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 Season 2024 of Doctor Who, Episode 4, 73 Yards by Russell Dede.
Episode Synopsis
The Doctor and Ruby arrive on the coast of Wales and, like last week, the Doctor has soon put his foot in it.
This time, stepping on a fairy circle.
Ruby reads a scroll, reading, Rest in Peace, Mad Jack.
After inspecting the circle, Ruby looks up and sees an old woman standing some distance away, signaling to her.
When she turns back, the doctor is gone.
The TARDIS is locked, and her key no longer works.
She tries approaching the mysterious woman, but she keeps her distance.
Ruby heads towards the nearby village.
The old woman continues to follow at a distance, never getting nearer or further away.
On the way, she encounters a hiker and asks her a favor.
Would you talk to the woman?
She agrees, but when she does, she runs away, screaming.
In the village pub, the locals are assholes to her because they're Welsh or because she's English or both.
She rents a room for the night, constantly aware that the woman remains outside, standing, watching, signaling.
One of the patrons, Josh, goes out to talk to her, and he runs away, screaming.
Ruby explains what happened with the fairy circle, and they explain the significance of the scroll she read.
The fairy circle bound the insane dead to the earth.
Now she has released him, and the woman is his herald.
This comes to a head when Mad Jack comes to the door, scaring the poo out of Ruby.
Except it's just the pasty man, and they were being assholes to her again.
The next day, the woman is still there, and there is still no sign of the doctor.
Ruby is told that Josh has vowed never to return to the pub as long as she's there.
So Ruby is kicked out.
Ruby returns to London via train.
Impossibly, the woman is always outside, the same distance away.
Returning to her home, her mom decides to talk with the woman and runs off screaming, avoiding Ruby at all costs.
She even changes the locks and kicks Ruby out of her life.
A year passes and Kate Lethbridge-Stewart of Unit approaches Ruby.
Unit can help Ruby with the situation.
The mysterious woman is unusual.
She is exactly 73 yards away from Ruby,
and high-powered cameras cannot get a better picture of her
than if you were seeing her from 73 yards away.
The unit troops have special training for these sorts of things,
and Lethbridge Stewart sends him in to apprehend the woman.
They approach the woman, and while they don't run off in terror,
they do all turn and give Ruby the side eye.
They report something back to Stuart, and she withdraws her troops and abandons Ruby with a look of disgust on her face.
Years passed. Ruby's life continues. She has a progression of romantic partners, but she can never fully commit to them.
The woman is always there, 73 yards away.
When Ruby turns 40, a new Welsh politician, Roger Apwil, comes on the political scene.
Ruby remembers the doctor telling her about how bad he was, and when she hears him refer to himself as Mad Jack, she decides it's up to her to save the world from him.
Commits her life to his political campaign as a volunteer and a donor.
He works his way up to Prime Minister, and rumor has it he's buying Pakistan's nuclear arsenal so he can use it.
on the eve of his announcement
Ruby stands 73 yards away from him
and he flees in terror
residing as Prime Minister
less than an hour later
with the only reason given for his resignation
as ask her
Ruby has perhaps saved the world
but this does not get rid of the woman
Ruby continues to age
and it has been 65 years
since the woman started shadowing her
Ruby is dying in hospital
and finally the woman comes closer
she's in the room with Ruby
at the foot of the bed and then ruby is the woman who sees herself and the doctor as the
tardis when she was young then ruby stops the doctor from stepping in the fairy circle
and we reach the end of the story and nothing has actually happened apparently the end now
i have a quick question for you it's uh independent of this uh sort of you i'm tipping the viewers
off they might be able to track you down now sorry you live in a small village in wales is this
correct it's correct and you are english correct it's correct and your cousins have been visiting
you and they also are english yes did you take them to a pub in your little village oh well now
i'm afraid that the experiment you're hoping for hasn't taken place no i didn't you haven't taken
them to a pub would they be assholes to them because they're english because this is a great
This episode is a fantastic travel brochure for not going to Wales.
The Welsh are not portrayed well in this episode at all, which I thought RTD was a little more sympathetic to the Welsh, but not in this one.
There is a thing.
I mean, I've got quite a lot to say about the pub scene.
There is a thing which is a very kind of, it's like a story the English tell each other about you go into a pub in Wales and everyone is speaking English.
And then as soon as you go in, everyone switches to speaking Welsh.
How they know that people are speaking English before they go in, I don't know.
But it's a really kind of, it's a very popular myth.
It's never been my experience that there is anything like that.
But I mean, that's not to say there aren't unfriendly pubs.
Yeah, I have come across unfriendly pubs.
It is a different kind of unfriendliness.
And to be fair, the unfriendliness in this pub, I'm not sure,
is as much to do with the fact that Ruby is English
as to do with the fact that Ruby is not local.
Oh, it's a local pub for local people.
That's the, okay.
That's a theme we get in British shows too.
Um, okay, well, let me ask, switching that aside, then, this experiment hasn't been conducted, but if you get a chance, take them down, see if they get, you know, get abused.
Um, but, uh, what'd you think of the episode?
Well, all right. Top, top level, top level take on this episode is, first off, if this, if this was it, this is, this is RTD, this is RTD doing what RTD does well.
And in some ways, he's telling a story here that doesn't need to be Doctor Who.
Yep.
I mean, in fact, it's a number of other things that he's sort of plundering,
including his own, because I think Years and Years is a huge influence on this.
But I'm going to stick my neck out and say there's bits of 2001 in there,
as well as the very kind of obvious American werewolf in London.
aspect to it but i also the fact that it's like it's doing something that isn't a traditional
doctor who story is a plus as far as i'm concerned because i don't i i don't want rtd
reheated you know this this is this is the whole thing about him coming back as showrunner
I don't want the same kinds of stories that we got in 2005 because the show's moved on from then
and every time we get a new showrunner we have someone who tells stories in different ways
and so I kind of think and obviously one of the things about RTD is that he left the show in 2010
so 13 years is a not inconsiderable amount of time and he he has to have developed and i you know i've
seen some of the stuff that he's done written since then and so coming back i want to see different
stuff from him and this the the kind of things this is the things about rtd playing through
strengths here this this is the kind of the spookiness the horror the kind of deeply
unsettling-ness of it all of that is incredibly powerful and even though there are nits that I
could pick and indeed will pick I I'll kind of forgive all of that if we you know if we get more
more of this is i mean not exactly like this but more of telling the kind of the kind of stories
that we haven't necessarily seen before not exactly i mean obviously there are echoes i guess
of turn left in this but if we hadn't had space babies and the devil's cord we'd just gone boom
and 73 yards i would have such a different attitude towards this season it's well it's
night and day okay so i mean this and i obviously i'm i'm mixing creative geniuses here this is bore
and also mixing my all right never mind beasts this should be a show like beasts this should
have been an anthology where he writes eight he writes eight different stories that don't have to
be doctor who you you said it yourself this would have been a fine story could have ended with ruby
being taken over by old ruby and being cursed and damned forever to repeat this loop and because
that's what ghost stories do they don't have happy endings and and then fine you know go on to a
completely different story but the fact that you want to put this in doctor who you have to reset
at the end and you say you can kind of do that and turn left but you can only go to that well
so many times and in this particular case i don't think it's very successful i think you can go to
that well after 14 years i'm i'm allowing that ah well then you have to go better than this it has
to it has to mean something turn left meant something in the end turn left made a huge
difference this didn't make a difference it didn't save the world from roger williams because that
hasn't happened yet it didn't well except it did because that that was the original timeline and it
will happen again now presumably because of the reset so yeah is it the original timeline i don't
know kate lethbridge stewart said something to the effect of perhaps this is this timeline is focused
on that particular event or something so i mean there's there is even an implication from kate
that this is a an alternate timeline but i'll tell you what um i'll give you my family's reaction
here just briefly uh my wife uh my son wouldn't watch it because eh branchy again so he's he is
he has definitely poisoned the well something fierce and however he did come out for the last
15 minutes just coincidentally he sat down and watched it and after we watched it i was kind of
like this is going to be the first one this year that i'm going to have to re-watch um because
now knowing what the ending is i have to go back and understand if if it made sense spoiler no but
um it so i said i'm gonna have to re-watch that one and do you want to watch it through
nah I'm good and then oh so ending did not grab him even though but I echo my I echo my wife's
sentiments which were it didn't really amount to anything but it was entertaining along the way
but that's that's the best you can say for it it was it was a string of scenes that were
entertaining and when you get to the end of no consequence I mean the thought and I know it's a
slightly it's an overused trite and it's almost in a way a misquote but i mean literally the the
pop in my mind was this is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing
she didn't do anything like it was it was in the end it was pointless and i it really bugged me so
i did i did actually re-watch this one this is the first one this year i have been able to go i am
gonna have to watch it again i just finished it a few minutes ago and like uh okay uh didn't really
change didn't really change my opinion much although i did pick up a few things like it is
obviously clear in the rewatch that when the people talk to the crazy old lady they look at
ruby in horror and run away yes yeah in in the first one it wasn't always clear that that was
true although i think josh doesn't really do that but but everyone else does they all turn to look
at ruby before she should run off so uh you know i i assume that when they're there and they're
talking to that woman the woman says ruby has a toe infection oh my god and they run away from her
um yeah no i i got that the first time i mean i i i there are things there were reasons why i
wanted to watch it again and i haven't yet had a had a chance to watch it again um but it wasn't
that and also wasn't knowing whether it makes sense knowing what the ending is because to me
that didn't really matter it was i kind of i kind of i do agree with your wife it in the in the sense
that it's entertaining to watch that you know that far I will go along with it but I I think
that it for some reason I don't know why because there are there are certain stories I guess it's
the style of story or whatever and I I am very taken with your comparison with beasts because
Nigel Neill I just I'm I'm astonished that I didn't think of it but the echoes are kind of
quite powerful i'm i'm thinking that they must have been deliberate actually in some way some of
the some of the like the way he's using the coast of wales echoing the the way that neil uses
uh the isle of man um you know for example in year of the sex olympics and like you say it's it's a
it's a kind of a short story in the way that beasts are short stories that happens to focus on
one of the protagonists of the show we are watching i don't necessarily have a problem
with that at all i have a basic thesis that doctor who has a show is an anthology show
and it should be an anthology show it's almost unique in being a a storytelling format or at
least a storytelling um premise i guess which allows you to tell any kind of story initially
it was we yeah we you can have a historical story you can have a story set on another planet
but anyway within that you can you can have a planet that represents whatever it is you want
it to represent you can bend reality you can as rtd is doing in here you can bring in kind of
fantastical and mythical kind of elements but you could also just set it within any real period of
history you could tell a kitchen sink drama you can do horror you can do a political thriller you
whatever you want. And there has been a sense that somehow there is a format to a Doctor Who
story and that emerges periodically over the show. And I think it changes as well what a Doctor Who
story is meant to be. But I like it when the show shrugs that off and ideally just shrugs off the
trappings of the season arc or the overall narrative arc just to tell a good story that
the TARDIS brings us into gives us a couple of familiar characters to hang on to because
let's face it anthology series are a difficult sell and then we get the story and whether it's
four episodes or six episodes or a standalone like this boom it's over just I just I am still
in in the camp that says you don't get to tell the story about your main well a main character
aging to death of natural causes over the natural span of a lifetime and then stab your fingers and
go yeah didn't happen and does not make any consequence to them because ruby's already
forgotten girls are way too or less i think the girl who waited yeah but it didn't the doctor and
rory and young uh young amy get something out of this story nobody gets anything out of this story
in this one the doctor wasn't there he doesn't know anything about it it just i don't like that
i didn't want to go in there and say it's impossible to tell such a story but at the same time
they didn't really undo it they killed old amy in that they let her die and she doesn't get a reset
to come back it's young amy just never got to do it everybody else has to live with what they did
not quite the same and it feels like it feels like this is supposed to be some sort of a penance
story for ruby this is the you know it's a ghost story this is the curse that's been laid upon you
because you've transgressed and this is your penance is being haunted by this the apparition
of your death except that it was the doctor that did the transgression he's not getting the penance
ruby was secondary does she learn anything from it no so did she successfully complete the curse no
you know all of that just doesn't gel right for me and before i forget the thought it just came to
I mean, there does, I, okay, one, this is either the most meaningless story they've told in a long time, or this is the most significant chunk of this year's story arc we've seen to date.
It has to be one of those. And it is possible that this will come back in some other way, in which case I might apologize in the end, but right now it just feels like they threw it away.
So I've seen a couple of things about this.
And one is I read Martin Bellum's recap of the episode
where he kind of gives a few thoughts.
And his basic take on it was this story was great until the end,
but the ending didn't pay off all the things that were set up in the episode
because we didn't, you know, for example,
we didn't really get to see how Ruby became the old woman
and all that kind of thing.
didn't even have the same hair as if as if if we were able to understand how that happened would
explain how she was 73 yards away i mean all of that i for me right that doesn't matter because
it's just the spookiness of the 73 yards and the fact you can't see it all yeah all of that i kind
of i don't necessarily even want an explanation of it however the other thing is yes there's a
stuff in here that has to do with the story arc and it's a big story arc episode i can't imagine
how but if it matters to you that what happens in this episode has an explanation the explanation
may yet still come well i think will still come i i i mean i have a feeling that it will not be
satisfactory and i'll i'll well that's different i mean i i i i i i also part of me is like i don't
want there to be any more explanation of it because whatever the explanation is first of all i didn't
need it but secondly whatever it is is not going to be satisfactory because when artymd ties up
these and arcs they don't they don't do it for me no no it can never work the whole if we ever get
the doctor's name it will never it will never pay off it cannot possibly ever pay off and there's
another one i did see a couple quotes from rtd about this episode one of which is he says and
hear my hear my scorn in my voice as i say this he says he will never tell what the woman was saying
to these people and and because it's much better dramatically that way if i if i never
tell that and like yeah except that there is you don't know what she was saying you didn't care
it didn't matter it didn't need to make sense there is nothing that that woman could have said
there is nothing that that woman could have said to ruby's mom to make ruby's mom behave that way
instantly ruby's mom of all the people that did this ruby's mom had to give her at least the
slightest this this old lady told me something oh my gosh it's the most horrible thing i've ever
heard in my life what could it nothing nothing is convincibly like and and even if she told you
something horrible horrible horrible beyond belief uh ruby over there is actually satan himself
harbinger of doom destroyer of worlds like yeah and why should i believe you that right there's
the credibility aspect of it it's like but rdd wasn't interested rdd wasn't amazed rdd doesn't
care about that all he wants is like oh you know anybody goes up to her they just run off in terror
that's creepy well it is creepy yes but you can't think about it for 35 seconds and not realize that
It doesn't make any sense.
Hang on a minute.
The woman is always 73 yards away.
You can't think that makes sense.
No, and I wish it did.
I mean, I know why.
I do know why RTD does reveal exactly why it is 73 yards subsequently, but it doesn't help.
I'm going to say it couldn't make any sense.
If what you're wanting is something, you know, there's some particular form of rhetoric or whatever that the woman uses that is purely a kind of purely kind of rational argument that convinces them that Ruby is a terrible person.
Of course, you can't imagine what that might be, but I don't expect there to be something like that. I expect it to be kind of essentially supernatural, that there is some power that she is exerting over them. It's almost, I guess, in the terms we're talking about, like casting a spell, but within the world of Doctor Who would usually be something about psychic resonance or whatever.
but I don't care I really don't care I can I can I can think about it and and and and rationalize
those kind of possible you know with some psychological effect or some hypnosis or
whatever that doesn't add anything to it doesn't add anything to it it doesn't really matter what
the thing was what matters is the effect it has I I have a I have a thing about a whole cause and
effect being two uh two sides of the same coin so i i i mean the argument there is that somebody
turns a corner and they see water uh a glass of water on a rock and then they kill themselves
it's like that makes no sense there's got to be a reason that may not be a sane reason
not not saying that but it's just it's like it doesn't it doesn't flow you're telling a story
and you're telling a story that doesn't that doesn't and i i can't not care it's just not
possible for me not to ask the questions when i see them see something on screen it's like
it's fine to ask fine to ask the question you're supposed to ask the question but it's whether or
not you actually need an answer i i don't like the answer being because the writer didn't care
bother or the writer just thought wasn't important i think it is it isn't important he like you
because it just doesn't matter it doesn't matter what she says it does matter what she says but
i think i think i think that that's not quite the same as the writer doesn't
care about it i think it's that the i think it's that the well you use the phrase i don't care
right you don't care yeah i'm transferring that exactly to the writer he doesn't care
it he didn't care no i think what i think i think he only cared about the effect and and and that
is you can get away with that sometime but the whole story is based on this this weird
idea and we get nothing and and you know maybe we will get something later on in which case
you know it's got to be better than bad wolf that should i say that everything has to be better than
bad wolf but you know i don't know i i do want to uh point something out i can't exactly fit these
in perfect categories because they aren't perfect categories but because i don't know what space
Babies was supposed to be. I mean, I don't know. Was it supposed to be bad 1940s pulp sci-fi?
I don't know. But we've had sort of pulp sci-fi, sort of a musical, sort of a war story,
sort of a horror story. And then kind of coming back to that whole, I don't know that this is a
real universe that i don't know that the doctor and ruby are actually existing in the real universe
at this time that maybe this is some sort of they are they are stepping through yes they're stepping
through fictional arrangements in some in some way i throw that out there i i don't have anything
concrete on it?
I hope not.
I mean, again,
I've said, I think, that
one of the strengths of Doctor Who is that
it can do any of
these genres.
And there remain genres that I
would like to see
Doctor Who do.
You know, I really want a good
film noir episode, for example.
But I
am not going to defend
bass babies or the devil's chord which i do think were pretty awful but the tonal shift
are what rtd did when he brought the show back in 2005 i think when he did that in 2005 he was
doing it partly because he wanted to find out what what worked in the sense of what
was successful, popular, whatever.
And yeah, I guess whether, you know,
it kind of gelled as a kind of tone for the show.
But it was very, very deliberately varied.
And I think more than with any subsequent showrunner,
it continued to be quite deliberately varied.
Like that was how he set up each season.
So there was an intentional mix of different styles, genres, types of episode with, I guess, a certain kind of formula to the beginning and the season finale.
so I welcome the fact that without the tone kind of feeling like it's
looking for its mark, the fact that they are doing different genres, and I hadn't until you
said it quite appreciated how they are sort of quite easy to recognize genres, but I like that,
I like the fact they're doing different genres, and yet it was a musical without music,
Ah, more or less.
It was a horror story that didn't end with the death of the cursed person.
Or it did, but it didn't.
You know, it's like they're just off slightly.
I don't know.
I will say here with regards to your discussion about when RTD came back and set up his sort of thing.
I have been going through the Fusion Patrol archives and I'll point listeners to episodes 11 through 15.
of our podcast from like 2010 where you i and ben sat down discussing your thesis on your website
with regards to the patterns that rtd and uh subsequently um uh stephen moffitt had
sort of adhered to in their moffitt adhered to it for one for one season i think that's about
when we did it though i think we did it after the end yeah yeah yeah no you're yeah you're
absolutely right it was the it was the first it was the first matt smith season and uh yeah that
was um yeah so that team's been going on for a long time and and and i mean in theory you could
say now rtd's back we could do that again but i don't think he's i don't think he's sticking to
that the the template as i saw it was that you know you have the the the present day companion
introduction episode you then have a historical episode you or a future episode i forget which
you're around yeah and then yeah future first and then you then you have a historical episode
and somewhere in the middle you actually have with rtd an episode that is adapted from some other
media so a big finish or a novel or whatever and then there's a bit of space in the middle for
trying out some different things but it ends up getting all wrapped up in a two-part season finale
and then you can see the bones of the structure there i don't think he's sticking to that hard
at this point i think the the christmas episode that introduced ruby and was was shooty cat was
first episode was the the kind of the the sort of present day one the space babies one i guess was
the future the uh devil's cord was historical celebrity sort of the historical yeah it's more
the kind of thing that you got in the middle of the season but yeah it was the kind of celebrity
historical it's sort of there but i i'm i think he's i mean partly because he's only got eight
episodes to play with instead of 13 he's doing something that is different i think yeah i think
he's i think he's playing with the whole season as a as a block somehow but i um doctor steps in
the thing again last episode doctor steps on the landmine theme is that is that a theme for the
season or or a theme that we're getting put forward i can't think of any situation in the
first two episodes where that is the case but in this case it's quite literally foot in it
not even it's not even metaphorically that way i i think it's probably an accident
because apart from anything else when he steps on the landmine he doesn't detonate it when he
steps on the fairy circle whatever it is he does do whatever he does by the way this is the first
episode filmed of the block apparently is it um yeah how interesting so i mean one of the other
one of the other things this is block two i don't know that's the problem uh but i thought it was
the first block i mean not counting ruby especially ruby wrote but uh one of one of the interesting
things about the this episode and which contributed to the fact that i did enjoy it
is that it doesn't have
a huge gasp in it.
The Doctor in it.
Yeah.
Didn't want to say it,
but I was going to.
You asked about whether it was Doctor Light.
It was absolutely 100% a Doctor Light.
And we discussed this
when we talked about Boom.
I have gone off him.
And I feel that Millie Gibson
is much more impressive.
And this is a good episode for her.
I'm still not kind of shouting from the rooftop
she's the best actor I've ever seen.
But she's got a lot more to her
and this episode gives her Lenty to do.
And I feel like she rises to it.
So, you know, both because Gat was not in it
and because Gibson does a pretty good job,
I feel like this is really making the most
of the cast that they've got.
Yeah, that's a terrible thing to say, but I can't disagree.
I know.
I can't disagree with it.
I'm really hoping that Gatua will convince me later in the season.
But, yeah.
Yeah.
Speaking of the cast.
So one of the things that RTD has done in the past that he's very good at, or people say he's good at, and I won't disagree.
Although I can take some exceptions here and there.
that he's really good about that whole gosh the companion has a family and they're people i mean
you know wilf is fantastic uh martha's mother is a believable uh bitch um you know uh i can't
stand jackie i know a lot of people love her but i i can i believe she exists i mean as a as a human
being she's just like okay yeah i can totally i can totally see that i've met people like that i
totally you know and and she does care about rose and they they do work the dynamic well
okay i initially thought carla was good but i'm way gone off her too i thought she was great in
this i don't like her right i'm curious i well as an actor no as a character but but so you're
do you know do you do you find her convincing as a character or or the the performance convincing
i guess i guess the two questions do you find the writing of the character
and or the acting of the character convincing okay so i find the character here's what here's
what's nagging at me we start the church on ruby road and carla is you know gosh what a nice lady
and she's so happy and she's jovial and like i said the actor is performing the job
perfectly well and then ruby's taken out of her life and she is a miserable dour person and i
don't know she comes off kind of miserable when the doctor materializes his start to see in her
roof later on i forget which episode that is and then here in this episode you know she's not
exactly great to begin with she's she's definitely not the same upbeat happy person she was in church
on ruby road when she's talking with ruby about oh man their sheds and you know not that i ever
had a garden where she had a man or anything you know she just she's kind of a downer and then
when uh and then when she turns on ruby she's in a nasty downer and i don't know i this is
such a weird term for this character that i thought was going to be and i'm not going to say
wolf but you know seemed like she was coming in as a strong supporter of ruby and yet now and i
know this is an alternate timeline perhaps that's what it is i don't know and i know that that was
an alternate timeline and that but there is a there's a sort of in the church on ruby road
there's a sort of she would be a miserable woman if she hadn't had ruby in her life and in this
one she's miserable now because she has ruby in her life and i don't know it's just it's just
it's odd and i'm sorry i've got i've got a different take on that but i wonder if it's
I wonder if my different reading of it is partly because I feel more convinced of that character that you're kind of describing as what your initial read is.
You know, the idea of Carla as being this wolf-like, you know, absolute cheerleader for Ruby, absolutely supportive.
If you take that, if you're convinced by that, if you feel like the show has done enough to establish that,
and I think it's difficult because there hasn't been a lot of screen time for them to do that.
And so I can absolutely see why you might feel like, well, I haven't really got the handle on her yet.
And we've had these alternate timelines where these other things are being shown.
But in terms of this episode, if you feel like that is who she is, it makes the way in which she turns in this episode one of the most kind of chilling and gut wrenchingly awful things to happen to Ruby.
Because, you know, it's on top of these kind of random unpleasantnesses that have occurred.
And Carla is the one person, and, you know, the dialogue before it happens reinforces that.
Carla is the one person who she knows will not do this.
And it just, it's terribly effective in demonstrating the power of the 73-yard woman and how immutable it is.
That's the terrifying thing about it.
That's the very sort of Nigel Neill thing about it.
Yeah.
And, okay, so Josh and the hiker woman and, you know, they turn, they look at Ruby, horror and disgust and run away screaming.
Okay.
And they never want to come back and see her again.
Perfectly fine.
Harla, really weird.
But as you say, it could be an effective way of showing the immutability and the amazing power of this woman's ability to turn people against Ruby.
Okay.
And that does seem to be what it is, right?
It seems to be turning people against Ruby.
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Would you agree with that?
Yes, definitely.
Why did App William resign from being prime minister?
Because he's running away from Ruby.
Okay, but he didn't need to resign as prime minister.
He could have just run away from Ruby and said, get that woman out of here and never bring her near me again.
File an injunction like her mom did.
I mean, he gave up power because he gave up power and his nuclear arsenal and his ability to blow somebody up, which has been his life's ambition, clearly, to nuke somebody.
But now he's like, oh, I'm giving that up because that woman, I don't like.
She's disgusting.
And that doesn't make any sense.
I think it does if you see what happens in those exchanges as being something that is more than just a kind of a rhetorical exchange, a kind of purely ruby-sows-socks-that-smell-in-hell kind of thing.
and then oh my god yeah exactly that that it that it that it's that is a kind of piece of clever
linguistics that is turning people against ruby but i i think it i think it's not that i think
it's something that as i say is kind of operating at a deeper psychological level and going straight
to those kind of trauma set trauma centers or whatever you know in in someone's psyche the
horror and that's linked to ruby right whatever this woman is doing she is generating the horror
within these people and they are getting the sense that that is somehow coming from ruby but it
but that the way in which they turn and they and they literally run away i don't think that comes
from a just yeah like say ruby socks mill or whatever i think there's something operating at
a deeper more kind of visceral level there yeah and if that is the case i think it could
that the the you it could be much more of a life-changing experience right we don't know
we we know the the depth of feeling with josh we don't know what happens to susan twist we
we know that it's a big deal in the case of carla but that may be more explicable it's life-changing
because it's her own daughter who she has turned her back on.
But if that trauma is independent of that,
I think that would explain why Apquilliam is kind of so shaken and upset
by what's happened to him that day,
that he literally two hours later goes and resigns his position.
And Lethbridge Stewart isn't even exposed directly to the woman.
No, and that surprised me. That did feel different.
That feels like it's the words coming over the phone.
Yeah, it echoes what Ruby was trying to do, or Carla and Ruby were agreeing to do together with the phone.
It didn't work on the phone, so I didn't understand how it worked with Kate.
Well, I mean, are you trying to make sense out of stuff that they don't care whether it makes sense?
I mean, I can, you know, this one I can at least.
Yes, yes.
You get it.
I think that one makes sense.
Right.
Okay.
I think that's what it is.
But I mean, it doesn't it doesn't have to.
That's the problem.
It doesn't have to.
Well, no, it doesn't have to.
And I but it but it that I think that would be a completely legitimate choice.
But I don't see the point in not being clear about it.
I guess I would have liked if that is the case, I would have liked it to have been a little bit clearer.
There is in the whole Ruby Kay.
Ruby apparently has a life.
I mean, she lives, she has boyfriends, she has, but they never last.
I mean, okay.
It doesn't seem like this woman is stopping her from having these relationships.
And in fact, you know, the boyfriends aren't run off by the terrifying woman.
They're just run off through ennui or whatever.
but so that's all kind of i i guess okay um roger ap williams so uh ruby throws herself in with
ap williams because she's going to save the world good for her there is that subplot with marty
i mean i don't know how i feel about that is that was it really there for a reason or was it just
shorthand for ap williams really is a nasty guy did did we i i i don't know i was expecting
I was expecting to find out more about her.
Is she?
Oh, she's the master's wife.
That's exactly what I was going to say.
I don't know that she is the master's wife,
but that is what it reminded me of.
And the reason I think we don't know that
is because it's possible we will still get an explanation for this.
We don't know exactly how the arc is going to tie back
into the events of this story,
whether Apgrilliam is going to appear again,
whether she is going to appear again.
She will be the master's wife.
I did think, because I found the whole master's wife thing
absolutely fascinating.
I didn't, generally speaking, like Last of the Time Lords
and The Sound of Drums, but that whole relationship
and the choice to present this abusive relationship
as part of an episode of a children's programme in the first place,
and then the choice to really kind of not address it and just have it there.
That was some of the most intriguing.
And, you know, the way it was put,
the performances and everything were really kind of subtle and interesting,
but it just, it wasn't explored.
and it was kind of, it was, I was just left kind of thinking,
what is the point of this?
This is a, sir, are we talking about Last of the Time Lords now
or are we talking about this one?
Because everything you're saying applies equally to both.
I'm talking about Last of the Time Lords.
Okay.
And I agree in the sense that if it is the same,
then yes, it could apply here.
It could apply here.
I think that maybe slightly the difference is that in this one, it's one of a number of things that are kind of dangled and left open and are much more about the kind of sense of horror that is being created through the episode.
But I still feel like, why was this there?
I'm not sure.
So what was it that made App Williams go after Marty and not Ruby?
is it is it those glasses she was wearing is though is that her hey ruby's 40 let's put her
in some really bad glasses is that what did it i i don't know about the glasses i mean i i i prefer
the glasses to the kind of bad aging makeups that they use you know changing oh changing her hair
and changing the glasses a bit when she is an old lady though fantastic job of makeup they even fixed
her eyebrows so it doesn't have that huge gap in it on her over over the one eye that was amazing
i i don't like recasting either so i'm not gonna i'm not gonna choose what is worse
let's see i have a weird note here and i'm just gonna throw it out here uh this episode reminds
me of very much of and i'm pretty sure you've never seen this one it's an episode of the wild
Wild West called The Night of the Man-Eating House, which without giving you spoilery,
but just kind of context, The Wild Wild West is typically steampunk.
It has that ability to do fantastically weird science fiction stuff because, oh, what if
they invented television in 1880?
He's like, oh, that's fantastic.
Or what if somebody made a steam-powered robot?
Whatever.
But so it's not supernatural.
And then there is this episode, The Night of the Man-Eating House, which is a ghost story.
And at the end of it, and it's effective for the Wild Wild West.
It's an effective ghost story.
It's creepy.
It's atmospheric.
It's got, like, what the heck's going on here?
The whole nine yards.
And they get to the end of it, and it has a reset.
But it has a reset that basically takes you back.
And they leave the episode like they do this one.
Did the protagonist learn anything from it?
I don't know.
And I've always disliked the ending of that episode.
In a way, I liked it because when they got to the end of it and they undo it, I can go, oh, thank goodness.
There isn't ghosts and supernatural elements in my tangentially science fiction steampunk show.
Right?
But which we are not getting away with in Doctor Who, which is bugging the heck out of me because I want those things.
undone or explained off because there is no such thing as supernatural only natural things that
have yet to be quantified in a naturalistic uh right but anyway i that was what came to my mind
when i was watching that's like in doctor who that is always just sufficiently advanced technology
usually yeah but so far no that is not what the toy maker is right i mean the toy maker is indeed
some sort of thingy yeah right now i get yeah and it's toy toy maker and the black and white
guardians yeah i would say they're different um so the 73 yards the rtd has said he he prior to
the episode he talked about i had to go out to swansea pier and work it out exactly and you
think oh there's some logic behind this the actual logic air quotes behind it is that he stood on the
here looking at people counting the railings uh till he found a distance where people couldn't
be identified by by his eyesight and that was 73 yards i hope he had his prescription updated
beforehand just to make sure that he was an average person's 2020 yeah kind of thing exactly
because it's bugging the hell out of me it's not metric it's really bugging the hell out of me it's
not metric that yeah i wonder why it's not metric actually in a way it's not particularly surprising
that it's not metric because you know it's pretty sure why would it be well he did say that the
railings were three and a half feet each so which is more than a meter which is more than a meter
so he used that to count so maybe he just didn't subsequently go oh well that's 73 yards and then
just go okay that's uh 67 meters okay we're cool sorry no but i but i mean a yard would be
a yard is less than a meter three and a half feet is more than a meter yes so i i have no idea what's
going on there well i mean even if he worked it out in meters and said it's seven or in yards it's
73 yards i don't understand why he didn't just just convert it and round it to the nearest one
because it's not that scientific.
I think the question would be,
what would Ruby use?
Because she's 18.
And I would have thought she would use meters.
Whereas someone my age would probably use yards.
And so...
But who would use 73 and not 70 or 75?
I don't think...
Well, the point about it has to be a precise sounding number
because it emphasizes the fact that Ruby has carefully measured it.
But I don't think the units matter as much.
I'm just from a kind of, can we blame Disney for anything else perspective, thinking to myself,
do they care about people like me, the old viewers, who might have done this in yards?
No.
Do they care about people in America who are watching it on Disney Plus?
Yes.
So that's my attempt at blaming Disney for that one.
You know something? I'm going to go with it and I'm going to run with it on social media.
I mean, unfortunately, social media for me is Mastodon, which means running with it means four people might see it.
But I'm going to run with it anyway.
I think this is a big...
I think you should write a letter to Bob Iger in Greening.
I think this is a big Disney middle finger to the British people out there and say,
We use yards in America, damn it!
Except it's not for the British people.
We've got this strange mixture here, and it is.
Okay, well, you've got the Brexit people in favor of yards.
Like, young people in the U.S., I'm assuming, will use yards.
Is that right?
Yeah.
Yeah, you do, don't you?
Yeah.
Which is kind of weird.
I mean, in school, if you're in science class, it's all metric.
But, you know, if you go down to the...
Oh, yeah.
If you go down to the, well, because it's science, you actually need it to be precise.
If you go down to the Home Depot, you can be precise in Imperials.
You just have to do more complicated multiplication, that's all.
Well, metric is good because the maths is easier.
I'm 100% on board.
I don't use Imperial measures unless it's going to get me killed.
like i i could set my speedometer in my car in metric but i don't because the signs are not
and i don't want to be driving down the road and go oh it's 45 what is that no just those need to
safety first always do that but otherwise and i give no quarter people it's like but but go to
home depot and you can get screws yeah you can you can get screws most of them are imperial but
you can get metric ones they are there but there are there are fewer and if you want to buy yourself
a tape measure uh you'll be lucky if they have one metric and the rest or yardsticks or anything
like that it's it's just overwhelmingly what's available and we have the one one we have it both
we have both but it's like 90 oh uh i don't have any of those for uh uh uh tape measures
yardsticks maybe but you know it's still it's it's still either a yardstick or a meter stick
they are different lengths you know hand me the yardstick if and you know i can't measure a meter
with this because it's not long enough if we if we want to go off on this tangent and we probably
ought to we ought to head back to the episode but the the thing if you're a railway modeler is
that a lot of the scales are like four millimeters to the foot or seven millimeters to the foot yeah
i have no idea what's going on well you just buy him in the right size and go on
All right, back to the episode.
Our hiker was Susan Twist.
And we have a new twist on this story.
See what you did there?
Have I met you before?
So it is finally percolating into their brain that they've seen.
Well, into her alternate timeline brain.
Well, it's only been a few minutes since she's been in the alternate timeline at that point.
So she should be picking it up from.
Yeah, but she won't remember this.
No, she won't remember this.
Maybe when she makes her.
She'll do exactly the same thing.
Quite possibly.
It's just it's interesting.
This is the first indication that that that noticed her.
So I think that means we're building to something.
We also had Mrs. Flood in the episode.
Kind of weird cameo.
Oh, you're taking your memories.
Well, this doesn't concern me.
and then just head off back into their apartment.
Or whatever.
So I think that's also there to remind us
that that's a thing that's not been resolved.
Lethbridge Stewart says there's been a lot more
supernatural stuff lately.
That's just...
That actually...
You know, like I said,
I would dearly love them to end this season
by undoing this supernatural nonsense
by turning out that they're in the land of fiction
or whatever it happens to be.
But, you know, going into the season,
RTD is like, yeah, we've opened the universe
for Supernatural so I can tell more stories,
although more bad stories is not.
But anyway, he keeps saying that.
I am now hoping that your mantra that RTD lies
is he's just, that's part of his promotional gimmick.
so i'm telling you it's the way it is but it's not going to be the way it is it's going to end
we're going to get rid of this it's got to end it's going to end one way or the other it's going
to end whether it's going
It's one of my nits that I'm going to pick at because I've taken a slightly different position to you on whether you can sort of tell a, quote, non-Doctor Who story in Doctor Who because I enjoyed it.
But when you're writing a non-time travel story and she goes into the pub and she's only got her phone and she tries to pay on the phone and she can't pay on the phone and everyone's going, oh, that's because you're racially concluding that all Welsh people are backwards.
Yes, of course, you can pay on the phone here.
I don't.
I'm not saying it's a funny gag, but it kind of it.
It works.
But what doesn't work is if you have a time travel story and she goes into the pub and tries to pay on the phone and it doesn't occur to her to ask, what year is this?
Yeah.
Like being able to pay on the phone.
That's I mean, what?
She's 18.
Yeah.
That's something that has been possible.
I don't know, since she was early teens, I guess.
I can't even remember how long Apple Pay's been around.
but she's not too young to know that this is a thing that wasn't around a few years ago
and she's not been anywhere that makes it that obvious that she's in the present day and she
knows she's in the time machine so why doesn't she ask what year is this when they're kind of going
what do you mean pay with the phone i i want her to say what year is i can see them really ragging
her hard after that one um she asked that question like yeah and just and and and in that case
justifiably so but you know wouldn't you wouldn't you ask that can you wouldn't that be what can
ask this question can you pay with apple pay tap to pay google pay whatever you want we want to
call it here but in this case it is a phone specifically a phone transfer not just
contactless payment uh can you do that everywhere in the uk because you can't hear
Yeah. You cannot do that here yet everywhere. It's getting there. But I live in, I don't know, what, third, fourth largest city in the United States, and I still encounter places that don't take that on a weekly basis. It's not.
There are places that only take cash, but they're pretty few and far between.
There are a few places that only take cash, but there are still places that only take swipe credit cards in this country.
And, man, their days are numbered.
But, you know, you can walk in and it's—
Yes, but don't have a map.
Our place is typically—I mean, I've absolutely seen the terminal that that woman put forward on the bar.
So I'm not saying we don't have those because we definitely do have those.
But, you know, many places that the credit card readers have been mounted by the till facing the customer.
So you look at that thing and you go, oh, that's that takes Apple Pay to have to pay whatever.
And they, you know, pay and do it.
And that's the thing. It's fewer places that have it hiding behind the the counter and you don't see it.
the El Taco Tote, I'll give them a shout out. I like El Taco Tote down the street, uh, from my
house has that exact reader. I'm sure it's that exact reader and it's kind of, they kind of keep
it hidden behind the counter. You don't see it until you ask. It's like, you need to take Apple
pay. I do have to do that. Uh, not now cause I know they have it, but you know, there are places
like that where you go, like, do you take Apple pay? Uh, and then they say, Oh no, we don't take
apple pay and then i give them a big isl have to dig out through all it to try to make them
understand what a how they put me out but so i mean it's not it didn't it doesn't feel unnatural
spoiled your whole week does not feel unnatural to me for ruby to walk into a place where you
cannot see the card reader and ask if you could pay by phone not at all that's completely
and absolutely not abnormal for an American.
So that scene plays like pay by phone.
Well, yeah, that just plays like they are being the biggest jerks imaginable.
Well, they are.
So not like, oh, you are not like, oh, you racist person.
Oh, you found a witchy thing.
You found a fairy circle up at the top of the hill.
You stepped in a fairy circle.
You come down here.
You tell people about stepping in the fairy circle and they're all like, yeah, that's what you get for thinking we're all a bunch of superstitious.
It was like, why wouldn't you think you're superstitious?
There's a freaking fairy circle up on top of the hill.
It's like, it's not a hundred.
I mean, sure.
She didn't come in and say, hey, a bunch of superstitious rubes.
What the heck's going on here?
They just jumped to that conclusion that that she thought they were all a bunch of superstitious.
Like the evidence is in her favor.
It's like there is a fairy circle.
You knew what it was.
And somebody built it.
Somebody probably in Wales.
Well, I assume they're Welsh too, but, you know, they built it in Wales.
And then there's a creepy lady following her at a weird distance.
I can get why she...
They're just...
Yeah, they're just being...
They're just jerks.
Man, they were just jerks.
I mean, it was funny.
It was funny.
But, you know, humor at the expense of other people is, you know, not the enlightened way.
I, so, well, I don't, I mean, I didn't, as a viewer, I mean, maybe the people, well, obviously the people in the pub found it funny that they were playing Trickle Ruby.
As a viewer, I didn't find the pub scene to be particularly entertaining because I didn't feel like it was, I didn't, I didn't get, it didn't feel like a recognisable situation.
I didn't get what the motivations of the characters were.
It felt more than anything else like it was entirely a pastiche of an American werewolf in London.
Yeah.
But that it wasn't done with the same kind of lightness of touch.
And also because the period's different.
You know, you have to update it in some way.
And I don't think they quite got it right in terms of how they updated it.
So I found all of that quite grating.
And I was not enjoying the episode at that point, if I'm honest.
what was a welcome surprise was that that wasn't going to be the whole episode i thought by the
time she got to the pub that that was it i thought we were going to get the characters in in the pub
and that and we would know we would get to know all of them very well and they would
one by one speak to the woman and run off or whatever and when that turned out not to be the
case i was you know pleasantly surprised because the episode definitely improved from from there on
in do you think english trains are 73 yards long i should think they're a lot longer you think the
woman could just be in one of the other cars that's a fair point fair point yeah let's ruby
well i did think it was interesting which is i'd not go on a boat or a plane in order not to
drowning the woman all yeah i so you know here's the scene on the train okay she looks out the
window the woman is there i was like that is creepy oh you look out the window the woman is
there oh that is creepy oh you see out the window the things but and i think you would appreciate
the maths that if you look out the window and you see the woman and the train moves she's not 73
yards away from you anymore if she doesn't that bothered me that did bother me some it's like
maybe shouldn't that woman be like hovering or something and just like a like a you know like
the moon follows you when you're probably it just it was uh it was good but it was uh it was
odd um let's see the doctor is brilliant uh he has been for a long time we discussed this a
previous episode he knows everything uh he can he can cough off roger app williams off the top of
his head but he doesn't know what year he picked up his friend a couple months ago in yeah clunky
i thought yeah yeah um and obviously roger app williams is the worst welshman ever because that's
the one that came to mind so um old mad jack there is a line which i kind of liked but at the same
time i didn't um and that is i hope you're not having a pee around the back it's like okay fair
enough i you know i mean you don't know what the doctor's urological configuration is they might
go whip around the back the tardis and take a leak i mean that's people do that sort of thing
um but man rtd's got a toilet humor fixation previous inclination but once yeah
and who knows we don't know we don't know about that income we don't know about time lords because
they're not men and women as we understand them so it's true i don't think we've ever seen the
dr p that's right and and i don't think we ever needed to have that thought brought into our
minds but mr toilet fixation has brought that one around too on the other hand there's only so much
tea that any life form can drink without yeah anyway moving on the eye of harmony maybe burns
it from the inside um filmed the artron energy thrives on tea that's what it uses to fuel it
filmed in temby pembrokeshire are you do you feel cheated because i know you're in pembrokeshire but
nowhere near there yeah well i'm not nowhere near there temby's not that far away i did know i did
know they were filming down at tembe i can't remember when it was but it wasn't a massive
secret it looked like 60 to 60 miles or more at least down the coat yeah it could be i mean i i
saw i thought you would as an american would think that you know 60 miles was just yes but i
but i've been to the uk and i've talked with people and they talk about distances of five
or six miles as being you know a long way off so thought you would work on that on that principle
well that's the next town down in the living room i think five or five or six five or six miles is
not that far i don't think tembi can be quite 60 miles as the crow flies but i i would need to
probably pack a few batteries in my bike to to make it there uh yeah see um the whole mad jack
thing seemed a little bit uh contrived i mean it's not even his name they couldn't even call him
jack app williams wouldn't that have been a wouldn't that have been a better match call him
but instead it's like i was a jack of all trades they called me mad jack what that's a strange
choice uh oh here's another one old ruby let's call her old ruby mystery 73 year away lady 73
yard away lady um wouldn't it have been better if she'd been 73 years away too just saying oh
maybe she was no i think i worked it out it couldn't be she seems to be trying to communicate
she's repeating the same hand gestures over and over she touches her heart she looks at a book
She waves her arms wide for a moment.
It's like she's trying to communicate something to Ruby.
She's constantly doing that all the time.
Whenever she sees her, that feels like she's trying to communicate.
Never worked.
Never accomplished anything.
Has no point.
Creepy, right?
It feels creepy.
But if it was meant to be communication, it's like the single most ineffective communication ever.
let's see oh yeah i do have to ask if i were if i go to a pub in the uk and i order a coke because
i don't drink beer will they also be assholes to me about that not just welsh no they'll still
charge me six pounds but yeah i mean i i don't i was not it's called pub but i was gonna i was
gonna say this is also the thing yeah i mean yeah i don't i don't think it makes any sense
To me, it seems like soft drinks in pubs are extremely expensive.
I understand that, you know, there are all sorts of costs that have to be covered by the drink.
But when you buy an alcoholic drink, a lot of the costs are duty and they're not there for a soft drink.
But also, if you're the landlady and you're charging less for a soft drink and you're not paying duty,
then wouldn't you actually prefer your customers to order the soft drinks because more of it you
get to keep? Dying good question. Didn't make sense to me. I wasn't sure. They haven't actually
run a pub, so I may have missed something there. And I've never actually been in one.
After it being pointless to be that rude, it just didn't seem logical. And maybe this is an
American perception. I don't know. When my wife were in and I were in the UK, we never set foot
in a pub we're not drinkers either one of us me by choice my wife by genetics um but and we know
you can go in and get food and you know as you get the fish and chips so we never set foot in there
because we felt uncomfortable with the idea of going in and ordering something to drink that
was not alcoholic so i don't know if that's a so that's why i raised this question because
that happens in this episode and i go oh that's exactly what i thought was gonna happen
they're gonna make a snide remark and then they're gonna charge me an outrageous amount for it but
um yeah yeah i don't know uh let's see we have the spiteful one mentioned this time which could
be mad jack but that's a that's a new name of the oldest one the one who waits the spiteful one
me and i got another one and when they mentioned mad jack's name boom perfectly timed thunderclap
which you know only could happen in a ghost story so that's why i think this is not real
i i don't understand that you can possibly think doctor who is not real uh carla does call the
doctor an intergalactic nutcase so she clearly knows what he is what he does um what ruby is
off doing i mean i i know the other families have had to put up with it too but in this case
you never really got that and i and i and i think i mean yeah he wouldn't it wouldn't occur to him to
to have ruby keep it a secret or whatever you know jackie was always going on it and i think that i
think that's partly because of the that the closeness of those relationships like rtd couldn't
have rose not tell jackie something like that and i i think he can't imagine ruby not telling carla
the truth but again you do have to convince carla as well i think we got some we got some proof
jackie and and martha's mom and sylvia all of them ultimately got a certain amount of
encountering with the doctor that proved it but once again in the church on ruby road because it
was all undone they have no proof they have they hang on he parked the ardus he did land the
inner kitchen and that never really yeah i guess it disappeared like maybe maybe that's good enough
a kitchen appears to be pretty well repaired i thought in this episode i was i was curious about
that because i thought there might be cracks or an unpainted ceiling where it had been
repaired or something but yeah did you notice that roger app williams uh mantra for his news
interview was no more 50th anniversary reference oh i didn't notice that no okay no i didn't notice
that i kind of guess i was kind of slightly more impressed by the fact that he'd managed the rtd
had managed to include an episode of an election in it and get it aired two days after an election
was called in the UK. Quite an impressive piece of foresight. Yeah. I will say on the, there are
various kind of sections. I've had a nitpick at the pub section. So I will say, since we're talking
about the app William kind of period of the episode I I'm not I'm not super keen on RTD
writing these kind of political stories he does it in years and years obviously as well and they've
all been terrible um I well they generally speaking they're never great I thought this was
probably the best that he's done. It's partly because it's set 20 years in the future.
And so I think you can say, well, politics now will not be the same as politics is then. You
can have the Albion Party. So you're not, you know, it's not supposed to reflect either today's
Conservative Party or today's Labour Party. It looks a lot more like American politics to me.
but then again you could say in 20 years what's to say that british politics won't i mean we've
already copied lots of aspects of american politics so why might it not look a lot more like
that and also the fact they've got amal rajan doing the interview rather than say trinity wells
because i always think if you're going to do if you're going to get a journalist if you're going
to have a journalist you should get a real journalist to do it actors for some reason can
never acts like journalists or you know maybe no actor can give a perfect perfect representation of
any profession but we all listen to journalists all the time as much as we listen to actors and
it never sounds quite right when an actor does an impression yeah i suppose um i have exactly one
other note here so i'll turn it off turn it over to you for any other things that you have after i
just point out that the one time we can hear the old lady speaking sort of i mean it's a ghostly
voice right there at the end when ruby's looking at her she's saying don't stare i think sadly uh
subtitles uh not working uh on my configuration for watching this this particular episode but
it seemed pretty clear to me the first time i watched it that it's saying and then when i
rewatched it it really sounds like they're saying don't stare don't stare but that's and when she
looks away then the woman's gone all right what else you got what else can we pick on that was
that that was the bit that was the bit that reminded me of 2001 it's that kind of and in a
way that's maybe why i don't necessarily expect expect to understand the explanation of how you
know how all of that works i think it's because she's lying in bed but also just because it's a
weird and spookily lit oh i see what you mean i was gonna say i'm not getting 2001 out of this
but okay the i'm in bed the monolith comes towards you there's a bunch of flashbacks or
psychedelic visions okay yeah yeah i can kind of see that yeah it was that it was that the the the
last thing i think on on all last but one i just want to ask one question but the the kind of i've
I've talked about the section in the pub,
kind of misgivings about some of that,
some of the misgivings about the political section,
which were lesser.
And then there's the unit thing.
I mean, I was happy to see Gemma Radgrave appearing again.
It's always good to have unit in this configuration
appear in the episode.
I didn't necessarily need a detailed, boring explanation of how Ruby had tracked Unit down or how Unit tracked Ruby down or however the hell they came across each other.
But I kind of felt like I might have wanted a throwaway line or an explanation of that because it all seemed a bit pat like there they are.
And Kate is doing a hard sell on Ruby, I think.
She's trying to, at the same time, reassure her, bring her in.
She never met Ruby with the Doctor.
Right.
I don't know how she knows that Ruby is a companion of the Doctor.
And why it took her a year.
It feels like this was an arranged meeting.
This feels like one of them called the other and said,
Yes, it does.
Meet me.
But it's not clear whether Ruby called Unit or Unit called Ruby.
Yeah.
And yeah, so I guess the reason that probably the kind of the conversation goes that way and the dynamic between them is like that is because it's important from a story perspective that it's very clear that Kate is trying to recruit Ruby, is trying to reassure her, look after her, make her feel supported,
do all the kind of things that will be in complete contrast to her abandoning her turning around and running off.
But I didn't necessarily feel like I understood in the first place why it was that Kate was doing all of that.
Yeah.
I also, while we're on Kate, I also don't understand why she's Kate Lethbridge-Stewart.
I think she was in The Giggle, too.
she was credited in the game or was she actually referred to as lethbridge stewart in the doctor
literally said kate lethbridge stewart i i think did we discuss it and i've forgotten about it
i kind of i think we did mention that they called her that but i dear i'm getting old well we might
have mentioned it off off time but it it is i mean i okay i prefer lethbridge stewart but
But I, well, yeah, I don't, I mean, yeah, I guess it is just to kind of link her more obviously back to the Brigadier.
But the fact that she was Kate Stewart and she was Kate Stewart, I think, from Power of Three right through to Power of the Doctor.
Yeah, it just feels weird that suddenly it's different.
Never mind.
Well, it's because we're in an alternate universe.
So my final question.
No.
Well, yes, that occurred to me, but I think it's probably not.
The final question, just to kind of like aside,
is this Sian Phillips' first appearance in Doctor Who?
I know she's done lots of Big Finish,
but has she ever done the show on TV before?
I don't know who that is.
She's the woman on the bar stool in the pub,
the seeming English professor.
Well, she's Welsh.
She's Welsh, I know, but she comes off English as in the English language in this case, I guess.
She comes off as a professor, yeah.
Yes, yes, yes.
Yes, she definitely comes off that way.
And she is, I'm guessing, a legend?
Yeah, I'd say she's quite a big cheese in the acting world.
Is she bigger cheese than the barkeep?
I have no idea who the barkeep was.
Okay, then I think we're fake.
There is a line in that interview thing that I saw with Russell RTD that he says, and we've got, and he names somebody, absolute legend, and I can't believe she's never been in Doctor Who before.
And we've all wanted to do it for years.
You know, that over-enthusiastic way, Doctor Vichon says, I think it is.
I think it is.
But then, you know, I watch that and I go, but I don't know who she is.
So she was in, like, I, Claudius, and, yeah, she's been around forever.
Among other things for Big Finish, she has done Warmaster stories,
and obviously Derek Jacoby was in, was Claudius.
So, you know, the extras for that CD have all the kind of
lovey-ish reunion stuff in there.
But she's actually done a ton of Big Finish stuff.
she has a fabulous voice so you know if she's if she's willing to do it of course well yes it's
to it oh she's she's definitely um very well very that stereotype that that that precise i mean yes
there's an accent there but it has that sort of regal-ish precise uh diction uh know-it-all
kind of mind yeah it worked it worked except she was she was rotten to them too to her
well yes do we have anything else i think not uh okay uh off the top of my head i don't know the
name of the nexus like bubble and squeak or dot and dot and pop or dip and dots uh
not not a good name but uh uh it's uh dot and okay dot and bubble not bubble and squeak
I like Bubble and Squeak better.
I do, but I guess we'll find out.
Simon, thank you for joining me.
It's a pleasure, as always.
And listeners, I do hope you'll join us all again next time on Fusion Patrol.
You've been listening to Fusion Patrol.
Thanks for listening.
If you've enjoyed this episode, we hope you'll consider supporting us at
buymeacoffee.com slash Fusion Patrol or patreon.com slash Fusion Patrol.
For our monthly Patreon subscribers, we're currently running a special series on Babylon 5.
Come join the conversation and find other content at FusionPatrol.com.
And we're back on social media, where you can also follow us on Mastodon and the Fediverse.
Our address is at podcast at FusionPatrol.com.
Our music is Fight the Future by Amber Wolf.
This has been a Lone Locust production.