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 episode one of the 2024 Doctor Who season.
Called how?
Entitled Space Babies.
Written by Russell T. Davies.
Episode synopsis.
Ruby takes up the Doctor's offer of a trip in the TARDIS, but not before the Doctor imparts an expositional info dump to catch Disney Plus viewers up to speed.
They arrive in Jurassic, Wyoming, where the history of life on Earth is thrown into chaos when Ruby steps on a butterfly.
Thinking quickly, the Doctor performs the kiss of life on the butterfly, saving all life on Earth.
This reminds him that the Aztec compensation switch needs to be turned on.
Sorry, did I say Aztec compensation switch?
I meant to say butterfly compensation switch.
If only that had been turned on when the Doctor and Donna met Isaac Newton.
Convinced that the diardists can travel in time,
Ruby selects a random date in the future,
and they arrive on a space station,
where they encounter a very scary monster.
Even the Doctor turns tail and runs.
Escaping to the upper decks,
the Doctor realizes they're on a baby farm.
Another pause for a Disney Plus info dump, and then they learn hyper-intelligent babies run the station in robotic prams.
Initially mistaken for mommy and daddy, and the babies are just dying for a hug.
The doctor sets about figuring out the mystery of why did the adults abandon the station and leave the babies.
They don't know anything about it, but the creature downstairs is the bogeyman, and it terrifies them.
The doctor finds that odd because it terrified him, too.
There's another pause while they remind viewers that there's something wrong about Ruby and her backstory.
The nanny computer reveals itself to be an actual station staff member named Joslyn.
The staff were recalled six years ago under protest due to budget cuts.
Planetary law prevented them from deactivating the station and terminating the gestating babies,
but didn't prevent them from abandoning them to death by starvation or asphyxiation.
So, fairly standard conservative politics, if you missed the metaphor.
Jocelyn stayed behind, pretending to be the computer,
and staying out of sight of the babies because she couldn't bear to see them die.
The station systems began educating the children,
and for reasons not entirely made clear,
they retained their baby size and relatively physical, incapable musculature while developing mentally.
A bit like Davros' Dalek experiments if they'd just gone a little differently.
Ruby recognizes that it's all a bit like a storybook with a real-life Boogeyman.
When one of the babies decides to be brave and make Ruby proud,
he goes after the Boogeyman with a wooden sword.
That doesn't work well, and it's Ruby and the Doctor to the rescue.
Finally, the Doctor realizes what's going on.
The Boogeyman is a creation of the ship's education system
to provide the babies with the necessary storybook element.
and it is made from their snot.
It is a monster made entirely of snot,
or bogeys, as some dialects of English refer to them.
The Doctor has also soniced the knackered computer systems,
and when they come back fully online,
Jocelyn captures a bogeyman in the airlock and tries to sneeze it out into space.
The Doctor, realizing that every life form is unique and therefore precious,
risks his life to hold back the sneeze.
This he does, and now all the kids love the boogie end.
But this space station doesn't just sneeze.
The doctor uses the accumulated methane from six years of baby diapers
to fart the space station into a trajectory
that will take it to a planet that accepts refugees.
Next stop, Ruby's home on her birthday, 2023.
Okay, I'm going to ask you a question first.
you uh i watched this episode with my wife and my son we did not speak or compare notes or talk and
frankly we're in relative silence with except for one statement by my wife which we'll explain in a
second in the middle of the episode and when it was done before i gave any feedback i asked for
their feedback would you like me to read you their feedback or would you like to tell me what you
thought of the episode before i tell you what they thought give me that feedback uh james's
first con well actually so during the episode my wife uh when the first uh when bear eric i think
it was came out first baby my wife goes but my wife's been a little bit um stressed lately and
she's just now decided that she's going back to be teaching kindergarten because she loves
the hugs which uh you know she's she's been having a rough time with the older kids lately because of
pandemic and they're all kind of don't know how to school uh so so she's in a kind of vulnerable
mood about the little kids so she did do that so then uh i asked james i said james uh what is your
this is the end what is your opinion of this episode and he said uh mom you better leave the
room and uh she said no it'll be all right go ahead and james goes that was terrible was it
written by chat gpt and um which made me think that if they had chat rtd that would be a thing
and then my wife uh said okay apart from the babies it was really bad the acting was terrible
over the top amateurish like a high school play and uh moments uh later sometimes co-host on the
podcast david also contacted me to see if i'd seen the episodes and i told him i haven't seen
i haven't seen the devil's court or whatever yet and he gave me his feedback and that was quote
ug space babies might be the worst ever wow so what do you think about space babies
i i don't think space babies was the worst ever but i'm inclined to agree with chat rtd there's
an element of there's an element of going through the motions it feels oh yeah i'm i'm i'm trying
not to if regurgitation yeah i i'm trying not to bring my prejudice about i mean i've discussed it
i think when we talked about the church on ruby road possibly even when we were discussing the
tenant specials but without kind of dismissing rtd's contribution to doctor who i'm kind of
looking for something different and i'd hoped that in coming back to it he was going to do
something different and so that was kind of the the purpose behind it even if what he was going
to do differently was he was going to bring in a a kind of new bunch of writers who could would be
the kind of future of the the show because it needs some fresh blood you know there needs to
be a potential new showrunner coming from somewhere etc etc so it felt to me like this wasn't that
it it felt to me like this was an attempt to reheat that tenant piper vibe i think where
you're running around having adventures in the universe and everything is amazing fun but i do
agree about the acting I think I think particularly Millie Gibson has waned on me I I mean I don't
know whether it's the the direction but she's way too full-on and I don't think either she or the
director have quite nailed what this character is about in the way that Billy Piper pretty much did
in the first five seconds and I I think there's a just a kind of a load of other stuff that the
satire that certainly i mean is unlikely to make ron de santis like disney anymore for funding this
um but the the kind of the fart gags and things that we saw early in the original rtd run with
aliens of london and world war i kept thinking in my mind is like he's done the fart before but i
couldn't remember where okay there we go well it is because i because i think i think he's you know
he's got his it's not quite a shopping humor because i think it yeah i think it well for sure
for sure but i think but i think he's also kind of got a sense of what doctor who is is meant to
be about and that includes kind of something for the the very youngsters as well as the intermediates
and you know the 50 something year old fans who've been watching it since the year dot
and this is what he thinks a certain generation of the show's audience want to see and you know
maybe maybe he's right i don't know but yeah it it kind of felt it felt like this episode and
i i'm holding off using filler as a kind of pejorative because we've discussed before the
fact that a lot of the filler episodes, i.e. the ones that are out of the arc, are the ones that I
enjoy a lot. And this isn't the problem with this episode. The problem with this episode is that it
is kind of generic. The space baby's idea is cool. It's not enough to sustain it. And even though it's
supposed to be, or it appears to be, a filler episode, we've actually got, as you have pointed
out a huge amount of information dumping flashbacking and all sorts of things to drive the
kind of overall arc forward and i you say that's for the disney plus audience but i wonder
if that's really necessary because it's not really held off doing that with the the christopher
eccleston it's not it's right i mean i'm thinking when in the 21st century did we hear about
gallifrey it was like it was at least a series in tenets run i think yep and last of the time
lords that wasn't mentioned until episode two at least i guess this is episode two isn't it but
yeah sort of i i didn't get why that was quite so info dumpy i yeah i have notes about that i want
to before we go any further i have a prepared statement to read yes well there's some things
you mentioned I'd like to come back to.
Prepared statement.
I have been watching Doctor Who since about 1975.
I consider it one of my five favorite TV series of all time.
It has provided me with thousands of hours of pure enjoyment.
This is not to say I have been uncritical of the series.
Listeners of this podcast know that's not true.
I have had some pretty harsh opinions of episodes in recent years.
Space Babies has brought me to a new place.
Never before have I reached the point where I said,
I don't want to watch the next episodes.
I firmly believe that if this were the first Doctor Who I'd ever seen,
I'd never have watched another.
If this were the episode that RTD used to bring the series back in 2005,
the series would not exist today.
My disappointment is palpable, bordering on contempt.
I'm entering into this discussion in that headspace.
I will do my damnedest to rein that in.
There is only so much I can do.
I'm going to disagree.
I don't even think space babies is cool.
And they were horribly realized.
They were pretty creepy.
You know, the CGI just didn't work.
And they weren't meant to be, obviously.
Yeah.
I want to start with one thing I liked in the episode.
I'm going to invalidate it shortly thereafter, but I'm going to start with one thing I liked.
And that is the doctor frequently, particularly, says, where do you want to go in all of time and space?
And, you know, apart from the past, no human would have a good notion, right?
You know, what would you say?
I want to go to, I don't know, take me to the year of Star Trek.
Take me to space 1999.
You know, that was the past.
You know, take me to, you know, whatever.
You just don't know because you don't know what is in the future.
Right?
So nobody is going to have an answer to that question.
I like the fact that Ruby just picked random numbers.
That is the only way a human could ever do that.
Is just, take me to 2734.
Okay.
2734 it is.
That's the only way you would do it.
Okay.
So I liked that. Finally, somebody had a way, you know, to go and they had a thing.
Now, how I'm going to flip that around and say that is absolutely absurd that they would go to Jurassic, Wyoming, step outside the TARDIS, see a sauropod, step on a butterfly and then go, hey, let's get back in the TARDIS and leave.
no one with a human soul
could resist
standing there and watching
for a while. No human
has ever seen this before. You have never
no one's ever seen a real sore bot.
This is not Jurassic Park.
This is the real free and deal.
And yet, eh,
yeah, whatever. Let's go.
It's there for the gag.
And this is where I disagree
also with your statement that
this is more of the same. Yes.
This has all the bad things that I don't like from RTD's earlier time.
But he is trying something new.
He's trying to make this so much more lighthearted.
And it doesn't work.
These jokes aren't funny.
And the, and of course the butterfly thing.
You mean there's a switch on the TARDIS as to whether or not we can change history or not?
If only the doctor had known about that during the Aztecs, then Barbara could have saved the day.
But no, toggle that on and off and time safe, time not safe.
But it's there for gag.
The whole sequence is there for two things.
It's like, look at the money we've got now with Disney.
One, which, you know, frankly, wasn't that impressive because they've done that in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship better.
And because it was part of the plot.
And then, you know, it's a butterfly.
So obviously it's the butterfly paradox.
You quite, quite literally are,
why couldn't it have been an ant or something?
But no, it's the butterfly
because that's what people know.
It's just a joke.
The whole thing is a joke
from the moment they step off that
to the moment they head off to the future.
And it's just not a funny joke.
It's not a funny joke.
I think it is intended to annoy Doctor Who fans.
So obviously it's serving part of its purpose.
But I didn't think the Isaac Newton thing
was funny either.
No, it wasn't.
and I think it was meant to be.
And I don't think that it's a wise decision.
If you're saying that this is RTD,
and I'm leaving that profanity in there, by the way,
this is RTD trying to irritate the fans,
I don't think that's a clever move.
You can make a good story.
You can appeal to a new audience.
You don't have to alienate part of your audience on purpose.
If you're doing that, you shouldn't be in charge.
I don't think that...
I'm trying to run through in my mind all the previous RCD episodes.
I don't think he's very funny.
No, he's not.
I mean, he likes fart jokes.
Even outside Doctor Who, actually, I'm not sure that comic is the hallmark.
He can do absurd and extraordinary and exciting.
And the characters that he can at least sometimes write are interesting and plausible and intriguing and convincing.
But I don't think he generally does funny.
And that is feeling a bit kind of forced here.
I think Moffat is an unbelievably funny writer.
And the one gag in this that I thought was good was the nanny filter gag, which I could imagine Moffat doing.
but he immediately overused it he immediately overused it so it's like yeah yeah it was funny
twice maybe three times but it just went on and on and i think chibnall isn't a funny writer either
but he didn't try to be funny no he didn't no i don't think well yeah no not really or if he did
it was so under the wire under the radar that nobody noticed yeah i do want to just throw one
thing out here because i'm gonna like said i'm trying to trying to rein this in and try to be
less than contemptuous it is also possible that the fact that okay ruby has heard of the butterfly
effect because we've heard about it right it's been a movie and it's been stuff and people talk
about it when the science fiction so ruby would have heard about the butterfly effect just like
she'd heard about star trek they got that whole long spiel about how you know how would you even
step on a butterfly because if they float around you have to do this thing and blah blah blah and
then they step out the butterfly flows right down goes right under her foot there is the possibility
that that is a clue that says there is something about ruby and coincidence and uh and the nature
of this universe conforming to something about ruby she thinks that it happened it you know it
wouldn't have happened it could just be a stupid gag it could still be just a stupid gag with a
point so i throw that out there just in the event that this turns up in a flashback in season eight
when they point out all the dumb dumb coincidences that could not possibly have happened
if it weren't for the fact that Ruby is, you know,
the seed pod for a new generation of humans
created by the Cybermen or something.
You know, I don't know.
But it's the sleight of hand that I think,
I mean, particularly Moffat uses quite a lot,
which is to make something funny
hide something that is relevant to the plot
because you watch it and you laugh at it
and you think that's what it was there for
and you move on.
And then it springs a surprise
when there's actually a genuine payoff yeah yeah i don't think and i don't like saying this because
rtd obviously can write well some things he doesn't write well this is one of them um this
type of humor and and he just doesn't just isn't good at i mean i not his thing i've been thinking
about it and i kind of think i i don't really necessarily disagree with what you were saying i
I mean, it's not that I don't want to watch another episode because I suspect that I'm now even more suspicious about the reason that I know it's a streaming kind of MO, but that they're dropping two episodes.
It's the first time.
At the same time.
Yeah.
I don't know.
And I mean, we obviously only watched one episode so that we could comment on this.
But I haven't stayed off social media.
You say obviously, but I was actually going to watch both of them and just not tell you.
And when I got to the end of it, I just didn't.
I didn't.
I'm like, nah.
Uh-uh.
I don't have to watch this till tomorrow.
I'm not going to watch it till tomorrow.
That's true.
And I love the beat.
But I think it's the only way that we can kind of discuss this in its own right.
Because if the next episode is brilliant, I think it will change our opinion of this.
And so maybe that's why they're dumping them together.
But I also think, thinking back to my experiences of that 2005 season, I mean, re-watching Rose now, I do kind of think it's brilliant.
And I've watched this episode once.
And it's, yeah, you're right, it is different in some ways, even though it's got the kind of RTT ingredients in it.
And to do it justice, you probably need to wait a few months or years and come back to it and watch it in the context of knowing where he went with it now.
Because that first Christopher Eccleston season, there were a lot of things in it that disappointed me.
And now, when I rewatch it, they're kind of priced in.
I know that they disappointed me.
I'm aware of that.
And I watch it for the good things, the things I like, and enjoy those now.
So I don't know if it's entirely fair.
I also think that, I mean, my experience of Doctor Who since 2005, which is, you know, I mean, if you compare the time when I previously regularly watched it and I was probably in primary school.
You know, this is this is the this is the time when I have watched every episode, been a regular viewer.
And throughout the run, either it got better because I just, you know, I thought RTD's original run, his fourth season was better than his third season, his third season was better than his second season and so on.
Then I thought Stephen Moffat was fantastic.
And then when Chris Chibnall took over, he did something very different with it.
And I became intrigued to see where that was going.
And so my expectations of Doctor Who have changed. And also in 2005, it was this was the only Doctor Who on the telly. It was like, you know, you're a couple of episodes into the new season and you've literally got two hours of TV Doctor Who since the 1996 movie.
It's like, you know, whatever it is, I'll take it.
Whereas now we're like, yeah, OK, this is another hour of Doctor Who.
But compare that to however many episodes I've lost count that we've had since 2005 or even just in the past few years.
And suddenly I think you realize that we have set another standard.
So I don't know.
I'm inclined to agree with you.
If this was the episode that was the episode to bring Doctor Who back,
was reviving it after a 16-year hiatus, it might have died a death.
I'm inclined to agree with that.
But I don't know that it's fair.
I would find it hard to.
I mean, they were worried enough that it was going to fail, and RTD himself,
as soon as we were worried enough it's going to fail.
It's like he was, I think he was restrained in that point.
I think he had some things that he, you know, I can go so far, but I can't go too far.
Otherwise, it will fail.
And I think we don't have that.
Now, something you brought up is interesting because we do have this post 2005 backlog.
And I don't care what they try saying.
This is not series one of Doctor Who.
Now you get that.
You can't pull that nonsense.
And and get away with it. And the sad part is, is that that's exactly what this feels like.
I mean, all the oh, that's TARDIS time and relative dimensions. I'm from Gallifrey. There was a genocide.
Oh, we have pompous names like the doctor or the bishop or, you know, which, you know, is actually not true.
You know, all of these just all of these things that they had to stop in the middle of and then suddenly give this dump like, well, it's season one.
this is a new show anybody watching it's never heard of doctor who i can pretty much guarantee
nobody watching this has never heard of doctor who like that that's just nonsense to believe
that they needed to do this and it is they were going to they should have done it like they did
in 2005 which is you just don't mention it and you didn't do it in 2005 i mean i think that is
the point they mentioned this is the yeah yeah you don't mention stuff that they thought they
needed for the show as it is now what they didn't do was include stuff that they think will drive
people back into into the the back catalogue and i guess maybe their aims are different now because
they're obviously wanting to wanting to make use of that back catalogue they i i think it's all
available on disney plus right they've they put it all on the iplayer uh i don't believe it is no
i don't okay well maybe maybe it's for driving people onto the iplayer i don't i don't know
exactly and for kind of various ill-judged reasons i think they were trying to put a lot of continuity
into the 1996 movie when they did that including the kind of off criticized bringing sylvester
which i really like but i can see why it really didn't actually help a lot of the american
didn't know right exactly america actually but doctor who was big for a while in the united
states i mean you know maybe not before 96 no in post 2005 during the late oh yeah yeah sure
it was so yeah yeah yeah the audiences now do doctor who is in the american zeitgeist it was
not prior to that so when they do the 1995 95 is it 95 movie 92 movie they they're working on the
fact that the only people who've ever seen doctor who in the united states watched it on public
television at odd hours i mean for example for a long time it was right after school but most of
the time on my public television station it was on at midnight saturday night yeah which is you
peak time not peak time and so they they felt like they had to like i don't know they shouldn't
have gone all in they should have introduced doctor who for what it is the same way any
companion gets introduced to doctor who they show up they meet the doctor they go off on a wild
adventure and you know it he dribbles and drabbles the info along the way but they just didn't feel
they could do that i will give you in recent terms and the most recent terms the example of how i
think it should be done which is the woman who fell to earth it doesn't do any kind of info dumpy
stuff there what it does is it sets up the season that is to come so yeah it was the high point of
jodie whittaker's reign yeah some people's opinion i i think i like i think i like that episode more
than more than you did but i i don't say you know i think objectively and in a lot of ways i think
it highlights the things that I think I'm looking for that are missing now. But I think you could
say a lot of the same things about the 11th hour or whatever, which is if you look at the woman who
fell to earth, you've got the stories of Graham and Yaz and Ryan being introduced to both audiences,
the continuing audience and the new audience simultaneously, in amongst which you're also
getting the new doctor being introduced and there are interesting and complex relationships
going on there whereas here i feel like there are not interesting and complex relationships going on
i don't really have any sense of who millie is or what makes her makes her tick or probably the
doctor yet and i don't think that it compensates for that that you dump a load of stuff about
gallifrey resurrecting the last of the time lords idea that rtd brought in in 2005 and which then
got gradually undone by others and so well no when he's talking about the red the the you're
talking about the last of the time lord stuff i thought he was talking about the uh the whatever
the heck chibnall did with the genocide i think he's talking about the master's genocide
of the time he was yes yes okay yeah i mean he could he doesn't he didn't the point is he didn't
have to mention it at all right no when he brought when he brought the show back in 2005
he wiped out the rest of the time lords again i think that was a deliberate thing because of all
of that kind of continuity all of those tedious episodes set on gallifrey are involving time
lords but he doesn't have to mention that now well okay hold up you there is there is one valid
argument and i think they also kind of did it well in eccleston's time and that is you made
an alien from another planet just like you are going to want to watch the dinosaurs for a while
you are also going to ask where are you from who are your people those are those are reasonable
questions you don't need to give them you don't need to give them the history of the time lords
you can just go i'm the last i'm called a time lord i'm the last of my people my species and
you're done i'm called a time lord you could just say my people are all god yeah so it it's
You know, you don't you have to give an answer and the question will be raised.
You don't have to expound upon it like was done in this episode for, you know, without without being asked.
But I guess this doctor just doesn't have any limits is not the word walls.
He just talks too much, you know, and that may be his character,
which could explain why he grates so hard on me he acts exactly like he acts when i saw him on
uh talk shows is that acting or is that just his personality you know it's like we hired a
character i don't know i don't know i i've never seen shooty got one anything else so it just
um yeah so i i'm just gonna say there was one thing that moffat got rid of that i was so happy
is he gone and it's just like this is part of that whole oh we're gonna we're gonna rehash
everything we're gonna rehash every stinking thing rtd brought into the show he has to sonic the
flipping phone in the first episode oh here you can talk to your mom whenever you want how is that
supposed to even work couldn't we have forgotten that i mean when if an hour goes by and she calls
her mom and then she waits another hour and she calls her mom is it been an hour i mean we saw
how badly that worked with uh aliens of london and coming back i mean like do we really need to
talk to mom i agree it's unnecessary i don't agree that moffat got rid of it because we have those
sequences in the tardis where churchill rings the tardis phone all right there is that i i agree
that but then the other thing is amy didn't have family to call anyway yeah although she probably
should have called rory but uh she was running away but when it came to clara also an orphan
with no family to call and um well maybe maybe that's why we got rid of it for that reason i
don't know that but you know he did not at any point oh here give me your phone okay now you've
got unlimited galactic time and space roaming kind of thing but certainly there were he did it
he did it in this episode with no reason whatsoever oh hey mom oh phone works click
like it it's just to re-establish things the way they were before well i think i think it is to
establish the the family around so it's to have a scene where her mom is where we're reminded of her
of her mom who her mom is you know what their relationship is about let's talk about her mom
i have notes on her mom that would that's supposed to be christmas day 2023 right they've just gone
through all that stuff they've just gone through all that stuff well she said you just ran out of
here 15 seconds ago yeah that was that was five months ago i haven't re-watched it oh but that was
that was uh that was christmas yeah that was still that was still christmas but that mom
does not seem to be this and and at the end of the episode does not seem to be the same mom
at carla clara clara carla something like that uh doesn't seem to be the same that seems to be
bitchy gripey mom from the parallel timeline she's not very nice she just doesn't come off
as warm and friendly and isn't she supposed to be fostering a baby and you know it just it just
it feels like that's not that's like a third version of this woman that we saw i don't know
it's all and i say it's all wrong it's all wrong rtd's told us everything's all wrong
he's let fantasy in and so we can't rely on anything but that feels like also they ruined
roof again i mean it's already cracked did the crack get fixed was the crack back at the end i
don't remember but now the tardis is smashed into it because apparently the tardis now indiscriminately
destroys people property when it lands also shoots through walls before it lands don't like that
either just another thing i didn't like i mentioned it you know rtd has said on record
that they got lots of gods coming up fantasy stuff because they've opened the door to this
and um then by and then walking that back by saying oh we already had ragnarok so you know
but he's opened the door on this being fantasy land and then we get to an episode where they
call it out this is like a storybook we're we're in we're like a storybook and if they had left
that as it was, I would go, oh, okay, see, this is a clue towards that whole thing.
But then it turns out it's just the computer's interpretation of what should be going on.
And so they kind of turned it back into old-fashioned science fiction computer glitch,
the science fiction cop-out, if you will.
It's like, well, this seems like it's some sort of amazing fantasy thing.
Oh, no, it's just an improbable science fiction thing.
But I mentioned that, but I thought it was odd that he chose to put a storybook inside, a fantasy storybook inside of, I don't know, whatever the season is supposed to be.
I didn't, I mean, this isn't really a comment on the storybook aspect of it, which I'm not, I haven't really picked up on.
And I'll withhold judgment.
I'll withhold judgment.
But I think we've seen that kind of computer gone wrong or, you know, a terraforming machine producing something unexpected.
He didn't quite sell this to me.
No, made no sense.
It was six years.
They left the ship because of budget cuts.
There wasn't actually anything wrong with the computer.
So I kind of feel like there was no explanation given of why it created a bogey monster or why the babies were mentally six years old, but physically still baby size.
I don't feel like those kids were six years old either.
I mean, I know they were physically, they were six years old.
But their behavior wasn't six year old.
And where were the intermediate babies?
If this, you know, if they weren't allowed to turn the baby producing machine, they had babies in jars.
Yeah, they were presumably the kind of prenatal babies or whatever.
But yeah, it didn't feel like he'd completed that picture so that you had a real sense of how this all was meant to work and how it had all gone wrong.
Yeah, no, I completely agree. I'll just put down here, he is, RTD, is laying it on really thick. There is the commentary, as you mentioned, will not make him endeared to Ron DeSantis, which is good.
anything that makes someone not endeared to ronda santus is by definition a good thing
but nonetheless you can you can lay it on uh you can lay it on with a trowel as it was done here
so we do have and i think this was more pointed towards i think this is more pointed towards the
tories although it is also germane here the asylum seekers oh there's a planet they'll take lots of
asylum seekers but you know they're not going to help you they're only you you can't you can't uh
you can't get asylum if you don't manage to get there first yes no i'm that well i think that was
probably pointed at ron desantis as well as the sunak government don't don't you have some
boat people and and trying to ship them off to nigeria or something or yeah but didn't they
didn't DeSantis put a bunch of people in a bus and oh yeah and the governor of Texas as well
yeah so I mean I I think that that that's a kind of fairly universal thing I mean it's something
that RTD has gone into in much well much more effectively in much more depth in things like
years and years but here I think my criticism that were that and the kind of birth control
thing which i suspect was much more focused on the us i i don't have an objection to laying it on
thick you know as you put it with a trowel that's okay by me but again he didn't sell it to me it
wasn't no it wasn't baked into the episode it was just crowbarred in as an extra neither was the
abortion one i mean yes that that is more germane to this story we had budget cuts we required
everyone to leave the space station behind we can't terminate the babies not saying that they
should terminate the babies but in other words they can't yeah sorry it's it's abortion rather
than birth control isn't it i was it is it's abortion we can't terminate these babies because
that's illegal but uh but we can condemn them to a life of misery starvation and death which is
exactly what the assholes and i'm not cutting that out that are in favor of that in this country and
have been taking our laws back you know in some cases like where i live to 18 freaking 64 yep
although we did get rid of that one but but we're still bad just we got rid of it quite a bad but
You know, the point is, it is a commentary, but this show feels like it was aimed at six-year-olds, and I don't know that that commentary is going to strike home with that.
And also, yeah, okay, you're pointing out the absurdity of the position.
I agree.
It's an absurd, ridiculous position that it's just nuts.
It's religious basis.
We don't know why it's based that way on their planet, but, you know, it is it's immoral.
And he's put it out, but he's not selling it here.
Like, I don't know.
It just, oh, you know, those people did on protest, but Jocelyn didn't do it on a protest.
What would what would have happened if the whole crew had just said, screw you, we're saying here, you know, would they would they have died?
Would they have left them to die?
Why is it that they went back and made protests for six years and nothing happened?
Isn't letting the machines fail also terminating the machines and therefore killing the bay?
It's just, I don't know, because we don't, you know, it's not a complete enough concept.
It's just, here, here's a slap of paint.
I just wanted to remind you that I am socially aware.
Let's go with, are we wrong?
Is that the exact words?
can't remember what the kid said are we wrong because we're the way we are and and the doctor
gave a very heartfelt you know of course not no one is wrong the way they are every person is
unique and they're special and they're precious and you know we can we can definitely see where
that one is coming from what what what social issue that one is being uh troweled over that
Ron DeSantis would not like this. And once again, F you Ron DeSantis. But you, you know, it's,
it's there. It's very heavy. And then, and that's the only one that pays off. And unfortunately it
pays off in a way that worries the heck out of me because what happens at the end is that the doctor
cannot let the boogeyman be destroyed because he too is unique and special and therefore the doctor
risks his life to save the boogeyman does this mean the doctor can never take out another villain
because all of them are unique and special everything in the universe i think that's always
and special that's always been the kind of doctor who's saying which is why except that he has a
point where he can get past that he can pull up a gun and shoot a cyberman if he had to
there well but that was fairly controversial and that's the point there's always this agonizing
as in do i have the right with the daleks and even though they think a lot alike they are all
unique and special individuals it's just it's just well no it's it's it's the same it's the
same thing it's it's taking out the daleks would be genocide taking out the boat the boogeyman
bogeyman would be genocide and he's done that like um sure but he's and he's he's ended things
since then too so i don't know it's just is the bogeyman even life is the bogeyman anything other
than a computer construct i think it's as much life as the babies i think that really that's
yeah i mean the babies were created from you see they don't connect that they don't they don't
i'm sure there is a line he says he created it but he doesn't explain how is that did he take a baby
did the computer take one of the baby embryos and slot snot it up and turn it into that monster
is that what that thing is or did it create a whole cloth out of snot and and some technology
we don't understand not not really not really um buying into that whole the snot monster is worthy
of saving um and i'm also not really into the fact that the kids all love it now too uh you know once
the doctor saves his life and now they're suddenly oh how long it's fun like okay that's a bit of a
fast bit of a fast turn or i mean obviously i think one of the things that the theme of doctor
who is you know the the problem that the doctor needs to overcome in this universe it's not evil
it's not this it's not deadly monsters the problem to be overcome is a lack of understanding
right he says that over and over so i've only understood earlier if only understood earlier
it's like it is it is about coming to an understanding and i kind of wonder if that's
what's going to be the theme here going forward in a more obvious way than it has been in the past
or a more overt way like this is going to be about solving problems through understanding
we're going to be mediating our issues this show is going to be about having meetings
around a table and negotiating exciting exciting negotiating um all right we already talked about
there's way too much disney introduction uh uh one thing i should mention uh bogeyman bogeyman
bogey is a word for the devil bogeyman is a monster bogeyman however considering how much
effort it felt like they were putting into this for the rest of the world bogey is not a word we
use in the united states for snot there is no correlation between the bogeyman and a booger
which is what we call them and i looked it up just to make sure i was wrong and bogey is a uk variant
of booger it's like we just don't use it so the joke doesn't land very well i don't know how that
will i mean should work should work great in england but i don't know about the rest of the
world well i'll reassure the people who are worried about the disney money let me tell you
the disney money i can just you just see it all over the place showing it off for no good effect
like the cgi kids faces i mean they couldn't have done it before but it just feels like we've we've
got we've got this money and we can do this and nobody had this had the sense to stand back and
but should we because it didn't work those kids faces did not work and i'll put that to my wife
saying it's not so much you know a they're not very well synced to the words that's one thing
but their facial expressions are wrong when they're happy they're not yeah they look angry
they they just don't or scared or scared or yeah they're just completely in the the wrong
And, you know, it's like those, there used to be these cartoons, I use the term loosely,
that there was an animation technique in the 50s, I believe it was, where they would take
a still image, a drawing, and then they would like superimpose, not superimpose, I think
they'd cut a hole in the drawing and they'd stick somebody's lips through it and have
them talk.
Or it's just nightmare fuel.
And that's what these reminded me of.
a truly truly it's like i cannot believe that you somebody did it i mean they must have been
sitting in the meeting well it's too late now we're gonna have to run with this because rdd
has written the script and we've gone on but i'm not sure i'm not sure i mean you could be right
and it could be that's what the overacting was intended to kind of compensate for the fact that
We needed to be getting everything through the Doctor and Ruby's reactions.
But I think the Doctor and Ruby's reactions actually probably reflect a kind of self-satisfaction that they will have with this episode.
They will think it actually did work really well.
And I mean, who's to say it didn't?
I don't know that our responses to the show are typical.
But my feeling about the Disney money is that, yeah, it's showing up in all of the wrong places.
And what makes Doctor Who Doctor Who is the fact that it's made on a budget and they write around the fact that there are things that they can't do.
And that would mean, I mean, Doctor Who has always pushed the boundaries.
They've never not done something because they didn't have the budget, but they've just found ways to kind of minimise it.
And so the space baby's idea, I think, would have involved maybe one baby captaining the ship filmed very sparingly with only a few seconds full on facial expression.
So they would do a tiny, tiny, tiny amount of animation that would be very, very expensive.
And the rest of it would all be done just with clever side shots or ropey lighting or whatever.
It could have. Yeah.
Speaking of Disney money, how about that fart in space?
I mean, just in case you thought maybe it's not a fart, it's an explosion.
I mean, no, no, that looked like a cartoon fart from a comic strip.
Didn't think that was very good.
Let's see.
We talked about the dinosaurs.
We talked about how they could not possibly have hopped in the TARDIS and gone, well, I'm gone.
The changed memory, the doctor remembering the night Ruby was dropped off and then suddenly the woman behaved differently and then there was snow.
I don't even know what to say about it.
I'm assuming we'll get an explanation for that.
I hope.
They told me I'd get an explanation for Bad Wolf 2, but it still doesn't hold up.
Well, I think you might not like the explanation, but there is going to be...
There'll be a payoff of some kind.
Exactly.
That was one of the things where I thought, is there going to be an answer to this in the episode or are we going to have to wait?
I think the answer is we're going to have to wait.
I am really surprised, though.
I honestly thought, and maybe I still do, right?
But as far as I know, there was no mention of the word mavity in this episode.
Okay.
That's the else you like.
Yeah, there you go.
I have come to the opinion that, and it does kind of fit with the whole Ruby stepping on the butterfly being some sort of indication that, you know, something's amiss with the universe as we understand it.
That perhaps they're not even in the universe we understand it.
We think they are.
Right?
They're in some other form of reality, whether it's mentally controlled reality or parallel.
I think that is the case. And I think Mavity is the bad wolf clue that that's where we are.
I think as long as we keep getting Mavity, we are in this parallel thing. So, you know, they use it.
Mavity predates the salt, so doesn't it?
It does. It does predate the salt. It absolutely predates the salt.
But what it doesn't do is it does not predate the new TARDIS.
Now, if we think about, we've got the new TARDIS, right?
The doctor's, ooh, new TARDIS.
Donna screws it up, as Donna's want to do.
They crash into Newton's tree.
Then they go to the edge of space, and they come back.
And we've had this continuous line.
And up until this point, as far as we know, the doctor never realized he needed to turn on the butterfly compensation switch.
So prior to this, it's been off.
They've been screwing around the timelines since that moment.
But it's going to be one of those parallel uniform or some sort of mental.
It's it's that it's the who is the guy who was the guy that created the world of land of fiction?
Is that the mind robber?
Yes.
No, he's the master of the land of fiction, isn't he?
Yes, that's it.
He was.
But he was a writer of some kind.
Yes.
In before he ended up there.
He was an author of some nature.
we could be in something like that so we're in the land of fiction that's that's where we are
for this whole we brought back the toy maker and we're in the land of fiction i think that's where
we're going um the mind robber is an absolutely brilliant serial it's a wonderful concept
but you can't just stretch it at infinitum he get they get yes it is and it's it's the a one way in
a science fiction show to get away with pure fantasy nonsense i that's i i don't know it just
feels like when you went back to the celestial toy maker it feels like rtd is for the first
time looking back he didn't do that the first time through when he was at the start as you said
earlier he's he's setting going forward and starting off and he was sparing i mean obviously
he brought the Daleks back pretty much straight away but he was sparing about what he brought
back which is another reason why I was thinking the woman who fell to earth is quite a good
parallel of how you bring a new audience along because you have that entire season where you
don't bring back any kind of recurring monsters and I loved that and I would like RTD to create
something new just like he did in effect create something new in 2005 well considering that he's
already given us a complete info dump about everything and we made it very clear that he's
going to do something with the timeless child somehow yes we're well i mean it's all the
foundling stuff although oh for please please please maybe that's it maybe that's all part of
the land of fiction he's gonna fix it by undoing it the doctor's gonna pop out in a shower uh
later on and go whoa what a dream oh right um i will add i do not like um another thing i did not
like but in a different way um every time we're talking about the baby space babies and then we've
gotta run down and save the babies space babies shut up already i think that adds to that whole
amateur high school drama production um just not good not good i'm thinking it just it was
it was a choice to make this episode the first of this season because i could understand it had
been shunted to like the fifth episode or whatever the calm before the storm or something but yeah
I know this,
this really not a good start in my opinion,
my opinion,
maybe,
maybe there's people out there.
Maybe it is.
That's the scary film.
Maybe it is the best.
No,
I'm still counting on episode three.
That's the only thing that's going to be going.
The only thing keeping me going right at the moment is episode three.
I've already seen what the villain looks like in the devil's cord.
And,
you know,
like seen just a couple of movie clubs and I'm like,
Nope,
this is not going to be good.
this is not gonna be good um looks like a disney villain and that's not a compliment and
ah so where where did eric get a wooden sword but did he make it did they do they have toys
don't they get toys on a baby farm i don't know i mean would a baby have a toy sword wouldn't the
isn't the purpose of this whole thing is it at some point the babies at a younger age than they
currently are go down to the planet and take up their place as babies i refer you to the
some moments ago yeah this this whole thing does not have you don't get a complete picture of how
this is supposed to work or how it's gone wrong so i don't know i i will say that i think if i'm
not mistaken this is the first time star trek got a name check in doctor who certainly on tv
yeah yeah yeah i mean i know there's been crossover comic books but oh i didn't know that
yeah there had i think matt smith has been on board and for the enterprise d so not the real
enterprise but that'll probably get more hate mail than yeah there have been there have been
audio episodes where ace has repeatedly said has been she's been she's been on the bridge of a
starship and repeatedly said make it happen or make it so i may have got the line wrong because
i haven't quite got that far in my star trek watch make it so yeah make it so there you go
on the original series yeah they in the original series they didn't have to have a catchphrase now
all the captains have to have a catchphrase whether it's let's try or make it so or hit it
or um i can't remember what the other one is but but they get it it's a weird thing this made me
think of it star trek has always had transporters that's just a that's just a plot device that
they've always had they've always called them transporters um doctor who has had them for ages
but they always call them transmats matter transmitters right it they they have a specific
yeah but transmat short for transmit matter they have called them matter transmitters in some
places it is i've always felt like it was a choice not to call them transporters it was interesting
that she called it i believe because i'm not going back to watch it again and the subtitles don't
work on the iPlayer it was Star Trek matter transporters she called it I believe which I
thought no one ever calls them matter transporters on Star Trek ever not ever like so that was an
it's almost like he was trying to blur the lines between the two uh in that line and it was
interesting that the doctor did say we will have to go visit them which I thought okay that's a
cheeky line but all right yes all right yes maybe maybe they with the way this show ran they could
cross over with lower decks no problem they could shout at each other all day loud and running around
and flipping out that is all i have i've i've saved one thing that i liked just to end on a positive
note and it's not right okay in in the info dump about the tardis and why the tardis looks like a
1963 police box and how it's got a chameleon circuit but the chameleon circuit is is broken
um i i love the doctor's line where he says most of the universe is knackered love
yeah yeah well yeah fair enough uh that's not what i thought he said but um i'll take your
word for it i thought it did it did make me laugh i said rtg couldn't write humor and he and he
oh i thought you said most of the universe i thought most of the universe was funnier
but i didn't think it was a funny line so i just thought it made me it made me laugh i said rtd
couldn't couldn't do humor and i said all the info dump was pointless but if there's a gag in
there and it was a funny gag it deserves credit so it deserves credit i wonder if uh i wonder if
he went to moffitt and said hey i need a i need a funny line all right here's one for free
No commission required.
All right.
Well, so, listeners, basically they did two episodes of this show.
They dumped two episodes at once because of the whole streaming thing.
So we're going to be back tomorrow for the next episode of Doctor Who in trying to keep our schedule somewhat contemporary with the release schedule of the Doctor Who episodes.
so because we couldn't we didn't manage to watch and then record and then watch another and then
record again all in one day given the time zone differences and everything else we're contending
with yes so uh we'll be we'll be um i mean and i will be looking at episode two we'll be recording
it and release well we'll be recording it on our tomorrow and then we'll be releasing it on your
tomorrow because they're not necessarily
the same day.
They will be back.
Timey, wimey, wibbly, wobbly.
Oh yeah.
Simon, thank you for joining me.
It's a pleasure as always.
And listeners, I hope you'll join
us all again next time where I hope
to be a little less negative
on Fusion Patrol.
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