you're listening to fusion patrol a listener supported podcast each week we take a single
episode of a science fiction tv series movie or audio and overanalyze it to within an inch
of its life welcome to the discussion
Hello and welcome to another episode of Fusion Patrol. I'm Eugene.
And I'm Simon.
And tonight we are looking at the first of three of the Doctor Who 60th anniversary specials.
First one, The Star Beast by Russell T. Davies.
And I did not write down the authors, but this is based on a comic book.
Pat Mills and Dave Gibbons.
That's the names.
From the 70s.
1980.
1980?
Is that when Doctor Who Weekly started?
Is it?
I thought it was from the 70s.
I don't know if it's when it started, but it was when the Starbeast was published.
Well, it's the second story after, I think, the Roman legions or something like that?
The Iron Legion.
Iron Legion.
There we go.
Yeah.
All right.
So there we go.
That's what this is based upon, featuring David Tennant as the Doctor.
Starting with the synopsis.
The newly regenerated Doctor, suffering no obvious post-regenerative effects, arrives in London,
where he almost immediately encounters Donna Noble, followed by her daughter Rose, and a crashing alien spacecraft.
The Doctor also meets Donna's husband, Sean, a taxi driver, and heads off to intercept the spacecraft.
Unit has descended on a steelworks, where the craft has made a controlled landing.
The doctor chooses to keep out of sight of the unit troops,
but he's soon spotted by Shirley Bingham, unit's current scientific advisor.
The doctor explains his dilemma.
For some reason, he's got an old face back,
and he's been plunked down right next to Donna Noble,
and there's an alien invasion.
Something is up, but if Donna ever remembers him, she will die.
He also points out that the ship was damaged by weapons fire,
which means there are two alien invaders.
Rose has gone to see the escape pod, which landed near her house, and then, upon return to her shed, has found the Meep, a creature so cute you could sell them by the millions if you had a little shop.
I'd love a little shop.
The Meep is afraid, for there are monsters pursuing the.
Unit has located the escape pod, and the Doctor hitches a lift to see it and realizes it is right near Donna's house.
At least, I think that's why he goes straight to Donna's house.
At the spaceship, a squad of unit soldiers are taken over by the craft and proceed to search for the Meep.
In Rose's shed, Donna discovers the Meep, and a flap ensues.
Sylvia, Donna's mother, pretends like there's nothing there because she knows if Donna remembers about her journey through space and time, she will die.
The doctor arrives and starts to try to deal with the Meep.
Tha explained that the Wrath Warriors have hunted Meepkind to extinction, and Tha is the only one left.
The possessed unit soldiers arrive at the front door.
The Wrath Warriors arrive at the back door, and the shooting begins.
The doctor gets them out of the house and into Sean's taxi.
Along the way, the doctor notices something curious.
They escape, but not before the Wrath Warriors notice them and open fire.
In an empty car park, the doctor stops and holds court, conveniently summoning two Wrath Warriors out of thin air.
The doctor as judge presents the evidence that he has amassed.
The Wrath Warriors are firing non-lethal weapons and are not killing the unit's soldiers but instead stunning them.
He fails to mention that they blew up two walls out of Donna's house with explosions that could have easily killed someone.
He also posits that the mind-controlled unit's soldiers are actually under the MEEP's control and trying to rescue them.
The Wrath Warriors explain the Meep is the last of the kind, a race of beings mutated into cruel, evil killers by their son when it went mad.
The Meep responds by killing the Wrath Warriors with a concealed weapon, just as the possessed unit soldiers arrive.
The doctor bluffs his way into getting himself and Donna's family taken prisoner, rather than killed outright.
They are taken back to the Meep's starship, which has been repaired by a team of more possessed workers.
The starship uses a dagger drive which will destroy and consume London upon takeoff.
The Doctor and the gang are rescued by Shirley, and while Donna's family tries to escape,
the Doctor heads to disable the ship.
Donna has been increasingly remembering the Doctor in an oblique way and almost instinctively
follows him into the starship.
They get sealed in before the Doctor can send her away.
The engine compartment is split in two by the biggest plot contrivance in the history
of television, and with Donna's consent, the doctor must perform an undelete on the files in
Donna's head, even knowing that it is certain death for Donna. They stop the ship and, bonus,
undo all the physical damage to London. Donna dies in the doctor's arms, but the meep is still at
large and plans to destroy the ship. This is where Rose comes in to save the day, for she too has the
mind of a time lord, passed down by Donna, which has split the meta-crisis between them, which also
means Donna isn't actually dead. The doctor then causes the Meep's escape cod to eject,
allowing the Roth warriors to apprehend them. The split meta-crisis only delays the inevitable,
and now Donna and Rose are on a countdown to die. Fear not. They're women, and they can just let it
go, thus ending the meta-crisis. Just let it go? Clearly Donna has never met Donna. Later, Donna
goes with the doctor for one last trip just to see wilf let him know that everything has been
resolved that donna is safe however donna spills coffee on the new tardis console and they are off
on an uncontrolled journey into time and space the end so star piece david tended back donna
noble back rtd back what do you think well it's come with a lot of expectations hasn't it there's
this, what do I think of it as
an adaptation of
the Starbeast? Or what
do I think of it as a
continuation of the Doctor and Donna
saga? Or what do I think of it as
a 60th anniversary
special? Or what
do I think of it as the continuation
of Doctor Who from Power
of the Doctor? So all of the
above. There are probably other
things I haven't thought of as well.
I mean, I
think the first thing is,
i definitely enjoyed it i i didn't like everything but you know i had a very good time
watching it um i'll i'll i'll just say before we get too cynical on this i watched it twice
and i i thoroughly enjoyed it both times so i think i was an enjoyable hour of tv both times
one or less second time but yeah after watching it twice i i think i enjoyed it a little bit more
time which i think may be partly to do with the kind of adjusted expectations around it um and i
tell you what when i was watching it the second time one of the things that i noticed i'm sure
influenced my first you know how much i enjoyed my first watching was and this is like absolutely
not news but my god david tennant is good as the doctor yeah he's he's he's good yeah yeah he's he's
he's still in fine form i think i was just expecting it the first time around but when i
when i kind of watched his performance the second time i watched the detail in it he is just
remarkably good and i i found things to enjoy in every performance as the doctor and several of
them you know i i really think are great really great and but there are there are certain i mean
I think this is why Tennant coming back is the 60th anniversary treat.
It's like the,
the,
the kind of two doctors that people think of are Tom Baker and David Tennant,
essentially.
And I,
you know,
I think there's a huge amount.
You,
you,
I can,
I can watch the worst Tom Baker serial,
but just really enjoy everything that he does in,
you know,
in his performance.
And so I think there is something about that in Tennant.
And it's, I mean, the other remarkable thing about it is,
I mean, obviously he was back as the doctor 10 years ago,
but it's pretty much 13 years since he was the doctor.
So, and there have been, oh God, he enumerated them,
but three other doctors in between.
So this is pretty much like what if Peter Davison had regenerated into Patrick Patton?
It's that kind of gap, which I find difficult to get my head around because it feels like yesterday that he stopped being the doctor.
But if you look at clips from the original run, my God, he was young.
My God.
Oh, yeah.
The earlier ones, he really looks like a kid.
You think he hasn't changed, but he does.
no he looks older he does well i wouldn't say he looks old but he looks kind of thin and there's a
lot more going on with his hair to i well yeah and obviously there's the reference in it to
you know how long you can get away with wearing a suit like that yep yep which clearly doesn't fit
the way it's buttoned up it just clearly doesn't fit right yeah it does seem to fit even less well
than his original costume yeah and and that i mean let's hop into the the you know we i think
we discussed this at at the end of the power of the doctor it regenerated into new clothes or
a variation of one of the variations of his old clothes okay well it's not it's not an old costume
i know it's completely it's completely new costume but it's it's of the same style i.e the clothes
came with it well i think his generation from trout and all possibly hard not but but the style
to cut the yet it doesn't fit it fits like maybe it was supposed to be on him when he was the doctor
and yet he is older and so taking a page from the moffat book where we now have established that if
you pull a doctor forward through time they get older and then snap back when they go back i'm
kind of halfway thinking that this inner this regeneration has somehow been obviously tampered
with by the boss we could talk about later but so in other words that's why yes that's why he's in
the clothes that would be appropriate for that doctor or a set of clothes appropriate hey yet
they don't fit like because you know took him that pair of clothes pulled him for maybe from
some time when he was wandering around before the ood took him down you know when he was on his own
maybe he had that suit on at one point and this is where that pattern has been pulled from but
it's odd that it doesn't quite fit um it goes with that whole the body has changed i don't know
i mean i said quite a lot about i i said quite a lot about regenerating into the clothes when we
talked about paris doctor that i can't quite believe was a year ago and i don't really have
anything to add to that except to say that i want an explanation for it and i am distinctly less
confident that we're going to get an explanation you're not going to get one no i don't think we
are going to get one for it i i can i mean i'll be happy if when shooty gawa regenerates he's in
jody whitaker's clothes that would be the it's like okay this was such a weird anomaly that
you know now we've but anyway that yeah i mean i'm gonna be okay but i i kind of think that
rtd has just i mean it's ironic because it's so unnecessary but he's he's regenerated him into
this costume directly because he didn't want to have a wardrobe scene it's like that that would
have that would have slowed things down and and tenant is back for three episodes and he's like
i'm i'm not i'm not giving it i'm not giving it a wardrobe scene so let's just deal with this at the
at the point of regeneration but he didn't need to do that because we there's a cut you know at
the end of power of the doctor we could see him in jodie whittaker's costume and at the beginning
of this clearly well sometime has passed because he's got a new sonic which i believe is from
a comic strip that has happened and there's also been the children in need special so other things
have happened they could have included tenant going off and sorting himself out in the tardis
wardrobe without it being televised and absolutely that would have made me happy yeah i i'm gonna i'm
gonna pass something on that i've got my notes here i was gonna bring this up a little bit later
but I think it, it goes to this idea about the clothes changing and no explanation and whatnot.
So there is, there is one two word phrase that comes to my mind when I think of Stephen Moffat
doing the doctor, not necessarily just his time, but Stephen Moffat, what he's done with doctor
who. And those two words are don't blink. Okay. That's just, that's just indelibly worked in my
mind about steven moffitt don't blink it's it's the key thing for rtd this needs to be don't think
because the reason i enjoyed the star piece a bit less the second time i still enjoyed it it's like
fun romp rtd is brilliant at a fun romp i will give him that i have complained in the past about
the fact that he just absolutely does not care about setting up a solution to his story and just
like flip flip flip done he's terrible at resolving plots but he's fantastic at making a fun
romp i give him that but do not think about what you see on the screen because if you do it's just
like that big plexiglass thing that comes down in the middle of the engine room what possible use
could that be but you know and it's not like it's something that the meat put up because it knew the
doctor and donna were down there it it then you can see the line where the plastic thing is going
to bisect it the whole time like it's part of the design of the engine room and don't think just
don't think it's there to create the drama it's not there because there's a good reason for it
whatsoever so uh and rtd will never you know we'll never care yeah i've watched it twice and didn't
think of that and i mean i agree with you i do think sometimes that it can be so sort of
carelessly done that it is distracting i mean it's detrimental to the story but at the same time
what you need is an explanation for it i mean like the plexiglass screen and the effect it has
in that scene is really it you know it works really well it's just you're absolutely right
what the hell is it for if you know the meat gave us and i didn't write it down but it was like some
bisect the that was that was the actual line bisect the something or other and which is very
clear we're going to cut something in two parts and there you go we cut the engine room in two
parts but if it had been a line like lower the radiation dampeners then you'd have just gone okay
to do with the design of the ship to compartmentalize yeah or their radiation or something
but no it's just cut the room in half device okay yeah i wondered what that button does
yeah yeah and so the second viewing i'm taking notes and therein lies the problem whenever i
take notes then i have a track of what happened and then that starts my mind working at it and
that was that was one of them you know one of a few i mean if we if we're if we're talking about
if we're talking about russell t davies which is obviously you know a big element in this story
i mean we've talked a lot about him as as a writer and as a showrunner in the past but
one of the kind of so i guess this this comes on to the question actually hold on hold on let me
let me just point something out have we actually talked a lot about him because fusion patrol
didn't start until uh matt smith's first season so oh gosh we we have talked about him when we
did the regeneration episodes we did rose didn't we yeah we did rose and we did uh christmas
invasion yeah yeah yeah but we haven't actually sat down in the middle of rtd era
retrospect and say i remember when he did that scene where it was all dangerous and then suddenly
the doctor just pulled a bucket of slop out of a dispenser on the wall and solved it
like that kind of thing um but yeah so this is our for a well live real-time rgd episode
of doctor who yeah i i hadn't i hadn't thought of that i mean it just it feels like it because
we're obviously so familiar and so we are in this rather unusual situation of there's a new show
runner new in inverted commas but someone who's kind of storytelling style and particular
strengths and weaknesses we're already kind of familiar with and this is this is a very solid
rtd story i mean i'm i'm very happy with it that the pacing is much better than the show has been
recent years and it it the the dialogue is terrific it zings a lull um there's there's a
lot of nice kind of character moments but one of the things that i found when i was watching it
that maybe kind of distracted a little bit from my from my enjoyment was this is like
a big finish this is all of those kind of familiar elements aping the rtd era was not
aping the rtd era it is actually rtd but we've got the doctor i was going to say the 10th doctor but
you know we've got tenants doctor we've got we've got donna we've got sylvia and we've got a style
of storytelling that feels like this could have come this could be 2011 in effect it it does feel
like a kind of continuation of it and another i mean there's nothing wrong with that per se
i i like you know digging out my season 30 dvds and watching the doctor and donna because they
were a great pairing and you know there were there are some great stories but this is Doctor Who
and it's not it's not continuing the show it is going backwards and I think you know when the
announcement was made I probably expressed some reservations about this I still got them I was
hoping they would go away but I still got them it feels like RTT has has just ignored everything
else i mean he mentioned the fact that the doctor had a bow tie and was then a woman he mentions
kate stewart who i assume is going to appear but yeah there's almost no kind of acknowledgement on
of anything that other people have done with the show which is a huge contrast to what if you look
at what stephen roffitt or even chris chibnall did building on what had come before and i could
understand rtd doing this the first time around 2005 he didn't want loads and loads of continuity
from the past i guess there's the argument this is the beginning of the disney plus era
i was gonna say this is season one again coming up they've they've officially that so just like
moffat did but uh more so because i think if you go to the bbc website yeah it's now 2023 23 and
on yes it is so uh they are which you know makes perfect sense for disney i'm not because as someone
else pointed out somewhere if you started you're on disney plus subscribers somewhere anywhere in
the freaking world and i don't know if you got it on the bbc version probably not but just like
apple tv stuff there's pages and pages and pages of spanish translation actors chinese actors
japanese actors uh you know french actors and on and on and on yeah yeah because the disney plus
has has that worldwide audience that if somebody starts watching doctor who yeah that we didn't
get that you start watching doctor who and you see uh you know season 36 or whatever it is
because you're going to go and sure it might be good for getting dvd sales or something
but probably could be off-putting to somebody new to the show well i don't want to start at
36 i mean i think it's got to be at least 39 i'm i'm counting i don't know what the number is
so 39 it's the specials from 39 like power of the doctor was because i'm not going to count
it as season 40 until we get the kutigatwa so um yeah but the the thing that it reminds me of a
little bit it's not as bad but it's it's because if it is driven by that and the and the disney
plus thing it's the it's the fox executive who wanted when they made the 1996 movie and they
decided they were going to have they were going to see the doctor regenerating into paul mcgann
and this idiot wanted tom baker to do it they wanted tom baker to come in and regenerate into
paul mcgann yeah yeah i i do want to come back to your comment about big finish aping the rtd era
okay i mean yes technically technically they are but i love big finish one it's not a mark it's just
the TV series has a different job.
Isn't every writer who works on Doctor Who,
who is not the showrunner,
in a way, aping that?
I mean, they are writing to a format
and specifications to fit the showrunner's vision.
So they're all doing that.
Big Finnish writers are just doing that after the fact.
And is there a difference between
RTD was there for what, four years?
yeah four years so is there a difference to rtd having done five years as opposed to having rtd
doing four years and then coming back a few years later and doing one i realize he's got more
experience and more things under his belt and whatnot but is that really is it really stepping
back because moving from one showrunner to another is not it's it's like that argument about evolution
that people falsely believe that man you know creatures progressively move into more advanced
forms which is not what happens creatures move into more adapted forms for the environment that
they currently exist and it's not better or worse it is different and uh sometimes those changes
don't work and they die off and sometimes they you know well so the moffett era is not necessarily
an advancement on rartidi's era neither is chibnall's certainly not an advancement on anyone's
era um maybe jnt he's down there with jnt late for me but you know it is it is an adaption to
the reality of the environment that it is in to survive and so i don't think of it as going back
to rtd it's technically from a linear time standpoint it is but yes rtd has been good
rtd has been once again given the chance to reinvent doctor who truly reinvent it for a new
time and audience that's the whole disney thing and and and he ignored a lot of the past
you make a good you make a good point you make a good point and i i am cautious about
banging on about this too much because this really is not the hill I want to die on
I would like and I and I may I may change my mind in a week right I would like to not worry about
this but I think there are a couple of things that you've raised that I connected with some
interesting parallels so what one is RTD has come along to reinvent Doctor Who that was what I hoped
would happen right and it still could but this is not it he has not reinvented doctor who he has
gone back to 2010 i hope that at christmas he will actually reinvent doctor who because i want to see
the show move forward that it that is that is the thing and if if you're right about the way it's
evolving and you know adapting I will be absolutely delighted so that's fine and I
and I would not object to I did not want to see RTG leave when he left I I had not had enough of
his era I saw that that the last series with Tennant and Tate was the best he'd done and I
hoped that the next series had it happened would be better yet and even more so when Moffat left
I mean, I just, I loved the Stephen Moffat era. I was in seventh heaven. So if he had carried on for an extra year or an extra two years or whatever, I would have been absolutely delighted by that. But do I want him to come back now? No, I don't think I do.
because I want to see how is Doctor Who going to become something different?
How is it going to enter a new era?
Because that is always what Doctor Who has done.
And that's part of what makes it so exciting.
So that's one side of what I'm worried about here.
And again, I don't want to make a big thing about this
because this was just back of my mind thing, not spoiling my enjoyment.
But the other, and this is real Jonah stuff,
But the other little worry in my head when you mentioned JNT is that what happened to JNT without him going away and coming back was that he was a super fan of the show.
And being the producer was like his dream job.
But until it was halfway through his run, he was pleading to leave the show.
And he got himself into a situation where he knew that if he left the show, it would end.
And there's a bit of me that's worried that the backers of Doctor Who, and it's no longer just, you know, the BBC now because we've got Disney Plus and whoever else, that they require someone running the show who they have confidence in pulling in the big audiences, which RTD has a track record for doing.
You know, he's brilliant at the kind of publicity and the special.
I mean, we'll see what happens with the ratings because, you know, obviously you would not expect them to be the same as 2009, given the change in the way people watch TV.
But it could happen that the BBC and Disney bosses get worried about the show.
And the only way they'll be assuaged is if RTD stays there.
And he will become the new JNT.
That's funny.
That's a real possibility.
I will say this to a point you raised in passing.
You're hoping that Chudy Gatwazaro will be a reinvention of Doctor Who.
I did see an interview with David Tennant and RTD.
And they weren't specifically addressing RTD's format here.
But, you know, they kind of asked, is this is this the 10th doctor? Is this the 14th doctor? And, you know, this is the 14th doctor. And so is he going to be different? He's like, no, he's not going to be different because this is a big celebration and we're bringing him back and people want to see him do him.
Right. So they are very they are very aware that this is a celebration of the 60th anniversary of Doctor Who, and it is a nostalgia fest. This is intended to be a celebration of the past. And so he is who he was, despite the fact that he is the 14th Doctor.
I think we can carry that through to what RTD is going to write.
He's going to write Doctor Who as a celebration of the past.
Maybe he'll twist it as we go towards the end of it to set up the new era.
But he is definitely in it for, you know, this celebration is meant to be.
You're supposed to remember the old days here.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, okay, I want to discuss it as a celebration.
But I guess my last point on RTD is RTD is very recognisable.
It doesn't matter whether you're talking about this or the second coming or years and years.
You know, the things that make his writing brilliant and the flaws are always there.
And, you know, I love recognisable writers.
You know, Aaron Sorkin is the same.
David Mamet is the same.
you enjoy their stuff because you enjoy their stuff.
And that's kind of fine.
It is just a question of coming back to Doctor Who.
So I don't know.
The thing about it being a celebration is kind of interesting
because it doesn't feel like a special RTD David Tennant episode to me.
It feels like a kind of fairly solid middle of the road, could have been 2009 sort of episode.
And it is special because people fondly remember David Tennant and they want to see David Tennant.
And that is it, which is interesting because traditionally, like as established by the 10th anniversary and the 20th anniversary and the 50th anniversary,
a kind of anniversary special is a multi-doctor story it's next week it's gonna be next week
it's not gonna be next week i'm sure it's not gonna be next week and i'm not i'm not kind of
complaining about this i'm i'm observing it i don't i don't generally
we've got nothing we've still got nothing from wild beyonder yonder which is the episode that
reportedly actually has a different title when it airs and even the next time the next time
they didn't they didn't show a next time trailer and then when they released it it doesn't actually
have anything in it that's right there's nothing in it they're hiding everything i agree it's
cryptic but i don't think it's going to be full of previous doctors which you know by the way is
fine i really enjoyed the kind of multi-doctor multi-companion aspects of power of the doctor
um even if it wasn't the greatest episode in the world and the 50th anniversary special was well
fantastic it was amazing it was amazing i i watched it i watched the star beast and then i watched
Day of the Doctor back to back.
And that's kind of unfair to the Starbees.
Yes, it is.
Day of the Doctor is kind of deliberately and amazingly well written
as a celebration of everything that makes Doctor Who fantastic
and what the spirit of the character is all about.
Plus, you've got all the interaction between these absolutely wonderful actors.
And into all of that, Moffat manages to fix one of the kind of issues
that he sees with the kind of one of the long-term storylines.
It is amazing.
But I was just struck by the fact that bringing David Tennant back
was the celebration.
I mean, this is the 60th anniversary special
because it's the one that's closest to the 60th anniversary.
And just having Tennant back is what makes it a 60th anniversary episode.
Oh, see now.
Okay, hold on, hold on, hold on.
I'm going to throw my crazy idea
that just popped into my head.
Remember what I said about the clothes
and the fact that they don't fit
and we have established that when you pull a doctor forward,
I'm thinking we might see some old fat doctors
popping in in their costumes in his place
during this episode, in the next episode.
I think that's how they'll...
Well, we'll...
We've seen a lot of clips from the Giggle.
that doesn't nothing from you i'll be the other so it's possible but anyway that that might be why
the clothes so there's your explanation um well i'm not saying we're not going to get an explanation
of the clothes but at the end of power of the doctor i was like this is a big clue i'm 100%
certain well no but at 90% certain that we're going to get an explanation of it and now i'm
like 50 certain i think it's yeah equally likely falling fast ignored completely but yeah we shall
see should we should we talk about the show itself perhaps we should i'm sure there's somebody sitting
there in the audience going get on with it oh there's probably somebody there every week if
they're still listening yeah i'm gonna throw one one out that's my first note donna is already dying
there's that line at the very beginning where she says as the days draw nearer as the days
draw in nearer or something like that i'm beginning to think that's like that's an odd
turn of phrase unless you are terminal i completely missed that yeah it's at the very
it's at the very beginning somewhere where she's sitting at the computer i don't remember it's in
the pre-credit sequence which sups or whether it's in or later on when she's talking but she
she says she says that um as the days draw nearer i'm beginning to feel like that and it could be
i'm just getting old but she's not old enough to to be i mean i don't i'm i'm pretty sure i'm older
than donna noble and i don't yet start thinking i'm counting days to the end even even though
technically speaking we all are but you know there's there's a point where you you realize
your mortality and then that's when it starts and it just didn't feel like that it was an odd line
and i think this could explain how we're going to get rid of donna again
not necessarily that she will die at the end of death rtd won't do that
but no i don't think he will there's a there's a reason why i am not leaving my family
so this has always been rgd's problem his companions are so close to the doctor
that there just is no logical reason to believe that they would ever leave him unless they had
no choice martha was a little bit odd but but even there i mean at least she at least she had
the excuse of like i get it it's not reciprocated bye-bye but the others yeah rose i'm not sure i
agree it's because of how close they are i just think that he can't it yeah it's it's kind of
part of the way he he plots these things that it it i mean i like the way dan left for example
that you can have an event that makes someone think maybe i won't carry on traveling in the
tardis tegan yeah yeah i guess i thought dan was better example for that one but
um and you know in a way the problem goes back to susan because sort of yeah having the having
having well both having the doctor chuck someone out of the tardis and also the whole idea that
these predominantly female companions can travel around through time and space until it's time for
them to get married and settle down are both fairly problematic and yes so we need a different
way of getting shot of the companions but i guess one of the problems that i have with the way rtd
plots stuff and it's kind of again one of these things where it is his weakness but also his
strength is he doesn't feel constrained by anything if he wants to write a story he'll write it and
you know nothing will get in the way the the way in which he got rid of Donna he needed to get rid
of Donna okay so he found a way of doing that I wasn't mega happy about it then but then he wants
to bring her back so he's just going to find a way of doing that and the issue with it is I mean the
good thing is he can he can get Tennant and Tate back together we can have a set of three exciting
new stories they're going to be very jolly and full of the kind of old camaraderie and chemistry
fab but the downside is nothing he does actually carries the weight of oh this is it forever and
it was like with Rose actually the the the kind of bad wolf bay stuff I did think was very
I was impressed by that.
I was moved by that.
But when he wants to bring Rose back, he just did.
And yeah, that meant that the weight of that original departure just sort of evaporated.
That's what happens when you can dispose.
It's that no end game.
He has no end game.
He writes with no end game.
And then he gets to the end of the page and he says, OK, now I have to finish this.
And that's what he does with the companions.
and similarly he's like well now i need the companions back so boom bring it yeah it's it's
it's don't think don't don't think too hard about this because the doctor didn't erase
donna's memory apparently he did not erase her memory he just password blocked it yeah i mean
would he do that if that was if he was saving her life and he was going to send her off why would
password blocked it because who knows he always did a monkey there was a japanese t-shirt that
had those words written on it and donna saw them and then boom it's that wasn't a rat she dies
that was not a retcon it was not a retcon no i thought he's he erased it he's very explicit in
2009 if she remembers she will die that's there in the episode yeah if he's erased it she's not
going to remember so the memories exist but she's got to not access them there's a there's quite an
interesting piece by dean burnett about memory and doctor who that we can put in the show notes
he put a password on it he did put a password on it yes that's not like that's not like it re you
know you erase a hard drive and you expect it not to come back unless you have a special tool
and there's a certain amount of time and sure maybe the erasure wasn't perfect and maybe she'll
gets bits of it will come back enough to trigger the whole thing that's not the same as blocking
it off in a secure area and putting a password around it that that's not yeah why i say i think
dean burnett's article is probably better than addressing this as if it were a computer hard
drive but let's just go with the computer hard drive and say if you want to erase data of a
computer hard drive completely securely you've got to rewrite it 35 times or whatever it is i mean
you'll know that better than i do but if you just if you just encrypt the drive that the data is on
then no one's going to be able to access that data without the password so it's more secure
the brain's not a hard drive so no no but it's still it it implies that there's a forethought
that he might undo it because you know what's better than encrypting a hard drive shredding it
it's encrypting a hard drive and not knowing what the password password is with a random password
It's like, oh, I don't know what it is, but the doctor knows what it is.
So he knows he might use it in the future.
At least that's you have to you have to take that assumption, which means.
But we know that was not the case in the original.
He was doing it to save her life forever.
And there was no intention of bringing her back.
But, you know, OK, fine.
Here's another thing I'm going to say for this.
And that probably I'll probably regret it.
but i'm gonna i'm gonna throw it a little bit of commentary from my wife um uh i was out walking
with her before the episode aired and um she my kids won't watch doctor who anymore chibnall
destroyed it for them they they simply will not they're not slightest bit interested or possibly
most people when they get to that age stop watching doctor who i know i did specifically
they said that they just it's been ruined and it's not because it's jody it's just because it
was awful to their to their minds but anyway um my wife expressed i was surprised frankly um
we talked a little bit and she got animatedly mad because of how badly they handled a female
doctor um she just thought that was and i and i still maintain that jody whittock was just a
chibnall just wrote david tenet and did not have david tenet in the role but that's always how
they strike i think personally but i think that rtd in a way did more on that issue in one freaking
line even though i have an argument about that line than they did in the entirety of jody
whitaker's era which is what they just squandered they squandered the whole idea with you know two
exceptions where they mentioned uh king charles and and in india and there were a couple of
instances where it mattered but it didn't really it didn't really matter and that that's a valid
that's a valid approach don't get me wrong it's valid to say there's no difference between men
and women period therefore we can just slot in any old person here and all people are exactly the
same and so this is fine and then there's also the this is not the experience that this is you
would have if you were female presenting and you would have a different experience and it did not
happen i'll see that and it did not happen it'll be different well we'll see if that does work that
way yes i think rest i think rtd will manage to do that chibnall did not but in just this one
episode it's like if you were still a woman you would remember that all you have to do is to let
it up which is a little bit trite um and a little bit more than a little bit trite a little bit
sexist and uh more than a little bit stupid but you know the doctor should remember that
and if if it were a true thing and there is more there in that line than chibnall got the whole
time that there are differences and i get you know it's it's entirely undermined by the fact
that donna noble never let anything go ever in her life yeah not ever i mean i so i mean there
are a couple of things one but i'm not going to get into the how how successfully or not did
chibnall handle those things with female doctor i will mention that i think rtd by not casting
another woman has i think he's kind of done a disservice to jodie whittaker because no matter
whether you loved her or you hated her for some time now she is going to be the woman who played
the doctor and i don't think that's a fair however on on this question of the whole just let it go
thing i i think that was my least favorite aspect of the episode again it's kind of down to the
well, you've got this Metacrisis problem that you created
in order to get rid of Donna in the first place,
but now you want to keep Donna, you've got to get rid of that,
so we're going to do it in this way.
And it's...
Classic RTD.
It's slightly clever, I guess, to have it passed down,
but really, fundamentally, look at that scene in the Meeps spaceship.
That's a good death scene she gets there.
And it's like, this would be a better episode if she died.
Yeah.
And it can't, I mean, partly it can't be because it's RTT.
Also partly, maybe more importantly, it can't because it's a 60th anniversary special.
And everyone is tuning in to watch Catherine Tate and David Tennant.
And so having Catherine Tate's character dying unexpectedly would put a dampener on the whole,
woohoo, this is a happy celebration vibe.
It's fair.
Yeah.
But it's a pity.
Because that part of the episode did not work for me.
Oh, no, it didn't.
And yeah.
And Mike, once again, my wife was incensed over that.
It's like, what woman would let it go?
It's like, we don't let things go ever.
And I can, I can attest to that.
At least in that one, that one case, that was, that was definitely grab a bucket of slop and solve the day by splashing it around.
It was. Gosh. So, uh, Shirley is the 56th. Am I right there? 56th unit scientific advisor?
Apparently.
And the doctor wrongly claims to be the first. Surely he's the second.
Who was the first?
Surely Liz Shaw was the first official unit scientific advisor.
Good point. Good point.
I mean, you could be arguing that the Cyberman and the second doctor, he advised the brigadier,
therefore he was the first guy along i don't know no no no no give it but i think liz shaw was the
first official unit employee who was yeah it's all about him having a job as he went on at length in
day of the doctor he you know he had a job and he didn't start that job until he got stranded on
earth so i think you're right i think it's liz and he has just basically her his enormous ego
has erased her from his memory so also why is that job so high turnover well that yeah that
is an interesting question how many of them have we encountered four so who's had that title i don't
know okay so uh obviously what's her name uh the zygon lady that's good can't think of it
osgood there we go that's scientific advisor so was she actually the scientific advisor
yeah yeah okay i'm pretty sure then we had the um uh the one with lady lady jewel thief
across the barrier they had a scientific advisor from unit oh the one who was played by lee evans
okay i'll take your word for that but he was that was official scientific advisor
and that's who i've gone that did we have one for brigadier bambara don't think so and i don't
think we had one for the suntaran sky no because that was that was shouty unit by then but i'm not
i'm not entirely clear that we know kate's still around kate kate gets a name check in this episode
and obviously having shirley bingham there she definitely seems a lot more sympathetic
and therefore the kind of faceless unit soldiers seem more sympathetic than they did in first
shouty the era i gotta say i hate what rtd did with the unit and i yes me too and i'm worried
yeah yes yeah yeah no it's it is straight back because i if i had a criticism of the way chibnall
handled it it was basically that which was not necessarily his fault so much as the fact he
didn't have any money but he well he did defund them that was his fault i do blame him for that
but when they appeared it was basically all he got was kate there was no like staff yeah so uh yeah
well we're back to we're back to i mean i hoping that they are more sympathetic because they were
not sympathetic in the rtd era they were a bunch of clownish buffoons and i i know that's the way
the doctor looks at them but you know that's not the way the doctor actually thinks about them he
he gives the he gives the brigadier grief about being a bumbling soldier because he is trying to
get the brigadier to strive higher i'm pretty sure he gives brigadier grief about committing genocide
as well to be fair okay he does on that one he is very upset about that at least until you know a
couple episodes down the road i i will on the other hand the doctor does understand sometimes
you have to commit genocide uh i mean he's kind of done it so um yeah yeah yes done a bit of that
but i think a lot of it was this is he's making yeah i'm not saying he excusings them for being
military but at the same time i do believe that he was part of it was trying to work with them
and make them better whereas in the early rtd stuff it's just like unit was just a force of
frankly bad was in the in the story so yeah i i was i was surprised and not surprised at the casting
um ruth madeley was in years and years and russell t davis kind of often is that is the actor playing
Shirley? Yeah, who was playing Shirley Bingham
but what surprised
me was she was only
cast as the sixth Doctor's Companion
by Big Finish last
year, no probably the year before
it only came out, her first story
as the sixth Doctor's Companion
last year and
this was filmed last year
yes, okay
I haven't heard any of them yet but it's
I haven't either, you know
it's remarkably fast
for the well doggone it that's perfect timing you've got a wheelchair ramp accessible TARDIS now
yeah we'll come to that oh yeah but I mean it's not it's not like it's not like Big Finish haven't
hired a unit by the way was Jack a unit scientific advisor I'm just thinking Jay Griffiths is now
a companion to the eighth doctor and she used to work for unit but they did at least wait eight
years in between whereas this was a lot faster oh i don't know anyway ruth madeley's great i like to
i like to like to character i hope we get more of her yeah that's that would be good if they could
keep keep it a little bit more uh you know maybe maybe she's more available than kate it was weird
that kate wasn't there given this you know yeah there is a fairly definite alien spaceship happening
pretty definitely sure i've oddly also the the soldier said geneva says to go in immediately not
yeah not the boss yeah so that was an odd line but i i think i think i've seen a still with kate
stewart in it from the last episode i saw i've had i think no we've seen her in previews she's
definitely in the previews right yeah so i mean that and to be fair when i talked about using
things from the moffat and chibnall eras that means he's doing it so yeah yeah so that that part
that part good well yeah um bring back i was good i think he also said he's going to address
the timeless child but uh but in an oblique way interesting so keep an ear out for that one
um in passing shall we discuss the new tardis then sure you mentioned the new sonic yes well
new tardis beautiful the only thing beautiful but beautiful that's an awful lot of wasted space
just to show us you got a budget the only thing i've got to say about the new tardis is i'm glad
that it has caught fire already.
I think it's too big,
but I hate it.
I like it.
Really?
Okay, I hate it more than anything else
in this episode.
I mean, I've been in mourning
since they got rid of the Pickwood TARDIS.
Which is which?
For all the criticisms of Jodie Whittaker's
interior.
Sorry, what's a Pickwood TARDIS?
TARDIS.
The Michael Pickwood TARDIS
was the set from mid-Matsmith
to late Capaldi.
Okay, that's the better of all the ones they've had in the modern era.
Because the organic ones suck.
I hated RTD's TARDIS.
And I was really worried we were going to get that crap back.
I quite liked that.
I mean, I wasn't wild about it at first, but it grew on me.
Well, it grew on a lot of things.
One of my favorites.
But the Pickwood TARDIS was just fab.
Just fab.
I don't know why they got rid of that so fast.
But this is just.
And everyone else loves it, including you.
And I don't understand why I hate it so much, but I do.
I do think that it's got real problems.
Like I say, it is stupid big.
It's clinical.
It's got no character.
It's got no soul.
It's awful.
But I think, well, and therein lies the part of the problem.
Can we at least have a hat stand?
It's too.
The doctor can decorate it.
Judy will decorate it with his, you know, shag carpets.
No, because he's burnt down now.
No, it's not.
That should be that.
No, no, it's not.
They wouldn't spend that money on it and then not bring it back.
No, they absolutely, that's just temporary damage.
The TARDIS can fix that.
So, yeah.
It's like, unless it's a gym.
Now, if the TARDIS is like a, I don't know if you have them over there.
I would think you'd have them more than we would.
Like community centers where they have like indoor tracks up on the second level so that people can run indoors when the weather is miserable and things like that.
That's what that felt like to me.
It was just...
Tenant was certainly getting his daily steps in.
Complete waste of space.
But functionally, the console, I kind of like the console.
I like the roundels being back.
I'm not sure I like the fact that they look like a gamer's keyboard.
Yeah.
um but they're i don't know that they should look like a gaming keyboard with the uh with patterns
and whatnot but my complaint is just dumb big yeah well that's what gaming keyboards do they
all they all flash and sequence and patterns while you're playing and whatnot but yeah no i
i like it i like i said i like it better than any of the organic ones i don't like it better than
capaldi's which i liked because it had books in it frankly it looked like character yeah black
boards and levels so this one maybe this one will get decorated out in time i mean the doctor hadn't
even seen it yet so it's not like he had the chance to bring a hat stand out but you know
it's not really it's not really built to have things put on it those are ramps they're not
places to put a sofa and a lamp and a phonograph or victorial uh well a bit of smoke damage for
an improvement so yeah i don't know about that i also think that if you're gonna redo the sonic
screwdriver which i didn't know that the new sonic came from a comic strip i was wondering
about that because that's certainly not his old one that would have come with the suit
it's a new one well it's not his old suit either so no i know but the style of suit it's not an
old style sonic either it's a it's a capaldi ish style sonic and except for the fact that it now
can make touch screens and force fields which is cool which it is cool but let me ask you this
question if you with with thousands of years of experience which the doctor has and you're making
a new sonic screwdriver don't you think that the first thing you should put into it is an
anti-deadlock device yeah and then you'd have to have like triple dead because i was not happy
with the return of that yeah i was not happy with the return of that like oh i did locked it why
what why because it's a sonic screwdriver did he know there was a sonic screwdriver
you just if you know that was a sonic screwdriver you got to write that locks in
you mean did that no it was a sonic there i i got my pronoun i said that i i i corrected
um yeah i i don't know i don't remember but oh yeah i mean just get rid of the teleport
the fact that you can do the teleport with the the sonic now and apparently i was intercepting
a teleport good timing good timing you're intercepting a teleport it's like i'm just
going to intercept a teleport and hopefully someone at this exact instant happens to be
teleporting because otherwise rtd don't think don't think that's the problem don't think if
you think about it it falls apart and i don't want it to fall apart i enjoyed it that is that
is one of the things where i i i because because what he's doing there is he's shortcutting a load
of explanation around it and it's good enough it does the job and i'm happy with that i would
rather there wasn't a sonic of course because then you wouldn't have to deadlock things but
which doesn't do any good it just means you have to flip switches instead so stupid deadlock
stupid stupid deadlock you didn't disable the controls also don't think do you not also think
about the damage to london being rolled back yeah i've got i've got a note that relates to that so
I'm going to come on to talk about money.
I have mixed feelings about the money.
And this, I mean, this is presumably Disney's money that we're seeing.
Because if you look at the power of the Doctor,
there are some very ropey special effects in that.
And it is clearly done on an absolutely minimal budget.
I mean, like a student movie project type budget.
And the money that we've got from Disney has done two things.
It's given us that spectacularly wonderful street fight with the drone shots.
And it's given us the ability to do things that I don't think would have necessarily even been done before just because of the amount of CGI involved.
like having London split apart by the dagger drive, which you then have to reverse, which is
definitely going to come under your don't think heading. And so in some ways, the restraint that
a budget can create is not a bad thing. There is a line. There is a line between what you have to do
with your imagination at a low budget and where you can go way way too far now i have seen and i
did not necessarily avoid interviews with rtd and and and cast members because they're all under such
tight ndas that they're not given much away yeah so it's not like a spoilery so you know rtd did
say you know and and others said we've got money which makes a difference but they've all gone on
to say we don't have anywhere near the kind of money you have on like big budget special effects
extravaganzas but it's a lot more than doctor who has ever had access to so it allows us to do more
so it's not an unlimited budget it's not a crazy mad budget but it's definitely a much bigger budget
for them and crazy mad for doctor who it you know could be so but hopefully they won't go full-on
avengers movie not you know yeah that's if they don't even let's hope they don't even go in
yeah i know i hate the fact that they think so um they should not be allowed i thought for a
second you were criticizing avengers i was thinking never you know well the movie the avengers movie
yes oh the avengers movie yeah but i was thinking you know where did the money come from in the
avengers it was it was the american money that made them able to shoot season four on film which
just the best season so sometimes money's okay but you spend it on the right stuff yeah you have
to you have to still be allocating it you can't have just like i need money for this and they go
okay fine you've you've still got to do the job that's what i mean there's a line there there's
there's a point where you've got too few too little money for the job to do it competently and and then
there's a point where you've got too much money and you can just you can you can develop a cgi
on a tidal wave and fly away on a on a parachute yeah and and although i i'm not quite sure they
had the budget to do that but anyway yeah i okay yeah fair enough fair enough um and and the big
tardis i mean that's just hey what's the biggest downstage week that soundstage is bigger than i
think lime grove was in its entirety yeah right i i think they've got more stage wasted there
for the tardis certainly more than they need because it's not going to advance the story
it's just there to look big and who knows maybe it's not even there maybe it's cg maybe it's a
maybe it's a volume wall i mean volume walls are amazing those are like the coolest thing ever
although
David Tennant did run around all the
planks so they must those at least
must be physically there
he ran up a couple of them we don't know
how much of it is there
have to look at the behind the scenes stuff to see
yeah he
said Rachel the director
told him to run around
to Lely
and he had to figure out the path
so
okay so there are ramps then
there are ramps
multiple yeah yeah i think it's i don't know whether the walls are there whether those are
imposed by computer but um i don't know have you ever seen how they do those volume walls
now start to exchange the worlds and and the the disney stuff they basically have lcd or led screens
300 almost 360 degrees top bottom side and they're rendered in real time by um gosh i can't think of
the rendering engine off the top of my head but a rendering engine and it's synced to the cameras
so it creates the 3d effect when the cameras move and it creates lighting shining off the people so
you can get the effect you have a mirror it actually reflects it it's amazing and it has
revolutionized a lot of science fiction tv shows you don't need to build cells you have to build
them in the computer and there is a technical amount of work that has to be done but if you've
ever seen it being used in a behind the scenes shot where the camera's moving and the whole
the whole set is shifting and changing when you're not looking at it through the camera's
perspective it looks wrong and according to the actors sometimes it makes you nauseous
well that's happening oh maybe but it looks phenomenal maybe it's time for them to remake
underworld there you go there you go maybe that's maybe that's what wild blue yonder really is
it's uh i'd see murray gold is back and in your theme of things from moffat era i am the doctor
was definitely being played at one point i have got a note of that yeah and that yeah that surprised
me because i am the doctor was essentially only ever used for matt smith yep which i thought was
wrong because capaldi is the doctor and he should have had that music too i don't mind him having
his own personal theme but there's still the other ones are there and yeah so yeah no i'm i was
pleased with that i was less pleased with much of the rest of the music but it was all right i i mean
i music was fine but i have an issue with the with the titles i do too what's your issue with
titles on my list of things that go beyond this episode are like the big thing is to do with
the TARDIS interior set if that sticks around into you know shooty era I shall be unhappy for a long
time so with the titles I'm also hoping that they are three episodes and done because they're kind
a very they're the comfort food stuff i mean if it's all about the nostalgia and making people
happy for three episodes okay so be it it's not that i don't like them it's like a another version
of the i guess it's between the series one and series four or between the 2005 and 2009 titles
it sounded very much like you know like murray gold doing the big orchestral thing
and the credits they were kind of they were pretty middle of the road it's good but i want
i want doctor who to evolve these things so i mean i know you hated the bees but
or the mice rats rats the rataphone yeah the the cupaldi era who theme but even even
it was still Morigold.
He was playing with different ways of doing the credits
and the Matt Smith one was quite distinctive as well.
And certainly the Akinola theme was very different
from all of these.
And we also saw different things visually.
But this kind of felt like a, let's do the kind of,
well, the greatest hits of the early Morigold theme tunes
plus the general TARDIS flying through a fairly nondescript vortexy cloudy thing yeah
not gonna win anymore the part I hate is not gonna be memorable is I I can't repeat my exact
words but I said something Murray Gold and his something choir yeah he does like his choir
I hate that I mean it was okay for the Daleks I like it when it's used sparingly
You know, it was used in a way to create a sort of alien evil feel, but I do not like it in the theme.
Fortunately, most of it's not there, at least to the end credits.
But yeah.
I did think the end credits were more interesting, actually.
They're quite different.
And there's this kind of percussive element to it that is new and therefore much more interesting to me.
So my criticisms are actually much more about the opening credits than the closing credits.
I noticed that the closing, I haven't put them together to compare as to whether or not I feel like it's just a different movement from the same piece or whether it's a different version of the same theme.
But, well, they're obviously different versions of the same thing, but you know what I mean.
Whether it's a different arrangement of the same theme.
I don't know about the credits.
I mean, I agree.
They look like they've gone back to early
with more special effects.
Will they change for Shooty Gatwa?
You could look at it two ways.
We don't want to spend too much money
making the new credits for the specials,
and we're going for nostalgia,
so let's go that route.
But I think they're going to stay the same
because Chris Eccleston to David Tennant.
Sub in, David Tennant.
Remove Chris Eccleston.
We're good.
Go.
credits yeah but they definitely didn't have the money then and true i mean i think i think on
balance i think you're probably right i think there may be a bit of do we want to really kind
of mark the changes with shooty and say you know this isn't a distinctive new era maybe but maybe
just my optimism going into overdrive reality so it could be based on some of the pictures i've
scene of shooty got with uh some of the costumes that he's wearing um they could maybe when he
comes in they'll have a version that sounds a bit like uh music from 70s blaxploitation films
shaft or something like that that uh that might be interesting version of the doctor who theme
give murray something fresh to work on yeah i feel like that might be a bit culturally um
stereotypical
but at the same time I'd love to hear a
shaft version of the Doctor Who theme
would be amazing
well yeah who knows maybe
maybe they will I mean we've
you know seen enough publicity though that
this Doctor changes costumes
a lot
maybe theme tunes
will change every week
we're now in Regency England
that with matt smith at one point didn't they a little bit yeah a little sequence every week
just to prove they had money but yeah um let's see i didn't hate sylvia in this
thought she got her best part ever yeah i thought she was she was very well written in this i mean
i wouldn't be surprised if rtd listens to big finish stuff at least some of it and
oh heck yeah her character has had some development so that may have helped i mean didn't hate sylvia
before but obviously it was she was meant to be a foil yeah yeah yes well yeah which i was
disappointed we haven't seen wolf yet but well i i found the whole wolf thing really weird
because i hadn't realized or i had forgotten i did know this i i had forgotten that this was all
filmed in 2022 yep and having the scene where tenant talks about wilf being dead yeah i mean
we we've seen it with the what i thought was very nicely done scene with in with matt smith
when nicholas courtney died acknowledging the fact that the brigadier was dead and i don't know
whether you've ever watched the detectorists but when that came back after diana rigg had died
there was a actually quite difficult to watch scene where they talked about the character having
died because her daughter was played by her real life daughter so you knew that you know she was
acting but acting talking about her own mother and so have it having this where you know that
cribbins has died and yet they're not acknowledging his death on the scene struck me as really weird
until i realized that that probably means that we are going to see him in it yes but it still
feels really weird yeah it was i'm looking forward to seeing him anyway yeah i i heard that there's
somebody said luckily we got bernard cribbins to film before before he died so i knew he's going
to be in it so then when they did that and they said oh he's you know he's dead the doctor went
sad and i thought oh well maybe they thought it was in bad taste and so they changed it around a
little bit but uh now yes they just i'm a bit surprised they didn't change that scene but yeah
yeah it's just a particular tone of it it's it's making a gag out of the fact that the doctor
thinks he's dead and he's not dead but he is dead okay to be fair and yeah you're right they're
making a gag out of it because he's not with us anymore is not what you say when they've moved out
like right you don't say that i mean like you'd say he lives in unit towers or whatever
yeah he doesn't live with us anymore so anything like that but yeah yeah but that was that part
was a bit of a uh what else you got the big thing i've got left is to talk about the star
Starbeast. Okay. Because, you know, we've talked about it as a Dr. Donner thing, we've talked about
the continuation of Doctor Who, we've talked about it as an anniversary special, but it is also
an adaptation of the Starbeast. And I, up front, I should say, I have not read the Starbeast.
So it's kind of difficult for me to comment on it as an adaptation of that. But I have,
however, listened to another adaptation of the Starbeast with Tom Baker, who was originally
drawn in the comic so i have something to kind of compare it to there and i mean this is not the
first time that rtd has adapted no that's not quite right the first three rtd series contained
adaptations of doctor who stories from other media that he thought deserved to reach a wider audience
so dalek and rise of the cybermen and age of steel and human nature and the family of blood
were all adapted in some cases by their own author in some cases by other people but not
rtd from audio or book forms this is the first comic adaptation i think and rtd has adapted it
himself yeah but the original was very very 1980s certainly the the big finnish audio version that
i have heard with tom baker and it is it leans into it to the point of getting angela ripon as
the newsreader uh which is fantastic it's very yorkshire um yeah obviously those things you've
got to dispense with because of the donna angle so it's got to be london it's got to be present day
and that's fair enough and rose is a fairly straight swap for sharon and that's fair enough
i was kind of a bit sad that because i was pleased when fudge turns up in it but then okay good i
don't remember i i've i've heard the star beast big finish i have not read the comic i don't
remember the names of any of the characters uh the fact that you now say one is named fudge
explains one of the things of like why was that kid in this okay got it but that but that is
exactly it i mean if you if you hadn't seen or heard the star beast or read or heard the star
beast i should say the the previous versions of it you'd think what is this character doing
because I thought Fudge was a terrific character,
but, you know, he has almost nothing to do with doing this.
And you just think, oh, it's RTD, he was going to write him in
and then he sort of forgot to write him in
because he's this super kind of sci-fi comic book nerd
and Sharon keeps calling him a wazzock in Yorkshire.
And it's, you know, it's lovely the way in which he is very kind of, he wants to be all knowledgeable about these kind of sci-fi and alien things.
And then a real alien turns up and he's got no idea what to do with it.
And Sharon's the one who obviously, you know, starts making the decisions.
So I'd have liked them to carry across fudge, I guess.
I'd have liked them.
But again, this comes down to the fact they've got an hour to tell the story and they've got a load of Donna stuff to fit in as well.
I'd have liked them to have had that slow build-up where they, in the audio, the beep, the meep is kind of non-speaking, just meeping for like at least an episode and a half.
And then, you know, start speaking English as a form of manipulation.
And so you get a much more kind of gradual move from the cute alien into them realizing this is a intergalactic criminal mastermind.
Starbeast.
Which is very cool.
Yeah, exactly.
I guess the other change that I noticed, I think this is pretty much, oh, well, there's a couple of things.
The Wrath Warriors are much nicer.
I think you alluded to the fact that they did actually blow a hole inside Donna's house that could have killed someone.
Two.
In the audio, they turn the doctor into a human bomb and talk about using any means necessary to bring Beep to justice.
So these are, for perhaps modern times, these are much less naughty police.
yeah the other thing was that the black sun has become a psychedelic sun and i can think of two
reasons for that i'm not quite sure which is correct one is they wanting to avoid calling
it black the other is black eyes are not as cool as psychedelic effect eyes which did look really
amazingly good so maybe that was it yeah i i just assumed that they did it to avoid comparisons to
the space 1999 uh episode of the black sun yeah that was to be there yep that was i'm sure that
was it i'm sure rtd has seen that i'm i'm positive so you know probably going yeah but pat mills and
dave gibbons may have seen that that's true very very true very true is there anything else on this
episode that we should touch on i promised you since you had to put your glasses on in order
to read the synopsis that I would talk about glasses. I think that the 14th Doctor is wearing
the 11th Doctor's brainy specs. I haven't been able to properly check, but I'm pretty sure the
10th Doctor's brainy specs were rectangular in these around. Well, that seems like a horrible
continuity error, or is it a callback for the fans? I don't know, but I'm literally just saying it.
An idea has popped into my head just now that he's wearing Patrick Troughton's trousers and he's wearing Matt Smith's glasses.
I'm going to be looking very carefully at what he uses and wears from now on.
If he's got celery in his pocket, we'll know.
Yeah, there's celery somewhere, isn't there?
Yeah, it could be.
Pop open a stack and start eating celery.
It's just...
I don't think they are Patrick Troughton's trousers.
I, again, after watching the episode, then I saw a clip where they talked about making the outfit.
I guess David Tennant just picked out the fabric and let me go here.
This is how I want it to be.
And RTD is like, yeah, you know, it's all our designing team.
So I thought that was the same fabric as the vest.
Yes, it could be.
It's all.
But I would consider that to be, they've made the vest out of Patrick Troughton's spare trousers.
His trousers were black and white.
I've seen them all, and they are black and white.
There's no color there.
Yeah, fair point.
Fair point.
You proved it wrong.
Was Sean the same actor who played him in that momentary section?
Yeah, Carl Collins.
Okay.
He was also in.
attacks the block with jodie whittaker as sean no that i would tell the block was a film that
had nothing to do with doctor who but was one of the few things i'd seen jodie whittaker in before
she played the doctor okay quite good well nice of them to get the same actor back even though
he was in a far shot seen briefly two seconds and listen but all right all right fair dues
fair dues oh well you know i hate recasting so i i would have insisted on it oh no okay so here's
another one you know how how we've had it established that the doctor chose capalli's
face to remind him of he has to be nicer whatever it is right so the doctor somehow fix his face
or that the doctor shows a cockney accent because rose had a cockney accent sort of uh sort of
did that get established on screen or was that just rtd in the doctor who confidential i don't
know i don't recall where that comes from off the top of my head but i i've treated it as being
legit but okay what what is donna's thing it's like some some husbands would be worried about
going on but yeah but not him donna has a type donna has had a type since we first saw her
and what does the 15th doctor look like donna's type your donna's type is based on the fact we've
seen her with two well two fiancés and one who she actually successfully married and they're both
black and so is the next incarnation of the doctor so yeah okay that's that's his uh i'm just trying
to get back and donna i'm not sure that's a number of data points sufficient to but yeah it's an rgd
script we can we don't need a whole lot of data you can draw the conclusions you want but they
may not be may not be the right one i i will say uh leave this for others to say but i did find one
thing fascinating um my wife did watch this okay like i said the kids just like don't don't bother
me. I don't care anymore. My wife, extremely mad at Dr. Who really, I mean, surprisingly mad at
Dr. Who. She did sit down and watch this. We did watch it together. She paid attention. She was not
reading on her phone. She was not snoring. She was not, you know, she wasn't cheering, but you know,
she was, she was, she watched the whole thing. And then I had a, I had a talk with her like a day
later we're out on our evening walk and that is when i discovered that she watched the entire
episode and never knew rose was trans what even after it gets mentioned in the episode yeah it's
like how did you how did you miss that you need to get the whole binary non-binary binary binary
binary binary binary binary yeah the non-binary and the speech about being non-binary but also
the dead naming scene is kind of yes yes giveaway um kind of i didn't really catch that much in the
first one because the kids just shouted something and then i give us a kiss and they'll beat them
up and tell their moms you know the but uh so i didn't really didn't really catch that um they
call her jason yes i did catch that on the second pass through um so yeah there was there was that
i i do have a concern about it and i'll i'll bring it out and that is and this is again how
rt doesn't really think through what he does there's this whole scene where the doctor and
donna are like explaining how the meta crisis is passed on and how it's affected rose and
you could take from that very much that rose is trans because of all this mucking about that's
happened and passed down and and done and then when they let it go rose's comment is at last i can
i can be myself that's not yeah i mean i think i think it was more about the parallels
yeah the power the parallels about being you know part part-time lord and part human
and now being fully human so we're part man for a woman doctor is male the hunter is female
as much exclusively specifically said that so one male one female one non-binary it was it was it
was not just human time lord it was gender specific but except except there is a line
that I understood to be about the Doctor saying
that he was binary.
And that was one thing that I wondered about
in terms of the consequences.
I mean, so basically I should say,
I just loved this whole storyline
and the way RTD handles it.
I think he's brilliant at this stuff.
But does that mean the Doctor can only be binary,
can only be a man or a woman?
That was my question from that.
I don't know whether that was intended
to be the implication.
Well, and then there's the line,
well, you know,
there's nothing a male presenting time lord could understand they just point blank said you just
don't get it dude yeah you're a dude and you can't get it despite the fact that they both know that
he was a woman just you know yesterday yeah but now he's not so yeah i mean there's no problem
with line other than what we've already discussed about in terms of in terms of which kind of
character stuff i i do i kind of feel like the the way that rtd approaches these things he puts
characters on the screen for them to be seen on the screen and yes he did he did this a lot
with gay characters in the where you know when he was running the show in the noughties whatever
we call them and there was all this kind of outrage about the so-called gay agenda which
was basically just having gay people being on screen visible yeah for no for no particular
reason other than you know why shouldn't people be gay and that there's a little bit more to
to kind of rose character being trans in this but it's not other other than their kind of
contrivances at the end it's not really central to the plot it's just no it's not and it was
fantastically done until that moment when it's like oh shit did you undermine what you just done
which was which was a phenomenally good job of showing like i i don't think so i mean if anything
it was done it was done that there was there were lines in there that might accidentally turn out to
be problematic later but that's not a given whereas for the for all the fact that i think
steven moffat's the greatest showrunner doctor who has ever had he did just casually sometimes
make fun of things and i don't think i you know i don't think rtd does that i think he's
no he's if if if he's doing it he's very careful he's you know he's trying to be
well he's trying to show he's trying to trying to show
that yeah don't make me the problem don't make me the problem just go on and do the job yeah that
was that was terrific and then and then she's got these cool weapons in her wheelchair and everything
yeah no absolutely yeah well i am i am still looking forward to the wild blue yonder or
whatever it turns out to be called i think it's going to be called the 14 doctors but that's just
you know i'm i'm gonna i'm gonna make two predictions they've blown their cgi budget
budget on recreating all the old doctors so i've i've already put on the record that i think
that we will see some previous doctors probably previous doctors certainly previous companions
in the toy maker episode and i'm also going to predict the boss is the toy maker toy maker i
yeah yeah i'm also gonna predict the next episode is called i'm gonna predict the next episode is
called wild blue yonder okay okay i i feel like i may have heard that from a cast member that said
they couldn't use the name because it's too much of a giveaway but the real name it's actually
wild blue yonder of the daleks yeah see there you go well and i also i have also heard a cast
members say and i think it was david tenet uh in an interview that you know we we shut a lot of this
indoors where we can bring in guests act artists that as surprises could be companions could be
okay if on the on the basis i i know we should stop talking because it it'll be airing next
week's episode will be airing but on the basis that you're right i'm just going to express
that i would like to see jodie whittaker back if we're going to have previous doctors even though
she's only just gone because i'd like to see the tenant whittaker dynamic i'd also i i would love
it if paldy were in the mix too i hope he is yeah if we're getting previous doctors yeah i think the
best we can hope for is maybe eight on but uh yeah well we know we're not getting eccleston back
okay oh yeah i know he hates rtd but you know i don't know maybe nick briggs
guarantee i think you can guarantee among the doctors we're not getting back are eccleston
and hurt for different reasons yes yes i was sure it was not coming back but he's not the doctor
so tom baker won't come back yeah so um but there's like i said remember the whole strike
was over ai and and disney in those studios recreating people digitally and uh you know
they've got the technology they did it with peter uh cushing rogue rogue a fair few years ago now
so it's possible i hate it so i don't want to do that they've got all the doctors there in the
computer just waiting to come out and recreate their missing episodes for us anyway all right
well let's leave it there and uh give me a little time to get this posted for our patrons early and
we'll be talking about uh whatever it's called yes i like that or the cyber wild blue yonder
of the daleks that would be all right yeah simon thank you for joining me it's a pleasure as always
but at least there's
I do hope you'll join us all again next time
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