Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to 500 year diary.
The only Doctor Who podcast disappointed that this story has so
little to say about the winemaking environment on the nesting
protein planets.
I'm Nathan.
I'm James.
I'm Peter.
I'm Simon.
It's the 2nd of January 1971.
Just shy of a year ago.
We saw Doctor Who relaunched and retooled with a new Time Lord, a
new setting, new regulars, and an entirely new world for them all
to happen in.
But tonight, to our surprise, We're seeing exactly the same thing
happening again.
Let's see if anyone can tell us what the hell is going on in
terror of the autumns.
So last week, we introduced a new timeline in the form of John
Pertuy as Doctor Who.
This week, and in the 1st episode, we actually introduced two new
Time Lords, and we introduced the Master very, very quickly, I
think.
The 1st scene.
I never got that Joe was a timelord.
Sorry.
It is really, really quite quick, and it took us quite a long time
to get to John Pertwe last time, but we're straight in with the
master just immediately, aren't we?
Yes, there are certain aspects of this opening that I almost feel
like they wanted us to feel like we'd arrived in the middle of
something rather than this was the beginning of a new season.
This could so easily be the 2nd master story, the way he just
appears straight off the get go.
You know, Captain Yates is referred to as having cleaned up from
the Nestine's last time.
So it's almost like, well, actually, was he in last year?
I can't remember.
I like it.
I think it's great I mean, we get this introduction.
We get him sort of establishing who he is and what he's like.
Then he goes off and commits his 1st crime.
And then only then do we actually see what's going on elsewhere?
Yes.
I think it's the beginning of this story that gives rise to the
tale we get that John Pertwee felt threatened by Roger Delgado.
It's not the fact that Roger Delgado is really good, which he is.
It's his primacy in the storytelling.
And right from the start, we go in on the master rather than the
doctor.
And then we cut back to the doctor in the unit headquarters, just
faffing around and doing his doctor-ish things.
I think maybe that's what it was.
You made a point in the original run of FTE, Nathan, about how
Roger Delgado immediately appears in the show and is at risk of
becoming the lead because he's more fun and just sort of injects
so much energy into it and it risks becoming a show about the
master rather than the doctor.
I mean, one thing that we know about Time Lords is that a Time
Lord can be the star of Doctor Who.
And so it's always the threat that the master poses.
And I think when they bring the master back for the new series
with a clear idea of his role in the narrative, that is the thing
that definitely happens and it does happen in series 3.
I think it happens in basically every scene that Missy is in.
And also, I think, you know, Sasha Dawan is a more lively figure
and Chibnall seems to put a lot more effort into his dialogue than
I'm afraid the doctor is, I think, by that point.
Well, evil characters are always going to be much more interesting
to write and certainly much more interesting to play.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, he is, I think we said in FDE, he's pertwe only foreign.
But her twee is foreign.
It's in Pertuia French.
Yeah, a twist to Lalabo.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, we alluded to this a little bit last week and we'll
get there a little bit later, but this is the episode where Pertry
is kind of reanalysed as a member of the ruling class.
And it isn't just his interaction with Mr. Brown Rose from the
ministry.
It is just generally the way that he kind of comports himself and
behaves the dismissive way that he reacts to Joe's arrive.
And also the way that he steals other characters' dialogue for the
1st time.
It's really weird.
There's a whole sequence where he basically takes Mark Yeats's
dialogue about you thought that you couldn't be hypnotised
whatever the full line is.
Like, it's quite clear that Richard Franklin is about to deliver a
line.
And then John Pertby kind of breathlessly chops him off.
It actually happens a couple of times in the story, and I think
it's the doctor doing doctor-ish things, but it's quite weird.
It doesn't really happen again.
There's something actually interesting from one of the Blu-ray
behind the sofas, and I can't recall exactly what season or what
story it was in, but Davidson is watching it, and he makes an
observation on Pertwee's performance that he felt it's not as
light as it should be.
It's not as a doctor.
And I thought that was actually interesting. not something I
completely agreed with, I have to say, but it's just given the
conversation we just had.
It's an interesting observation for Davidson to have made.
Is the Paul Cornell review, is it about Terror of the Autons?
It is.
It came from the feeling in fandom, in the 90s, where they had a
revisionist idea of the poet era, which had been held up as the
most amazing doctor who ever throughout the 1980s, where they
thought, let's revise it, and let's talk about how crap this is.
And Paul Cornell led that with his review of Terror of the Autons
which basically, and comically, said that it was absolute rubbish
and pointed out in all the ways that it was.
And I think a lot of that lingers, like the Jeremy Bentham reviews
from things like a celebration, set fandom's ideas.
I think Paul Cornell's review of this story is actually
responsible for a lot of tropes of the Pertwee era, which don't
necessarily exist outside of this story.
So it's espousing received fan wisdom.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, he ends that saying, you know, the time lords exile
the doctor to earth, and make him a Tory.
And I think that's not fair, but they do actually make him kind of
you know, a patrician authority figure in a way that he hadn't
been since Hartnall.
And even Hartnell isn't a very good patrician authority figure
because he's naughty and a little bit ramshackle and a little bit
chill.
And do you remember Tom's description of John Pertwe, you know
where he's like a lap poster?
He's like a light bulb.
Tall light bulb?
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
And so kind of twinkles.
And so he is patrician in a way that even Capoldi, I think, doesn't
manage.
Like, he he is that.
But I don't think necessarily that that's a problem, although he
is a little bit more unpleasant to people, I think, in this story
than...
I think what it comes down to is that he's pro-establishment per
se, if that's where the critique of him being a Tory is coming
from.
It's not so much that he's pro-establishment, but he's portrayed
as being of the establishment.
But at the same time, he's anti-establishment because, you know, he
does keep talking about the military mind and in one story is no
one capable of thinking on their own and so on like that.
He's very sceptical of that kind of authority.
However, he loves the trappings of the aristocracy, if I could
right. and that is that is the 3rd doctor through and through.
Look, the way he dresses.
Exactly, yeah.
Yeah, you could say he queers establishment in a way.
Well, because he's wearing the fluffy out.
Yes, there's an Oscar Wildness.
There's a sense of the wildness.
Yeah, that's what I meant.
Yeah.
Because I think that the, that scene, that particular scene where
he says quite the wrong sort of chat is coming into a rat.
And that's really super unpleasant. think that there's any way of
making that likeable.
But we also...
We all have that thought about government departments.
I don't know whether we would put it in quite that way.
I couldn't possibly comment.
James, you've always been the wrong kind in James.
But what we do get is we get to see him interacting with another
time, Lord, for the 1st time on the same level.
So we had the time meddler, obviously, and that's sort of a little
bit different.
And then we had the tribunal, which is what they're called here, I
think.
And he is scared of them, you know, Trout and sort of scared of
them in a way, and he certainly has to do what they say.
But then we just get this guy.
And would you believe that he has a name in the wider fandom and
it is Wait for it, Adelphi.
I know, Adelphi space name.
And he's absolutely Sir Frank or like Herbert.
Yes, yes.
Or something like that.
Like he's like, it's so stupid.
Delphi to Verat Rolunda.
He's a pre-regeneration terrible Zodin is what he is.
But there again, he's a man from the ministry.
He looks like he's like the head of a government department
doesn't he?
He's sort of quite natalie dressed.
He's got the bowl.
He's got an umbrella and stuff.
And he speaks very poshly.
And we talk.
He definitely went to the right kind of school.
Well, and that's what we talk about.
We do talk about his degree in the academy, perjury's degree.
All of that kind of thing is all sort of expressed in these upper
class terms.
So when Holmes gets hold of the time laws and finally gets to
present them in the way that he wants.
That's what they all are, aren't they?
They're all sort of ineffectual old upperclass men in sort of
Oxford colleges or whatever.
Here, it's the civil service, but it's a sort of very similar
thing.
But you see, the 3rd doctor is new money.
The 3rd doctor aspires to all that kind of trappings of
aristocracy, but is not part of it.
No, he's not new money. old money.
In what way?
I think he's the 3rd son of an aristocrat.
So basically he's not inheriting the timeline.
I see you mean old money with no money.
Yes, yes, exactly.
That's a standard trope.
I mean, yes. sort of English, exactly.
He's away with 3rd son.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
What the doctor is.
What he's always been and what the 3rd doctor is is a hater of
bureaucracy.
Exactly.
And that's what he's talking about with the wrong sort of chap is
creeping into the department.
It's those people who are just kind of time servers.
They're not there to actually achieve anything, they're just there
to hold the positions.
And that's your kind of exactly, Mr. Chin, that you get in a
couple of stories time.
But it's also the whole way that the civil service is portrayed
throughout the 70s, which then, of course, leads to programs like
yes, Minister, yes, Prime Minister.
The civil service in the modern era in all the public service, as
you'd now call it, does not reflect that sort of 70s, you know, the
ends, there is no ends in administration only means, you know, kind
of Humphreyism.
Yeah, I mean, part of the thing is for us as Doctor Who fans
looking back at Doctor Who in the 60s, we get this experience of
our favourite TV show being made by that system.
Exactly.
You know, very much in sort of memos and all of that kind of thing
program prevention offices.
The memos exist, the episodes don't.
But also that is Holmes's conception of the doctor, isn't it?
But the enemies of the doctor are bureaucrats and they're rule
bound.
And you see it in the valleyard, I think.
But you do see...
Sunmakers, absolutely, all the way through.
Yeah, not necessarily enemies, just people he doesn't like.
Yeah, yeah.
What I think is the best story of this era is kind of of
monsters.
And that has things to say about class while very loudly saying
that it's nothing political.
But those people, the gray-faced men of interminor are all just
civil servants, having discussions and they're the doctor's
adversary there who he's contrasted with and up against.
But it's not very much like that in series 7.
No, the doctor's more of an equal opportunist rude person in
season seven.
And so he'll turn up in sort of the space command centre in
ambassadors of death and just be rude to the command there just
because.
Whereas I think terror of the autons distils it into, he's rude to
the right kinds of people.
Yeah, yes.
But, I mean, the class thing is sort of different and the time
lords, I think.
We have the time lords back.
And it's kind of interesting that the time loads are introduced at
the end of series 6.
They're in some senses responsible for the premise of series 7, but
they don't really get talked about, and now they're back, and
they're back on the table, and they will be back this season.
Look, they're just back to give us a kick along to just introduce
who the master is.
He's one of the doctor's own race.
The end.
Oh, I suppose actually...
Yeah, no, he's back in colony instead, of course.
They mentioned frequently in the claws of Axos.
They're kind of used to kind of motivate the story or to create
the premise.
The way that the exile is.
And we don't see them that much.
We don't see them that much, but it's surprising that this big
kind of development disappears for a year, more or less, and then
they're starting to say, all right, we can incorporate the time
lords into the show sort of more regularly into the premise.
So the other thing that we did last year, of course, was
introduced to new regular characters, the brigadier, who was a
character, but not a regular, and Liz Shaw, now we introduce quite
a stable of new regular characters.
They've kind of come in dribs and drabs, haven't they?
I mean, you get the brigadier first, then you get, well, bent and
returning from his appearance in the invasion, and then you get
Mikey Yates because you've had a kind of a succession of, you know
ancillary other...
I mean, Benton was in ambassadors in Inferno.
Oh, yes, that's what I'm saying.
You get Benson in Inferno.
More so, in fact, a little bit in ambassadors, but mainly
inferno.
So he kind of slides in and then you get sort of Mikey Yates being
introduced. as I sort of tried to say before, they're kind of
introduced as if they've already been there, we just haven't seen
them.
I didn't know as a child that this was Mike Yates's 1st story.
I just, you just assume that he's there.
You 2 assume that he's there from the beginning, don't you?
I actually had an impression before watching Spearhead in
preparation for watching this, that he was in Spearhead.
No, no, no, no, Yates.
Because I hadn't watched it in a decade and I was misremembering
him being...
You don't want to miss out on Captain Monroe or Paul Darrow.
Well exactly.
Actually, I actually don't think it makes a whole lot of
difference that they're introducing a new character in Captain
Yeats because there's always been that captain character.
And actually the 3 that we've had so far, Captain Turner in the
Invasion, Captain Monroe in Spearhead and then Captain Paul Darrow
in the Siberia.
Hawkins.
Yes, yes, yes. are actually all better characters than Mike
Yates.
I agree with that. and played better.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And they're played by better actors.
So, I mean, that's a thing.
I think you're just meant to think that this is the latest
iteration of the unit 2nd in command and it could be different
next week, but for some happy reason, it's not.
Yeah, I mean, by the time we hit the end of this season, we really
do have a proper stable of regulars and Mike gets to do things
that are Mike things rather than just Captain Yates things.
Although funnily enough, it then immediately starts to
disintegrate.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He starts to become unavailable.
And I could fully imagine Joe going on a date with any of those
previous captains than I could, Captain Yates.
Even Paul for some reason.
It's very interesting as well.
The introduction of Joe because I think in many ways, Liz was a
character who didn't really work for the show.
I think she's a great character and a great actress and I love Liz
Shaw, but I know what they were trying to do by bringing it back
to a more child friendly character who could be an identification
figure.
And it's very interesting how we almost missed out on the Liz Shaw
character because they gave serious thought to actually making it
Isabel from the invasion and bringing her back.
And she is very similar to Joe. She's vivacious and she sort of
goes off and gets herself into trouble and she wears...
Although old and groovy things.
Although older.
Sally Faulkner would have been 36 when they brought her back.
Possibly ancient.
Positively ancient.
But the point is, Joe comes across as a girl in terms of, you know
she's fresh out of high school or fresh out of whatever degree
she's done, college, whereas Isabel would come across as more and
certainly more sassy and more worldly, even though, you know
obviously Joe and Katie are both absolutely spectacular.
And they just hit it off from the 1st moment.
It's just that opening scene with the fire extinguisher.
They are so good.
And the way she looks at him, you know, I'm your new assistant.
She is spot on from the get go.
And yes, I know that the film sequences would have been done
first.
It's instantly delivers warmth, which a lot of season 7 didn't
have, and again, I love it, though, I do.
Love it, though, I do.
Not as much warmth, not as much warmth, because he is very wise.
He was saying last week.
John is very warm with Carolyn John in that opening sequence that
they have together in the in the unit lab.
There's nothing wrong with the Liz character per se.
It's just, I think that this is just better for the format of the
show.
I'm trying to work out if the cart came before the horse.
Is the show changing and therefore Joe is a manifestation of that
or do they craft Joe and then the entire show becomes Joe
Flavoured?
Like, it's really telling to compare this with Spearhead from
Space, because so many of the elements are the same.
And last week, we talked about the kind of realism that Spearhead
from Space has.
And in fact, this version of Earth that this show is set in now is
vastly different from what we get in Spearhead from Space.
And look at how quickly everything happens and how we go from
place to place to place really, very, very quickly, much, much
more than we ever have.
That's actually effective change in the production techniques
though.
They had new equipment and were able to edit more. for season 8
than they were for season.
So season 7 is still a little, even though it's in colour, is
still a little bit like it was in season six.
Yeah, it's much more for live.
They got new equipment before season eight, which meant they could
have more edits in an episode.
Is that also when they start to shoot rather than one episode a
week. shoot 2 episodes every 2 weeks or something.
Isn't that the same thing?
They trial it.
They had trial at the previous season, but for this season, it
becomes the norm, like 2 episodes recorded every fortnight.
But I think what Nathan was saying, though, is the fact that we
start to get that kind of invented world spearhead from space is
set in in cottage hospitals and, you know, high streets and so on
like that at a big, you know, grim plastics factory.
Whereas now we've got, yes, there's a little bit of a high street
at times, but basically when people are being given daffodils.
But, you know, there's a circus and there's a research, this
antiquarry and a research facility and so on like that.
And I mean, look at unit, Unity and Spearhead from Space was just
behind a faceless building somewhere in central London.
Here, it's in a weird kind of... on a canal where you sort of
throw things through windows.
It's sort of it's out there.
It's out.
It's not in.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think there's a speed, though, that we move from place to
place.
So we move to the museum, we go circus, museum.
We're in and out of John Farrell's house.
We're in the plastics factory.
We move really, really rapidly.
There's a moment in episode one where Joe goes off to make a list
of plastics factories to divide up among people.
The next time we see her, she's actually in a plastics factory
investigating one. and there's no connective tissue between those
scenes at all.
So we're going very, very rapidly through odd spaces, I think, than
we did.
I can actually see how it would work as a six-part story and how
those things would have been stretched out.
But I wonder whether that would have helped.
No, no, no.
I'm not saying it would, but I can just see it in a pertly kind of
way.
I mean, clause of Axos does the same thing.
It has the same very quick cutting between scenes.
But actually, this is something that I wanted to talk about.
It built on what James was talking about with kind of new
technology.
The reason terror of the autons feels like another revamp of the
show is that the mise en scene of the show is completely
different.
So the way that it's actually presented is different.
And again, it's a bit of a blind alley.
There aren't many examples of the show looking like this.
They sort of settle down into a halfway point.
It's like they, let's look at the soundtrack.
The soundtrack is, as Nathan might call it, blaring space nonsense
because it's all done on a synthesiser.
It's very kind of...
They swiftly decide that that doesn't work.
And so they mix it in with some conventional instruments and you
get, say, the day of the garlic score.
Here there's a reliance on shooting in a certain way that doesn't
quite work.
And so they sort of go back to a happy medium between what they
used to shoot and what they shoot now.
So the reason that this is sometimes called comic strip is that
Barry Letts alternates between mid-shots and big close-ups, often
for no dramatic purpose, and comic strip panels do the same
thing.
They have those big reactive close-ups on characters.
People also walk into an outer frame without wide establishing
shots, which means you don't get a sense of place and geography on
the sets, and often scenes will start on those big close shots.
So an example that you were talking about there, Nathan, is the
sphere being stolen from the museum in episode one.
In spearhead from space, you would have had a direct lead up to
this.
So you would build up to that moment.
You'd have like an establishing shot of where you would were, you
might have some mysterious shot of a character walking up the
stairs or something like that.
You get none of that.
It's 3 quick odd shots.
Very, very quick at last 10 seconds, that scene.
It's a weirdly high close-up of the casing and MCU of the guard
being hit by who Russell.
You, Russell.
When I was young, I thought his name was you Russell, EWE.
So you get the weirdly close high shot of the casing.
You get the MCU of the guard being hit by you, Russell on CSO, and
then a cut back to the casing for an inordinately long time in
things on it.
And the grammar of those shots is misplaced.
You need to know where you are, but you only get where you are in
the 2nd shot where you get the Kromakishot of the museum behind
them.
But there's a lot happening in close-up in that short.
You've got one character yelling and another one clubbing them.
So by the time you cut away, you only just taken in what's
happening.
I don't think it actually works.
I think it's a style of the show that moves too quickly and
doesn't ground you well enough, which is why they do away with
it.
And it's not just Barry Lett's being a bad director.
We know he's not a bad director.
Enemy of the world is not like this.
Carnival of Monsters is not like this.
So it was a stylistic choice, which I think they make.
Do you think, though, that's because this is the 1st time they
have had the ability to edit so much, they are actually getting a
little too excited and and go, oh, I can have lots of fast moving
pacy kind of shots and say maybe they over- over-ag that pudding?
It could be.
Or is it like series 11 where they, you know, do an exciting new
look, which doesn't quite take for the rest of the season?
It could be, but also remember that they would have had to have
planned for this because it moves so quickly in the shooting that
these episodes would have to have been overwritten.
You couldn't have had a standard 25 minute episode being shot like
this because that example we were using before of the master
stealing the sphere from the museum, that should have lasted a
longer time on screen and it doesn't.
So that begs the question, was this the remit?
Did they say we're going to try this?
We're going to shoot it really quickly. and like make it really
energetic?
Or did perhaps the scripts come in long and they decided that was
the way to shoot it?
I think you might be onto something there because there are
missing, there are significantly large missing chunks of this
episode.
There's actually someone in the entitles of one of the episodes
who doesn't appear in the story.
How interesting scene was cut out.
A policeman character.
It would have just been a line, but nevertheless.
Yeah, what were you going to say, son?
Well, I'm going to disagree and agree with different aspects.
I want to go back to the 6 part thing because I actually wonder
whether plotting wise, the story was devised, was at least
pencilled out as a 6 parter and then condensed because there is an
awful lot that happens in episode one even more.
And I think Claude of Axos works in a similar way.
Maybe it's just because mentally at this point in the program
they're thinking in the context of 6 part stories and a four
parter is a shortened 6 part as opposed to what becomes the other
way around.
You know, a six-parter is a stretched for parter.
I actually think it's not a conscious decision.
I mean, I'd be surprised, I should say, if it was a conscious
decision.
I think it's the fact that Barry lets is really going gung-ho with
his Kramer key with his CSO.
He's got ideas.
He's got ambition for this thing.
And remember, he appears in that training video. that's done
internally with BBC.
He is an advocate for using this technology, not just in space
dramas like Doctor Who, but in normal dramas, like in their setup
it's a village.
I think it's because they've decided to write it with so many
little scenes and he's going to achieve it with Mrs. Farrell's
kitchen and the museum and so on, just using Kremaki.
There's also another sequence where Farrell discovers the master
in with the autons.
And that's a Kramer key background as well.
There's quite a lot of chromic backgrounds just so you can get a
single shot of a single location.
And I think it's Barrelett's wanting to expand the number of quote
unquote locations and or quote unquote sets.
And then when it comes down to it, in practice in the studio, to
set up that CSO museum, you can only really have the 2 shots the
way it was done because it was going to take 2 long to set up kind
of thing.
And so you couldn't do as many shots as you would normally do
using the traditional grammar of a television drama, especially at
that era.
I mean, I think you're right.
And also, that's why they pair it back from now because that scene
that you referenced, where Farrell comes in and the master is
activating the autons, actually gets lost in the drama.
It should be a really scary part of the end of episode one where
the master is activating the autons, which the audience has seen
before for the 1st time, but actually it's done again in 3 shots
wide shots of autons just kind of sitting up, big close-up on
Farrell, just looking panicked, and then a short of the auton
about to hit him, and it's completely thrown away.
Whereas actually, it's a big part of the drama.
So I think that they decide you can't actually shoot important
parts of the drama against Chromaki because they don't land.
I also think they're remembering the snappiness of the cutting in
spearhead from space, which you could do because the whole thing
was cut on film, so you could slice it together, better, and you
get this kind of that 60s, as Todd was saying last week, is that
kind of 60s feature film, flavour to it.
And I think that's what he's trying to emulate here and it just
doesn't quite work in the same way because of the other
restrictions.
It ties their hands in how you shoot drama, and that's why tear of
the autons, again, is characterised as comic strip, because it
doesn't feel like actual drama sometimes.
It feels like there's just cameras covering things that are
happening rather than a buildup of the way that you cut drama
together.
So if you use that example of the time lord appearing to the
doctor and he's out in midair, which is funny, what they do to
bring him into the doctor is just zoom in on the amter against.
It kind of looks pretty crappy.
It's okay, but what really undoes it is when they try to cut to
the live action studio and the placement of the 2 characters.
Yes, they're like right nose to nose.
It's bizarre.
Yeah, it's very often he's like, whoa, the doctor wasn't standing
there, was he?
And so the natural coverage is undermined by it, which is why they
never lean into it to this extent again.
They only ever use going forward apart from a few very rare
occasions.
They only have used chroma key for space backgrounds and to do
things which are slightly fantastic.
Sometimes you'll have a very competent director like Christopher
Barry who will use it to fill in the background of corridors.
So in the brain of Morbius, you'll have the corridor in Solons
laboratory.
And it's actually got a chromicky background to extend it.
Same things happens in robots of death.
Rather than the blow-up photograph.
Isn't it funny whenever we go to a radio telescope, things always
fall apart in the production?
Yes, exactly.
But you never again have an instance where you're trying to place
real characters into a real world environment and convince the
audience by effect.
But also the snappiness as well.
I mean, we talk about the comic book thinking, I think you're
right with the choices of shots and you go to these really big
close-ups quite a lot.
I also think it's just a stylistic thing and it's a direction that
we don't go in.
It's the stylistic choices to make it almost hyper real or
unreal.
And they decide to go back to the real.
They do.
I mean, we do go back to it again.
I think to some degree in clause of access.
Yes, I was going to say, clause of access has a very similar
flavour to it in terms of that.
Michael Ferguson is a very good director.
Yeah.
And also, I was speaking last week in Spearhead from Space about
how much influence Douglas Canfield had in the way that he shot
Web of Fear and the Invasion.
And Canfield uses intense close-ups on characters in the studio.
And so you'll get a lot of scenes. of the doctor and Travers in
the laboratory in Web of Fear, and a lot of it is shot in these
incredible close-ups of both characters.
I think Barry Letts is trying to ape that and it doesn't quite
work because he's knocked Douglas Canfield.
Canfield just knows exactly where to place his camera to have a
really interesting shot of someone's face.
Whereas I don't think other directors can do it, but they were
trying.
So, the other thing that I want to talk about a bit is the way the
story is structured compared to the last time we had the auton.
It's so weird.
It's just structured as a series of attacks on the doctor.
Yeah.
So there's no plot as such.
Like it doesn't develop, I think.
I think that there are a series of things.
I guess the closest that we get to plot development is as we start
to find out about the final plot, which is the daffodils, but
essentially it is just a whole bunch of stuff that happens to the
doctor. and then it just stops happening.
Yeah.
And what we had last time was we had to introduce these new
characters in this new premise.
So we basically kept the doctor out of the action from episode 2
until about the end of episode 4 and had him getting to know Liz
and doing his thing and stuff.
Here.
I think there's some of that motivating it, and I think we do have
to spend some time with Joe, and we'll talk a little bit more
about her, I think, but it is just a bunch of things that happen
one after the other to the doctor culminating in, you know, him
being kidnapped by the master at the end of the story.
I think it's because it's Doctor Who's 1st sequel.
And so they don't have to do all of that setup.
They think that the audience knows what the autons are.
They sort of cover it in one dialogue sequence with Richard
Franklin and Katie Manning.
And so what Holmes does is just try to spice it up.
He knows that they're going for a lot of action.
And so he just keeps throwing in action.
In fact, it's gratuitous action.
So not only do you have the doctor being an attempt to blow up the
doctor, 3 separate occasions.
There are bombs which try to blow up the doctor.
But anytime something...
It's true.
That is true.
In the normalisation, he makes the one at the Circus of Santaran.
Yes, it does.
But you know, don't even get me started on that.
I did wonder where that was when I was watching the story as a
child because I'd read the book first.
Yes, me too.
It's not actually the first, you can't really say it's the 1st
sequel, though.
I mean, I think it's the 1st one that's more most closely remade.
Even the moonbase isn't as much of a remake of 10 planets as this
is a spinhead.
Yeah, yeah, or snowman and web of fear.
But it's a certain sequel.
Well, I don't know.
I think I know what you're coming from, though.
It's very much the same thing.
We have a plastic factory that's being taken over, you know, by a
guy.
It's less a sequel, more a remake.
Well, and we're going to do this again next year.
It seems to be a thing that we're doing this year and next year is
what if a series 7 story only with the master, right?
And we kind of do that this year and we do that next year.
And this is very close to that.
But when the master comes, and the master's just Channing, isn't
he, like, the master is essentially Channing, we do have a auton
voice guy, but he's just got a featureless head and a sort of
suddenly the auton voice. one of them.
Yeah, one of them.
And look much less scary, unfortunately.
Yes.
Yeah, I'm wondering about that.
Those blue overalls from last week were fantastic.
Oh, and the scarves.
The scarves.
But again, it's down to the direction.
There was something about the way that they moved, the stillness
in spearhead from space.
They were much more terrifying than any previous monster in the
show.
Well, and the other reason they're more terrifying is because
they're still, and then suddenly they run.
Like when he's...
Yes.
And that's what you don't really get in this one because partly
because of the huge stupid heads.
Yeah, well, in Doctor Who generally, they can't run because...
So that was so unique last night.
I think the scares in Spearhead come from the same kind of jump
scare you get from the weeping angels in the new series.
It's something that shouldn't move.
And then suddenly it moves either out of the corner of your eye or
when you blink.
It's because it's suddenly coming towards you and it shouldn't
be.
It's like a mundane thing suddenly, suddenly being a threat.
Here, the autons are just surplus to the plot.
They're just the master's henchmen.
Whereas spearhead from space sets out to make them scary.
So the scene with ransom coming back to the factory and looking
around and that gallery of autons behind him and one of them just
slowly starts to move is an absolutely terrifying sequence.
Whereas in terror of the autons, The autons don't do anything
frightening.
No.
In fact, there's no time for atmosphere, I think, is part of the
problem here.
And they're not reaching for that.
You know, they did that last year.
And so this is sort of action.
This is introducing the master.
Like it very much has that role, doesn't it?
It's also lacking that it all feels too rushed.
One thing that Better Doctor Who stories always had, is silence or
stillness or, as you're saying, Peter, with the autons being
still.
And even within a line of dialogue, all the dialogues kind of
rushed out and everyone kind of responds to everybody else and it
all sort of keeps moving.
You don't get that poise that you get with in spearhead with
things like destroy. total destruction.
Like that the pauses in that, it creates a more captivating way of
delivering dialogue rather than just getting the lines out as
quickly as you can so that the next person can deliver theirs.
Spearhead from Space had that essential John Wood nuttiness, the
terror.
Yes.
It's the pauses.
It's the best delivery is often the ones with pauses.
It's interesting as well because I think the script is setting up
the autons to be scary.
It doesn't give them necessarily scary things to do, but it's
making them visually scary by giving them the big daffodil men
heads.
We've become used to those through being overexposed to them, but
they're actually quite grotesque and sinister looking.
And also the auton heads on the policeman is quite a shocking
image, which we've become used to.
I think the script is setting them up for that, but there's just
something about the way they're being shot, which isn't
frightening.
Although the action sequence in the quarry where the policeman
auton is flung down the side of the hill and then just instantly
gets up.
That is very, very good too.
But doesn't Terry Walsh like break his arm or something like
that?
Still gets up.
He's probably got set.
The show must go off, Nathan.
Yeah.
But the other thing is that the things that are scary in this are
less the autons like they were in Spearhead.
It's all the other things.
It's the black chair that kills McDermott.
It's the daffodils with the spraying out the plastic, which is
actually very frightening indeed.
And the troll doll and so.
Yes it is.
And that's actually one of the moments in the story that's very
well shot as well because when you see the jet of plastic come out
from the daffodil, You then cut to an incredible close-up on Katie
Manning staggering back from the camera with it over her mouth and
that's almost filmmic in the way it's shot in the studio.
So, um, you do see the uh, uh, mask on the table in front of her.
The mask being put on the table by someone's hand.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
God, you've ruined it now.
I've never noticed that.
Neither did I. Maybe that's something that Tata Swick here.
No, I noticed this time.
It's clear that Robert Holmes has been asked to deliver a very
fast paced script.
And so he sat down and he's just sort of ticked off this list of
things of like, what's plastic?
What can I make scary?
That's plastic.
Playing cord and so on.
The phone cord, all that kind of stuff.
And actually, that does work.
It's lots of scary images, but it's a lot of it skated over and it
skated over in the production as well.
But also, I think this is the 1st time where, or is it, like, is
it the 1st time where we've gone for this sort of the camp?
Like the carnival heads on the auton seem to me to be a place that
Doctor Who now goes all the time?
Yes.
Yeah.
But I don't think it's gone here before.
And I think the threat of the phone flex is funny.
I think that the...
He makes it funny.
With his eyes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But I also think that the, like, yes, that chair is scary, but the
chair is also played for laughs, isn't it?
Like that scene.
The line where Michael Wisher calls Sylvia.
Yes.
I had Mr. McDermott say entirely...
That is brilliant.
It's a great double.
But that is just Robert Holmes's dark century.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Also the way he comes over afterwards and the master says, oh, that
wasn't very fair.
She says, oh, I don't know.
I thought it was crazy.
Just all that yards of bread.
But like he's making it funny.
He's making it terrifying for 10 year olds and funny for people
who are older than that, I think.
And that's a choice that the show doesn't always do intentionally
I think.
I think unintentionally it does it quite a lot in the 60s.
It's a sense of the grotesque that the show never had previously.
The only story I can think of that tried that juxtaposition, not
very successfully is the celestial toy maker.
Yeah, okay.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think the issue with the 60s, as you say, is less it's
unintentional because they just can't realise it in any meaningful
way, whereas at least by now they've got a better chance of
realising it in a way that looks sensible.
Yeah, I mean, the scene with McDermott getting smothered by the
thing is actually funny.
And I also think that the troll doll is funny and her reaction to
it, just like, how kind of this is something for young people.
Do you know what I mean?
Like it's a troll doll.
We don't, like, it's an awful looking thing.
It's something those horrid young people would buy.
And so like all of that stuff is funny, like quite deliberately
funny.
But it gives a lightness to the story.
Otherwise, it'd be just desperately dark with all these people
being asphyxiated. and that's what you do.
It's that lightness.
And I think that's what some often the modern era of the show
fails to grasp.
The premise isn't a joke.
It's just there's lightness added in the way that it's created to
stop it being just so totally grim.
But that's the Dolgado master, isn't it?
Exactly.
I mean, going back to that McDermott scene, he's so the delivery
is so brilliant.
He's suave and then, you know, sit down.
Like, it's just the way he can just throw that out in that way
that makes you really look like, yes, I will do anything you say.
The Delgado Master does really vicious, awful things, but always
with a sense of style and a sense of humour.
And very well dressed.
Simon, if you're going to be evil, you have to be impeccably
dressed.
Exactly.
But also it's the way that the master reacts to things because
when he finds out that one of his devilish plans to get the doctor
hasn't worked and Farrell comes in to tell him, he reacts with
amusement, he's like, you know, oh, yes, you know, the doctor's
fired.
That's fine.
The more he tries to prolong his fate, the more delicious it will
be when it actually happens.
And that's the master.
The master enjoys himself.
And so he has a sense of humour about all his evil plans.
But that's what he's sort of saying.
That's what we get later with Missy, like the line, whatever the
line is with Missy saying that, you know, this is how best friends
behave.
You know, it's all gang.
This is our sting.
This is our texting, yes.
I think there's a point there, and we kind of touched on earlier
there's no plot.
The plot is the master's having fun.
The plot is...
Well, the plot is the master just has lots of nefarious schemes
one after the other.
He's got backup plans after backup plans because he's just having
fun.
But I also think that the end then doesn't land for me as a result
of that.
Like, I don't buy the master's sudden change of heart that, you
know, the nesting's only been appearing for, like, you know, 30
seconds before he decides that it's going to kill him and he has
to change science. how little we care about the plot.
At that point, that's how it's resolved.
The master goes, oh, yeah, wait, that dangly, sparkly thing there
isn't going to be able to tell me apart from anyone else.
It's never occurred to me before, but it is just, I mean, Holmes
knows what he's doing.
He's not an idiot.
And so he's clearly just gone, this plot really doesn't require
much more effort in wrapping it up than these.
Yes.
And you're remembering.
That's me, is that the time?
But you remember that it's been observed before, of course, that
Terrence Dix clearly has 2nd thoughts about it.
And so in the novelisation, which is the 1st encounter I had with
the story, the brigady pulls a gun on the master and says, I will
shoot, you dead, unless you make it go away.
And of course he does.
And that was always right there.
Well, then that's interesting because that's the Terry Sticks
novelisation because I've always felt that the pert we stories, as
a rule, and particularly the 6 parties have the best resolutions
in stories of most of the years of the show, mainly because most
of the time, and especially in the 6 parties, the entirety of the
final episode is the resolution.
The basically the Cliffhanger to part 5 is the final revelation or
the final thing before then we use all of episode 6 to wrap it
up.
It creates this wonderful satisfaction when you get to the end.
Tear of the Ortons is one of my lesser favourite pertly stories
because it does not do that.
And that's what you just said about the novelisation indicates to
me that that's Terrence Dix, a script editor saying, this is how
we write a story.
Yeah, and invariably the ends of those 6 parters are always
something blowing up.
So there's that to look forward to.
Well, exactly.
But rather than it just being the last 5 minutes, it's the last 25
minutes.
Yes, the Green Death being a perfect example.
And also, given how little Robert Holmes actually cares about the
plot, it's the fact that the radio telescope forms an integral
part of the climax, and this is the same radio telescope that he
wired up the bomb 2 in episode one to blow it up.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He was going to go and find another radio telescope after that
one.
There are loads of radio telescopes.
Oh, there's another one lying down the road.
It's interesting, Simon, that you mentioned the Terror of the
Autons novelisation because when you read it, and I did a couple
of years ago.
I reread it.
It feels much more like Spearhead from Space.
And so there's something about the story that is not that far
removed from the way that season 7 was telling stories, but it's
the production that is giving it a really different feel.
I think what's happening here too is a kind of microcosm of the
entirety of the season because this is a season that has 5 stories
and each story has the master with a plan that goes horribly wrong
and he gets to feed it at the end.
And so this kind of, this kind of collapses 5 of those into one
two, part story.
And then we start to dole them out at the rate of one a month or
so after this.
It's a bit Scooby-too.
And it is a strange choice.
I mean, there's a sense in which we could go to the beginning of
series 9 with Day of the Daleks and say, now we're doing another
relaunch of the Pertu era, but one without the master, because
this was something that couldn't have continued, could it?
In terms of the master being in every story.
Yeah, yeah.
It is actually an interesting choice and it doesn't feel like a
particularly necessary choice.
I can understand him being in, say, 3 of the stories, but all
five.
And I know in Colony in space, he doesn't appear until sort of the
2nd half.
But nevertheless, it is an interesting choice.
It sort of makes sense in the fiction of the show that he gets
stuck on Earth at the end of Terror of the Autons, and so he'll
turn up in Mind of Evil and then Claws of Axos. weirder that he
then just shows up in the 2nd half of Colony in Space and then
turns up on Earth again in the demons.
Yes, indeed.
I want to sort of give a shout out to, you know, the story as it
stands now, because, of course, you know, the original 625 line
tapes are wiped.
This wasn't part of those repeat seasons that we got in the very
late 70s and into the 80s that it sort of became, it was part of
what we talked about last week when Spearhead was changed.
They said spearheads, Silurians.
Then they showed this, if you remember Beta.
And this, of course, like Salurians, was broadcast in black and
white.
Now, the problem, of course, with it being a film print, is that
you've got a film tellersini of film that has been captured on
video for the broadcast edit.
So you've got everything that's an exterior shot.
All the film sequences that have this odd jutter to it, and I'm
afraid the Blu-ray restoration really suffers at this point.
It's quite blurry and it's very unfortunate.
Whereas the studio stuff looks spectacular.
But does that tell us anything?
But yeah, Peter, it's just that interesting thing that we had it
in bits, like seeing Tear of the Ortons, and it was a crappy $16
film copy that was being brought.
Yeah, but it was something magical about Silurians, and this was
the 1st time I'd seen Doctor Who in black and white.
I was so excited that they were showing black and white Doctor
Who.
Like, oh, my God, the door is open and now we're going to see all
this other stuff becomes possible.
Which we, in fact, did.
Which we, in fact, did with a whole complete, complete pertway
around minus invasion of the dinosaurs.
That's right.
And so we saw the we saw the black and white version of Terror of
the Autons in 1984 and 1986.
In 1986, it was part of the whole, the entire Pertwee era being
repeated.
In 1984, it was part of that mini season, do you remember?
Assignment of Pertwe episodes, which was Spearhead from Space
Silurians, Tear of the Autons, Cursipelodon, the Green Death, and
the 5 part Invasion of the Dinosaurs.
So it was just like this mini season of things, which had suddenly
become for sale to the ABC.
And so they just, they just took them.
And it was interesting that we talked last week about Spearhead
often being at the start of a mini run of Pertwi, which was not
the same stories in 1978, 79.
So it felt like a start of the show.
In 1984, we had Spearhead Silurians and then Terror of the Autons
following each other.
And so seeing spearhead and terror of the autons back to back
really informed both of them.
You thought, oh, okay, you could see the similarities and the
differences.
But I also want to build on what you were saying there about
terror of the autons being in black and white because it did help
it.
I think terror of the autons was not meant to be seen in colour.
I know it was made in colour, but in 1971, less than 10% of the TV
licenses in Britain were colour.
Still only 10%.
That's right.
So 90% of the terrestrial audience and 100% of the international
audience were watching it in black and white.
And that's how the entire per era was seen by the majority of the
audience.
I don't think colour licenses outnumbered black and white in the
UK until 1976.
So that's the face of evil.
So when we saw it on black and white, part of the effect was
undeniably the film Telesini adding the grain, but it was not too
far removed from watching it on a small screen black and white TV
in 1971.
So an image that now looks thin and cartoony on a digital flat
screen just didn't back then.
I think maybe most of the audience would have had trouble telling
the visual style or the presentation of terror the autons apart
from inferno or even spearhead.
Exactly.
And it certainly hides all the cromer key.
Absolutely.
That's the point I was going to make, Simon.
I think that's the thing.
Doctor Who was not made to be like most television in the 60s and
70s and even 80s was not made to be rewatched.
It was made to be broadcast once, maybe repeated again.
It was being made for a weekly time slot and was being pumped out
as quickly as possible.
And so I think they went, oh, we can make this in colour.
And maybe it'll be broadcasting colour for some people.
But the fact that it was broadcast in black and white actually
forgives a lot of the failings of the production.
On a small screen with imperfect reception.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. in black and white.
A lot of what we see is a production reboot, I think, is something
that we can look at and see now.
I don't think it was obvious to the audience at the time.
Oh no, it wouldn't have been.
No.
I think though it does represent, though, a reassessment of where
we were.
Do we think that series 7 despite its undoubted popularity?
Now, do we think that it was a blind alley that this was something
that had to actually happen?
I don't think it had to happen.
I think is not quite right.
I think because, I mean, I'll sort of slightly reiterate and
expand on what I said last week about Spearhead Spearhead.
I found back in that 1984 repeat run, Peter.
Spearhead I found alienating, not because of the story or the
content, but because of the way it was made.
I felt the whole film, the I actually felt alienating. didn't feel
like real Doctor Who. something bizarre about it.
Salurians, completely on board.
In fact, I was absolutely wrapped and still am.
But when I saw that for the 1st time in 84 in black and white, I
was absolutely wrapped in it.
And I didn't see at the time a particular jump or change to tear
of the autons.
Yes, I think the relaunch such as it is is, yeah, the list short
character we need to replace her with something which is a little
bit more accessible for the kiddies, a little bit more of a sort
of a younger person, so that they can ask, you know, as in fact
they almost kind of, it's a bit meta when the brigadier actually
says what you need, doctor, of someone who can hand you your test
tubes and say how brilliant you are.
I mean, that is actually the, that is Barrel Letts and Terence
Dick speaking there.
Yeah.
I think season 7 is still in 86 when we saw all 4 of the stories
here.
I loved them all.
I mean, I'm what, 14 at the time.
Maybe that's the audience that they were trying to go for.
So I was probably the perfect age to be watching all those stories
particularly things like ambassadors and Inferno.
But look, I think they just decide to slightly tweak the direction
not a wholesale change of direction.
Yeah, I don't think it's a blind alley.
I think it's, we've retooled the show, a lot of it worked quite
well.
You know, the unit supporting cast is a good idea. within the
structure, but there were some things that it didn't quite work.
It's not a blind alley.
It's just that they're retooling the things that they thought did
not work from the previous season.
It's not a wholesale reboot.
It's a jushing up.
But it's also the concept, the concepts of season 7 are a little
bit more highbrow.
They are a little bit more intellectual.
They're a little bit more kind of esoteric.
When season eight.
They're a bit more, you know, basic base level.
Yes, yes.
As however, reboots are softer edged than we think that they are.
And so Spearhead from Space, I don't think should actually be
compared to anything because it is its own individual entity.
The series does not take its cue from spearhead from space going
forwards.
And so actually, it's more instructive to compare, say, the
Silurians to terror of the autons, which, you know, the
differences are softer.
But also, as you go forward, the series isn't terror of the autons
from now on.
There are stories that are like terror of the autons.
Claws of Axos, as we've discussed, are quite similar in style and
presentation.
But then you look at the mind of evil, and the mind of evil is
very similar to Inferno, and ambassadors of death.
Yeah.
And ambassadors of death, I would say, is actually a more
illustrative example of season 7 than Spearhead from Spaces.
And terror of the autons is clearly different from ambassadors of
death in its presentation because ambassadors still feels like a
film series.
Some of it's shot in the studio, but it's mounted and moves like a
film series.
Terror of the autons doesn't.
Terror of the autons is in many ways back to what we got in the
1960s.
It's a studio-based program, which studio-based cutting and
location inserts.
And so I think that was always going to happen.
See, again, the 1st time round on Flight Through Entirety, I
actually found myself liking each story of series 7 less than the
previous one.
That's obviously madness, Nathan.
Yes, evidently.
And I think part of the thing is that we exile the doctor to earth
and he spends all of his time in space bases and establishments
and stuff that bear no resemblance to anything that we have ever
seen.
And each story is more heavily based on the scientific research
institution that it set in.
We occasionally get to escape from the caves in the Silurians.
We get to go to Dr. Quinn's cottage or whatever.
But we don't get to do that in Inferno, for instance.
So here, in a way, we're laying our cards on the table and saying
it's the Beacon Hill radio telescope and here we are again, but
we're also in a circus in Tarminstar, and we're also in Mrs
Farrell's CSO kitchen.
And so I think that we did need to do that.
I think we also needed to go back into space.
I think it was a baffling decision to have a year of Doctor Who
where he never leaves the planet.
And now that we have the time lords back, We're able to do that
twice a year, I think, from now.
You mean like 2005?
But 2005 goes into the past and it goes off, you know, into orbit
and stuff like that.
It is a much, much better.
Well, the doctor goes into orbit in Ambassadors of Dead.
Well, that is.
I don't think it's a baffling decision.
I think it goes back to what you were saying about season 5
earlier about the fact that it's, you know, it's kind of a
retooling of the same fundamental story.
I think they're basically, they're taking away the thing that
might make it look like a staggering coincidence that they're
always saying in 20th century.
So, you know, inferno is for you from the deep in terms of view
from the deep is not set.
I mean, set the not too distant future, I guess, but also few from
the deep is set in, not in the real world.
Even though it's notionally present day or shortly after the
present day.
And there's always a certain amount of course correction that goes
on.
Like nothing, nothing is ever a definitive reboot, which the
series then takes its cue from.
So you have season 7 and then they tinker with that and go off in
a new direction season eight, they then tinker with that and move
back because in both instances, they've gone too far in one
direction.
So I would argue that the real format for the series going forward
in the way that it's shot and the way that it feels, the way that
it's put together is Day of the Daleks.
Absolutely.
David Daleks is when they've completely worked out what the show
is going to look like, and I think that's the template that's
used.
And sound like you're quite correct, yes, that mention of the
incidental score.
It's also where Dudley starts to become more samey, and I think
that becomes his downfall, ultimately.
Can we finish by talking about the one thing that is established
here that is still in play in the series as it's being made now
and that is the one doctor and a female companion, and that female
companion role is created by Katie Manning.
And she decides, as we've said before, to play it a bit big.
She's doing children's TV acting.
She's young, you know, as a person, but she's also bigging it up.
And I think that she's terribly underserved by the, you just need
someone to pass... because she is incredibly competent.
Absolutely.
And I think that her reaction to being discovered in the plastics
factory at the end of episode one is just so wonderful.
She is so magnificent.
She's great on the phone.
You know, she starts to get a little bit annoyed as she's being
dismissed by people and there's even something in episode 2 where
she says, oh, you know, just pretend I'm not here.
And that doesn't really go anywhere.
But there's that terrific exchange with her and Mike where Mike
says, I'll just stay here and stay out of the way.
And, you know, she's being told, no, you can't go up the radio
telescope.
No, you can't go here.
You can't do anything.
Just say I'm like, Yates is the one who's being sent to make the
coffee.
Yeah, yeah.
But she just smiles and says, oh, yes, of course, I'll do that.
And then nicks off anyway.
Yeah, but she gets to save the doctor.
And there's one moment which has never made me laugh out loud
before, but really, really, I think, lands perfectly, which is
where the doctor says, if only esque apology had been included in
your course.
And she says, funny you should say that.
And just produces her hands and waves her fingers.
It's so funny, it's so perfect, and it is her absolutely landing
as a worthy companion.
Exactly.
But she also acts as this really efficient and competent executive
assistant to him.
Like, she looks at the plastic factory.
She goes and orders stuff from requisition and say, oh, this
stuff's gonna take a while. sack her.
Yes, yes.
She's super enthusiastic.
All these things that would have been beneath Liz Shaw.
Yeah.
She she schmoozes with Mr. Campbell in order to get the equipment
you know.
Yes, in time and quicker, you know.
That is her back and her eyelashes.
Mrs. Farrell as well.
Exactly.
She can do it all.
But the funny thing is too, is she's the only instance, and even
Liz doesn't get this, and Sarah Jane certainly doesn't get this.
She's actually effectively had to apply for the job of the
companion.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
She's actually, I'm your new assistant.
Like I've just got this job.
I've got the, it's that sort of meta thing.
Like she's big cars, but also the character has to apply for the
position.
She had to prove she could trip over on cue.
Yes, yes.
I think also it's doing a slight disservice to Casey, man, to say
that she's doing children's TV acting.
I mean, I think she's doing slightly heightened acting, but the
fact is, and it's the...
It's the thing that makes her Exactly.
And it's the thing that makes her very effective in close-up is
that she has a wide muppety face.
And so does John Pertwee.
And actually, it was...
Well, exactly.
It's the thing that works for good Doctor Who actors.
She has a very expressive facing close-up.
And, you know, from her long association with Australia, and our
long association with her, sort of on a semi-personal level.
She is perhaps the most gorgeous person to play a companion as
well.
Bleeds out the screen, doesn't It bleeds out of the screen.
It is infectious.
She's such a wonderful person and she brings that into the role.
And people who can't see. how great Joe is, I think they're not
looking at the right things.
Exactly.
Oh, I think, you know, no Joe, no Sarah Jane.
I think is absolutely...
There's a more direct line between Joe and say Rose than there is
between Sarah and Rose.
Well, but it's interesting what you said, Nathan, is that Joe is
actually the template. of the female campaigns.
We've never had the doctor and female companion before.
None of the female companions who've shared the screen with a male
companion at the last the previous 7 years.
Joe is the template that we use now moving forward and everyone
else is some kind of deviation or a reaction against, but
nevertheless, it all comes back to this is how it's done.
We've had characters and actresses in the past who could have done
it.
So if you'd had Wendy Padbury continuing on.
You could easily see her having the same kind of relationship and
warmth with John Pertweese doctor that Joe Grant does, but it's
the 1st time that the companion is ever placed on an equal
standing with the doctor in the action.
It's the doctor and his companion rather than the doctor with his
companions.
Well, that's all the time we have for this week.
We'll be back again next week, after jumping ahead about 35 years
to see what happens when a new doctor makes our show an unmissable
Yuletide event in the Christmas invasion.
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, Flight
Through Entirety, and the 2nd great and Bountiful Human Empire.
Until next time, let's be grateful that there aren't any Doctor
Who aliens with a natural affinity for latex.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Ta-ta.
Bye for now.
See you later.
That was 500 year diary, starring Nathan Bottomley, Peter Griffith
Simon Moore, and James Selwood.
The theme was composed by Cameron Lamb.
This episode, Establishment Drag, was recorded on the 17th of
March 2024 and released on the 28th of April.
Here at 500 year diary, we would like to apologise for the levity
with which we treated the death of Mr. McDermott in this episode.
Sofas continue to be one of the leading causes of death in the
Western world, whether through falling accidents, ingestion, or
just lying on the damn things, eating a whole bunch of crisps.
Be careful out there.
Okay, this is the stupidest dad joke I've ever done.
Just wait.
Let's see if we can beat.
Okay.
Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to 500 year diary.
The only Doctor Who podcast disappointed that this story has so
little to say about the winemaking environment on the nesting
protein planets.
It's not terroir of the...
Sorry.
That's probably one of the most middle-class jokes I've ever told
them.
Go well.
Even I didn't get that.
It's a very middle class podcast.
I'm the most middle class person.
I just said this podcast we've already done 3 episodes.
Yep.
All right.
Yeah, 1971 was more of a table wine year.
More of a...
I wouldn't say that people understand the joke, that electrical
attack.
Best thing about the 70s is the pair of us, Peter.
That's right It's the 2nd of January 1971.