Nervous and Scottish

Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to 500 Year Diary, the only Doctor Who podcast that spent the 1990s mostly smelling of eternity by Calvin Klein. I'm Nathan. I'm Adam. I'm James. I'm Kevin. It's Wednesday the 8th of July, 2009. It's been just 23 hours since the big tank was unveiled on floor 13 of Thames House, and tonight, nearly 6 million. People have tuned in to watch the 456 appear inside it. Let's see if they have any surprising requests to make, as we discuss Torchwood, Children of Earth, day three. So, Kevin, I have actually never heard you talk about Torchwood and I have no idea what you think of it. So how did you feel about children of earth going in? Oh, I love children of earth. It was actually the 1st torch what I was allowed to watch given my rather young age. at the time. I mean, I've got to be honest, it's a lot less outrageous than stuff in the previous 2 seasons. I think if you're going to start a child on it, existential despair is probably a better place to start than sex gas. Like, I'll be honest, as a kid, I really wanted to know what was up with his ex-gas. I kind of love the sex guest episode. Oh, I'm very... Is the 6th guess episode the root and pop one? Yeah, mission pop. And then did you go back and enjoy earlier seasons? Eventually I did. Yeah. It took a little while to get around to being able to sneak my way back, but eventually I made it through all of Torchwood. Obviously, the 1st 2 seasons are a roller coaster of wild quality swings, but I kind of love that in my Doctor Who. I always prefer a run of Doctor Who that's very ambitious and has some all-time classics as well as some other shit to something that's just sort of even keel, but never really sticks with me. So I've got a big soft spot for Torchwood. Plus, like, so many people in my generation. Kind of the 1st queer representation on TV. I ever really saw. I mean, sure Doctor Who had some, but Tort sure had a lot more. I have to say that, you know, rewatching this, I was super fond about the setup and, you know, particularly the remaining regulars and Reese. I think I really like them a lot. And it is kind of fun to spend time with them. And we did have a week of John Barriman last week, which was kind of nice as well. He was mostly on fire or in concrete. We're not sure he enjoyed. He was a cinder. Oh my god. I didn't realise how naked. until I watched it on my ridiculously large television with far too much definition on it. And I was like, oh, that bit of text is not doing any covering there. There's sort of a fascinating mystery to me that Russell T. Davies during his 1st run of Doctor Who and Torchwood seems to be willing to treat John Barrowman as being as attractive as John Barrowman thinks he is. It's very strange. Yes, it's very weird. the world's oldest twink. So at this point in the show, we have 2 plots going and episode three, which at its very, very middle point is Frobisher talking to the 456. So that plot properly, properly kicks in here. But what also kicks in and perhaps reaches a climax is the why is the government trying to kill Captain Jack Harkness plot? And I think what we get here is those 2 sort of coinciding really interestingly. So, um, this episode starts with a giant hero moment for the Torchwood crew as they overcome what happened to them, you know, at the end of part one. I had a couple of weird things within this episode where, and I had this same problem a couple of times in the war between the Hoozy and the Doozy. Um, which was the characters who we had seen in the last episode doing something in this episode was like, oh, it's almost like that never happened because it was a different writer last week and we didn't read the whole script. Like when Kush Jumbo is like, I don't know if I should do this, I could be done for Teresa. It's like, you already helped them in the previous episode in the cafe. Why aren't you now pretending like you haven't even had a conversation? It was a very strange moment for me when she's like, oh no, I can't possibly help you. It's like you already did. There is kind of a kind of passover that. Isn't there like where someone does say, I mean, she does say something about, I helped you once, blah, blah, blah. So someone someone has sort of papered over that a little bit. Yeah, not enough. Yeah, so like, I actually really think that episode 2 has been a bit relentless because it is this sort of giant chase and we're on the run and Jack is, as you said, Adam kind of encased in concrete. And here we kind of get like a proper hero moment and we even get the music kicking in and stuff, you know, he gets his jacket back barely in pausibly. His entire, his entire outfit get comfort backs on my out. I like how the script doesn't even really care on that one. like um, Yanto later when he's trying to seduce Jack says, I missed that coat, as though it's the same one. I went to a military surplus store. and just happened to pick up exactly the same outfit because they bought all of them. Yeah, maybe is the coat like, do they do it in the coat? is what I want to know. Does he take all the clothes off and then put the coat back on and then they have like their little 20 to 30 minute adventure? That or nothing comes off. It's just men at play.com. I have literally another very urgent sex question, which is what on earth do you do with the torchwood contact lenses? Because apparently Reese and Gwen have been doing it and I can't imagine what it would be. Like looking themselves having sex with. Yeah, no, it's either extreme narcissism or like distance play. I don't... Is it a different movie to try to see what each other are doing to themselves and like send instructions back and forth. don't know. It's not super obvious, is it? I mean, he's he's a long haul truck driver. So perhaps he has the laptop when he's on the road and she's just looking down and jiggling a bit. But before that, I think, you know, as well as getting the relief of a hero moment, we actually have that really kind of fun montage of them all committing crimes. So much fun. Oh, it's crazy. Oh, that is hilarious. Like, it's so stupid. And did this not give children ideas throughout England? I had no ideas whatsoever watching it as a kid. It is actually the sort of thing that you can only do on torture it. I mean, you know, because Doctor Who is for children or is for families and, you know, to some degree has to be a bit of a role model, having all of our heroes commit crimes is really only something that we can do on torture. And it is hilarious. It's really adorable, I think. It really hit home for me just how efficient the scripting is here. Like, we go into a montage for it. That's something that I feel like, um, the more recent spinoff war between really could have used more of where we could just blitz through different beats and comedy and juggle characters a bit more. It's, it's fun to see everybody doing a little different thing that builds. Yeah. And, you know, with the with the culmination of Jack stealing the sports car, which is just hilarious. Just adorable. And like, it is a really fun moment. This is a fairly relentless 5 hours, and there isn't a lot of humour, and it's still torchwood. It's still a Doctor Who spinoff. It still should be funny. And so giving them that light moment. And also, you know, there is some other stuff in that the new hub in hub too. You know, the stuff about the beans, the stuff that we mentioned before about, you know, Yanto trying to seduce Jack and, and, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. Like all of that stuff is actually really kind of fun and adorable. I mean, we had, it was the fun. There was some fun stuff in episode 2 with Yanto's sister. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like driving off while they're all arresting the guys taking out the house. Yeah, or stealing the torchwood car as well in episode one, that dreadful car that makes them walk so stupid. So all of that stuff is kind of fun, but this in particular because it ends in such a dark place for Jack. It ends in that admission. So it starts with some triumph for Jack, you know, who's overcome being buried in concrete. Um, and wearing tracks of pants, which seems to be pants. That was brought to his very lowest in tracksuit fans. You know, it kind of has to have that trajectory, I think. But certainly that's a hugely fun sequence. Well, I mean, given what Captain Jack's famous for, it's weird that he's not okay with being in tracksuit pants, you'd think that would be his go-to outfit so everyone could see what he's famous for. And so this particular plot, this particular thread, which starts with Jack's hero moment and then ends and ends the episode with his admission that he gave the children to the 456 the 1st time. And it even ends with him saying, as a gift, the very word that the 456 have just used themselves to describe what they want. And I guess that thread basically is Gwen's subplot, isn't it? Like Gwen gets Clem out of lockup and slowly, you know, very slowly through traffic. There's a big traffic jam so that she arrives at the crucial moment. And he can smell Jack. He can smell, Jack. We all can. Thank you, Nathan. You said what we're all thinking. That's just that's one of those things watching this that really reminded me. I am watching a Russell T Davies show. He just has this deep love of weird sensory details and the puerile that no other writer would even think to do, and I'm not sure how I feel about it, to be honest. He also really enjoys decimating populations. Yes, definitely. When was... Like Series 3 is what, 2007? This is 2009. Like, oh, wait a minute, he doesn't decimate the sea devils. He wipes out 90% of them. Yeah, yeah. It's the trade-off. The other 10%. Yeah, the other... I will say in comparison to the sea devil's business. This takes ages to build the little case. Whereas in the sea devil's like, yeah, we probably took a bit long with that. Would you do that really quickly in the 1st episode? I mean, I think that I actually think that this works really well that the, that there is the mystery of what the children do, which is just this sort of massive, incredible hawk. Like it's super memorable. Very high concept, very, very easy to understand and super visual. But then we don't get the aliens until halfway through the show. And what we do get instead is the mystery of why Jack is being targeted, who those 3 other people are. And so we get that mystery solved here. And then that clears the decks to let us do the 456, but we don't have to do them for too long. Like they don't wear out their welcome. Whereas obviously in war between the land and the sea, the tank is sort of set up, isn't it? In episode one. And then they replay all the same footage in episode two, like we're watching the Thunderbirds and the palm trees going down. Yeah, yeah. Which, yeah. So I think that that works incredibly well. And because there's enough going on, because we're introducing all of these other characters and characters who are reacting to the children and characters who have the children are in sort of various, you know, in Jack's family and Yanto's family and Frobisher. We've got enough happening to kind of keep us going. So we never feel like we're marking time, even though the show sets up. This is not going to happen till tomorrow. This is not going to happen until, you know, the end of the day and so on. So it, you know, like it creates some future deadlines, but we never feel like we're just spinning our wheels waiting for them. Yeah, I've got to say the 1st conversation with the 456 is one of those moments where Uris Lynn has taken us on a big wide shot and it's just tiny little Peter Capaldi walking slowly forwards in the room and he's so softly spoken, you're like, I can't believe this is the same guy that plays Malcolm Tucker, that when he says the word shit, it's like, ooh, that's the biggest thing you've said. That's the worst swear that's come out of your mouth. yeah It's such a weird impact. And it's the same guy that plays the doctor and is so incendiary and active and it's this quiet, terrifying little man. It's such a great performance from him. I've said this multiple times. He is the best actor to regularly play the doctor. He is. Oh, no contest. So he's just so brilliant and so well timed and you don't notice that these 4 different characters we know him for. Three, three, which in the Doctor Who universe and one in the Doctor Who adjacent universe. They're all so different Yeah, I forget that it is actually the same actor. Yeah. Yeah. Like this is Frobisher. like you don't say, oh, it's Peter Capaldi. You think it's Frobisher as the character? Not the penguin. No, no, no, but head cannon wise, he is the penguin, remember? Let's kind of talk about that. We do have the 456 here now, finally. We're wise not to give them a name. They don't have a space name, and they refuse to give one. So... Yep, we have that. Well, maybe because it's pronounced by spitting all over the window. What do we think of that puke anyway? Is it puke? Is it some other bodily fluid? Is it because of the child drugs? I actually think I actually think it's brilliant. And I think I think the reason is that you have a contrast between the incredibly crisp and cultured voice that it speaks with, how incredibly measured it is, how it's prepared to just sit and let its interlocutors just sort of twist on the weird waiting for a ply. It just leaves people there. These huge gaps in the conversation. Oh, yes. It's clearly, really very intelligent. But the screaming and the growling, and the fact, like it, it's spraying bodily fluids all over the walls, in a, in a way, there's that incredible moment, isn't there, where, um, where Frobisher, in not in the 1st conversation, but in the 1st big recorded conversation that, that lower season that the prime minister sees that it does that screaming, shrieking thing and smashing against the walls and and spraying the walls with the excrement. Um, And Capaldi says, is everything okay? I'm concerned or, you know, forgive me, I'm concerned. And then it just kind of parrots that back at him in this really aggressive, dismissive way. And so the mere fact that we don't know what that is, but that there's something disgusting and animalistic about it, that it's dripping with mucus all the time, that we don't get to see it properly ever. It reminds me a little bit of Anthony Hopkins's, as Hannibal Lecter, where he's very, very cultured and urbane. And the contrast between that and the disgusting things that he's prepared to touch and and it's like that, I think. I can smell your penguin from here. I think it's also, I wonder if, so the behaviour of the 456 when you pull out and look at it, like they're drug addicts, for one thing, they're demanding gifts for another. They parrot you back to you in some sort of mocking way and they're spitting all over the glass. Are they annoying teenagers at the shops? Can you buy me a 6 pack, sir? I mean, it is kind of, you know, love crafty and in the sense that it's just this weird, unknowable thing that doesn't even have a name that we can't understand in any way, but that it is really kind of viscerally disgusting and sort of slimy and frightening and incomprehensible. And I think as well, one of the things that we've talked about over the last couple of weeks is the show lands on calling them drug addicts, you know, that the, they bolt themselves to the children, because the children producer chemical that makes them high, that gives them a hit, as they say. But they're also conceived of as paedophiles, aren't they? They're people who violate the bodily autonomy of children in order to get off. Yeah, in order to get off. And we have characters in dialogue talk to people like last week. You know, Yanto went to a little girl at the playground and tried to see what was going on with her when she'd stopped and her mother calls him a pervert and tells him to kind of get away. Yeah, and the same thing with the car when they're shaking the car in that thing. Like, oh, you paedophile. staying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So all of that anxiety, because there is a real anxiety and we talked about this as well, that as gay men, there's something about this as slightly inaccessible probably to us, or as childless gay men anyway. The way that people own their children or see themselves as owning their children on top of the way that they're anxious about their children and the way they love their children and stuff and all of those things are kind of being played with all the way through here, I think. Yeah, I mean, that's a good point with the children and not us, you know, having that experience, but also we can, that is our in because I'm sure we've all at times experienced being accused of being pervs. But, you know, homophobic people. in our lives. Maybe not Kevin, because he's not as grown up as us. But in our day, the 2 things were inextricable. Like, and even when you look at someone like Kevin Spacey, when you know, he was accused of molesting Anthony Rapp, and instead of saying, oh, I absolutely did that, and I'm really sorry about it he came out of the closet as if it's like, no, no, no, we're not talking about you being gay. We're talking about you interfering with a 14 year old boy. And he just had those 2 in his head as, oh, that's the same thing. And a lot of people back in the day were completely completed the two. And, you know, you would. I remember once when I was in radio and this is in the 2000s and it was like, oh, maybe we shouldn't have Adam come to this thing because it's a kid's party and everyone's like, why not? And I had a step monster at the time that I was living with on the weekend. like, yeah, he's fine. But that was just kind of an attitude. And I guess that's part of what, you know, Russell's trying to expose here on some level is that everyone was a paedophile at that time in England, like everyone that was, you know, that was a word thrown around like crazy about everybody, little, did we realise that all the people in charge, throwing that word around were in fact the paedophiles. That's why they were sort of familiar with the use of the word. I mean, that's sort of a thing with this too, with Torchwood is fundamentally playing with conspiracy thrillers and classic conspiracy theory, and 2 of the big ones that Children of Earth touches on are, of course, the elites are coming to take your children, and also later on, they have a sort of vaccine panic story beat. It's the sort of thing that ages quite strangely in good ways and bad, but it is very much in conversation with what people are going to be screaming about secret government organisations like Torchwood doing in the 1st place. Yeah, yeah. Let's talk about some of the secondary characters for a second. I thought that Alice and Stephen had a pretty great week this week. She's amazing. She is. I love her. Yeah, I really like her. I think she's incredible. I would love to know what she was going to do with that knife. Yeah, yeah. It's awesome, isn't it? It's so great Like she actually leaves the kitchen. And it's really kind of well done. Like, you know, she hears a dog, like the sound of a dog. I was watching it this morning and Alfie reacted really badly to the sound of the dog. He was running around looking for it. But she reacts to the sound of the dog. She kind of looks in and out. She grabs 2 things from the kitchen, like the chopping board and the knife and then runs just as like the armed goons come into her house. And then within a 2nd she's used the chopping board to like smash this guy in the head and steal his gun. And now she's running around the streets with a gun. It's awesome. She's so great. She's so great. And even the bit at the beginning too, which kind of intercunts between the crime bit because the crime bit kind of spills over a bit because, you know, she does the sneaky thing where she goes to the woman across the road and says, can I borrow your phone and then she kind of realises she's being traced, I think. Yeah. And then you get Jack, of course, and we'll talk about this later going into Frobisher's house and stealing Anna's phone and we'll talk about that too. But I mean, here, I just think she's fantastically strong. And I was saying last week, I think that I really, really like the woman who plays Johnson. Oh yeah. But she's looking at down in the hole and pouring in the concrete. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's great. She does overpluck her eyebrows a little bit, but I'm, like, I'm I'm repanticated for you. It was the style of the time. But she's really great, and I have sort of suggested, because I think next week, her and Alice actually bond slightly, like, and gradually, like, they end up having quite an interesting relationship, I think. But here she's just incredibly strong. And I think the one moment that I think we see the beginning of that relationship is where Alice says to her, if you hurt Stephen I will kill you and her reply is just understood, you know understood. I love that standoff. It's beautiful. a beautiful moment. I think the really smart twist is them defusing the situation by her saying, if I wanted either of you dead, you already would be. It's the sort of just bringing logic into a standard beat where the characters really get the measure of each other. I thought that was really well played. I just love how that character, and she's, she, like, she's so chilling. But you don't get the impression that she's necessarily evil. She's just doing her job. Her job is evil and it has hurting people. But there's that line where Alice says, take me, but leave him. He's only a kid and she says, so? And it's like, oh. But I mean, later her concern for children. Do you know what I mean? It actually becomes apparent, like, when she knows what her government is actually doing? She comes over to our side. And that's more effective because she's someone whom we've seen you know, attempting to kill our leads and stuff. In many ways, she is, she becomes one of the heroes of the story towards the end. Like she... She certainly one of our gang. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And of course, there is just a brilliant economy as well in ending that scene with Stephen pointing and us not knowing why. And so we go straight into the pointing when we're in the middle of something else. And that is something I think that happens a couple of times where during the course of the thing, we're actually in the middle of another scene and the children interrupt the action by suddenly behaving oddly at the behest of the 456. And here it's Stephen pointing, it's something that we've never seen before. And it's really just another very clever thing because it is the 456 trying to implicate England, which it's been trying to do all the way through. Like it's, you know, it's been trying to make it clear that England is responsible for all of this. Yeah. And it's Rhiannon, who realises that London's over there, Reese, I think, realises as well, and then it's Yanto, who realises that they're all pointing at Thames house, but we get that montage of all of the newsreaders, you know, saying that everyone in France is pointing west and everyone in the US is pointing east and all of that. So, and then we kind of narrow it down to Thames house. everyone in London is pointing at the centre of London. Everyone's pointing at Tim's house, which again, is just really well told through those, you know, very rustly kind of newsreaders. And I really want to shout out to that blonde news reader who is so convincing, just as absolutely the intonation of a BBC news reader. She's so perfect. Absolutely, absolutely 100% credible. I think also the efficiency of the storytelling means you don't have to dwell on some of the oddities of a concept like that. Like, what direction were people on the exact opposite of the globe from England pointing? Were they pointing down? They're going like, oh, corrections? What happens? It's very much like the Christmas invasion where, you know, like a 3rd of the population walk up to the roof and you kind of go, well is there always a roof? Like what's happening? Some of them were standing on the garden wall. I'm standing on the gutter. I mean, it is great to see Trinity back. It feels weird, though, because, you know, she doesn't really fit in Torchwood, in a way, you know? Like, she, she fits in conspiracy is always in Doctor Who, and she's kind of reassuring until you get to the 2nd RTT era, and she's just got full mental. She's sort of Alex Jones. you know, she works for she works too. I think this is the start of her Candace Owens art. But yeah, like I think all of those things are great and that's obviously the great innovation that Russell brings to Doctor Who in Aliens of London and brings it straight from the 2nd coming which is, you know, where it's a huge way that he goes about telling, you know, giving that story scale. But here, just the fact that they act as a kind of Greek chorus or or, you know, like a narrator and enables some very quick worldwide things to happen, like constantly reminding us that this isn't England, even though we only ever see England. Oh, speaking of 2nd coming, how great is that biblical image of the pillar of fire? Yeah, it's so good, isn't it? It's really good. It's so good. because I watched it on my stupidly large television with my ridiculous 7 speakers. It's crazy loud. Like, I know this has always been a complaint about the BBC Blu rays is that they pump up the, um, the surround sound is stupid. Like everything is miles away. Like they make this enormous sound field and the subwoofer was getting quite a workout and I'm like, yeah, sometimes it's ridiculous. And then sometimes it's just fun. It just looks incredible. And there's a reason, I think, that they've used it. They use it as the kind of hero image on TARDIS IKEA for this episode of, you know, and they use it very prominently in next week's previously on reprise montage thing. It looks so incredibly striking. And the fact that it is a pillar of fire rather than some sort of space beam is actually the right thing to do. Like, even it looked like a transporter effect or something like that. And we don't even, we don't even talk in those terms. Like last week when Bridget was wondering how they were going to get into the tank. You know, we don't say, oh, they'll beam in using a teleport because that's a Doctor Who thing. They just don't say. The point you made about the appropriateness of the pillar of fire the biblical nature of it. They are kind of like gods. And they are visiting some sort of biblical, not judgement because you know, they're doing it for their own purposes. Yeah, it's not an act of God, but it is, it's a biblical kind of thing. You know, like taking 10% like destroying 10% of a population eating 10% of a population, not whatever they're paying to do with them. I mean, God kills a lot of children. Yeah, it's mad for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is like literally a thing. It's what the Passover is about. All of the firstborn children of the Egyptians are killed by God. And again, that has to be a thing that is being referenced or thought about here by the writers, surely. And also diagetically, like the 456 are drama queens, they want to implicate you in the loudest way possible and they want the world scared. I also think they've gone crazy on this one big special effect because everything else is being done practically in the show. They're not really using many visual effects. So it's like, oh, we've got heaps left over in the budget. Let's really go to town on the fire pillar. Because, I mean, it's just a giant puppet, isn't it? The fore 456 is just a really, really impressive puppet. That doesn't have to be... And it's mostly in smoke. Because you're mostly in smoke. that's right Just think what we would think of the Scarasan if it had been mostly in smoke. Imagine if it was a foggy day. Just think how much better legend of the sea devils would be if we couldn't see it. Imagine. It's a great audio plan. When you can't see it's Super Marioing into the boat. We haven't talked about Kush Jumbo enough because I love her so much. When are we doing the Kush Jumbo podcast? Wow, are we doing it now? doing for the last 2.5 weeks? She's great in this, isn't she? I mean, she's so good. She is really, really good. And like a lot of it, like a lot of it is just done. There's something about her facial expression. There's the moment, isn't there where she's watching the Prime Minister on television, talking about looking after the children and things. And everyone's watching it at her work and the camera goes across and we see her watching it as well, but she makes it very clear that she's thinking about what she's learned about how this government works. Like she already knows that the government has killed people in order to try and hush this stuff up. And so she's already disillusioned, but it's everywhere on her face. And the other thing too, is that bit where she has to try and get herself allowed into Thames house. And she does that by telling Bridget that she's having an affair with Frobisher. And she's super embarrassed about having to do that. Like, she's really awkward about that. And the implication from Bridget that she has also had an affair with him and it ended badly, but they still work together and she's kind of the harbouring... Yeah, the first. Don't think you're the first. I also just love all the little glances between them throughout the episode. Like, when Lois is manoeuvring herself to see Peter Capaldi's mouth, she is the only person who notices Lois doing that. Yeah, yeah, Bridget Bridget's all over it. And of course, that pays off in episode five. Like, I think that what happens in episode five. There's that interesting visit where she visits Lois in prison where Bridget visits Lois in prison, and there's that whole speech. And I don't think the story really hugely emphasises the prior relationship between Bridget and Frobisher, but it's strongly hinted at here. But I don't think episode 5 works. And the eventual kind of resolution that Bridget is involved in. I don't think any of that works without the knowledge of that relationship, I think. Can you imagine how much poorer that would have been if they had got Prima to be, Martha? You can't do that with her. God. No. The other reason we talked about this before and Sandra brings this up. It's because Martha comes from a world where there are aliens. Yeah. And Lois does it. like Lois just comes from the world where you catch the buster work for your 1st day on Monday. You know, like, and so her heroism comes out of just being a kind of good person who doesn't have any special powers or any kind of plot magic or anything like that, hasn't survived alien attacks. You know, this is her seeing an alien for the 1st time. Martha's role would have had to be significantly different. And I do think that Lois is better. At this point, Martha has also worked with Torchwood. So how would she infiltrate the government if there were those connections between... Yeah, everyone would have known who she was. Yeah, she would have been one of the people they were trying to kill. I mean, there would have had to have been a significant rewrite. Like, but I think that I think that Martha, and like possibly Mickey was going to be in it as well at one point. I just think that that's too many space people. you know, the fact that that most of our, that all of our series 3 regulars, apart from the main Tortured crew, are just normal people doing their jobs. Can I just say when she's looking up the torchwood thing, it might have been an episode one, but I noticed a factual error, which I very rarely noticed because I'm too excited by the story. On the screen, it said HRH Queen Victoria, and the monarch is never HRH. That's all the other royals. Ah yes. Monarch is HM. It's always Her Majesty, not Her Royal Highness. Thank you very much. There you go. HRH is everyone else. The end of the monarchy. Things that I know. I've ruined it for everyone now. So it's also, I noticed another sort of error in the dialogue which is the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, from Frobisher halfway through the episode. Instead of Great Britain and Northern Ireland? United Kingdom. Oh, of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Whoops. I mean, he's nervous and Scottish. That's obviously the script editor needed to do a bit further work. That is actually something that I'm thinking about, and I actually was very impressed about war between, is it emphasised slightly more of the degree to which any representative will be given, you know, scripts to read as opposed to actually being able to have an agency. There's not as much of a sense of that here, which I suppose makes Probisher feel more isolated, but he would be reading a script wouldn't he? You'd think so. But he's a he's a public servant. He'd be writing this group, so we might as well deliver it. It's like sending Sir Humphrey to meet some evil alien, isn't it? except so Humphrey probably would have actually come out of it better. There is that thing. We've had this in the previous episode as well where Frobisher is expendable. And all of that stuff where, you know, it's kind of like the Americans are mad at the English for having this sort of prior contact with the 456 and and even before, I think, anything comes out about the 456 having visited England before. It's the same sort of beat as the end of series 3 where the president of America has words with the master. for unilaterally like, you know, forming some sort of alliance with with an alien race. Yeah. Yeah. It's sort of that ongoing struggle. Doctor Who and related media have of, they are fundamentally sort of British nationalist television, but they're written by people who are also fundamentally sceptical of that. And usually the way they settle that tension is just by punching Americans, which is kind of the easiest move to diffuse that. Although the American guy seems to be in the riety. doesn't he? Yeah, he certainly does seem to be. He seems to win. Yeah, he has righteous anger. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But Green does actually use him, doesn't he, to kind of say, oh all right, I won't go in the room and negotiate and we'll just let the very expendable John Frobisher do that instead? So it does end up being what Green wanted anyway. what he basically said he was going to do to Frobisher yesterday. And there's that great line, you don't become prime minister by accident. Yeah, yeah. around that point. It's, yeah, it's he is really a villain. Yeah, 0 yeah, no. All the prime ministers are realistically. Or dead in a cupboard. Yeah, both. Usually 1st one, then the other in RTDs, Doctor Who. I think that's the thing. I miss about RTD. The 1st go around is he let his cynicism lead him a bit more. He talked a lot in interviews prior to the newer era where he felt the world was so dark he wanted Doctor Who to be a more comforting force. And I get that impulse, but he's just a better writer when he's a miserable bastard. Yeah, yeah. And also in some ways, that citizen helps you feel less alone. That's one of the things I enjoy about Russell's version, Doctor Who the 1st time around, is the, oh, I have that same sort of cynicism about the world. I'm not alone in feeling that. Yeah. So in some ways, that is the comfort. The comfort is the shared cynicism. I feel like he stopped writing subtext after the 1st season. Like the 1st season with Christopher Eccleston has so much subtext baked into it. Like each episode has like this deep other story behind it. Like even to the point of the long game being very much a critique on news media and hoarding power and all that kind of thing. Like everything has like a 2nd layer to it. But from season 2 one was just like, no, no, I've just got to tell the story and get home. I mean, I think we've sort of said this before on flight to entirety, at least, that like season one is being done in the dark they have no idea what it's going to be like, and then suddenly they're this giant hit, and they decide we don't need to be tentative anymore. And then, of course, this thing, tortured children of earth, where they're able to commandeer, like at 5 consecutive nights on BBC one at 9 PM, and where this stupid show, which had sort of 4000000 viewers were sort of bumbling along at 4000000 viewers, suddenly getting kind of 6000000 viewers and becoming a big thing. Um, you know, like this is, like I love that 1st era as well of RTD and I'm also kind of a big fan of RTD too. But this, I think, you know, in a way is kind of their crowning achievement in the sense that it's the longest Doctor Who story basically ever. It's got a massive cast. It's really hugely ambitious. Uh, it strives to get the kind of a level of realism and a level of kind of everyday life in there that Doctor Who sometimes doesn't get. The stuff with Rihanna. Oh my god. This week. That bit. So, so we go to her house and she's she's cleaning some kid who's got food or something. She's got the children. And it's Johnny's idea to charge 10 quid ahead and she doesn't like it, but the moment a kid throws up on himself or something. And she's washing the clothes. She said, tell your mum it's another 2 quid. And that's when, like, that's the point at which the children are all pointing. And I have to say, and I will say this again later because it continues to be the case, Misha is the single best child when it comes to doing scary possessed by aliens acting. She's so great. She's like this little kid with pigtails who absolutely throws herself into it. She does the best scream in episode one. She's fiercely pointing at her mother with her beetled brown. and stuff. She's so great. Like, in episode 2 or episode three, by a sapone. Bias Sapono. was very funny. That was, yeah. That's not mission. Okay, I have to say an anecdote about that. Shortly after children of earth aired. I was at San Diego Comic-Con, which was one of the years Russell T Davis was at that event. And I'm running around there as an actual child and I meet Russell T. Davies. And I tell him, Torchwood was amazing. And he looks at me like, a horrible crime has just happened. He's like, oh, you watch Torchwood. I was like, no, my parents said it was okay. I loved it. And then I quoted, we want a pony. We want a pony, which I did put him at ease that that's what a child took away from that. I mean, it does work, you know, like it's that Doctor Who thing working on multiple levels as well. You know, like the incredible spectacle, but the comedy, the hero moments, all of that sort of stuff. Yanto yesterday with the with the big forklift thing. Like all of that really fun, silly stuff, the criming, like that's absolutely the sort of thing that you could appreciate. And then all of the cynicism and all of the darkness in his Doctor Who and here is much more conceptual. Despite how it sort of gross the 456 are. But just the fact that what not just what the aliens are going to do to us, but what our own government would do to us and does do to us all the time. All the time. It's also, I love how they're foregrounding for the most part, the children that are going to be affected, the children of working class and poor people. Yeah. Yeah? Like the, the, the children that are, that um, and her sister and her husband are looking after are the children that they decide in later episodes that they're going to give. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, it's just, I've got to say, like, I love that they're using Katie Wicks, who plays Yanto sister in this, like, she's so gloriously, uh, working class and amazingly horrific and, you know but then really maternal looking after all those kids. And it's, I'm so, like it took me, like, I've watched, so this is the 3rd one now. I've watched it. It took me 3 episodes to go, oh, she's the officious woman from Ted Lesson. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It didn't register for ages because again, so many great performers in this show playing characters that we haven't seen them play anywhere else before. It's just, yeah, the cast is really phenomenal. Like every single person is kind of batting a 100. Even the guy that's doing, you know, building the cage that is just sort of like sneakily looking off everywhere all the time. So we said last week that we actually have 3 classes, don't we? We have like a permanent undersecretary, Frobisher and his wife Anna, who live in a big house. We see the exterior of the house. We get the more middle class, Alice and Stephen, uh, in that other house. And then we get the working class, you know, Rhiannon and Johnny and their kids. And in fact, they're the kids who go on the run from the army who are snatching children off the street in episode five. Yeah, I actually just watched this episode in isolation without the rest of Children of Earth, which felt very wrong. very fundamentally unnatural. It is very strange to do that as a Doctor Who fan. But also just the fact that, you know, the episodes don't get individual titles, really, the fact that they air on consecutive nights, that each one of them covers a day's action. It is completely serialised. It's like Planet of the Spiders. It's not like Tortured Series 4 or Doctor Who series 3 or anything like that that tells an overarching story. It is just a single story, you know, really sort of strong way. And although this does have that individual that sort of trajectory that Jack goes on as well as the arrival of the 456. There is a particular thing that happens here. It does really kind of merge into the whole thing, I think. Yeah, genuinely, if you had put a gun to my head or asked me, where does this episode specifically start and end? I would have given you the complete wrong answer? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wonder if this is Russell trying to recapture that, um, feeling that kids of the 80s had watching Doctor Who when in the UK it was was it like Monday, Tuesday or Tuesday, Wednesday? And so like that would get a cliffhanger and then the very next day was the next episode. Like we had it in Australia all the time. That was our experience of watching Doctor Who. So watching Children of Earth for me was just like, oh, it's the old days. You get the cliffhanger, then the next day, the story, then you cliffhanger, and the next day, the story, and you got 5 days of fun. And then the goodies. And then the goodies. was before. But it was also, it's also, I think, the experience of just spending a long time with people. Like, I think that when the show came back in 2005, it was inevitably going to be 45 minute episodes that were whole story tune in every week for part of a story, still less a quarter of a story. That's madness. Like who wants that? But what you lose is having a big guest cast in a story, which we get to have here and having a story told over a period of time. And, you know, this has a lot of the same kind of vibe as, I think season 7 of classic Peru, where, you know, you spend 3 hours with a group of people who all have their own relationships with each other, who interact, who have their own arcs and things. And then there's a big problem on earth that has some kind of scale to it. Like it does seem like the Silurians or ambassadors of death or something. There's even a big capture escape with Jack in the 2nd episode. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. It is actually like that, isn't it? It's like the, you know, episode 5 of Invasion of the Dinosaurs where we're just running away for an episode. But there is enough other stuff going on because we have all of our other characters and their stories developing as well. It doesn't just seem like we're marking time the way we are. Oh, no, it feels... It's more like Liz running over the wheel. Ambassadors of death. But again, it's the efficiency here that really makes it shine. You can get the thrills of the capture escape to keep the pace off while juggling 17 other plates with the large cast. So it never really feels like you're marking time. It always feels like there's another plot advancing, more attention being built. I want to talk about one other thing that he's part of Jack's arc and it is the phone call that he has with Frobisher just before Frobisher goes in and speaks to the 456 that 2nd time. And it's the one that lands with Frobisher saying that Jack is a good person. This show will sure prove that wrong. Yeah, yeah. I think it's, like, I think it's really properly good because, you know, like Jack is a sort of stupid ludicrous space person. I mean, he even calls himself a space-time event or something, you know, like a fixed point in time. know, just absolutely absurd. And Frobisher is a civil servant, you know, like he's just kind of like a sort of fairly normal person who has a family and a car and wife and 2 daughters and stuff. But Frobis is evil and acknowledges that he's evil in a way that he sees that Jack isn't. And I think that that's really properly good and properly interesting. But then he just says, hold my beer. I think the show is very interesting in setting that up to prove it wrong, actually, because by the end, we have Jack murdering a child, whereas we get a speech about how John Probisher is a good man. But even at the end of this episode, we go from Jack being told he's a good man to the discovery that Jack gave the kids to the forefighters. He's the man that fights the monsters. This is what he does. then it's like, no, no, no, I like, you know he was there. He gave the kids like it's just, 0 my god. It takes a monster to fight a monster. You know that. And it's really properly good too, because that scene at the beginning of day one. We see no adults at all. There's a hint, I think, if you look back at it, you might be able to see like Jack's coat or something. But basically that's a thing that just children do rather than something that's done to them by adults. The adults are effaced from that version of it. And so all the way through, we keep going back to that in Clem's flashbacks. Like he keeps remembering more and more of it. Until the point just before Jack comes along, I think, that he actually sees that Jack was there. And there's the moment that even Jack realises he was there. Like, I thought he was being super shifty when Yanter was mentioning the names of those people who were killed at the same time, but he's not. I was misreading that or maybe it was just a... It's just John Perriman trying to act. Oh my god. Maybe that was it. I think that's cool. You can't act through that. Botox. It's real hard. But he realises like that's when he remembers, isn't it? Like he gets Yanto to bring up the pictures of the names and then you know, gets like the internet was so wild. back then in 2009. Get, you know, there. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Now, age them down. Enhance that quarter. Make them back in one. Put them in lodge for uniforms. That's them. That's them. Yeah, and that's when he realises and that's when he heads off isn't it? Yeah. But that's the points at which he's being told that he's a good man by Frobisher after he almost his way of to make sure to sort of persuade him not to go back and do anything with Anna. But the thing is, the thing that Frobis is threatening to do to Stephen in that phone call is what actually Jack will end up doing to Stephen in the final episode. It's interesting that Clem can only smell queer people apparently. That's not clear our setup there, because he smells yepto. like he's queer. Nazi's like, I can smell him. He's coming about Jack. He never mentions how Gwen smells. No, he could smell the pregnancy. He did smell that she was pregnant. in part one. So he could smell her. I really like Yanto's reply, though. It's just, hey, it's not 1965 now, which I thought was pretty good. Here's queer. Like, it's almost a childlike response. like, he's not saying queer as that person is a queer as an insult. That's the word he knows. And he silly as a child as this man is still a child. He's emotionally stunted at that age. So like, I didn't read it as him being homophobic. I just read it as him using a word he knows to describe someone who is queer. Also, Yanto's having trouble in this moment of like not knowing if he's gay, if he's bisexual, if he's jack sexual or what's happening. So I think it's also a lot of internalised homophobia suddenly coming out of him, like going, it's, you can't say that kind of thing. It's like, but... Yeah, like I had actually thought it was worse than that. And I still think probably it's worse than you. think it is James. I do think that he is meant to be, like he's a sympathetic character and someone that we have, you know, like we have a fair amount of pity for. We see him crying when Gwen turns up to bust him out of the lockup and she has to hug him, even though he smells, I can just tell. Um, uh, and she, she, yeah. Yeah. But he is a sympathetic character and then he comes out with a slur. Do you know what I mean? Like, I'm happy to reclaim queer. I think it's a great word. I use it to refer to myself all the time. But it's even saying LGBTQIA. Exactly. Exactly. And so he is using it as a slur. And I just thought it was kind of interesting for Russell to make us sympathetic with a character who is like a bit awful in it. in at least some way. Yeah. It's a very Russell thing to do, though. I mean, of course it is. You know, Rose uses gay in a pejorative term. Yeah, yeah, yeah Like the 2nd episode. I think I think that's what I love about Russell's characters. They're never completely sympathetic. They never completely unflawed. No, they're never good in the evil shades. Yeah. Shades of gray. well-meaning and not well-meaning. Yeah, yeah. Shades of gay. Shades of gay. So our 2 plants really come into focus like right at the very end don't they? And so we have Jack kind of reaching his low point in that arc and he was blown up at the end of episode one. So he's... blow point. Yeah. blowpoint. And the thing that the thing that's really good, I think the thing that ties the 2 plot threads together is just the use of the word gift. So this is Jack admitting, even though he wasn't in the room, he uses the same word that the 456 used to describe what they want from humanity, which is the children they want, a gift. And then when Jack comes in, he says, I gave the 12 children to the 456 in 1965 as a gift. Just to understand how he's not put that together until now, even in the 1st episode when the kids have started doing stuff. Yeah, but this is a guy who's lived 100s and 100s of years. Like, I, I, like, whenever it comes up in my stupid solo podcast where it's like, oh, how can the doctor not know this? Like, I think I was talking about the, um, the story in the engine and how does the doctor remember being the fugitive doctor? And it's like, those memories might be in there, but he's had 1000s of years of memory. Who knows when they're going to pop up? Like, the doctor doesn't have the memory of a fan. Well, also, the 456 didn't have this modus operandi before, you know, last time they showed up, they just wanted kids and they're like, here, we're going to cure the flu for you. Which, honestly, if we're going to nitpick, it's very writerly to have the tab Jack say gift, when really, in no way was a gift, it was a trade. Yeah, but it is deliberately that, isn't it? is trying to tie them together. And it's sort of rather wonderful, I think, to have the 456 use that word. And then have him come in, not having heard that, and use the same word. But also the way he talks to Frobisher. He goes, if this is who it's meant to be, you know that they don't stick to their word. Because obviously it implies that the gift was given to just rack off and don't come back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, and so, of course, you know, like the 10%. Do they come back again in 40 years and ask for another 50%? We just have to kill them at this point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's all the time we have this week. We'll be back next week to work out just whose children are going to fill the home office's giant gift pan bar in Torchwood, Children of Earth, day four. 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 the entirety of flight through entirety which includes every episode of our 4 Doctor Who podcasts. Until next time, remember that when you turn up to a friend's place for dinner, a bottle of wine is a gift likely to go down much better than 10% of a child. Thank you very much for listening and good night. Good night. Ta-ta. Good night. That was 500 year diary, starring Nathan Bottomley, Kevin Bernard Adam Richard, and James Selwood. The theme was composed by Cameron Lamb. This episode, nervous and Scottish, was recorded on the 7th of March, 2026 and released on the 29th of March. This week, we'd like to thank our newest sponsor, GastroStop. If you're invading an alien planet to demand the surrender of 35000000 of their children, do it with the confidence only gastro stop can provide, now available in chewable mint flavour that you can take without water or hydrochloric acid. Incidentally, I just have to ask, have you guys seen the news about what's happened in Cardiff recently evolving Torchwood? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. and Melvin actually just posted because he was on, uh, he was on, uh, well, episode two. I think he was on last week. And he was talking about the shrine coming down. And of course, um, Gareth, was he on, um, he like posted something on Instagram or something, like talking about it, which was kind of sweet. Yeah, like it is kind of sweet. It was insane. It was always insane. And we will talk about it because obviously he dies in in a couple a couple of episodes time. Yeah, he's not going to be fine. Don't spoil this rewatch podcast. But, but it's, I, for one, I'm very mad, Russell, at Barry Argaze. Yeah, and that was it. There was a huge bury our gaze thing. Do you know what I mean? It's like Russell's, you know, like Russell's killing the gay character and this is an outrage. And for me, like I just thought, oh, you know, like this elevates that relationship and becomes like a giant operatic thing, do you know what it means? like a giant loss. It's, you know, they freed Janto. But, but he, um, but, you know, like Jack's feelings about that are hugely important for the rest of the thing, that's a hugely important consequential relationship, it's not just a fling. It, you know, it, it, it, it, some, it's a big deal. And why can't the gay characters have that in the thing? And why can't Yanto die heroically, you know, trying to do something. Also, quite frankly, is the 1st time their relationship's ever been taken seriously. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no, it becomes a proper thing. And in fact, that episode, you know, we'll talk about it in a few weeks time, but the, the, you know, Gwen's reaction, the, the, all the bodies in that room in Thames house and and Yanto's there. Like it's it's really good. Like, I think it's properly good. And, and, like, you know, it's a TV show and whatever. But like being affected by a TV show is one of the reasons that you watch it. I mean, one of the reasons that this is good, is that it does manage to do that. over and over again as well, in all sorts of different ways and different contexts, all the stuff about children. Like, you know, the people who have joined or are going to be joining us on these podcasts who have children. Like talking to them about what the experience of watching these is like when, you know, you've looked after children or cared for them or whatever. We do offer counselling. Yeah, yeah, we do. I'm very sympathetic. Yeah, if you've been affected by issues raised in this podcast. Yeah. Anyway, that's all. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, maybe that's a tag. to be funny about, like, and not feel guilty about something so dark. Yeah, but the show doesn't care about being funny about it. you know what I mean? It's Russell. Russell's funny about things that are funny and anything that's you know, that is going to be blackly funny is just black. It doesn't. He doesn't go there. He's just like, no, no, I'm just going to let you sit in your discomfort. Because more footwheel. Wait, like he'll always crack wise, I think. Yes. But Russell, yeah, he sort of drops it a bit. Like the, like, I mean, it is satire, isn't it? Like these these satire and particularly that just sort of exaggerated stuff like with Denise at the end and stuff, but it's only barely satire. I mean, yeah, I, no, I, I'm just thinking about how in 2009, when this came out, it was, everything was, it was paedophile everything. Like, and there was that huge scandal with brass eye, you know making jokes about paedophilia and you couldn't really talk about it and it was, but it was on every, the front of every newspaper and people had to go and knock on doors because when they were 19 they had sex with a 17 year old. And so now that's their job, every time they move is that they're a sexual predator. So it was like a huge big thing that was going on. So it was, on some level, it does feel like, you know, look, this is what you think of a paedophile. Like it's a monster that's spewed. Goop into a room. But I'm also thinking just about how England does have... I mean, like all of our countries who, but England, in particular has these sort of underclass that is just kind of that sales beneath, you know, like that doesn't get assistance of people who live on the estate, you know, the people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's historical. Like that's ever since they were plans ever since they were working the land. There have always been, England has always had a class of people that were disposable. And, but now we feel like we're morally superior and we wouldn't do that, but this show is basically going... you know what I mean? It's not just that we would do it if aliens come along, but we're doing it already. All the time. Yeah, and the fact that you have that mention of the league tables which is so brutal, might be the best line of the thing. you know what are the school league tables for law then, you know, so good. So great. It's so good. Just, um...