Paul Kasey in a Halloween Mask

Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to 500 year diary. The only Doctor Who podcast that's separate from the government outside the police and beyond the United Nations, because we're just nerds on a couch. I'm Nathan. I'm Brendan. I'm James and I'm Todd. It's the 22nd of October 2006. Tonight on BBC 3, a milestone in Doctor Who history, the 1st broadcast ever of the 2nd episode of a Doctor Who spinoff. But immediately before that, the 1st episode in which Gwen Cooper meets that mysterious traveller in time and space known only as Captain Jack Harkness, and begins to learn about the horrors of the universe. It's the 21st century, so it's time for Torchwood, series one episode one, everything changes. So, 18 months ago, we had the first episode of New Who, and now we have Russell T. Davis introducing a second show in that period of time. How much do you think he learns from or relies on road? as he's launching this new show? I think he has learned a lot from Rose, or at least knows what works from Rose, the modern day setting, making it a relatable real world setting with alien stuff sort of thrown into it. I guess it's it's the yeti on the Tooting Beck kind of approach that worked really well with Rose, bringing strange alien things into a normal world. The difference, I think, is how dark and gritty and urban he makes this world. It's kind of that early to mid 2000s kind of, ooh, let's have it all set in the rain. Let's have it in car parks. Let's make it real by making it dirty and dark and that's something that the rose definitely doesn't have. It's very true, James. I think he's taking that, but he's also, he's got this really strong female character investigating, right? And you've got that in rows, like Rose being the central figure and here you've got Gwen, and you've also got the same thing, like back in an unearthly child with Barbara, also heading on the investigation as well. So those things are very, very similar. But there's also unravelling certain beats throughout the episode. Like, I mean, Yanto's not introduced until about 19 minutes in. So there's certain things that have to happen. And I think he's actually learnt to space that out. So just when you're perhaps, oh, where are we going with this suddenly there's a new element and that's what I see in this in particular. But also it's also sort of a bit, well, we're going to be the anti Doctor Who, so we're going to put the F-bomb in in the 1st 2 minutes and then and then later on, you know, it's back again although the main characters don't necessarily say that word, it's all supporting cast. And then you've got the huge blood, right, of with the weevil and the death of that particular orderly. So there are certain things there where he's sort of saying, well we're not Doctor Who, you know? It's the same pattern, isn't it? It's our female lead who is investigating someone trying to find out something about them. Yeah, yeah. And on the topic of death, which is a big theme in torchwood. Something a lot of fans commented on with, particularly Russell's 1st year on Doctor Who, is that whenever a character died, we would usually cut away just at the last moment and the rest would be left up to the audience imagination. Torchwood starts with a corpse, who then dies again. And also, as you say, Todd, the violent attack on the hospital worker. And then later on in the episode, we are explicitly told, yes, he's died, yes, we've covered it up and thrown the body in the bay. Yeah, I mean, original Doctor Who is about death, and I remember interviews with Russell saying how important death was to the show and it is very important to Rose, isn't it? We get that visit to Clive, where Clive explains that wherever the doctor goes, death and destruction kind of follow. And of course, Clive is killed at the climax of the episode. And so death is important to Doctor Who. And it is a massive theme in this episode of tortured and in tortured generally, obviously climaxing in series 4, which is all about death or not death, as the case may be. But essentially, I think what we get is sort of very similar beats don't we? We get an initial encounter with Jack. So like an initial counter with the doctor. Exactly. So we get to see him enough that then she wants to investigate further, then she actually ends up being allowed into the sort of bass, and she gets to meet everyone, and then she gets to kind of well, she doesn't really get to resolve the plot in quite the same way as Rose does. But it has that same shape, doesn't it? It's got the initial encounter, searching for the main guy eventually kind of meeting him properly and getting to know the premise of the show and then being invited into the show at the very end of the episode after the thing's resolved. It also gives that character a chance to show its chops. Like, it basically shows how good an investigator Gwen is. You know, she finds a lead, she follows it, she goes to the pizza parlour, she tracks down that lead, she inveigles her way into the base. So it actually allows you to show this is a strong, interesting character who has agency and can motivate a plot. And what's especially interesting about that? To me, as I was watching, is that in terms of Rose, Rose, as she sums up at the end of the episode, she's got nothing going on for you know, she's in a dead end job. She's not happy in her life. She's not particularly happy in her relationship. So going off with the doctor at the end is a given. Gwen is respected in her work. You know, there is that scene early on where she's bringing everyone around the tees, but later on when she comes in, she can just get one of her colleagues in the office to go look someone up on a whim without having to go through regular processes. And then when she comes in on the scene where they've determined the murder weapon, she's speaking to a more senior member of staff who just talks to her as if they're equals. So she clearly has the respect there. She has a brilliant partner in Reese, you know, who when he's cooked her a nice dinner and she blows him off to go investigate tortured and says she's working and then apparently comes home and falls asleep hung over. His only concern is, are you okay? Here, have a cup of tea. You really shouldn't be drinking that much. There's no recrimination. So he, you know, he's not Mickey, who's more interested in going to see the football when, you know, Rose has had a traumatic night. So Gwen actually has a really brilliant life and still at the end chooses the possibility of it being upended for this life of weirdness. And I think that's a very adult choice because I think all children at some point have a fantasy of having a more exciting life, but that's less encouraged in adults. Yeah, we've given up on it really. Yes, thanks for that, Nathan. Looking at me. One, 3 weeks into my marriage. Congratulations. It's interesting you talk about race because I think this is something that Russell's probably learned from the rose episode where Mickey is just so, like, just not well received at all. And you just really don't like that character, whereas here you do like Reese and you do see a strength in him and a relationship there, which is actually, you get an inkling. Well. He's good for her, but is she good for him kind of thing? Like there's that thing like with Rose where they're a little bit taken boyfriend for granted or I'm not, yeah, that's probably where I'm heading with that a bit. And can I just say, this is off topic. She looks so young. Yeah, everyone's young. I actually did check because we were commenting on this on the thread. So John Barriman is 39, Eve Miles is 28. I think she's learning about his age. Okay. turned 40 on the season finale of series one. Oh, wow, didn't he? Didn't have his 40th birthday cake? don't know. Or maybe it was his 38 that happened. I'm just going with tbdb.com. And everyone else is sort of Yanto's only 25, but everyone else is in their sort of early 30s. You think they look young, watch Torchwood declassified and see the production team? I think the director is incredibly young. I did see a photo of him. So it's not just Reese, of course. It's Andy as well. And so what Russell does here is exactly what he does in Rose which is he gives Gwen a couple of ancillary characters, so Reese and Andy, who are kind of from more recognisable TV shows, I think who just get to talk normally about stuff. I love that weird conversation where she comes home late and his friend banana boat has been over and they've been drinking tea because banana boat's not drinking anymore and he's sort of settling down as we get older and more responsible. worried about diabetes. Yeah, all of that stuff is sort of terribly cute. And that is very, very rustly. And later on when she's obsessing about the knife after she's been retconned and she's trying to, she's sort of vaguely remembering having seen the knife before. There's 2 conversations 1st with Andy and then with Reese that she's just not listening to. And they're just sort of burbling on quite happily talking about absolutely normal things. And so both of them are going to serve as a sort of grounding for her for the rest of the show. And I think the fact that she lies to Reese in order to go and investigate Torchwood. That's the 1st of a whole series of lies, like that becomes a kind of thing in the show, doesn't it? The fact that she is freezing him out, that she's, she doesn't tell him about the torture job or anything like that, and it's only revealed a bit later. That's right, Nathan. One of the things I'd have to say about Torchwood is that in my memory anyway, that everybody's very unlikeable. And she becomes very unlikeable very quickly, right, at certain points in this season. And I don't know whether that's a good or a bad thing. But we're not going to talk about the rest of the season here. But everyone is not a likeable character. In fact, when Tortured comes in, like the crime scene investigators in their sort of, you know, the white suits and stuff are super annoyed, the police are annoyed. They stride in in that sort of stupid black SUV and their long coats and stuff, you know, like with the word torchwood written down the fact that shot of them walking in. And it's sort of like they've been doing this forever, but Gwen's never encountered them before. I just get the feeling they've only been together for a very short time. That's my feeling. Well, we do find out at the end of series 2 a little bit more about their backstory, but here they all just think they're neo from the Matrix. It is a very kind of period. Look, and perhaps a slightly dated period, look, to be honest. It does date itself because the genes that they wearing have those slight flares and all the male haircuts are like those degrade boy bands at the time, where the hairs down rather than up, you know what I mean? So I, watching this, I did kind of go, yeah, this is of 2006 or whenever, five, six, whenever it is, um, very much so. I just got the feeling that they hadn't been together a long time. Can you remember, like, this is after the season 2 finale of Doctor Who, isn't it? Yes. And so Torch would have been mentioned like quite a lot in Doctor Who and there was a buildup and then Tortured one under Yvonne had all been destroyed at Canary Wharf. So did we have an expectation of what this was going to be like? Did we think it was going to be like that? I can't even remember. Like, I'm just there going, like, was this a big shock, like, as to how with the swearing and with all the sexual stuff, at least with Owen and that sort of thing was. Can you remember like what you? I think it was pitched as being adult. And so I think that's what we were expecting. I think, you know, it was Doctor Who but post-watershed. And so it was very, very much kind of advertised like that and publicised like that. I think, like, for me, I'm sure I've said this and bored people with it before. This is very much like a new adventure. Yeah, there's early new adventures where it was Doctor Who, but adults. So we had to have lots of swearing and sex every 5 minutes and just to show how adult we were, but it's actually not that adult. It's kind of Doctor Who with some swearing, thrown in and some blood, splattering everywhere. It's basically the same universe, but we have to try and show that we're different by being naughty. Well, I think, let's get onto that a little bit later because I do think that there is something really importantly different between Doctor Who and Torchwood, that this episode does address. But what I want to do now is to go into hard mode and travel back in time to 1963 and say, what has Russell learned from an unearthly child about introducing a new show in the Doctor Who universe? to an adoring public. I thought you were going to say, what if Barbara came along and she was swearing like nothing else in the junkyard about where they were? I thought you were referring to a different type of hardness. So what has Russell learned from an unearthly child? Yeah. I'm gonna say that both stories introduce the phrase dimensionally transcendental at roughly the same point. Yep, that's true. Write the 1st episode yourself rather than giving it to freelance writer whose son will eventually go mad and try to sue you. Do does Gwen enter the Torchwood hub, like inna Barbara, enter the TARDIS, like at about the same point in time? And maybe the same point in time that Rose enters the TARDIS as well. Because remember she enters it towards the end, but not sort of completely towards the end. I mean, there's something just incredibly similar about this. We've got a time traveller who doesn't really die. We've got a base that's bigger on the inside than the ants. All right, it's underground, but it's bigger than the water tower is in Roldal Plas. I think also, I mean, you could argue that either Torchwood, or at least Captain Jack are analogous with Susan in the plot, like Susan is a mysterious kind of character who we're not sure who they are and they're just odd. so we follow them into the plot and they introduce us into the story. Yeah, what prompts Barbara and Ian to go and investigate is that Susan behaves in an unearthly way, and she has knowledge that she can't possibly have, and here we have Gwen. I think in one of the best scenes, like it's almost a jump scare isn't it, where Gwen is watching them from the top floor of the car park as they revive the dead body, not revive, not resuscitate bring back to life the dead body, and Jack just shouts up to her and says, what do you think? And then she realises she's been spotted. And it's like actually quite a shock to have her involved in that scene, given how kind of physically distant they are in it. But it's the same thing. Isn't it the same weird otherworldly knowledge that the Torchwood team have that prompts Gwen to investigate as well? Yeah, and of course, she follows them down to the wharf and then ultimately goes into the junkyard or into torchwood through the door, offering pizza, and then she meets a whole bunch of characters who are basically, I want to say arseholes because they are like just toying with her every single one of them. In fact, when Tosh and Owen burst out laughing because they can't keep it up any longer. They actually disrupt the incidental music. Like the incidental music, which is creating all this foreboding atmosphere, immediately goes away because they both lose it and kind of spoil the whole ruse. It's kind of interesting because the doctor, both in an unearthly child and Rose doesn't have to try to be mysterious, you know, but here, the torchwood crew, including Jack, acknowledge that they're trying to be mysterious. and failing. And Jack's response to that failure is to turn it into like a setup for a porn film of, well, she's going to give me the pizza and I'm going to say I don't have any money and what are we going to do about this? And thankfully something else then happens to distract us from that. I don't think it was porn. Didn't he say you had a punchline coming? I don't know about porn. That is a porn setup, but I think maybe halfway through the scene Russell realised what he was doing. he was going to like, oh, he's going to have a whole punchline because I just realised I was doing a porn setup. Which, of course, then carries on with Owen later on with that couple outside. Jack is mysterious in the way that the doctor's mysterious though. I mean, he has a title, the way that the doctor does. And he does have a mysterious past. And I think we're supposed to understand that when Jack doesn't report for duty in January 1941, I think we're supposed to understand that that's because he goes off with the doctor in the empty child, but it's possible that it's the 2nd time round in 1941 that he disappears as well. Or that it's the original Captain Jack. Oh, yes, there's... like, I mean, like, yeah, it's repeated. like that's still a mystery, which Jack is it? Yeah. And that is setting it up because that is later this season. Yes, isn't it? So that's clearly planned. And you know, that, I think, is Russell setting this series up to be, yes, a Doctor Who spinoff, but also its own thing. So if you've watched Doctor Who, you have an explanation for that but then by the end of this season, as you say, James, we're given an internal explanation so that you don't have to watch Doctor Who. It's funny, isn't it? Because the world that they exist in is very much that world of 2005, 2006, when Doctor Who was just the most massive thing on television. And so in the bar when Jack drugs Gwen's drink, they're having a conversation not only about the Christmas invasion, but also army of ghosts and doomsday. And so they've seen all of the Doctor Who that we've seen as well. They exist in the same world as us. There's a great character moment, which is just perfectly rustly too, where Gwen says, oh, you know, my husband thinks it's LSD and the water supply and Jack says your husband's an idiot and her reply is, oh, so you've met him then, which I just think is absolutely adorable. And not that mean spirited, you know, because I think that we love... I think we already know that Reese is a kind of loveable oaf. Do you know what I mean? Like, he's very sweet and likeable and a bit like uncomplicated. It's also the way she delivers the line with his kind of smile like I'm just, you know, playing. I don't hate my boyfriend. I just, you know, I'm just joshing. There is a bit of flirting in that scene, though. There's a lot of her looking at his mouth and all of that sort of thing. Like they are definitely kind of flirting at that point. Well, I guess there's subtle setups for what is to come, but you need her to be a likeable character in order to want to continue on watching. But also, you know, as Doctor Who fans, you've got all those links back to the show and you've already seen the doctor's hand and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, yeah. And I think that scene is also really important too because, like it's setting up this crew too, because, I mean, he talks about no one is allowed to take out alien tech and then we get cutaways too well. Yeah, we're all we're all subtly lying to each other. Something I find as an interesting parallel in that scene in the bar is in Rose, when Rose is following the doctor back to the TARDIS after the hand attacks him in her flat, he says to her forget me, go home. Yeah, okay. Now here's the thing. The doctor, at this stage, doesn't enforce it. Jack, on the other hand, is enforcing it. Jack is not only saying forget me. He's saying, I'm going to make you forget me, but in such a way it's this morally gray thing of, you know, he's drugging Gwen, but at the same time, he is doing it to protect her because when she says, I will tell someone else. He's like, do you want to involve someone you care about? And I like that it's morally gray. At least it's morally gray, unlike the other drugging that happens around this time in the episode. Well, let's get to that in a second. I think what's interesting is that both Rose and Gwen are actually initially rejected. So what we used to, you know, that sort of Joseph Campbell Monomith thing, where someone is special or chosen or something and they end up assuming the mantle of a hero at the end of the episode, and both rose and everything changes are a bit like that. But instead of Rose and Gwen being reluctant, like initially rejecting the idea, but being forced to nevertheless adopt the role, they're actually rejected. They're actually told no, and they persist, nevertheless, and then they kind of show their value to, you know, the doctor and Jack respectively and end up being invited on board. So I think that that's, you know, that's another beat that the 2 shows have in common. All right, well, let's talk about what distinguishes. Torchwood from Doctor Who. And I think that in addition to the fact that we open on a corpse and that there's a lot of blood and so on, there is what we've started to talk about, which is the problematic behaviour of the characters. So I want to talk about Tosh. She seems to steal a scanner and she, why? And she just scans a book in like you do? And a book that's in the public domain. She is a massive nerd and she doesn't know at the public domain. is true. So it's a tale of 2 cities. I think she's reading it. Like, I think that she's reading the book. So she scans the book, but as she sees the pages flick past. Yeah, yeah, I think we're getting sort of reactions from her as if she's reading the book. But it is the nerdiest possible thing to take home. So Susie's taking home the resurrection glove to resurrect a fly. Yeah, she kills a flying resurrector fly. We learn that she is doing other things with the respect. But at this point in the episode, it's like, oh, wow, resurrecting a flight, oh, reading a book. What's the Anto doing? Oh, just cleaning up after them. Okay. Yeah, yeah, he doesn't do it because he's a good boy. He doesn't... But, Owen, I think, I think, well, so the Owen thing, like, there's a problem with the Owen thing, and it's a shame because it's nearly funny. Like the idea that Owen is bisexual and is clearly excited to have both of the members of the couple lusting after him, although... Sorry, I'm laughing because I'm, I'm just thinking of that guy's words in the episode, like they both want poems so bad. I'm gonna have you or whatever it is. I'm going to have him first. Burn actually doesn't play it as if he's into being kissed by the guy. He goes rigid and stuff like that, but definitely the script has him go, quick, let's get a taxi. And so clearly he's going to go home with both of them and have sex with both of them. And the issue is that there aren't really sprays that you can spray on yourself that make you irresistible to other people and make them definitely want you to have sex. And if there were, we don't know whether that would be right or wrong, because the whole thing really depends on, they're going to regret it afterwards or not, they're both enthusiastically giving consent, but in what circumstances it isn't like drugging people. I mean, it's very deliberately a thing he sprays on himself and not something that he gives them. But I think it's it doesn't work and you could never, ever do it in a 1000000 years now. Yeah, still, it's still space roofing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And I think that's it. I think Russell has sort of considered, okay, oh, what if there was pretty much an alien roofie. Oh, but no, I can't have him roofie someone, but what if he roofies himself and sort of writes that down and then it gets filmed and then it gets editing? And I like to think at some point during screening, someone went oh dear, no, this still hasn't quite, this hasn't quite hit what we wanted, but it's too late now. We still have to give bird a scene. Because you're still having those other characters be influenced by it. And after that effect wears off, are they going to feel like they're being violated? Yeah, that's exactly. And what but what if they went, wow, that was absolutely incredibly hot, darling, let's pick up some rando again. You know, like because it never happens. Like, you know, what if Owen's consequence was during the course of the season, we find out he is now dating this couple, but actually really doesn't want to, but they're both into him, even without that stuff. You know, that that's a consequence that gives those minor characters power in the situation. But I kind of get the impression that it's a bit like the burping bin in Rose in that. okay, we have to include this now because it's part of the plot that let's never speak of this again. No, the burping bin is brilliant. I didn't say it wasn't a great thing. I said the production team were embarrassed by it. Actually, sorry. Probably not the burping bin. The highly plastic Mickey. Yeah, he is a bit too plastic at that point. So, I mean, it works in the sense that we're trying to show that they're kind of horrible people and they're doing the wrong thing. And remember that the objection that Gwen has just raised a torchwood is that how do we know they're not going to use the alien tech they get for their own benefit and then we see them doing exactly that? And so at the end of the episode, you know, we not only lock up the knife and the resurrection glove and declare that it's never to be used again, but they shamefacedly hand in the scanner and the sex spray. That's all very true. And I think it's also setting the show apart from Doctor Who in the fact that we are going to have alien technology that we can use, like because it has to come to us. And also the fact that we are going to be in adult situations, in bars, et cetera, with bar brawls and like an earlier in the episode, but also, you know, prepared to go out to get dates or whatever we need to do, you know? Whereas that doesn't really happen in Doctor Who. Don't you think that bar brawl? So that bar brawl happens and there's sort of some comedy chats between Andy and Gwen about what CSI Cardiff would look like. But in that, in that scene, she gets hit and she falls and hits her head and it's then after that that all of the stuff happens in the hospital as if she's now in a kind of slightly odd state where her experiences can't be relied on, you know, she's had a blow to the head and then all of this weird magical stuff starts happening. Don't you like how magical it is? Like she has to go into the sealed off section a bit like Paul McGann in the telly movie, right? where nobody else is supposed to be around, but, you know, still the orderly comes up and, and, and that whole sequence with the Star Trek alien masking. I'm there going, really, just run. Just run away. So this is another thing that actually it shares with Rose. Remember that the autons are in rows because they look like students wearing masks. You know, they're students, they're being silly. That's rose's theory that she comes up with in the lift with the doctor. And that's the reason why Russell had humanoid aliens so that they wouldn't necessarily, definitely be aliens until it was sort of revealed later. Here you've got the weevil. It turns out this weevil is called Janet. we know that? that. later. Oh, we did fight it out later after Janet Fielding. And it's we do have that thing where it's a mask you're wearing a mask and stuff. So it looks like a person because it's sort of distant. It's wearing coveralls as we come closer to it, then we start to rationalise it by saying it's sort of a fabulous animatronic mask. In fact, it's merely an adequate animatronic mask. But, you know. I think it actually holds up better than some of the CGI, like Jack standing in front of the fountain towards the end, like, you know, when he's come up in the lift, like I kind of looked at that and I went, it's a bit ropey. Yeah, yeah. I mean, this was Doctor Who's 1st production in HD. But some of the CG looks like it's been done in standard death. Right. I think you're right there, Brendan. As well as agreeing with you, Todd. Jack coming up in the lift at the end, to flash forward for a moment, actually really breaks the tension for me because it looks hilarious. Like, it just looks like he's been slapped on there, like Anthony Ainley, behind Tom Baker in the Pharos project in Magopolis. But there's a, there's another bit where Jack and Gwen are 1st taking the lift up. And it's just this, it's this minor thing and it's just that Indira Varma's eye line does not at all match where the lift is when she's looking up and waving. And again, she looks like she's waving at their asses. Yeah, exactly. In terms of the barber all and then the hospital. Something I found so interesting about that, and again, in comparison with Rose. So in Rose, Rose works in a shop and she and Mickey go out to a restaurant and later Clive and his family go out shopping. So these are all sort of spaces for recreation, right? And family recreation in particular. Whereas here we get a pub brawl, which is not appropriate for families. And indeed, most pubs, you know, children generally aren't there. And we also get a hospital and no one goes to a hospital for recreation. You know, you only go for a hospital if something's wrong. Even in the outdoor scenes, it's constantly raining. That does give us some comedy when Andy turns up and he's like, I have walked. I have bloody walked. But even the environments of this are much harsher than the real world environments of Doctor Who. In fact, they're kind of police procedural environments, aren't they? We go from the pub brawl to the police station, to a crime scene to a hospital, like all of those places are just places where police procedurals happen. Whereas Rose is set in the sort of environments that a soap opera might be set in. So it's a different type of TV that's sort of being riffed on and a kind of more adult. Uh, you know, something targeted in adults more than a soap opera is, I guess. But I guess it's a real world environment in a sense up until the point they get into the to the tortured hub, which is like, you know, leading up to when we get into the TARDIS, either in an earthly child or in rows itself. The parallels between the hub and the TARDIS are really, really strong. And I think that when Russell kind of takes control over the show again in series three, His immediate instinct is to get rid of the giant science fiction superbase that he's put in the show because it's a little bit crappy. It's a little bit kind of unrealistic and a bit crab and it fights against the show kind of being gritty and serious because it adds that level of fantasy. fake tube station. Yeah. I mean, I think the design is great. I have to say the design, you know, with all the tiles and all of the um, circular corridors and all of that stuff looks, it just looks terrific. That scene where Jack walks away after putting Susie's body in the drawer and walks away and that seems to be computer generated something. It is because I was watching it going, yeah, that's not real. But it is very beautifully designed, I think. It's a good look. I think everything above and around him is, but the drawers are real. The drawers were practical and the floor is practical, but everything else was a map painting. right It's always interesting seeing, I think, in television series like the pilot episode or the 1st episode compared to what they actually do. Yeah. Because Ianto's little desk and his corridor to come in and the lift going up are things that we don't we never see again. It's like in DS9 with the runabouts going to Bajor. Like, in the 1st couple of series, you spend 500 hours going to Bajor, and then by the time you get to the last 2 seasons of that show, it's like we're getting the runabout cut to, oh, we've already arrived on Bajor. like it's like shortcut. In Diravama, I really like. Didn't she do Rome? Yeah, wasn't she killed off in that? Yeah, she seems to be the guest actress of choice to have a substantial part in shows and then bite the bullet. Is she also in Game of Thrones? Yes, and she also met an unfortunate fate there eventually. I don't remember if she got killed or was shipped off to somewhere. She's locked up in a dungeon to basically die. Yes, that's right. I think Susie Costello's death also is an example of a Doctor Who program doing something that someone else did first. So just a few years before this spook started. And early on in Spooks, you have Lisa Faulkner, who was a big household name, you know, she'd had a leading role in Brookside and Holby City. She was one of the leads in the 1st 2 episodes, and then in the 2nd episode, she is suddenly killed, her character. Shall we say how? That's brutal. Has her face dunked in boiling oil and then shot through the head. Oh, by Space Captain Hugo Lang, by the way. Oh my god. He sounds like a bad person. Oh, I must be awful because I'm laughing about it now. This isn't a deep fryer incident, isn't it? Yes, the deep fryer. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, well, Matthew McFadgeon looks on. I've sort of noticed since then it's not uncommon for a show to introduce a character early on who is then expected to be part of the main cast and then killed off. Yeah. And so, you know, we have um, Helen in Spooks, we have Susie here. We have Grace when Chris Chipnell takes over Doctor Who. Yeah. And it seems to sort of be a shorthand for saying, we're not screwing around here and anyone is fair game. It really means everyone else is safe though, really, at that point, doesn't it? Yes. It's like, well, we have the other one. Yeah, it has the opposite effect, yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's kind of like, we're telling you we're very adult but we're very sorry and we're not going to do it again. Well, not until the end of the 2nd year. that's right. This is the thing that, obviously, Joss Whedon wanted to do in episode one of Buffy, which was have the character in the opening credits and then kill him off, the best friend character whose name I can't even remember, but they couldn't afford to do it in the credits. Here, she's in the radio times and everything, and she is in the opening credits to episode one in Dear Obama, and she's a big name. I mean, we're advertising having Indira Vama. So we don't expect that at all. I think. Was it Jesse? Jesse, that's right. It was Jesse. No one gets mentioned again. No, but she's in the opening credits, and you just think that she's going to be a part of the team. Yeah, she's in all the publicity photos for the season. Like, it's a 6 shot with Eve as well. And of course, she will come back later in the season, and I think part of the reason for that as well is that being a very good episode, they keep killing Susie, was that that meant she was around for late production blocks. Right, right. The thing that's here, the thing that makes this show more adult than Doctor Who, I think, is the question of death. You have that scene which is wonderfully awkward, where they run out of things to say to the revivified corpse to poor John Tucker. They run out of things to say like a minute into the 2 minutes that he's got and they're trying to kill time and work out what to do and what to say next. And the question is, what did you experience? What was death like? And he suddenly realises there was nothing and those are his last words. Oh my god, there's nothing. And so when Susie comes back, there's that amazingly memorable scene where she also talks about the subjective experience of death and there isn't one. There's nothing. And so death is absolutely final. And this is not something that you can look at in Doctor Who in a lot of detail, but it is something that's really, really important to Russell, and it is that episode 6 of cucumber thing, where we actually get to see one of the characters die and we get to experience what he experiences. We see it from his point of view as his brain is so sort of damaged and starved of oxygen that sort of random images start to come up and then eventually it just blacks out and there's nothing. So there's nothing after death. And so this show absolutely faces that head on and is essentially about that. And so when you have, you know, you're in this show where there's a magical glove that can raise people from the dead, but there's no magical afterlife or anything like that when people die, they just die. And that bleakness underlies it in a way that never underlies Doctor Who. But also the fact that she chooses to commit suicide. And you see that happening and that doesn't happen in Doctor Who unless the character is really sacrificing themselves to save everybody else from a menace, you know? like, I don't know. Yeah, like self-sacrificed, right? Like, highly in, uh, voyage of the dad. Or PEX in Paradise Towers. Why? Why am I thinking of that? From the ridiculous to the sublime? But here, she's deciding that she doesn't want to have her memory wiped and just go back to mandana's existence, she's just, she's choosing to shoot herself, which I just found really disturbing and I don't know if it's the right decision. Like I kind of was sitting there going, oh, do I actually buy it? She did also kill a bunch of people. So even though she was like she had planned to just go and disappear somewhere so she would never be caught, there's Jack, she killed people, you know. It does sort of then bring up, you know, the vetting process of the employees of Torchwood by Jack, you know? Has he done any sort of psychiatric testing on them? Psychometric testing. psychometric testing to see if they're prone to doing murders. Yes, but that's the effect of the glove. Isn't it? Like it's the effect of the resurrection glove. She has the glove on and she gets off on the power of bringing people back to life. And she has that whole speech about how being able to resurrect people from the dead would be a game changer, it would be hugely important and stuff. But even when she revives the fly, There's a really weird look on her face as if she is in some way being affected by that power. Okay, I see what you're saying. The more she uses, the more it amplifies, the more it wants you to kill like something bigger and that sort of thing, which I don't actually quite get from the episode. Like, you've brought that up, but I just didn't get that at all. It's, to me, it sort of just went from a fly to, yeah, we can talk about killing all these other people, but I just didn't quite buy. The dialogue tries to reach for it. She says something about every time I use it, it grants me more access. I gain more sort of ability. Like, it's like it's allowing me in, but I don't think they necessarily land that. think it's pretty incredible. She gets a couple of quite long speeches in that final scene and she absolutely nails them. She's really really good. Oh, I'm thinking absolute terror from Gwen. I think that's too much, actually. It's hard to watch. Yeah, that thing where she thinks she's going to be short. I think is awful. Yeah, it's really, I mean, that's, and again, something that's set set apart from Doctor Who, you would never linger on that much torment of a character. You know, they are your identification character in the episode. Yeah, absolutely. Like, something you don't see in Doctor Who, for instance, is the sort of stereotypical idea of someone's holding a gun on you. Well, you give them a karate shop and they drop the gun. Like Doctor Who is against imitable violence, but it's also against sort of imitable self-endangerment. You know, it doesn't, Let the heroes do things that, um, if a child tried them in a dangerous situation, could lead to something worse. So I agree with you there, James, in that that scene between Susie and Gwen is one of the more adult scenes of the episode because of not only Gwen's reaction, but actually Susie's awkwardness, which is rummaging in her bag for the gun. Yeah, I'm so sorry. Just a second. I've just got to, I've just, I've just got to get my gun handbags am I right? It kind of goes a long way to saying these characters are flawed and that Susie is not evil in the sense that, you know, when they're talking about serial killers earlier and this really nasty knife and what have you, we're not encouraged to have any sympathy for whoever's doing this. And then all of a sudden, Susie is scared and awkward and um pleading with Gwen to understand why she did what she did. And Gwen can't remember what she did. You know, it's it's this incredibly tense and well-acted scene. And I do remember at the time, just going, I'm really going to miss Susie. Yeah, yeah. She gets the big speech as well. So the thing that Doctor Who keeps doing in this period is talking about the wondrous things that the doctor in Rose C when they go out into the universe in the Christmas invasion last week. There's a hilarious scene where Mickey goes on about how much he enjoys hearing these stories about how wonderful and great it is in the TARDIS. And we've seen that all the way back, you know, to boomtown when we hear about woman wept and all of that sort of stuff. The world, the universe is a magical and wondrous place. And she alludes to that doesn't she? She actually says, maybe there's better stuff out there, brilliant stuff, beautiful stuff. Just they don't come here. And so that, and Doctor Who at the time doesn't show us that stuff necessarily, partly because we don't have the budget. And also because Doctor Who is an adventure show where we're always being threatened by monsters and stuff. So most of the time, they're not just revelling and how beautiful everything is. But it's something that Russell has taken from the original show with all of its Florana speeches and stuff and has made that a motivator for Rose to travel with the doctor. Here, we don't get any of that. That's not the motivator, and in fact, it's the opposite. Everything that comes from outside of earth is terrible. You know, she just says it's shit. It's weevils and stuff, you know, that's what we get. And I don't know whether that long term is such a great premise. It really sounds kind of miserable to me. Does this work, you think, in the long term? No. No, no, you're going to have to change things. I guess it's all the other hooks in the episode, including the secret that Jack can come back to life. Yeah, yeah. Which is kind of like the secret that, I mean, I don't know if Rose really keeps the secret, but you know, suddenly she's travelling with this amazing man, but that's a secret there and it's a secret that he's not telling other people. So when is that going to be all revealed? I don't know. I kind of think for it more as a case of, yes, all these horrible things are coming and that's the peril of the show. Like with Doctor Who, you go to all these amazing places and face horrible monsters every week. So, well, what's the difference, really, this time they're just coming to us and we're going to just stop them. Yeah, I guess I guess it's just the sort of underlying kind of just negativity and cynicism. The, you know, Russell, for all of his sort of big personality, the way that he constantly talks about how marvellous and wonderful everything is. We've said before, there's like a deep kind of thread of cynicism in there as well. But you see in things like midnight and turn left, for instance. No, Nathan, I see what you're saying. Like, I mean, in Doctor Who, it's always a positive outcome because we're going to survive and we're going to have people surviving as much as we can and things are going to be made right. Whereas here you are left with more of a, oh, this is a bit more dower foreboding or just, you know, it's, well, to use your word from earlier, bleak, you know? Yeah. And all we can afford is Paul Casey in a Halloween mask. I think the other problem is with that sort of bleakness is the obvious response is, oh, well, you have to have moments of humour. But the problem that constantly arises in torchwood is that the moments of humour are also bleak because their reactions to death and horrible things happening. Like, the one that immediately springs to Bid is in the next episode with the sex gas, where the torchwood crew are constantly joking about people being killed. He came and went. You know, and then in the sperm bank scene. I don't think so, love. I'm gay. And, you know, we know then he's dead. Further on. I think part of the problem with cyberwoman is cyberwoman is so bleak. that you start laughing at things that aren't intended to be funny because your brain is looking for relief, basically. And I think some of the more successful tortured episodes, I'm thinking things like from out of the rain, random shoes, have humour built in because there's more of a focus on people outside the team and regular life, you know? And then once you get to children of Earth, because there's more of a focus on Gwen and Reese and children of Earth, there's just more humour built in that's not at the expense of the situation. It's not at the expense of tragedy. It takes us a while to get there. I think it's possible, but I think with the structure we have in this season. They unfortunately miss the mark just because we have to move between 2 extremes very quickly a lot of the time. Well, that's all the time we have for this week. We'll be back again next week, or in just over two months' time, to experience the start of another Doctor Who spinoff, the Sarah Jane Adventures, episode one, Invasion of the Bane. 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, always remember that there's nothing to be gained by having a distinctive murder weapon. Thank you very much for listening and good night. Good night. Ta-ta. See you soon. Could someone get me down off the big Merino? I've had enough of a look. That was 500 Year Diary, starring Todd Bealby, Nathan Bottomley Brendan Jones and James Selwood. The theme was composed by Cameron Lamb. This episode, Paul Casey, and a Halloween mask, was recorded on the 14th of April, 2024, and released on the 12th of May. Well, now that this episode of 500 Year Diary has been edited and released, it's time for us to turn our attention to the Doctor Who episodes released yesterday. Space Babies and the Devil's Cord. To hear our hot takes on those, search for the 2nd great and bountiful human empire on your podcatcher of choice, or visit us at greatandbountiful.com. There's a point I think that Russell makes in the making of this episode, which is that as you keep watching this show, you'll come to realise that the most dangerous thing about tortured is tortured. They are, yeah, they're playing... job interview picture. isn't it? It's like, so she's still dead. And he says, he says, oh, we got a vacancy. She looks down, perhaps, and don't look at the next time trailer. Okay. doesn't it just cut to the next time trailer and she's part of the that CSI walking. She's already part of the team. That's called day one, isn't it? It's the 1st episode of Torture to be called day one. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's like Star Trek. So Star Trek has Muse and the Muse. It has emissary and the emissary. Obviously... The conspiracy? don't know. No, there's an episode called Nemesis in a film called Nemesis. There's an episode called First Contact and a film called First Contact. There's an episode called Dax and an episode called Chanal. Yeah. Actually, 2 episodes called Anomaly. One in Enterprise Series 3. And then the DMA is so vegan, so world shakingly important that it actually allows them to break the don't repeat episode titles rule. Two Vics? Yeah, well... This helped differently. I know. So good. I'm so sad about that They're killing that off after 5 years. I just kind of think, I just kind of thought, well, maybe that because it's audio, they don't cost as much as a cast and animation doesn't cost as much as... It actually might be the sort of thing that they bring back in 5 years time or something like that. Well, Futurama. Yeah, look at future. Do you know what I mean? It's the sort of thing they could do. It's not like they struck the sets at the end of series 3 of the original series and couldn't bring the show back. It's such a shame. had in my head that I thought they were too. Yeah. I mean, this is the thing that most modern shows don't, unless they're police procedurals, don't last more than about 5 seasons these days. All right. Yeah. Okay, well, that was fun. That was fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you for that. I'm glad that you are able to sit in a chair and talk. It's the main requirement. Rod's bringing you things and all of that sort of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to go do some stretches now and put some ice on it. That sounds awesome. All right, sweetheart. Bye. All right. Thank you all. There'll be a big publicity thing this afternoon. Brilliant. One more to go. One more to go. Bye. Bye, everyone.