Hello, dear listener and welcome back to 500 Year Diary.
The only Doctor Who podcast that just can't believe how young
parents are on TV these days.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Adam.
I'm Brendan, and I'm James.
It's the 1st of December, 2008.
It's been nearly 2 years since Mrs. Wormwood vowed to take revenge
on Sarah Jane Smith for exploding her mother, and this afternoon
the CBC audience will get to watch the 2 of them catch up again.
But can Samantha Bond bring the Sarah Jane Adventures 1st villain
to life again?
Is there any point even asking that question?
Let's find out as we discuss Enemy of the Bane.
We have actually already talked on 500 year diary about the first
appearance of Mrs. Wormwood in Invasion of the Bane.
And so this is the last story of season two, episodes 11 and 12.
It's written by Phil Ford, who is perhaps the writer that we
associate with Sarah Jane Adventures, maybe more than anyone else
and it's directed by Graham Harper, who I think actually directed
Invasion of the Bane.
And there's a real sense, and I don't know if we said this last
time, that this show is really kind of much better than it needs
to be in lots of ways.
Yeah, apart from the fact that so much of the blocking and staging
is like just whatever we can get done in the time.
Stand in the middle.
We don't know what's going to be going on either side.
I mean, it is significantly cheaper, isn't it, than Doctor Who?
Yeah.
But, I mean, that budget still runs to, like, the big CGI Bane
blob guys, who are actually pretty great.
Yeah, and they're obviously already on a hard drive somewhere.
So, you know.
We don't have to create them from scratch.
And then we have the big kind of portal thing at the very end
which is massively kind of unimpressive. weirdly static and
strange and yeah.
But, but what we do have is a lot of actors who are, with maybe
one exception, just doing everything properly, you've got a writer
who kind of cares about creating something.
You have just the most magnificent guest actor in Samantha Bond.
The regulars are all really charming.
We didn't have Ashley or Daniel Anthony in the episode that we
talked about last time and they're both really great.
Gita and Haresh are really good.
Like, it's a properly good show, I think.
Yeah, it's fun.
My biggest problem, I think, is the fact that they don't have the
budget.
Like, you see what Graham Harper did with the 2 parter that ended
the 2nd season of Doctor Who and you're like, oh, he can choose
camera angles.
He's doing interesting things with big, wide scenes and this is
like front yard, maybe a couple of stones in a field.
Also filming around Nicholas Courtney not being able to stand for
very long is also...
Yeah.
You know, we go to the Black Archive and it's a pretty good
looking kind of CGI building.
But what we actually look like we're doing is that we're going to
kind of the paper factory in Slough, you know, and like it's a red
brick building with a sort of reception and stuff.
You want to know what's interesting about that?
It is actually a ministry of defence building.
Wow.
Not the big CG nonsense, but the red brick.
The red brick.
It's MOD St.
Athens.
It's used in Army of Ghosts.
It's used in children of Earth.
It's used in Planet of Vieud, and Doomsday.
So yeah, we've got the Graham Harper connection there.
But he found the most boring wall to film against.
Yes.
You could say, this is Doctor Who on a Doctor Who budget.
It is.
And that's kind of one of the things I love about Sarah Jane
Adventures.
It felt like the Doctor Who that I remember as a kid, if that
makes sense.
Because it had cliffhangers, for one thing. every other week.
It was like, I think that's absolutely it.
I mean, it really is kind of designed, I think.
For people with kids, with sort of Doctor Who Age kids or kids the
right age for this.
So what's this pitched at sort of 10, 11, 12, maybe?
Yeah.
And then their parents who watched classic Doctor Who, or have
some idea of classic Doctor Who, because it does have a real
classic Doctor Who vibe.
And I think the low budget actually does kind of help with that.
Not to mention the cliffhangers, and the cliffhanger in this is
really spectacularly great, isn't it?
It's like a triple cliffhanger, isn't it?
It's like a thing, then a thing, and then another thing.
Yeah, yeah.
But the great thing is that everyone's in peril in various ways
you know, in series one of Doctor Who, they are aware of how few
cliffhangers they have and they really try and make them count.
And that 1st cliffhanger, which is at the end of aliens of London
is also that. literally everyone's in peril.
But we end on the most important person in peril, which is Jackie
Tyler, of course.
The person we care about.
Here, we have everyone in peril, but the cliffhanger isn't that.
The cliffhanger is, oh my goodness, she's teamed up with the
Santarin from the 1st story.
And so it becomes one of those what's going to happen now
Cliffhangers.
Here's a bit of information that changes what things are.
I think it's really only at this point that we realise that the
whole thing's a ruse and that she isn't trying to.
So what she doing, there's some, someone was not sufficiently
executed enough and they were split into 2 bits and she isn't
trying to prevent the bane from getting the 2 bits she wants them
and that's the reveal.
Yeah It's, yeah.
I mean, it's all McGuffin, McGuffin, McGuffin.
What we really want is Samantha Bond being arch.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And we get it.
I remember during the 1st season of Sarah Jane Adventures sitting
at the pub, I think, with you, Nathan, and with our friends
Stephen Kennedy and David Smith.
And I think it was Stephen Kennedy who said, the great thing about
the Sarah Jane Adventures is this feels like if when Doctor Who
was brought back, Philip Hinchcliffe was put in charge.
And yeah, it's that thing of not only, you know, has Mrs. Wormwood
not been sufficiently executed enough, but we also have the
ancient creature from 3000 years ago at a burial site.
That is not sufficiently executed enough.
And the burial site is in a quarry.
And it's the same quarry that was used last week on the Sarah Jane
Adventures in the Temptation of Sarah James Smith and on Planet of
the Eude.
I love a multipurpose quarry.
I was half expecting those stones to become ogre. going.
They were shot from so far away.
I was like, oh, they're not there, are they?
They're not permanent, but they are a physical prop that they did
put that.
Oh, they are, they agree.
No, fibreglass.
They are polystyrene.
I will say, and sort of, you know, getting ahead and sort of
rushing to the end.
Something I thought with, oh, you know, Luke, you're human.
So you can go inside this force field.
It's kind of like Luke can just go in there and go, okay, I'm just
going to stand here now.
Yeah.
What you going to do?
I guess, you know, they needed to establish whether a blaster fire
would go through the force fields, like that to work.
Yes.
Yeah.
Also, he's a scared child.
That's true.
I did love that whole thing about her having a little maternal
moment, Mrs. Wormwood.
I think that that's actually really, really properly good.
And that's, so like Samantha Bond was really great the 1st time
round.
And I guess the thing that we remember best is the confrontation
in the office between her and Sarah Jane and where she talks about
Sarah Jane being childless and purposeless and navigate empty life
and all of that kind of thing.
And there's still more of that here, isn't there?
Because the 2 of them are fighting over Lou.
And even though Mrs. Wormwood spends the 1st episode lying to us
about why she's here and what she wants to do, I think that she is
sincere when she talks about Luke.
Like that, she's not trying to trick him.
It's not the usual thing where the master sort of says you could
rule by my side over the entire galaxy or whatever and but he
intends to kind of off you within the 1st kind of week or so.
Like, I think she means it, doesn't she?
Like, yeah, yeah.
And also, I love that they didn't overplay when Sarah Jane is like
oh, Luke chose me, basically.
Yeah, yeah.
They don't overplay the lead up to that.
We don't get 40 minutes of her hand ringing going, will he choose
me, which I feel we would have gotten in a more modern episode of
Doctor Who.
Yeah, I mean, I think that just works incredibly well.
And it's the sort of thing that a child can understand.
So the central thing becomes about his 2 mothers, his birth mother
and what is it that makes a mother?
And I think that that's something that is absolutely pitched at
the audience, like the main audience, something that they're going
to understand.
So all of the science fiction stuff, which is great, and, you know
Samantha Bond sort of arch villain performance is also really
fantastic, but there is a central comprehensible emotional chord
of the story that speaks to the concerns of the main audience.
I just think it's really well charged.
Yeah, it's really sweet.
Weirdly, when I was like, oh, I don't think I've seen this one
when I started watching it, and then the brigadier and this on
Tara turned up, I'm like, no, I've definitely seen this one.
I remember the brigadier and the Santara.
How did I blank out everything else and I think that's that weird
thing we have with Doctor Who where you go. you remember it, like
friends episode titles.
It's like the one with.
And you don't go further than the one with the brigadier and the
Santara. other things might have happened.
I don't remember.
For me, it was always the one where Carg and Mrs. Wormwood team
are because that is such a random... like, you know, it's like the
Riddler and the Joker teaming up.
You know, like it's an absolute kids show thing.
Two villains from one from The Pilot and one from the beginning of
this season.
Both team up to get revenge on Sarah Jane, which I just think is
fabulous and absolutely part of the genre and is cheesy as hell
terrific, terrific staff.
And he's really good as well.
I think he's great.
Um, not a Santaran that we've seen from the parent show at all.
I mean, it was offered to both of those actors, the role, and they
were busy or turned it down.
Oh, it could have been one of them.
I do want to give a shout out in particular to Anthony O'Donnell
because he is in his late 50s when he takes on this role.
Right.
And he's doing all the running around.
And there's one bit, I think it's the bit where he knocks Luke to
the ground, like he, you know, trips him over and you get a sort
of side profile view of him and he's a lot more solid than
Christopher Ryan or Dan Starkey.
Like, you know, he looks like a rugby player.
He is Welsh.
Listeners, listeners to our old Bond podcast, Bondfinger, may
recognise Anthony O'Donnell as the man in Skyfall, who observes
Bond rushing and jumping onto a tube train and saying, he's in a
hurry to get home.
That's it.
In his signature role as man, I think.
Yeah.
Train passenger. number two.
I once got casters villain number 2 and then villain number one
didn't turn up and so I got to be villain number one.
Right.
Well done.
Student production.
Yeah, that really beefed up that idea.
Something I find really interesting about Anthony O'Donnell's
performance is it's not a comedy performance in the same way that
Christopher Ryan and Dan Starkey sort of do in the Santar and 2
parter, and that's not a criticism of them.
You know, we've talked before about the Santarans are meant to be
funny.
Anthony O'Donnell plays it really seriously.
And I think that helps because I think if he was being quite arch
as well.
It would take away from Samantha Bond's performance. whereas he
has to be a sort of more credible, more physical threat.
It's just such an interesting choice to have him in the kids' show
of the Doctor Who universe at this point be a really quite
menacing figure.
Whereas in the main show, you've got Comedy Sontara saying, oh
humans all look the same to us. do you mean?
It's kind of weird that they're treated as comedic.
I don't know if it's because Russell T Davis is quite tall, but
it's almost like, oh, short people are all ridiculous.
Yes, make fun of them.
Whereas this is like, this is like, 0 no, this is someone with
Napoleonic syndrome.
This is like an angry, small man.
I saw a great production of Romeo and Juliet once and Tybalt was
cast as like this short, muscly guy.
And I was like, oh, that makes so much more sense.
There's a real threat.
Like, Mrs. Wormwood, at some point, comments on the fact that this
is sparring between 2 women to kind of middle-aged women and we
need like a masculine figure in here to kind of sort it out and
then the Santaran comes in.
But you also get Clyde talking about a story just a couple of
episodes ago called Mark of the Berserker, which involved his
father, and his father being violent.
And so, you know, again, there's something there that the show is
not afraid to touch on.
But I do think that he just needs to play it straight because she
doesn't.
And you don't want them competing.
I think.
Yeah, also, as Brendan said, he's an older gentleman who is under
7 kilos of latex.
And it's just like, this is all I can manage, right?
There's something about his teeth.
Like they're sort of crooked or something and it's just a really
really strong look.
Like, I think he looks great.
I think he looks properly menacing.
It's been a weird scar.
Yeah, the scar.
It's been a long time since I've seen it.
So it was called the Last Santarin, and it was the two-part
opening story for this season, in which Chrissy is written out of
the show and some other characters leave, I think, as well.
No, Chrissy and Maria and Alan are all written out in the sort of
Santaran 2 parter at the start of the show.
And he is a Santaran who is left over from the series 4 Santaran 2
Parta, which was just screened a few months earlier.
So it's kind of like a spinoff or a continuation almost.
Yeah.
Yeah, and again, I think there's something really warm about
that.
The show acknowledging the parent show because the kids are
watching the parent show because at this point everyone's watching
it. everyone is.
And so this is something for them, just for them that hooks into
the show before we consider having the doctor himself sort of
coming to visit, I think.
More of a spud off than a spinoff.
I love Nathan, that you're concerned for who's being written out
is one of the mums.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But it's crazy.
I mean, all the mums, all of the mums.
But Chrissy actually gets a high heel shoe into the Santari
probing fan.
She defeats it and she also walks off and says, you know I know
what's been going on. so good.
And it is exactly what I've always said about when I heard that
Billy Piper was leaving Doctor Who.
I went, oh my god, what will happen to Camille?
And it is exactly the same feeling when Maria.
And I like Maria.
I actually think Maria is pretty good.
It's really good having an actual kid as the star of this kid's
show.
I thought she was, you know, she performed really well.
I thought she was great.
She's not actually Mohindra, who is really just superb, but is
who's a 20s and very tall.
And very taller than everyone else.
Samantha Bond actually gets to say that.
Okay, it's to mention how much taller she is than her
predecessor.
But, you know, like I was just sort of a bit sad that she was
going to leave.
So there are a couple of half forms in a 3 quarter form.
Yeah, basically.
A one. 5 form.
And then the other people that we haven't mentioned, like Gita
who's played by Mina Anwar is just absolutely superb. amazing.
We already praised her appearance in Smile, in that tiny scene at
the beginning of Smile when we talked about that on Flight Through
Entirety.
I mean, she's just so magnificent and she's ridiculously young in
this, isn't she?
Like they're so young.
Like she feels like she could be her daughter's sister. like
legitimately.
It's really something.
She's so funny. and funny in a completely different way from
Chrissy and adorable, just absolutely loveable.
And, you know, the genius of this is that you can threaten the
parents, that you can put the parents in peril in the show.
The kids know what's happening.
The parents are kind of unwitting.
And so we start with, you know, Mrs. Wormwood visiting the flower
shop.
Oh my god, that has a stupid pun name, which I adore.
I couldn't get over that handwriting font that the window.
It's just like so period.
It's not as bad as the bubble shock font.
No, that's true.
Which looked like everything on Canva. exactly.
Something amazing about the blooming lovely scenes is for the
night scenes.
They literally just put up a tent outside to block the sunlight.
Great.
And then after they'd done that, they pulled the tent down and did
the day scenes in the shop.
Amazing. love it.
The other thing I love about the bloom and lovely scenes is when
everyone except Luke gets knocked out, you cut away, I think you
show Ansley or Danny Anthony falling down.
And then when you cut back, you can just see that Nick is sitting
in a chair.
It's like, yeah, they're conveniently positioned a chair for the
brig to fall into and just probably gone.
Now, now, I'm just about to grab Papa.
Now, Nick, don't actually fall over.
We don't have the insurance.
We're just going to cut away and you're going to sit in the
chair.
It's fine.
It fine.
It's fine.
Make magic.
Let's go.
I love that several of his scenes take place just in a car with
other people not in the car.
It's like, how do we accommodate the blocking here?
Just leave him.
So he was originally going to be Martha, of course, who has joined
unit, but she was unavailable and we can blame Chris Chibnall
because she was doing Law and Order UK.
So the decision to do him, this is his last appearance as the
brigadier on television.
So glorious.
Yeah. it really is rather wonderful to have him on this show.
Again.
One of the things that this era of Doctor Who does is it
introduces a whole new generation to all of the nonsense that
we've been obsessed with for decades.
And so it's Dalek, Cybermen, the Master, the Santarans, you know
Davros, all come back.
And so we get the brigadier as well.
And he's been mentioned.
He was not available because he was in Peru, I think, during the
Santaran 2 parter in series four.
So that's great because they actually make him being in Peru in
the Sultan two-parter into a plot by the Bang.
Yeah, yeah.
That's fantastic.
So in fact, the kids watching this know more about that two-part
story than everyone else, which is wonderful. absolutely
brilliant.
Yeah.
There's actually deleted dialogue where when Major Kilburn asks
him about his mission in Peru. brigadier very angrily replies.
The Chupacabra is an urban legend.
Nothing more.
Doesn't unit have enough aliens to shoot at these days without
chasing shadows?
Wonderful.
I wish they'd let that in.
That's awesome.
Here's the thing.
And the viewer at home can't see this, but I have the Sarah Jane
Smith companion here from Doctor Who magazine here.
This whole blue page here is deleted dialogue. from this story.
We're talking like size 8 font.
I suspect it was a lot of, you know, they're in such a hurry.
It's like, yeah, you fluff the name of that gobbledy-gook.
We'll just move that.
The brigadier probably couldn't say...
Well, they also gave him an explanation to spout out for why he's
using a cane.
Ruddy Catabakuda, stinger in my leg.
It's good for nothing but a doorstop for the last 15 years.
And yeah, I think they just came down on the fact of, no, he's
just old.
He can just have a cane.
It's fine.
And just the warmth between the 2 of them as well.
Like his photos on her wall in the attic, I think, isn't it?
Like there's photos of Harry and there's photos of the brigadier
and stuff.
But just seeing those 2 reunited on television in a way that you
just never, ever expected to happen.
I think is so great.
It adds so much to their relationship as well.
Like, they really don't have that much of a relationship in
classic Doctor Who.
Yeah, they're in a, what, 2 or 3 stories together.
You know, like they're, they're, they're acquaintances.
They're not even really colleagues.
She didn't work for units.
Um, you know, they're writing unit out in the season she's
introduced in.
So, like, they appear in a few stories, then another few with
Tom.
But this actually shows that they had a relationship after the
show and that they kept in touch and that they value each other as
friends.
It's really sweet.
I like the line where she says that she never had the security
clearance that her own memoirs have. because she's just some
journalist who's hanging around for no reason and there's that
wonderful thing in robot where the brigadier says, I actually
don't know why I'm telling you all of this because you're just
some rando friend of the doctor.
So like all of that was so tremendous.
And I do think, though, those scenes are spoiled somewhat. by just
an inexplicably badly judged performance by the actor who plays
Kilburn.
Yeah, he's giving a kids TV show performance.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And it highlights that everyone else isn't doing that, that
everyone else isn't doing a kid's TV performance.
They are, in a sense, they're doing a classic Doctor Who
performance where it is slightly bigger, like it is hyper real.
You know, it's not prestige TV.
It is still just a kids show and it sort of tends towards
melodrama the way that the parent show does.
But he's doing something completely different.
I think that's the point with Sarah Jane Benches.
For the most part, it is played not straight, but it's played.
It's played in a in a way which, like you say, is melt dramatic
but it's not kids show acting.
It's heightened, but it's they're taking it seriously.
Yeah.
So you've got these 2 spectacular women playing really straight
this ludicrous storyline, you know, absolutely out of the box
craziness, and he's come into mansplain how to perform this
script.
And it's like, look who you're up against.
Like, these women know what they're doing.
Like, don't come in and pretend like you know better because, oh, I
know how to play this craziness and it's like, no, no, these, these
2 have been doing this for years. know what's going on.
He could have been properly menacing because, you know, he is
already a threat.
I mean, part of the problem is that the performance spoils the
reveal.
Like the moment he starts acting like this, you know that he's a
bane, right?
Yeah, so that reveal gets spoiled, I think, by that performance.
But also he's still a proper threat.
And he is an antagonist.
And had he been someone who was a little bit more credible, that
would have been more interesting and then the discovery that he's
a bane.
And he could have been a properly scary bane as well.
Generally the Bane, you know, comedy gloop monsters and stuff like
that.
We even have the fabulous thing of exploding them all over the
kids, you know.
Oh my god, weird custard explosions. on television.
But I mean, we had the Slovene doing that in the parent show a few
years ago as well.
They had noodles in them.
But like that's fun.
All of that stuff is really terrifically fun.
But he's not fun.
He's just not fun to watch So he's he's Simon Chadwick, and it's
been bothering me since I rewatched this.
I'm like, I know I recognise him from somewhere.
I know I recognise him from somewhere.
James, if I were to say the words coupling and rump.
Really?
He is Sally's butcher boyfriend in the coupling episode the man
with 2 legs.
I misremembered this episode in that because of this performance
from him, I actually assumed that we always knew that he was a
bank. the reveal that he was a Bane was at the beginning of the
story.
So because of the largeness of his performance, it ruins it, but I
actually also had a memory cheats moment with that because that
acting.
I think I had a similar thing where I said, oh, he's a bane, and
then it just kept going.
You know, I thought, oh, okay, maybe I'm misremembering it.
It's just a terrible performance.
But turns out it was both.
When you said earlier, apart from one performance, everyone's
good.
I'm like, I can't remember anyone being bad.
And then you bring him up, I'm like, oh, yeah, I blocked him out.
I only watched it yesterday.
You know, I think he's also kind of like the Grand Serpent in flux
not in terms of performance, I think, the Grand Serpent's
performance is brilliant.
But he's just, he's just one villain too many.
Yeah.
He's the Sandman in Spider-Man 3.
Yeah.
Irritating, of course, and gets everywhere.
Yeah.
Terrible in the underpants.
It could be a casualty of rapidly rewriting the scripts because
you know, earlier on, Nathan, when you said this was originally
meant to be Martha, Nicholas Courtney was cast on 5 days notice.
Wow, okay. kind of the offer came in for Freeman and she just
called the production office and she's like, I can't turn this
down.
It's a lead role in a major show.
And Russell's like, yep, of course, you know, we'll figure it
out.
And kudos to Nick for basically being told, so you're our 2nd
choice.
Can you get down to Carter for a costume fitting?
He's like, of bloody course I can.
I mean, he would have thought he'd like practically retired at
this point, wouldn't he?
Yeah, just big finishing conventions at this point.
Yeah.
I guess 3 years before he passed away.
Like he's quite, you know, senior.
It's the wedding of River Song, isn't it?
The finale to series 6 where the doctor learns that the brigadier
has died.
So it is sort of quite soon after this, I think.
Like, yeah, I'm just glad that we had it.
It was so nice and I'd forgotten. when I watched this that he was
in it and was so excited to see him again.
I did actually go to a convention in the UK around the time this
went out and Nick was there as one of the guests.
And my main memory of it is he and Silv were meant to be on an
interview panel, but Nick's autograph queue was running along.
So he was a bit late.
But the interviewer also didn't show up.
And so Silv is running around with the microphone like he was a
bit more...
And Nick wanders in after about 10 minutes with a pint and says, oh
oh, so what are you doing?
What are you doing?
Oh, the interviewer hasn't turned up, Nick.
So I'm running around.
You go sit down and I'll get questions for you.
Oh.
Oh, all right.
All right.
And so Nick goes up to the stage and Sills fielding the questions
for him. 10 minutes later, the interviewer comes in and Nick's
like, oh, hello.
And still says, no, we don't need you.
We're doing fine.
Thank you.
Goodbye.
And he's like, oh, no, no, no, come on, come up, dear boy.
Come on.
Yes, you know.
So he was the 1st convention guest that I ever saw, and it was the
1st convention I ever went to, and it was in the very late 80s, and
we had just seen Battlefield.
So it must be 8990 or something like that.
And it was at Sydney University, which is where I was.
Stephen Roberts, Stephen Roberts Theatre.
I was there, I remember it was demolished.
The theatre.
Not the convention.
No.
And everyone wanted to ask him about Anselon because he's terribly
hot.
You know, like he'd been in Battlefield.
We all wanted to know about Anselon.
And he said, oh, lovely fellow, had terrific hash, what he said.
I want to talk about Samantha Bond again a little bit.
We can talk about it for days.
I watched a terrible crime show just because it had her and Joe
Martin.
Oh, I had someone at work this week.
Tell me about a show that she's in and I can't remember.
The Marlow Murder Club.
No, it's not that, but it was something else.
And she was trying to continue. to watch it, not downtown Abbey.
She was trying to convince me to watch it.
She said, have you ever heard of Samantha Bond?
It's just like, have I heard?
Have I?
She was Money Penny.
She calls Money Penny.
She called Bond a cunning linguist.
Come on.
What about the deep fake sex that she has with Piers Brosnan in
the VR helmet?
But here, she's amazingly still.
Isn't there just an incredible stillness to her?
And like she's wearing that that cowl, which is stupid.
Like, who wears?
pinned into her hair.
But she's just so windy.
She looks fantastic, but there is just that absolute stillness to
the way that she can dance herself.
She never raises a sweat.
She never really seems super agitated and just the line delivery
just the way that she speaks is so magnificent.
And, you know, there was just no question that whatever you did
with her, whatever you got her to come back and do, she would
absolutely be magnificent at, and you just needed to kind of lure
her back in some way.
She was unbelievably great in that 1st episode.
So magnificent.
I suspect that she was given a direction that, you know, when
you're holding your little ring thing.
It needs to be in exactly the same place because the special
effects people.
Oh, Jake.
And so she's done the whole role of like, I'm just not going to
move much because I don't want to get out of the screen.
I think also, we were saying earlier with Simon Chadwick's
performance and the idea of a kids TV performance.
I think there are certain things that you can do in live action
kids TV.
It's okay to give that level of kids' performance.
And for me, I call that sort of pose she does with her ring.
I call that her Power Rangers moment because it's like when the
Power Rangers are about to change.
They have to go into the same pose every time because that matches
the Japanese footage.
Yeah.
So, you know, she or Graham have figured out.
It's like, right, so with the ring, you're going to sort of do a
live long and prosper and put those 2 things around and just twist
your hands every time and that's going to be the pose.
Yeah.
So that's something kids can do in the playground.
Exactly.
And we get one whacking great close-up of the ring and it's just
one of those cheap sort of light refracting rings that you could
get at pound land at the time.
So cheap.
What I love about this show.
It's like it's so cheap and it's delightful.
But I mean, she spends like that 1st episode just lying to us
about who she is.
Like, and even being on the back foot a little bit.
You know, even when she's sort of caught in the, you know, the
containment vortex or something in the attic and she has to try
and get Luke to release her.
All of that sort of star.
Like, everything is arch and everything is this sort of villain
performance, but there's a real sort of sincerity to it.
She's really believable, I think.
And I think the one thing that they do here.
So Russell likes to give the villains families, right?
So we had the main mother, and you know, we have the Slovene, a
crime family.
You know, it's Margaret Blaine and all of her brothers.
Yeah, you know, and there's the family of blood.
Like, he wants villains that love one another in a way.
That's a little bit kind of more interesting.
But she doesn't really show any of that in the in that 1st story.
But here she's actually invited to do something a little bit more
interesting with Luke.
And like, of course she can do it.
She's magnificent, but it was nice to kind of give her a little
bit more depth for want of a better word.
Well, I guess if you know it's Samantha Bond just coming back
you're like, well, we can throw anything at her and she'll be
fine.
Like, we don't have to.
Because I imagine they've, they've had so many great guest actors
on this show.
It's like they know they're going to get someone good. every
episode.
It's like, ah yeah, we can just throw anything at them.
But Saran Jones next week. fine.
We've got Bradley Walsh.
It's fine.
Let's do it.
Doctor Who, like the parent show doesn't seem to do villains in
quite the same way.
It's a very classic Doctor Who villain performance.
It's the sort of thing that Simon would approve of, I think.
You know, you have a posh person doing a sort of slightly bigger
but not too big performance and it's not the sort of villain that
we tend to go for, the sort of RP villain.
Um, who is from Doctor Who in the 70s.
It's just sad that she doesn't have a proper old school Doctor Who
death where instead of being pitched into a special effect, she
just sort of crumples to the floor.
Like carefully because it's concrete.
I mean, I don't think this show kills its villains very often
because it is a kid's show.
Yeah Oh, she's pitched into a weird dimension.
She could be back.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I think that was absolutely the aim.
Had the show kept going.
You know, we could have had her back, I think.
Well, big finish have brought her back.
No. in their box set.
Rani takes on the world.
Oh, of course they have.
And she's Mrs. Wormwood.
Is she fabulous?
I haven't heard it, but the story is called Revenge of the Bane.
Oh wonderful.
I thought it was called the Revenge of Wormwood. might be right.
You might be right.
It's such an uncomfortable sounding name.
Have you got your wormwood scene too?
She actually says, doesn't she?
I think she says where it comes from, that it's from the book of
Revelation.
Like wormwood is like what absinthe is made of.
But it's a star in the book of Revelation that falls to the earth
and poisons a 3rd of the water.
And so that's why she's called that, but wormwood is famously a
bitter plant.
And so like, that's why that's there.
And it's so much better than giving her a space name.
Oh, yeah.
Like that would have been dreadful.
We have carg and his glorious space name and that's probably
enough space names for one story. surname, isn't it?
glorious space now.
Well, that's all the time we had for this week.
We'll be back next week to see how that terrifying entity on the
planet Midnight gets on without any middle class daily mail
readers to frighten in the well.
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 greys and bountiful Human Empire.
Until next time, remember that there are plenty of delicacies
sweeter than the tongue of your enemy.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Bye.
Good night.
Ta ta.
That was 500 year diary, starring Nathan Bottomley, Brendan Jones
Adam Richard, and James Selwood.
The theme was composed by Cameron Lamb.
This episode, Gloria Space Name, was recorded on the 25th of May
2025 and released on the 29th of June.
When Samantha Bond returned to Bannerman wrote in a box set in
December 2023, big finish released a lovely 6 minute interview
with her that you really should watch.
Follow the link in this week's show notes.
I was gonna say, if you think she's bitter, maybe you should stop
licking her.
Oh my god.
Oh my, oh my god, switch cartridges are the 3rd scheme of the
bane.
What's that about?
Well, because switch cartridges are bitter when you lick them so
that if children put them in their mouths, they spit them out.
Oh, it's it's the reason.
Yeah, it's like that nail polish you can put on, yeah.
To stop your biting your nail.
I have never done it.
And I don't know if the new ones, because the new switch things
they don't even have the game on them.
Some of them don't.
Because the game is too big to fit on the country. it will be
clearly on the packaging.
Okay.
That's not the case.
On the topic of Boomtown that you mentioned a couple of minutes
ago.
So, yeah, I know we covered Boomtown last week, but it's
interesting that when Mrs. Wormwood comes up to the attic.
The scene really heavily mirrors the scene with Margaret coming
into the Tartars in Boomtown, right down to, Oh, yeah, well, we'll
turn you over to the bane.
Yeah, well, they'll execute me.
They'll eat me.
And then a discussion comes up around 2nd chances and what have
you.
And, you know, instead of like Captain Jack's laser handcuffs
we've got the containment vortex, you know.
I mean, the main difference is that Margaret does get a shot at
redemption and there is there is a moment where at the end where
you genuinely believe that, oh, you know, she she is actually
grateful for the idea of starting over, whereas Mrs. Wormwood is
like, no, evil all along.
That's actually really wonderful.
When Luke rejects her.
She goes, oh, well, I'll just go back to destroying things.
That's fun.
Like, almost literally, she says that.
And I think that's fabulous.
It's just kind of like, okay, no regrets.
I'm just going to be a fabulous villain and you do what you want.
And I think that that is pretty great.
There's that in that scene, you know, Margaret comes into the
Tartar and goes, oh, I feel a little bit less bad about how you
beat me given that you have this technology.
And I think that Mrs. Wormwood has a similar experience, doesn't
she, when she sees the computer and all of that sort of thing, that
it's not quite as homegrown, you know, as she thought it was.
Yeah.
One of my favourite moments in this is when Sarah Jane pulls out a
spare sonic lipstick and it's like, what woman only has one
lipstick?
I think the line is, you think I'm the sort of girl that only
carries one.
Awesome. glorious.
I love stupid logic.
I'm just imagining if, like, in one of the days that Eric Saywood
was pissed off with JNG, like he just types in.
The doctor whips out a sonic screwdriver and says to Tegan, oh yes
I built another one.
Don't know why I didn't think of this 3 stories ago, really.
What do you think?
Do we have...
Oh, we've got heaps set out?
I think we have a I think we have a I think we've got hate.
Oh, I just want to say one thing about the editing and pacing, and
this could go back where there was deleted dialogue stuff.
I did get the feeling watching this, that there was a lot of
deleted dialogue.
Just because there are some really odd cuts.
Like as we go into the titles.
Like instead of getting out a maniacal laugh, Mrs. Wormwood gets
out and then, book, titles.
And it's like...
I kind of loved that.
We'll take the laugh as red.
Yeah, yeah.
It happens to about 3 or 4 times.
Like the end of part one, she gets cut off.
But like looking at the episodes, they're just above 28 minutes
which I think must be the maximum for the slot.
So I'm just imagining Graham Harper in the edit suite going, okay
no, chop that tail that.
Like, we come in halfway through the discussion about Clyde's dad
and we get the gist, but the buildup to that is actually
instigated by Luke asking Clyde.
You know, you've had your dad suddenly come back into your life.
How should I be feeling about this?
Oh, right.
You know, that being said, it doesn't affect my enjoyment.
And I don't think it would bother a kid, but just as I do work
with footage and cutting stuff down and do occasionally have to go
right, we need to take out 12nd from every shot of this sequence
to get it to time.
I think perhaps I'm just more sensitive.
So it's not a criticism.
It's just something I observed.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's, I mean, I feel like it makes it really lean and the
judicious choices are like, we we kind of get why these things are
happening.
Like there's no there's no mistaking the the ongoing storyline.
They could have cut half a McGuffin, and I wouldn't have cared.
Yeah.
I reckon that's, I think, great.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's that's fun.
That's fun.