 78 or 79.
That was the last time 79.
That was the last time they showed the per weeks for a few years.
They didn't go back to them until 1983.
Late 1974.
Well, late 1984. late 1983, they went back to...
Without Spearhead.
Now, 4 years, of course, is not very long in the modern era, but 4
years when your sort of 7 is an eternity.
But point being that that was my 1st proper experience of but they
didn't show Spearhead.
Then after our season 21 broadcast sometime after, they then went
back and they showed Spearhead from Space, and that was the 1st
time I'd seen it.
It actually completely alienated me in a very strange way.
I thought, just to echo what Todd, what you were saying.
It feels different not just to what's immediately before it, like
it's a relaunch of the show, but it feels different to also
everything that comes after it.
And I'm including from solurians on.
It's like this standalone, like what Todd's saying. like a
standalone, mini feature film, like B grade feature film that was
made.
And I didn't like it when I saw it in 984, I didn't like it.
The fact that it was all on film, was very off-putting.
I love it now.
When I was sort of, whenever I was then 12.
I found it very off putting.
And I will say that a lot of the interiors, particularly the
scenes in the brigadier's office and that early scene that you're
talking about, Todd, that you said you felt was stilted, is so
echoey.
Yeah.
It's so echoey.
It like the microphone is miles away and pointed in the wrong
direction or something.
It's like in a school gym or something.
Yes, exactly.
Scient spaces that they're...
Yeah, and even the, I mean, the hospital sounds a bit better, but
all the unit, the lab, the doctor's lab and the brigadier's office
just terrible from that point of view, but also it's just
something about that image quality as well as film on film.
I mean, it looks so good on the restored Blu-ray.
It looks spectacular.
At the time when we were watching it.
You know, it was a 2nd generation print that had been doing the
rounds by then.
So it was a little bit faded in comparison.
So it looked, it looked like a 60s piece of television.
I agree with you, Simon.
Like, I think my experience was the same as yours.
I think that was the 1st time I saw spearhead as well.
Like I'd seen the perch wee repeats, but not that.
But I can't remember what I really thought of it.
It was just like, 0 my goodness, they're going back to, I knew...
It was so exciting to go back to that, but I can't remember my
initial reaction.
It was like getting to see Lee Shaw and just something very
different.
So I didn't form an opinion of it one way or the other.
But it is so different from the next story as well, like in
Silurian.
For me, of course.
And I think you as well, probably Peter, the fact that you would
just see Spearhead and then suddenly it would be Joe means that it
is unusual and stands out more even more than it does in the
context of series 7.
And I think what complicated it for me as a kid was that the auton
invasion novelisation was one that I read and so was the doomsday
weapon.
And the doomsday weapon has Joe arriving for the 1st time as
well.
And so that's super strange.
And all of that just made that whole thing kind of muddy and weird
and unknowable.
But when we did fly through entirety, and we'd watched our way
through the 60s, and I'd done that myself for the 1st time
watching it all in order, I mean, there's a reason why our episode
on this story for Flight through Entirety is called they've
cancelled my show, because suddenly just nothing is left of not
only the, you know, the TARDIS, as we said, we don't see the
interior, we see it very briefly from the outside.
We do get a mention of the time lords, don't we?
But they weren't even part of the 60s anyway.
And they disappear from series 7 completely, I think, more or
less.
And so there's nothing left of the show.
And you think that they're making something really completely
different.
And even though this is unusual for series 7, I still think that
series 7 is unusual for the show as a whole.
And is it just the budgetary thing?
Is that why we've retooled the show like this?
I'm going to say that actually, I don't think this is as much of a
reformat as people say that it is.
I think that invasion is the reformat, and this is the invasion
with the colour turned up.
This and the invasion are of a pair.
It's impossible, I think, to separate them when you talk about how
the series was evolving.
The invasion scene at the end of episode 4 in this story is pretty
much the invasion scene from episode 6 of the invasion.
They even shoot in the same location when the autons come out to
see the unit troops and the...
It's shot in the same alleyway in the same location.
And I think what they were trying to do was they'd seen what
Douglas Camfield had done on the web of fear and the invasion and
they thought, that's what we should be doing on Doc 2.
And I think it was a very specific iteration of what Dr. 2 was.
And they went, that works.
Let's do that.
And Spearhead is the 3rd in a trio of stories that does it.
Yeah, I mean, they get the idea from Webber Fear, perhaps they
refine it in the invasion and then they decide from Spearhead, yes
this is the format of the show that we're going with now.
And I think it's budget, not from the point of view that they've
had a budget cut or anything. don't think.
I think it's just budgetary in terms of the fact that we feel we
can make a better show and the show will be more engaging if it's
set on earth and you have Sidemen coming down the steps of St.
Paul's and Auton's breaking out of shop glass windows, et cetera
et cetera.
I think is what the decision is.
I think the fact that it's now suddenly in colour.
We've got suddenly there's colour opening credits.
There are certain other stylistic differences too that are created
which is effectively what the show becomes from then until 1989, if
I can say, in terms of the way we understand our understanding of
how opening and closing credits work actually starts with
spearhead from space, even though there's a bit of faffing around
with things like inferno, in a massive of death and so on.
But that's when we get that format.
It's also Simon, the 1st time that you get end credits rather than
just captions. even though the proper sting doesn't arrive until
ambassadors of death.
It's evolving during season seven, but I suppose my point being
that there are all those peripheral things that make it feel like
a greater relaunch than perhaps it actually was.
Remembering, of course, that the vast bulk of people in Britain
and certainly in Australia. are watching it on a black and white
television.
I think it's telling that Russell goes back to that opening
credits with those colours and Futura and all of that sort of
thing.
Like he just goes back and makes it 3D and essentially does the
same thing.
So much of what makes Spearhead feel like reformat is by accident
I think.
So there was very nearly a version of Doctor Who, where Spearhead
in season 7 had Patrick Troughton and Wendy Padbury in it, it
would have been just a different version of Doctor Who, but with
the same leads, and that would not have felt so much for relaunch
as just a soft reboot of the show.
It would have felt like the invasion with the colour turned up.
So it's those cosmetic changes that mark it out.
It's the fact of John Pertwey's casting, it's the new credits.
It's the fact that it's in colour. and the shortened season which
give it an aura.
So if this hadn't been a shortened season, if this had been a
1960s style season, then colour would have come in in about the
3rd story slot because it was introduced in November of 1969 on
BBC One.
But all of those things came together to mark this as something
new and fresh and a lot of it was actually by accident.
Is it a mistake for the show to just say this is one thing that we
believe that we can do well and then just concentrate on that one
thing?
I don't think it's a mistake necessarily.
And I think it's demonstrated in season six.
I think they start to grow tight or they start to run out of ideas
for sort of funny and funky planets that they want to go to.
It's season five, isn't it?
We can go anywhere in time and space and we just go to a series of
roughly identical, sort of completely fungible bases under siege
where the same thing is happening.
Yeah, it was season 6 is more imaginative.
Yeah, to many more places.
Simon, what's wrong with you?
Is the planet of the Gon's not fun and funky enough for you?
No, I love the Crown.
I love credos.
But I think I think there's a lot of, like if you look at the
seeds of death, which I love, and you look at the war games, which
I love, there are some costuming choices in both of those which
make it all look a bit silly.
Now, I think one of the reasons why season seven, season eight, and
so on looks so much better is because there's none of that.
The worst thing about them is the fact that the brigadies in a
strange jumpsuit as opposed to a proper army uniform.
Yeah, it's the future.
It's the future.
Oh, but Liz, can I just say Liz's jacket with the strange. brain
the plastic, this plastic brain thing on this.
I've always hated that.
I hated it when I 1st started.
The crotons.
It's not a 1000000 miles away from Zoe's.
Well exactly.
The costume designer obviously said, no, damn it, I'm going to, you
know, design a funky out of space costume, regardless of where
we're set.
Do you think there were any people who thought it might come alive
and attack her?
Oh, I see.
Well, it's either that or her enormous eyelashes.
Yeah.
The eye makeup and the hair.
Oh, the camp friend Janeway hair, bun head.
I told you, you're just pointing out her enormous eyelashes
because of that one shot in episode one where she says to the
brigadier, invisible ink.
That sort of thing.
Oh, but she's so good with the brigadier.
She's so consistently belittling of him throughout the entire
thing.
I was actually laughing at what he's saying.
It's like icy.
I was actually a little bit shocked by it because, you know, from
next year onwards, we'll have the dynamic where Pertwee is grumpy
and kind of obnoxious and is humanised by Joe. Here it's the other
way around where Liz Shaw.
And she's annoyed because she's kind of been virtually drafted, you
know, from her job at Cambridge.
Exactly. kidnapped, actually.
And so she's basically annoyed the whole episode.
She was even searched.
Yes.
That look on her face that would just says, I was even searched.
It's almost like I'd searched in places that I'm not going to
mention.
No wonder she had to wear plastic. of death, actually the doctor's
being grumpy.
Uh, and maybe it's something to do with post-soliorine install.
Just a coincidence.
I like how warm the doctor is when he 1st meets her.
Like, it's really lovely.
Like, I was really quite shocked by that because the perch we I
have in my head is really quite grumpy, like, at this point.
But I really, really like that scene with them together.
But just that dynamic with the brigadier, like throughout the
entire thing where they're not really friendly until perhaps
General Scorbi says that really sexist thing and then the
brigadier says, well, she's got degrees and all that sort of
stuff.
You know, maybe there's a bit of breaking down.
I was about to say, that's doctor sure to you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
When Scobie says, no, I should have a pretty pierced around the
players.
This is actually looking mad and smiling and it's when it's when
the brigadier says, she's not just a pretty face, sir.
And that's when she kind of scowls.
I mean, I think that's one of the things that marks out Spearhead
from Space and makes it feel like more of a reformat than it is
because we could easily have had Wendy Padbury.
This could have been Zoe.
She was asked to stay.
She said no.
It could have been Zoe.
Carrie John is the oldest companion we've had since Jacqueline
Hill.
So she's, I think, 29 or 30.
So she's a proper adult.
You can believe that.
She's a woman, not a girl.
She's a woman, not a girl. absolutely.
She's 29 or 30.
Nick Courtney is 40.
Troughton's companions were children.
And so that's a market change in the way that the series is
presented to the audience.
Do you know how old pert we is when he's filming this?
He's 50.
He's 50. younger than he's younger than we are.
Isn't that extraordinary though?
How do you feel about Pertu's performance here?
Because this I don't think is where he lands.
How do you feel about being older?
How do you feel about me?
Not good.
I'm older than Capaldi.
You can all just shut up.
No, you're older than John Pertwee when he leaves the show.
How do you feel about his performance because I actually think
that he's a little bit more trout-ish in this story that he
eventually lands on.
I would say so too.
Can I just say that 1st scene we were talking about the one where
the important scene in the 1st episode where he meets the
brigadier, I had never noticed before what a passable
impersonation he's doing a Trouton in that entire scene.
Right.
When he's looking in the mirror and saying, that's not me at all.
And he's even got Troughton's inflections.
Go back and watch it.
Every line is delivered as Troughton.
That's an interesting observation.
I'm full of them, Simon.
No, I agree with you, because when I was watching it, I was going
this is not perchway, and it was kind of going, this is written
more like Trouton, but obviously he's playing it more like that.
He's finding his feet because, you know, of his comedic
background.
Yeah, yeah.
So there's times where I think a few little, you know, the eyebrow
things and a few other things are perhaps overplayed a bit, but in
terms...
But in terms of actually playing it straight, he's actually doing
I think, a really good job.
I think what's interesting is that he's still an outsider, and we
will get him reanalysed as a kind of member of the ruling class
and I think that happens next year.
I don't think that happens yet.
And so here he's still doing crime and stuff, he's still...
You know?
And so, so he is a little bit of that sort of outsider, and the
show doesn't centre around him all that much.
And I think because we're doing an Avengers episode and because
we're retooling the show, I think people don't realise just how
little the doctor has to do with anything that goes on in the
story.
And so I think it's telling that 2 of the 3 cliffhangers are guest
stars in peril.
Yes.
Yeah, but it's not about the guest star in peril. the advancement
of the plot.
Yes, of course.
Oh my god, this is happening. you know, Scoby's being replaced.
Yeah Oh my god, this is happening.
You know, the dummies are coming alive in the workshop.
As we knew, they were going to.
Yeah, it's about as far as you can get from the JNT edict that
every cliffhanger crashes a zoom on the doctor.
Yeah.
But that's an Avengers thing.
If you think about it.
Like, you know, Richard and Brendan aren't here and there are real
experts, but it's quite common, I think, for there to be a threat
that kills off a guest character and then Steve and Mrs. Peel
arrive later and sort of see that happen and that they don't
themselves get put into peril until the very end of the episode.
And that's what happens in this story.
Like Liz and the doctor are not in peril, except, you know, being
shot.
He's shot by.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But that's as close as he gets to involvement in the plot and he
doesn't advance the plot or anything like that.
They're just around kind of investigating things and then they
resolve the plot at the end.
The director.
Derek Martinez.
Does he do any other?
Oh, yes. who's one of the best directors to ever work on the
show?
So he started off with Galaxy 4 and Mission to the Unknown, but
then came into his own with things like the 10th planet, Evil of
the Daleks and the Ice Warriors.
The Ice War is not very good, but it's very, very well directed.
It's usually shot, yes.
Does he do anything after this?
No, it's his last one.
I interviewed him in 1996.
And it is absolutely clear that he was a man with ideas ahead of
his time in how to shoot television.
You can watch the existing episode of Evil of the Daleks.
And the stuff that he does in the studio is just beautiful, the
way that he's moving the camera around.
And when you speak to people who worked with him, they didn't like
him.
They called him deadly Derek Martinez because he was so slow and
methodical, but look at the results.
Only reason why I say this is because, you know, there's certain
directors and writers for us that stick in your mind from the
classic series, and when his name came up, I just kind of went, oh
I don't know what he's done.
Like, so there's all those black and white.
It's the only complete story that he says.
Yeah.
Okay.
So you wouldn't have, it's not like, it's not engrained in my...
It's only great in my mind.
But, you know, there's certain things from John being in the
wheelchair and that chase sequence to the way in which even the
reporters seen from the, with the brigadier and Liz in the
hospital where he's from, where it's from the media point of view
and then the car crash and the window store dummies where you
don't actually see those crashes, but just the way in which all
that is shot is so different to other Doctor Who's.
I can only, going back to that media scrum in the hospital foyer, I
can only imagine that that would have been a studio scene.
Oh, absolutely. yeah There is no way they'd been able to do that
handheld thing in the studio.
We are so blessed by.
We are so blessed that this is on film.
And imagine what the show would have been like. with sequences
like that had this been the template moving forward.
Had Doctor Who just been shot on film, it would have been, well
for a start, you'd have all of the per year in the original colour
format.
But it was just completely changed, the feel and flavour of the
show.
Because, I mean, we've been talking about this when we've done
startling Barbara Bain when we've done Space 1999, which is also
shot on film.
And so a lot of the special effects actually just need to be able
to be done in camera and you don't have videotape to do video
effects.
And so here, everything looks just a lot less crap.
Not just because film looks better and more expensive, not just
because we're on location, but because we don't attempt any laser
beams and stuff.
Yes.
And so it's...
Yeah, and when ransom gets killed, you've got the film going
backwards and the smoke going.
Oh brilliant.
That's another...
So many people get exploded.
Like so many actors have little charges in their costumes that
explode.
Which makes it feel so much more gritty.
Yeah, it feels really visceral.
But the Avengers is also like on film at the time, I think.
And there's lots of stuff where you get close-ups of people's
faces and stuff and their reactions and people who are hypnotised
and all of that sort of thing.
All of the autons who have that slightly shiny face thing that
comes...
Especially the secretary of the secretary...
She's never commented on.
It's so good.
Like all of that is really good.
Just that one line from the captain, where there's something odd
about the faces.
And that's the only reference you actually get to it, but it's all
you need with the photograph of Channing.
But it's like having the general open the door to the general and
like it's so obvious that the natural face and the auton face and
then Channing's face, like he is wonderful.
Like, he's just brilliant.
But it's that subtlety in the makeup and that, which is just
brilliant.
I just want to reiterate this thing about the film thing.
It's not just a look.
It's also the manner in which film is shocked. right?
You've got the opportunity to shoot each angle of the sequence
incompletely or mainly, and then cut when you want to afterwards
cut between the various things.
And you can do complete reverses, like some of those very powerful
things, you know, where the doctor does say, shoes, and then you
get the closer of the doctor.
I beg your pardon?
And it's these incredible things.
You would never have been able to achieve that in a studio with
enormous, huge cameras that need to be wheeled around. as quietly
as possible.
And the vision mixer, relying on the vision mixer to press the
button at the right moment.
You don't get that amount of finesse.
Absolutely right, Simon.
And let me add to that.
This is why Spearhead from Space is not so much a relaunch of the
show, but a bit of a cul-de-sac.
I think Dog 2 and the Silurians is closer to the war games than
Spearhead for the Spaces.
Spearhead from Space is like the location footage on the
invasion.
That's the only analogue that I can think of, which is why I think
they looked at what Douglas Canfield did on Webber Fair and the
invasion and went, let's go that way.
Spearhead from Space had 33 days of shooing. which is just
ridiculous for any Doctor Who story.
So they were shooting a tiny amount of film every day, 3 minutes
of film a day.
They then were able to take all of that, and edit it as a film
which is why it moves like an action film.
No other Doctor Who can do that because it's physically impossible
to do it in the studio.
You can't cut together a multicamera sequence like that.
So Spearhead from Space is not a relaunch for the show in that
respect.
It's its own individual and unique thing.
Yeah.
The only disadvantages I sort of highlighted before about the film
thing is the soundtrack.
I mean, 16 mil film has a tiny, tiny magnetic stripe of sound.
And I think that that's how the sound was being recorded, which is
when the way they normally record it.
It'd be like using a, probably what would have been a news camera
like for news footage.
Because as I said, the only disadvantage is that the sound is very
thin and echo-y. very tinny and that's just the nature of how it
was recorded.
I think if the show was being filmed on film properly.
There would have been a separate.
I mean, I don't I don't want to say that that's definitely the way
it was done, but that's what my guard instinct says.
And just to contrast to space 1999, not that I really watched it
all that much, but this has a sharpness to it in terms of the
cutting and the direction that I don't think space 1999 really has
but the Avengers does have.
But you know why that is, Simon?
It's because it's not set up to be filmed.
It is not meant to be filmed, this script.
And so it's structured like a television drama, whereas Space 1999
is not.
It's structured as a film drama.
So you have lots of languid scenes with no dialogue in them.
This is just a Doctor Who story that's meant to be shot in the
studio that's actually being shot on film.
And so it moves much quicker than any Space 1999 episode.
Languid is the word.
Just a quick note on directors.
You said Derek Martinez didn't have a very good reputation.
People didn't like to work with him.
So many of the better directors on Doctor Who had their
reputation.
Douglas Camfield was apparently like running it like a military
operation, like everyone hated it.
Graham Harper was seen as chaotic in the 80s.
Do you know what I mean?
It's just, and who are the directors that people love to work
with?
People like Penn and Roberts and Peter Moffatt.
Yes, exactly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That'll do, love.
That'll do attitude.
Well, that'll do is that was 90%.
That's enough.
Let's not forget as well that Douglas Canfield was offered the
producership of the show before Barry Letts.
So clearly there was something to the fact that they wanted to ape
that style that he'd brought to the show.
And Simon, also what you were saying about the soundtrack.
I noticed that as well.
Part of it's to do with the 16 mil magstripe, but also Doctor Who
had no ADR budget.
And so they never ADR stuff that was on location.
If it was meant to be made on film, like the Avengers, they ADR
it.
And so it sounded like that.
They got rid of all of the echo.
They put in dialogue in place, whereas this just can't do it.
There is a line that I saw was ADR in the brigadier's office, the
doctor, when Ransom's in the office.
I thought that's been, obviously there was, there must have been a
terrible set, but basically it was only when they really had to
that they, that's right.
They do it very occasionally throughout the show.
I mean, there's a scene in Lagopolis, which is ADR.
It's the scene in the TARDIS with the doctor and address, where
everything is overdubbed.
But that's absolutely...
We disposed of the master.
That's exactly the one See, I know exactly what you're talking
about.
So, let's talk about the world that this creates.
We say that this is set on Earth, but in what sense...
How do you mean?
So what do we see?
One of the one of my biggest complaints, for instance, about the
hand of fear is that it's one of them.
Nominally set on earth.
It's set on earth, but it's set in a quarry, in a nuclear power
station and in a very, very cheaply realised hospital.
That's Bob Baker and Dave Martin work. world.
There's no sense that it's actually said in the real world.
But here, you do get that sense because you've got, you know
people with old-fashioned vacuum cleaners and phones and beepers
and then all the different fashions than out in the street with
the window shop and the cars.
You really do get that sense that it's set at a particular time.
All those old ladies with head scarves.
Yes, not to mention that the Auton dummies in episode 4 breaking
out of the shops, they've got some pre-decimal currency price tags
on them.
I only noticed that last day.
Like I said, £17, one shilling. absolutely extraordinary.
I actually think that this story is one of the few in Doctor Who
at all, particularly around this time, which does really feel like
it is set in the real world, because it feels like a cottage
hospital, you've got the Seelies, you've got the high street.
Whereas, as you said, with hand to fear, but also things like, you
know, claws of axles and so on.
They're set in nuclear power stations and research facilities, and
they're not set anywhere near the real world.
And it's so refreshing to see the high street.
Yes.
To see the ladies with hairnets in the bus stop and the cop and
the thing.
I think the auton kind of smashing up the Sealey's house and
there's a piano in there.
Yes, and there's, yes, an old...
All I could think of was all of these little things, these little
kind of ornaments and stuff that they'd accumulated over...
Yeah, yeah, yeah. it all just seemed really quite real.
Yes, and horrible.
And just the miserable English factory.
Do you know what I mean?
That mid-20th century horrible English factory. like they were
still making those dolls on ration books.
But it was that the, the, the women, you know, sewing their hair
on.
And the eyelashes.
Yeah, yeah.
All of that stuff.
Like that is something, you know, Doctor Who has been to
contemporary earth a few times by this point, but not very many.
It's not as grim as this.
Yeah, but it's proper England.
Like, that's proper mid-20, like, that's England in 1970.
It really, really captures it.
And the life that the Celies have.
I mean, we forget.
And of course, this was the case here, but people who lived in
rural areas, you know, at that time, it's actually practically
indistinguishable from the 3rd world.
Like he's going out to poach for rabbits.
He's hunting his own food.
They've got they've got their stuff, they've got their trinkets
and stuff, but, you know, I'm almost sceptical that there's
electricity in that house, for instance.
You know what I mean?
I mean, obviously miles from anywhere.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think they're probably better off, you know, the TV poor
people.
Yes, you know what I mean?
But, but like that seems really real.
The hospital, all of that sort of stuff.
It also shows in the social mores, I think, in the way that people
deal with each other.
So when you have Dr. Henderson and he needs the porter to turn off
the vacuum cleaner, he doesn't say, could you turn it off?
He gets irritated and snaps his fingers at him.
How'd you see I'm on the phone?
Exactly.
Yeah, he's a doctor where he's just a worker.
And you see the way that Sam Seely deals with his wife.
It's not 70s.
It's very 50s and 60s. the way, you know, fetch me some grub
woman.
What you're looking at?
hungry.
Yeah, what you looking at, woman?
Although she, of course, does give it back to him.
Yeah, 0 yeah.
I don't think I'm having that old box in my house.
It's so nice.
You haven't been thieving again.
As we record, Todd's getting married next week.
So he has all of this to look forward to.
Todd, don't think Ash is going to have that old trunk in your
apartment.
I just need to point out a bit of the wonderful Mrs. Seely
performance, though, which is sort of foreshadowing what we see in
the old hag in Talons of Wing Chiang. where she said, where she
says, no, no, no, no.
Something must have frightened him dreadful before he died.
All I could think of was the woman from the Silurians coming up
next who was found in the park. paralysed by fear.
She may have seen something.
It's good though, she's alive, because you think that when you see
her body on the floor with your life, that she's been killed.
No, I'm being knocked unconscious. so glad that she wasn't sure.
And it's kind of, it is sort of a penalty, you know, like it's Mr
Sealey pays a terrible price for his poor person kind of trying to
get money out of the lovely middle class people in the tent.
They're selling the Thunderball.
So equating being poor with being stupid and being cunning.
Exactly.
And being a bit dishonest.
That's right.
He's the working class character.
He's a bit thieving.
He's also stupid and that he doesn't realise the importance of
these things and the danger that he could be in.
It's a very interesting representation of British society.
And likewise, the porter is portrayed as stupid.
You know, he sells that.
And he sells the story.
And he sells the story to the media.
It's tell from Thomas.
He's legally required to be evil in everything.
He's not evil. evil in the grand death.
No, that's true, but he's super evil in survivors.
Oh.
And then we get Madame Tussaud.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Again, just miserable as hell.
Well, those fashions, for God's sake.
They were spectacular.
Talking about the fashions, the thing I loved was there, and you
get it in tear of the autumns, which you'll talk about next week.
The glasses of that era where this very heavy top with the thing
if they're very kind of... sort of NHS glass.
Yes, they're very Henry Kissinger.
Simon, Simon, Mary Whitehouse.
Yes, yes, exactly. exactly what they are.
It's just so one unit.
It's like what Todd's saying before about it being a film.
It all just comes together as one consistent unit.
So, I want to talk just briefly about the nestings because this is
not the nestings as they end up being.
And this is a very kind of Bob Holmes approached the program.
So this is not a show where rubber aliens invade the earth.
The nestings have been colonising planets for a 10000000 years.
They have evolved beyond any kind of physical presence.
Like there is just something strange and kind of Eldritch about
them.
And when Holmes takes over the program, you know, he does these
evils from the dawn of history and the nestings are that.
But do you know what they are as well?
They're the great intelligence.
The great intelligence is the same thing.
It crafts itself bodies to do its bidding.
It doesn't actually put its intelligence into them.
It maintains the uncorporeality of itself, but the idea is the
same.
And yet it's more evidence of how the reformat of the show or the
new direction of the show steals from the web of fear and the
invasion.
Yeah.
But unlike something like the web of fear, and perhaps more like
the invasion.
The threat he's building, like when the doctor arrives and when
the story starts, there isn't an alien invasion underway, there
isn't already a disturbance.
Life is normal.
Life is fine.
And then gradually as they collect the nestine spheres.
And it's that thing back, like in Power of the Darks, they're not
ready to take over yet, they're still building up their strength.
There's a bit of a war of the world's thing with the sort of
bombardment and what's all this and we don't know what this is, but
we should be, we're not as nearly concerned as we should be.
It's funny how quick it all is too, because, you know, they arrive
things arrive at the same time as the doctor very exciting.
Very, very soon.
Like, in a couple of days, they've replaced all of the most boring
civil servants in the entire government musicians and frozen them
somehow and put them in Madam 2.
But that's already the second, that's already the 2nd bombardment
though.
Because remember, it was another fleet of meteorites.
Swarm leaders in the 2nd lead.
Yes, and they haven't frozen them and put them in Madame 2
swords.
They don't actually replace them until they come to life until
they come to life.
And there were probably a couple because I assume Channing comes
down, the Channing one comes down and I assume there was there was
a real Channing that he's replaced or something.
Maybe.
That's what I was going to say, like Channing is his own special
entity that has to be the 1st one there as a whole creature.
Yeah, in a whole body.
Yeah, they make extinction, don't they, between the facsimiles
which are Channing and the facsimile of Scobi.
And the regular autons, which kind of don't pass as people.
Yeah.
I think it's interesting how they talk about nestines and autons
just as, you know, different terms and that the autons just appear
to be the faceless gun shooting.
Yeah, like the mannequins.
The mannequins, the facsimiles of people.
Yeah.
Are they autons because it's the factory's autoplastics?
So it's the author.
Yes.
And then we certainly forget it from now and forever.
Isn't it just a shortened version of automaton?
Oh, yeah.
Yes, that too.
Yeah, yeah.
But I think they get the name from autoplastics.
Don't forget that in Terror of the Autons, they call the Daffodils
the AutoJet.
Oh there you go.
It's interesting how they're replacing all the civil servants, much
like the Silovine do.
Yeah, all the fattest civil servants get a place.
It's actually really funny because it just means that the Madame
Tussords thing is much, much more boring than you would kind of
think.
It's like the.
But don't you sort of walk the cabinet secretary?
You do walk past the Kennedy and the Nixon gun.
And then there's the cabinet secretary.
I keep on looking.
Every time I watch that sequence, I'm looking at, well, what are
the actual dummies?
and then I'm looking at the actual real people standing still and
saying, are they going to blink?
Are they going to move?
It's really great.
It's actually really well shot.
Like trying to, it's the one moment where Liz gets scared as
well.
It's a little bit of a shame.
She recovers quickly.
And I think it's really good.
She. see the doctor.
She goes, oh, doctor.
But it's just a little bit of a rare moment for Liz to kind of be
discombobulated.
And particularly if we're doing the Avengers where Mrs. Peel
doesn't even react to, you know, slowly advancing towards a
circular saw on a conveyor belt, she can't even kind of raise a
flicker of interest.
I just thought that was just a little bit of a shame.
I have to say, when I was watching Spearhead years ago on a, you
know, 43 centimetre colour television, it looked like all the
actors were completely still, but watching the restored Blu-ray on
a 55 inch OLED screen, they're all swaying side to side.
So, I mean, you would think that on 16 millimetre film, they would
be slightly swaying from side to side with the image anyway.
Yes, exactly, yes. yes.
So this, I think, has such an effect on the show that it is
repeatedly referenced when we're relaunching the show again, and
that will happen next season, when we relaunch the show for series
8, we go straight back here and do the autons again, but it
obviously also happens in the TV movie and in the 11th hour.
Have I missed any more?
Maybe Rose?
Yeah, yes.
Stro's sake.
Maybe.
But what specifically, what aspect specifically, what aspect
specifically are you referring to there?
I think, you know, doctor being in hospital.
The doctor being in hospital, but also the doctor gets his costume
while he's in hospital.
And in fact, you know, the cottage hospital, I think, in the 11th
hour is just so definitely a reference to it, even in the look, the
look of it from the outside, the fact that it has a very kind of
mid-20th century vibe, sort of generally, and it is very much
going back to what works.
And what Moffat does is he takes that scene where the doctor gets
his costume and turns it into the kind of Aristaea for the doctor
the big giant hero moment, is where he rejects the tie and puts
the bow tie on and that suddenly he's the doctor.
Yeah, I think certainly the aspect of it sort of touched on before
about, you know, things like Castra Valve is that it certainly
becomes a template for how you introduce a U doctor, where they
are unconscious, incapacitated, deranged, whatever it is, for at
least a good part of the story.
The only one that's not like that really is robot, like after the
after he's changed all his outfits and never said one, he's
basically the doctor from then on in robot.
Whereas in cash revolver in twin dilemma in Time the Rani, even in
the telly movie and so on like that, and certainly in the 11th
hour, he's still discombobulated through at least sort of 60 or 70
of it, certainly in the Christmas invasion.
Well, I mean, I think I think what we do with the doctor in the
11th hour is that he's actually always with it, but he doesn't
have the TARDIS or the Sonic screwdriver.
He doesn't have a bit of sort of weird post-regeneration thing.
Because it actually turns out that's a bad idea.
And Russell abandoned it for Shooty, didn't he?
He just went, actually, we're not doing that.
And he abandoned it for David Tennant.
Yeah, as he should, it should have been abandoned a long time
ago.
Yeah, really.
You had maybe 5 minutes, but then...
I mean, I think you could do that when the doctor was changing
every 7 years, but not every 3 seasons.
Exactly, exactly.
It becomes tiresome.
Well, and it's just sort of slightly dumb.
I mean, you want to see the new doctor.
And so what exactly is the purpose of this?
And the 1st time they do it, they don't do it with Troughton at
all.
He gets up and he's obnoxious and kind of off putting and things
but he's not deranged in any way.
I think it's a difference when you build a regeneration story or
the 1st story of a new doctor around the fact that the doctor has
changed or else just change him and parachute him into a story.
That's your 2 viable models.
Power of the Daleks, they change him and parachutes him in, robot
the same thing.
Whereas Castravalva, Spearhead, I think the Christmas invasion
deep breath, certainly is built around the changing doctor.
I have to say, though, that we kind of decided last week that this
is a very definite relaunch for the doctor in Power of the Daleks
and a relaunch for the Daleks, that there's a real sense in which
we're now doing a new show and we're self-consciously doing that.
And the way that the doctor talks about Hartnell's doctor in the
3rd person, the way that he becomes a collection of artefacts in
the chest, the 500-year diary, all of those things serve to
distance us from the previous doctor.
Absolutely, but all of that happens in basically 2 scenes.
And then you're on with the story.
The other aspect of the relaunch, though.
I mean, it's easy to sort of just pick up on the launches of new
doctors.
But other relaunches, things like leisure hive, even though script
wise, it is still a kind of a 7 season 17 script.
There are other aspects of it that after you get that long
Brighton Beach scene where the doctor reminded it really get
involved in the story for a while that you get and you get that in
spearhead and rose as well.
You know, all this stuff is happening before the doctor arrives.
Church on Ruby Row, all this stuff is happening before the doctor
actually arrives.
So the relaunches, in some respects, make the doctor absent, or at
least not as engaged in the story for a bit longer, like you're
introduced to all these other people, and then, I suppose, through
their eyes that you're introduced to the doctor.
And that tried and true method of making the show reassuringly
familiar when the doctor changes.
People always talk about it in reference to robot, and it happens
in deep breath as well.
I think this is the most potent example of it.
Like you are reassured that this is the same program, even though
it's gone to colour, even though it's a shorter season, even
though there's a new companion, even though many other things.
Even though it's now made on film for some reason, rather than on
videotape, you're reassured by the fact that the brigadier is
there.
And that is a key thing about it.
And the thing that's really interesting is how close we might have
come to not even having the brigadier, which would have made this
a vastly different relaunch for the show.
That's interesting because like if he hadn't been there.
This would have been like Rose, everybody's new.
And in this season, it's the only season, in terms of enemies
there's no recurring villains, right?
Series one, series seven.
Series 13 has it as well, but you still got the same leads and you
still got unit in the background and all that sort of thing.
The key to time has it.
But again, you've still got Tom Baker and you've got canine.
So this is as close as it gets to being like Rose or even like the
11th hour where everybody's new.
It's also, as you said before, I think Nathan, it was you.
It's an ensemble show now.
There are more characters and I think it becomes even more an
ensemble in season eight.
The other thing that makes it better and it's one of the reasons
why I love the classic series, but I think you particularly start
to get from the per we era onwards is interesting and meaningful
scenes that don't involve the doctor or any of his immediate
friends.
Yes, I'm thinking of Saudi rians and things like that, but there's
loads of scenes in this.
And not just not just with Channing and Hibbet and so on.
But, you know, with the doctor in the hospital and so on.
And the media pack in the lobby talking about what's going on.
Ransom going to visit.
Yeah, exactly.
You don't get that.
You don't get the model format.
Yeah, exactly.
The Celies.
There's no allowance for that in the modern form of the show, very
little allowance for that.
And there's not really that much of that happening up to this
point either, really.
It's also the way that the show usually starts in the black and
white years, you will invariably open with the TARDIS
materialising or the doctor and his companions inside the TARDIS
whereas what Bob Holmes does is he starts off in the world in the
crotons, and then he advances that in the space pirates, you go
for 9 minutes without the doctor in the show.
And he does the same thing here.
And I think it's taking it away from children's drama where you're
focussing on the protagonist and taking it towards adult drama
where you're focussing on the world that the protagonists are in.
And in fact, if I can expand on that.
That is the language, the dramatic language that I was learning
from the show when I was watching it because all the stuff we were
watching started in that way.
The 1st scene would almost always, not always, would almost always
be where the story is going to be set.
And I was, that's one of the reasons why I love the unquiet dead
because suddenly in the new season, this new version of the show
an episode was starting, the way I felt it should start, which is
here we are in 18, whatever it is, Cardiff, rather than, you know
the doctor and Rose in the Tartars.
Well, that's all the time we have for this week.
We'll be back again next week, or in just short of a year's time
to watch everyone scramble to relaunch the show again in Terror of
the Autons?
In the meantime, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts
and you can keep up with us on our website, 500yearDiary.com, where
you'll find our social media links as well as links to all of our
other podcasts, including our other Doctor Who podcasts, flights
through entirety, and the 2nd great and bountiful Human Empire.
Until next time, remember that it's not an effective guard dog, if
it's just a guy in the next room saying arf a bunch of times.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
See you soon.
Good night.
Bye for now.
That was 500 Year Diary, starring Todd Bealby, Nathan Bottomley
Peter Griffith, and Simon Moore.
The theme was composed by Cameron Lamb.
This episode, The Pertwee I have in my head, was recorded on the
17th of March 2024 and released on the 21st of April.
Listeners will be pleased to learn that about a week after this
recording, Todd Bealby and Ash Urquhart were successfully married
and more than a month later, Todd has, as far as we know, not
attempted to bring any mysterious alien artefacts into the house.
I think that's good.
What do you think?
Yep.
All right, tune in next week for us to throw all of this away and
become terribly silly.
That's not terribly serious.
I love Terra Vior.
I think it's good, but I love what it does to the show.
But also, I think I think I don't think season 7 is as serious as
all that.
I just think of the fact that the concepts which underline all the
stories are more are a bit more hardcore.
Well, I think we'll talk about that.
Peter, why don't you hang up and stop your recording?
We'll go and do a prisoner exchange.
And a quick wee, a patented quick wee.
And I'll see you all.
On Saturday. on Saturday.
All right, okay.
We'll hang up.
We'll call you in a sec.
Press stop.