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 it's another one of our hastily put together as quickly as we possibly can episodes after watching Doctor Who Season 2024 Episode 3 Boom by Stephen Moffat.
Episode Synopsis.
On the planet Castarian III, Anglican Marines wage war against an unseen enemy.
Casualties are high, made worse by a malfunctioning robotic ambulance force,
which makes on-battlefield decisions about the economic viability of treatment
and the prognosis of a speedy return to fighting status.
One soldier, John Vader, has been blinded,
and his companion Carson tries to lead him back to base and his young daughter,
without the ambulances finding him.
Carson falls down an embankment and trots on a landmine.
Boom. Carson is no more.
A nearby ambulance is drawn to the sound of the explosion,
finds Vader, and upon diagnosing his blindness as being not viable economically, kills him.
Into this, the TARDIS lands.
The doctor, hearing Vader's death scream, runs willy-nilly across the battlefield
until he steps on the landmine.
But it doesn't go off because of what I can only classify as really stupid programming.
unable to move, the doctor calls Ruby and has her describe the landmine to him.
Realizing the nature of the landmine, the doctor must remain perfectly still, balanced on one foot.
He tasks Ruby with finding a counterweight that they can use to allow him to set his other foot
down. What she finds are the compressed remains of John Vader. It'll have to do, and after a
tricky handoff, the doctor has two feet on the ground, so to speak. The AI landmine is trying
determine if it has a live target on it. To avoid detection, the doctor must remain perfectly still
and regulate his vital signs. Zen is the watchword. The compressed remains of John Vader also have an
AI hologram of him as a form of memorial and final words for his next of kin. The hologram is activated
and begins speaking to them. Splice Vader, Vader's young daughter, wandering the battlefield in search
of her father, hears her father's voice and approaches the doctor. She rushes towards her
father's hologram, and Ruby must restrain her, lest she detonate the mine. Mundy Flynn, another
marine and friend of the Vader's, arrives and demands that the doctor drop Vader's remains.
Trying to force him to drop it, she shoots him in the arm, but he desperately explains to her
that the landmines use the body of the victim as an explosive, and as a time lord, a complex
space-time event, he will produce a much bigger bang than your average Anglican Marine. Certainly
enough to shatter the entire battlefield. Mundy scans the doctor and realizes he's telling the
truth, but an ambulance arrives looking for wounded. Mundy tells Ruby to shoot her with her
gun, which is on the lowest setting. The ambulance will treat her and leave the others alone. Ruby
tries to do this, but Mundy's associate, Kanto, arrives, sees Ruby holding a gun on Monday, and
shoots her, not on the lowest setting. The ambulance examines Ruby and determines that she
is 3,082 years old. She is not of their faith, and therefore the ambulance is programmed not to
save her. It prepares to terminate her when the Ruby snow begins, and seems to cause some problems
for the ambulance. The doctor has, of course, worked it all out. There are no enemies on the
planet. The weapons manufacturer, Villengard, has built a closed money-making loop. Soldiers are
killed at a level that keeps the war going and keeps the weapons sales lucrative. All they have
to do is surrender, but they can't do that. It takes a bishop to make that call. The doctor tries
a different tactic. He speaks to the Vader AI, dad to AI dad, and convinces him to enter the
ambulance's network and do some reconnaissance work for him. Meanwhile, Canto tries accessing
the ambulance's circuitry. While he does, he and Monday have a heart-to-heart talk. They admit that
They love one another, which of course means Kanto is instantly killed by the ambulance's defenses.
Nothing says war sucks better than orphaned children and newfound love snuffed out in an instant.
The ambulance announces that the John Vader AI, which was attempting unauthorized access, has been deleted.
More ambulances arrive.
The new ambulances go inactive, the original one heals Ruby, and the landmine deactivates, allowing the doctor to step off safely.
John Vader was not deleted, and instead of just doing a reconnaissance, has saved the day.
The Doctor and Ruby leave.
Day in.
All right.
What are your thoughts?
Six and a half years.
It's been six and a half years since we had a Moffat episode.
Mm-hmm.
And?
I tell you what, I almost mentioned this last week, but one of the reasons I was pleased to have a Moffat episode,
although slightly worried, was that it just seemed awful
that the last Doctor Who episode he wrote was Twice Upon a Time,
which I hated.
So I was very keen to enjoy this one
and for it to be a kind of classic Moffat.
And there were loads of Moffat tropes in this.
And I did enjoy this.
And I think, I mean, your commentary highlights the fact
The satire in this is not subtle.
No.
But, you know, unlike the kind of almost slightly crowbarred in stuff about refugees in Space Babies, for example, this is at the heart of the episode.
And it's what drives it.
Moffat builds a really kind of solid story around it and doesn't miss any of the opportunities to kind of drive home that message and makes it feel kind of particularly relevant to the present day, even though it's whatever, 3,060 odd years ahead of the present day.
Well, I can tell you exactly what year it is, actually. I worked it out because it is the 5088 CE, late 51st century.
How many years ahead is that?
It is 3080.
Well, it's 3082 years is the age of rubies, so take 3082 minus 18.
She's 18.
Okay, I did minus 23.
She was 18 on Christmas Day.
Okay, so she's 3064, so yeah.
so yeah i mean i guess i there are loads of there are loads of moff moffity things that we could
chat about but i suppose the first thing that interests me about that about about the episode
about having what i consider i suppose i should ask you whether you consider this to be a
a decently written episode first well it's certainly the best this year it's not bad
it's not bad i i enjoyed it more than i did the previous two um i don't want to i hate to use this
term but i think it's um kicking around something that you said and i i think it's mostly true
moffett puts together much more logical stories his pieces are are better intertwined um there
There are a couple of groaners.
Yeah, there's a couple of groaners in here,
but the pieces are put together
and they become integral to the story
just so that the satire works better.
So whatever he writes,
whether he writes drama or pathos or satire
or whatever it is,
because he writes farce,
he can do intricate plotting.
And as you say,
That means the piece is fit and nothing's wasted.
Yes.
So that, I simply appreciate that.
It doesn't matter what writer does that.
I appreciate that.
That is what appeals to me in a story.
And I know, and this is not a bag on RTD moment,
but I have finally gotten around to working on reading a writer's tale.
And it is about his writing process.
And now that it's laid bare, I totally get why his stories don't make sense.
He visualizes a thing.
Like one example is, okay, so the doctor, and I think Penny is the name of the companion he's talking about at the time, arrive on a planet.
And there's this smoke-filled corridor.
And a big Amazon comes out with a machine gun and says, hello, dad.
and then that's where these things come from it's the scene he sees he visualizes a scene
and then he puts stuff around it to make it happen which i guess can make for some great scenes
but which is what drama is built of i mean it it but then he's stringing it together with
masking tape you know from around it and yeah it doesn't make sense but equally you get you get
writers who can construct logical plots who can maybe even write plausible characters but whose
scenes are just tedious yeah i i i just wanted i mean i was i was thinking about the girl who waited
um after watching this episode and thinking about that the way in which moffat writes
he just sticks a horse in there.
I don't think he's a writer
who doesn't kind of think about the scenes.
I think in interviews,
I've heard him talk about those things coming to him
and then he does work around them.
Maybe that's not his primary approach.
Maybe that is a difference between him and RTD.
But I remember him talking about that horse
and saying, you know, that horse is there
because it's Saturday night
and people are ready to go off to the pub
and I want them to carry on watching the show
and they're going to go, why is there a horse?
And I feel like that's a little exceptional.
So, I mean, that's probably the biggest
of the ones that Moffat did is a horse.
It's quite grand compared to a lot of the other.
I don't know.
I'd be interested about the, you know,
Did the Doctor Dancers get built around the image of a kid in a gas mask?
I don't know. I don't know.
I hope Moffat writes his own writer's tale.
Although I have to admit, despite having both editions of RTD's The Writer's Tale,
I haven't actually got around to reading them yet.
I had the final edition since it came out.
The last final edition. I'm assuming there will be a new final edition after this.
Yeah, the previous final edition where he, I don't know.
I mean, the way it works, I don't know.
Maybe he'll just do a separate book.
So, you know, it's instead of updating this one.
But I just hadn't gotten around to reading it.
But now that it's, now that we're back to having RTD actively involved in Doctor Who,
it felt like it was important for me to try to figure what the hell that man's thinking.
I mean, for those first two episodes.
Well, there have been episodes that he has written in the past where I have felt like there were very rough edges.
And to put, you know, to kind of put it kindly.
And I've heard him talk a lot about his writing process.
I mean, I've heard him talk. He's a great talker.
I actually love listening to him, sure.
But one of the things he mentioned, which I think is kind of possibly relevant, is that he has a real fear of overwriting.
that the kind of immediacy or urgency or freshness of those ideas,
which I guess come from those scenes you're describing,
will somehow be bludgeoned to death by doing too many rewrites
and trying to kind of go over everything and fit everything together.
And who knows? He may be right,
because no one else can write an RTD story except himself,
and he's probably tried.
And if he can't make that work, he can't make that work. But I think Moffat and maybe he doesn't have the well, he certainly I mean, he certainly can't write an RTD story.
But what he does seem to be able to do is to get to a point where he rewrites enough to really kind of it.
Yeah, I guess the analogy in my mind is a joiner or someone, you know, a real kind of...
Craftsman.
Craftsman, yeah, who produces something that is quite intricate and well-finished and looks lovely, but also is kind of solid and doesn't fall apart when you touch it.
And yeah, it's different. It's different.
And I think in RTD, you could see as possibly more of an artist in terms of producing something that is flash, but maybe you could knock apart.
I do believe that there is a quote in the book where he tells the chronicler that his scripts basically come out full form when he writes them.
He puts them on paper and that's pretty much it.
So that's his choice.
Yeah, it sounds like he's not rewrites, yeah.
And I think we've said probably a million times that an RTD script could use a second pair of eyes.
I would love to see an RTD script that had been script edited by Moffat.
Or by anyone else.
I mean, I think there's a bit of a tragedy that we, because he was the one who brought the show back,
we never got him writing for the show for someone else.
Yeah.
I mean, obviously, he did submit Mind of the Hodiak for Colin Baker's Doctor, but it only got produced on audio a year or two ago, which isn't quite the same.
And I seriously doubt Big Finish made a lot of modifications to that.
Well, I think they probably did, because I think, actually, it's a Scott Hancock script based on an RTV treatment.
Okay. And likewise, Damaged Goods, which is, you know, really, well, that's well worth listening to, really interesting story. But it's gone through processes of having, you know, RTD wrote that one as a novel. And then it was adapted by, I think, Jonathan Morris. And so it's been, you know, dramatic.
And I think in some ways, I haven't actually listened to mine at Hodiak, but Damaged Goods shows a kind of polish that probably isn't typical of an RTD script.
But like you say, it would be really interesting were he to write for another showrunner on television.
And one that was willing to script edit him.
You know, I have a theory about novel writers that take Stephen King, for example, who is undeniably can write stuff that people want to read.
And I've read some of it and enjoyed it, so I'm not I'm not banging on him that way.
But just look at the page count on his books.
The editors at the publishing house are not putting any restrictions on him as he moves up the fame ladder.
It happens to almost everybody at J.K. Rowling.
Stories do the same thing.
They just, it's like, you're working in partnership with the editor when you start.
And by the end of it, you are the God who can do no wrong.
And they're like, yeah, they know best.
Just let them, let's do the minor edits.
they misspell you know this word but other than that go i i think that you know at this point rtd
would be treated that way probably or very near that way but anyway we should return to this story
well yes because i mean i want to talk about moffat but before talking about moffat i guess
the the other thing that i found this episode enabled me to kind of evaluate it because i
I thought it was a well-written, you know, not the best Moffat episode ever,
but definitely good, solid Moffat fare.
And so I could separate out the performances of Shuti Ghatwa and Millie Gibson,
who I've been a little bit critical of in the last couple of episodes,
from the way that they were being, the way their characters were being written, I guess.
And there's obviously the direction in there.
And I'm not sure I thought this was the best directed episode ever, but it's certainly not at all bad.
My kind of takeaway from this, the headline is that Millie Gibson's stock has shot back up with me.
I thought she was really good in this.
And so I think there is mileage there.
I'm not sure that, I'm not sure that Shooty Gatwin made the most of the material.
Like, I thought, I'm disappointed in it.
And maybe he will take a bit longer to get into the character, just like Peter Capaldi did, for example.
But I, I thought other actors who've played the Doctor could have done more, is it, than he did.
I'm going to, I'm going to read you a couple quotes then.
From my son who came back to watch this one after last week, not being willing to watch the Devil's Chord.
But he did watch this.
My wife did not.
She was busy elsewhere.
So his first, most salient point, quote, apart from the doctor, I thought it was pretty good.
He said it didn't seem like it was 45 minutes.
Actually, he said it didn't seem like it was an hour.
And I'm like, I don't think it was an hour.
it's like okay it didn't seem like 45 minutes okay sorry however many minutes of that it didn't
it's an oppressive amount of stuff that happened and didn't feel forced and then i'm not very fond
of the new doctor he seems like he's worse at being the doctor than any of the others i don't
know about any yeah i mean come on shoddy whittaker was worse maybe no i don't know he's worse than
they're down at the meeting
he's shooting up for me though
yeah he is I don't know if I'm ready to say he's worse than any of the others
but he's at the lower end at the minute with me
I want to point out characterization it's interesting
Moffat gets to do his thing and right here
oh it's this episode where ruby finally takes in the awe of being somewhere amazing i mean yeah
okay fine the planets are the brings and stuff would probably be an incredibly staggering moment
and i get the bit that ruby is like stunned into like oh my gosh i've seen this never seen this
thing before we should have gotten that with a damn jurassic scene right she had no soul in that
episode in this episode she comes off much better because of that yeah yeah yeah no yeah 100 100
but even if even if that episode even if the jurassic uh excursion had been written with a
little bit more wonder in it i still think being being on another planet i what's great about it
what's so moffatty about it for me is the multiple layers that are going on there right if we'd seen
the Jurassic excursion written as we'd hoped you know the way RTD would have written it would have
been straight up you know just being awestruck but but Moffat is combining the being awestruck
with the being in the middle of rescuing the doctor and the doctor being in the middle of
standing on a landmine, but also managing to be conscious,
or at least after a moment of thinking about it,
managing to be conscious of what's going on for Ruby
and kind of sympathising with what should be a wonderful moment for her,
even in a kind of very terrible moment for him.
You know, it's so complex.
To me, that is one of the reasons why he is so good,
Because it's just, there's so much going on.
It's so relatable, but it's also so unexpected.
Yeah.
That is a much better scene for your first step out of the TARDIS.
And I realize, you know, it's your first alien world that's a step up.
But it's still, it just works much better.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But also I think it's like 61 years of companions stepping out for their first look as a different planet.
And Moffat still managing to make it feel fresh and do something with it that really we've never seen anything like that before.
So I really appreciate it. And it wasn't a big moment in the episode, but, you know, it was it was something that I don't think should have been allowed to pass and also something that was very original.
we ever get to the point where the doctor is now mocking uh the companions seeing their first alien
world in the same way that he does when they step in and go hey it's bigger on the inside than the
outside because you know that is the same kind of wonder moment and should be the same kind of
wonder moment well it should i don't think he does always mock not always no some writers write it
like that and i i think there are others who trying to think but there have been some quite good
surprising surprising examples but yeah it's that's not always how it gets written and sometimes
those scenes are still they they impress yeah uh while we're talking about rudy ruby something
occurred to me in this episode uh we have that whole she's she's deadish thing and then the snow
begins right and stuff are we missing something really incredibly obvious here that ruby was born
on christmas day was there somebody else who was supposedly allegedly born on christmas day
that was a big deal somewhere along the line i i can't remember his name but those anglicans make
a big deal out of him i think if that if that were the case you know and and when they die or
even temporarily died it snows why doesn't it snow at easter
and then came back to life i don't know it just it's like is it significant that ruby was born
on christmas day i'm guessing no it didn't have to be 18 years to her to the day for the christmas
episode to be happening it just just happens to be but it is kind of yeah also the ambulance
identifies her by name and age which moffat's done that before um the beast below with amy
not exactly sure how that's supposed to happen but how did the ambulance identify her dna would
that include her name well obviously they have incredibly comprehensive medical records going
back 3,082 years or more yes it's possible we know there's something weird about her dna i don't know
how they would have her dna in order to identify her so thinking about it but then it could i don't
know facial recognition i don't know oh well she put her dna in the database so that divina could
try to track down her family so she was in a she did she was in a 21 and me breach or something and
so now the there you go there you go no never a plot hole in an rtd arc
no none whatsoever um it's just i am just odd but it does it does put us um it does give us the day
which as i mentioned earlier is late 51st century want to know another story that was written in the
50 that was in the 51st century the talents of wang chiang time of angels and flesh and stone
oh okay so why didn't they know he was the doctor when he identified himself who the anglican marines
he's the doctor they're the same marines yeah it's the same time it's the same it's and it's
later than the the byzantine byzantium or probably later than the byzantium we the byzantium is the
51st century and this is 5088 there's not much 51st century left in this story and i would really
really love to know more about this anglican military backstory that moffat has built i i
don't i i think that i think this is unfinished business i think he's deliberately maybe this is
why he's set it at this time but he's he's deliberately brought back these anglican marines
because last time he had them,
I think we said we want to know about the backstory of them.
There must be some reason and expected it to form part of the silence will fall stuff, etc, etc.
But I don't think there was anything to it.
And I think what he's trying to say in this story is he simply had Anglican Marines
because it's part of his...
All right, let's not beat about the bush here.
One of the things that...
Obviously, part of the target of this story
is the arms manufacturers, the arms industry.
Mm-hmm.
But another big thing in it is the church.
He's having a pop-up face in a big way.
I mean, the magic word that keeps you
from ever having to think for yourself,
This is pretty full on.
And he has Ruby ask, since when was the church an army?
And he basically says, since forever.
You know, you're living in a blip, a kind of temporal anomaly where it wasn't obvious to you that this is the case.
But these things that, you know, that religion and the wielding of military power go hand in hand.
And this is his thesis. And I think this I think this episode, I think I think he may have felt he was too subtle before because people thought, you know,
putting those two things together is some sort of clever juxtaposition of distinct elements that's
supposed to suggest some kind of elaborate backstory or plot twist and here he's he's saying
no it's not they're not distinct elements that it's not a clever juxtaposition it's actually just
showing the true church it's still i still think you know this particular incarnation or
thing. I'm not saying that he has a grandmaster plan for it. That is not what I was getting at,
and I don't recall thinking he had a grandmaster plan for it back at Flesh and Stone, but maybe.
But I do think that in his mind, he has built up some sort of Earth timeline, and one of them is
roughly the 51st century, where it's heavily military Anglican fighting. And I find that
would be an interesting area to explore not that it necessarily needs to go anywhere from this point
just i think there's some fertile ground obviously i think there's some fertile ground for a whole
lot more bashing of religion there and i'm always up for that so i mean so i'm always there for that
but you know but one thing that i i so yes he's very very critical of faith and then we have that
last scene that goes on forever and ever and ever you know just because i wear like it doesn't mean
i don't need it yeah yeah something to that effect i was like but does he mean he but is
is faith in your companion faith in the behavior of someone you know faith in the fact that if i
drop a hammer on a planet with gravity that it's gonna fall all of those things people use the
english word faith for i have i have faith this will happen but you don't really need but i
you really need faith to know that a thing's going to fall and yet it is still presented that way
and i think he's thinking i don't think that is f is i don't think it is either but that is the
way english no no no no no no no no i don't i don't i don't i think let's draw a distinction
i don't think dropping
faith actually implies something that goes beyond evidence like the the whole douglas adams
thing in you know the ulan kalufit passage about um i refuse to prove i exist says god
because proof denies faith without because proof denies faith and without faith i am nothing
so d and yeah disappears yes yeah what about the babel fish that's that's a dead giveaway isn't it
it proves that you exist and therefore you don't qed yeah it's but he certainly you would you would
argue i have faith that my companion will behave in a way that i want he wants to but he wants to
believe something that goes beyond the evidence and that is still faith and i think what he's
saying is and i it's interesting whether the doctor has always kind of had this position because i
I think other people have written him as much more respectful of faith.
And Moffat's line kind of maybe covers that.
But, well, I think even RTD has written kind of very quasi-religious stories, despite his atheism, because he's kind of got a fascination with faith that is much more sympathetic.
But I think that the kind of position that Moffat is giving the doctor, at least in this story, is a kind of preference. He's preferencing logic and evidence and things that you can actually verify over things that require you to take the leap of faith.
And yet this line is an acknowledgement that sometimes we do all take a leap of faith.
We need to take a leap of faith because, you know, we can't we can't live without doing that.
Doesn't necessarily mean religious faith.
The other word that is gamble.
You're taking a gamble is what that is.
Yeah, I mean, and I guess that's that's fair enough.
And it's not that he's not having a go at religious faith through the episode, because obviously all of the kind of thoughts and prayer stuff is all pretty on the nose.
Yeah, yeah. He's going after two faiths with capital Fs. Faith, religion, and faith, capitalism.
And that certainly is some people's faith. We know that.
Let's see. I just want to point out what we're talking about, Faith, that the ambulance won't treat non-believers.
That's not very Christian, is it?
I'm told. I'm told. Let's see. I, you know, I earlier I said that Moffat puts together a logic, a logical story. He likes to put his pieces together in a logical, interlocking fashion.
However, in a way that hurt me to say that because this bomb makes no sense, not even in the way he describes it.
I mean, yeah, I love, I love the idea that you put lights on the bomb to make it look sexy on the showroom floor.
That is so absolutely believable that I, you know, I love it.
However, stuff like that usually comes with an off switch.
It's in demo mode. It's in not demo mode.
So why not have them turned off on the battlefield?
Sexy lights notwithstanding, you know, they are displaying meaningful data because of the way the algorithm is.
It's a, you know, it's a bar chart, basically.
And it's giving some information to people who would be standing around the landmine, not the person standing on the landmine.
So who is that for? Who is that data?
You know, whose user interface is that?
And, okay, so all that, I love the idea that it sells on the thing.
It's probably inspired by gamer keyboards.
Matt Moffat's probably having a pop at gamer.
His kids probably wanted keyboards to do all the flashy stuff.
And he's like, this is just ridiculous.
I'm going to write that in a story, put it on a bomb.
I can totally see that.
But here's my question.
The AI bomb logic.
It doesn't automatically detonate when triggered.
It determines if the target is legit first.
What is a legit target?
Because the doctor stands on a landmine and it does not go off.
taking his foot off the landmine would cause it to go off, I think.
Except that it might not, because the way that landmine works,
it causes your body to be the explosive.
So if you had taken your foot off faster than it could make you an explosive,
would you not blow up? I don't know.
But what is it that the doctor is doing that makes him not confuse the landmine?
He's not moving, but he's obviously got some vital signs, but not enough to make it go off.
I don't understand that.
And if you work on the argument that it's trying to prevent wasted explosions, like let's say a rock falls on it.
Okay.
Rock tumbles down, lands on the landmine.
It goes, oh, there's nothing there.
I don't need to blow up.
Okay.
Kind of okay.
then why put a timer on it that says after 20 minutes or whatever the length of time was or 40 minutes, if it can't decide, then blow up anyway?
I'm not going to disagree. I think there are problems with the logic behind what's going on here.
Also, I don't care, but never mind. You do.
So let me have a stab at explaining why I think, even though it doesn't ultimately make sense, why I think some of those things are as they are.
With the caveat, I am in no way a military or explosives expert.
Okay.
I think that conventional landmines work by when you step off them, they blow up.
That is true because they launch something in the air that detonates so that it kills at a further range, like a fragmentation grade.
If it blows up on the ground, it doesn't do as much damage.
If it blows up two or three feet in the air, it hurts more people.
Okay.
Well, obviously, I mean, that fits.
that fits and i i mean i as i understand that even less sophisticated land mines will have
some mechanism whereby you push treading on it pushes the pin in but it's the push it's the pin
coming out yes that that uh causes the the thing to detonate and so i think it's possibly based on
that kind of tradition all of the other kind of stuff is obviously just there to serve the story
and the notion that it fails safe in quotes by blowing up on a timer it is completely ludicrous
I mean even it that took even me out of the story because yeah the point is yes you don't want it
to be blow up when a rock lands on it or a rabbit or a deer treads on it or whatever it may be you
want it to damage your military opponent so you want to check before it blows up that there is
actually a military and that's safe that's the safe thing you don't want to just blowing up
without being absolutely 100 sure that when it blows up it is going to do some damage to
something that matters in terms of your military objective yes yes i i'm i know that that last
timer is there because it adds dramatic tension to the last few minutes of the show yes the
ticking bomb has to be a ticking bomb but it doesn't the reason i bring it up is yes it
particularly that last bit took me out of it from it i was like come on it's because i was praising
moffatts for logically putting the pieces together and this is one he didn't do this is like this one
was kind of a hand wave this this was a little this was a little bit of rtd in there by my i'm
I'm not sure that's kind of completely correct.
I think any piece of writing, you can pick a hole in some aspect of it.
And one of the things that I like about Moffat in general is that he maybe, and this is my preferences,
but that he tends to weight what he sees as being the important aspects of the story and focuses on getting those right.
Those are the aspects of the story that I think need to be right.
And there are always going to be little things that, you know, there's a plot hole here or there's a, you know, for the sake of keeping the pace up, there's something skipped over there.
But if those things are relatively unimportant, it's not going to bother me.
And I would consider this one to be relatively unimportant because I'm kind of bought into the central idea, which is, you know, that which I still think is probably inspired by No Man's Land, although there's not much else in the story that kind of connects with that.
You know, but that but that's that's the central idea that the doctor is he has he has to be unable to move and they have to resolve that situation.
So let me ask you this question. I don't know if you saw it, but there was a YouTube piece that the Doctor Who channel put out. There was Stephen Moffat explaining before the story what his idea was. He says, I've had the idea for a story where you take the doctor and you take away his one key asset. And what would he do then?
he really made a big thing about you you take the doctor you take away the the most important
thing he's got and then like and i didn't see that till after i watched the episode and i sat
there for a very long time going sorry what what was the doctor's asset that he took away i'm not
sure i i'm not sure i know what it was his animation presumably i would have thought his
assets his brain so i mean i don't know the companion knocks out the companion halfway
way through maybe i i don't know i would have thought i would i mean i i need to watch the
clip i haven't seen it but i would have from what you've described i was taught the the obvious thing
is the doctor is an incredibly you know dynamic and i'll just watch the way he runs through the
battlefield that is a dynamic running style um yeah exactly and so if if you if you force him
to be unable to move.
I think, I mean, I think, you know,
I would connect that with other particular stories
that I think are incredibly effective,
like Midnight, for example, where...
There are a lot of comparisons
between this one and Midnight, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I mean, it's the bottle episode thing,
but yeah, also the fact that you're kind of stripping away
that it's almost an omnipotence
that the doctor can sometimes seem to have and you're really sort of put you're ramping up the
jeopardy by making it clear that he can't fix this he can't fix this you know he's he's relying on
other people to help him now i'll i'll take a there's a the the doctor who unleashed that goes
with this episode which i did watch uh there is a sequence where art is fascinating you should watch
rgd and and uh moffett are discussing what it takes to write for the doctor and one of the
things that they both absolutely agree on is that the the hard part about writing a doctor who script
is um shutting the doctor up um he's he's the biggest smartest brain in the entire universe
and he just you know if he if he just walked in and solved everything so they have the part of
their hard part is to take that and knock him down a peg in each story so that they can have
something interesting happen and that's solely on rtd's head because the doctor was not the most
omnipotent intelligent being in the entire universe before he took over he was much more
flawed and much more vulnerable prior to eccleston's era yes i think that's
well okay i i can see you're open to persuasion on this i i think that's probably not wrong in
terms of the degree to which he is the biggest brain the smartest the most involverable there is
and possibly not so much eccleston as actually tenant but i think if you look back to some of
the Tom Baker stuff I think it had I think it had happened then I think the the problem was he was
so kind of mercurial and fast-witted that there was a there was a kind of expectation being built
up around the way a Doctor Who story worked was that you know he would he would outwit everyone
else in the room and everything would resolve itself as a result of him doing something brilliant
famously peter davison i think that the peter davison thing was a reaction to that
so yeah it's a question of degree i think i think the show has had that problem in the past
and they have had to address it in the past but i think that you're right which is probably
well in as much as it was never worse than yeah with with David Tennant I suspect maybe maybe this
is why he's taken this swing on fantasy because you you take the biggest smartest mortal and put
him in the playroom with the gods and now you're not yes you even up the score which you know I
think i think is is dangerous and this is this is this is but perhaps well it is escalation because
this is perhaps why we we go from like i i still remain of the view that on balance the time lords
are a mistake like we shouldn't have had other time lords in the show but it gets to a point
where you need to have the other time lords because the doctor by virtue of being this special alien
is so much above and beyond the kind of human adversaries that he faces,
or even any other lower races that he faces.
And so you have to have things that are on his level
to kind of restore that balance and regain that level of jeopardy.
But I would have thought the better solution,
rather than getting into an arms race like that,
would be actually to roll back and do something like this episode does
or Midnight does and disarm the doctor.
De-escalation.
Yeah.
Yes.
They take a big swing at capitalism this week.
I guess.
War being engineered for maximum profit by AI algorithms.
That could be so many things.
Not just war.
Right?
I mean, you could argue that that's social media.
You could argue that it's all being done to just fuel the machine, to keep the people churning and doing whatever it is that makes you the money.
So I like that pop.
I certainly enjoy a good pop at capitalism almost as much as I enjoy a good pop at religion.
So two and one is definitely a twofer in this episode.
I also thought, now I don't know if they had this in the UK, because I sometimes kind of get my news crossed between one place or another.
Certainly one of the things that people of a certain bent fire up their conspiracy are the death panels that people are going to be establishing to decide who lives and dies in the medical care system.
I know they had that here.
I don't know if that's been one of those things that has been brought up over on your side of the pond, but certainly the ambulances fit that to a T.
Like, oh, you're not worth, it's not worth curing you, so let's kill them.
I think one of the arguments, one of the people that are against this are the people who are against socialized medicine.
Because if you don't have the right to pay them a lot more money to save your life, and they're just doing it based on compassion and government taxes, they're going to kill you.
You know, if you're not worthy of things.
So I don't think that this is intended as an attack on socialized medicine.
Oh, no, I don't think it's an attack on socialized medicine.
I think it's an attack on people who are making, yeah, would let a computer do it.
But it's satire there.
It's definitely.
Well, it is.
But I mean, I don't think it's aimed at a target as specific as, say, National Institute for Clinical Excellence,
because I don't think it's about particular mechanisms or processes for making decisions about what kinds of medicines and treatments should be available and, you know, where the cost benefits are.
Because there are always, you know, this is the reality when you have the discussion.
There are always choices, trade-offs to be made.
There are very, very expensive cures for very, you know, difficult, problematic diseases or whatever.
And should you spend that money where it can only benefit one person, let's say, without kind of getting into the ethics of all this, as opposed to spending on something where you might be able to save a lot more lives?
And I don't think that that is his target.
I think that he's essentially just going for, we shouldn't put a price on life.
We should be willing to put a lot more money, even if there is no amount of money that you can put into medicine that would allow you to buy all of the drugs and all of the treatments that you might want to.
We shouldn't try and skimp and save and cut back on that aspect.
I think that's the argument that he's making.
I don't.
Well, I mean, that's part and parcel of.
I don't think it's particularly sophisticated.
That's part and parcel of war.
War is putting a price on lives.
Yes.
The whole thing is like, do we really think it's worth sending people to go die to kill other people to achieve our goals?
And, you know, if we lose 10,000 people and they lose 50,000 people, what a deal.
Yeah, it's I appreciate it.
I appreciate what he's saying.
Yeah, I didn't think he was going after specifically the targeting something like socialized medicine.
I think he was targeting, don't put a price on life.
But he is doing it in a way that would be instantly recognizable to the loonies.
Looking at it, going, yeah, yeah, that's what they're going to do.
So, you let them liberals get in there and give us medical care, then they're going to be off there killing us.
Like, okay, you crazy nut job.
That's why we're giving you medical care, so we can kill you off.
Okay, yeah.
Let's see.
Do we have, do I have anything else?
The ambulances obviously were Susan Twist again.
Okay, didn't spot that.
Despite the fact that after last week I went and looked up Susan Twist
and looked at all her previous performances and pictures of her.
Oh, well.
I did bother Snow in my defense.
I did have my eyes out during the episode.
We got the Ruby Snow TM.
There's another episode that the Doctor did not save the day.
That is not the first one this season.
And Ruby wasn't very useful either.
Well, to be fair, you know, she was quite dead for most of it.
Well, I know I'm not I'm not saying that that shouldn't have an excuse, but that is down to the writer.
So it was he's the one that killed her so that she would not be very useful, as in the doctor wasn't very useful.
So that was, you know, again, there was a there was a interview with RTD back Eccleston era where he was talking about the fact that the doctor is basically a force of nature, a great moral force that sweeps in and forces, shakes things up and makes people do the right thing.
And I'm kind of seeing that the idea that the doctor is not the solution to the problem.
The doctor is the catalyst that that gets these things cranking.
I'm not sure I like that, but sometimes.
But I think the doctor probably should be solving some problems, too.
Let's see. So Varada Setu, I hope I'm pronouncing that right, as Monday Flynn is also the new companion.
oh don't know if it's the same character don't know if it's the same character they have not
said and they're being very tight-lipped about it but that is the actor who will be portraying
the the new companion next next season oh it would be strange if it wasn't the same character
you know oh well like in torchwood martha no i don't think it's like that because i think
the way in which these two have been
written and filmed so close
together.
It'll be
like her great
great great grandmother
Tuesday Flynn.
That was
a retcon.
I think if they do anything
like this it will have been planned in advance.
I don't know.
This is more like Asylum of the Daleks.
It could be. I don't know.
I, there is an interview with her, uh, after the announcement and there had been interviews with her.
There is sort of a, uh, there's sort of a sound like she was surprised.
Not, not exactly.
Like it was two separate jobs interviews, but no, no details.
It's just, there was just something about that.
It's also in that doctor who unleashed for this week.
So you can see it.
Um, and the only other thing I asked is I think we talked about this a while back.
You know, the newest, the greatest and most amazing thing that is in science fiction television production these days is a volume wall, which they were using on the Disney Star Wars stuff.
And Strange New Worlds uses a volume wall for some of their sets, which for if you haven't, anyone who's listening hasn't gotten in on this.
It is a computer-generated background, a wall of LEDs.
And in the case of like Strange New World, this is a complete almost 360 degree and up and over kind of thing.
They're very expensive.
They put practical set design in them.
And then they put, they use Real Engine, I believe, to generate live computer game photorealistic background.
that can have you know birds and volcanoes and whatnot going on in the background and it casts
light because it's a led wall so it's actually reflecting upon the actors the actors can see it
it um there is a disadvantage to that but i'll get to that in a second uh they can do things
with it like they can pop a chunk out and put a blue screen up where they need one or anything
or they can make extra lighting it's it's an it's a really really amazing bit of kit now and it's
synced entirely to the computer controlled cameras so to create the proper 3d perspective
when the camera moves the background actually moves and shifts and turns so for the actors
the actual walls around them are actually moving when they're doing things they say it can actually
cause them uh nausea or or you have to kind of look away because it is it the camera starts
swooping everything starts changing to create the correct distance effect they don't have that
for doctor who but in this episode they had uh i don't know maybe a 60 degree arc led wall
that they use for the battlefield uh when like the doctor is running across it
and whatnot so they are they are beginning to incorporate that technology into doctor who uh
at the bad wolf studios so it it looked good you know that's that's the nice thing about it if
they look good for studio bound sets but so there's there's disney money going for good
that's that's all i can say i don't have anything else about the episode i don't think
I've got a couple of tiny little things but I'll I'll mention them anyway okay one one so one is
one is the the I guess linking back to what we were talking about earlier about the idea of
overwriting and I think maybe the danger in Moffat's case is that he puts too much in he
gets too clever he adds too many flourishes and in this case it's when he quotes himself
and in particular the 11th hour and fish fingers and custard so the the doctor says something about
you know when when you when you come and visit me or when i come and visit you fish fingers and
custard is my favorite but i think he's misremembered the 11th hour because the whole
point about the fish fingers and custard scene which i still think is brilliant by the way
is that it's the new taste buds that he doesn't, he hasn't calibrated.
You know, he's trying to work out what he likes
and nothing that Amy makes him is any good
until he tries the fish fingers and custard.
But he doesn't have those taste buds anymore.
That was very specific to that incarnation.
Yeah, and has this doctor had a meal yet?
I don't know. I don't know.
I guess kind of related to that,
The other final little point that I had was we talked about,
you said you'd like to see RTD writing and being script edited by Moffat.
And obviously, we must have had Moffat being script edited by RTD
because when the show first came back, RTD was running it
and other writers were providing script of whom Moffat was one.
He was the best, but he was one.
And so I'm sure that was happening then. I'm not sure that was happening this time because I noticed that there's an executive producer credit on this for Stephen Moffat.
Oh, really? Extra money.
Yeah, well, but I also guess a degree more control than typically a writer might have. Now, obviously, RTD is going to have input into it. And clearly, Moffat's not going to have a problem with that. They seem to get on fine. And Moffat's going to recognise that RTD is running the show and running the arc or whatever. But it did jump out at me. I did think, oh, that's interesting.
You know, the guy, the guy has come back, which was unexpected because RTD very deliberately said he wasn't going to come back and write the show once he left.
Moffat has done and he's writing for another showrunner, but he appears to have a kind of higher status than an ordinary writer.
Now, I will say executive producers, that is a, in some cases, a virtually do nothing job title to give money, more money to certain actors.
And I don't mean actors, I mean members of the production team.
You know, producers, all the other forms of producers are working titles, but executive producer is can just be nothing that they just want to give more money and they have to do it.
They have to do it through through giving out a title may or may not be the case.
again in that doctor who unleashed uh rtd said that when he agreed to do doctor who again he said
he made three phone calls he called julie he called murray gold and he called steven moffat
and then he said and they may not have been in that order he didn't go on to number four
or anything else he went straight to steven moffat as you know the only other right you
you can call chibnall i'm sure that'd be you know 10 or 12th or something that'll but you know it
says a lot about the working relationship between those two they must get on pretty darn well yeah
no i said i i think there is definitely a kind of very strong mutual respect there but i i i'm not
sure that's true here i uh you know about executive producer i think oh yeah i don't know i think i
think that carries what i'm reminded of is um have you seen it's american film you've seen state and
main it's a no a satire on kind of make film industry making a film kind of thing and philip
seymour hoffman's character is a novelist who's having his work adapted to make this film so he's
he's the kind of outsider to the film industry and there's a there's a there's a line where
someone talks about giving someone an associate producer credit and he says what's an associate
producer credit and the answer he's given is it's what you give your secretary instead of a raise
yeah all right i maybe i'm maybe i'm misremembering my my fake job titles but i mean the point is the
same that that is definitely that is definitely kind of summing up what you were just talking
about and they may have they may have changed it for the purposes of the film i don't know but
But yeah, that definitely reminds me of that. I don't think they would have a problem paying
off it more money just to write. I think he has had some creative control over this episode.
But I don't know exactly what that credit represents.
Here we go. An executive producer is a high-ranking producer who leads a film,
audio, television, or music production by securing investor financing.
overseeing the casting process, collaborating with the director,
creating a distribution deal with a studio,
and even organizing a marketing campaign to promote the production.
They also work closely with writers, directors, and other creative personnel
to develop the script and provide input on the production's visual style.
And he goes on to say, that's the tip of an iceberg of what an executive producer is.
So it is a functional job, but it is a bit of a grab bag.
So it could simply be...
Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.
Well, that would be my guess. I would think it has to do with having some input into the directorial decisions that most writers wouldn't get to have.
Yeah.
And he was on set, it appeared.
All right. My apologies to any executive producers out there who felt slighted that I said you were worthless.
You may still be worthless, but I'm not going to say it just because of your title.
might just be marketing anyway uh anything else no that's me don't so next one is what
73 yards or something like that that what the title is i can't remember what the title is
i did wonder you you you talked about whether you were speculating at the end of our last
discussion about whether this episode was going to be dr light because you thought that we wouldn't
him standing there on the landmine for the whole episode we would follow ruby's uh attempts to
yeah now someone help and i think looking at the trailer for the next episode that it is the
doctor light episode it does feel that way i'm hoping it is um i'm not necessarily trusting the
the the trailers i think that may be you know just the way it's edited but i certainly think
that's a possibility so we shall see yeah um it is 73 yards and i am already upset at this episode
unless unless it is 73 people's front yards or backyards i i don't want to see yards that's
meters damn it that's okay you're right well anyway simon thank you for joining me
It's a pleasure, as always.
And listeners, I hope you'll join us all again next time on Fusion Patrol.
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