Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to 500 year diary, the only
Doctor Who podcast that thinks it's about time they cleaned up
that dreadful mess at Mermaid Key.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Fiona.
I'm Peter, and I'm Todd.
It's Thursday the ninth of July 2009.
It's been just 23 hours since the 456 unveiled their Amazon wish
list, and tonight, well over 6000000 people have tuned in to watch
the Prime Minister chewing his lip, while his mouse pointer hovers
over the buy now button.
It's time to watch Torchwood, Children of Earth, day four.
All right, so we open with 1965 Scotland, and this is really the
moment where the first of the two plot threads gets resolved, isn't
it?
We've had 2 plot threads.
We have why the children behaving like this.
But the other one is, why is everyone trying to kill Jack?
Apart from the obvious reason that he's played by John Barriman.
Those kids are just watched the web planet.
They were ready to die.
I think they might have just actually watched episode one of the
Dale X Master plan, perhaps.
Yeah, we're all children these days.
You know what?
I can't believe they talk about the Indonesian flu and killing 25
million.
Like, this is all pre-COVID.
It's just such a coincidence.
Yeah, it is pretty amazing, isn't it?
So we've seen this scene before.
We saw it at the beginning of episode one and we saw some
flashbacks last night when Clem started to remember what was kind
of happening.
But now we see it right from the beginning, don't we?
And we see it before the children are involved.
We see all of the adults who are killed, like those other 3 adults
that are killed at the same time is Jack is killed.
And we see what's really going on.
And we're presented with a trolly problem, I think.
It's 25000000 people or the lives of 12 children.
This is why I don't particularly rate the way that this story
plays out.
I think it's got very good atmospherics, but at heart it is just
the trolly problem, and we've seen that so many times in drama
that it didn't really have much effect on me. discuss.
Well, I think we'll talk more about the trolly problem next week
because that's obviously a thing.
And at the very end of this episode, the trolly problem becomes
67000000000 people or 35000000 children.
And that seems worse for some reason than what happened in 1965.
And then eventually it becomes one child and 67000000000 people
and that's the trolly problem that we presented within tomorrow
nights episode.
But what's the solution?
Well, in fact, what the solution always is in Doctor Who, because
Doctor Who doesn't subscribe to the consequentialist morality that
says, well, it's got to be the best outcome for the best number of
people.
And we have Yanto, I actually say, an injury to one is an injury
to all.
There's no injury that you can inflict on some people that doesn't
in some way affect everyone else.
And so what Doctor Who does is it always creates an opportunity
for the doctor to refuse the morality of the of the trolly
problem.
Oh, he stops the train.
Yeah.
Just finds a cunning plan to somehow stop the train so nobody
dies.
Exactly.
And that's kind of what Yanto says to Jack, isn't it?
Like Yanto says the jack I know would have stood up against this.
And then later when Jack and Yanto get into the car, Jack says to
Yanto, let's go and stand up to this.
Like he kind of accepts that the trolly problem is an unacceptable
framing.
And I think what's really good about this is that it actually
plays with all of that stuff.
So Jack tries to stand up.
He refuses the trolly problem framing of the situation, and this
episode, and what I think makes this maybe the best episode of the
week of the run, is that it looks like they're going to win at the
end of episode 4, and there's all these little triumphant punch
the air moments for the audience, as we see Torchwood, finally
fighting back, and of course, it doesn't work.
And so next week, Jack has no choice.
But to accept the trolly problem framing, and he gets a trolly
problem where it's one life up against 67000000000 lives, but it's
the life of his own grandchild and the destruction of his
relationship with his daughter that is the price that he has to
pay.
Yeah, yeah.
They make it explicit in the drama, don't they?
They say that when the doctor isn't there, when he doesn't drop
down from space and solve things for them, then they have to
accept the framing, they things go awry and so they have to make
the hard choices because the doctor isn't there to save the
situation.
And in fact, the only time, really, when the trolly problem kind
of works in Doctor Who is, when it's someone who willingly
sacrifices themselves to save other people.
And sometimes that's even the doctor, of course, because he can
regenerate.
But the idea that the doctor gives his own life to save people or
you know, that Galloway, gives his life to save people or
whatever.
But that's not what happens here because anyway, we're getting
ahead of ourselves, I think.
Jack doesn't come off at all well here, like with the kids. saying
that it's an adventure and he's really awful.
And the 456 don't take 12 children.
They only take 11.
Yeah. which adds into the situation.
Maybe they're back because they didn't get that one as well, even
though it's not explicitly stated anyway.
It's 9% better than their original.
But it's Gwen who says to Jack, this was a protection racket, and
you must have known that they would be back, you know, and he said
well, we had 44 years.
Yeah, 44 years to come up with a solution and they just kind of
pretended it didn't happen.
My problem with was with the crazy evil ice agents that were going
around trying to kill Jack and everybody else. because it became
clear that they didn't really know what Jack's involvement was and
what had actually happened and about the children towards the end
of episode four.
So I thought, well, why were you so psychotically hell bent on
just murdering all these people in cold blood?
Like, I couldn't see like why anyone would want to actually do
that and take such pleasure in doing it.
Yeah, I mean, that whole plot there gives us space to have
exciting things happen while we wait for the four, five, 6 to
arrive.
And so episodes one and 2 are largely about the, like there's the
mystery of what the children are doing and why, but that's not the
plot that's actually going on.
The plot is the government is out to kill Jack and the members of
Torchwood because of the blank page that Capoldi, well, doesn't
sign, but gives to Bridget.
And then bitch faces just killing everybody like for 4 episodes.
Yeah.
And the great thing about this episode is, and her name's Johnson
I think.
But do they actually say that anywhere?
Like maybe once.
Maybe once.
I didn't even, I was trying to hear her name and I was looking in
the, you know, the credits and I'm going, I just kept calling you
the bitch face all the time, like anxious in black.
She says killing people off left, right and centre.
What is her motivation?
Is she going to get away with this, you know?
But she actually is on our side by the end of this.
And that's the really great moment.
Like, it's not just that this 1st plot gets resolved when Jack is
revealed to have given the kids to the 456 back in 1965.
And I'd actually forgotten that too.
I'd forgotten that point.
In fact, you know, the way that you talk about it, Todd, where
we've talked about the way that the show, and it's particularly
next week's episode, the show lands on drug use as a metaphor for
what the 456 are doing to the children.
But there's a real sense in which the metaphor is paedophilia
where they're abusing the children in order to get physical
pleasure.
Yeah, in order to get satisfaction.
And so, and that paedophilia thing keeps coming up.
Yanto gets called a pervert when he tries to talk to a little girl
in the playground.
Which is very ill advised.
Yeah, yeah.
But here you've got Jack saying, come with me, I'm going to take
you on a lovely adventure.
And so his, you know, involvement here is like a creepy pedo, you
know, like luring children away.
And so it's really, really, like, it's not just that he's killing
the children, but he's doing it in this really creepy way.
He's preying on vulnerable children who have no one to care about
them.
And he, he, like, with Clem, he touches the back of Clem's neck
and puts his hand on Clem's shoulder in order to encourage him to
go there.
Like, there's a lot of physical tenderness between him and Clem in
that in that flashback scene.
It's really, really brutally hard to what?
It is, it's quite known. squirmy to watch and and that whole like
come on a let's come on an exciting adventure like that's the
impression I got as well that it very much is a child sexual abuse
kind of opening line and yeah, I've had a man say that to me when
I was a teenager.
Come outside.
I've got something exciting to show you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's right.
That's what we were always told as kids, as members of Gen X, you
know, that someone would turn up to our school in a van and say
you know, come with me, I want to show you a puppy.
Like, that was absolutely how that was frightening. ice cream.
I'm gonna have ice cream.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I wouldn't have cared to have known what John Barriman would have
splattered all over the inside of the street.
Even without knowing what happens at the end of episode five, I
found him very unlikeable throughout the whole rewatching.
I didn't actually watch episode 5 this time.
I just went, no, I've made it to episode four.
Like, I don't know that I need that extra trauma.
I employed the same philosophy with the dominators.
It's like, yeah, I don't need that at the time in my life.
But yeah, I found him quite unlikeable throughout the thing.
But I also found he's, I didn't particularly bond with his
daughter either.
I'm not sure whether it's I just didn't like her hair.
That sounds like a good thing to say.
She had her Caroline Ford hair happening.
I thought.
Yeah, it was a bit kind of, I found a hairstyle very jarring.
But no, I didn't find her, especially somebody that I sort of
really sort of liked or sympathised with.
Yanto's sister was just gorgeous.
Yeah.
We have raved about the act of who plays Alice earlier on. this
season, and I think she was fantastic, like in last night's
episode where she smacks the guy in the face with a chopping board
and, you know, threatens Johnson with a gun.
All that's pretty gray.
I think she's terrific.
But she's not necessarily warm. up to that point where she's
actually threatened.
Yeah.
I mean, I like a performance all the way through.
I'm just saying, I like the character more in these back 2
episodes than I do earlier on when her family is under threat and
what Jack is doing is just awful.
And just to go back to some of the things that you've been
saying.
It is so disturbing to watch.
I find this just so icky the whole way through.
And when that poor child is revealed in the 456 puppet child.
Yeah, like, you know, the sky is full of diamonds or whatever.
It's just so sickly and gross.
Like, it's just so disturbing and everything is just, it just goes
back to Jack's character.
He's really not a nice person like in this.
And how can you have a lead that's not a nice person.
You know what I mean?
Like, I know the doctor's not a nice person in Doctor Who
sometimes, but to this level, they really are sending him down a
certain path.
It's it's that thing.
Peter, you complain about the early portrayal of Capaldi's doctor
in season eight, you know, she's my carer, she cares, so I don't
have to.
But there's that line in this episode, isn't there where...
That's why they chose Jack because he wouldn't, he wouldn't care
that the children were being sent off to this awful, awful fate.
Yeah.
Yeah, and he doesn't know what the fate is.
He doesn't know exactly what it is, but he does know that it's not
paradise because there's no such thing.
I think, like, that's perhaps the chief problem of torchwood.
Partly it is that just John Barrowman isn't a very strong actor.
And so the very, very emotional scenes, for me at least, don't
land at all, but also that his character is massively unlikeable
in the show.
And I remember the experience of seeing him again in utopia.
And even having him say, oh, that's right, you know, this is what
it used to be like because he's really enjoying himself, the
doctors around.
Martha's there, they're running from the future kind, like they're
having fun.
And it was such a relief after just the misery of watching him
kind of mooning his way through those 1st 2 seasons.
Could you choose another?
I mean, we're talking around the problem slightly in that Captain
Jack is a sporting character and he works as supporting colour.
He doesn't work as a lead because he doesn't have the necessary
depth of a lead character.
So what they do.
The reason why Torchwood, as a rule, is not that satisfactory, and
why children of Earth works better than the others, is that lead
is not Jack, it's Gwen.
Yeah.
God, she's good.
She is really good.
We'll talk about it at the end of the episode.
We'll talk a little bit more about how this episode ends, but I
think Gwen is what actually lands the whole thing.
But there's so many great actors in this.
Yeah.
You know, you don't like Johnson, but I actually think she gives
an incredible performance.
No, I don't like the character.
Like, because she's just like killing everybody for no reason, but
she's really good.
Alice, again, you know, I said I like her in the last 2 episodes
but you know, you look at Reese.
You look at Capaldi, you look at his secretary, whose name I
always forget.
Bridget, the prime minister is good, Bridget, the prime minister.
Yep.
Rhiannon.
Yanto sister.
Oh, and her husband.
Yeah, yeah, Johnny.
Who you think, oh, yeah, he's going to be a real, you know
whatever.
But he actually comes through.
Yeah, yeah.
And of course, Lois, you know?
She's great.
They're all great.
And it just shows up.
Barriman.
I'm sorry it does.
Yeah, it does.
It does.
I agree.
Eros Lynn always casts swell.
And so this has a magnificent cast.
Susan Brown, who plays Bridget, is amazing and does so much with
so little.
And to get someone like Kush Jumbo in her earlier career, is just
you know, quite a find.
She's amazing in this.
There's that moment, the one big punch the air moment.
And we're supposed to, you know, we're relieved that Torchwood, uh
like Torchwood has this big heist thing at the end and we'll talk
more about it, perhaps a little bit later, but they have a plan.
It's not revealed to us beforehand, and it seems to go incredibly
well.
It seems to be really, really successful.
And it's the moment where Lois, who is just an ordinary person and
she puts a hand up and says, I'm a voter, you know, I'm in this
room.
I have something to say.
And then she she gives her big speech.
And then she goes, um, uh, and I guess that's it.
She doesn't have a proper ending to the speech because she's not
the doctor and she's not Jack.
And then she just does this tiny smile of triumph, which is so
exciting and so well judged.
She's magnificently good.
But they're both, both secretaries. are so good.
And because Bridget's not given a lot to do. her desk stare at
lowest all the way through all the way through.
And of course, we'll talk about her moment of tribe, which is next
week.
Yeah, yeah.
But she's just so good in those small roles and you're only as
good as your weakest link.
Yeah. and it's Barryman.
No, it is.
It is, but, you know, that whole cabinet meeting.
I mean, that's too fair to talk about that.
Yeah, yeah.
I think that's in a way really central to the entire show, isn't
it?
Maybe we do talk about that.
So that meeting, it's the Cobra meeting, which is a real thing
that actually happens when there is some kind of crisis.
There was all sorts of news reports about it, for instance, during
COVID.
So it is a real thing, but it's the speech by Denise.
Denise Riley, who will, it seems at the end of tomorrow night's
episode, be taking over as Prime Minister, perhaps, or at least in
a position to kind of run the Prime Minister because she knows
where all the bodies are buried.
Basically, Boris Johnson, let them die and then take over as prime
minister.
Well, I mean, we have, you know, we have a green at a time when
Brown is actually the Prime Minister.
So it's that incredible speech that everyone remembers about what
the school league tables are for, that sat around the table.
They have decided that nice people like us are not going to have
to have our children taken away.
And because it's 10% rather than like 50% or something like that
we can just ensure that the people that we don't know, the people
who are not like us, the people that we don't care about, other
people who suffer at this point.
And it's that thing which she says, which I just think is amazing
where she says, God knows we've tried and we've failed.
Now, I don't know whether she means we've tried to persuade the
456 to be happy with a smaller number of children.
What was it going to be?
It was going to be 6700 children.
We tried, but they wouldn't agree to that.
But I think what she means is that there's an underclass in
England that we've tried to help, but they just won't be helped
and they're the ones that are on benefits.
They're the ones that are on the estate.
They're Yanto's family, essentially, and the people whose children
are being looked after by Rhiannon in their home, they're the
people who we're going to sacrifice.
And that's the way that the British government has historically
worked.
Those are the people who suffer the most when we're doing
austerity.
Those are the people who Harriet Jones improve the life of during
her short prime ministership.
But those are the people that basically, in real, in Britain in
real life, other people who are left behind, who we abandon.
So the decision that's being made there, the decision that Denise
is being advocated for is, in a way, the decision that the British
government makes essentially every day.
And it's brutal.
Like it's so brutal.
Yeah.
Yes, and like that whole sequence with that whole discussion and
failed asylum seekers and God, she is good.
She is really, she is really good.
Denise.
Yes, Beavel, Denise.
No, she is really, really good.
It's because the point that she's making.
I'm not saying that it's a good point, but the point that she's
making bears thinking about.
It is a moral question.
If you have a plague that's going to wipe out 20% of the world and
you get to choose which 20, do you allow it to wipe out doctors
and scientists and engineers who might be able to put things
together or do you just let it run its course, like the trolly
problem?
Yeah, but I mean, I guess that sequence is so repellent because
because we're being presented with that very consequentialist
morality, where the people that we deem to be of the most value
are the people who are going to survive.
And because we deem valuable, people like us who sit in offices
and talk about things.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, they're the ones who are apparently vital.
You know, they do talk about nurses and things like that, but
they've described the population as useless.
Remember before we had unemployment.
We had surplus population is what people used to be referred to
early in the 20th century.
People who didn't have jobs, they were surplus.
They were unnecessary.
And, you know, like when you think about what Rhiannon is depicted
as doing in this episode, which is looking after other people's
children so that their parents can go to work doing things like
repairing people's cars or driving their buses or doing incredibly
emptying their business, for God's sake.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, like genuinely doing things that actually keep society
going, but those are not the people who are valuable because they
didn't go to the good schools.
And it's incredible in the post-COVID era, looking back at that
you know, who are the people who are going out and, you know
putting their health at risk.
They were people who did the everyday service jobs so that we
needed to keep society going.
Yeah, yeah.
People delivering food or working in Amazon fulfilment houses, like
people with crappy jobs, who, you know, were often immigrants or
the children of immigrants and they were the people who were
keeping things going.
It wasn't the Latin teachers, Todd, who were keeping society
going.
You guys would be the 1st on the PR.
I can tell you that.
I do think there is a different moral question over whether you
are choosing, which is what you said, Nathan, the most valuable in
society, or whether you're choosing the least valuable in
society.
Yeah, it's just because that's not an objective measurement.
Do you know what I mean?
We decide the criteria for who are the most valuable and the least
valuable.
And they talk initially about it being random, and that seems less
objectionable in a way that everyone has an equal chance of
suffering from this.
That does seem less obnoxious than no one around this table, our
children and grandchildren are not going to be included in this.
The moment that it suddenly people like us aren't going to be
included.
There's Denise saying, let's go the whole hog and ensure that
people of our social class aren't included.
It's a very disturbing discussion, and it makes you feel
uncomfortable.
Yeah, if we're not already uncomfortable with what's happened
already in the episode.
That's right And what happens at the end of next week is, of
course, it's Denise, who's the last person standing.
She's going to be running Britain going forward.
It's literally the woman who makes that speech about school league
tables, who is left in charge at the end.
Why didn't we have a five-part series, Denise?
The war between the land and Denise.
Well, between the lantern, Tiffany.
And that's the reason why it is so uncomfortable in that these are
the elected representatives, and although they're doing a heinous
thing, that is what they are elected and given the job of doing
deciding these things.
So the fact that they're throwing it around in a meeting is fine
it's the problem is that's where they land.
Yeah, yeah.
It's really brutal too, isn't it?
Like, like, there's a scene too, where Capoldi is in that meeting
and for some reason he's sat at the hand of the table like dad
even though he's kind of no one.
And so he's in the middle of the shot with people sitting on
either side of the table and just the look on his face.
I mean, it's Capaldi.
He's literally the best actor in the room and he is just, he just
looks so disapproving and so, so unimpressed with them.
Can I just say how wonderful he is in this?
Because I haven't met on any episodes yet.
But he's just so effortless, you know?
He just is that character.
Yeah, you know?
It's it's just amazing to watch yet again.
But it's he's the co-lead, isn't he?
Him and Gwen, who split the action between them.
Jack just kind of wanders around in the middle of it.
Except when he's, you know, a corpse in pieces. episode too.
Or, you know, cement block.
I think I've said this before on a podcast with you guys, but the
joy of an actor like Capaldi is that he doesn't have to open his
mouth for you to know exactly what he's thinking.
Like he just has all the emotions just written over his face in
his eyes, in his body language, and that's just what makes him so
incredible to watch and such a strong character.
And he's just got, Yeah, there's sort of like, he goes through the
whole range of emotions in this, like, there's times where he's
looking just really vulnerable and lost, other times where he's
just doing that real steely kind of coldness where he's doing
things that are just unmentionable.
But, yeah, he's he just is, like you said, he's the best actor in
the room.
Like you just, he's amazing to watch.
And he looks so young.
It does. to do with the hair, I think.
This is an incredibly contained performance and I always find it
incredible that Capaldi has given 3 major performances in Doctor
Who and the Doctor Who universe.
The 1st obviously being the doctor, which is a tour de force, the
2nd being this one, and the 3rd being fires of Pompeii, and they
are all completely different performances.
Yeah No, he disappears into those roles.
And, you know, I'm not thinking about the doctor when I see
Frobisher.
He is very, very much more contained.
I think he's terrific.
Like just maybe the best thing in it.
Yes.
But what about Trinity Wells?
What was the UK hiding?
God, she's good. forgotten about her.
We thought actually, because she doesn't appear among the
newscasters at the beginning.
And of course, it's a very RTD thing to kind of tell the story
with this sort of Greek chorus of newscasters, which just sort of
works terrifically well.
And we thought that she wasn't in it and I suspected that maybe
she's not going to be in it because she's a kids show announcer
you know, like she's in Doctor Who.
And we probably don't want small kids who love Doctor Who
necessarily tuning into this.
But I'm really glad she's in it.
Yeah, she's meant to say things like the fat is walking away.
This is written by John Fay.
Yeah.
What has he done?
So Russell had wanted him to do it Doctor Who, but it didn't end
up happening.
He wrote episode 2 of this and episode four.
He had a very long career in one of the soaps, I think.
And he's a playwright, like a proper playwright has written things
for the theatre.
I think that his 2 episodes are both extremely strong.
I mean, 3 is pivotal in the sense that it introduces the 456
properly, but this is the episode, I think, where the 456 get the
biggest run.
I think it very carefully hands off from one major plot to
another.
It does that incredible high point where we get all of these hero
moments and we think that everything's going to go okay and then
everything goes to hell.
Like he actually handles the pace and the ups and downs and stuff
just incredibly well, I think.
He's a Russia, I think, who's in sync with Russell style of
storytelling.
Of course, Russell had that soap background as well.
And this is family drama at the hearts of it.
I mean, obviously the stakes are much bigger than you would get in
soap opera.
But it has that kind of rhythm to it.
And I think unless Russell's done a very heavy rerice on it
they're writers who are simpatico.
Yeah, I mean, I think it is a great shame that we never got to see
him in the main show because he is really, really great.
So it's Russell does one, 3 and five.
He does 3 with James Moran who wrote Fires of Pompeii, and then we
get John Fay doing 2 and four.
But, you know, last episode we had a lot of foreshadowing from
Yanto.
He was talking about like dying and all that sort of stuff. with
Jack.
And of course, it happens here, but in the writing, you've got him
you know, saying, I love you to his sister and we love you too.
So all that little stuff's in there that you get something, like
there's no, I mean, there's not full closure, but you know, you
know what I'm saying?
John's obviously in discussion with Russell thought about these
moments have to happen before we actually do get the whole
confrontation with the 456 and how that goes to hell in a
handbasket.
We'll talk about that, I think, at the end of this episode, but
there is a moment where he's on the phone to Rhiannon, and we
discover later that he's deliberately giving his position away so
that Johnson turns up at the Torchwood warehouse.
But he, he sort of, he says, I love you and I love the kids, and
I'm even warming to Johnny.
And then she actually is still on the line after he hangs up and
she's going, Yanto, are you there?
Are you there?
Like the last thing that we see her, say to him, is asking him
where he is?
And like I just think that that's a beautiful foreshadowing of
what's going to happen at the end of the episode.
I think if you're really attentive, that's the point at which you
know that he's not going to survive.
Even though we are in the midst of the moment of triumph, where
because that phone call also has Yanto warning, the operative of
control, uh, that this is happening, you, you're listening in on
this call, it's your children, it's everyone's children at stake
here.
You know, like it's a really exciting, like there's a lot of
action.
There's a lot of, you know, everyone has their job to do.
Everyone seems to be doing their job very well.
Everything's working at that point in the episode.
We don't know that it's going to end in disaster.
There's that conversation that they always have in Doc 2.
I think we might have touched on this in episode one about the
doctor goes on and the companions will die.
And the series is setting up that question with Jack and Yanto.
But you think in the 1st couple of episodes, there's just a
generic character question, how will their relationship progress?
I think in episode 4, you start to feel that, oh, there's
something to this and the foreboding grows.
I think too, you know, like if you've watched television before
you've got to be aware that there's an hour of stuff that has to
happen tomorrow night at 9 PM.
And so they're not going to solve the problem at the end of this
episode and spend an hour just kind of faffing or saying goodbye
or anything.
So I think you probably are feeling some sense of foreboding, even
amidst all of the excitement.
But Fay does try his best to distract you from that.
The foreboding.
I remember watching it, having that foreboding feeling.
But I thought, no, after killing off Tosh and Owen last year, we're
not going to have deaths.
They're going to get out of this.
They're all going to get out of it.
So that's what my mindset was, even going into this episode.
And as I said, with Yanto asking questions like, do you think your
luck will run out?
You know, I will die of old age or stuff from the previous
episode.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's only now that you when I go back and watch it, that I see
that foreshadowing.
But I didn't see this foreshadowing here, even with him.
No, I didn't at the time.
And I was exactly like you watching this as well, Todd, that I
thought that because Tosh and Owen had died at the end of the
previous season, that Yanto was safe, we weren't going to just be
left with 2 tortured members at the end of this.
So I was surprised, although maybe I was spoiled.
I can't remember, possibly.
Can we talk about the 456?
Just revolting.
Is this in 2009?
This is back in 965 when they were just the 123.
Well, just all that splushing and sploshing and screeching on the
you know, all that vomit stuff onto the...
I loved the way that that was shot because it never happens in the
same scene that the actors are in.
It's always just the same cutaway to the thing, oh, splash
splash.
There's nothing in the white shot.
I mean, it's incredible, isn't it?
Like it's just amazing.
So when we see the rubber puppet child and we have everyone's
reaction to that, which I just think is done incredibly well, that
moment, it's when Lois starts crying, and when Gwen tells Clem
that the thing that's gone wrong with the video on the computer is
that is that Lois is crying, like she works it out.
And then you get Frobisher's reaction as well. like Frobisher just
turns on the 456 really angrily.
Like, like he really, really chose some fire and that's when the
456 absolutely loses it.
And I don't think, like, I, like, maybe it's vomit.
I think it's, it's, it's like it's crapping on the walls.
And, and, and, like, it's very clear that we want it to be
disgusting.
Like, and so it's dripping with mucus.
We don't see it properly.
The shapes are unclear.
The whole kind of, the whole physicality of it is revolting.
And it does that brilliant Doctor Who thing of giving it an
incredibly crisp posh voice as well.
This absolute Eldritch horror, this sort of love crafty and
octopus thing, but it speaks like it went to a very nice school.
Simon would approve.
Exactly, I'm singing the same thing.
The disgusting image that it put in my mind was going back to the
drug analogy with the children, was that kind of, you know
overdose frothing.
Yeah, yeah. just, oh, it's so repellent and visceral.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, when the guy, the hot guy comes out of the tank and they're
kind of hosing him down because he's just covered in all of this
revolting, like kind of staff, like it's really, really so
brutal.
I think it might be the most terrifying Doctor Who monster ever.
Like, I think it might be the most frightening thing that the show
has ever created.
And I think keeping it nameless was the right idea.
I think...
I was just thinking back to the band rolls.
The Dolly that Mrs. Farrell's husband.
That was in mind of the slipper.
Go do it.
And the other moment that I really like from the 456 is where
everyone sort of left the room.
It's like, it's the night before the big confrontation.
It's actually not very clear how this is day 4 because the night
seems to happen in the middle of the episode.
So I kind of lost track of the timing a little bit, but whatever.
It's fine.
When Frobisher presents our compromise proposal of just 6,700
children.
And then he leaves.
He says, that's our final offer, and he leaves, and then it starts
whispering, like it starts quietly whispering the number to itself
before all the children start saying the number.
And again, they find a new thing, a new terrifying thing for the
children to do.
Initially they stop.
Then they speak in unison. then we see them pointing and now we
see them.
They're coming now they're here.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. back.
It escalates so wonderfully and this is yet another new thing for
the children to do.
And my favourite moment is the moment of comedy where Johnny
suggests that maybe they're lottery numbers.
That is funny.
Oh, those children.
All those children in the playground.
Some of them are better than others Yeah.
Well, I think I've said before that I think Misha is absolutely
the goat.
She's the best one, the our most valuable player among the
children because she has a sort of Beetle brow.
She really is kind of going for it in the best way.
She's awesome.
A lot of those children, Yantu's sister is looking after, could
have gone either way.
There was a touch of he got funny eyes now.
But it never quite, never quite tips over. say Can I give the
parents' perspective?
Because, um, Yeah, please.
Yeah, I think one of the reasons I got invited on here was I'm the
only one who's actually got children.
And tell us, Fiona, which one would you have chosen to give to the
456.
That's the whole thing.
At the time, so this was 2009, wasn't it?
Yeah, so my eldest was 9 and the other one would have been about
seven-ish and...
Oh my god, how disturbing.
So they were right at that age where you do have them at home.
You feel incredibly protective of them.
Yeah, you haven't, I haven't, um, rewatched episode 5, but my
memory is that when they come and get the kids, that the parents
are doing everything that they can.
And absolutely.
Like, if somebody came to take away my children, I would get out
of chainsaw to defend them kind of thing, it would be absolutely
everything, and they haven't really touched on it, this episode, um
in episode 4 about when it's being pregnant.
But I just remember when I was pregnant, um, yeah, which was like
twice, you do feel incredibly protective of, of what's growing
inside you and would do anything to sort of make sure that your
baby is safe.
Um, I mean, now sort of rewatching.
I didn't find it quite so traumatic because I wasn't quite in that
headspace.
Um, you know, my children got older.
I sent them off to boarding school and, you know, like, oh.
And now. redecorated their rooms, that kind of thing.
Now they're adults and yeah, kind of thing.
It's like, oh, well, you're fine.
You've survived.
But at the time, you're in that headspace where you are incredibly
protective of them.
And when they brought in this, that whole meeting where they said
oh, let's go over the school league tables.
I found that was really harsh to listen to because my youngest, I
don't think you'd mind me saying this, but he has always like
struggled with literacy.
So he would have like absolutely been one of the people who was
selected to go there.
And I was just like, nobody is taking my son.
Yeah, so that was really, really uncomfortable thinking that your
own children could be in that position and just the, like the
horrible thought of like this, just these innocent kids being
taken away.
Um, not to mention what happens in episode five.
We weren't talk about that.
I mean, you might not remember after all this time, but episode 5
is full of scenes where you've got parents kind of weeping as
their children are being taken away in school buses.
You get armed people's snatching children from their parents' arms
and seeing the distressed parents and stuff.
And I mean, it's really, really rough to watch.
Like, even before what happens to Stephen at the end of the
episode, there's very, very distressing scenes of parents bereaved
of their children or parents whose children are being taken away.
And remember, there's a deal.
You know, the state educates your children.
You entrust your children to something outside your home, and it's
the 1st time that you ever do that is when you surrender the child
to daycare or to school.
Oh, absolutely.
That's hard.
You know, that's really terrifically hard because they've been
with you all the time.
You're entrusting them to strangers to look after.
And those strangers betray you in this case by, you know, then
handing them over to kind of aliens and stuff.
Yeah, and I remember that feeling well, that whole thing of, you
know, you're going from that bit where you are the absolute cent
of your children's life and you know what they're doing every day
and then suddenly you stick them.
My 1st child was sent on a school bus at the age of 3.5 .
He got put on a school bus and sent off.
And that was an incredible moment of trust, you know, and then he
comes home and you're going, well, what have you been doing all
this time when you were without me?
And he's like, oh, yes, you know, stuff.
And you're like devastated.
Because you're suddenly cut out.
The scene where Johnson 1st gets humanised, I think, is in last
night's episode, which is where Alice and Stephen are captured, and
Alice says, you understand that if you hurt my child, I will kill
you, and Johnson says, understood.
Like she just says, yes, that's absolutely...
Yeah, perfectly acceptable.
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Yeah, and I would be the same.
I would absolutely shoot somebody between the eyes if they hurt my
children even now.
Like I'm just, it's like, no, you don't touch my kids.
It's just a thing.
Yeah.
No, I feel much the same way about my laptop, actually, I have to
say.
I thought you were going to say you were tall.
The scenes that you were talking about, Nathan, where the mothers
are gathered outside the school gates and the children are being
kind of railroaded onto the buses and that's very hard to watch.
And the kids are distressed. right. one boy breaks away and runs
towards his mother and gets kind of like snatched up by a soldier
and put back on thing.
And to give the teachers their due, they are also incredibly
shocked and saddened by what's happening.
They're not helping the soldiers.
Of course, that plan, that incredible plan that seems to be going
so well, runs up against the sheer fact of the 456, I think.
And it's not that it was badly planned.
No one makes a mistake or anything like that, but we're in a room
confronted by the 456 and we cannot deal with them.
We're just not able to do anything about it.
And you've got the 456 repeatedly saying, you yielded in the past
you will do so again, and they just repeatedly say that, no matter
what Jack and Yanto say to them.
There's that wonderful moment as well. where they do the cyberman
speech from the 10th planet.
You know, the What, you'll be like us?
No.
The every 3 seconds a child dies and you adapt and you move on.
The human infant mortality rate is 29,158 deaths per day, and the
human response is to accept and adapt.
It's exactly the conversation that the Cyberman has with Polly in
the 10th planet.
And the fact is that those things happen because in a very large
measure, we don't care, and we choose not to do anything about
it.
So, you know, it turns out the humans were the villains all
along.
Yeah.
That's a very sharp piece of dialogue because it is true.
Yeah.
And so, like the scene in the cabinet room, it does get you
thinking.
And actually, a lot of, a lot of this story, I think, is about
what people will come to accept. and looking a little ahead to
next week where it becomes, we will roll this out under the guise
of giving everyone vaccinations in the post-COVID era.
I found that that didn't really hold any water because you
remember the movie contagion?
which everyone was watching during lockdown.
And at the end of contagion, they have a birthday lottery for who
will get the vaccination against this terrible virus.
And people are clamouring for it.
Whereas we know that in real life that didn't happen.
As soon as we had a vaccination program, there was a great mass of
people who suddenly became, well, we don't want it.
In fact, like doing it under the guise of inoculations, which is
the proposal that Frobisher actually makes in the meeting in this
episode is incredibly dangerous and reckless, isn't it?
Because it would cause people to distrust vaccinations in future.
Like it actually makes vaccination impossible to sell from here on
in.
And we see what happens, you know, we've got measles back with a
vengeance in the US and the possibility of other serious
infectious diseases that have been more or less eradicated.
And because vaccination's been so successful, People don't realise
how necessary it is.
It was just, it was such a different world in 2009, where the
understanding was that if there was some massive threat, people
would be clamouring for the vaccination, we couldn't imagine a
world where that wouldn't be the case and people would reject
vaccination.
And so I found it a dated concept in the show.
Yeah.
But I think it's incredible that it's been explored here.
Do you know what I mean?
that he's actually looking at this in this context and then what
happened in 2019, 2020 happened.
The other thing, too, is that the 456 seem to have something about
viruses, right?
So they come saying that they're offering an antivirus for the
Indonesian flu.
And here, somehow they're able to release a virus into the
building.
And I really love the fact that the MI5 building is kitted out
with get smart doorways that kind of clatter closed vertically and
horizontal.
I mean, that scene is unbelievably great.
Like Ben Foster absolutely goes to town.
Like you get into cutting between what's happening with Jack and
DeAnto and just the entire building.
We, you know, the building, locking down people, people screaming
you know, banging on the walls, like all of them.
Some of them were not great, though, I have to say.
Can I just say, like, they were not great.
Euroslyn is not good at doing these big scenes with groups of
people, right?
Back in the day in Doctor Who.
And even through this, when you have crowd groups, like I sit
there going, I'm not condensed.
Eros always casts swell, but I don't think he casts the extras.
We did talk a little bit about his limitations.
Like he is very good at things, I think, and he is one of Doctor
Who's best directors, but this is a little bit more cinematic and
that's not really his strong point, I think.
Yeah, but I mean, you know, you've got Jack and Yanto both dying
while it says, you will die, and tomorrow your people will deliver
the children, and like, it's just a complete loss. isn't it?
Is it?
Because I sit there watching that scene with them dying and I'm
dying inside watching their acting. embarrassing.
What I thought was really embarrassing is when we come back to the
Cobra office and all of those people have been watching that scene
on telly and you must think, oh my god, what would they think?
Prime Minister turned to Denise and said, it would have been
better with Gwen.
Barrowman, God.
I was like, Again, is he dying again?
Why can't he just stay dead?
There is the very, very nice beat after it all happens where when
he comes back to life.
It's not with the massive gas he usually gives, it's underplayed.
It's in fact really done really quite well, isn't it?
After that sort of giant musical theatre death that he does, and
then he just does that little breath in and you can actually kind
of see him remembering what happened.
You know, he wakes up and remembers that this was the thing that
happened.
But like you, I spent that entire scene just dying of
embarrassment.
But, you know, um, Eve Miles.
It's just a hero.
She sells the entire last sequence with Yanto and with Jack and
you can see, well, I think I can see that she's over.
Jack, oh, yeah, you're back.
But just her distress at Yanto and her crying and she just is
magnificent and that whole long.
You know, I just can't praise her enough throughout this entire
production.
It's such a great scene, isn't it?
Because she's brought into the room.
The room has just bodies like dead bodies.
They're number 11 and 13.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And she looks at Jack and she smiles because she she loves Jack
you know, and she knows that he's going to be okay.
And so she looks at him in a kind of sort of maternal, affectionate
way.
And then she turns to, and I can barely bear to say it.
She turns to Yanto and Yanto's face is gray.
He's not going to get better, and she just adjusts his tie, and
it's such a tender thing to do, and then you look at her and like
there's tears falling down her face, and she's so good.
Like, she's so tremendous.
And that's the moment, I think, where I became upset because, you
know, there's all that controversy.
Isn't there about this?
It's a bury your gaze thing.
You know, we have the gay couple and one of them has to die in the
episode.
And I just remember thinking, no, that's great.
Let's have that happen.
Like, let's have BBC One, you know, 1000000s of people tuning into
BBC One to see Jack Morning, his dead love, you know.
I know it's a terrible scene, but, you know, I will give Barriman
his due in that.
I don't think that the scene, where he answer dies, is very good.
But the scene where Jack wakes up afterwards.
What you were talking about earlier, he wakes up and that's that
thing where you've had a terrible loss in your life or something's
gone terribly wrong.
You've managed to sleep and you wake up and for that blissful 2
seconds, everything's okay before the memories flood back over
you.
I thought he sold that really well.
Yeah, it's really good.
I will agree with you.
Like he can do reactions really well, but it's selling dialogue in
the moment that he just has some limitations.
Clem's dying at the same time, isn't it?
And again, Eve absolutely sells that.
I mean, I'm over the character of Clem by this point.
I know he's been through a lot, but all of his crying and all that
by the time this episode I'm just ready to get rid of him.
A good actor like he was in Downton Abbey in the future.
But, you know, yeah.
Yeah, I like, I also thought that that was a kind of very sort of
Eric Sayward moment of getting rid of him, so we don't have to
have him in episode five, but, of course, spoilers tomorrow
night's episode is solved because we learn about the link between
him and the 456 and they even refer to him, don't they, as the
remnant.
That's right I do have a question.
That old scientist guy that keeps coming into it whose name, I
forget, Decker. right?
Like all the gases in the building or whatever.
But he's still an anxious to get into a suit. and survive to the
next episode, whereas I thought he was collapsing when he got into
that suit.
Am I wrong?
Yeah, I wonder why they do that.
I wonder why they do that because Yanto just says, no, I've
breathed the air. die, you know, like there's nothing that can be
done.
Decker gets into a kind of hazmat suit, like that red kind of bio
suit thing.
And I'm wondering why they do that. like why they have him in the
room at all.
And I wonder whether there's a line in an earlier episode where he
refers to himself and Frobisher is cockroaches, that they are
people who've survived for decades, and their civil servants will
be here long after the politicians are gone.
We were here long before they got there.
And I just wonder whether that's what that's trying to sell.
He is going to have an important role in tomorrow night's episode
and I guess that that was why he's there because I was wondering
because it does stretch plausibility, I think.
That's what I was saying.
Like, I just kind of thought, well, he's briefed in the air
shouldn't he be dead like everybody else?
slightly confusing in the direction because when you have, you
think, is he collapsing inside the suit or is it just relief
that's inside the suit on his face?
But I think that that's why they do it.
I think there's a reason, a clear reason why they choose to
include him there rather than just not have him in the building.
I think it is trying to make character point about him being a
survivor.
Yeah, I wondered the same thing.
You know, despite my earlier misgivings about, you know, just
returning to the trolly problem and the fact that I don't think
the story in general holds up in a post-COVID world.
I don't think the structural logic of it holds up.
It is good.
It is good drama, and we have good people like Peter Capaldi and
absolutely Eve Miles, I'm doing their best in it.
And so I think by some stretch, it, by some way, it is the best
Doctor Who spinoff.
Yeah, there's a sense in which I thought for a while, and I may
have said this before, that for a while, I thought this was the
best thing in the RTD one era.
And I don't think that now, because I love Doctor Who, and I love
the lighter, more family-friendly tone that it usually takes, this
is a bit bleak for me generally.
But this is Russell's closest attempt to do something like like
season 7 or years and years.
Yeah, or years and years, but something that's longer, like we get
we get a big regular cast, we get lots of interesting characters
played by incredible actors.
We get a complicated story with a lot happening.
There's no marking time or anything like that.
Everything goes at quite a pace.
It's got a huge scale.
You know, it's like the Silurians, I think only longer and a bit
better.
All that green sort of froth.
We're going done with a prime ward.
Well, that's all the time we had for this week.
We'll be back next week to watch everyone get a well deserved
happy ending in Torchwood, Children of Earth, day five.
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 comprises every episode of our 4 Doctor Who podcasts.
Until next time, remember that when a child is being terribly
annoying, a simple but effective technique is to ask them politely
to leave the room.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
See you soon.
That was 500 year diary, starring Todd Bealby, Nathan Bottomley
Peter Griffiths, and Fiona Tomney.
The theme was composed by Cameron Lamb.
This episode, The War between the Land and Denise, was recorded on
the 15th of March, 2026, and released on the 5th of April.
Here at FDE, we're so impressed with the adorable puppet murker
from the season 21 box set that we're starting a campaign to
include it in every story in the season 16 box set.
To show your support, post on your favourite social media network
with the hashtag, The Planet Tara needs a merker.
Next time, Count Grendel shall not be so delicious.
So he could have done it, and done it differently and just go, well
we're just going to get torchwood to help them deal with 456 and
just cut it back to 2 episodes and not have them having to try and
take him out.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah.
But I do like that because there's some great, you know, like them
being chased by people and stuff like that, the destruction of
torch, but all that stuff's so great.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm just saying, like, you know, you could have got just a 2
part.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. where, you know, we've got a structure here
that's going to work for five.
I mean, I think I said before about what idiot Barrowman is
because he complains that we're being demoted, where it's like
instead, no, we're getting 5 consecutive nights on BBC one, that
people are actually going to watch.
And the highest rating the show ever got.
Yeah, that's right.
And it's incredibly good for a change as well. you know.
Maybe he was just cheesed off at, you know, Capaldi and miles with
her.
Yeah, the star.
I mean, that's something to get your dick out over.
You're cancelled as well now.
Long before time.
I reckon that's it.
What do you think?
I thought that was really good.
Yeah, I don't think there's anything.
Do you have any closing remarks, Fiona?
Oh, not really.
Just, um, next time, make sure you do invite me for invasion of
the fluffy bunnies kind of thing.