Choreography of the Daleks

[00:34]

Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to 500 year diary, the only Doctor Who podcast made, inevitably, of 100% pure terranium sourced directly from Uranus.

I'm Nathan.

I'm Peter.

I'm Simon.

And I'm Toby.

It's the 13th of November 1965.

It's been just over a month since the doctor failed to show up on his own TV show, leaving space security service pinup boy Mark Corey to be gunned down by the Daleks.

But tonight, here he is at last on the planet Campbell, and 9.10000 people have tuned in to find out exactly what kind of nightmare is about to begin.

So let's sit down in this comfy magnetic chair, pour ourselves a glass of pure turanium, and discuss the longest story in the history of the galaxy, probably, the Daleks master plan.

[01:54]

All right, so last week, we talked about Mission to the Unknown, and I have to say that we were pretty positive about it.

We tended to think that it was a pretty good episode, but let's start by giving our quick take on what we think of this story generally.

Well, I've had a roller coaster, um, in the last 40 years of being aware of this story, like many a 10-year-old, when I saw that there was a 12 episode gnarlic story, it obviously had to be the best story ever.

Then I saw parts 5 and 10 and I thought, well, maybe it's not that good.

And then episode 2 came back and I thought, oh, no, this is really good.

And now episodes one and 3 have come back and I thought, it's quite good.

And then I watched the rest of it on reconstruction and thought, no, no.

It's not, it's not the, it's, it loses its way, I hate to say.

Toby.

My trajectory is pretty similar to Simon's, except some bits came before, and my conclusion was slightly different.

[02:54]

So I was introduced to it via Doctor Who Celebration and the various bits of literature.

I read that introduced the idea that, you know, it was the longest Doctor Who story and also one of the best, and 2 companions died, and it got delegates in it, and it looked all very exciting.

And then I saw episodes 5 and 10 and then so did the fashionable thing of going, oh, well, everybody else loves this story, but I've seen the episodes and they're actually not that good.

And then I listened to the soundtrack and I think I was drawn to the space stuff more than the Chase Part 2.

I actually quite like the funky comic strip, Terry Nation, Century 21 universe that he creates, and it's quite incongruous to have the Hartnoll doctor in all of that.

It seems like quite an odd mix, which I rather like.

It's a bit Dan Derry and I used to get Eagle comics, so I quite like that.

Episode 2 came back, really good episode.

And then latterly, of course, I've been in a situation where I've seen episodes one to 3 more times than I think it was, it's possible. is necessary.

[04:01]

And that is certainly an essay.

I mean, a nice problem to have.

Those have really improved my feel for, and I'm desperate to watch the traitors, and I'm desperate to watch the destruction of time.

But, of course, when you think long and hard about it, I do agree that actually it's let down by the fact that it completely goes away from what makes it an interesting story, this brilliant year 4000 that they create and the sort of space opera stuff going on there to do some comedy time travelling, and it really dil the story's impact.

Apart from lengths, where you earn that brilliant episode 12.

But I think episodes, you know, 7 to 7 to 10 certainly are pretty disposable, which is a shame and I think a wasted opportunity.

Why introduce all those brilliant delegates and then not do anything with them.

It seems such an odd call.

But I like season three.

I like its ambition.

I like its sort of tonal variation, and currently, I'm in a big happy place with Dalek smiles of blood, because of all it represents to us at the moment as well, in terms of all the things that we've discovered and seen and how it's brightened up our missing episodes tally.

[05:16]

Are you enjoying the elation of salation, Toby?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

But I'd have liked him to have turned up, you know, I'd have liked to have seen him in action.

I think we're all broadly on the same page here.

I think I think it was maybe Jeremy Bentham, who coined that hokey kind of fandom phrase that people use for years and years, curate's egg, good in part, that could almost be tailor made to describe Dalek's masterplan.

I'm with Toby.

I think the 1st half is generally exceptionally good.

It's everything that Terry Nation does well, and I think it's a distillation of everything that the series has done so far.

It's also, will talk a little more about this, moves the doctor into the position that I think Terry has always been positioning him as, and it's here that he becomes a fully fledged hero fighting against an epic evil, which I don't think has really happened before.

I think it's nice that Terry's inclination is to go bigger on everything.

We went from the end of a world with Scaro to the invasion of earth to sort of trotting through time and space to suddenly to this the invasion of the entire galaxy.

[06:25]

So earth and everything is at stake.

And it's the 1st time that we've had Doctor Who on this scale.

So I think that the 1st half of the story, if it existed just as a 6 parter, would be possibly the best heart and story.

Maybe Marco Polo, possibly this.

I think the 2nd half of the story, with the exception of the last episode is, as Toby said, a massive letdown where they're just treading water every week.

And as we'll discuss, I don't know why that was.

I don't know why that had to be.

Yeah, I just don't understand why that was necessary.

I mean, you know, Terrence Dixon, Malcolm Hulk establish in only 3 years later that 3 and 5 years later that you can stretch a story out and have new characters and have, even if it does, War Games does go around in circles a little bit in the 2nd half.

It feels like there's an overall structure that you're getting somewhere, whereas here you have a story, and I know that it started as a 6 part story, and then Bigwig said, oh, no, we want it to be 12 episodes.

But come on, people.

You can do better than this.

You don't just sort of, you know, stop at episode 5, insert 6 episodes of rubbish, and then we have the 12th episode, which I'm kind of wondering whether that's kind of what they did.

[07:34]

There are so many interesting characters, like, or nice characters.

Like, you know, those that couple in the control room, we meet in episode one.

Lilo and Stitch.

Yeah, I mean, you know, but also and and also the stuff that you get with, you know, the, I can't remember the guy's name, you know, the ball guy that's kind of, um, Matichen.

He's Carlton.

He's great.

He's fantastic. he's absolutely awesome It's like, we could have had this wonderful intrigue and stuff going on all through the 2nd half and even allowing for the fact that you need to have a Christmas episode, which is separate.

I just think that it loses its way from that point on.

Like even episode 6 is a bit of a retreat of what we've already had.

And 7 and 8 and 9.

It's just like, oh God, please, someone actually just come up with something interesting.

Well, of course, I'm in episode 6 is not Terry, is it?

So Terry does episodes one to 5 and then he does the Christmas Day episode.

So where it starts to go wrong, unfortunately, is where Dennis Spooner takes over.

Can I say, though, that I think that if you think about the idea that just for this season, for 3 months, Doctor Who changes its premise somewhat, and so we have just, you know, these, the some delegates, you have Kevin Stoney, you have Daleks, and you have the doctor and his companions, and they're just sort of doing a thing.

[08:50]

And like, what's fun, I think, about, say, episodes one to 4 or maybe sort of barely five.

Like, I think all of that stuff is great and everything everyone said about the 40th century setting and all of that stuff is really kind of fun.

All of the galaxy talk and stuff is just absurdly preposterous and, you know, what if, what if we only get to be in charge of one galaxy?

What a loser.

I'm going to feel like if that's what happens.

You know, like all of that stuff, all of the scale, which is all just words, do you know what I mean?

Like it's all, it's all just words, but it's really fun and really silly and super enjoyable.

But then, like, watching it this time, I have to say that I didn't mind the break from that story and making this an ongoing thing where the doctor is in this sort of low-key conflict with the daleks and mavic channel over a period of time.

I think he's kind of okay.

[09:50]

And certainly the 2 episodes in Egypt, I think, it struck me this time how great they look.

You know, you've got Barry Newberry sort of designing it, that you've got these really detailed sets.

You've got an attempt to make something that's really visually striking, and I think in context, it must have been kind of regarded as, you know, like impressive as far as the sort of set goes.

But, you know, like admittedly, you know, and look, and you've got Peter Butterworth and he's really fun, like all of that stuff, you know, like, I don't think that's that's worthless or just padding.

No, all that stuff is great because it looks so great.

And Peter Butterworth's great.

If only something happened in those episodes, apart from wandering around.

Yeah, that's true.

But, I mean, that has been a false so far.

You know, like this is not the 1st Terry Nation story that has, you know, a paucity of incident.

You know, places.

[10:52]

Let me push back on that because I don't think the Terry Nation sections of this story do have a poor city of incident.

I think it's everything that he doesn't work on.

In fact, we get into the story really quickly.

It's quite a breakneck pace.

That's surprising.

And given that they've got 2 oversides, yeah.

That's right.

I wonder why we're doing this.

Why get into it so quickly when you have so much time to develop the narrative.

I think a slow burn buildup to that typical terry nation Dalek reveal at the end of episode one would have actually been perfectly acceptable here and, you know, in line with his structure.

What also struck me about those early episodes and how quickly they move is that there's quite a few gaps in the storytelling, which I think could have been filled in.

So you get, for instance, the scene where Brett and Sarah and Stephen have to leave the TARDIS, when the Daleks arrive, I know that's set up as a cliffhanger, are they still in there?

Are they being menaced?

But you could have had quite an exciting sequence where they have to get out of the Tartars by the Daleks and into the jungle, which is just completely missing in the storytelling.

[11:54]

And later on, when the doctor steals the, the full William M. of terrain from Uranus.

You're missing the entire sequence where he escapes the Dalek city and gets into the spa.

And so there's just, it felt to me like things could have been developed at a slower and more effective pace and we didn't need to go so fast.

I think I think time is also not done us any favours because of course, things like ancient Egypt, if you're a school kid in the 1960s and even I was, you know, I was a, I was a school kid in the early 80s, it seemed to me that what Doctor Who was doing when I read about Doctor Who before I saw the old Doctor Who before I saw the episodes, things like visiting the Mary Celeste and going to the top of the Empire State building.

These were all things you learnt about in school and so, but not in a boring way.

They were the things that were invoked that were sort of quite exciting things to talk about.

So just having ancient Egypt was, you know, daringly, cosmopolitan for, you know, television viewing for youngsters.

[12:55]

And there was a whole mystique about ancient Egypt.

And those episodes are, as you say, extremely well rendered.

And let's not forget, you know, one of the great talking points of this story is the fact that every episode is directed by Douglas Campfield, who is, you know, very much a cut above your average television director, even this early on in his career and the that breakneck pace and that atmosphere and that constant striving to keep things real and to keep things exciting and engaging and muscular, is really, really good.

But, you know, I think we're going to be boringly in accord apart from Nathan in the, in the, it just feels like, and you can, and I think they did it at a meeting where they say, well, no, we're going to, we're going to make this longer, but we'll bring Dennis Spooner in and we need to go away from this terrination stuff just to give it some variety, which is a laudable idea to say we can't do the same thing for 12 episodes.

Unfortunately, they do those early episodes so well, and the space future is so engagingly rendered and there's so much going on.

[13:58]

And I think, again, we're quite used to modern television, where you will create a society like that, and there will be traitors, and there will be hierarchies and guest characters coming in, who get a life of their own that American television does very well these days, that you think, oh, no, I can stay with this.

I could have a couple of episodes where Carlton betrays Chen or does something behind his back or allies himself with the Daleks and all of that.

And it could have perfectly taken that.

But by the time you see how well that stuff is working, they've already done the film sequences for Egypt, you know, because they're because they've planned ahead.

So I think it was a laudable idea to go, well, no, we need to, we're doing a 12 part story, but it needs to be one with lots of variety, but unfortunately, you have a bit like what you have with the chase, where instead of doing one thing very well, it does a number of things unsatisfyingly, because there's not long enough to do anything interesting with them other than the surface gloss of, oh, look, we're in ancient Egypt, or, oh, look, we're on a planet doing something with the TARDIS lock that is probably the most disposable secrets of Doctor Who in the, in the whole of the 1960s, if not

[15:14]

beyond.

I mean, I think I would also nominate the sequence where Stephen is turned into a zombie and protected by a force field for some reason.

That's cactic power, Peter.

Come on.

But yeah, I mean, that's the thing.

I mean, for something that you sort of, I want, I want to be epic, and obviously there are some epic things about it, and you do feel the epic nature of it when you're watching episode 12, I think.

I think the whole time, it's so brilliantly, well done.

But I'm not feeling the epic nature of it, much in the middle of it.

And it's because even though you've got, you know, so much time, yeah, maybe because they're wanting to do the variety, you're not getting to know anything particularly, well, it's almost like, I mean, I'm sure this is not the case, but even with the episodes that we can now watch.

I just sort of feel like, oh, we're going to do this this week and then we're going to do this next week.

And then next we go, oh, why don't we do this?

And then the next week we'll do something else.

And I don't get a feeling that there's any kind of thought as to how put in advance how this is all actually going to work.

[16:14]

It's just like, oh, I know, I've got a great idea.

Let's have them teleport back to the other side of the galaxy and with mice and all that kind of stuff.

And so I don't care about any of the ancillary characters.

The few that I do care about. you know, people like Carlton. as I said before, is so interesting and good.

Why is he kind of just appear in, what is it, two, maybe 3 episodes, is it?

Two episodes.

And his last line is basically him going, oh, I've got my eye on you, big boy.

You know, I might have, I might have ambitions beyond my factotum status, and you never see it.

He should be doing the crowd, the full crowd, Timon, really. you know, I mean...

He should be that guy in Day of the Daleks who steps in when the controller is exterminated.

Yes, exactly.

And bows a little too deeply.

This is the same problem that we have with the delegates. like in theory, and think about, say, Curse of Paladon, where the delegates all have relationships with one another, we have some sort of sense of what they want, interactions with one another.

[17:17]

Whereas these guys are sort of bobbing up and down and like one of them occasionally sort of says something and and, you know, we cross it another one.

But this never sort of develops anywhere.

And Bert from the Green Death, of course.

Alarmingly, all of a sudden.

Like, there's no there, there.

It's not exactly a sort of, you know, big finish galafray audio or something or iClaudius.

You know, like it is just...

It almost intinguishable from one another.

But also, how does it work?

You know, you have these delegates set up in mission to the unknown because it's not just the Daleks, it's the Daleks and all these funky aliens.

Oh, this is brilliant.

Yeah, galaxies and all that, and everyone's got a different way of clapping their hands.

And I know in rehearsal, you know, when you're the last one in the queue and it's like, well, everything's been taken, love.

You're going to have to come up with something.

Oh, come on.

Can't we have workshop this?

[18:18]

There's that one who says I'm going to jump onto the table and then off it.

He was last.

It's such a wasted opportunity because you've got the costumes.

You could have all sorts of fun with that sort of menagerie of creatures.

And also, how does it work?

So when they kill Trantis, salation rather sort of blithely says, oh, why do you think they chose him?

As if to say, yeah, we know that they're going to shoot one of us every now and again because they're the Darlix and we're ancillary characters.

And also, how does that work in the galaxy of Trantis?

Do the Daleks just going to turn up and say, oh, we killed we killed Bert the Minor, and then we go, oh, okay, well, we're subjugated by you now because you've killed one man.

Or do the Daleks have to go and go, yeah, he fell over at work?

Send more trantises.

It's Trantai, actually.

Yeah, yeah, it's Trandai.

I just don't buy how any of that were.

What is this war force that they've assembled for how does it work?

Now, look, I don't expect there to be a chancellor of the exchequer and all of that sort of thing.

[19:21]

But it just seems to have not been thought through at all, apart from the fact that, oh, we've got a room full of monsters.

And I think there was so much more potential to have fun with them.

It was there.

They got it.

They'd got all the pieces in place.

And instead they said, yeah, let's dick about with a force field or some echos on a planet and the TARDIS lock. you go, what are you doing?

I have 2 thoughts on this.

One is that quite hilarious scene in episode 11 where all the delegates are in the cell, where they turn to each other and say, well, if we pulled our resources, we could take on and defeat the Daleks. don't we do that?

Which is quite amazing.

But also...

Also, what you're talking about, Toby, I think, is why episode 2 is probably the best episode of the story and definitely the best of the extant episodes, because it has the most delegate action in it.

It has all that great stuff with Zephon.

You know, stop the creature, stop the creature, all that stuff, which I love.

We could have had much more of it.

[20:21]

Actually, I think 4 is probably the best.

I know it's always tempting to suggest an episode that doesn't exist.

It's the best, but when I was watching the recon, I thought, yeah, no, this is actually Darlic Master Plan distilled, this is what everyone who saw it back in the day is remembering when they say how great it is.

It's interesting you say, Peter, episode 2 is the best.

I think that's why when it came back in 2004, I thought, no, actually, this story is really, really good.

Because I think there's so much great stuff in it.

And one of the things which is great about it is it's got some excellent examples of the old style talking urgently in corridors, or in this, though, in this case, it's talking urgently in a jungle.

And I think that that's how you get exciting, Doctor Who, is when they're having that argument.

And, and, you know, Nicholas Courtney eventually cuts them off and say, well, you shut up.

It's great because they're actually not talking about anything.

Like, it's not advancing. all just going around in circles, but it creates this tension and excitement.

And what we needed was more of that as the story progressed.

[21:28]

Can I say, too, that I think that we are at a weird point in Doctor Who's history, and it really only sort of struck me this time through.

So we've just lost Maureen O'Brien.

And so we're just travelling with Stephen and Katerina.

And, you know, Stephen, it's impossible to overstate how great Stephen is and how important he is in this season of the program, how great Peter Purvis is.

He's a proper leading man.

He's really, really good.

But I can't help getting that feeling that I occasionally get in the 80s in particular, which is why are these people all travelling together?

Like, what's going on here now?

Um, Vicki's gone and she was our link to kind of Ian and Barbara.

There was a sort of comprehensible kind of group of people when the show begins and we swap Susan out for a slightly improved version, considerably improved version when Maureen O'Brien comes along.

[22:33]

But now why are we here?

And so this is the 1st time that the doctor is kind of unmoored completely, I think, from that place where we 1st met him.

And now we see what he does when he doesn't have Vicky to entertain or impress.

And I found it very strange.

Like I started to kind of, and because we now see him in the kind of story that he would never have done before, a story that Barbara and Ian would not have fitted into, I think, really in any way.

And so the show is unmooring itself from where it started.

And I think also the show is nastier at this point than I think, um, I'm comfortable with.

I think that's fair.

I like season 3 a lot, but I think it does have, I think it's partially because it has a dower and a dark tone that I always wanted Doctor Who to have when I was a kid because I was ashamed that the thing I liked was a children's program and I always wanted Doctor Who to be grown up an adult.

[23:37]

The older I get, the more I get drawn to the sort of the more sort of cosy and enjoyable and zesty and zany doctor, because that's what it has that a lot of other shows don't have.

And actually something is more grown up sometimes, the less grown up it tries to sort of present itself as.

But I admire season 3 because I think they are trying to do something different with the show and it's a sort of robustly intelligent approach to different types of storytelling.

But, and I've only come up with this theory as you were talking, Nathan, because I'd never thought of it this way before, but I think they get the fundamentals so right in the 1st 2 years of Doctor Who, that you just want to be with those people, whether it's a brilliant story or not, those 4 characters carry you, and there's a cosiness that is, again, the sort of thing I used to poo-poo.

I don't know my doctor too to be cosy.

Well, yes, you do actually, because Doctor is a charming show, full of characters that you like, who you want to sort of be like and things.

And I love that quartet, both of those quartets that you could take Susan out of and put Vicky into.

[24:39]

Wasn't it that same quartet that was once described by a reviewer as the dullest quartet in fiction?

Well, yes, indeed.

Well, it's nice to prove a reviewer wrong.

Well, I'm not proving anything, but I'm pontificating.

But I think in going for that ambitious and occasionally very dark storytelling, they kind of forget what they're doing with the fundamentals of the show, which is the doctor, who is absent for a great deal, and we know there's behind the scenes things going on, and we know that William Martin wasn't always well, but they write him out of Toymaker, the doctor isn't in the massacre much.

Hartnell turns up very late in a number of episodes here and doesn't have an awful lot to do.

Stephen carries the show sometimes, but then you have this sort of revolving door of companions, who are they, even companions or Dodo, who's not a great success, unfortunately.

And it's only really when they get sort of Ben and Polly and they go, oh, we've got a new, it doesn't last long as it turns out, but it seems like they suddenly realise that they haven't really been thinking about the main constituents of the show.

[25:45]

They've got the differing storytelling, quite interestingly, they've got the quite ambitious, different approaches to what Doctor Who should be, but they sort of neglect their leading man and everybody else who's feeding him sort of changes as the story requires.

It's just good that Purvis is strong enough to be a sort of de facto leading man, but that's not really what Doctor Who should ever need in that sense is somebody to make up for the fact that the doctor's not in it that much.

It just falls to Purvis out of practicality and he rises to the challenge.

But that means I think they do more interesting things with the stories in this period than they do with the regulars.

But I do accept your theory that it is quite a cruel universe, but I have to say, when I was a kid, I wanted Doctor Who to be grown up and dark, because I've got older brothers and an older sister, and I like the idea that my thing wasn't just a thing for young kids.

The worst thing that could happen is for you to have your older brother come in while you were watching, you know, Doctor Who and the...

Should I say the wrong episode of Doctor Who, of which...

[26:46]

Yeah, I'd much rather he came in to see, you know, Katerina get killed than he would to see the TARDIS getting painted pink on a planet of Bertie Bassett, you know, that was what I wanted as a kid.

Toby, I think also what you put your finger on there and what Nathan was talking about is that William Hartnell's, shall we say, disgruntlement about the series at this stage, was maybe because of the same things.

You know, all the things that had made it Doctor Who and had made him the leading character were kind of being stripped away.

And when he suddenly wasn't the star of his own show, you can understand why he was so sort of upset and detached from the program.

I think that hurts the show and it makes it sort of less of the show that we're familiar with.

But Nathan, what you were saying as well, about it being sort of a brutal universe, that's distilled terry nation.

I think this is, if we're looking at the sweep of Terry Nation stories.

This is the most distilled terry nation.

It's got all of his preoccupations are present.

It's kind of the doctor rising up against tyranny, which no one has really done apart from Terry in the past.

[27:50]

He sort of, he founded that idea in Dalek invasion of earth.

And he runs with it here, whereas in other stories, the doctor still sort of arrives and muddles through.

Whereas Terry presents the doctor as an almost mythic force.

The Daleks know him and he operates on a galactic level.

I think that helps with the stakes of the story, but it also makes it feel, as Nathan said, like a harsher universe.

I think the harshness is probably because, you know, there are a number of deaths of people that we're choosing to call companions in, you know, and add bread to that in master plan, and then you have the massacre.

So, and then, you know, before that, you've had myth makers, we're kind of...

And mission to the unknown, where everyone gets killed.

Can I can I express it in a different way?

And I think what happens with the departure of verity and a kind of a long tale of the departure of David Whittaker as well is that what I see in Master Plan, but also what I see in much of season three, even though there's some great ideas in it, is a lack of care, a lack of thought of, wait a minute, how can we make this a bit better than it actually is, how can we improve on that?

[29:03]

Is that actually good enough?

And is it John Welles?

Is it Dennis Spooner?

I don't know.

It's corrected.

It starts to be corrected when Innes Lloyd comes along and Jerry Davis, I think.

But what I see is, and this is what I, going back to what I was saying before, about the master plan episode's kind of being just a jumble of stuff that happens one after the other.

And yes, it has the, thanks, no small parts to Duggee.

It has this great, you know, excitement to much of it.

But at the same time, I just feel that there's just not, hasn't been enough care put into, what are we trying to do with this story?

Where are we trying to go with it?

What's going to happen?

I mean, the massacre.

I've only heard the audio, but, you know, you know, the book is so much better than than the actual televised version, because the, again, the televised version kind of, well, stuff happens and then it just kind of is a massacre and then it's at the end.

And I watched Mission to the Unknown as well, the recon of not the remake, but the recon of it before watching master plan for this.

And it's the 1st time I'd seen it for donkeys years.

And it is the last verity episode and I think there is a real contrast to that episode and then what we get here in terms of care.

[30:11]

The question that we should be focussing in on here, Simon, is where was Donald Tosh in all of this?

He's the scriptor to say.

And he's the script teacher of all of those stories that you identify.

It only lasts for a very short time.

So what was he doing?

Okay, so we know that Terry Nation and Dennis Spooner got together and had a meeting, probably lasted 5 minutes, judging by the end result on how they were going to kind of link their stories together for Dalek Masterplan.

Yes.

But where was Donald Tosh in this?

Where was he saying, okay, here's our framework and keeping the writers on the same page?

It's almost like you just left them to their own devices.

Yeah, I mean, there's that old, I don't know whether it's an old wife's tale of the whole thing of, you know, Terry delivering a wafer thin version of a script which only asks 12 minutes and then dashing off in a cab.

Is that true?

That's demonstrably untrue.

I mean, Donald Tosh's anecdotes are serviced by nominative determinism because the main body of them is provably unverifiable.

And the way that he told it, because he was...

I think he almost said it when we interviewed him once, he said, well, everybody else is dead now, so I could just say what I like.

[31:17]

And because he also claimed to have discovered Coronation Street on a desk when he worked at Granada.

And that was also, that was also not, again, again, provably wrong.

I mean, I've got the I've got the terri nation scripts from Master Blood.

And they are, they are thinner, but they're not that thinner and all of the core stuff that we associate and with Master Plan and most of the dialogue is, is, is terry nations.

Tosh fills in blanks and extends bits.

And I mean, this is how you talk about how casual it is.

I think when the companion character dies.

Terri Nation basically types, and you can bunk something in here that is appropriate for the character, because I don't know, and I don't, you know, it's not what interests, it's interesting.

The stuff that interests most writers, which is the colour and the character, is not seemingly what interests nation.

Nations basically interested in writing a war movie.

And that's why they love him so much is because he's interested in the sort of mechanics of getting the story from A to B. And that's actually what you annoyingly what you want from a right.

[32:27]

That's the stuff we almost value less as viewers because we go, oh, I like that scene where that character does that or I like that scene that's got those good jokes in it or whereas actually what you need to make a good Doctor Who story is somebody who knows exactly how to tell a story in that number of sets and how to get it from A to B and keep it being exciting.

Terry Nation does that standing on his head, but he's not that bothered about having a sad bit for a character or whatever.

Although the sadness is built into the fact that he leans into all of those, you know, like I'm thinking of Larry and Phil in Dalek Invasion of Earth, you know, he knows how to do all of that.

So he sets up various little storylines within his storyline that gives, it's like a disaster movie.

Everyone has to have a sort of, the coward has to become brave or the awful character has to die bravely.

The coward has to learn that he's not really a coward, all that stuff.

Terri Nation can do so well that we sort of slightly take him for granted because we're slightly more snooty about those sorts of things because, well, loads of things do that, but actually to do the well is really, really difficult and because he makes it look so easy.

[33:33]

I think it's easy to respect him less because we are more drawn to poetic dialogue and funny jokes and all of all of that.

That's right.

And I respect him greatly for this.

We have the superb example of Blake 7, where Terry provides nuts and bolt stories that work and characters that leap off the page, and then the script editor, who in that case is a good script editor, Chris Boucher, comes in and adds little bits of colour and excitement and detail that elevate the entire experience.

But Terry's got the nuts and bolts.

Terry provides exactly what you need for storytelling and I see that here.

Everything that he provides for the 1st 4 episodes sets this up to be an absolutely rollicking adventure, which is then squandered.

But even then, I mean, the 1st four, five, whatever you want, episodes still, they don't have for me, even if you chuck away most of the rest of it and bring episode 12 back to be episode six.

Even if you do that, I'm not seeing an elegant story arc as one gets in the Dalek invasion of Earth or the Daleks, even though it's a sort of a story of 2 halves with, you know, one to 4 and then 5 to seven.

[34:43]

I'm just not seeing that, even though I think there are some great episodes and there's some great stuff in those 1st 4 or 5 episodes.

I'm not seeing, and I thought of how we actually doing this, how we, how is this being shaped in, as a total, and even keys of marinace, which I kind of, as I said on this podcast, I, I, I kind of, I mean, I don't hate.

I just kind of dislike a bit because we're going from place to place to place, place and we never actually kind of get to know anyone.

We don't, you know, I'm not getting a sense of kind of you're getting interested in any of the locations in particular until you get to, you know, the city of millennias.

Same sort of problem here. certainly the same problem in the chase.

But I mean, remember that something like Dialect Invasion of Earth is actually fairly simple when it comes to plotting.

I mean we just split the leads up.

We all head up, we all join together and we overthrow the Daleks and there's no sort of serious reversals or anything like that.

We even managed to circle around with, you know, Susan and the doctor.

[35:44]

We get to end an episode where it begins, you know, because we couldn't avoid doing that.

But there wasn't a complexity or building or strange unexpected reversals and stuff because that's not what he does.

And I think that, like, some of that really ripe dialogue that we get, you know, at the beginning, like, it does, you know, all the stuff about all these galaxies in every universe and, you know, the solar system and, you know, like everything, like how many galaxies are we and I'm going to control 5 galaxies and like all of this sort of stuff.

There's a kind of lack of interest in any of that being comprehensible or psychologically real or anything like that.

And that's okay because what he is good at is getting things to happen during the course of an episode and things that are really fun and interesting.

But so far, in our trip through the nation, Irv, in Doctor Who, I think it's never been more complex plot wise than Fiona Walker on the planet Millennius, the town of Millennius.

[36:50]

The city station.

You know, that's as complex as it's got.

Everything else is just very plotty and very straightforward.

And I think I think that we're going to see an improvement in the 70s again, and I think we're going to see an improvement in the 70s because we get 1st Terence Dix and then Robert Holmes, you know, eventually helping him and and, you know, making up for the deficiencies in the way he writes dialogue, I think.

I mean, I partially agree with that, but I also think that that is a symptom of what you've identified in the past, Nathan, which is people not wanting to give something like horror fang rock to Graham Williams.

They always say, well, it's a pinchcliffe leftover because Graham Williams couldn't possibly have done something like that that well.

People don't want to give Terry his due for the good dialogue that he does present.

Like, I don't believe that many lions in Genesis of the Daleks were tickled up that far by Rawat Holmes.

I believe he did come in and do some great polishers, but a lot of the dialogue is pure Terry.

[37:53]

And the dialogue here.

It's not, it's not rich or making myself hungry.

It, not rich or brucey.

But, you know, we're trained as Doctor Who fans to think that that kind of Robert Holmes style dialogue where you use, you know, words like perfidious and fascinine.

We're trained to think that that is good dialogue and it is.

But Terry's dialogue is always sharp and expeditious.

And I think that's its own virtue.

He keeps the scenes moving along.

Well, and and also we have, I mean, I, I, now that we have episode one, I think my favourite bit in episode one, is, is the cynicism of the chorus of, uh, um, Lizan and Roald, you know, as they watch... as they watch Mavechen, you know, give us the necessary exposition, but it's framed in a way where you have these 2, uh, you know, and he mouths along and he says, it's great to see him do his speech again and it's so artfully deployed. and nicely done and that, and that made me think, I love the way you framed nation through Blake 7 and that's, that's how best to do it.

[39:05]

I think that's that's absolutely right.

Because he does have, you know, that dark and cynical thing that, again, as a kid, made me feel like I was watching something really grown up.

And I think where Doctor Who works with that is at its best is I think you can have a dark and dour and quite harsh universe of a story because it is the doctor that provides the sparkle and the twinkle, which is why I think I'm glad Hartnell is in this rather than say pert we, who I think would have perhaps been a more natural fit.

He would have taken this universe in his stride.

Whereas the sort of dotty old man who's being very sweet with the Trojan handmaiden gives this an element of the sort of otherworldly and the strange and the slightly twinkly that without which it would just be like a war film and not quite like Doctor Who.

And I have to say that the discovery of the the 2 missing episodes recently has, it seems to me really elevated Katerina in everybody's view because she has this strange.

[40:12]

I'm not sure it's always deliberate.

If you listen to some of her line readings, which are things like, you know, if you've got a line like, you must rest, and she goes, you must rest, and you go, I think you're absolutely lovely doing that a little bit too much.

But it strangely works and I love that slightly detached.

It's like she's, she's doing what she literally does in the show, which is she, she floats through from the worldly plane into the heavenly one, but she's got this sort of slightly detached and slightly odd.

Um, and Camfield helps with the way I love that bit where they're talking about her on the spa in episode 3 and he favours a close-up of her looking at star charts and all of that.

I think that is just, I think she's absolutely captivating.

As I say, I'm not sure it's always deliberate on the actress's part.

I think she's sometimes doing naive acting from oldie worldie person, but it just kind of strangely works.

And it also brings out what we love about Hartnell when he is with Vicky and Susan at his best, is that he can have a really nice rapport with his companions when he chooses to, especially if he has a sort of responsibility over them.

[41:28]

And this sort of bit the stuff where he's teaching her.

But he's never sort of patronising.

And I think all that stuff where they get together to repel that hairy men.

I was thinking desperate.

It's really good.

And he's telling off the board.

And of course, you know, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

But of course, this being the Terry Nation, John Wild's Donald Tosh axis, it's sadly, what it's going to lead to, her last words are something like, I'm going to, I'm learning so much with you.

I know I'm going to be safe, literally.

She dies.

Which, considering it's the, it's the charming, jolly, you know, comic book 60s is quite sort of jarring and and sort of to be cherished in the sense that it's so sort of bold and outrageous, even though it's quite sort of casually thrown in there, probably more from afterthought and lack of rigour than we would care to admit, but it does mean it's sort of strangely impactful by killing her off 5 minutes into the next episode.

I think there is, like, I think it's a horrible, you know what I mean?

[42:30]

And like obviously a bit regrettable that it does turn out that way.

But one of the things about Doctor Who and the way that it grew and happened and all of that is that we get to see it do things that don't work and are weird and strange and off-putting.

And it's a little bit like those people who wanted to, you know, reboot Blake 7.

Let's reboot Blake 7 and we'll make it sensible and we won't give Blake 2 backstories that are different within 6 episodes and we won't do all of this sort of thing.

You think, no, that would make it worse, you know, or rebooting Doctor Who so that none of this ever really happened or whatever, you know, so that it can be more sensible and considered right from the get go.

All of that is a terrible idea.

And so, like, I'm super excited that this happened once.

But I think it's a bad idea.

And I think that we learn, we learn from it, that like killing the companion.

It isn't a great idea, and this one does it twice.

I mean, it just does it twice and it's, it's horrible and particularly Sarah's death is unbelievably effective.

[43:36]

She ends up the time destructor turns her into Gene Marsh.

It's terrifying.

It is horrible, but I am glad it was attempted.

It's funny, Toby, that you say that about her performance.

It's almost like when one watches the war games for the very 1st time and you look at James Bre and you go, what are you doing?

But then you keep watching it and you go, no, this is fantastic.

Whether it's kind of a choice or an accident in the case of Adrian Hill, I don't know.

But remember, she's supposed to be the character thinks she's essentially in purgatory on the way between dying in Troy and the place of perfection.

When I was going to say, I don't know.

I mean, when we were all small people, The urban myth was that, oh, you know, they introduced Catarina from the Trojan Wars, and they discovered very quickly that the character wasn't going to work, so they killed her off, which we all know now, because we're all so much older and wiser that she filmed.

[44:39]

The 1st thing she actually did was to fill her death scene.

We've all been pixlified.

Yes, exactly.

My question, and Toby, I'd be interested to know if you have any understanding in that is to like why?

Because, as I understand it, Maureen O'Brien's contract still had a little way to run, she was surprised when she got the script for myth makers and, oh, I'm leaving it into this.

Is it plausible that they, for some reason, they decided that someone's going to be sucked out of an airlock at the beginning of episode 4 of the next story and they decided that it would just be too awful if Vicki got sucked out of an airlock.

So they get rid of her in the previous story and basically introduce a filler companion that we don't get overly attached to so that she can then be sucked out of an airlock.

Do we think there's any legs in that idea or do we think they were just making it up as they went along?

Well, before I answer that question, I'm going to quickly give you my James Brie series.

I love that.

I love his performance. brilliant.

I think they cast James Bre as a baddie in Doctor Who.

And he went, oh, now the bad is in Doctor Who.

[45:40]

They're Daleks, aren't they?

I know how they talk.

He talks like this, and I think he just thought all baddies in Doctor Who were Daleks, and so he thought he'd talk like a Dalek, and nobody ever, you can imagine them in a canteen going, you go, I'm not going to tell him.

No, you're going to take it.

You're the director.

You're the producer.

Ask Patrick to tell him, I'm leaving, love, don't ask me.

I've never heard of Dalek, say, the Matrix.

My Matrix.

I thought the best way to sort of put an actor down was just to say, oh, you're doing it like that, are you?

Yeah, you're going to do it like that. absolutely.

And I'm surprised everybody didn't say that.

I think that James Brees' performance informs all of the warlord's performance.

I think there's actually, anyway.

But that's for another time.

It's funny because we think of old Doctor Who sort of almost being made up as it went along.

And as we know, that didn't happen because, as, you know, those Egypt sequences weren't just sort of just bunged in as a last minute thing, they were planned.

[46:45]

They were pre-filmed and a lot of them, you know, there was more plan.

It's not like they made an episode where they had to completely throw a story arc into the bin and do a last minute rewrite that betrayed a central character's development, even though she was a last minute central character because you'd fired the previous central character.

Sorry, I'm talking about different episodes of...

I mean, it's a good job now with the big run-in that we get with television and how meticulously planned everything is that you don't get sort of hasty last minute rewrites that derail everything.

Those things only happened in the 1960s when they were making it on a weekly basis. 8 days before broadcast.

Yeah, I quite like your theory, Simon.

I think even John Wiles wouldn't have killed Vicky.

I think that would have been a bit too much, even though that, you know, that character is Vicky in the, in the draft scripts, but I, but I think they, they, they never would uh...

Yeah, I think I'm pretty sure that's good.

[47:47]

But I think they know, I think they know it's not Vicky because that's why he sort of says you stick something in here about the companion.

So I think Vicky is purely a placeholder.

I don't think anyone expected it to be to be Vicky because, you know, both wiles and and in as Lloyd are both quite harsh when it comes to just saying to a regular, yeah, you're going next week.

Um, uh, and uh, so I, I think your theory is well, because when I, again, when I was a kid and it was Katerina joins in the myth makers, you would assume that Katerina would be like Nissa, you know, she would be a main character in the story who then joins the TARDIS at the end of it, but she's not in the myth makers until episode four.

So, you know, she's got less screen time than Brett Vion, probably. certainly less dialogue.

So yeah, I've nothing to prove it, but I quite like your theory that they go, we're going to kill somebody off.

But then again, why would they choose to kill somebody off?

They didn't have to kill somebody off.

They didn't have to kill them off.

But for whatever reason, I don't think it would have been acceptable to kill Vicky and Katerina was there.

[48:53]

I mean, Adrian Hill doesn't even get companion billing in the radio times, so I'm very sympathetic to anyone that thinks she's not a companion.

I've been told a lie all these decades.

Yeah, she does, yeah.

It goes back to what Nathan was saying.

I think if it had been a long-term companion, if it had been Vicky, then it would have been too traumatic, but they can get away with it in the Dalek's master plan because to all intents and purposes, Sarah Kingdom and Katerina are not companions.

They fulfil the same role as Brett Vion, who also gets killed.

And so if we're talking about them as companions, We should also be talking about Brett Vion, as...

I am doing that.

Well, the truth is that none of them are.

They are just supporting characters.

They're like Dr. Todd from Kinder.

They fulfilled that kind of thing. thinking of Dr. Todd as well.

They're not as good as Dr. Todd, can I just say?

Only Todd was here.

He's also been thinking of Dr. Todd.

I also think going back to Adrian Hill, I think she had very little experience.

I think she had a small role on Coronation Street, and she had this, and that was kind of the extent of her film career.

[49:55]

I think what lets her down is her voice.

It's far too soft sometimes.

I mean, there's no reason talking about projection on TV, but you can't make out a lot of what she's saying a lot of the time.

And I think that's purely inexperience.

What she does have as Nathan highlighted earlier, is a very expressive face.

And so when she gets given that beautiful Duggee close-up where she's looking at the star charts and things.

She looks immaculate in close-up.

And so I think she's got a charm.

And I think she gets better as the episodes go on.

I think she's better in episode 3 and 02 minutes of episode four than she is in episodes one and two.

So yeah, I don't think she was ever a long-term prospect, but I think she's she's quite interesting.

I'm glad she's in the episodes.

Can you imagine watching it at the time, though, and you get, you know, Vicki is replaced by someone who the doctor has to explain how to open and close a door to, like in the following episode, and Vicki is so great and so lively and so dynamic and so exciting.

[51:00]

Like I just would have been kind of crushed, I think.

I've called up Terry Nation script for, for episode four, uh, which features, yeah, it's Vicky.

Vick is Hunt punches the button.

Brett is ready to fire.

So they die, and then, yeah, Brett says, it must have been mercifully quick after Vicky has died, and Stephen turns away, unable to speak.

Then Doctor Who says a speech here to cover the character of the girl and her belief that indeed.

That indeed she would be the daughter of the gods.

So they've obviously got, they've obviously told him that.

I'll leave this sheet.

Just the name.

I'll leave this to you as the speech depends on what you have previously established.

There we go.

But that's extraordinary.

It's extraordinary that they introduce this person.

At the end of, as you said, it's not she's not even in myth makers, really the story.

She just appears at the end.

I mean, we only we're probably only missing about 90 seconds of her screen time.

[52:02]

It's just it's just unbelievable that that they decided to introduce that character at the end of the mythmakers in order to have her sucked out of an airlock at the beginning of episode four.

Why not just have another Brett Vion character?

like a space security agent on Kemble already that they'd pick up.

Why do we swap out one space security agent for another one?

you know, midway through the story as well?

Because she's a lady space agent.

Fantastic.

She's so good.

But it is very odd.

It is kind of very strange.

It's almost as if they were making enough as they went.

I think, though, that it is maybe deliberately format breaking as well.

It's like, well, it's always been the doctor and companions.

Let's do something.

I mean, on a much smaller scale in series one, in 2005, where Adam is suddenly along for the ride in the next story, which is like, does that happen?

When does that ever happen?

And it is a deliberate kind of shaking it up.

And again, I think this whole story is doing that with this sort of new era suddenly we're not just going to, you know, change directors every 4 to 6 episodes and make a whole bunch of new sets and have a whole set of new characters.

[53:13]

We're shaking the format up and I'm kind of glad they did it.

But they are making new sets every 4 or 6.

They're not just making use sets every 4 or 6 weeks.

They're making new sets practically every week.

Oh, yeah, yeah, we like a piece of marinace.

Yes, exactly.

They're not they're not using They're not utilising the benefit of having a 12 episode story by having a few more, just a couple, more standing stats, although, of course, they've got, you know, jungle here, there and everywhere.

But yeah, I mean, look, I think the other thing, I mean, going back to the format breaking thing.

I mean, the other thing we're missing is because of the jumble of companions or semi-not companions that we're getting, we don't really get an opportunity for the doctor and the companions to be split up.

And that's that's such a Doctor Who thing. a terror nation thing, actually.

Like more than anything else.

And I think actually splitting the doctor from the TARDIS as well.

Like, it's so weird for us because we think of the TARDIS as the doctor's machine that gets him from place to place.

But obviously at this point in the show, it's the thing that drops him into the story and then it doesn't play a role until it's time for the story to end.

[54:16]

And because he can't drive it.

You know, like we've got, we're in the spa and we're in the thing and we're in, you know, like whatever the hell they're in after that, the Dalekers YouTube or something, you know.

And then they're in the TARDIS, but then it has to have the monks TARDIS because our TARDIS doesn't work and all of that sort of stuff.

Like all of that stuff is the classicarination thing, but he doesn't get to do his quick, you go that way.

I'll go this way, which is a staple of the stories he's done so far.

We'll meet up in 3 days in Bedfordshire, yeah.

We'll see you in episode six.

I have to say, a lot of the early stories are about getting back to the TARDIS, and so there's something physical, stopping them for going, you know, the force field in marinas or the literal door in the temple in the Aztecs, or the fact it's on a spaceship in the sensory rights, any of those.

And so I think they're cut off from the TARDIS by virtue of the fact that they're taken away from Kemble and then have to come back.

[55:21]

So I think that's perfectly in line with what Terry's been doing so far.

But it is odd that he doesn't split them up more.

I think this would have been a perfect opportunity for Bill Hartnall to have had 2 weeks on holiday while Sarah and Stephen kind of divvied up 2 episodes between them.

I think that would have worked, but we never quite get that.

The doctor's in some episodes less, but he's not in all of them in some respect.

Well, that's how you do it now.

Of course, you'd have, you'd have episodes 8 and 9 would be in production at the same time and you'd have one set of leads doing episode 8 and one set of leads doing episode 9 and so you'd, you'd double.

I, what you say about, the TARDIS there is quite right.

In the 60s.

The TARDIS's sanctuary, the, you know, the, the, it's, it's built into any story, whatever the story of the week is.

It's, but we also have to get back to the TARDIS.

And that's why Ian and Barbara are such great creations because the thrust of every story is we're trying to get these people back home or whatever or they need to return to normality or whatever it is.

[56:21]

So the very environment you have been pitched into in 60s, Doctor, already is inherently dangerous because it's not the TARDIS, which is which is our link to us, which is safety and normality and what we know.

And that's, and again, I think we, we lose the impact of that a little bit now, the more blase we are about the great and exciting fundamentals of what Doctor Who is.

But in the 60s, you know, that would have been a real part of the whole appeal of the show is, well, forget anything else that's going on.

The TARDIS is miles away.

We've got to get back to that.

Otherwise, we can't have the program and the characters aren't safe.

But I think that does then give us the key to where they sort of torpedo the story, is you've got all this sense of urgency about the M of terranium and the galaxies and all this sort of thing.

And then they go, but now we're going to travel through time and do the chase again.

And the minute you start travelling through time in this story, you completely dilute the impact of the events of the year 4000.

[57:26]

Um, and it never quite recovers from that until you then get to episode 12.

And, you know, you earn that because of the length of everything and it's, and it is a very, very well done episode.

But Sarah's death that has already been mentioned, again, now you would, that death would buy you something.

Sarah's death buys us nothing.

She doesn't, her turning back to help the doctor.

She doesn't.

She does nowadays. the day.

No, nowadays, you know, her final act would be to push the doctor into the TARDIS before the time wins, you know, activated an irreversible regeneration or whatever dialogue you'd want to throw in to say why it's dangerous.

Now, she just, it doesn't, but it's, now, you could say that's the whole point.

It's a cruel universe.

Death is arbitrary.

I don't think we, as modern viewers, unless you're, you know, flagging up a universe where death is arbitrary, that's the lesson that we learn.

It just seems to be, you've got a big moment here, but you're not letting it resound as much as it might because it's just, it just kind of happens.

[58:32]

At least there's a sort of thematic rigour to Katerina's because she's been taught how to press button.

I mean it's ironic, isn't it?

She's been she's been educated and given a bit of knowledge.

She's, she's, she's, she's picked up how, yeah, she's learned how, she's learned what buttons do.

She doesn't want to open a door.

Talets are in episode one.

It's a shame she, it's a shame what she should have done, where she should have said to Kirkson, are you thirsty?

Have this drink and she's put tablets in the drink and she knocks them out.

That's what, because she learned what tablets were in episode one.

The hilarious thing about that story. sequence, they too, with the, with the, with the door being closed is because, you know, when they're taking off from Kemble, it's like, oh, we have to shut the outer door.

Otherwise, we'll be sucked out.

And then they say the same thing when they're leaving the devil's planet.

Oh, the outdoors.

Oh don't worry, it's fine.

Exen can come on board.

Let's just setting it up so that the doctor can say...

Go on, check, check, check, check, check.

[59:34]

I mean, that is the thing about the end.

And I think that, you know, like we complain, or some people complain about the show being kind of retooled as has happened over the decades, where it becomes a show about the doctor landing somewhere, fighting monsters, throwing off an oppressive government, solving the problem, saving the day, and then leaving.

And we don't have that here at all and we don't have it, you know, he doesn't turn up in...

He doesn't turn up in mission to the unknown.

He doesn't save the day in the myth makers.

You know, he doesn't save the day here.

Like, he doesn't really save the day.

You know, he turns the thing on, but it's all kind of sordid and it just isn't given the chance to be a hero moment.

We're not happy about it.

Everything has come at this huge cost and that's all we can think about.

Next week he's going to escape barely and not save the day.

And so we're getting into a rut here where he doesn't do that.

[1:00:37]

And I think that's bad.

I think that's bad.

But again, because it happened once, this time and they tried it.

Uh, I think now in a position to say that that's bad.

But it's, but it's Terry Nation, who we've discussed before, the Terry Nation is the one who kind of introduces this idea that the doctor saves the day.

You know, the whole point of Marco Polo and the Aztecs and that they just, they just have happened. they're just there to with the events.

I mean, it's only...

And they barely get away.

And, I mean, he starts to save the day in sort of the sense, right?

I suppose, well, I suppose in the reign of terror.

But you know, it's kind of an evolution of the show that the doctor's there to save the day.

And I think he does sort of save the day by, you know, using up the whole M of terranium, which is very odd because it's taken 50 years to mine.

And basically he activates it, uses up the entire M, and all they do is effectively age a small section of a planet to death.

Am I missing something?

[1:01:38]

Not exactly a way to conquer the outer galaxies or even the inner ones.

We're missing that Legopolis shot of kind of, you know, the map of the universe being stained black.

Like.

Yes.

Yeah, so you can't even see material.

Yes, exactly.

No, we've talked about Sarah Kingdom's death, but can we talk about her very briefly because I think that is helpful in looking at why the 1st half of the story broadly works in the 2nd half broadly doesn't.

Sarah Kingdom is set up very well by Terry.

She makes a great impact at the end of episode 4 and then episode five.

Her character is then dumped wholesale by Dennis Spooner, who turns her into the most regulation issue companion, model V, shall we say?

She's very charming, but that's entirely down to Gene Marsh.

There's nothing there on the page that gives any indication of her character.

Apart from perhaps the one moment where she comes face to face with Maverick Jen and calls him a traitor.

That's it.

So much could have been done with her desire for revenge because she was manipulated into killing her own brother, which is swiftly forgotten.

[1:02:46]

Um, and sort of redemption arc as well.

I know that's not necessarily the kind of thing that 60s Doctor Who did, but I think that in a 12 episode story, it absolutely could have, there's absolutely space for it.

I just think, you know, what she's in episode 10 and she's flinching from make-believe mummies and things like that.

We've lost we've lost whatever character she had and she's just companion of the week.

I think that's emblematic of the wasted potential, that is the 2nd half of the story.

And it's interesting to see what, I think, a lesser writer does with the quest format that Terry Nation had in something like the chase, which, as we know, was delivered very badly, but is, I think, stronger on the page, and the keys to Marinus.

Terry is focussed.

Dennis Spooner is rambling and boring given the same remit.

There are no real set pieces in any of the episodes that he pens for the garlic mask plan.

There's nothing to hang the individual episodes on.

And it's odd because I like Dennis Spooner's work on the Romans.

[1:03:49]

I think the Romans is extremely strong and very funny.

But here, for some bizarre reason, he chooses not to do any plotting.

So every episode's the same.

The TARDIS lands, they wander around a little bit, have some minor obstacles to stop them getting back into the TARDIS, which they then overcome, get back into the TARDIS and go.

It's mystifying.

I'm not sure why when we've had this great setup that Terry delivered us that we then just jettison it all and wander around for 6 episodes.

It's mystifying.

I mean, Terry Nation, he writes headlines, a bit like Russell T. Davis does when the show comes back and each episode that's on is like, there's a headline that's going to draw me into it.

I'm no great fan of the chase, but yeah, he goes, we've got Dracula and Frankenstein in a haunted house.

We'll solve the Mary Celeste mystery.

Absolutely.

We've got a robot Doctor Who, which means I can kill him and call the episode The Death of Doctor Who.

This is all stuff when you read about it as a kid.

You go, that must have been an amazing story. it's got all of those things Whereas Dennis Spooner goes, how can I make a force field last for 6 pages?

[1:04:57]

How can I make opening the TARDIS door on a planet that echos?

Or I can't even remember what, and I watched it the other day.

I can't remember what happened in that bit.

Not much to remember for half an episode.

And as you say, it's that cardinal sin of when you've got a load of alien costumes hanging up in the costume store around the corner.

It's the Cardinal Centre being boring.

Um, you know, at least land on on the planet of malfa and have a fight with malfa for a week and see what the malfons are.

And they can all cuff their hands in their particular way. yeah.

All of that.

I think his planet's called Teramalfa.

Teramalpha, yeah.

And, you know, we get to the Egyptian episodes, and again, there's a great setup.

You could have a couple of really great historical dog 2 episodes with some Daleks thrown in, but instead, all they do is wander around pyramids.

[1:06:04]

The most interesting thing about those 2 episodes is the doctor's super stylish Panama hat, making a reappearance.

How has this happened?

I ask myself, and I go back to my previous conclusion, where was Donald Tosh?

But as Toby said, I mean, maybe you could do something better with ancient Egypt.

I'm sure you could, but I think it takes away from the importance of the year 4000 by going back in time at all.

Can I ask what people's view is of the Feast of Stephen?

Because I just want to make the observation that, you know, I mean, obviously, as we all know, it was never shown overseas, you know, it should have been, you should have come here and it didn't.

And I was watching at the end of episode 6 in the beginning of episode 8 to sort of see how it would have worked if episode 7 just wasn't there.

And I don't know, picking, you would have felt like you'd really missed something because it's not like the cliffhanger works or even the, you know, because the, the whole thing about, you know, all the, the most poisonous atmosphere of experience, whatever it is.

And they don't even arrive on the volcano planet at the beginning of volcano.

[1:07:05]

It sort of doesn't work.

Having said that, I actually think that episode 7 actually is quite good.

And I think you can draw a line from episode 7 to the Christmas episode, some of the Christmas episodes of the 21st century.

So I like actually both 7 and eight.

It's actually not as bad as I feel either.

Like their disposable, they, you know, nothing sort of very much is happening, but they're kind of aware that on Christmas Day, is this what they're thinking that they just can't keep doing this grim dark stuff on Christmas Day, so they'll do something that's fun?

It's the fact that they think that not enough people will be able to watch it.

So they don't want to do anything, which is, well, that's the understanding that I read that, that, that, and, and the similar thing happens with New Year's Day as well, because of course, episode 8 is New Year's Day.

Same, same rhyme and reason.

And you sort of have a moment where we're kind of heading towards London on New Year's Eve, like the Daleks are about to turn up.

You know, a little bit like the most recent series of Doctor Who, where the world's going to end when the last episode gets broadcast, you know, that or when the pirate captain decides to kind of, um, that he's going to mine earth.

[1:08:14]

You know, like suddenly, suddenly we as the audience in the present day in London are kind of under threat in in that in episode eight.

Like, I think all of that, that stuff is fun and forgivable.

And I think that it's a reminder too, that Doctor Who is, you know, a TV program that takes place on Saturday night.

And, um, I think I said before that Stephen Moffatt says that Doctor Who takes place under your bed.

But I think Doctor Who obviously takes place in the corner of the living room.

And so this is Doctor Who being a TV show and being part of the TV landscape.

And I think that's kind of fine.

And, you know, obviously when actual Christmas specials come.

They are more substantial and more coherent than this on the whole, even the next doctor.

But...

I was going to say, even the Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe, I think, is it?

So I mean, I can't hate them and I did watch a very crappily animated version because I got sick of watching the PowerPoint presentations.

[1:09:25]

And I didn't hate it.

I would actually have quite enjoyed.

I think that that inexplicable 2nd half.

It's kind of like the entire story in my career.

I mean, there are 2 things that have nothing to do with one another and it's kind of hard to know exactly what anyone was thinking.

I think it's lovely to see that.

Well, yes.

Well, why?

Oh, it's great.

It fine.

It's the kind of thing that, you know, because they haven't I mean, short of the Daleks, they haven't brought anything back.

They certainly haven't brought a character back.

So it would have been quite cool, I think, back in the day to see, oh my god, the monk's back.

But yeah, it's it's just they've run out of like Dennis Spooner is searching for something to do and it's it's very unfortunate.

I mean, it is, it's that desire to, to kind of pin the show to being Doctor Who when it's changed so dramatically.

And so let's have the Daleks. let's have the monk, you know, let's remind ourselves that this is still the same thing.

But being a child, child of the 80s, and obviously an adult of more recently, where we get consumed by self-loathing that the show gets so inward looking, and that is often to its detriment.

[1:10:30]

I actually rather like it in the 70s and the 60s when they do, you know, when they bring Mike Yates back in Planet of the Spiders and refer to that, just those, because none of that stuff really ever overtakes us during it, and it's like, oh, there is a bit of joined up thinking because I think we used to sort of looking at, particularly the 60s ago, oh, they've just changed it every week.

Sometimes they called him Doctor Who, for God's sake.

You know, but there was a bit of joined up thinking and that the universe, you know, had threads that attached it.

It wasn't just disparate people parachuting in and writing a different version of the show.

So I quite, I like the fact they bring the monk back and especially because Peter Butterworth is so good.

But it is sort of facilitated by the fact that we have our gateway opened to comedy by the Christmas episode, which for me, I don't think it's particularly good or it's certainly not necessary to the story, but the art lies in the fact that it is there in that I love the fact that Doctor Who is an historical artefact, especially for those of us that, you know, started watching post 1960s because of when we were born or whatever.

[1:11:36]

This is stuff that you learn about and you delve into.

And I love the idea that there was a moment when I discovered there was Shotcora, a Doctor Who episode on Christmas Day.

And then many years later I discovered, oh, it was this self-contained thing because it couldn't have references to what was going on the rest of the story.

And, oh, stylistically, they just went for madcap disposability.

I mean, and it sounds an absolute mess.

But that's not to say, it probably would be improved by us being able to see it.

We know that Douglas Canfield was a, was a good director, but I, I mean, I can see why Tony Hancock fired Terry Nation, I don't think he is a great comedy writer.

I think he's a great...

I mean, that whole, that whole thing about the man in the mackintosh and the revels and the green hat.

It's a really torturous way to get to a terrible punchline.

The best bit about that is the bit that they add where once Reg Pritchard has been cast and they decide to go, I recognise you from a marketplace in Jaffa.

[1:12:36]

And you go, hang on, suddenly we're doing meta-actor-based references in 19 the mid-1960s.

This is absolutely extraordinary.

From an episode that was on once, 12 months.

I adore that.

That's the sort of thing that gets floats my boat.

Gets you in the fields.

But in the, you know, the actual experiencing of it, you know, I don't think it's particularly good, but I love the fact that because one of the great things about Doctor Who is that it's not like anything else and that it gets away with doing some bizarre things.

I love the fact that in Doctor Who's history, a big epic dark space opera in which 2 companions and inverted commas get killed and the show enters a sort of different phase.

They throw in this, the only episode of classic coup that was on Christmas Day and it has its own particular feel about it.

And then it gets its own mystique because was it telerecorded, was it not?

We'll probably never see it again.

[1:13:37]

All of that.

That, to me, is all part of the whole great experience of Doctor Who.

I can't experience Doctor Who stories in a vacuum without all of the other stuff that excites me around them, you know.

Well, indeed, indeed.

It's because I never learned to press buttons properly.

Can I observe about Hartnell, though, is how I felt he was so immaculate in the Feast of Stephen.

And actually, I think that that lasts a little bit longer.

Like, I think he's also pretty word perfect in volcano, and then the 2 Egypt episodes, and then it sort of all falls apart again.

But yeah, he's absolutely, completely on form during the feast of Stephen.

It's just quite remarkable.

It's like watching a different actor.

Maybe it's because he had a week off for Christmas before he filmed.

Ah, right okay.

Speaking of what you were saying, Toby about being a child of the 80s.

It's a wonder that we didn't get the meddling bunk back in the 1980s with Ian Levine's influence on the program.

[1:14:41]

I can just say that was kind of the light, a light entertainment role that was made for JNT to cast.

David, David Jason was my choice when I wrote fan fiction as a kid.

I cast David Jason as the meddling monk.

Yes.

I mean, JNT would have had Morecambe and Or Wise to choose from, you know?

Well, that cancel season 23, I think, just got a little bit longer.

Can we talk a little bit about Dougie Canfield as well because I don't feel that we've really given him his due for this story.

Terry was always pushing for the program to be more than anyone else.

And so we said earlier, you know, he's looking for different sets every week. is pushing production.

If there's a problem with his big ideas.

It's that the scope leaves him at the mercy of the director.

And so we've seen the chase, Richard Martin.

Sloppy.

Genesis, David Maloney. excellent.

Dalek invasion birth, Richard Martin again, sloppy.

Dalek's master plan, Duggee. excellent.

Duggee is who we have to thank for this story, having its reputation, I think.

[1:15:46]

We've had Daleks in the hands of Richard Martin for the last few episodes, and they're kind of, we forget how threatening and interesting they are when they're shot well.

Um, Kurt Gantry's death in episode one where the 1st shot you get at the Dalek is that big horrified close-up on him and then the low shot of the Dalek looking down at him is superbly effective.

It's like textbook for setting up the 1st appearance of a monster in a Doctor Who story.

And just a few shots later.

Dougie does the same thing with the TARDS.

We've seen the TARDIS materialise.

In every story since the, since 1963.

What Dunkie does is he has the task materialise behind some ferns in low shot, and it instantly looks iconic.

I don't know what it is about how he frames and composers and how he does it under the same circumstances in the same studios as every other director, but he just has a knack for visual storytelling.

And I think this story absolutely hangs off his talent.

[1:16:47]

I think a lot of the stuff that would be tedious slash dull, I think, are, say, is definitely saved by Douglas Canfield.

Even episode 10 is, which is, I think, you know, amongst the least interesting, is at least watchable.

And certainly those early episodes, he really does something special, but and we haven't really seen it like, we haven't actually really seen Doctor Who like that before.

As you say, I mean, I know that TARDIS materialisation sequence that you're talking about is on film, which is why we had the clip before we got the episodes back.

And it might have something to do with that.

I hate to say the depth of field or whatever. you know, you think maybe they didn't have a high enough tripod.

No, no, no, I just do take some direction into it in layers because if you did that on video, it might not look the same.

And I, and also I wonder, I wonder how much of the mystique is the fact that it was just that clip of the Tartar materialisation that we had for, for, for many years.

It looks great in context though.

It does.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think also Dougie uses the set in ways that other directors don't.

[1:17:48]

And so he's constantly shooting through things.

There's the great scene in episode 2 with Maveik Chen and Zephon when they're outside the Dalek city.

And 1st of all, when Maveic Chan is looking out at the firestorm.

He sort of framed through this lattice in the set.

And so instantly it looks visually arresting.

But then, as he moves around in the scene and he sort of, um, he reframes the characters in it, Mochan moves behind these bars, which are kind of set up in the thing.

And then he says, he delivers the line, perhaps, I'm one of those who knows my place.

And then Kevin Stoney kind of pauses, looks at the bars, gives a little smile and then steps back.

Now all of that has been worked out in rehearsals because Dougie knew how he was going to shoot that.

He's always shooting through things and across things and it just makes it instantly more interesting.

Yeah, but that, I mean, that moment's Kevin Stoney as well, but I'm sure we'll get on to him who is Chef's Kiss.

But yeah, Camfield not only knows how to shoot the Daleks, he knows how to choreograph them.

[1:18:50]

That's the beauty of what he does with those Daleks in that spaceship.

It's not just the way that he shoots them.

It's he's constantly thinking about how to place them, how to move them, and when he does move them, what the camera's going to do when they move.

And his use of the Daleks is absolute, they're not a hinderance to him.

They're something that he works out how to shoot well in order to make the story visually arresting and he works out. his camera moves and his movements of the Daleks in order to bring out the very best in them.

And I think the choreography of the Daleks, particularly in something like, Devil's Planet, I wasn't that terribly excited about in terms of, you know, episodes coming back.

I was like, well, it'll be great, but, you know, it's it's not much, it's not much that really happens in that episode.

They just go to a scruffy planet for a bit, but actually all that stuff on the Dalek spaceship is absolutely, stunningly done.

And then there's the, the, the, the sunlight glinting on the, on the dalek that turns dessert is amazing. just extraordinary. one of the best dissolves I've ever seen in Doctor Who.

[1:19:52]

Just the ambition of that.

And the fact that he, you know, committed to doing all 12 episodes, uh, and to work really hard on them.

And I know there was lots of departmental anger about how late he was with some of the stuff by the time that it all backed up and there's been this sort of domino effect of delays.

But he, you know, it's the story is the story that it is because he totally committed to it.

And he's totally committed to keeping it moving.

There's no sort of sense of vattel do.

And that stretches, I have to say, and he doesn't often get credit for this because I think it's invisible often, is that he's really good with actors as well.

We know he's really good.

Yeah, absolutely.

We know he's a really good action director.

We know he's really good at keeping things moving and he's very good at keeping these frames.

But to get his actors being tense and having the energy.

Actors, good actors, energy, drives programs, which is why Tenant is such a good doctor, which is why Davison often rescues some quite dull material, because the actor is driving the episode and is bringing you through.

[1:20:58]

And you look at somebody like John Levine in Terror of the Zygons, and he's a completely different actor from the actor who's in some of the other John Levine stories because Camfield has given him the respect and he suddenly realises to do things like put his hand to his mouth before he works out how to do the decompression thing and just little touches like that and he trusts his actors enough to bring the camera in really close.

So often he gets the actors doing a lot of the heavy lifting, of scenes that could otherwise be quite sort of dull or pedestrian or expositionary, and he just has them.

Doctor Who is a show that it's best when it is sort of driven and energetic and is keeping you thrilled and excited.

And he's just the exemplar of that.

I think he's really key to the success, but it's not just because of his muscular attitude to the show.

It's also because he, you know, he makes sure that his actors are all, you know, working at the top of their game.

And often he doesn't do that thing that Doctor Who relies on, which is rely on theatrical actors to give it that heft of a stage actor.

[1:22:01]

He often plucks actors from the ranks or he likes.

He's got a bit of Joan Littlewood in him.

He likes sort of tough guy actors who might not be sort of trained thespe types, but who give it a sort of realism and a gutziness that, again, doctor doesn't need too much of work because it could be too dour and dark and you don't want it to be like the Sweeney, but it does work and especially if you're a kid and you're seeing that sort of stuff and you go, oh, no, this makes me feel this is thrilling and alive and, you know.

And it's a different approach from a lot of directors to casting in that sense.

And Toby, you can draw a direct line from that to Graham Harper, because of course, Graham Harper was Douglas's protégé worked with him on things like Seeds of Doom on Doctor Who.

And what was Graham Harper famous for?

You can see him in the footage on the Tartar set in the caves of Andrazani rushes.

He starts every shot by saying lots of energy, lots of energy.

Let's go.

I was going to say, too, I mean, it goes back to Toby, what you were saying goes back to what I was saying before about talking urgently in corridors, that that sequence in part 2 where they're all hiding in the jungle and everyone's kind of got this energy and they're all talking terribly urging me and it makes a scene of otherwise nothing dialogue incredibly exciting.

[1:23:11]

But it's not just about the energy.

It's also about the fact that he gets his actors on the same page.

They all feel like they are in the same show.

Sometimes on Doctor Who.

The lesser stories for me suffer because some people are playing it too big.

Other people are playing it too seriously, other people are playing it for laughs and they're all in this same thing.

Whereas Dougie gets them all doing the same level.

You know, seeds of doom as a great example.

Tear of the Zygons.

Crusade.

They're all so so great.

And even though, you know, you can laugh about, we can laugh about the delegates all having different hand clap motions.

And we do. they've thought about that.

They've actually like, he's, he's actually, when, when, you know, is it Salation who kind of floats in in episode 2 when he comes to the meeting?

Like, you know, it's not just some stupid costume they've been asked to put on.

You know, Trantis is made to kind of be like a troll and and, you know, it's no, but that's care.

That's what I goes back to what I was saying before, about care.

Dougie has the care that unfortunately, I fear the producer and the script editor were lacking at this point.

[1:24:16]

And you know, this is the only time that Douglas Canfield ever directs space in Doctor Who.

Ah, yeah.

His only space story.

And he's committed to creating that universe.

He does it, as you said, with the casting.

He always casts extremely well.

He always gets the big parts right.

Maveic Chan, Brett Vai, and Sarah Kingdom.

They're always immaculately cast, helps with keeping them on the same page.

He gets it right with the way that he shoots it, but also very, very importantly, he gets the sound design, right?

Oh, yes.

And so episode 12 would not be nearly as great if it didn't have that incredibly weird TikTok of the time stalker.

And then the howling winds, the creak is genuinely gripping climax, and you can believe that the planet is falling apart around them.

And I guess that they, you know, will never know, but I guess they couldn't really show that, that you believe it because you hear it.

Yeah.

And you don't, what you don't get, um, which you so often get in, in earlier Doctor Who, is the sound, like you kind of get in Legopolis of, like, you can, you can hear their footsteps on the, on the balsa wood, like rise, if they're on, you know, it's also obviously hollow.

[1:25:25]

But the same, it's not just episode 12.

The sound design throughout is so beautiful.

It's got this wonderful music concrete.

There's a kind of that echoey.

It's incidental sound rather than incidental music and it just, it has, that's what creates this beautiful atmosphere.

And going back to what we're saying earlier using the Blake 7 example.

When the Dalek Time Machine shows up, it's accompanied by a very, I think, a very basic sound effect, like it's nowhere near the genius that is the TARDIS materialisation noise.

Isn't the same one they use in the chase?

That's right.

And so that's a product of guess who, Richard Martin.

I think it would have been okay for Dougie to have changed the sound effect.

Yes, but also they probably said, you know, it's already been established.

That's how they used it.

But using the Bleak 7 example, with the Terri Nation link before, The reason Blake 7 is one of my favourite series and works so well is that you had an incredible designer, an incredible sound designer working on those 1st episodes.

[1:26:28]

And so you have the liberator set up in all of its glory, the way it looks, but also importantly, the way that it sounds, the teleport effect, Zen, the way the liberator sounds when it's flying through space, all of those amazing things.

And we have the illustrative example of series D of Blake 7, when you take all of that away, and set it all up again with a new spaceship, the Scorpio, and all of it is 2nd tier, because you don't have geniuses at work getting the sound design right.

But one of the best actors, of course, we talked about the actors, is, of course, Kevin Stoney, and he is absolutely magnificent, and I think episode two, not just because we haven't had it for 20 years longer than we had, episode 11 episodes one and three, but I think that's actually his strongest episode, and possibly episode 4 as well.

And he starts to kind of get a bit too big in camp towards the end, but he's just magnificent and he can he can take the simplest lines of dialogue, like some air and just make it land.

[1:27:34]

Oh, he's extraordinary.

A man such as yourself.

Yes, that's when he talks to that Zephod.

And that little bit he does when he goes, you know, I know my place basically going, look, I'm imprisoned by this.

There's a set here that looks like the bars of a prison.

I'll just do a little bit of stuff there.

He is magnificent.

He is an actor with a deft touch.

I actually I mean, he's doing what the script asks him to do when he gets bigger.

I mean, that whole big speech he gives that then cuts back to Carlton going, you're bonkers.

You know, this Chen's arc, if you like, is one of hubris.

I mean, I've revised my opinion.

I know in, I think in running through corridors, I say, it's a bit disappointing that in, it's already in episode 2, the Dalek's going, Chen's a dick, we're going to kill him.

And you go, oh, no, that's a shame because, but actually, that's the whole point is that he plays the whole story like he's the lead character.

And yet we already know that he's disposable.

So actually, I think that dramatically that works in a way that I perhaps didn't 15, 20 years ago.

And because it doesn't diminish Maverick Chen, because you can't diminish Kevin Stony, because he is such an inventive, committed, sly actor of great detail and great nuance and great subtlety.

[1:28:49]

And then, and he's, and he's such a reliable presence throughout the whole thing.

The way he bats the, you know, he gets the best bit of episode 10 when he bats the Dalek, I stalk away.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, that's it.

And the Daleks have character, which we forget, which they don't always have in Doc 2, but the Daleks have a bit of character in this.

You know, when they kill Zephon, they're a little bit sort of inscrutable if something that has no facial expressions can be, but they somehow are.

But then at the end, when the main characters going, right, I'm going to have my big moment now, because it's episode 12, the Daleks just ignore him and then go, we're not even going to kill him in the main set.

Take him out to a drag him out to a corridor.

End of the corridor.

And it's such an ignominious ending, but it's supposed to be.

That is not because they haven't thought it through.

That's not just because they need to get rid of the character and so the writers do it in a way that doesn't, you know, you do get some main villains who get slightly crappy deaths and it always feels a bit unsatisfactory.

[1:29:54]

It's deliberately an aside for the Daleks because he's, he has spent the whole time under the illusion that this is all about him and it's, and it's not remotely.

And, and as a result, he does need to be sort of slightly bigger because he's bigger than he thinks he is.

His role is not as large as he thinks he is.

And I just think he's magnificent.

I think he's so good in this and I've watched the invasion recently.

And he's so good in that as well.

Just goes, this is why I like character actors.

We all expect sort of stars to turn up and bring whatever star power that they do.

But when you have when you have a sort of jobbing actor who does work of such high quality, more than you could ever hope for.

And he's a gift that keeps on giving.

I think he's one of the great Doctor Who guest turns, and I think he's one of the great Doctor Who villains, and I think he does a magnificent job.

Like all great Doctor Who villains.

Maverick Chen has a sense of humour about him, including the aforementioned Tobias Vaughan.

[1:30:57]

I also think that scene in episode five, where you get the 1st hint that he's crazy and he's just stressing around that weird empty teleportation room set, sort of, you know, gesticulating.

I think is a real tour de force.

I also think it would be great to see his death scene.

You can't see it, obviously, on the reconstruction.

But because he's made up in such a weird way, it's almost like he's in negative with the very tanned skin and then the white hair and the white brows and the white beard.

I think to see him turned dalek negative when he's exterminated would have been a very arresting.

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

And the script specifies that he, before he crumples, he has a disbelieving look on his face.

And you know, that's absolutely, his coda will be, the last thing we see of him is, I can't believe they've done that.

To me.

Yeah.

Amazing.

[1:32:01]

I mean, we're all of an age that we encountered that list in, whether it's, you know, the what it was, the winter celebration. and then for me, at least it was a celebration, but I know that that wasn't the 1st time that it was out there.

But to have that awful word none sitting next to Dalek Master Plan.

And because, you know, it was a 12 part dialect story.

So it had to be the best story ever. everyone keeps saying this.

So I was there was just awful to think that.

And then, you know, not long after we get 5 and 10, then we have 2 and you think, wow, that was just so amazing.

And now we have one and 3 and they just extraordinary to think that in 1983, could you have looked forward and thought we would have 5 of these episodes.

But what I wanted to say about it was, they didn't have to turn up in the order that they turned up.

No, no, no, they didn't.

They did have to turn up and let it out.

Like, basically, imagine if instead of 5 and 10, which made us all go, oh, is that is that what this?

Oh, oh, oh.

[1:33:02]

Imagine if one and 3 had been the 1st episodes to turn up in the 80s, right?

And then we got two, and then we get 5 and 10 now, and we go, oh, it's just, it's so fascinating, to me, because it's the only, is it the only example where we've, certainly must be the only example where recovered episodes have come in 3 completely separate trenches decades apart.

You know what I mean?

It's just a fascinating thought if they'd have turned up in a different order.

What it reminds me of, though, is Enemy of the World, which we've talked about before, where you get that very weirdly uncharacteristic single episode, and then you get the rest of the story where all of the other episodes are, you know, quite different.

And, you know, you're surprised to learn how kind of great it actually ends up being.

And for me, what's interesting is that the Dalek's master plan is in some sense just a thing that happened for 3 months in 1965 and six. and six, I think. you very much.

[1:34:07]

But in a sense, more people or for a longer period of time, it's been this weird partial thing. you know, that's been the subject of sort of myths and things.

And I think in our power of the Daleks episode, Simon, you traced the history of Power of the Daleks from, you know, a paragraph somewhere to a thing that, you know, has been animated, that we have scripts and stories and, you know, all of these things, opinions about performances, clips, you know, that in its afterlife. it's become something quite different It's interesting what you were saying, Simon, about the fact that 5 and 10 existed because I think it authored a distorted idea of what the Daleks master plan was like. 5 and 10 are not rep, when people think of the Daleks master plan.

They think of those Terry Nation episodes 1st and foremost.

They think of the Kemble episodes and then they think, oh, yes, and there's some other stuff.

I think if we'd had those 1st 3 episodes or even if we'd had just episode two, it would have given an entirely different flavour to the story back in the 80s.

[1:35:15]

Yeah, absolutely.

The missing episodes are a great part of Doctor Who's appeal to me.

I think there is something.

I wonder if we would love Doctor as much as we do if we had it all at our fingertips.

There's something about if we had to watch the Space Pirates.

Indeed.

Oh, for God's sake, we have to watch underworld.

Or not.

But there's something about longing, there's something about injustice.

There's something about unavailability.

There's something about something being there, having been there and now not being there and the whole tragedy and mostly, of course, the hope.

It's the hope that kills you, but it's also the hope that keeps the flame alive.

And, you know, like you guys, I knew it as none.

And I remember reading none and thinking, but it's 12 episodes.

Surely the chances are, because I didn't know how things worked.

Surely one of them, I can understand that mission to the unknown is a nun, because there's only one of it, but there's 12 of this one.

Now, can it be none?

And then, of course, you learn later that the fact that we've got any is a miracle, and the fact that 5 and 10 came back was a kind of crazy miracle.

[1:36:24]

And then two, and then the fact that we got the 2 episodes that surround two, so it suddenly gives us a 3 week run of the bloody thing.

And we've suddenly got, you know, more episodes that of it than we have of a number of stories because even stories that we've got all of because a lot of stories are only 4 episodes long.

And we've got more episodes of the Daleks Master Plan than of stories that we think that we've got plenty of and enough of because they're complete. and elegant sufficiency.

And yet bizarrely.

The finding of one to three, which I am in a fortunate position that I found out about in real time, pretty much, I remember the phone call from John Franklin, and he said, I've found them.

And we knew that this guy had some missing episodes of Doctor Who.

That's all I knew.

I mean, we had an I had an inkling. was must, but I thought he was going to say it was...

I think I'd got an inkling about Devil's Planet.

I had no idea about Nightmare begins.

So when he said, what's the nightmare begins and I was like, yo, what?

[1:37:28]

Hang on, I hadn't even, and I'd just done a massive podcast where I'd sort of canvassed opinion about who wanted which episodes back.

And I remember thinking about master plan.

I was like, well, we got three.

So I'd maybe want episode 12 because it's got all that brilliant stuff in it, but, you know, we've got representation for a master plan.

Let's get stuff back from stories that are completely missing.

So it wasn't on my, I would never look a gift horse in the mouth, especially if it's the Trojan one.

But I was in no hurry to get master plan back.

I was at, yeah, I was like, well, we, and one and 3, well, we've got episode two.

But of course, as soon as he said it, I'm suddenly like, what, the nightmare?

You got the 1st episode?

Oh, and then you suddenly think it's got Kirk Gantry. got the dice got.

And then he said...

Yeah, yeah.

And then, and so then, of course, I was able to watch them.

And I've now watched them too many times.

An unhealthy number of times.

You're an unhealthy, it's allowed.

Every time episode three.

[1:38:29]

When we had episodes 25 and 10, I was like, well, we're lucky to have them in the 1st place.

And also, yeah, it's nice to have, it's nice to have those snippets from across master plan.

Now that we've got more of master plan, I miss the bits we haven't got more.

I feel like we're closer to having not just a bit of a representation from a story we can imagine because, you know, because of all the other stuff that we've got, now I really miss, I miss the traitors more now than I did 6 months ago because I feel like we're almost there. can almost touch it.

Yeah, yeah.

And if we had the traitors and if we had the destruction of time, I feel we could, we would maybe have enough to say, well, we've got the, we've, you know, we've got the gamut.

Although, you know, people who want to experience all of it might, well, some of the jokes, I understand that.

Volcano is an interesting one because that has kind of both because it's got delegates and comedy.

[1:39:29]

And as...

As sure as new things are separated.

As an Englishman currently on a call with Australian friends, I have to invoke the cricket match because and as a fan of cricket as well, I love that joke of the of the 2 commentators, the very plummy English commentator who is Jethro and the sort of slightly boring, boring Australian commentator just sort of repeats what he says.

But the wonderful joke of the TARDIS landing, and I'm going, oh, this is rather jolly.

And then it taking off again, and then they're just carrying on with the cricket, which is, I'm a listener to Test Match Special.

I like cricket.

It's a joke that really floats my boat that, but also it's one of those sequences where you just assumed that it'd be a bit of stock footage or that you wouldn't even see it, but actually they went to the trouble of doing a TARDIS fade in and having a couple of extras in cricket costume and all of that archeology of working that out.

Anyway, that's a that's a side issue, but that's another gift of Dalek's masterplan.

[1:40:31]

And I would urge anybody to look at some of Gavin Reimill's output or Tim's missing episode podcasts where there's some quite scholarship got into piecing together what we haven't got or in Gavin's case looking at that glass shot on Devil's Planet, which points out that actually some of the set is an extension and a painted bit, which I wouldn't have known.

And I've seen that episode a lot now.

And I only noticed that when he pointed it out.

So that's the other thing is that it provokes us with so much other sort of content and experiences and research and all of that.

So the whole missing episode thing adds to the lustre and to the mystique.

But these 2 discoveries have actually given me a bigger appreciation of the story itself.

And I miss it more now than I did, even though we've now that we've got 50 minutes, minutes more of it.

In addition to that as well, I would say that I appreciate the fact that the Daleks Master Plan represents the sweep of our understanding of missing episodes, as you say, looking at those lists and seeing the dreaded word none, and then finding out that there were 2 episodes, which appear to have been the stereotypical episodes that were taken off a shelf and then found somewhere and returned to the BBC. episodes 5 and 10.

[1:41:43]

And then knowing that episode 2 existed and was actually one of those ones that came, I think, from an editor's collection.

And so it was, you know, taken from a cutting room somewhere.

And then episodes one and 3 coming back and realising that there were these things called cutting copies.

And so our entire understanding of what were missing episodes and how many copies, and film prints of episodes might be out there, and what might be returned and what might still be in collections, has all been kind of encapsulated in the Daleks Mask plan and its trenches of returns. absolutely.

I remember when episode 2 came back, it really was in 2004, I think a lot of us were thinking, okay, that really is it, isn't it?

That was that was it.

And yet, as you said, the cutting copy thing is totally changing.

Just the delicious possibilities.

It's an exciting time to be a fan of missing episodes, I think.

Yeah.

And actually, if there are so many episodes that I would have had higher on my list to have returned, but actually, and in the way that this has happened and the fact that Peter Purvis was involved in that.

[1:42:47]

And because of course, I'm now going based on the experience of what we've actually had.

I can't think of 2 better episodes that could have come back because they, one because they're good, but 2 because of they open up these other possibilities about missing episodes. 3 because they give us a complete run of now a 3rd of a story. 4 because they fill in Katerina's story as well.

It could have been any 2 episodes that were in that man's collection.

But they were surprising enough as well.

I just think they were the perfect 2 episodes to come back.

I think, you know, we might have been after the initial excitement slightly underwhelmed, but I don't think anybody, I've been at those screenings.

You know, people have really lapped these up.

And I think it's just the perfect.

It's the perfect fairy tale for missing episode afficionados in 2026, you know, which after so many years of nothing and despair and, you know, horror stories that it's just worked out really, really, really well, and unexpectedly and surprisingly so.

[1:43:52]

Yeah, the Dalek's masterplan surprises us once more.

Well, that's all the time we have for this week, and we'll be back next week to watch the Daleks performing their greatest hits in a whole new decade in Planet of the Dialects.

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 flights for entirety, which comprises every episode of our 4 Doctor Who podcasts.

[1:44:52]

Until next time, some guy named Rinmull keeps calling to ask if anyone has seen his mice.

If you hear from him, can you please make up some story about how they've gone to start a new life on a farm in the country or something?

Thanks.

Thank you very much for listening and good night.

Good night.

Ta-ta.

Bye-bye.

And aim for the head.

That was 500 year diary, starring Nathan Bottomley, Peter Griffiths, Toby Hadoke, and Simon Moore.

The theme was composed by Cameron Lamb.

This episode, choreography of the Daleks, was recorded on the 4th of July 2026 and released on the 20th of September.

Well despite my prediction last week.

This episode came in at just under 2 hours, once I edited out some of Peter's puns, Simon's lengthy impersonations of James Marie and Peter Miles, and my own impassioned and repeated defences of the two-part finales in both RTD eras.

[1:46:13]

That's brilliant.

Mm, I think that's...

I think that's the out.

So the title will be choreography of the Daleks, I think, which... that's Toby.

Choreography of the Daleks.

Gary Dowdy. absolutely should have been a Doctor Who title.

It's my favourite recent one that we had was when we did, um, we did, uh, uh, uh, Terence Dix's season, which ended with um, Timeworm Exodus, uh, which Adam said, let's explain Hitler.

Again.

Anyway.

But yeah, it's choreography of Daleks, absolutely.

Yeah, sold.

Well, because I've got a thing now.

Like what I will do is I will actually get the combined track of us run it through a transcriber and like I'll be able to kind of have a 1st look at that.

[1:47:23]

Do you know what I mean?

Because listening through the whole thing takes the full fear. too long.

But and I will listen to it all the way through several times, obviously, before releasing it, but I also get an additional kind of a look and see if I can find titles and stuff.

You listen to my reference to Ian Touchy himself multiple times.

That, I'll, won't tell you what I'll be doing while I'm listening.

That's the 500 year diary after dark.

Well, I have everything.

I have so much dirt on so many people, including Toby actually.

But uh...