Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to 500 year diary.
The only Doctor Who podcast that can still remember having tariff
free access to the alms markets of the warlords of Thorden.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Kate.
I'm Peter, and I'm Simon.
It's the 4th of October, 1986.
There's been a whole 18 month hiatus since the doctor was on the
planet Varos, throwing a couple of cutting quips in Sill's
direction, and tonight, 4.800000 people have tuned in to watch The
Trial of a Time Lord, part five, possibly hoping to see that
happen again.
But can still work as a villain in a completely different set of
space corridors?
Let's find out as we discuss Mind Warp.
All right, so we're here in trial of a time law.
Right in the middle.
Right in the middle of trial of a time, Lord.
How are we feeling about it so far?
Disappointed.
I was so, oh, goodness me.
I was loving season 22 and the tone of the show and the way it was
being made and for some reason during the hiatus, they completely
forgot how to make Doctor Who.
I liked it at the time because I needed to like it at the time.
But seasons 23 and 24 are basically for me, one of the deers of
the show, I'm afraid.
Yeah, I'll have to agree with that.
I think this was an important season in my fan evolution, not this
story, which I'm really quite fond of, but the season as a whole
was the 1st time as a 14 year old, I realised the Doctor Who was
not as good as it used to be.
And it was a frightening feeling.
I remember mostly being puzzled by it.
I kind of knew what season 22 was like because by that point the
VCR had been invented and so I watched season 22 to death.
And then season 23 came along and I was sort of watching it, now
kind of enjoying it, and I'm kind of sharing the doctor on, but
you know, I would rewatch an episode and I would think, what's
wrong?
What's missing?
I don't understand because I'm too young.
That thing of like coming home from school or university or
whatever and, you know, frantically rewatching Attack of the
Cyberman part one, 5 or 6 times. part of that could be explained
by the fact that we were a year older, but I don't think so.
There was something missing from the series.
See, I had the opposite experience and I'm slightly older than you
and I wonder whether there's something developmental happening
here.
Well, you're the same age as Kate.
Well, that's true.
That is true.
So for me, season 22 was the moment where I think I started to see
through Doctor Who.
And for me, season 22 is a series of episodes set in various space
corridors all over the place, in which unpleasant things happen
and there's a lot of running around and getting captured and
escaping and that kind of thing.
Yeah, hear, hear.
And for me, what I felt was that we found a new type of space
corridor for each story.
But we never really kind of developed a story in any kind of
different way.
So we would just find new settings for the doctor to do quips and
for capturing and escaping to happen.
And on some level, Doctor Who has always been like that, and maybe
22 happens to coincide with the moment where I kind of
realised...
Had an awakening.
But I do have to say that there are things about season 22 that I
really, really seriously dislike, and that I think that despite
the fact that I like season 23 a lot better, and I'm not claiming
it's good or that it's coherent, any of those things.
That's okay.
We can still be free.
But I think Mind Warp is where it reaches its Nadir.
And I think that a lot of it has to do with Perry. and it's not
Nicola, and it's not the character of Perry, but it's the
treatment of Perry.
Yes. which I just think is the worst stain on 80s Doctor Who.
And during the Hinchcliffe era, we talked a little bit on flight
through entirety about how Sarah Jane stops being a credible
character, because she's constantly having these terrible things
happen to her, and yet she hops in the TARDIS at the end of Terror
of the Zycons rather than kind of running a mile.
And what happens to Perry, is that not only is she mistreated, but
she's sexualised in a way that really hadn't happened since the
60s and certainly had never happened to the degree that it happens
with Perry.
And so mind warp opens with a scene in which the actual mind warp
not the not the trial.
But a scene in which, uh, Perry and the doctor talk about the
handsy warlord of Thornton, who sent the dirty warlord.
Yeah.
And like that's a funny throwaway line, except that that's what
happens to her all the time.
And that she's constantly being leered at and physically
manhandled by man.
And this is the point where her body is taken over and taken off
her and she's experimented on it, mistreated.
And I just think it's awful.
I'm going to say that I do agree with you on an intellectual level
and yet that's not the takeaway I had as child, not the takeaway I
have now.
Episode 8 or part four, whichever way you want to look at it, is
clearly the most important part of this story.
And I remember the way that I felt when I watched it.
I think maybe Simon and I watched Doctor Who in a slightly
different way because of our reactions to season 22 and how
positively we reacted to it.
Episode 8 puts me back in mind of season 22.
It's really unsettling and a bit brutal.
And the fact that, you know, Perry Nicola Bryant is one of the
most generically attractive Doctor Who companions, like, you know
you would sort of put her on screen and people would agree that's
a beautiful woman.
So the fact that they shave her head to make her into this
creature at the end, I found so confronting and so dramatic that
it still works for me now.
I get a thrill when I watch it and I don't feel any of that kind
of dispossession that you're talking about.
So let me just say that I think that that final episode is as
terrifying as Doctor Who has ever been, and the only thing that I
can compare it to, I think, is Dark Water, where I spent the
entire episode just with this feeling of incredible dread.
We've talked before about when a story feels like a regeneration
story because things are careening out of control and you're
thinking, hang on, it's reached the 3 quarter mark of episode 4
and things aren't being resolved.
In this story, you have the doctor for the one and only time maybe
apart from turn left, which examines it, of you remove the hero
from the action.
This is what happened.
He goes to hell.
The thing that you mention about shaving Perry's head is the
moment that you know the doctor's not going to save her.
Like, you're, he's already asked, where's Perry, hasn't he, in
episode one of Trial of a Time Lord, and we don't know where Perry
is.
And we don't know exactly when he was taken out of time.
That's right.
Because we're never going to have Nicola Bride in a bald wig
playing Perry and the doctor rescuing her.
The moment that Matrona Carly starts cutting her hair, either the
doctor has to turn up immediately and put a stop to it.
Or we already know by then that she's done for.
And all of those delays, even just scenes of colony and corridors
with people getting in his way.
Yeah.
Do you know what I mean?
Oh, unquestionably. and echoing what you said, Peter, about
episode 4 is a bit of season 22, which has been dropped into
season 23, and that's the one, the foreboding music.
It is that terrible sense of foreboding.
And I think that's the episode, the only episode of the story
which properly works and then I enjoy.
I think the rest of it is basically the worst parts of the trial.
And it's the only episode of the season that has that dramatic
weight. kind of anodyne, lightweight, jokey, everything that I
don't really want from Doctor.
With the treatment of Perry, though.
I think we're forgetting what the mid-80s was like to attractive
women.
The only thing they can be is a sex symbol, whether it's the
hostesses on game shows to spinning around things for the for the
guy in a suit because someone's chosen the letter N or whether
it's other people.
Basically, they are sexualised in a way.
It is all it is doing.
I'm not saying it's right. saying all it's doing is exactly what's
happening at the time.
In all those American shows too.
But you've got Sigourney Weaver and Linda Hamilton.
There are other ways of being a woman that are available.
You've got Tegan.
Tegan is not being pulled by aliens.
No, it's actually wonderful, isn't it?
And she's obnoxious and she's difficult and all of those things
and she's never, ever once sexualised.
Yeah, but so we'd had that character and now they're doing a
different character.
So that's what you do.
It's not just another Tegan that's been put in.
No, no.
I don't think we need another Tegan, but I do think that Doctor
Who has, like it's always, you know, had obviously sort of
problematic things with its representation of women, but I think
here it falls down a hole where it's worse than it used to be.
It regresses.
And I think it's a proper problem.
And I think it's really, really deeply unpleasant and it stops at
this and doesn't come back. disagree with you.
I think it's probably a symptom of the kind of nihilist world that
Eric Seywood occupies and the stories that he wants to deliver
that bad things will happen to the doctor and his companion in a
variety of ways, and Perry happens to be in the middle of that.
One of the things I do like is that Perry, I don't think, ever
really loses her agency.
She's always forthright and fighting back.
She never just becomes a victim.
She's never just tied to a railway track, except in time lash.
Colin gets tied to a right way.
Exactly.
Even then, the train came off worse.
But because it's bad sex things that happen to Perry is the
problem.
Do you know what I mean?
It's not the peril.
It's not like she gets blinded or pushed down the stairs like
happens to Sarah and Brain of Morbius.
It is specifically around people leering at her and pawing at her
and stuff in a way that.
You have to physically fight Joe Bell off.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And, you know, even the goddamn Borad has the hots for us.
Even Sill, in vengeance on Varos, is like when she's changing, you
say, oh, she's almost attractive now, or as a pet.
Yes, someone is obsessed with her appearance.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Like, I think that that's unpleasant, and I can't kind of, like, I
don't know how much of my dislike of this era stems from, that.
I think definitely now.
I doubt when I was a kid.
It loomed very large in my consciousness and I think what I was
worried about was just the usual genre staff.
But because she is basically the most beautiful companion we've
ever had before or since. don't think that's true.
Or it's not in any way an objective thing.
Yeah, it's not a clearly...
Barbara, aren't you?
I am thinking of Barbara.
Look, but she is an incredibly beautiful woman.
It's not surprising that the writing goes in this direction.
And also the fact that that didn't, it didn't bother me then and
it doesn't bother me now because the fact that an incredibly
attractive woman is being poured at by villains.
People we are supposed to despise.
Is that sending a bad message?
Because we're not saying it's okay for Perry.
No.
No, no.
But I think what we're saying is that it's entertaining to watch
Perry being poor.
No, it's supposed to be crying.
It supposed to be awful.
If it didn't happen quite so often, then you could look at it that
way, I think, but it's this absolute consistent.
It's in story after story that Perry is pursued.
It would be like if guest characters were falling in love with
Tegan constantly.
You'd be like, what's going on here?
But when it happens in enlightenment.
It's a fascinating subport.
Yeah.
Yes.
I think it's a, they just go back to it too often, and I think
it's become an obsession that say what has for some reason, and I
think there's a real genuine nastiness to it.
And so while I think that that final episode that episode 8 is an
amazing, you know, like amazingly paced, amazingly told, really
quite terrifying.
I think it's really kind of horrible.
Like, I think it's got a great scene with Brian Blessed and her.
It's one of the few good brands.
A really, really good scene.
Oh, I really like when he comes off the doorfers died.
I think that's a really, I actually...
We can cherry pick.
Yeah, yeah. cherry pick one or 2 moments when he's not shouting
from the ceiling. actually quite good.
Yeah.
Way too much.
A problem for the story is that it's building inexorably to this
horrendous climax, which is going to shock the heck out of all of
us. you know, I remember my jaw hanging open.
But a lot of the story is being played as a parody, as a comedy, by
the people who are in it, and it's not necessarily written as
humorously as they are playing it.
But Crozier seems to think he's in the rocky horror picture show.
And Ryan Brassett is playing.
Right, bless it.
Well, he's playing Voltan, whatever his name is from Flash
Gordon.
You know, he's playing what's written on the page, basically.
And he does more than just shout.
He does those lovely moments, but you've got this problem where a
lot of the cast just seem to be in a different production that is
not a horror story, but to joke.
And the doctor is not immune to that.
Like the dreadful business after he's been zapped in his brain.
And he comes out and he's just a clown.
He's just ridiculous and I hate it when anybody does that to the
doctor and they make him look like just a jackass.
And then worse, he turns into a complete asshole.
And again, I hate it when people do that with the doctor, and of
course, it's never resolved.
Was it a clever ploy?
Was he affected by the brain machine?
Is it a matrix?
We don't, we don't know.
He just a toll.
They needed to have a tone meeting or something to decide, okay
look, are we doing a parody Frankenstein story here with a warlord
in it, or are we doing a serious story about brain alteration
which is going to end up with this terrible climax?
I mean, they've done stories in Dog 2 before, which start off with
a different tone then.
So I'm thinking of the myth makers, which is a comedy for 3
quarters of its run, and then becomes high drama for its last
episode.
Well, you know, I say high drama.
Mind warp is like that, I think.
And I still call it mind warp.
Trial of Time.
But for that.
Series 7B. It might even be Planet of Silver.
For 3 quarters, it's run.
It's a black comedy and really quite an effective one.
And then it pitches over into its last episode, the comedy gets
stripped away and it's just dark.
I'm fine with that.
I'm on board with that.
In fact, one of the best gags, I think, is the moment that Sill
looks at the new Kiev in Perry's body and says, if only we could
have found a more attractive one, which is not a great joke, but
the fact that we're doing a joke at that moment. you know, and
that's.
But isn't it great as well?
Because it's silent apart from his life, which is one of the very
few moments of silence before or since.
What are we doing with making the doctor into an unlikeable
unsympathetic villain for half of the story, when we have the
experience of the twin dilemma, and how badly that went down with
a big chunk of fandom, and it may be one of the turning points in
the public consciousness of the show, maybe.
Why are we doing that again?
When the show is under scrutiny by the public, by the BBC bosses
why are we going there?
The answer is we shouldn't be.
The doctor should be the doctor throughout the season.
But if we are going to go there, We have to work out why we're
going there and what we're going to do.
And as you said, it's not worked out.
We don't know if the doctor is being manipulated by the Matrix, if
it was the brain pulse.
I thought that weird brain transference pulse had made you crazy.
I mean, I actually said this in the flight through entirety
episode.
I think it's clear what the script wants to be happening
afterwards, yes.
Yeah, it's Matrix.
Yes, that's right.
And I think there's the bit that Kate objected to, which is the
immediate consequence of the brain pulse, but then after that we
see the doctor much as he is, although the doctor complains that
the emphasis is slightly wrong and that's kind of fine.
And then I think that the moment where the Matrix is tampered with
is that, again, that horrific scene where they chain Nicola to
rocks.
They really chain her to rocks and the tide is coming in and she's
anxious about the battery pack on her microphone giving her a
shock.
And we try to get the scene as quickly as possible.
She's really, really unhappy about it.
And you've got Colin torturing her.
And there's one moment where he says, oh, look, we can talk and
then he says, tell me the names of your conspirators and stuff.
And that's the bit, which is the moment where that scene turns
because it turns it's like, oh, all right, it's our Dr. Pack.
Everything's fine, and then it turns out he's not, and that's the
Matrix being interviewed with.
The problem with this is there's 2 problems, I think.
One is that it's an uncomfortable spilling over of the production
mayhem into what we get on screen.
We should have had a clear idea. people involved should have had a
clear idea of what was here and why they're playing.
Colin doesn't have any idea.
And so it leans into his worst impulses.
He just goes over the top.
I don't think it helps that he's got Brian Blessed in the scenes
with him and he's trying to match that height and that energy.
But also, I don't know why it probably goes back to what you were
saying.
But the 6th doctor in particular, who I really like a lot more
than some other people do, leans into misogyny when he becomes
that character.
And so he's always talking about, why would I listen to this?
and a stupid girl.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's Liberty Gibbet. hopeless.
Yes, all that. and he's pushing Perry along the corridors when
they come back from the scene at the rocks and all of that.
And that makes me slightly uncomfortable.
I think if they'd been clarity in the production of what was
happening, Colin would have had more to have latched onto.
Yeah, I was thinking about that because everyone says that Colin
asked the writer and they said, oh, ask the script editor and then
ask the director and nobody knew.
Apparently he couldn't speak to Philip Martin because why would he
be able to read Philip Martin?
That's right.
And so he asks the director and he asks say word and say would say
speak to Philip Martin.
He goes, well, I can't do that.
We're done.
But I mean, you know, I think I, again, I made this point.
It's Eric Sayward's job tonight.
It's a director's job to decide, even if the director has not
received any input from the writer or the script editor or the
producer, it's the director's job to go through the script with a
highlighter and go, okay, this is this, this is that.
What do we have 10 days of rehearsal?
on Monday going, okay, we've got these scenes.
How are we playing this?
How are we doing this?
And I think that's what you're saying.
Having said that, I wonder if they'd have worked out what was what
it would have actually been even Hamier because it would have had
it would have had that terrible thing of actors pretending they're
acting within the story, which always looks embarrassing.
Do you know what I mean?
So maybe we've just maybe we have to be thankful for small
mercies.
And also, the other thing is, I don't necessarily mind the fact
that even to this day, we don't really know, because we all have a
different idea, and every time you watch it, you go, because I
don't think it needs to be a bounce.
And this is maybe what Philip Martin might have actually said, had
he been contacted, is maybe he would have said, you're never
actually supposed to know, you shouldn't know what he's real and
what's the matrix, and what might have been the doctor just being
if I'm not by the brain thing.
I absolutely don't mind that.
I just think it's indicative of the mayhem of the series.
It's an indictment of that.
In fact, it's the 1st time that the doctor's experiences stop
being what we see on screen.
This is the 1st time that we have a thoroughly unreliable narrator
where we as the audience can't trust that what we're seeing is
what really happened, right?
And that's kind of interesting, I think, and inadvertent.
And we never really go anywhere with it, but I think it is a
thing.
Whereas, you know, modern Doctor Who, we very frequently see
things told in a particular way or from a person's point of view
or things are not meant to be naturalistic or things happen.
But this is the 1st time it happens.
Yeah exactly.
See, a lot of people's problems, the people who don't like mind
warp, and they are numerous, but it's usually about this issue
about, oh, which is the matrix and which is the...
I don't...
Exactly.
I don't care.
I'm happy for the bizarre ambiguity, right?
It's almost everything else apart from episode 4 that I think is
wrong with the story.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, like, I think there are so many bad things about it from the
way the production is made from, to the way it's performed, all of
these things, and we can go through them one by one if you.
Well, itemise them for us, Simon.
I mean, let's talk a little bit about the predecessor of the story
Vengeance on Varus, which is where we 1st meet still.
And it's very highly regarded.
I think a lot of people think it's the best story of that season
or the era.
And I think it does some pretty amazing things with, you know, the
way it's told and all of that sort of thing.
But I think it's the story at which I just went. actually I'm done
here.
And I don't like it at all.
And I think it's, it's not as good as this.
And I think part of the reason is that the baddies are just
horrifically woefully generic and uninteresting.
Inventions of virus.
Yeah, like silly.
Chief and Quillum are terrible.
Quillem is, you know, like a, like just, oh, he wears a mask.
He's poundland Shara's jerk.
You know, like here.
That's right.
He's terrible.
And even...
Terribly gorgeous greys.
But but slimy performance is wonderful.
The thing is, it's a show about how terrible Doctor Who is.
Like at Philip Martin sees Doctor Who as a thing where people are
just going through space corridors, confronted by random things
that they solve in random ways. special effects.
Do you know what I mean?
Like with the fly, it's all right.
We'll just pretend it's an illusion, so it won't affect us.
The sand, however, that's an illusion, but it will affect us.
Who could predict which thing would happen?
And it's exciting.
Do you know what, Wayne's this not wonderful?
Exactly.
I don't understand.
Because, basically, it's a satire of Doctor Who that basically
says that Doctor Who is bad.
And that's one way of dealing with the fact that Doctor Who is
bad.
But another way would be making it good.
Okay.
I, I, I don't accept the premise of my, by the way.
And I'll explain why.
I think, I think, I mean, it's a great...
I think what you've come up with there is a wonderful meta reading
of it.
But I think that's what it's doing, isn't it?
Like, no, that's how the cliffhanger works.
Like the real cliffhanger and the meta cliffhanger are the same
and the fact that the doctor's yes and cut it now and all that
sort of stuff.
Yeah. but and it suits using elements of television.
What it's about, it's video narsis.
It's about the fact that television, not just Doctor Who, but
television generally has become a very violent place at this
time.
Like all of those American dramas that people are consuming
whether it's the A team and all that sort of stuff.
Have horrific things happen to people, and then they all go, ha, ha
and then they move on.
You know, it's the era of television and that's the story it's
telling, not just Doctor Who.
But it's, it's, it does it by creating a TV show that involves the
doctor and his companions and the guest starts going through
corridors.
It's literally a doctor actually watching it.
Yeah, but that's also not what parody is.
You know, parody is taking sort of, you know, the most laughable
or the most generic aspects of something and writing them large
which is what vengeance. not an accurate reflection of what Doctor
Who does all the time.
No.
A big difference between vengeance on Varos and Mindwarp is that
Varos has a very, very clear theme, a very, very clear point.
Yes.
How well it's done.
You can argue, but it's got something to say.
What the hell is mind warp about?
such a hodgepodge.
Brain alteration is bad.
Perry says, no one likes brain alter-ish.
That seems like...
She's not talking for me.
And that's what I picking up that it's exactly the point.
Varos has a clear thing for me of what it's doing and what it is.
You can think that, well, that's a bit rubbish, or you don't think
it should be doing that, but it knows what it's doing, and I
actually think it does it really, really well.
Even if you have someone chewing the scenery like Quilla, right?
But you have so much good in it, like the Martin Jarvis's
characters, the governor, that is just elegance personified for
me.
You have the meta nature of Eric and Etta watching it from the
sidelines and they're watching television.
They're watching Doctor Who from there.
And that works as well because they do.
And it is the wider story of Dog 2 in season 22 and C23.
You can disagree with what season 22 is going for. going for
something.
Season 23 feels at sea.
It doesn't know what it wants.
It's like they suddenly went, 0 my god, is that the time?
We have a season to write, and we've only got a week to write it
and this is what they come up with.
We've 18 months, for goodness sake.
I think it's a function of the real world.
I think it's being told, no, you're making Doctor Who wrong.
But not being told why.
Not being told how to fix it and what people want.
I mean, that's baffling to me that they need to be told what's
wrong. would agree.
A bereft of ideas.
And look at how vengeance on Varus resolves itself because it is a
bad story for the doctor because he doesn't actually do anything.
And had he not turned up, the same thing would have taken place.
Because the Galatron Mining Corporation or something reduces the
price of Zeiton Zebnerin creases it all.
Some god thing implies it applies a tariff, does something.
And everything's fine again, and the doctor turns out, didn't need
to do anything.
I mean, what the doctor does is ensure the survival of the good
governor to make sure going forward.
He does actually cause, because I think without that, maybe the
price of Zeiton 7 is improved.
But even so, you still have a corrupt regime running.
But what you don't get is the doctor being a proper hero.
Like he wanders through this sort of miserable thing.
I think he is from a hero in it.
Anyway, but that's Varos, and that's what we're here to talk
about.
So what about Sill on Varos?
And that's one of the things that I dislike Mindwalk for and love
Varos for is because Sill is so much better in vengeance on
Varos.
The performance is so much more subtle and interesting and
measured, whereas in mind warp, he just turns into a comic, not
even villain, just a comedy relief character.
He's stripped of his villainy.
He's stripped of that dark villainy that he has in Varos.
In Varos, the costume is so much better.
It's a murkier green, like he's come out of the shore, the murky
bits of the shore, rather than this fluorescent green colour.
It's wet and oozy and shiny in barrass.
It's got a proper headpiece rather than this kind of flat thing.
The mask in mind warp.
Sometimes he's coming down and starting to cover the top of his
eyebrows in his eyes. that you can see the makeup painted on in a
completely different way.
It is...
No, no.
We've seen Carnival of Monsters.
No, but his still and his costume and his portrayal is chalk and
cheese between the two.
So I actually think that the costume is better in mind warp.
And the reason is, I think it's like, it looks like a costume.
No, it looks like a costume.
I'm sorry.
Mind warp, mind warp.
It looks like you've got a man dressed as a green thing, whereas
inventions of virus, you go, wow, that looks so good.
I'm so impressed.
Don't go like that.
So he's kind of brown and glistening.
And he's got a pinched off end.
And so he just looks like a turd.
And do you know what I mean?
Like, it's the pinch float.
When he walked in, do you know what my uncle said when I was
watching Bear Angel Barrows for the Upteenth time.
Chris, why are you watching this again?
No, no, he better than that.
He said, oh, he's got a big donga.
And still had enough poison to be able to.
So I think that's a problem.
I also think that the fin flap things around his head don't work
quite as well.
And I think that the new costume at least has some attempt to kind
of hide the terrible because there's a very, very clear hole for
Nabil's face to, you know, go through the headpiece.
Well, see, I find I don't see it in embarrassed, but I do see it
in mine.
All I'm seeing is a man in a mask.
A man with a head covering.
Yeah, no, I mean, I think that they've gone back to the drawing
board and tried to address some of the problems.
No, I think they've just lost all the designs from the previous
like all that's been shredded and they have to...
That seems like it, though.
Yeah, they destroy the episodes.
They keep all the paperwork.
Talking about silly in general, I think it is, again, indicative
of the unfavourable shift in the series.
He's gone from being this dark character, you know, villainous
character who sort of was a bit repulsive and said these weird... and
he's become comic relief.
Because they've said, we don't want elements like that.
We don't want sort of hard hitting or brutal or nasty characters.
And so they said, okay, let's add comedy to the villain.
It works for Crozier.
I am not sure it works for still.
He's funny in the moment, but he actually contributes nothing to
the story.
But he is funny in Vengeance and the virus because it's done, but
yeah.
Yeah, he's got the governor.
And the malfunctioning translator.
But that's what makes it all those slight eccentricities for me is
what is what makes, like, I know people keep saying that stories
like Varos are just relentless, but they're not because there are
so many lovely moments, like, you know, There's a lot of humours.
Like, you know, the governor's saying, you know, you know, don't
tell.
It's my only amusement, you know, in terms of, there are lovely
moments throughout there, I was like that.
And still, it's just such, still, for me, feels like an actual
villainous character in Varrels.
I just play...
And in mind warp, he's just there to feed lions to feed comedy
lines and everything else I've said about the costume.
You see, I actually really like the comedy duo of Christopher Ryan
and Nabil Shaban in Mind Warp.
I think Christopher Ryan is great.
Like, I think he's really, really terrific.
And I kind of like seeing Seal panicky and on the back foot, which
he does at the end, doesn't he, of vengeance on Varos?
But that's his default mode all the way through the...
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's, yeah, I like the comedy duo between Kiv and Sil.
It's different, but there's still, it's not silly.
It's like it's a different thing to me.
It's a different creature. a different person, a different
character.
I've just had the astonishing idea of what if they didn't have
kids and it was still who wanted his brain transplanted into
Perry.
It would change the ending of the episode quite, quite markedly.
I missed that punchline.
Oh, ew.
And he doesn't do that nearly as well or as sinisterly as he does
in Barros.
It's pretty great.
He's brilliant in Barros. especially the way it comes in on that
cliffhanger.
Oh my god, that story is so good.
That's one of the many things I don't like about Mind Warp is
still.
Yeah.
You know, like, I think Crozier is incredibly great.
And Matrona Carney's really...
I remember Carney's really good.
I disagree about Crozier and the acting, I think... terrible
performance.
I think his the way he delivers the lines is like, I am going to
be a villain.
It's like...
But he only becomes like that at the very end.
Otherwise, he's remarkably underplayed the whole time.
No, I think he's not under played. he's a terrible threat.
It's that it's the monotone way in which he delivers all of his
lines.
I just think is just magnificent.
And it was the discontinuity guy that mentions the bit where he
goes into cardiac arrest and then Crozier has a sip of his tea.
I love that.
That's a great comedy moment.
No, that's a one of them come here.
But he doesn't do a very good CPR.
He's just what he spread all over.
He can't...
I think Patrick Rikart's been in rehearsals.
He's looked at what Collin's doing.
Yes, looks at what Brian's doing.
What can I do differently?
And he thought, if I go similarly over the top, it's just going to
be a full on panto production, I'm going to pull it right back and
I agree with that decision.
I actually think he is over the top throughout.
It's just a very different kind of... that's probably fair.
Yeah.
But again, there's a cartoonishness to this story that I actually
really quite enjoy.
It's the cartoonishness which I don't like.
Yeah, that's what I annoyed me back in 1986.
Yeah, the cartoonishness, which I 5050 don't mind.
Yeah.
I mean, there are terrible moments, but generally too, I think
that the production looks better.
Like, I think the caves look better.
I think that, you know, you've got that incredible. outdoors.
Yep, yeah.
The space corridors look better generally, I think.
Okay, I'm going to say, I know you said earlier, Simon, that you
think that the production is bad on all kinds of levels.
It is poor on one or 2 levels, but I think this is one of the very
few stories of the 1980s that looks like it's had a tone meeting.
Yeah, yeah.
I think the set.
A design tone meeting.
No, fair enough.
I'd agree with that.
Yeah, the set's the costume and in particular. the lighting, which
is so much better than any production around it in Doctor Who.
It all looks like it's created, even if you don't believe in the
alien world, and even if it's still in a bunch of subterranean
tunnels.
It creates this cohesive world that the characters wander around
in, which I think is quite an achievement.
It just goes to show all it needs is a little thought.
It didn't need more budget.
It just needed some thought, some talking between departments, and
the lights turned down, and all of a sudden it's a different
show.
Okay, so there are good things about the production.
And when I'm talking about the production being flawed, I'm kind
of talking about it in a global sense, not because it looks bad.
I think there are things that look really good.
I think the paint box work they do on when they're on location
whilst on the Blu-rays.
Like, I've always found that, I mean, when watching a rubbish VHS
copy that was recorded on long play, so it was all a bit fuzzy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And nowhere on, do you speak very square?
Do you explain for the benefit of our child audience?
What is long play?
It was being recorded.
It was being able to record 15, 25 minute episodes on a three-hour
take.
That's what long play was.
Thank you very much.
But, but that, it's great. using new technology.
Great.
Top marks.
I agree and I love all the costumes being brighter.
I love the fact that we've decided to finally have an alien planet
with very racially diverse.
People are at least trying to have a racial feel to the planet
with having people of South Asian and you don't think that's
good.
Well, I just think, yeah, yeah.
I think that's, you know, like it's very obvious why John Nathan
Turner's happy to have lots and lots of shirtless black men in
harnesses around the set as decoration.
Yes.
I think it's more from his house in Bryce.
It's pretty hard Like, I think that is pretty hard to watch
because it's not a racially diverse planet.
It's Planet of the Black people, and I think that that's probably
a problem.
Well, no, because...
I know. right.
You've got twos up.
But it depends.
Okay, depends how you do the racially diverse casting.
Do you just have everyone sort of mixed together or do you say
here is a culture which is, you know, of this look?
You can, look, it's a problem.
Okay, when we've had 22.5 years of basically white faces, surely
it's at least something.
What, we get some black slaves in.
Do you know what I mean?
It's like saying that Toberman is finally much needed
representation of black people in Doctor Who.
Well, you've got lots of favours, whereas in fact, it's career.
It's career.
But of course, and she, but that's not quite what we get here.
But my point being, okay, but at time, it would have been, it's
quite a statement to make at the time, okay, even if they are
effectively playing slave, conquered people.
But my point being, and I love the pink and the bright colours.
Yes, and can I just say that I would agree with you, Nathan, on
that apart from the fact that Matrona Carney is so great.
Exactly.
But she's a head slave.
But chooser, even though I don't think he's very well played, which
is very unusual because Gordon Warnecki was in my beautiful
dress.
That was very good. is also a very sympathetic character.
Yeah, yeah, I see the story.
I see I see what you're I do recognise what you're saying, but
okay, let's just not cast anyone like that.
Do you know what I mean?
No, no, no, but that's not it.
You can cast... you can cast a Leby Parsons in a story that's not
Planet of the Black people.
Like, that's available to us, is it?
He's available to us as an option.
It wasn't thought to be available in 1986 in the same way.
That's the problem.
You can quite imagine that's the problem.
So, you know, you can't, so doing, doing this anyway, that's...
You can really imagine a Leapy Parsons playing, like, um, on a
black man's role in terror of the verb.
Yes, for instance, yes, exactly.
And that's where it could you could have had that kind of
cussing.
Absolutely.
But the point is, at least they've tried to sort of flavour the
planet that way.
Where the production is failing for me is all sorts of other
things, I don't agree with what everyone says about the lighting.
Yes, we've got to get away from the game show talk show lighting
that we often get and we have in Snake Downs and Warriors of the
Deep.
Most egregiously last episode in Mysterious Planet.
Exactly.
We don't want that, but this does a different mistake because you
can't actually see what's going on sometimes.
People aren't in, if you're going to create pools of light.
You need to make sure people step into them.
Do you know what I mean?
And that so from that point of view, I think it's too dimly lit.
I was cheering the fact that they'd finally turn down the lights.
And then I realised that all the cave walls are painted black and
I simply cannot make out any details.
So they just look like a black back door.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Might as well be playing against curtains.
Yeah, exactly.
It's quite a weird thing to be sitting there saying, thank you for
turning down the lights.
Oh god I can't see anything.
And interestingly, just at the risk of talking about Varos again.
I actually think the lighting in Barros is actually very, very
good because I think it is dimly lit in a way that you can still
see what's going on.
And does the same thing that this story does where you have
strobes.
Exactly.
Yes, the strobing. like you've got that strobe lighting.
It's great.
And I know it flashes on the doctor's face on one of the
cliffhangers and that might affect you. which is a really nice
effect.
But if it wasn't for the strobe lighting, you wouldn't have
actually seen Collins' reaction.
Maybe that would have been a better thing.
I don't know.
But you know what I'm saying?
I'm certain that even with the studio lights turned off, you would
have seen...
My point being that turning down the lights in it of itself is
only phase one of what has to be done.
Now we actually have to block the cards.
There is something wrong with the audio in this story and I think
it's to do with how it's recorded.
Like, um, you know, 2 weeks ago I talked about the way they almost
had to turn the microphone levels up in snake dance, to catch
Collette O'Neill's dialogue, so you've got all this roomy noise.
I actually think they've done the opposite here.
They've either turned the audio down when they've recorded in the
studio to avoid that kind of roomy studio noise.
And I'm finding that quiet moments of syllables and lines of
dialogue, almost actually just sink and disappear.
And then there are other moments where musical cues overwhelm the
dialogue to such an extent that you just can't make out what
people are saying.
There are various things that are muttered that act as mutter to
each other that are just probably meant to be throwaway lines, but
sometimes I think, was I supposed to actually understand what was
just said there?
I think it's when Perry, you know, die well, my lady, and Perry
leaves.
And I thought, Brian Blessed then says something remarkably
quietly in the cell.
And there are these there are all these moments where I just can't
hear what's going on.
This isn't young people mumbling a lot these days, is it?
No, there's definitely a problem with the quality.
This is, this is, well, this is me when I'm, I thought this in
1997.
I know you say, oh, it's because, you know, young people mumble
these days because we're all getting deaf.
Why don't I find that with Mysterious Planet?
No, fair enough.
You know, if you have to compare it with everything around.
And that's what I say about, like, the Jody audio as well is why
can I not understand what's being said in the Jody series, but I
can, in what we've got now, the sheeter series.
I think it's a symptom of the confluence of a couple of things, one
is bad studio sound recording, which is endemic in this era and
becomes worse in the Sylvester McCoy era.
Okay.
Also, the sometimes tortured dialogue that Eric's saying.
You're trying to work out what they've actually just been talking
about.
And Nicola Bryant's accent.
So a lot of what's...
It is.
And a lot of what Perry says gets a bit lost because I'm trying to
work out what she just actually said.
Because she's fitting it out sometimes.
That's right.
And so there's a scene early on where the doctor and Perry are
outside Crozier's laboratory and everyone leaves.
And the doctor says they weren't hanging about.
And Perry says, neither did they look very pleased, which is just
a bit...
Oh, that's that's surely that's Eric saying.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Absolutely needed.
Exactly. bad recording and the bad line and Perry's accent.
I have never once been able to work out what she was saying until
this time probably the 20th time I've watched Michael when I went
to the transcripts and looked it up.
Yeah And there's numerous moments like that throughout the story.
You're right.
There is something wrong with the quality of the sound recording.
Can I say that the music, however, is unbelievably good.
Yeah.
So he only does this story, I think, is a real composer that gets
other words.
It is a real composer, I think.
And it is terrific.
I mean just absolutely splendid.
And it's part of J&T's change.
I mean, one of the cosmetic changes that JNT made in the hiatus
was stopping using the radiophonic workshop and going back to
freelance composers, which is why you have Dominic Glynn on
serious Planets and the final 2 pass.
My only observation about the music from this point on in the
series, including the theme music and most egregiously on this
arrangement of the theme music.
Oh, God.
It's too treble.
Like what we miss.
I so missed that base sound.
What do you think of the music next week on Terror of the
Fluffoids?
I can't remember it, but it's pretty bad too.
It's a bit tinny.
I think, you know, but he hasn't the nice, like, regal sounds when
the mentors are coming in.
There are all these sorts of loving touches and the music in
episode four, particularly.
Yes, wonderful.
Absolutely sells the foreboding thing.
So yeah, so the music is one aspect, which I'm happy too. say is a
positive.
And I hesitate to use the word exotic in light of what we were
talking about earlier, but I feel like the culture is being
presented in an exotic way on screen.
And the music really helps to sell that.
It feels like it's sort of otherworldly. without putting bongs in
for, you know, yeah, yeah. you know what I mean?
Like that's the thing, you know.
Well, you know what I mean?
So, one thing about cell, and I'm glad that the series is doing
this, is the series has become too backward looking at the
moment.
It's too much looking at its past glories, which is, you know
maybe one of those. trying to relive and recreate its past.
Well, exactly.
Never reliving them well.
We talked last week in Warriors deep about the fact that it's
never good enough just to have a returning element.
You have to actually bring with them what made them special.
So bringing the brigadier back for Modern Undead is a hiding to
nothing unless you've surrounded him with unit and are having an
alien invasion because that's what people are remembering. what
he's for.
That's right.
So you can't just have, like we spoke about last week, a bunch of
sea devils and Silurians ripped out of their natural Malcolm
Hulkian habitat and just put in some white space corridors.
It doesn't work.
It's what we said about bringing the ice warriors back. you know
it's just a costume at that point.
Like all you're doing is bringing back a used costume.
It doesn't matter who's invading the sea base at that point
really.
And so the only the only examples that we've had in recent times
of a new, interesting menace being revisited are the Mara and
Sill.
And that's great.
That's the show creating new law.
New Legends.
That's right.
It's children watching the show now and I think children are
dropping away as an audience by this point.
Yes, they are.
Watching the show and going, I remember that from last year and
getting a thrill about that.
I put a lolly snake on my arm kind of thing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
And I think that actually probably has a lot to say about the
paucity of ideas coming from the production team slash Eric
Seywood, really, that they're not coming up with these endless new
threats that they can then revisit.
And so they've got to look back at the classics.
I think it's good that we are taking a recent monster and
expanding upon them.
Definitely.
I entirely agree with that.
Because, I mean, we talk about origin stories with snake dance, and
in a sense, that's what we have here.
We did mention Thoros Peter in Vengeance on Clara.
Oh, Peter.
Yeah.
So here we are.
Can I say something that's a bit odd, though, from a frequently?
He knows on the beach, he knows that this is Thoros beat that they
are because that's the twin planet Thoros Alpha.
Yeah.
But he says, and yet this was manufactured here about the weapon.
And then he knows the raw speeder is still his home planet.
And so why is it so strange that that weapon was manufactured on
Taurus Beta?
Do you know what I mean?
There's weird things here.
And also the fact that Perry, who was also in the room when Sill
is calling in the cavalry in Vengeance on Varos, from Thoros, from
my home planet from Thoros Beta.
And yet, she doesn't know that Thorosby here is still his home
planet.
Well, it's just annoying. just space name.
Do you know what I mean?
The planet's space name.
Nevertheless, there are...
It's less that.
It's more the fact that the doctor's sceptical that this weapon
was manufactured here.
Yet he knows that this is where Sill's race comes from.
And other mentors are called the mentors.
Mentors are just saying our overlords, basically.
Yeah, yeah.
They're not called anything.
They not cool.
They not cool anything.
Thorus beatens.
Yeah So for me, I think perhaps the biggest flaw in the production
is the rock, which is rarely the return of the Slither, isn't it?
Except, I never thought I would say this about Ron Jones.
Shot better.
Yeah, well, he hides it.
And it's dark.
We've turned the lights off, but it is really terrible.
I can't have had the impression that the rock is basically the
prop that we see lying on the stretcher once it's dead.
It's just the front of this creature.
And then some Colin has to fight with some poor prop guy sort of
holding up the front of this creature and wiggling it up and down
violently.
It's like a pansomime horse, but it's just the top half.
But no, someone's got green rubber gloves on or something.
Well, doesn't it?
Oh, I would love to see like a photograph or footage javant.
Gosh.
I wonder if there's like studio footage of that.
Oh I want to see it.
God.
I've been very unkind about Ron Jones in my own head.
He does deliver 3 execrable productions. for his 1st three, which
is Black Orchard, Time Flight and Arc of Infinity.
But with Frontios, he seems to suddenly...
God, that's 10 episodes of Ron Jo 14. 8 in a row.
Who looked at time flight and went, I know, let's get him.
Let's get him.
With Frontios, he suddenly seemed to find out what makes Dr. 2
work.
And I actually think vengeance on Varos and Milder... are actually
very accomplished studio productions.
I think Frontios looks good, but he's obviously terribly done in
all sorts of ways.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's a lot of problems in Frontios, and it's also shot a little
bit in a pedestrian way.
But I think Varos and Mindwarp are whole productions in that he's
actually got the atmosphere, right?
He's covered the action properly.
And I was surprised.
There's moments in mind warp.
Like that glass painting where they pull back on Crozier's
laboratory and you can see the caves all around.
And the induction centre as well.
Yeah, that's one of those two.
Yes, they're a wonderful.
But that's the sort of thing they're starting to be able to do.
Eat more easily now.
Yeah, but it requires the thought to do it.
And he has thought, Cherie. that'll do in the studio.
And talking about the lights being turned off.
I like the fact there's some thought game that when you're in
Crozier's laboratory.
And suddenly it's very bright and you've got those white sales
with the negative space behind them.
It just seems to me that this is the kind of thing that you can do
in the Doctor Who studio, which adds so much production value and
doesn't require anything more than F Pennant Roberts was at the
helm doing timelash.
Well, I mean, we talked a couple of weeks ago about the importance
of sets, you know.
And this gets it, I think.
Because it is just space corridors.
And as I've said, at this point, I'm utterly, utterly sick of
space corridors, but I think the laboratory set looks fantastic
like properly good.
Yeah, it does look good.
Yeah.
No, there's definitely they know how to build those sorts of
sets.
The cage don't look too bad, although, again, it's sort of
featureless.
Maybe could have had a bit more interest in them.
It refreshing when you go to the induction centre and the other
mentor in the episode for the comedy relief one.
Just go.
He is great.
He is such nauseating things.
Pure padding, but he's such a delight that I don't mind.
That's what you do with padding.
You padding can be good. see.
Yes.
I love his life.
Padding need not be a dirty word.
I love his line where he says, I will, of course, have to check
your carte blanche.
And the way he turns.
And the fact that Yakanos doesn't kill him because he's an amusing
comedy character.
But it's also just the fact that he's so posh and so English, but
he's covered in green makeup and dressed as a slug.
He's just absolutely surprised.
I can't imagine it being a minister.
Yes, minister.
Absolutely.
I had to look I didn't look him up.
He may very well have been.
Been berated by Sir Humphrey...
Yeah, no, what I was saying about Ron Jones is I think he's one of
the vanishingly few directors of the 1980s who has a holistic view
of production.
His last 2 stories gets it right.
Varos and Mind Warp feel like solid productions where everything
has been thought about.
I think maybe you're also wanting to say there is that he's one of
the few examples of people who seem to learn from previous
mistakes.
I mean, how you could not learn from Timefly.
But...
But I mean, he does get better.
Like, there is a...
I'll put trajectory.
That's not what you always say.
You sometimes see a flat or downward trajectory.
Oh, yeah.
Let's call it the reverse penet Roberts.
Yes, there is.
One thing we haven't talked about yet is the trial, and how the
trial itself, because all we've talked about is mind warp as the
story of mine, rather than how it fits in with the trial.
I actually prefer the trial, but to the actual story.
And that's what I was going to say apart from the fact that in the
beginning, I think in the 1st episode, the trial completely
interrupts you getting into the story.
That's because you cut back too often.
It's cut back too often and all the sagacity stuff, it's all just
tediously... to say anything.
Either it just cuts back to argue about what we're seeing on
screen.
But from, yes.
From the 2nd episode on.
I think the trial sequences are some of the strongest stuff in the
story, and I think that it's actually some of Collins' best
performances in his entire era.
I love Colin in episodes 23 and 4 in the track.
Then tell it.
Yeah, that's really good.
But like, I'm not a big fan of the episode three, Cliffhanger
which is like in the trial rather than in the store.
And it's a fake hour.
And I don't know why suddenly the Oxo lady knows what happened to
Perry and stuff and is delivering all of that dialogue in episode
four.
I have a theory about that.
I think the valleyard was supposed to deliver all of that
dialogue.
And they said, give it to Linda.
Give it to Linda.
Or was he ill that afternoon?
Or something.
It's all tone.
It all sounds like Michael Jason.
It does.
It's as basic as they thought.
Well, Linda Bellingham hasn't had many lines, we'll give some to
her without any thought of the character and who should be
delivering it.
Yeah, because suddenly the judge of the tribe.
He's basically providing evidence, saying we had to act.
It's like, so this is a setup.
You know what I mean?
Also, I think it's very dangerous, Saint Colin, we had to act.
Do you know what?
I think that actually the direction of the trial scenes is better
than it is in the previous story.
And one of the reasons is that sometimes we cut to the trial sound
before we cut to the video.
So we hear like Michael Jason talk over something.
Or I don't remember that.
Yes, exactly.
I'm saying it over the over the...
And the trial continues playing on the screen sometimes. whereas
it's all very much, let's turn and look at the tally, you know, in
Mysterious Planet, here there's a little bit more kind of playing
with the boundaries between the trial and the and the style.
The main floor, though, the only flaw that with the trial
sequences in this segment of the trial is in episode one.
For some reason, we see the black floor between the 3 of them
which you don't see.
Usually it's, it's disappears to a black, like it's, it's a black
void going to nothing, which is kind of the effect you want, rather
than there is a black floor between us.
That's just a lighting era, I think.
They turn the lights up for that, obviously.
There's all kinds of stuff to unpick with the trial sequences.
You know, most of all, should they have done this at all.
You know, okay, they made the choice to do it.
I think it was extremely, you know, what Doctor Who needed was a
reboot.
It needs to be something which, again, like I said earlier, it was
forward looking.
Yeah.
More time lords.
That's what we should do.
More time lords in it.
Yeah, we need to talk about the doctor being on trial like he was
in 1969.
You know, that was come up within a bar on the back of a napkin.
You know what I mean?
But if they'd made that decision.
There was a way of making the trial, an interesting critique of
both Doctor Who and the way that television is watched, like
vengeance on Varos was, and it could have been much more
interesting and had something to say.
And you get glimpses of that like where they cut back to the trial
for a short scene where basically the inquisitor says, this is a
really boring opening.
Can we cut later?
They do that.
I could have done that all the way through and it would have had
this interesting kind of meta idea of the doctor watching his own
adventures and what that could have been really fun.
But instead, so many of the scenes are just the doctor and the
valiard bickering overnight. childishly.
And again, it comes back to...
Did they have an idea for this series?
What were they looking to do?
I think what the problem was is that, okay, we've decided we're
going to go with this idea for the trial, the whole season's going
to be framed as a trial, but they're still production wise, they're
still locked into this idea of you have 7A shot by Nicholas
Mallett, 7B shot by Ron Jones, 7 C shot by Chris Clough, right?
And so you've got these production box and so they feel the need
to do the stories in the same way.
And so you end up with this weird hybrid where it's not like the
key to time where you've just got stories which have a kind of a
season arc.
But also it's not, even though they've got the on same on-screen
story title, it's not really the same story in other ways.
I think what you might have been able to do with a bit more
imagination.
And I'm surely this would have been possible given the fact that
you've got the trial set.
So, okay, let's spend an entire block, but entire block doing all
14 episodes worth of trial scenes, which means that the stories
itself don't need to be neatly 4 episodes.
And imagine what it would have been like if mysterious planet, the
mysterious planet plot had ended halfway through part four.
And then the mindwalk part starts.
And so the cliffhanger at the end of episode 4 of the Trial of
Time Lord is the beginnings of like them being mindful, do you
know what I mean?
And that's where you end up with your three-part stories again.
What if they did a big epic story, like the Dalek master plan
where, you know, we go from place to place.
It clearly does sort of go from story to story, but not in any
predictable way.
And they're just not imaginative enough to do it.
And the way that they try and rope the 3 stories into the trial
literally makes no sense at all.
And it's absolutely clear that they have no idea what they're
heading towards because.
It also makes no sense from illegal.
No, no, no, that's right.
Like, you know, there's so many procedurals on TV, which sort of
do this clever stuff.
Whereas now it's like, really doctor, is it to be your defence
that you get better?
Better.
Like, what even is that?
Well, that's fine.
I promise.
I promise I vote murder again.
Let me off.
Yeah, it's tiny wine, but you can do that.
But all that makes that relevant evidence is when he tells Mel not
to wander off or tries to stop her going off and getting
involved.
And that's it.
Ergo, I'm not interfering.
I was asked by the person, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, another parallel universe from the one I just mentioned is
what if Mysterious Planet is just a story?
And then Mind Warp is just a story.
And then 10 minutes from the end, 5 minutes from the end of the
story, 10 minutes from the end, when it's all going to hell in a
handbasket, that's when the doctor's something taken out of time
and we're transported to this thing and he comes out.
Oh, I like this.
And then and then it's like you're on trial for your life and we
see the end of mind whop on the screen.
He's absolutely horrified and he says, you took me away.
I was going to save her, etc.
And then you, I don't know, then 2 of them avoid something else
entirely, I guess.
That can't happen anywhere.
But then they...
And then the trial becomes part of the narrative rather than this
kind of weird bean out.
You had some weird stuff.
You'd still have some weird stuff happening in Mysterious Planet
to think that there's like something coming that you're not sure
what it is.
I mean, you have to rewrite half of it and you should rewrite half
of it anyway.
But that's a different way of framing it.
And then you have, maybe you have effectively for the vervoid
slot.
You have what is effectively like a clip show, not a clip show of
like a made up story, made up stories.
And then you just get all the exciting bits of all of the bits of
season 20, the original season 23 or something.
And I don't know how you do it.
Obviously, that's probably not.
And again, that's a way of delivering more stories in a 14 episode
run.
Exactly.
Thinking outside the box.
Exactly.
And this is what the production team seemed incapable of doing at
this point.
I don't know if they were paralysed by the criticism from above.
I don't know if they were ever able to do this kind of thing.
But what they needed to do if they had a trial framing sequence.
That's not a bad idea in itself.
But the way it's delivered is appallingly mundane.
They needed to sit down, watch some legal thrillers and say, okay
what's an interesting legal story that we can tell at the same
time?
Not just every time we cut back, there'll be a bit of an argument
and then we'll cut back.
Yeah, so basically what they do, what they use the trial sequences
for is they just don't know, like they're just not...
You needed brilliant reveals and rehearses.
But that's why, yes, but that's why I think the trial sequences
which we've had in Mysterious Planet, and they are the worst parts
of it, of something that's not very good.
And then you move to mind warp.
And I think when you, in the 2nd half of the story, the trial
sequence is, after you stop that bickering, then you start getting
wow, this is actually gripping.
The trial sequences are actually suddenly gripping now, whereas
they weren't for the last the previous 6 episodes.
Yeah, and the cliffhangers are like episode 12, which I think is
absolutely superb, which is the charge must now be genocide.
Yeah, which again, you know, just ups the stakes and, you know, we
were all congratulating ourselves because the doctor solves the
problem.
And then suddenly...
Because we do regress in the trial scenes do regress then in terms
of the verboids, because terror verboids is the story that least
needs the trial sequences to make sense.
And that's why that edited on the Blu-ray box set is so perfect
because you do not need the trial sequences at all.
That's interesting.
So what they actually needed to do was sit down and plot out the
narrative of the trial by itself beforehand.
And even though it seems counterintuitive, I think maybe Pip and
Jane Baker might have been the best place to do this because for
all their faults.
For all of their faults.
Absolutely, because, yeah, the episode 14 that Saywood walks off
with is dreadful.
Yes.
See, Flight through Entirety episode. whatever, where we perform
it for you.
Like, it's terrible.
And what Pip and Jane do is absolutely incoherent makes no sense
at all.
It's clearly not being built up to in any way, but it's so much
more entertaining anyway than what we were doing.
Well, they're doing the best what they can with what they hand
which is a cliffhanger from, you know, from nowhere.
But you're right, but that's why it baffles me because again, I
think they're still making, mentally, they are still making three
because remember, tariff of always an ultimate foe is effectively
one story, for the purposes of production point of view.
They are making 3 stories and then deciding to call it all the
same thing.
They haven't gotten to the mindset that this is one continuous
thing.
It's like being half pregnant.
It's kind of not one thing nor the other.
But it's worse than that.
They're writing for their lives.
But they're not showing any sign that they're doing that.
They were cancelled.
They were given.
They were actually cancelled.
Yeah, they were actually cancelled.
They were given instructions.
There's the trial and tribulations documentary on the thing, where
you see John McDonald's stuff about how none of that stuff in
Mysterious Planet makes sense.
You just pause the Blu-ray and you can read the demo.
And all of it is very clearly right.
And Eric Saban says, ah, we had no idea what he was talking
about.
He wasn't reading the memos coming down from the 6th floor.
Jonathan Palace memo on this story says good narrative, engaging
characters.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yep.
Because, of course, he would have worked with Philip Martin on
things like gangsters.
He knew he was a good writer.
He liked vengeance of virus.
I think his instincts are correct.
The instincts that are not correct are J&T and Eric Saywood's.
I mean, 1st time we've ever heard that because when confronted
with this, when confronted with their bosses saying Doctor Who's
got too silly and too violent and it's a bit outlandish, they
obviously don't understand the spaciness.
They think it's ridiculous. their instinct should have been to
okay, how can we make the series more what they want and obviously
what they should have done was bring it back down to earth.
Bring it down to Earth, change Collins, costume, et cetera, et
cetera.
And literally bring it back down to earth.
Set it in the present day so that you don't have...
Pizarro costumes and these huge performances.
They should have gone, this is what they want from Dodger, but
they lacked any of that kind of introspection.
But remember, the show was cancelled halfway through season 22
going out.
Okay?
It was not actually cancelled. because the high-ups thought that
season 22 was absolutely terrible.
They probably just thought that anyway because they thought Doctor
Who was terrible.
Okay.
Michael Gray cancels it is because he wants to use the money for
something else.
He wants different shows, right?
And so they retrospectively proclaims that it had gone off the
rails, it had lost its way, right?
Now he probably never thought it had its way, to be fair.
And so you get this kind of retcon that there was something wrong
with the show that went off the air, and I know one can argue that
there are issues with season 22 and there are issues with the show
and there are issues with what they're doing and they need to be
less backward looking and more forward looking at all the rest of
it.
But it wasn't really why the show was cancelled in 85.
And when they get the reprieve that, okay, you can come back the
following year, but we'll have the season, blah, blah, blah, blah.
They're given absolutely no direction as to what was actually
wrong with it.
And this is my big question.
Okay, so they thought the show had gone off the rails.
Where were they a year earlier when they were seeing playback
copies of the Awakening or the twin dilemma going, we don't want
this.
This is what we want. to their program makers.
When it's put on hiatus and it comes back.
Why does J&T come away with a nebulous idea that they want more
comedy rather than a detailed 3 hours long meeting?
Because they didn't give a damn.
Yeah, but that's professional malpractice.
But the reason they didn't give a damn was it was past its use by
date.
You know, like it wasn't important.
If it was well loved, then they wouldn't have pulled the plug, I
think.
Because they bring it back to get media and fans in some respects
media off their back.
Really, because they've realised they've created a public
relations disaster by cancelling the show.
And they brought it back as 14 episodes.
It's a drop in the ocean of their budget. to drop in the ocean of
their budget because it may be 14 episodes, but it's not like it's
basically, I think, still getting the same amount of money per
episode, which I think does improve in the back end of the McCoy
era, does it?
A little bit.
But point being, it doesn't receive, it's just a tokenistic
presence.
In fact, the show would have been so much better if it had come
back on BBC 2 or something.
You know what I mean?
Like, and then it could have just lived there, probably, and it
may have run through the 90s like that.
Well, that's all the time we have for this week.
We'll be back next week for another bimonthly meeting of the Cato
Mara Appreciation Society with Time and the Rani.
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 grade and Bountiful Human Empire.
Until next time, could the mentor guiding the induction centre
please tuck in his neck flaps before HR gets involved?
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
Bye bye.
That was 500 year diary, starring Nathan Bottomley, Peter Griffith
Simon Moore, and Kate Orman.
The theme was composed by Cameron Lamm.
This episode, capturing and escaping, was recorded on the 6th of
April 2025, and released on the 8th of June.
With the current season of Doctor Who over, the flight through
entirety team has now discussed every episode of Doctor Who.
Doctors one to 12 on Flight Through Entirety, Dr. 13 on Jody
Interterterra, and doctors 14 and 15 on the 2nd great and
bountiful Human Empire, more than 13 days of Doctor Who content.
So you'd better get started right away.
I find it sort of curious, that's disappointing.
I mean, has it been established that they always intended to kill
Perry, and then they chickened out at the end?
Is that what happened?
Chickened out in ultimate foe.
From what I understand, J and T told Nicola at her leaving party
which was after the location of MindWarp, which was done after the
studio work, that Perry wasn't going to die.
So they'd already decided basically when they chot it.
Oh, that's an odd decision because if they're, it's, I mean, back
in the day when you had contract roulette, that's where people get
left on strange planets strangely.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Whereas, it's weird, whereas Perry is not a five-minute
companion.
You know, Jane, he goes to the effort of creating an end story for
Turlow.
Adric at least gets a sort of proper death.
Nissa is sort of contract roulette, but at least it makes sense in
the context of her character that she can find out more about
telebiogenesis or whatever.
Bonnie is contract roulette roulette.
At the end of Dragon Fire.
Yes, that's true.
And so we've always regressed is what I'm saying.
Well, no, I think that this is contract roulette.
I think they, and I think too, it's super cynical because I don't
think you should kill the companions.
I don't think it ever works.
I think it's a bad idea for characters that we have grown to love
to be killed.
I don't think that it helps the drama because it's Doctor Who.
It's not like, ooh, maybe Perry or be killed this week.
Like, that's not how you're watching it.
You know.
So it doesn't add to the sort of precarity.
It doesn't make the doctor.
It's just cheap, you know.
And so you do this.
Like, you do it to Adric, and what happens?
As a one-off.
Yeah, 5 minutes later, Adric wouldn't want us to mourn.
Let's all go to the great exhibition.
But imagine if Ershock was the last episode of the season.
That would have been something.
Yeah, but then here, do you know what I mean?
Like we then have a recess so that we don't have to see the doctor
deal with the news at all.
He comes back and says something and now we have a new companion
as the valleyard.
That's right.
Yes, a bit better, isn't it?
And then we and then we walk it back anyway.
Do you know what I mean?
And give her a dumb ending, a dumb contract roulette ending, rather
than the kind of impressively terrifying ending that we got on
screen.
It just shows a whole lack of bravery on the part of the
production team and they want to deliver.
Yes, that's right.
They wanted to deliver this big shock and they do, but they also
want to walk it back and you think, oh, have the courage.
But how do you walk it back?
just because Linda Bellingham says it in one line at the very end
that this half of the people...
There's a flashback.
That's true.
Yeah.
No, I, like, I think it's terrible, but I think the whole idea is
misconceived.
You know what I mean?
And the way that you do it properly is when you have proper actors
and stuff and then you kill Clara and then you give Peter Capaldi
a whole episode in which to process that.
And that show.
That version of Doctor Who.
I haven't actually killed.
Exactly.
But we have.
She's dead.
We just go back and fast.
Well that's okay.
I get what you're saying, but actually that's what annoys me about
that thing is because it's Doctor Who's not about that sort of
thing.
Doctor Who's not about that sort of grieving and that sort of
processing of people's deaths because, you know, people get killed
all the time.
Like, I prefer the Pyramids of Mars thing where Sarah is grieving
the death of whoever it was.
And, um, and...
Oh, Dr. Lawrence. it's Lawrence Garman.
And she says, a man's just been killed and the doctor says 5 men
or whatever the number is.
Do you know what I mean?
That's kind of what you want.
So just think about instillary character, not the companion.
Think about the death of Scooty Minister in the...
We're probably well past what I'm going to broadcast.
Think about the death of Scooty Minister in the Impossible Planet
where she is just the 1st person to die and it's properly
affecting and everyone cares about it.
And I think that Doctor Who can do that and should do that.
And one of the things that it can do in the new series is because
generally speaking, we've got time, we're more character focussed
and let's say some of the actors are better, we can deal with that
grief.
But in this era, in the 80s, we're killing companions off and we
like, what's the point?
Well, it's a TV show.
Yeah, but it's like a cheap shock that doesn't really go
anywhere.
I think, well, look, I don't mind the cheap shock.
I think that's part of this genre of television as it existed in
this era.
And basically what you want is you want the that big moment where
like, I mean, the reason why the end credits run silently at the
end of the shock is because what it was Corey, that something like
that happened on crossroads, maybe?
Crossroads, something rubbish like that.
I mean, but the point is that it's it's what...
Doctor Who being that rubbish.
Exactly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And that's what that's what it kind of is.
Yes.
Let's end on that.
Doctor Who is kind of rubbish.