Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to 500 year diary.
The only Doctor Who podcast that's starting to suspect that the
wasting would be much better than whatever it is we've got going
on right now.
Bring on the wasting, I say.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Peter.
I'm Simon.
And I'm a Commodore 64 in a revolutionary cave that's seen things
a box that size shouldn't see.
It's the 22nd of November, 1980.
It's been a few years since we had a Terence Dick script on Doctor
Who, but tonight he's back rescued from Christopher H.
Bidmead's wastepaper basket and ready to thrill and delight the
5.80000 viewers who have tuned in to watch.
But Doctor Who is quite a different show in 1980 than it was back
in 1969 or 1974 or even 1977.
How does Terence's Doctor Who hold up 11 years after its debut?
Let's find out as we discuss state of decay.
So, this script has a pretty storied history, I think.
It does.
As we know, it was originally planned to open season 15 and then
got pushed.
And there's one of those stories that's become uncontested and
kind of, you know, just gone into fan consciousness, that it was
feared that it would be a mockery of Dracula, which was being
produced by BBC One that autumn.
I think they just didn't want 2 of their flagship programs to be
dealing with vampires in the same week.
So eventually it got binned.
I don't know why it wasn't resurrected for season 16, which it
really should have been.
But when JNT came on board and had no stories left.
This was one of the ones that was in the file. was retrieved from
the waste paper basket.
Yes, but then it gets very quickly tossed into the wastepaper
basket again in the sense that it is very, very heavily edited by
Christopher H.
Midmead.
And we see him do that with David Fisher's the leisure hive, which
I mean, David Fisher does 2 scripts in season 16 and they're both
really funny and basically none of that survives.
Well, I assume the leisure hive rewrites to do with the fact that
you know, J&T wanted the tone of the show to be changed.
So I suspect that I think the original leisure hive was a bit of a
sillier version of it.
And wasn't there a moment in time when James he had wanted to
bring it back to 3 episodes, which is one of the reasons why
Leisure Heart and Megloss underrun so much?
That's right Yeah.
And I'm going to push back a little bit on the idea.
Again, it's in fan consciousness that Christopher Bidmead edited
this very heavily.
I interviewed Terence about this story, like in 1997.
And he said that actually he went back to basics.
So he just had a storyline.
He then went back and revamped the storyline.
So they didn't really pull much out of the waste paper basket.
Yes, it's not like they just replaced Leila with remarks.
That was one of the key things, but also I had to introduce Adrick
and all that.
He just went back to basics on how to tell the story.
And he said that he and Bitmead worked on it together.
He said it was like working with any other script editor or Bob
Holmes on the show.
He was happy with what happened.
What he then heard through his friend Barry Letts, who is the
executive producer, is that Bidmead completely tore up the script
and rewrote it, like page one rewrite, and he couldn't remember
very much about it, but he said it had things like the vampires
hatched out of eggs and things like that.
He then said, I'm not very happy about that.
Peter Moffatt, the director said, I'm not directing this.
This is not scripts that I was brought on board to do, and they
basically went back to the original, which had been hashed out
between Chris and Terence, with a couple of little things added in
like the mechanical reader in the TARDIS, rather than some old
scrolls with the legends Rassalon.
Right, right.
That's just tweaks, though.
I mean, it's interesting because on the Blu-ray, what would have
been the original DVD extra, the making of, I mean, that would
have been recorded 9 years after that interview that you did.
And it's interesting that maybe his memory of that had kind of
developed because he does recall in that.
And so does Chris been made a very fractious relationship between
the 2 of them.
And a lot of that situation kind of being retold.
Yeah, Peter Moffatt saying, no, I'm not going to do this.
And Terence was very happy that he said, it's not usual that a
director comes to your defence.
Absolutely.
And also the fact that Terrence, you know, has a healthy sense of
humour about these things.
He knows what being rewritten is like.
He knows what he rewrites about. absolutely.
And so he has a sense of humour about it.
He said, who does this crisp meat think he is?
Terence Dix.
I mean, there is a lot of bit meat in the script, I think.
And in particular, there are 2 things.
One is just the obsession with scientists and technology, which is
a feature of stories all the way through this season.
Bitmead season always has scientists and things.
And we've already had, you are scientists.
We've already...
We've already had a story this season, which has religious
obscurantists versus scientists in Meglos, and that's absolutely
what we have here.
We have a situation where science is forbidden.
Any kind of learning?
reading is forbidden.
And the lords who are doing religious rituals and things, you know
they're not just sort of predatory class, they're also a religious
group in a sense.
You know, there's sacrifices and rituals that need to be performed
and you've got Orcon who's a seer and all of that sort of thing.
And so those contrasts, again, that's very bid me.
And that will reach, I think, its apotheosis in Legopolis, which
is all about science being performed as mathematics, being
performed as ritual, monopolis.
Yes.
It's interesting actually you talk about it kind of the religious
aspects of the Lords because this whole style of thing. you know
any kind of learning, reading, being forbidden, kind of presages
certain developments with religious fundamentalism that start to
develop after this time.
And even the Handmaids tell, the book of the Handmaid's Tale is, I
think, early 80s.
So it's actually after this as well.
So that's fascinating. being banned from libraries.
Exactly, all that sort of stuff, yes.
Banning of knowledge, yes.
I mean, there were at times laws in the pre-civil war South
forbidding the teaching of reading to enslave people, like, and
that was sort of quite common.
That's always been a thing, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There's also something, I think, in the season.
It plays out in virtually every story about the way that things
change or don't.
And so obviously you have entropy as a big thing in Legopolis.
Entropy increases, the universe is past the point of heat death in
full circle.
You have that idea of everything going around in circles.
In this, it's the fact that for a 1000 years, nothing has changed
and it's always critique of change or not in this season.
And that lack of change is bad.
Absolutely.
I mean, it's in the title, isn't it?
It's called statewide decay.
In one of the original titles, the wasting, exactly.
Yeah.
I mean, the wasting is kind of funny because it seems to me that
sort of mystification, you know, the idea that the ruling class is
here essentially for our benefit and not to take staff office and
you know, live well.
They have all the cheese, apparently.
I don't think Ivo's wife.
Ivo's wife doesn't know what cheese is, but Orcon and Camilla and
Zargo serve cheese to the doctor in Romana in that scene.
I love how Romana looks down her nose and goes, no thanks.
It's interesting you mentioned the wasting, though, because I've
wondered a couple of times when I've watched it.
She will lead to a waste.
Anti-ways, to mention.
But I've always wondered whether there was going to be more made
about the wasting because it is not a throwaway.
It's more than a throwaway, but it's never really explored.
I suppose it's just a device to say, it's something to be
frightened of, I suppose.
Yeah.
But I mean, it's interesting.
It's one of the ways that the Lords have power over the population
is by having this thing called the wasting, which we don't know
anything about.
The wasting is the wasting.
Yeah, yeah.
Does anyone, whenever they have those nicely choreographed shots
of Orcon, Camilla and Zago, does anyone else see Charles, Camilla
and Andrew?
No, that wasn't what came.
I think we mock them in flight through entirety, we actually make
fun, perhaps, of those sort of tableaus that they're self
consciously creating.
I think they're wonderful.
I think they are hilarious, particularly when Zargo sort of bears
his teeth in the background of a shot or something.
I just think they're really terrific.
Yeah, it's every band girls were drawing on their pencil coaster
at exactly that year.
But I think it's actually just the right side of it because it
only happens in that one scene when Orcon says that, you know, I
think I found someone and...
It's all being played to camera in this theatrical way, but I
think it's on the right line of absurdity.
And I think it also goes to the fact that, you know, they all look
like, well, particularly Zago and Camilla look like playing
cards.
Yes don't they?
And that's part of the design.
And so it all kind of works when they do that little dump.
Yeah, I mean, isn't that the story of successful Doctor Who?
It's just on the right side.
100%.
Yeah, 100%.
And it's just like the entirely historically accurate mask of man
dragon. in terms of the way the clay is done.
In any case, there is plenty of Christopher H.
Bidmeade here.
But I am interested in trying to identify what is particularly
Terence here, because this is different, I think, from any of the
stories that we've discussed so far.
It is, and yet it isn't.
I think the Christopher H.
Bidmidness of it are light touches, the trappings.
The trappings.
Thank you.
Whether it's the Jaki, Jaki, Jaki, Jago business.
Which is absolutely bidmead.
Which is very bitmeading so much so that Terrence said that
basically Bidmead wanted to spend like about 5 minutes of the
story explaining the consonant and bowel shift or whatever
whatever they are.
I would have loved that.
Yes, I would have loved that.
Not entirely sure that the audiences would have, I think I think
it's done enough.
Like we get it.
And that's more of a tense, something.
But fundamentally, it is actually different to all the other
stories of this season because it is an older-fashioned Doctor Who
story. reassuringly traditional.
Yes, and I don't mean old-fashioned in a pejority because it is
traditional.
And again, I don't want traditional to be a pejorative either
because Terrence is capable and I think it's partly because of all
the, you know, novelization's here, he wrote.
So he understands and being scripted for such a long time.
He understands how to make a story go from A to B to CCD.
And so he doesn't sit there and agonise about how to get from A to
B, C to D. There's a kind of a logical and easy flow that
happens.
And when I was watching it to do this podcast, I was reminded of
that, the opening scene is set up with so many wonderful things
mentioned, the time of rising, and the chosen one, and all of
these capitalisations, the kind of allittered throughout the
script, but not in a way which detracts.
And the whole structure of the story is so Terence, the way it
builds the positioning of the cliffhangers, the way different
things are introduced in different episodes.
We kind of talked about this in horror Fang rock, I think, last
week.
Same sort of deal.
We also talked about it in robot.
He's able to introduce new elements to the script.
So he doesn't need.
We never get, you know, 2 episodes of people running in place.
We don't delay things artificially.
No one has to be locked up in episode 3 although that does kind of
happen here.
In the most entertaining way possible.
Exactly. delivers information.
And that's the point.
I mean, it's often been a discussion on this podcast that is the
ideal length of Doctor Who story, actually classic era one
actually 3 episodes.
And whilst I don't have anything against 3 episode stories per se
in the McCoy, they're great, but I think that happens as the 80s
progress because a certain script editor doesn't understand how to
structure or get a story is structured when you've got only so
many sets, only so many speaking parts.
Terence completely understands how you do that.
And let me pick up on what you're saying there because obviously
from all his years of script editing, Terrence knows exactly how
to structure a 4 parter.
What he does here is he drops you into the action.
He then moves the doctor in Romana around the place, so they go to
the village.
They meet Heberus. find things out.
That's right, find things out.
They then go to the Technicothica and meet Mr. Kimber.
Find other things out.
He delays meeting the villains until episode 2 to really start
that with a punch.
But in that scene, which I would like to talk more about later
they actually dance around each other, you don't find out too
much.
And so that saves more kind of revelations and confrontations
further on.
When you reach episode 3 and there's a danger that the story can
run out of steam.
He splits up the regulars.
He has the doctor go back to the TARDIS to find out background on
what they're facing, while Romana hooks up with one of the
sporting characters and goes and explores the castle.
He's so effortless about it.
And I think that's why we think this is traditional.
It is classic, but it has that archetypal Doctor Who structure
which Terence Nails.
Also, he adds things.
So the time of arising is a thing that's coming, that sets a kind
of endpoint for the thing, and it turns up.
And I think the fact that Kalmar discovers the scanner and is then
able to verify the fact that there's something under the tower.
And then the villager's decision to storm the tower.
Like those are all things that happen and move the story on.
So he introduces new elements.
It's like the arrival of the boat at the end of episode one of
Horror of Fang Rock.
All of that stuff is a thing that he does.
And you're right.
I think you said something, Peter, and I can't remember if it was
in a podcast or just in real life at some point, that later on
they lose the knack of doing that properly, that what we do is we
set up an environment and then have a series of escapes and
captures and stuff until we reach the denouement.
Until we run out of time.
Yeah, yeah.
And Terrence sets that up.
You're right. the presaging.
We talked about this on robot, the structuring you were just
saying.
And how predicating these little moments of horror.
So the 1st moment I remember watching this in 82 was that the boys
keep disappearing.
I thought, oh, the guards are, oh, they're all going to be
guards.
Even before we that, we know they're knocking down the east wing
of the hydrax to build the ballroom.
But are they?
Don't they fire the east wing of the hydrax into the air?
It is.
Sounds a little nightpad.
We know it's a vampire story early on, but there's just all these
little points.
And yes, he goes to Hammohora and Bram Stoker, but he's actually
going more to...
Well, you know, there's that novel, Carmeilla.
Anyway, there's a lot of Vampire, and Christopher Fralin, who
talks on the DVD.
I've got a book of his from the 80s because I was so loved this
story.
And wasn't this the 1st target that came out for season 18 quite
early on.
This was the 1st target.
And it came out, I think, about 6 months after it was on TV, which
is fairly, fairly short in target novelisation terms.
We got it in Australia before it was on TV.
No.
I think we did.
I would be surprised.
Yeah, that's true, actually.
I don't remember reading that logo in bookshops. interesting.
I remember reading it, grabbing it. didn't know.
We just saw it on a shelf and we'd haunt these books.
You've got it.
And reading it before it was on TV.
And that would be Terrence as well.
Terrence would not do anything as inelegant as just going to
Dracula as his source material.
He would be better read than that.
And so that book, Camilla.
Obviously, that was one of the earliest works of lesbian vampire
fiction as well.
And the current royal family we did not mention.
And of course, Camilla in the story was originally spelt Camilla.
Yeah, right, he's making that clear.
But Terrence also pointed out that he went to the Hamahara style
of Dracula, not the actual Bram Stoker, because it's a very
different way that the vampires are portrayed.
And so this is the more of this little schlock horror kind of
thing.
Isn't L in one of them?
Yeah, she is.
She thought she was.
Would you like a great piece of trivia as well?
Always, Peter, always.
The judgement is out on what this will be great.
It is a piece of trivia.
Emirus James, who plays Orcon.
Wonderfully, yeah.
In the same week as episode 3 was in a hammer house of horror.
There we go.
With his bodice being ripped as we speak.
How can we just say, what a delicious performance.
You say Simon earlier, just on the right side of the line.
His performance just straddles that line.
Absolutely perfectly.
He knows when to make it dramatic and when to go soaring over the
top.
And the other thing about a great performance, which I think can
be lost with bad directors, is there is opportunity for him to
pause.
So the performance is given with poise.
Lala did an RSC with Emris James.
And it was funny.
It's a very, it's that sort of RSC and almost faux RSC thing.
And that's one of the things it makes.
That era of Dr. B so good.
For example.
But the other thing I want to note, that something else Terrence
has said, which I think is very evident here.
He said, once you've created a good setting.
The supporting characters do kind of just create themselves.
Like they just come out of the setting that's been created.
And that's kind of goes back to the point I was trying to make
before about the fact that it's an unpretentious way of creating a
story.
There is nothing forced.
There is nothing shoehorned in.
It all just naturally progresses and flows.
It's actually kind of what you would expect.
And I think that that is Terence, while that is true.
That's Terence being typically kind of self-effacing.
They don't create themselves.
A great writer creates these great characters that come out of the
setting.
It's just that he would never make that claim for himself.
Yes, but what the point he's making is that he doesn't he doesn't
kind of have a pre-ordained idea of what the people need to be
what needs to happen.
He's kind of just saying that if you effectively he's saying if
you do the legwork on the idea and the concept, it all just
happens.
Again, see horrifying rock last week.
Exactly.
Another good example.
I can detect some Bob Holmes in this as well.
I mean, last week, Horror Fang Rock, people say, oh, you know
that's a Hinchcliffe story because they don't really want Graham
Williams to have a good story.
So, but it's just some dumb aliens landed.
Whereas here what we...
We're talking about Reuben the Ruten.
Reuben the Ruten.
But what we have here is what Holmes has in so many of his stories
which is an ancient evil, long thought dead coming back to life
much like this point.
But, you know, which exists in so many of his stories in the
Hinchcliffe here are obviously Brain of Morbius, but Pyramids of
Mars, even the Crinoid, for God's sake, is from 1000s of years
ago.
Had a fear, not sufficiently executed enough.
The master in the...
Yeah, mastering the deadly assassin. absolutely.
And so that is a very homes thing.
And obviously tanks full of blanded, all of that. pretty much an
island view of the ostensible threat, isn't it?
We're clutching here on the edge of Europe and these things from
Time Memorial, waiting.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But it is Robert Holmes because yes, even if the script was redone
from the original concept.
The original concept is created with Robert Holmes because
remember, Robert Holmes doesn't end with talents being changed.
He goes into halfway through season 15.
That's right.
Which has probably got more to do with Horror of Frank Rock's
brilliance than the lack of Philip Shinsley before, the edition of
Graham Williams.
That's right.
And so when people say that horror Fang Rock is a Philip
Hinchcliffe story, what they really mean.
It's a robot.
It's just done with the sobriety that we associate with the
Hinchcliffe era, not with the Williams era.
We lose something of the elegance of the fact that Terence
essentially did back-to-back stories.
So once he'd finished the brain of Morbius, he then went on to do
horror fang rock.
The plundering of Frankenstein, for Brain of Morbius, and then the
plundering of Dracula, straight after for the vampire mutations
which was going to be opening season 15.
The elegance of that is lost on us because vampire mutations was
moved, and Brain of Morbius is under someone else's name.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I actually think it probably benefits from the gap because I
think it would have felt like, oh, this is just another one of
that.
This is more of the same.
I mean, that is the Hinchcliffe.
Yeah, that's how I feel about that.
No, but not in quite the same way. so obvious.
I mean, Terrace would have had a good chortle about that, I
think.
Frankenstein, let's do Dracula.
What's next?
Zombies.
I mean, it would have had a season and a half, I suppose, in
between.
The other thing that's very Terence, I think, is the introduction
of the Time Lord, and we talked...
Never misses a beat, does it?
Yeah, well, we've talked in our 1st episode.
We talk about how Terrence invents the time lords and kind of
inflicts them on the Barry Letts era in a way.
He sets them up and creates them and then uses them judiciously as
his era goes on.
And here he is bringing them back as an idea again, and they are
in a way central to this.
And what struck me this time is, you know, the time lords are
lords, and these people are from earth.
You know, there's something about the how inextricable Gallifrey
and earth are from each other, and obviously it's because
Gallifrey features in a television program that's mostly made on
earth.
But I think that that is a very Terence thing, and I think, unlike
a lot of the times that the 80s goes back for the time lords.
This is pretty successful.
Yeah, because, I mean, no time loads are actually, you know, apart
from the doctor in Romana.
Time was made appear in the story.
I mean, it's a set of scrolls or like it's in the ancient
database.
So the time lords are a backdrop rather than essential.
It just provides that line.
You know, you have to defeat them even at the cost of your own
life.
Yeah, which actually almost makes it feel like it could have been
a regeneration story. wanted it to be.
It could have been a great regeneration story actually.
And Terence never strays from the idea that Time Lords are
mythical figures.
So it sets them up as such in the war games.
They are realised to varying degrees in the per wheat era, but he
never goes away from the fact that they are kind of these superior
beings that occasionally appear and a part of the action.
I think that's the same with this backstory.
He set up this mythic battle between the time Lords and the great
vampires.
And that's almost time war-ish.
You know, that's something that was huge that no one knew about
that happened in the background aeons go.
I think that view of the time lords. actually works for the
series.
I also think Robert Holmes view of the time lords in the deadly
assassin, which is then carried on in the invasion of time, works
for the series.
I think when you remove those 2 master craftsmen from the time
lords, you end up getting rough. like mark of Infinity care.
I think everyone's in trial of a time. harsh on Ark Infinity.
I think it's trial of the Time Lord.
But Arc Infinity, yes, I do agree.
It's not as bad as all that, but what it does with the time lords
is basically nothing.
It uses trappings, but has nothing to say about.
You're quite correct, but I actually think most of the problem
with the time loss.
Yeah, is travel time, but also the 21st century.
I think, you know, Gallifrey should have stayed destroyed in so
many ways.
But that's an argument for another thing.
I think that you've hit the nail on the head there.
I think that Terrence Sticks is around when Holmes recreates the
time lords and Holmes recreates the time lords in order to give
the doctor something to rebel against in a way, which is not
Bernard Horsfall previously.
You know, yeah.
Not the 1st burnet horse.
The other burnet, right?
They're always regenerating into the same British character actors
I'll say, time lords. amazing.
There are only so many.
They've given that a choice.
No, that one's too old.
I'll have a Bernard, please.
Is that all right?
So Terence takes the time lords back to the mythical era that
Holmes's time lords are only dimly aware of.
The doctor and Umana don't know about the vampires, and I assume
that Holmes's timelords don't know about it either.
It's the story told by the hermit in the mountains of South Gala
right?
That rubbish.
Yes, brought that back.
I love that he goes back.
Oh the Hermit on the Mountain.
Yes, yeah, yeah.
But the thing that I do like, that Pythia era, which is from
Timeworm something.
No, not time of anything.
Cat's cradle time.
Cat's cradle.
There we go.
Time's crucible, exactly.
Then long barrow, any and all, frankly.
Infinity doctors, like all of those things.
The word tiresome comes to mind.
Yeah, but, but, but there is something about that sort of grand
absurd histrionic space opera that the Time Lords used to belong
to.
And I can see why, because it's sort of well executed and kind of
intriguing.
I can see why writers have said yes, you know, I would quite like
to see a bit more of this.
I don't think anyone's ever watched Arc of Infinity and said, we
need to see more of these versions.
Califrade.
Well executed.
It's well executed because it's Terence.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
It's just very well judged and it doesn't contradict anything that
we've seen before.
It adds a little bit of mythology.
We had the minions being the reason that the time lords didn't
intervene back in underworld, but here it's established it was
this, that sickened the time lords of violence and caused them to
stop intervening. this sort of giant war.
Yeah, it's a time war, isn't it?
It's the 1st round of the time war or the 1st go at it.
Absolutely.
And also, we see in lesser hands how something like that can be so
boring in underworld.
That's a really great setup, which isn't explored remotely in that
story.
Whereas Terrence loves bringing in the time watch for a little bit
of colour.
So those 1st scenes in Brain of Morbius, which I'm absolutely
certain are Terrence and not Bob Holmes, where the doctor is
railing against them and Sarah's mocking him for it.
That's vintage Terrence.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's something that Pertwe, you can imagine Pertwe doing.
And it's something which they do for better or for worse than
Attack of the Cybermen, when the doctor is locked in the cold room
that's right You can't lure me to this message, so that I can get
you out.
That's right. that's one of the best moments of that story when
the doctor suddenly realised that, you know, maybe the timelords
are doing something.
Oh, I'm the one who's been put in place to do something about it.
Yes, yes.
I suppose what I don't like about that part of the time, Lords, is
I was never a fan, and maybe it's just to do with the order that I
saw things in, is that I was never a fan of the supernatural
version of the time, Lords.
I probably did prefer the House of Lords version of the Time Lords
which is sort of what you get in Deadly Assassin. and Arc of
Infinity, basically.
Because they're amusing, which they're not amusing when they're
gods.
Exactly.
They become, it's like, um, it's interesting that Hebrus says to
the 3 who rule.
I could swear that they were laws.
They were lords, yeah, yeah.
Because they are lords.
They are time laws.
We are your lords.
Yes, exactly.
And now, but it...
She knows that's one of Surfland's commanders.
Is he really?
Yes.
I'm glad he got other words.
They don't tend to go on.
But there is something about the concept, I think, goes back to
what you were saying, Nathan, before about, you know, Earth is the
common people and the time lords are our laws as much as anything
else.
And, you know, there is the stratification of society still back
in this time, to a greater degree, and that's just sort of a
natural way of seeing how things are.
But the fact that what sets them apart is probably not just the
way they speak, but how they're dressed, but also their
knowledge.
And as we said before, if learning is forbidden, the only people
who are allowed to have knowledge are the lords, therefore these
people are knowledgable, therefore these people are lords.
Yeah, in fact, that's explicitly said when the doctor and run are
escaped from the throne room.
And Camilla says they have the greatest weapon of all knowledge.
And that's wonderful.
And that is the moral of Doctor Who.
Basically, that is fundamentally the entire series is summarised
in that one little moment.
Terrence always goes back to the Reetian polemics, doesn't he?
He's really an old school empire boy at heart.
But then there's a little bit of wit. listening to you all talking
about this and having lovely flashbacks.
We talked on robot about how structural it was and that we felt
that at this point in his career, Terence was firstly a
structuralist.
Albeit, as you say, characters come out of the wainscotting
afterwards.
Well, no, they don't because he's brilliant, but structure before
all of that other fun, where homes, maybe, I think homes is there
for the dry crack.
Yeah.
Firstly, and having a dig.
But in this one, I want to know what you think, because it still
feels very structural to me, but he's starting to be at that point
in his career.
As you do and you get to a certain age, I'm right here.
Where you're looking back at what gave you joy, and there's that
reinterpretation that, but still very respectful, and firstly and
foremost, it's about, as you say, it's the plotting and the points
and then letting the actors sing from that.
Don't think it would have worked without Peter Moffat, though.
Before we talk about Peter Moffat, let's think about where Terence
was in his career, because he'd left behind obviously script
editing Doctor Who, that would have given him a vast knowledge of
how to structure a Doctor Who story properly.
He's now become embedded in the series as a whole through all the
novelisations that he's done.
So he would have seen, and he, as a rule, tends to novelize four
part stories.
There are some 6 parters, he does 4 parters.
People like Malcolm Hulk do their own 6 parts.
So he has seen what everyone else has done with 4 partters.
He knows how to structure them.
He has now moved on to the classic series where he is the script
editor to the Sunday classic to Barry Letts, who is the producer.
So I think that gives him more of a freeform knowledge of kind of
how drama comes together.
He will eventually, in a couple of years time, take over as the
producer of those Sunday classic dramas.
And so I think if Terence is experimenting and letting go with
that structure, that's just where he's at his career as well.
It's also what's coming easiest, and I don't mean that implying
that he's lazy, but it's the fact that when you do get to a
certain age, you really do know what you're doing.
If you've got that much experience, it just happens and you don't
need to try too hard and often, it's when people try too hard that
it's all about what?
That's why often the scripts that have had to be written in a
weekend turn out so well because you go to the obvious.
If I can just go to structure and pacing before we talk about
Peter Moffat, one of the reasons, I think the pert we year as a
whole is successful, is because it understands, and I think this
is a lot to do with Terrence, how you plot out a 4 or 6 part story
too often in the what we've just come from in the Trouton era, the
resolution happens in the last 10, 5, sometimes 3 minutes of even
a 6 part story.
That starts to happen again, sometimes in the cartinal era, I'm
afraid.
If you look at this story, state of decape, most of episode four
not all of it, because if it's a 6 part, all of episode 6 was
generally the resolution.
The cliffhanger into the last episode was always about to be ready
to...
Green Death is the perfect example.
And here you have a proper resolution where it's all planned out
and things happen one after the other.
So it is a 90 minute movie that has been chopped into 4 with a few
allowances for the fact that they have to be cliffhangers and so
on like that.
But you don't get this sense of at the end of episode 3 that we're
still, nothing is really progressed anywhere.
No, I think what we've found so far is that in all of the stories
new elements come in and propel the narrative on.
And like, I mean, it is like the death of Orcon Camilla and Sarko
is not quite at the end, but it's not in the middle or anything
like that.
But we do have time to just kind of tidy up.
I'm not just talking about a de Nou More. the buildup to that
about the resolution.
The whole episode 4 is about the resolution and you get that so
often in anything that Terrence is touched.
And I think he retrofits that into many of those 12 chapter target
novelisations that we loved reading over and over back in the day
that he didn't write the original script for.
Absolutely.
And also, the fact that we'll talk more about this, but when we
come to the 5 doctors, he's possibly the only person who could
have made that work.
Capable of doing that.
Because of that approach.
What do you need?
Give me the small explorer of things, here you go.
It's all in place.
It's interesting you mentioned Peter Moffatt before.
As I've frequently said, a good director is what makes or breaks
or lack of good directors, what makes or breaks a Doctor Who story
a classic era Doctor Who story.
Peter Moffa is, I think, too often unfairly maligned, and I think
it's basically for me, it's just because of twin dilemma.
And I think if you take to a dilemma out of it, as a rule, all of
his stories, even the less successful ones like visitation, which
is a bit dull, have excellent casts.
Yes.
And Lala said that Peter Moffat was an actor's director because
he's all about finding the right people for the part, allowing
them to do their thing, modifying it as necessary in a way which
is collaborative in the same way that the best theatre directors
do.
And that's what they were allowed to do with the acting rehearsal
rooms and so on, they spent all this time to properly workshop the
performances and that's where things like that choreographed dance
between the 3 who rule would have been developed.
I strongly suspect.
And I suspect that stage of decay is actually Moffatt's best
directorial outing, not just because of the choreograph scene, but
I think just because of the way he was able to bring it all
together.
I think he's actually a very good director who's underrated.
So, I mean, you've said to me before that Peter Mothad is by no
means a bad director.
He's a conservative director.
And that is true.
He covers the action conservatively.
I would argue that in this story, he's being quite forthright with
his camera work in a lot of ways.
That wonderful moment where Orcon refers to his servants and we
don't know who they are.
And then you get the bat, which is so unusual.
So, Doctor Who...
Do you had a crossfay?
any era, really.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And also, I would point to the end of episode two.
It doesn't entirely work, but I appreciate what they were trying
to do where Orcon says, welcome to my domain and it cuts into a
big close-up in his eyes, which is taken from a later shot in
episode three.
But I see...
That might be why it's missing from the reprise.
Look, I think Peter Moffat, There's a couple of undersold things
about him.
He was quite old when he started working on the series.
And so the 2 doctors ended up being the last thing he ever did.
He basically came out of retirement to do that.
So I think there is a natural thing of kind of slowing down a
little bit.
I also think that when Lala talks about him as an actor's director
we've talked before about performances all being on different
pages, all of the performances in many of the scripts that he
directs are all on the same page.
And if you look at it through that lens, that actually makes him
the perfect director for the 5 doctors.
Maybe not as a spectacle, but as someone who could sort of bring
all of those big personalities together and have them gel on
screen.
I think the reason one of the reasons I think is a conservative
director is, perhaps, because of the stage of decay experience
because he did say that that last sequence with the special effect
of the great one coming, the hand coming through the thing, he
didn't know, as I think was common in the era.
He didn't really know what the special effects people were going
to give him until it was way too late to do anything about it.
Well, he really liked that.
He loved the hand coming through.
Who was the puppet?
Was the puppet and the rocket.
Oh, right. what is clearly what's intended in the script is that
the tower has 3 turrets.
Yes, turret, silver one.
Not that it actually splits in two.
Yes.
Well, no, but that's not the special effects because that's drawn
by the designer.
Dean Roscoe's original sketch is very much.
It's her sketch is that.
But he wouldn't have seen what the...
Well, it's based on the series.
Yeah, but no, what he was saying about the hand coming through.
He actually thought, I think it's probably the chroma key shot of
the Lord's backs, and you see that the hand he was not happy with
that.
He said he would have rather if he knew what he was going to get
he would rather have just had the crane shot.
And so the camera goes up as the Lord's.
With a shadow, as Nosferatu does in what, 2324?
You just get the bat wing.
That would have been mum.
Exactly.
And I kind of agree with him and I wonder whether that kind of
informs him what he starts to do in later stories to make sure
that that sort of era doesn't happen.
Because there are very few poor effect shots in Peter Moffatt
directed stories when you think about it.
That's true because he tends to be conservative because he's
conservative about what he needs to make sure that it looks
convincing.
I like how those miniatures are kind of directed the way that we
get lighting, different lighting and different times of day and
things for the for the miniatures, but they're not that great.
They do look like a Hornby train set.
Well, yeah, great music architects.
Yes, yes, yes.
Yes, you talked about the Lycan trees.
But of course, the music helps them.
Oh, that's bringing the production together.
Yeah, you get that kind of refrain.
Yeah, yeah. wonderful.
And isn't it interesting that the music, even though we've now
entered the radiophonic workshop era of incidental music, it still
managed to have that imperious...
It's got a lot of organ sound, yes, but it's electronically
produced.
Yes, of course.
So it's not a 1000000 miles away from what Dudley was doing on
something like the deadly assassin.
No.
Or Androids of Tara.
I think there's a lack of critique in Doctor Who directing.
A lot of people associate good Doctor Who direction with a fancy
camera.
Yes, yes, I do as well.
Graham Harper. and you did very much.
Yeah, you know, Donkey Canfield, Graham Harper, absolutely.
I can make it look amazing.
But what Moffat does a lot is choreography.
He blocks things so well in scenes.
And I would like to talk about, you referenced it before, Simon
the scene in episode 2 where the doctor and Romana confront the 2
villains for the 1st time.
That is so beautifully mounted, that entire scene.
Really, all it is is just kind of a lot of wide shots with the
characters moving around within the frame and then the camera
following them to 2 shots.
In fact, there's a beautiful opening sweep, when Camilla and Zargo
1st appear, and Romana's noticed them and points them out to the
doctor, and it pulls out from 2 shot of both of them, to this
tableau of the doctor and Romana posing Camilla and Zargo.
And it's just an absolutely majestic way of telling that
introduction.
What Peter Moffat said was that obviously they'd come back from
holidays with the leisure hive, Tom and Lala had broken up.
They were on extremely bad terms.
He said they were on shouting terms with each other.
So on location, they would finish shots and then walk as far away
from each other as possible.
When they were doing rehearsals for the 1st block, they had what
was called red corner and blue corner.
And if you were having a red corner blue corner day when they were
at opposite ends of the Acton rehearsal rooms, you knew, you know
not to upset things.
And so he told a story, actually.
I mean, this is this is how Matthew Waterhouse arrived.
That's right. the middle of this fraction is, you know, being told
to...
Because this is actually shot first, isn't it?
In terms of before full circle is what I'm saying.
That's right, Waterhouse.
That's right.
And so in the 1st block, things are out there, absolute worst
between Tom and Lala.
And the way that he got through to Tom to sort of get him on board
and invest in the material was by saying in that scene with Zargo
and Camilla, he said, we're going to choreograph it like a dance
he said, it's going to be like the gavotte.
And so he invested Tom in kind of getting all of this together and
got Tom's mind off, kind of the fractiousness, and that's a good
director at work getting that to happen.
Tom was also very ill, wasn't he?
You can really see that it's almost cadaverous that really...
Warrior's Gate is his low point.
I don't know what the illness had been, but I know it was fraught
for him.
They were having to perm his hair because it kept kind of...
It kept falling out.
There was some kind of metabolic disorder that hasn't been
revealed what it is, but he ended up being able to deal with it
and it's obviously still with us now. hopefully.
But you know, going on from what we were saying there, that scene
where the doctor and Romana climbed down the ladder, apparently
Peter Moffatt was in the studio control room, and when they
climbed down, he said through the PA.
Oh, it would be nice if Tom helped Lala down, to which Tom turned
around and said, why, should not a cripple?
Ah, they've made statement, isn't it?
This is all on the record.
Yeah, it's all on the record.
It's all into you.
They then made up between the 1st 2 episodes and the 2nd 2
episodes and got back together.
And so you can tell in there's certain scenes where Tom will not
look at Lala.
Then there's scenes where he's absolutely lovey-dolvey with her.
He can't stop looking at her.
And so that, from whichever recording block it comes from.
In the 2nd recording block, they go down further, so they're not
just in the engine room.
They're now in the caverns.
Tom turns around and says, oh, wouldn't it be nice if I helped
Lala down now?
which Peter said, oh, what a good idea.
It just goes back to the thing I was saying.
A good director knows how to navigate all of these challenges to
get his actors on board and make it work.
I believe it's the line from an adventure in space and time where
Sidney Newman helps verity out with dealing with a grumpy William
Hartnell.
And when Verity goes up and says, oh, thank you so much, Sydney.
He just interrupts her and says, be a producer, find a way to deal
with this stuff.
And that's unfortunately part of the job.
Ridiculously, it is, that these people can behave so appallingly.
It's incredible just the number of speaking parts in this story.
It's a pretty big cast, isn't it?
I think you're just too used to watching New Doctor Who, where
there's like three.
It's a normal number.
I mean, you've got the as Terence said earlier, you've got the
right people.
You've got the innkeeper man and his wife.
But also their son.
And there's son.
Oh, yes, he's well, he's one of the kind of 2 line kind of
characters.
But you need a few of those.
That's why that's why we think it's a big couple of guards.
We've got Stuart Fowl.
We need some lines.
Of course, that's Terence's humour, where we've got those amazing
guards.
There's more than one guard who have kind of one scene and are
really funny in it.
So there's the one in which Lala takes the door key and he's like
wait, hang on. are you doing?
Wait, you're a rebel.
There's a garden in the...
There's a garden.
So well delivered.
Where he's just listening in, what the doctor and Martin...
It's the things that we think of, the things that we loved when we
were growing up with Doctor Who.
Yeah, particular to this kind of Terrence-ish Doctor Who.
Well, I just want, for no reason at all, to mention Orkon's line
where Heybra says to him, we'll be killed and he just goes, well
done.
That is the purpose of gods, which is so brilliant and so perfect
for that character.
But isn't it interesting, I think, Habris's reaction to that.
The way he looks and he's suddenly real, like, it's almost, what I
wanted to see was actually a guard's revolt from that point.
That's, I think, the scene that's missing.
I think he's hypnotised by Orcon.
Oh, interesting to walk on Zion.
Fascinating.
Maybe that's intention, but that's not my reading, but maybe
that's...
That would have been incredible, I think.
Because yes, because Allcon had hypnotised Adrik.
Yes, yeah. yeah.
Yeah.
They've been shielding their faces from Orcon and stuff earlier.
That's right, yes.
Quite crazy, yes.
I also think too, we were talking earlier about how Terrence is
steeped in Doctor Who, and you mention all of those abstract nouns
that...
Yeah, yeah, yeah. these rareified abstractions.
And I think that that's an interesting thing here too.
This is a setting taken out of classic Doctor Who in all sorts of
ways.
And you know, this is not our 1st great one.
All the 1st chosen one. not the 1st selection is at the 1st
arising, you know, like all of those things.
So these villains are not just from Galifrayan history, but in a
real sense they're from Doctor Who history, they're steeped in the
traditions of Doctor Who, every bit as much as Terrence is, I
think. steeped in the 70s traditions of Dr. Mid. because that
didn't really exist in the heart and trout in the area. also in
the traditions of folklore.
Which is what the story draws it on so much.
I mean, we talk about the brothers grim earlier.
And, you know, the laws of consonantal shift.
I always want to say continental.
There's always a continental shift.
Of course, that was Bidmade. brought that to the story. and as a
10 year old watching this story.
I loved that stuff.
There wasn't any other avenue on television or in popular fiction
for me to learn that stuff and I loved it.
And I think if you were to talk about the Brothers Grim, who not
only were linguists, but were sort of master storytellers and
bring us together of collections of folklore, who does that remind
you of in the Doctor Who Pantheon?
Yeah, yeah, it's Terrence.
But, I mean, the brothers Grima, the forest.
You know what I mean?
The village and the forest and the sun and the chosen one, the
castle, the monsters, like that's that stuff.
And so the mentioning of the brothers Grim can't be an accident.
It has to be something to remind us of them.
That's right.
And if it's coming from Bidmead, that indicates that the
discussions between Terence and Bidmead were all together on a
sympathetic level.
Yeah.
And Robert Smith is the eyeliner consultant for this one.
I just keep wanting to hear prog rock.
The reason it stays with us, yes, it's a vampire story.
Christine Roscoe and Amy's costumes.
Everything's deep burgundy velvet.
Very beautiful, actually, when you look at the tones going through
that everything is cohesive.
And that's pretty impressive as something made so quickly.
I think that's what Moffat was saying about the script changing.
Yes, I think there was probably a whole lot of scientific
underpinning brought to the script by Bidmead in his rewrite, but
what he really changed, which Moffat didn't want changed was the
aesthetic.
And so I think we would have lost that kind of lords in a castle
in tunics and those deep crimsons and those walls, which look like
they could be a spaceship, but also look like a tower.
I think we would have lost a lot.
It may have been more like underworld, basically.
Correct. what you're saying.
I love, though, the, and again, it comes back to the discovering
things bit by bit by bit, is, you know, when the doctor and Romana
are in the throne room for the 1st time, and I don't know what the
lead in is, like, you know, what you think about the windows.
What do you think about the windows, hot windows?
And then can I just say, as soon as the guard leads, Tom just
looks around and says, funny about the windows.
Rana says, what windows?
He says, yes, and then there's the general architecture.
Just an amazing piece of doctor who died.
And the Rococo. it's like Rococo.
Not really.
It's just, but it's also the brilliant Tom Lala dynamic or the Dr
Romana dynamic.
Who knows whether this was a good day or a bad day for them.
But maybe actually, I wonder whether it was a bad day because the
way they're kind of talking away from each other makes the scene
work.
And it's like that moment, the beginning of Destiny of the Daleks
where they're kind of having different conversations at the same
time.
But it's what I think is missing about some latter-day companions
and too many companions.
You know, I really love the fact that Romana was a time lady who
was on a different level who was able to meet the doctor's
intellect because it enables you to have sequences like that.
Yeah, wonderful.
Basically, it's how city of death works so brilliantly as well.
Yeah, in many ways, she's a little bit dismissive of what the
doctor says sometimes.
Exactly. that's brilliant.
Terrence and Mac Hulk did write for the Avengers, and I do
remember somewhere, you might remember Peter saying that that
pitch of the Diana Regan Pat McNee together purloining the events
before they happen and dissing them a little bit and playing with
them is exactly what we see, especially in City of Death.
It's very Avengers script model.
So that could well have been a deliberate thing.
And more on that is that it's the way moments of comedy are placed
not just in this, but in other Terrence scripts, and not just ones
he's written, ones he's touched, basically, a script editor and
anything else.
And he actually said that it's fatal to write a comedy, but it's
okay to have comic moments.
And I think that's the thing that makes it proper doctor.
You've got to have the light in comic moments, but their moments.
They're not the kind of the raison d'etre for the sequence or the
story.
I mean, I think that you identified that, Peter, in the war games
as a thing that Terrence was bringing to it was making the doctor
and his friends, I think, funny, making them fun people to be
around.
Not that they're cracking hilarious jokes.
No, no, but they're just kind of fun and funny.
And clever and banterous.
Clever.
Exactly.
Clever.
The way of mounting these things, well, we talk about that scene
in episode 3 where the doctor's talking about the hermit halfway
up the mountain, you get a lot of exposition, which is done really
beautifully, which comes some nice backwards and forwards between
Romana and the doctor, then get a piece of action into cut with
Habris and the guard outside, you then get a masterful comic
punchline where he comes in through the door and slams the door on
top, whose bit kind of dazzled behind him.
I mean, that's perfect, and it's funny, and it doesn't undermine
any of the drama.
Five minutes later, when they go to, you know, they're going into
the villain's den.
They're going into the sleeping vampires chamber and we have
that...
Wake up, wake up.
I mean, that is amazing, but the comedy scene before it where they
can't get in and so has to take the key and put it the wrong way
around in the lock.
I mean, that's just a beautiful intermeshing of comedy and drama.
And Terence is masterful at it.
The scene where Romana is frightened because we're down under the
ship and, you know, there's tanks full of blood and the doctor
says something about, we really want to find out who this is or we
really want.
And she just goes, no.
And of course, the moment where she's terribly scared and the
doctor yelps and she says, what?
What?
He says, you stood on my toe.
Which must have come from rehearsals, but is playing off that mode
of Doctor Who that has all of these things in perfect sense.
Well, that's all the time we have for this week.
We'll be back next week to gaze in wonder at how old everyone's
got, in the five doctors.
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, remember that if Tom Baker asks you out on a date
the only sensible course of action is to run away.
Terribly fast.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
Bye bye.
Good then.
That was 500 year diary, starring Nathan Bottomley, Peter Griffith
Simon Moore, and Richard Stone.
The theme was composed by Cameron Lamb.
This episode, The East Wing of the Hydrax, was recorded on the 9th
of November 2025 and released on the 14th of December.
Our legal team have instructed me to say that the destruction of
the Lords in state of decay should not be regarded as normative in
our dealings with our current billionaire overlords.
FDE cannot be regarded as legally responsible if any member of its
audience decides to crash an escape pod into a member of the
Bloomberg billionaires index.
I'm looking around this room, and I'm astonished at how everyone's
gotten so old.
Silence, you.
Speak of yourself, Q. We'll start to crumble to dart. right.
Oh my god.
All right. do you think?
Just one thing.
That's why I sort of never understood that thing that various
showrunners in different areas of the show, you know, right from
Time and Memorial have had about the audience identification
character.
Like you can't have...
Why can't why isn't Romana an audience identification character?
I identified with her when I was 8 years old in 1980?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I think I don't think the I don't think the companion is
really a good audience identification character.
And there's actually that there's that wonderful moment where the
doctor says, you know the saying, what goes up, must come down, and
Adric says no.
Yes, yes, yes.
You know, because Roman has been to earth a lot and she knows all
about it now.
And, you know, like initially there was going to be a sort of fish
out of water thing with Romana on earth, not knowing what tennis
is or whatever.
But now that's Adric, you know, gets to do that.
And I don't think, I don't think that audience identification
character is really the right thing, um, uh, to call a companion
because like the doctor's the one, he knows all of the earth
references.
Do you know what I mean?
We don't need the doctor interpreted to us by anyone.
I don't know what they're doing.
It's just a, I don't know why they think that that was a problem.
See, in the original setup of the show, where the doctor's just
the crazy old man who gets the characters into scrapes.
You know what I mean?
It's actually about his...
Yeah, then it's about Ian and Barbara, but it becomes about the
doctor soon enough because he's been here the whole time.
Yeah.
I mean, because you're not a crazy old man being watched by 8 year
olds.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it's one of those one of those things that people just
accept.
It's like people accept when Graham Williams came in, he said, well
they told me to turn down the horror.
So the only thing to fill the vacuum was humour, and you think
that makes no sense at all.
There is no vacuum left by turning down.
You just got to turn down.
You just tone down the horror.
There are plenty of things that are just dramas and not horror
right?
Yeah, and yet people accept that as this is the way it must be.
Like JNT saying no hanky-panky in the TARDIS.
Rubbish.
There was ways of doing inverted quotes, hanky-panky and the
Tartars, which would have been incredibly interesting.
Like if Dr. Todd from Kinder had become a companion.
And you had that kind of freison.
That tanky-panky in the TARDS without actually...
Actually being hanky-panky.
Exactly.
Not quite sure whether we had that in mind, though, at the time.
Barbara and Ian running around that villa.
Yes, for example, and Vasor.
Yuck.
But it's funny because JT does exactly the same thing after season
22 with, you know, oh, we were cancelled because we were too
violent.
One of the bizarre excuses they came up with.
And then, um, trial of the Time Lord is then awful.
Pencil because Warriors are the deep love.
It's just acceptable.
Yeah, I know, but then again, JNT, again, says that we have to
ramp up the humour, which is like nonsense. ramp up the silliness
you know, the inconsequential silliness.
That's right.
Just tone down what you're being asked to tone down.
You don't then have to bring in something that is opposite to
that.
Yes exactly.
Well, I think we're done.
What do you think?
I think we're in that plan.
I have to be looking for an out for 10 minutes.
I want, I want, yeah, I want to say that silliness is very
important.
I know you do.
Yeah, good.
And I'm saying that the right amounts of slamen.
I think it's just a question of degrees.
Oh, maybe.
Not the baby, yes.