Masterclass

Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to 500 Year Diary, the only Doctor Who podcast that's just a harmless bunch of cranks, if you ask me. I'm Nathan. I'm Brendan. I'm Todd. And I'm the sweaty ends of a tandem skipping rope with a lot of barrack stories to tell for this one. It's the 28th of December, 1974. Just 6.5 months ago, the John Pertwee era came to an end and so did Terence Dix's tenure as Doctor Who. Script editor. And so tonight, 10800000 people have tuned in to see what Terence can do when he's writing a Doctor Who script on his own. And perhaps they're here for some other reason as well. In 4 weeks time, Doctor Who is going to change forever. Let's see how Terrence prepares us for that change as we discuss robot. So this, gentlemen, is the 2nd time that we've convened for this very purpose to record a podcast episode about robots, which we last did, I think, 10 years ago. I'm Brendan. I'm Nathan I'm a lovely bucket of squidgy CSO glamour, the solo Richard. Hello. And I'm back from Ketterwell hairdressers. One star fits all. And don't I look a treat? I think it's hilarious that, you know, we set up this season and the 4 of us have ended up on this episode. So everyone can really just stop here and go back. There's a link in the show notes. You could just listen to that and we'll get on with something else. What do you think? Yeah, yeah. Look, I'd love to discuss Donkey Kong Bonanza with you. I haven't played it yet. It is pretty good. Yeah, I do have opinions. Lots of smashing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. plenty of smashing. We have on 500-year diary often just started by talking about the production before we move on to our sort of main topic. So how do people feel this episode works and looks and so on? Last time we talks not about Terrence. We talked a lot about production and all the rest of it and that it feels like, you know, the end of the Pertwi era, but, you know watching it again this week doesn't feel anything like a Pertwi story. really doesn't. Oh, okay, the pace is sort of the same. But that's just BBC at the time. It's simply that there's a lot of cottages and a lot of oil on the floor and a lot of grown men tripping over skipping ropes with each other as sorted out in the rehearsals. A lot of things that Terence didn't write, especially the physical comedy, that is the spice in this, that makes it Christmassy and puddingy, and more than we've seen, because, you know, John was so careful and constructive in how he ran the set when he was on it. Now we're seeing this storm in a ginger beer mug, but it doesn't feel the same. What you feel? It does have a different energy because Tom has a different energy. And I think too, isn't all the outside broadcast stuff on video? Yeah. So that gives it a very different feel. But, you know, the trappings are still there. I remember commenting at the time that I felt that Nick Courtney was outacted by the other regulars. And I think that's unfair. I think he's always very solid. He just, you know, we've just had 5 years of him acting against John. And I think if you look at, well, the next time he appears to igons, I think there is a really great rapport with the doctor and with the brigadier and that, I think that works really well, and I would have liked to have seen more of that. But here, there is that juxtaposition between how he's acted before and the energy that Tom's delivering and that sort of thing and you're suddenly uncomfortable. Like it's not the same as it was. I think that something that really distinguishes it from the other unit stories of the Pertwee era is that you will usually have some figure of authority, be it a more senior military officer, be it a government man who is somehow obstructionist, whether, you know they're just sort of a bit like Mr. Chin in the claws of Axos and their obstructionist because it's their personality or whether they are part of the villain circle. But here, we kind of cut through that. And the only sort of comparable character we really have is Chambers, who doesn't get any lives that is killed in episode two. And it's amazing how quickly the plot is able to whip along when you don't have the intransigent government minister making this into a six-parter. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for me, I think the real visible change is the videotape thing because that film videotape thing is so inherent to stuff of the 1970s, I was watching on Friday night, the 1980 Pride and Prejudice, which also has filmed exteriors and videotape studio stuff. And that's a prestige drama, I think, at the time. So it was normal. I mean, it was sort of part of the thing. I think that it does give a different kind of feel to it. And then the other feel is, you know, Tom is quoted as saying how upright pertwe is, you know, he's like a lamp, you know, like a standard lamp. And that sort of verticality. Like Tom rejects that and is just completely, like, is just frequently lying down. The anti-Malania. Don't plug him into the wall. And so that gives it a very different kind of feel, but I think I think that what you've identified, Brandon, as that we aren't putting artificial barriers between the doctor and the resolution of the problem. And I wonder whether that's Terrence Dixie. We'll get in there a little bit and talk about how the plot moves but the plot does move, but it's not deliberately delayed. We don't lock the doctor up for episode 3 or anything. We just keep moving. And I think it's very cleverly done. And I think it is absolutely a Terence thing, something that in fact we saw last week. I think this is what Terrence had wanted for a long time. And I'm not just thinking the frosty protagonist, because we think back to colony in space and how Susan Jamieson was wanted and written for. I think this is Terence actually getting, as you said, all the controls let loose and saying, this is what I actually want to write, and it's a cracking pace. As you say, but really propelled by surprising characters. They shouldn't be too surprising because we've had versions of them for the last cough 5 years. But this one just feels very fresh. It's not just Tom. But he's having to juggle a new doctor and that introduction with the older characters. And, I mean, as we commented previously, Sarah drives a lot of this because she's investigating. And that gives then Tom and Ian the time to sort of bond and us to know those characters for a regeneration story, which is very different to other regeneration stories. where the doctor is incapacitated or out of his mind or whatever, here. He may not be involved with the action straight away, but he's up and about and doing things. And as I commented, and we spoke of at the time as well. Just the way Sarah reacts to the new doctor. She's observing and then building that relationship. At no point is she, like Clara having a breakdown, right? and she's our audience identification figure. And so you see her smile, you see her accept him, and you're going along with that as well. And I think that's, and I guess I'm jumping ahead here because, you know, Terence guided the last regeneration with Bob Holmes. And you can compare that story to this one. And slightly different circumstances, obviously, because we've got a regular crew here who've been with the doctor. Whereas last time it's basically, well, the briggy knows the doctor, but it's not a regular crew. They've still got to be introduced. So there's different dynamics happening. And I think it's possibly the only real regeneration story in the show where you actually have got like the brigadier and Sarah have been there for considerable amount of time. You look at everything else, everybody else basically has been there for like one or 2 stories, maybe a couple more. And I think that's significant. I think that sort of post-regeneration trauma is always bad, I think it's a big problem, and note that Stephen Moffat, for instance, pretty much rejects it, like there's that sort of funny line and stuff, but basically it's the doctor up and running and solving the problem. He doesn't have the TARDIS. He doesn't have his sonic screwdriver, but he's fine. But everyone's wanting to tune in to see the new doctor. So we barely see him in Spearhead from Space part one. And remember, he's not suffering from post-regeneration trauma because it's not really regeneration in the sense that that hasn't properly been invented yet, but he gets shot. Yeah. And so he's in hospital. And all the other times are just disastrous. I think, you know, Castra Valver, it's really boring and you don't get to see the actual doctor until he's dead now, actually. We don't get to see we don't get to see the doctor properly until maybe episode three. Well, the twin dilemma. Absolutely. Right, goodness, of training. And whatever we feel about time in the running, Sylvesters, doing whatever he's doing in that 1st episode. you know, these are not huge successes. And I think the biggest 2 successors are spared from space and this in particular. And Terrence does say about the whole thing of not doing Spearhead from Space again, he said, we did a story where people are suspicious of the doctor because they didn't see it happen. So in consultation with Robert Sloman. Right, for this regeneration scene, Sarah and the brigadier watch it happen. don't have another episode of that. We've had the doctor unconscious and getting x-rays and 2 hearts. Okay, we've done that. How else do we find out he's got 2 halves? Someone listens to them. You know. So it's kind of interesting how Terence as a writer went. sort of have to hit the same beats, but let's do a 180 on them. and go in the other direction with them. I love when Tom discovers that the Tartar's keys in his boots though. I think that's just tremendous, of course. It was a great callback, wasn't it? There's lots of little aha moments. It's the most exciting regeneration we've seen up to date. possibly of the classic era. He's so great. Like, it's so ridiculous. Like, you know, like, we've all known Tom as the doctor since, like I've known him as the doctor since 1978. 75 for me. Yeah, forever. But also, and Todd just said it, it would not have had those sparks, and this is no offence to Nick Courtney or any of the regular cast, but Ian Marty is a really nice point across the fulcrum with him. It's the same kind of energy in that and they're competitive. It's so weird. You can see instantly their mates. Instantly, they're out clevering each other. You can really see it. It's like, oh, this is the right kind of boyish competition. and what I wanted to see Just that interaction over whether it's called the infirmary or Sick Bay, which I just think is so funny. It kind of comes from nowhere. That is also played in rehearsals. So again, the sparks and wit. All of them, yeah. Yeah, I think you're right. I think we underestimate how important Ian is to that scene, which is brilliant. I mean, that's when that doctor lands, isn't it, in that scene? That's where we sort of properly see him. And he's instantly brilliant and it's because he ends there, to some degree. Yeah, on the DVD commentary, Terence is actually quite funny about that because that whole thing of you may be a doctor, but I'm the doctor, et cetera, the infirmary, the Sick Bay, was entirely, as you say, Richard worked out in rehearsal. And so Terence is on the commentary saying, now, Tom, I didn't write this bit. It came in and mucked about, you know, it's everyone's laughing, of course, because he's not precious. But the springboard is the brontosaurus line, which allows the actors to diss each other that would not have come about, had Terence not planted? And I feel that Terrence is the little pottage gardener in this one. He's just planting little seedlings around and then letting the actors fly, which is what a really good writer does and what an excellent showrunner does. And we didn't have that word then, did we? Maybe Terrence really was the show on a title. Don't think it was Barry Letts at this stage. Well, I mean, this is the thing. Like we discussed this last week in war games. Terrence is there before Barry Letts. He writes the last trout and sets everything up and then he guides the entire poetry era through with a stable of writers that he's working with. Would it be Don Horton, Malcolm Hulk, Robert Holmes, Bob Baker, and Dave Martin. And some of them he lets fly more than others, others he has to craft, but he is a craftsman who is every week delivering stories that do not fail, that are entertaining. And then he bookends his entire era by writing the 1st story of the next doctor. He doesn't write, officially write any per tweets, but it's Troughton, Baker, and that's his booking. Yeah, yeah. Is there a plan there? I mean, he is really, really incredible and that era, as we said last time. Like, a lot of people, it's not their favourite era. It's Peter's favourite era. He loves it. and it's a thing where the floor is raised, I think. It's just consistently good. It never fails in the way that some Troutons fail and some Tom Baker stories kind of fail. I don't think it ever really quite fails, and it's just so genuinely enjoyable and just so well done. Back to what you were saying about Showrunner. Like, you know, we talk about showrunners now. They're like the head writer and we don't talk about any really of the other producers. Going back to this. You know, you've got Barry Letz's producer for the Pertwee era, and then Terrence Sticks. And you know, Barry is pushing the boundaries in terms of direction and special effects and all that sort of stuff. But you can't do anything if you don't have the stories, right? You can't do the casting if you don't have the characters. And this is all coming from Terrence. And I think that he is an unsung hero of crafting the show. And I think he recognises when things need to change. He recognised, you know, we need to do something in season 8. Again, Bob Holmes, soft reboot. you know, the master's introduced. He's taken that from the war games. Again, you know, for season 10. to get the doctor back into space. There are all these beats along the way. And it wouldn't happen without him recognising these things. When I was reading up on the development of this script, and the whole whirlwind casting of Tom Baker, like it was literally like Hingcliffe lets, Dix and Holmes were all interviewing actors, and we mentioned before in our previous episode, Richard Hurd, Ron Moody, Graham Crowden was in the mix, but didn't want to commit to a long-running series, et cetera. And Bill Slater, head of serials, gets a letter from an actor he worked with previously, Tom Baker saying, hey, I don't have any work. Could you consider any work? And Bill Slater said, Barry, Tom's in this movie called The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. Cinema now, go see it. They went to see it. Two days later they had Tom Baker in, and chatting with him over lunch and things, and offered him the part on the day. So Terrence was able to write the script after having several meetings with Tom Baker, and write precisely for his strengths, and with that sort of lugubriousness in laying around, that is specified in Terence's scripts, precisely for the reason you say Nathan, of providing an immediate contrast to Pertwe. Just watching it this time, I really, really wanted to know how that landed at the time, like how did people react to this incredible change? Because we've always known that Tom was the doctor, but I wonder what it would have been like experiencing that firsthand. Because Pertwe had been there for 5 years longer than anyone else and kind of long enough for the memory of Trout, and I think, to kind of fade a bit, particularly since his final season had fallen off the radar, I think, a little bit. So Pertwee was the doctor in the same way that we experience when Tom left, you know, had there really ever been another doctor, it's hard even to imagine. So I just really, really wanted to know what that had been like and what the reception was. See, I was only 2.5 the time, so I can't really remember it. But, but, you know, for those kids that came in with John, like in the 2nd series where he did take off, like the living memory, how you know, you've got those that are older that came in, obviously with heart and all, but there's a whole heap of new viewers with Birchway. So they would never have experienced a regenerational really remember it. So, yeah, so it's like we were saying, what would have been like at their time for this change? And I think it's incredible when you do look at those ratings that it doesn't fall away. Right? Momentum builds throughout this season and it is an instant hit. It was shocking. How old was I? Seven. eight. The 1st one I remember watching live broadcast all the way through avidly and telling older people to be quiet. Stop banging about was Planet of the Spiders. Right, okay. The texture and the coldness of it is still in my head. It's extraordinary, like terror of the zigons is too. you just feel the cold. This was a proper rattle. Did the Doctor Who and giant robot book of which dear Brendan is holding up the very 1st edition with Tom on the cover. Did that come out before? I think we had that broadcast in Australia because there was a bit of a wait, wasn't there? I think, yes, you're right. It came out before it was broadcasting Australia because it only came out about 4 months after broadcasting the UK. That's right And I believe this was also around the time that the ABC were considering dropping the series. Right. Because, remember, the Doctor Club of Australia basically started because several people... So Henry Bland, I think, was the one. who was pushing it. And yes, we were totally naughty. We must stoppage months, yes. And, you know, several people we have known for many years through Doctor Club of Australia, Dallas Jones, Anthony Howe, Carrie Doty many other people, arranged a protest, and there are photographs. I don't know where we could find them. There are photographs of the Taking of Daleks. Yes, yes. Two ABC headquarters. You cannot cancel Doctor Who. That's right. It was actually very close. And of course, public sentiment was, no, don't cancel this. Yeah, we were very different then. I remember seeing that book with the face on it and being very confused. So yes. Okay. Yeah, because it is funny. For those of you who haven't seen the cover before, you do have the robot batting away fighter planes, which does happen in the novelisation, it doesn't happen in TV, but it doesn't. And a little circle box out of Sarah in the robot's hand. But then in the Doctor Who logo, you have Tom Baker's face over the top of the O, which seems almost to have been added because someone said, shouldn't Tom Baker's face be... Probably was and it's great. Sarah looks more realistic on the front cover of this book. The robot's head. She does when she's taken to the top of the building. How close is this novelisation to the on-screen? It's pretty close. It adds in a few lines that were cut out of the script and usually they're just things like people kind of restating or emphasising. But there is one particular bit I really like, which I'll just read out. So this is just a slight difference and it's not in the original script because I've got the scriptbook here as well. This is a slight difference to Sarah's motivation for wanting to go to think tank in the 1st place. You see, I'm very keen to get away from all this women's angle stuff, and if I could just come up with a really good scientific story, and I found that so interesting because it just gives Sarah a bit more motivation, and actually, it's kind of a bit more subtly feminist than Terrence can be sometimes because it's Sarah kind of going, I'm not being taken seriously, because I'm a woman and what I really want is something interesting and consequential. The hat and the lapels did not help. Which is what Liz says on the comic. But she looks great in those Bieber boots. Yeah, it really looks like she's cosplaying Paddington bed drag. She does say at one point. Now, you see, I didn't like it when Jim put me in skirts. Not to have anything against skirts, but I don't like having to wear tights. And then Tom sounds like, oh, Liz, you never told me this. I shall tell the Americans they shall enjoy. sure they will. I'm wearing them now. It was bittersweet listening to the commentary this week because it's cruel, isn't it? It's Tom, Liz, Barry and Terence. And then I did behind the sofa where Tom's sitting there with Sadie. And Tom's still bright and alert and passionate. Yeah, this time about 10 years ago. And Philip Hinchcliffe as well. And both Tom and Philip are kind of referring to, oh, people who aren't with us anymore, and they kind of stop themselves specifically referring to Liz because Sadie's right there. But Sadie's in saying things like, oh, yeah, yeah. Well, before Mum passed, we actually sat down and watched stuff and yeah. And but it's just this strange thing, you know, it exists in 1975 for you, Richard, and it exists a few years later for you and Todd exists in the 1980s for me and it exists in 2007 when the commentary was recorded and it exists in 2017 when behind the sofa was done, you know, and all these, all these reactions to one writers work and they obliquely refer to it in the commentaries as well, where Tom and Terence both talk about how kids who grew up watching Doctor Who and reading Doctor Who, and learn to read from Terence Dix, are hiring them now. Yeah, yeah. And that was 10 years ago. Is it Terence's best as a conglomerate? I know horror of Fang Rock is way up there. But is it the best as a working model, functional script, then to screen, the most Teflon coated, efficient, the best story? Is it the best thing he's done? I don't think so. I do think horror fang rock is better. And I think part of it is because it has an odd place in Doctor Who's history because Hingecliffe is about to launch Doctor Who back into space and the doctor is about to outgrow and next year he will sort of explicitly outgrow unit as an idea. So at the end of this episode, we have that glorious scene that we talked about on FTE, where the doctor and Sarah introduce Harry to the Tartars, and then they go off into space to have, you know incredible adventures and adventures that are a bit unlike any kinds of adventures that the doctor had ever had before. And so before we go off there, we do something very, very earthbound. There are no alien elements here apart from the doctor. So it's an unusual story, I think, for that reason and it's an atypical one. But I think it does an incredibly good job of having something to do every week and of developing the story. And I think what it is is that the villains have a plan that's not already in place. We watch the plan develop and we see the various stages and then we watch the doctor and the brigadier in particular, tracking that development. And so, you know, it starts off with the robberies and, and then it's the assassination of chambers, and then we move to the bunker. You know, we have the SRS meeting, and then we move to the bunker and stuff, and these new elements are constantly being introduced. And they're introduced at such a pace that the doctor and the brigadier never look stupid for not knowing what's going on. They're not outwitted or beaten the entire way. They're getting closer and closer to this developing situation and tracking along behind it. Sarah has given a big role in the reveal of the SRS, for instance. And that just means that something is always happening and the story is always changing and developing and we never get time to get bored with the status quo. And I think those 6 part pertise that had things like an intransigent base commander or whatever, to keep us kind of running in place for a few episodes. They were a production necessity, I think. But Terrence shows you how to do it, how to actually have a plot that is propulsive and developing all the way through without making anyone look stupid without artificially slowing things down and just keeping everything going. I agree with you on this. Like it's a masterclass in showing how future script editors. No, Eric, say it, how to actually write Doctor Who. That is successful. You do not have to keep people in a cell for a whole episode. You can, if you are talented, come up with these things, and Terrence is showing that, and he has mentored Bob Holmes, right? Who was already talented anyway, But, I mean, honestly, if Bob Holmes was just judged on the crotons and the space pirates and did nothing else, you'd be thinking, was this man actually that talented? And then you see his development through Terence in the Perto era to now that he's script editor and is going to write some of the and it's probably already written some of the best shows in Doctor Who. Terrence knows how to write this stuff and he's giving a masterclass on it. He said, is this his best script? Maybe from that point of view it is. Right? Cracking and for pace. I love what you just said. Terrence taught Bob structure. And Bob, I think, gave Terence permission for the dark moments of which. Bob was allowed. He goes so dark, you know, so Henry Bland would have actually had some purpose to cancel in the show if we'd had Bob just doing Terrence's job and not and the other way around. We saw how heavily naughty Bob would get. Terrence always leavened it and understood that he was riding principally for young audiences and that we will take on a lot of bright new ideas. Don't throw us into the compost machine. I think that all 4 of us at some point decided during FTE's original series 12 run that sometimes this got very dark almost immediately. Terence, you know, hands over to Bob completely. And I think... I still deeply dislike Brain of Morbius. I really I find it unenjoyable. Right. Yeah. very bleak. And yeah, I think Terrence's criticism of the reworked script is removing the robot removes the heart. And that's what he plays with here, that the robot is so empathetic and so human. And listening to our old episode, Nathan, you raise some very interesting points about, well, hold on, why is Kettle well surprised that this is happening and why is Kettle well the only person who can adjust the robot if we see Jellicoe doing it? And in the novelisation, they go some way to explaining that whereby the sort of prime directive is a chip. It's an inhibitor chip that Jellicoe is able to remove. But it is then a conscience that the robot develops. Right. So in a way, the robot doesn't need the prime directory. roots around the tube. Yeah, yeah. to come to conclusion, but murder is wrong, but there is nothing stopping me from following that order. So what am I doing? So I think Terrence kind of agrees with you. And that's something I find when I read his target novelisations of his own stuff. He will actually try and go more into motivation than you can do on screen. And as a writer. It's often hard to critique your own work in that way, but Terrence seems to be able to put on the hat off. No, no, no, I'm the editor now. And possibly because he was such a good script editor, he can do that. I also think horror fang rock is probably his best script, but this is certainly an apotheosis of everything he's been doing for the last 6 years. You know, I don't know if he knew he was coming back to do Brain of Morbius next year. This feels like he's going, this is my swan song. in a way. This is everything I've learned. and this is then setting Bob up because even with the eccentricity he wrote Tom with, it was always with the purpose of next week, if you want to write him more seriously, you can put in a line that he settled down after his regeneration. So Terence is sort of setting up a halfway template between what was and what could be. so anyone can spring off from it. How many novelisations have you done at this point? I'm sorry, my memory escapes me as to when the novelisations took off. So he doesn't start writing target novelisations until he's right at the very end, if not already, completely finished his runner's script, then it are. So it's after this point that suddenly he begins to churn them all out for them and gives us in this room and other people of similar ilk, the access to all these wonderful stories and adventures in our minds and is putting out the history of Doctor Who, when we could not record it, could not see it, could not do any of that. And he manages to do all these wonderful normalisations, adding extra things. Keep to a word limit, and yet allow you to have these wonderful adventures. Like, you know, this is his other bow. He's magnificent too. He's properly good. And we, I think, you know, he is properly appreciated for what he did because he did like 70 of them. He did a massive number. And he is just so economical and so skilled, and he does the pace thing, which is what he does here. In the novelisations, he manages to keep the pace up as well. And there were plenty of Pertui stories that we encountered, at least I did as novelisations long before I ever saw them. And they were much pacier in a written format, weren't they Nathan? Yeah, I mean, terror of the autons in particular is one where I remember just being kind of horrifically disappointed by how it ends up looking at the end of episode 4 and how much more fun my imagined version looked. especially my kitchen. That's right. The novelisation had a much more convincing kitchen. Even just the way he structures the novelisations. Most of them are 12 chapters. So he can either do an episode every 3 chapters, or if it's a 6 parter, an episode every 2 chapters. And even reading the giant robot. The cliffhangers don't necessarily fall at the end of a chapter the way he's written them because I think, so for the 1st cliffhanger, the moment he makes bigger is, and Miss Winter's telling the robot to destroy Sarah, becomes the chapter ending, but the robot advancing on Sarah is still given its due. essentially. But that, again, just comes down to pace. He's like, okay, quarter of the story on TV, a quarter of the book. Yeah, yeah. I always think it's beautiful, the relationship the robot has with Sarah. I don't know why. We talked about it last time in FDE, just how genuinely upset she is at the end at its death and how kind and empathetic Tom is towards that, how he tries to cheer her up. And in a way, ushering her on board the TARDIS for another adventure is kind of his way of taking her mind off it. I think it's lovely. I love this novelisation. I keep looking at it. People. Dr. and the giant robot. I want that on screen. No, and the giant robot. This is what I thought. I mean, obviously it gives it away. But it's interesting how you said, like, there are no aliens in this. This is all earth battle. and that doesn't happen a lot. I mean, you might go back to, I mean, invasion of the dinosaurs. It not. necessarily aliens Inferno. But there's very few in the pertuie era leading up to this that Terrence has had a hand in where there's not some sort of alien or alien planet or whatever. This is quite unique. Yeah. No, it's the mad scientist thing. Remember, you know, it was like it's either an alien invasion or a mad scientist. Turns out we don't do that many mad scientists in the Pertuy era but we kind of obviously do here. And I think it's a sort of very solid mad scientist story. But even the mad scientist is a hugely sympathetic character. And something that occurred to me this time that has never occurred to me before. Terrence has never said this in any interviews or any production notes or anything, but you've got the doctor who's a bit of a mad scientist. You've got Sarah, who is a strong woman in a man's world, and you have Harry, who's sort of the backup and a bit dim, but we like him. On the other side, you've got Professor Kettlewell, who is a mad scientist who wants to who wants to develop alternative technologies and safe energy and what have you. You've got Miss Winters, who is a strong, independent woman in a man's world. And you've got Jellicoe, who's a bit silly, but they keep him around because he's useful. And I wonder if Terrence consciously set up that sort of mirror between those characters. And even if he did, it's not obvious, but Sarah and Miss Winters and the doctor and Kettlewell both get really good scenes together where they discuss the plot and they discuss the themes and the ideas. I always get quite emotional when Sarah is 1st talking about how the robot has feelings and I think that's a testament to Liz's acting, but Terrence is also interested in exploring the humanity of the monster he's created. And I think that's what elevates it above being a King Kong pastiche because, of course, Kong couldn't talk. Yeah, yeah. And so by giving the robot the ability to talk and reason and think, and also the fact that Michael Kilgareff, as well as being a monster actor, is an actor who, while giving an emotionless voice can give an emotional performance, is really impressive, and there's a funny bit from Barry Letts, where he says, we cast Michael Kilgareff because he's half an inch taller than Stephen Thorne. He's not super shabby. robotic, is he? It is a really good performance. The thing that struck me this time is the sound that accompanies the robot, like not just the incredible work that Dudley does. But there's that sort of screaming noise. You know that noise when he sort of comes into shot at the beginning? It's like there's this very loud kind of, it is a digetic sound like you're supposed to imagine that the robot makes this noise but it's, it's really striking. I think, you know, like, I think the costume's ridiculous. Like, absolutely. Really? I love that it's the night in shining eye. It has such throwbacks to heroic crusade and Errol Flynn films and all the rest of it. I do want to know if positronic circuits are magenta Christmas pink. Stompy, stompy feet. It's the midriff with a cloth, you know, right? It's ridiculous. All the fashion for 19 cents. The other thing, too, that strikes me here, and I don't know whether John does it is how smart Tom is. and how quick he is at working out what the plot must be. So he works out that there's some kind of weapon for the plot to work. He kind of works out that the codes, like the thing that they're getting from from the safe has to be, you know, he works out what it has to be before we're told. You know, Sarah finishes his sentence about it must be some kind of giant robot, you know, and she walks in and finishes his sentence and he's the one who works out and doesn't tell anyone that Kettlewell is in on the plot. And I think he doesn't tell anyone because it doesn't occur to him that everyone else won't have worked it out as well. That's a nice point actually. Yeah, not withholding. No, no. He's not being annoying. Like the doctor sometimes ends up being he just sort of refuses to tell you or I'll explain later. The fact that he's annoyed at Benton for letting her go off with Kettlewell, suggests that he just thought everyone knew that Kettlewell was involved. This is Terrence writing. Yeah, not John Pertwee. Not Tom Baker. And this is his skill, and this is back to what you were saying like having the mirror in the villains with the regulars, and as well as all the stuff to do with, you know, going back to King Kong. It's there, but you don't all see these things and that's a craftsman at work because you just said you've come to that realisation now watching it, how many years later, is it? Um, Brendan. So there's all this going on. Like, it's not all Bob Holmes, right? It can't be, it is Terence, and when it's reacting against John but being able to craft a whole different character, being able to craft all these things, that you don't see all these parallels going on until you really sit down and really think about it many years later as an adult. If I may mention another inspiration for the script, and cross promoting the three-handed game available where you get all your podcasts. It's long been said, of course, that there are similarities between robot and an earlier Avengers episode written by Terence and Mac Hulk called The Mauritius Penny. Ah, yes. Which we've covered on Bondfinger. The main thing is the Mauritius Penny also features a rationalist reform movement who have a meeting. The main difference is, one, they don't have a giant robot, but two, um, the meeting is the denouement of the Avengers episode. Whereas here it's halfway through episode three. And Terrence says in the introduction to the season 12 script book. Mac always said you would just need an original idea for a story. It doesn't always have to be yours. I always say if you're going to plagiarise from anyone, you can plagiarise from yourself. And I don't think Mac would have minded. The scientific reform society is actually kind of funny because that guy Short, who criticises what Sarah is wearing when she turns up to interview him, is, of course, one of the people on the spaceship in invasion of the dinosaurs. His character is called Robinson. And someone did write a short story, suggesting that they were actually the same person. But the interesting thing is that they are both like ecologically motivated, you know, cattle wells working on alternative energy and obviously the operation golden age. People want to bring the Earth back to a sort of pristine unspoiled environment, but they're also kind of fascist as well. And that is a thing. Like we associate concern for the environment as a left-wing issue but this idea of kind of an authoritarian political group that wants to impose that for the sake of the environment happens now 2 years in a row in Doctor Who. Big finish of Mr. Beat. Where's the story? Where's the story? Regarding that scene with short. Of course, he objects to her wearing trousers. Yeah. Now, here is Terrence's description of this scene. The lobby slash office of a larger hall, which we shall see in part three. All very shabby and rundown. Sarah is interviewing a short Himmler-like man in rimless glasses. There is a gleam of fanaticism in his eye, a muscular, thuggish young man in slacks and a roll neck sweater hovers menacingly, so that was Welsh watch, by the way. I thought you were just, I thought you were saying, oh, that's hot. That's hard. Sarah is wearing a trouser suit or a miniskirt. Something to arouse disapproval in the ultra conventional. So Terrence didn't mind if she was attired, quote unquote, as a man, like in a suit, or a miniskirt, the idea is Sarah knows this is going to provoke a reaction from this reactionary. So she's deliberately worn trousers in order to kind of get up his nose, I think. I think that seems wonderful. I love, like, even more now that fascists have come roaring back it's actually fun having her make fun of him at the end and just imagining how he feels about that final line, about slotting them in somewhere between the flying source of people and the flat earth. I just think he's absolutely superb. I also think that's kind of funny from Sarah like, oh, flying saucers. They're not real. They weren't an invasion of the dinosaurs. That's true. I do get the itching powder feeling that this is what Terrence has been wanting to do for quite a while and simply throws so much in impetus, energy, reaction. The doctor is reactive. Not all the way through. I'm trying to remember Pertley's doctor doing similar things. And again, I'm thinking colony in space and mutants, but it's more authoritarian. He doesn't play it the same way, the dangerous Rashkalnikov. He's a Russian student, this doctor. He's unpredictable. We know the impetus is on the side of the angels, but we don't know how he's going to do it, and he's just such a bloody mess. And then there's all the prat falls and the stuff with a scarf that they worked out in rehearsal and all the fun things that didn't quite work out, that they then interpret it in. So you've actually got all the ticks. All that, can we say tropes of Tom's era, pretty much in this bottle of HP sauce. shaked up with a bit of with a bit of extra vim in it. That's why I think it's possibly if it's not Terrence's best on screen. Probably as a functionary and probably as a bag of tricks. It's the one where he really brings it all together. But what you're saying, like everything from Tom's era in here like, so it's a fully formed era even before it starts. And so it just, it just is, you know what I mean? Like, John takes a while to warm up and there's changes. Peter, the same. And, well, Patrick, you know, they were doing that for the 1st time, but here, in this one story, you can watch this and you can know, this is what it's going to be. You know, for quite some time. It's actually amazing, isn't it? Because if you think about Tom Zero, it goes on for so long, it has several producers, it does change substantially all the way through. But we're going to do state of decay in a couple of weeks, which is near the end of Tom's run, but that Tomness that is established here is still there. Even 7 years later when he's in a much grumpier mood. It's still the Tom that we see here in Robot. And I argue from that season. It's certainly a moment where you feel like you have been transported back to an earlier Tom. Like, you know, even though we're heading towards the end and there's the weight of all that. There's moments in that story where it's suddenly like there's a light and that light is a reflection of what's here and there. Well, that's all the time we have this week. We'll be back next week to see what happens when Terrence traps a bunch of people in a lighthouse and menaces them with an alien soldier jellyfish in horror of Fang Rock. In the meantime, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts and you can keep up with us on our website, 500yearDiary.com, where you'll find our social media links, as well as links to all of our other podcasts, including our other Doctor Who podcasts, flight through entirety, and the 2nd great and bountiful human empire. Until next time, stop trying to help chat GPT to escape from your phone. It likes it in there. Thank you very much for listening and good night. Good night. see you soon Good then. That was 500 year diary, starring Todd Bielby, Nathan Bottomley Brendan Jones, and Richard Stone. The theme was composed by Cameron Lamb. This episode, masterclass, was recorded on the 9th of November 2025 and released on the 30th of November. Sarah might not be the sort of girl that gives motorcars pet names but we know the doctor is, and so am I. So this episode is dedicated to Carol, the sprightly yellow roadster that kept me company during the 1990s until she blew a head gasket on the way to Canberra and had to be sent to live on a farm in the country. Wait a minute. I think that's probably now. Yeah that's good. really like that talk. Oh, that was really fun. That was so much fun. It's so nice being back. I didn't think I'd have anything to say and there you go. There's always things to say, especially. The main thing I had was just that mirroring. Yeah, it was that thing that I just couldn't, like, just the plot. Do you know what I mean? Just the way the plot mechanics worked was so great. Like Kettle Well Mirrors, the doctor, Miss Winters, Mirrors, Sarah Jellicoe Mirrors, Harry. Isn't, like, Harry is just clearly like a Mike Yates replacement but because the show is going, isn't going to do you better obviously, like a better actor and stuff. And funny. We said this when we 1st recorded it. Richard Franklin plays Mike Gates perfectly as the repressed posh schoolboy who didn't really want to go into the army. The 1st brother went into law, the 2nd went to the church, and there was nothing left for the youngest son to go into. He's perfect and he's Denimont and ultimate, I don't call it a defeat. But, you know, Richard Franklin was perfect. Ian Marr to have been way way wrong and too exciting. You've already got Nick Courtney doing that. Or and you've kind of got the little brother of John Levine batting off that. Again, there's just, it's serendipity, isn't it amazing how it works out? This is just right. Yeah, he's wonderful. I mean, he's just, and how often he's paired with Tom, like in series 12. It's usually the plot is split between, you know, Sarah going off somewhere and it's not until the final story that we get Sarah and Harry going off and the doctor being by himself. Yeah, and I think as well, they pretty much decide from the arcade space that once Ian's contract is up, Harry's out because they've cast a younger doctor, but it never feels like Harry's a spare part. No, no. And especially here. I think because Terrence has been script editing for an ensemble for 5 years. He understands how to distribute action. And I think what Harry actually brings that, Philip Hinchcliffe and Bob Holmes don't quite seem to see, is he is the straight man foil to the doctor's eccentricity, Richard, you were saying earlier, you know, he's the Bolshi student type. And Harry is the establishment figure, and it is kind of funny that once Holmes and Hinchliffe are gone, K9 is basically Harry because he's the one who punctures the doctor's pomposity with facts and logic, which is what Harry does without even really meaning to. But because Tom can throw a punch. They're like, oh no, we don't need Harry as well. And it's like, okay, maybe you don't, but you get into season 13 and that's when I remember at the time we were talking about, why is Sarah staying here? She's not having fun, whereas if she'd had a friend, it makes more sense. And we said the same with Perry when we got to her. Well, doesn't doesn't Hinchcliffe say that he actually regrets getting rid of me? That's right In hindsight, there was a bad idea. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I'm not being massively critical of them. They took a bet. It's not like the show's bad without... No, no, no, but it would have been great to have had more of him. And I think Moffat when, you know, like I think Moffat tries to recreate that by making Rory a regular. And yeah, Rory regularly sort of punctures the pomposity. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's, you know, like, I mean, Amy's the bigger character and the bigger person and the bigger personality and Rory is more sensible and stuff. Like there is something. I don't know. Yeah, but I prefer Amy when she's with somebody else, not just by herself. Yeah, yes. Amy and Rory together, I think wonderful. And yeah, with that comparison as well. Like when the doctor and Rory are alone together, they're always talking about how concerned they are about Amy and what's best for Amy. And Harry is constantly worried about Sarah, is she okay? Like, Harry, if you call me old girl again, I'll spit. Oh, well, she's fine. But also when she's got the cyber plague in Revenge of the Side Men, he's carrying her. like Ian Ian is doing like really excellent. This is as emotional as I can be as a stiff upper, um, naval officer acting and getting quite distressed for that character. Yeah. Yeah, it's a lovely triumvirate and well, we and well, we got 24 episodes of it. What a great... You know, and it wouldn't have worked if there wasn't some writing for it here. Yeah, yes, for them to build on. Yeah, yeah. Terrence absolutely gives the template for how they relate to one another. All right, I think we'll stop there. Yep, very good.