WEBVTT 00:00:08.120 --> 00:00:11.280 you're listening to fusion patrol a listener supported podcast 00:00:14.520 --> 00:00:18.440 each week we take a single episode of a science fiction tv series movie or 00:00:18.620 --> 00:00:24.980 audio and overanalyze it to within an inch of its life welcome to the discussion 00:00:31.840 --> 00:00:35.560 hello and welcome to another episode of fusion patrol i'm eugene and i'm simon 00:00:36.360 --> 00:00:44.220 ah tonight we are looking at the doctor who 2024 christmas special joy to the world by 00:00:44.720 --> 00:00:52.140 steven moffitt um just uh fyi my synopsis might be a little on the shy side tonight 00:00:52.960 --> 00:01:01.400 I have not had the opportunity to watch this twice, and I didn't take synopsis notes down as I was watching it. 00:01:01.400 --> 00:01:06.140 So I'm doing this from memory almost 24 hours after watching it. 00:01:06.680 --> 00:01:07.180 So here we go. 00:01:07.760 --> 00:01:17.420 Joy is a lonely woman who checks into a hotel for Christmas when she meets a Silurian with a briefcase and the doctor, both of whom barge into her room. 00:01:18.000 --> 00:01:19.740 But wait, let's go back a bit. 00:01:20.520 --> 00:01:27.180 The doctor, arriving at the Time Hotel to steal refreshments, notices a strange man with a briefcase trying to check in without a reservation. 00:01:27.880 --> 00:01:35.620 This intrigues him, so he enlists the aid of hotel security to keep tabs on him while the doctor tries to figure out where he's hoping to go. 00:01:35.980 --> 00:01:43.660 Because, you see, the Time Hotel transports guests back to various times and places in Earth's history. 00:01:44.240 --> 00:01:49.520 The briefcase has a mind and purpose of its own and takes possession of people to reach its objective. 00:01:50.080 --> 00:01:51.440 killing the people afterwards. 00:01:51.860 --> 00:01:54.620 The doctor's security assistant is killed in this way 00:01:54.780 --> 00:01:57.920 before passing on the briefcase to the Silurian manager. 00:01:58.480 --> 00:02:01.320 Having followed the Silurian manager into Joy's room, 00:02:01.580 --> 00:02:05.200 the case is passed to Joy and the Silurian dies. 00:02:05.760 --> 00:02:09.259 Because the doctor was tampering, the case is going to explode, 00:02:09.600 --> 00:02:13.720 but the doctor from the future arrives and gives himself the code 00:02:13.900 --> 00:02:17.800 and then takes Joy and the case, leaving the doctor stranded. 00:02:18.560 --> 00:02:23.900 Trapped in 2024, the doctor must wait till December 2025 to return to the Time Hotel. 00:02:24.560 --> 00:02:28.400 He forms an attachment with Anita, seemingly the hotel's only employee. 00:02:29.000 --> 00:02:38.040 Then he leaves her to continue the story, giving his past self the code that he previously got from himself and taking Joy and the case. 00:02:38.240 --> 00:02:46.200 The case leads them to another room, and then, upon asking, the case hopefully explains that it is making a star and will destroy all life on Earth. 00:02:47.060 --> 00:02:52.960 The seed of the star needs time to germinate, which is why they wanted to take it back in time. 00:02:53.450 --> 00:03:00.800 The doctor points out that they haven't got enough time and would need something like an oddly specific 65 million years. 00:03:01.480 --> 00:03:10.200 At which point, a Tyrannosaurus Rex eats the briefcase, ensuring that back in the future, the seed will be ready to germinate. 00:03:10.320 --> 00:03:13.220 They track the case through another door in the past. 00:03:13.400 --> 00:03:31.060 It's Bethlehem in the year one, and Joy sacrifices herself to become the star, along with all the other people the briefcase killed and her mom, who died of COVID on Christmas Day alone in hospital while Boris Johnson and his privileged scum cronies partied in defiance of their own lockdown rules. 00:03:31.580 --> 00:03:32.100 The end. 00:03:32.600 --> 00:03:32.840 All right. 00:03:33.340 --> 00:03:40.640 Well, I haven't got much to say about nitpicks about the Time Hotel, but OK, what did you think of Joy to the World? 00:03:41.220 --> 00:03:57.540 Well, I can see there might be some interesting... I was definitely looking forward to the kind of paleontological take on it, where I have nothing like your expertise around these things. 00:03:57.800 --> 00:04:17.340 And I did wince at some of the time stuff, but I kind of thought that the, I don't know, some of it you get, some of it is the like Christmas rules are suspended and some of it is Moffat kind of just saying straight up, look, I'm not following those rules this time. 00:04:18.980 --> 00:04:23.000 that you know they that's because they would get in the way of a jolly good story because from my 00:04:23.120 --> 00:04:29.380 point of view i have to say this is i if i was being conservative this is the best christmas 00:04:29.560 --> 00:04:36.160 special since the return of dr mysterioso but i'm pretty much ready at this point to go all out and 00:04:36.260 --> 00:04:41.779 say i think it's the best christmas special since a christmas carol which i think is fantastic 00:04:42.440 --> 00:04:50.620 i i have there been any christmas specials since uh dr mysterio uh well there's there's yes there 00:04:50.900 --> 00:05:00.280 has um uh twice upon a time i guess must have been one after immediately which i did not great 00:05:00.880 --> 00:05:07.599 and then we've had uh the revolution and resolution of the dialects that was new year's 00:05:08.000 --> 00:05:12.680 I don't know Skyfall counted as a Christmas special. I'm not sure I was prepared to accept 00:05:12.730 --> 00:05:24.740 that it was, but yeah, it's a few years since we have had a good Christmas special. And for me, 00:05:24.790 --> 00:05:34.179 this was a good Christmas special. I enjoyed this. I enjoyed this. So I've only watched it once for 00:05:34.200 --> 00:05:38.440 different reason from you which is that I only managed to watch it this morning I would quite 00:05:38.640 --> 00:05:44.360 happily have watched it a second time pretty much straight away not only does this kind of rate 00:05:44.600 --> 00:05:52.200 highly in the Christmas special stakes but I would say this is the first episode in the 00:05:52.440 --> 00:05:59.559 Chuty Gatwa era that I have just straight up enjoyed the whole episode with no serious 00:05:59.580 --> 00:06:05.740 reservations about it and also I kind of feel like this just I know it's probably not going 00:06:05.740 --> 00:06:13.200 to be a typical episode it's not something that I can count on the show being like necessarily 00:06:13.440 --> 00:06:19.040 going forward because it is a lot to do with the fact that it's Stephen Moffat writing it but it 00:06:19.300 --> 00:06:27.339 just felt like they'd found what they needed to do with his doctor I think he's an interesting 00:06:27.360 --> 00:06:36.860 performer i've criticized a lot of what he they did with the character in the first series that 00:06:36.860 --> 00:06:45.640 he was in but this to me felt like it really kind of played to his strengths there wasn't that kind 00:06:45.640 --> 00:06:52.739 of crazy over manic stuff there was a lot of high energy stuff but there was also just some really 00:06:53.100 --> 00:07:01.780 kind of lovely moments exploring why he is the way he is and i know the kind of theme about the doctor 00:07:02.620 --> 00:07:09.860 needing a companion has been a regularly visited motif since the show came back in 00:07:10.700 --> 00:07:18.819 2005 but i i just thought this was done really really well and i i did the kind of speech about 00:07:18.840 --> 00:07:20.760 what you will accept in the hotel room, 00:07:20.920 --> 00:07:22.940 apart from the fact that it kind of struck home with me 00:07:23.010 --> 00:07:24.500 when I look around at some of the hotel rooms 00:07:24.680 --> 00:07:26.780 I've been prepared to stay in. 00:07:27.280 --> 00:07:29.120 When Joy says, yeah, but you were prepared 00:07:29.130 --> 00:07:30.800 to stay in that hotel room for a year, 00:07:31.900 --> 00:07:35.540 and the doctor working in a hotel for a year 00:07:35.700 --> 00:07:38.260 and forming that relationship with Anita, 00:07:38.460 --> 00:07:40.000 who for my money actually turned out 00:07:40.070 --> 00:07:43.080 to be the replacement companion in this episode 00:07:43.410 --> 00:07:44.280 rather than Joy herself. 00:07:45.580 --> 00:07:51.040 Well, I mean, I'll agree that there hasn't been a good Christmas special in years. 00:07:51.860 --> 00:07:53.100 I absolutely go. 00:07:53.980 --> 00:07:56.020 I'll absolutely echo that statement. 00:07:56.480 --> 00:07:58.340 I'm not sure that I thought this one was. 00:07:58.400 --> 00:08:00.800 I certainly know that my family got up and walked out on it. 00:08:02.520 --> 00:08:11.840 I could not because I have an obligation, but I certainly would have just paused it of boredom and left if I could have come back to it. 00:08:13.760 --> 00:08:16.640 I did not think much of the episode. 00:08:17.140 --> 00:08:21.360 I thought that the section with Anita in the hotel room was the only thing 00:08:21.430 --> 00:08:21.980 worth watching. 00:08:23.140 --> 00:08:25.080 I'm glad you enjoyed that because I mean, 00:08:25.220 --> 00:08:26.080 I really, 00:08:26.300 --> 00:08:28.660 really particularly enjoyed that section. 00:08:29.360 --> 00:08:29.460 Yeah. 00:08:29.720 --> 00:08:36.000 And Joy was such a not companion considering how that the, 00:08:36.680 --> 00:08:38.360 the buildup was Joy, 00:08:38.370 --> 00:08:38.960 I need this. 00:08:39.060 --> 00:08:41.159 And then even have her doing the intros. 00:08:42.919 --> 00:08:48.360 it's like no no it was moffat lies nothing it was moffat lies again that whole thing yeah 00:08:48.960 --> 00:08:55.260 and he gets an exec producer credit on this so you it it he's much more now you know as a former 00:08:55.400 --> 00:09:01.420 showrunner coming back i think he's he's not just the kind of guest writer apart from the fact that 00:09:01.520 --> 00:09:08.419 he's one of the few people who is writing now apart from the showrunner himself i think he has 00:09:08.440 --> 00:09:16.460 much more kind of input and it wouldn't surprise me if that included hey let's market this by 00:09:16.720 --> 00:09:22.000 bigging up joy as the companion and then totally you know doing a bacon switch on everyone 00:09:23.080 --> 00:09:31.340 yeah it's it's possible um i i mean the only thing that i can say that i i don't it's not 00:09:31.340 --> 00:09:37.199 that i hated it it just it was a big nothing burger as as we say here in the states sometimes 00:09:37.220 --> 00:09:45.160 it was just nothing um it was um you know it was followed immediately by wallace and grommet's 00:09:45.300 --> 00:09:52.400 vengeance most foul which was phenomenal so hang on no spoilers i haven't i'm not going to give you 00:09:52.400 --> 00:09:57.440 any spoilers can i give you any spoilers save that it was good but do you expect anything else from 00:09:57.700 --> 00:10:04.999 wallace and grommet well true okay well it's like although i'm not sure i've enjoyed a feature length 00:10:05.020 --> 00:10:10.860 wallace and gromit so this may be a first from that point of view but um you know i and also 00:10:11.040 --> 00:10:18.380 you know maybe my expectations were my uh my desire for something good was was really in need 00:10:18.380 --> 00:10:28.500 of wallace and gromit after watching doctor i don't know um i you know it it it's unfortunately 00:10:28.620 --> 00:10:35.140 it's the kind of story that because i didn't really feel that it had really any jeopardy any 00:10:35.920 --> 00:10:42.040 interesting idea um you know the the star thing is just not an interesting idea and it doesn't hold 00:10:42.120 --> 00:10:48.740 up but the star the star thing is the mcguffin and and i mean it's quite interesting i i find 00:10:48.830 --> 00:10:54.959 the way in which because to me this this has all of the kind of things that make me feel like 00:10:55.540 --> 00:11:04.240 I know I complain about RTD coming back on the basis that I don't think it's what the show needs 00:11:04.240 --> 00:11:08.480 is people coming back I think what it always needs is to move forward because that's how 00:11:09.160 --> 00:11:15.300 Doctor Who has always survived by regenerating into something different and I know I have kind 00:11:15.300 --> 00:11:22.999 of felt like when I was watching the Moffat era because I enjoy his writing so much that I was 00:11:24.240 --> 00:11:32.380 watching what I felt was the greatest period of Doctor Who in 40-something years and appreciating 00:11:32.410 --> 00:11:35.740 the privilege of that. And now looking back on that, I'm bound to kind of think, 00:11:36.480 --> 00:11:39.660 what compares to that? And then Moffat comes along and writes something like this, 00:11:40.040 --> 00:11:47.240 which for my money is just, you know, he writes just as well as he ever did, but also he writes 00:11:47.680 --> 00:11:52.219 all of the kind of things that I enjoy about Moffat's writing are there. There's not just 00:11:52.240 --> 00:11:58.320 the fact that as any writer can they can take the kind of doctor who template is essentially a blank 00:11:58.580 --> 00:12:05.060 canvas you can land the tardis literally anywhere and tell any story you like but he goes beyond 00:12:05.380 --> 00:12:11.560 that and he uses the kind of timey-wimey premises to do kind of the mind-bending paradoxes and the 00:12:11.700 --> 00:12:17.459 incredibly complex stuff and he lines up all these bits and pieces that his stories are very complex 00:12:17.460 --> 00:12:23.280 but even though you're expecting that when you kind of get him rushing through the different 00:12:23.560 --> 00:12:32.520 doors into you know a world war ii hotel room and into the orient express and into i not sure 00:12:33.420 --> 00:12:41.600 was a hillary's um mission that that you know you know that everything in there is going to be used 00:12:41.620 --> 00:12:47.440 in some way in the story and that it's going to get paid off at some point what you don't know is 00:12:47.460 --> 00:12:53.220 of the big and small elements and the fact that the the kind of Sandringham hotel bit becomes this 00:12:53.350 --> 00:12:58.100 rather prolonged sequence over the course of a year and the fact that Joy ends up being a rather 00:12:58.330 --> 00:13:03.160 minor element I mean she's an important plot element but she's not an important character 00:13:04.000 --> 00:13:11.200 in the narrative and so all of that is quite kind of surprising but however small the characters are 00:13:11.220 --> 00:13:20.380 even the Silurian hotel manager, he creates a really engaging character there. The excitement 00:13:20.470 --> 00:13:26.040 of this Silurian who's woken up and wandered out of a cave and managed to rise to the top of the 00:13:27.810 --> 00:13:35.280 trans-temporal hospitality industry is fabulous. So there is something about Moffat that just really 00:13:35.300 --> 00:13:43.660 appeals to me and this does all of it as far as i'm concerned i i i mean the the one thing that 00:13:44.340 --> 00:13:52.860 i thought was particularly neat how about that is as you know i i don't like a um 00:13:54.220 --> 00:14:02.820 shekov's gun when it's really obvious but the silurian manager was shekov's gun by showing 00:14:02.900 --> 00:14:06.360 that the time portals went back past 65 million years. 00:14:06.900 --> 00:14:09.840 I thought he'd, I would need to rewatch it. 00:14:09.880 --> 00:14:11.060 I thought he'd woken up. 00:14:11.400 --> 00:14:14.340 I thought he was a Silurian who had been in hibernation. 00:14:14.400 --> 00:14:15.560 Well, I suppose it's possible. 00:14:15.760 --> 00:14:16.840 He said he woke up in a cave. 00:14:17.680 --> 00:14:17.940 Yeah, okay. 00:14:17.940 --> 00:14:19.540 He was in a cave and he found his way in. 00:14:20.200 --> 00:14:21.480 I guess I'd inferred that 00:14:21.680 --> 00:14:24.300 because I'm so used to stories about Silurians 00:14:24.860 --> 00:14:27.240 where, you know, just another bunch of them 00:14:28.000 --> 00:14:29.280 come out of hibernation early 00:14:29.480 --> 00:14:32.180 and decide to wipe out the humans on the surface 00:14:32.200 --> 00:14:32.860 or whatever it is. 00:14:33.290 --> 00:14:37.120 But of course, if the Time Hotel does go back 65 million years, there's no reason why they 00:14:37.400 --> 00:14:38.060 couldn't be going. 00:14:38.700 --> 00:14:39.400 No, quite right. 00:14:39.680 --> 00:14:41.620 No, I think your interpretation does make sense. 00:14:42.350 --> 00:14:43.500 And yeah, I do like that. 00:14:43.680 --> 00:14:46.740 That's a very subtle Chekhov's gun, if it is. 00:14:47.320 --> 00:14:47.720 It is. 00:14:47.770 --> 00:14:53.880 And I think one of the things that Moffat does very well is he just leaves a kind of 00:14:54.120 --> 00:15:01.220 Chekhov's entire armory lying around and he hides half the weapons as gags. 00:15:01.780 --> 00:15:08.120 So a lot of the time you think that whatever he's introduced has served its purpose because it was there for a laugh. 00:15:08.500 --> 00:15:09.020 But it's not. 00:15:09.400 --> 00:15:14.540 It's there for some kind of plot purpose that doesn't get revealed until the actual payoff comes. 00:15:14.780 --> 00:15:21.680 That's the entirety of the entire series coupling, or at least the character of Jeff is in that. 00:15:22.760 --> 00:15:25.220 You know, everything he says is a gag. 00:15:25.720 --> 00:15:35.880 But yet by the end of the episode, all those gags have compounded back on the story in a way where you go, well, that was just darn clever. 00:15:36.000 --> 00:15:40.000 And I fully concede that Moffat can do that. 00:15:40.200 --> 00:15:41.300 I just kind of. 00:15:41.860 --> 00:15:44.940 I just wasn't engaged by any of this. 00:15:45.480 --> 00:15:45.720 MacGuffin. 00:15:46.380 --> 00:15:46.480 Yeah. 00:15:46.860 --> 00:15:50.860 I'm just going to say, just in terms of those gags, even if it's not a plot development, 00:15:51.490 --> 00:15:59.120 the fact that he can have the doctor kind of using French as an expletive in the middle of something crazy going on, 00:15:59.250 --> 00:16:00.500 because he's set up a... 00:16:00.800 --> 00:16:06.720 It's the kind of thing that I think RTD was trying to do with Mavity, except when Moffat does it, it's funny. 00:16:07.240 --> 00:16:09.320 And Mavity got its appearance here. 00:16:09.800 --> 00:16:10.420 Oh, I missed that. 00:16:11.140 --> 00:16:12.140 He missed Mavity. 00:16:12.620 --> 00:16:14.400 Very, very close. 00:16:14.740 --> 00:16:23.820 There was when he asked the security guard if you have sensors and can you do measure radiation, air pressure, temperature, mavening. 00:16:24.800 --> 00:16:25.400 I missed that. 00:16:25.540 --> 00:16:30.700 Yeah, I made I didn't make a note of it because I wasn't taking any notes, but I made a mental note of it. 00:16:31.480 --> 00:16:33.960 Shook my head, did a facepalm. 00:16:34.340 --> 00:16:37.420 I thought we'd gotten rid of that nonsense. 00:16:37.760 --> 00:16:42.100 The only thing I can hope is, you know, we're still in a parallel universe and it's all going to be undone someday. 00:16:43.860 --> 00:16:56.600 But so, yeah, I don't understand even even the slightest glance of the Time Hotel. 00:16:57.370 --> 00:16:59.180 I mean, OK, the Time Lords are dead. 00:16:59.920 --> 00:17:05.579 So that explains why they don't stop this kind of nonsense in its tracks. 00:17:06.400 --> 00:17:11.160 But how can it at its wildest, craziest? 00:17:11.630 --> 00:17:12.680 How can it work? 00:17:13.160 --> 00:17:27.660 But, you know, the idea that they put forth sounds like from the brochures and whatnot that the hotels in the Time Hotel are linked to hotel rooms in the past. 00:17:28.280 --> 00:17:28.700 Does that make sense? 00:17:28.850 --> 00:17:30.420 I mean, that's the feeling. 00:17:30.750 --> 00:17:35.980 And the example they give, the first example they give is the old couple there enjoying the Blitz. 00:17:37.400 --> 00:17:40.160 Like, OK, you're having fun enjoying the Blitz. 00:17:40.160 --> 00:17:41.160 You haven't got your lights out. 00:17:42.440 --> 00:17:48.920 And so hotel room to hotel room, but then they immediately cut to hotel room to the Orient Express. 00:17:49.920 --> 00:17:54.460 And then I don't think hotel room to Edmund Hillary's tent on Everest. 00:17:55.280 --> 00:18:02.260 I don't think that I don't think the people who he visits in those places are actually intended to be guests of the time hotel. 00:18:02.380 --> 00:18:04.940 I think there's no who's to be right. 00:18:05.580 --> 00:18:05.720 Absolutely. 00:18:06.780 --> 00:18:11.760 Well, I think the I thought the old couple were, but I did not think. 00:18:12.200 --> 00:18:13.640 obviously the other two were. 00:18:14.120 --> 00:18:18.340 Oh, I thought they were all contemporary characters. 00:18:18.760 --> 00:18:20.200 Okay, well then what's the point of that? 00:18:20.840 --> 00:18:22.120 You can't even rent the room out. 00:18:23.400 --> 00:18:24.660 Because if you send them through, 00:18:24.980 --> 00:18:26.020 then there's going to be people there. 00:18:26.170 --> 00:18:28.760 It's like, you want to go through to Edmund Hillary's? 00:18:29.040 --> 00:18:30.500 Good luck explaining yourself 00:18:30.840 --> 00:18:33.200 when you show up in his tent at base camp two. 00:18:34.080 --> 00:18:37.340 Yeah, I mean, I can see there being some difficulty in that. 00:18:37.660 --> 00:18:40.880 I mean, obviously we get a certain amount of information, 00:18:41.260 --> 00:18:49.180 the connection or the window in which you can go and stay is very limited as it is in the Sandringham. 00:18:49.960 --> 00:18:55.400 You know, it's for one night over Christmas or whatever it may be. 00:18:55.980 --> 00:18:59.700 And then no one else is going to use that connection for a year. 00:19:00.580 --> 00:19:07.000 But I think the kind of broader problem that immediately leapt into my mind 00:19:07.820 --> 00:19:13.560 was if the doctor discovers that someone is messing with the web of time in order to give 00:19:13.820 --> 00:19:20.340 people a kind of mini break experience, his usual thing would be, I'm going to shut this down 00:19:20.640 --> 00:19:26.160 immediately in order to protect the universe from imploding. Instead of telling us how wonderful it 00:19:26.260 --> 00:19:33.440 is. Yeah, yeah. And that was the kind of thing where I thought that Moffat sort of was giving 00:19:33.460 --> 00:19:38.400 us a nod and a wink the whole breaking the fourth wall because it's the christmas special thing not 00:19:38.600 --> 00:19:47.560 literally in this case but saying that um the the rules of this episode are okay this is all 00:19:48.100 --> 00:19:54.920 fine and the fact that the the hotel has established i think there's some mention of it 00:19:55.040 --> 00:20:02.100 later on that it's established these stable temporal gateways or corridors or whatever they 00:20:02.120 --> 00:20:09.580 are that are paradox proof so there's there's some kind of responsible temple engineering that has 00:20:10.100 --> 00:20:16.020 been going on and that's why and the and the again the kind of waving his arms around saying well i 00:20:16.260 --> 00:20:21.640 well i couldn't use the tardis in this case but i can use the the hotel but in another episode 00:20:22.360 --> 00:20:27.760 you know that if moffat felt that it was a better story to have him use the tardis he would just use 00:20:27.780 --> 00:20:34.000 the TARDIS and say oh well I could use the TARDIS now because here's some here's some hand wavium 00:20:34.180 --> 00:20:39.520 that explains it the TARDIS has a thing that's paradox proof but there you go yeah that's exactly 00:20:39.540 --> 00:20:48.260 what he said about the hotel and you know I don't uh I don't appreciate that I don't appreciate that 00:20:48.480 --> 00:20:57.740 that is uh um I don't like my universe shifting from one episode to the next that that is always 00:20:58.200 --> 00:21:03.360 and and and i'll i'll go one further i'm sure i have said this at some point over the years 00:21:03.640 --> 00:21:08.960 on the show there's nothing i hate worse well i'm sure there's things i hate worse 00:21:09.780 --> 00:21:13.700 one of the things that is very close to the bottom of the list of things i hate most 00:21:13.980 --> 00:21:20.620 when it comes to television shows at least when i was a kid was when they got to the christmas 00:21:20.940 --> 00:21:27.720 episode that breaks all the rules of the universe that they lived in up to that point oh 00:21:27.740 --> 00:21:36.700 wait you mean like there really is a santa claus no there isn't and it's like it can be a dream 00:21:37.440 --> 00:21:44.960 it can be you know the product of a fever or a drug induced a hallucination but it cannot be 00:21:45.130 --> 00:21:54.400 santa claus and i thought moffat did that pretty darn well in um whatever that was last last christmas 00:21:54.420 --> 00:22:16.500 Last Christmas. There we go. Because going into that episode, I immediately go, I can't believe they're going to pull this nonsense with Santa Claus being real in the episode. And then by the end of it, Moffat demonstrated to me that he felt the same way I did as a kid, probably because he pulled it out. 00:22:17.700 --> 00:22:21.720 And so, no, I don't appreciate when you could drop into a Christmas episode. 00:22:21.920 --> 00:22:23.040 It's a Christmas episode. 00:22:23.170 --> 00:22:24.440 We can just ignore everything. 00:22:24.880 --> 00:22:31.700 No, I was going to say I agree with you, but actually I've realized I don't agree with you in the sense that I'm sure we've discussed this before. 00:22:31.850 --> 00:22:35.740 And I've mentioned being an episode of the bill where they totally do that. 00:22:35.740 --> 00:22:41.580 And to the point where the bill, which never has non-diegetic music, has it in this episode. 00:22:41.700 --> 00:22:49.400 and there are things that are inexplicable within what we see within the episode. 00:22:49.690 --> 00:22:52.540 So it definitely breaks all the rules and yet it is brilliant. 00:22:53.340 --> 00:23:00.020 But where I would say I'm not entirely sure you're being fair to Doctor Who 00:23:00.920 --> 00:23:03.520 is that it doesn't just do this at Christmas. 00:23:04.110 --> 00:23:08.220 Like there are episodes where they break all the rules and it's not Christmas. 00:23:08.460 --> 00:23:12.380 It's just they want to break the rules for some reason or other. 00:23:13.180 --> 00:23:14.140 And I never like that. 00:23:15.740 --> 00:23:20.060 But let me put something out there, though, that may make a difference. 00:23:20.880 --> 00:23:23.660 I can't exactly speak for you, so I'm not trying to. 00:23:24.300 --> 00:23:25.200 But I will say this. 00:23:25.900 --> 00:23:33.640 Your Christmas experience on television is very, very different from our Christmas experience on television. 00:23:34.380 --> 00:23:41.640 we don't really they don't they don't make a big hash of christmas day and go we're gonna have uh 00:23:41.900 --> 00:23:47.260 that amazing gavin and stacy special and a doctor who special and a call the midwife special and a 00:23:47.360 --> 00:23:52.220 wallace and grommets they don't do that but all of these shows like the six million dollar man 00:23:52.380 --> 00:23:58.800 and knight rider and whatever uh they just you know we're gonna have one airing around the time 00:23:58.820 --> 00:24:05.020 of Christmas so we'll make a Christmas episode and throw it in the sequence so it it's kind of 00:24:05.080 --> 00:24:09.920 like an ordinary day except it's they just don't make that big of a deal you want a Christmas 00:24:10.140 --> 00:24:15.440 special you watch Charlie Brown so Christmas Day is just like the schedule is just Wednesday 00:24:16.190 --> 00:24:21.740 yep pretty much when I was a kid except that there would be you know if there was normally 00:24:21.850 --> 00:24:28.780 a movie on Wednesday they'd sometimes preempt things for a Charlie Brown Christmas or Rudolph 00:24:28.800 --> 00:24:29.840 Red Nosed Reindeer or something. 00:24:30.400 --> 00:24:38.120 But by and walk the week of Christmas, the day after, the day before, pretty much standard programming with a few. 00:24:38.600 --> 00:24:40.920 Some shows would get preempted, usually low rated shows. 00:24:41.620 --> 00:24:48.760 Like, oh, there's not going to be a Logan's Run this week because we want to run the Jerry Lewis holiday special or whatever. 00:24:49.460 --> 00:24:50.820 But no, they didn't. 00:24:51.140 --> 00:24:57.600 They didn't like make a big deal of the Christmas episodes of TV shows. 00:24:58.420 --> 00:25:00.940 They would concentrate on things that were non-standard. 00:25:01.460 --> 00:25:04.580 And I don't think here it necessarily does mean breaking. 00:25:04.800 --> 00:25:10.420 I mean, if you watch your Gavin and Stacey Christmas specials or whatever, they don't break all the rules. 00:25:10.700 --> 00:25:12.160 They have no idea. 00:25:12.530 --> 00:25:14.700 I have not watched any of those. 00:25:14.760 --> 00:25:15.700 Well, I mean, fair enough. 00:25:15.820 --> 00:25:19.940 But they're an episode where maybe something particularly dramatic or momentous happens. 00:25:20.920 --> 00:25:25.960 But they're still part of the show in a recognizable way. 00:25:26.520 --> 00:25:39.080 But I do think you put your finger on something in that you're saying that the kind of British TV schedule is completely different right around the Christmas period. 00:25:39.560 --> 00:25:42.740 And it's always been like that since ever I can remember. 00:25:43.420 --> 00:25:49.220 And you lose track of, like, you go, well, I know today's Christmas Eve or I know today's Christmas Day. 00:25:49.840 --> 00:25:52.200 But it's quite hard to remember which day of the week it is. 00:25:52.800 --> 00:25:57.920 And the television doesn't help you at all because it doesn't have the schedule for that day of the week. 00:25:57.990 --> 00:26:02.980 It has a special schedule and it won't go back to normal until probably after New Year. 00:26:03.620 --> 00:26:07.660 Yeah, we're at least in the 70s. 00:26:07.840 --> 00:26:08.940 We're not like that. 00:26:09.000 --> 00:26:12.800 I don't even know if they have television airing on broadcast anymore in the United States. 00:26:13.310 --> 00:26:20.520 I haven't seen anything aired live in a decade, but at least so. 00:26:21.180 --> 00:26:34.020 But like I said, to me, that week is always a bad week on television because in a show that's science fiction, in a show that's a comedy, in a show that's whatever, whatever situation. 00:26:34.860 --> 00:26:37.480 Suddenly you're a week where Santa can be real. 00:26:38.000 --> 00:26:39.460 Miracles can really happen. 00:26:40.330 --> 00:26:46.320 You know, sometimes it's just heartwarming stories of people, you know, getting the Christmas spirit. 00:26:46.880 --> 00:26:51.260 but also sometimes the most serious of show will just completely and utterly 00:26:51.520 --> 00:26:51.680 break, 00:26:52.280 --> 00:26:53.240 break their continuity. 00:26:54.320 --> 00:27:01.700 And even shows that say specialize on there can't be anything supernatural 00:27:02.680 --> 00:27:05.920 could have something supernatural in it in the week of Christmas. 00:27:06.580 --> 00:27:07.960 I detest the week of Christmas. 00:27:08.520 --> 00:27:10.120 Those are the episodes of TV shows. 00:27:10.170 --> 00:27:12.160 I don't rewatch when I go through the, 00:27:12.790 --> 00:27:15.340 go through my collections of old stuff. 00:27:15.410 --> 00:27:16.300 You just hit that one. 00:27:16.400 --> 00:27:23.700 up market is watched and go on never mind it's it's throw away and i don't feel like this episode 00:27:23.710 --> 00:27:30.740 of doctor who is supposed to be throw away and that's the difference because it is to me except 00:27:30.940 --> 00:27:37.660 10 minutes with anita yeah i mean well i don't i don't know that it's i would imagine you could 00:27:37.730 --> 00:27:42.339 sit down and watch the last series and the next series back to back without this episode in 00:27:42.360 --> 00:27:48.260 between and not really lose anything like it'll still make sense but i don't think it's meant to 00:27:48.340 --> 00:27:56.220 be throw away but i also in some sense don't think that it breaks the rules more than other episodes 00:27:56.370 --> 00:28:05.760 that are part of the regular run have done sometimes well so how for example let me this 00:28:05.860 --> 00:28:11.880 is this is in the nitpicky category but you said this i couldn't quite make sense of it 00:28:12.620 --> 00:28:20.380 so i'll i'll go there the doctor is in the room it's christmas i think it's christmas it might 00:28:20.440 --> 00:28:28.680 be christmas eve i'm not sure i thought it was christmas um 2024 and that's apparently a 00:28:28.800 --> 00:28:33.659 destination that you can go to from the time hotel would we agree that that must be the case 00:28:33.680 --> 00:28:35.220 because they got there from the Time Hotel. 00:28:36.080 --> 00:28:37.840 Would they have booked that for somebody 00:28:38.140 --> 00:28:39.040 when Joy is in the room? 00:28:39.640 --> 00:28:44.000 No, I think that he only got access to that 00:28:44.180 --> 00:28:46.360 by using his sonic screwdriver or... 00:28:46.660 --> 00:28:48.400 But the Silurian, well... 00:28:48.700 --> 00:28:50.140 The Silurian had access to it 00:28:50.320 --> 00:28:51.540 because he is the manager 00:28:51.740 --> 00:28:52.860 and he has access to the rooms 00:28:52.910 --> 00:28:54.740 that the guests did not have access to. 00:28:54.740 --> 00:28:57.120 I mean, I think that was relatively explicit 00:28:57.240 --> 00:28:58.260 in the plot at that point. 00:28:58.900 --> 00:28:59.680 Why that room, man? 00:29:00.460 --> 00:29:01.540 Well, I'm not... 00:29:01.960 --> 00:29:02.879 Surely he'd know 00:29:03.220 --> 00:29:08.320 that that's not far enough back and then the doctor has to stay around till not christmas 00:29:09.130 --> 00:29:17.760 new year's a year later with new york yeah yeah so it's not even the same room yeah i so it's 00:29:18.020 --> 00:29:25.060 possible that the rooms are only you like a room is only used once at one time somebody somebody 00:29:25.220 --> 00:29:34.280 said not not me hearing it directly from moffat or rtd or somebody but somebody i heard in the 00:29:34.460 --> 00:29:43.800 run-up to this said that what they thought they heard and i'm actually they said what i heard 00:29:44.290 --> 00:29:49.119 but i can't remember that was moffat or rtd but i think it was moffat was that the germ of the idea 00:29:49.140 --> 00:29:58.940 was the time hotel was the ability to use any empty hotel room in history all those vacant rooms 00:29:59.740 --> 00:30:06.120 throughout time all you need to do is to know which that does sound very moffat and obviously 00:30:06.620 --> 00:30:11.660 that may have colored my perception going into this episode because that is not what we saw 00:30:12.080 --> 00:30:19.100 and also also the kind of moffat thing of of the being clockwork droids under the bed or the being 00:30:19.120 --> 00:30:19.280 uh, 00:30:19.980 --> 00:30:20.180 you know, 00:30:20.500 --> 00:30:22.720 a prisoner coming through the crack in your bedroom wall, 00:30:23.400 --> 00:30:27.260 there'd be always being a locked door in the hotel room. 00:30:28.100 --> 00:30:28.260 And, 00:30:29.060 --> 00:30:29.320 you know, 00:30:29.400 --> 00:30:31.860 suggesting that on the other side of it is the time hotel. 00:30:32.060 --> 00:30:33.200 That's a very Moffat thing. 00:30:33.200 --> 00:30:33.440 I think. 00:30:34.240 --> 00:30:34.500 Yeah. 00:30:35.160 --> 00:30:35.340 Yeah. 00:30:35.740 --> 00:30:35.820 I, 00:30:36.000 --> 00:30:36.560 I would agree. 00:30:37.160 --> 00:30:37.440 Um, 00:30:38.040 --> 00:30:38.640 I would agree. 00:30:38.820 --> 00:30:38.900 And, 00:30:39.080 --> 00:30:43.900 and that would also fit with that whole idea of being able to have hotel room. 00:30:44.360 --> 00:30:44.440 Now, 00:30:44.480 --> 00:30:45.420 why would you use that? 00:30:45.520 --> 00:30:45.880 I don't know. 00:30:46.040 --> 00:30:48.540 Maybe it's just like this hotel always has openings. 00:30:49.340 --> 00:30:54.720 we have we are the greatest hotel in in the entire history of time because we always have 00:30:54.860 --> 00:31:01.240 rooms available for everybody because we can always find one somewhere for you but um you know 00:31:01.620 --> 00:31:08.380 this room opens onto a tomb who would want to go to that tomb it's like why would you i think that's 00:31:08.390 --> 00:31:16.480 the that's the experience thing isn't it you want to yeah i mean a locked stone tomb look the the 00:31:16.500 --> 00:31:20.960 The only way the doctor managed to get out of there was to tie a rope to the Orient Express. 00:31:22.120 --> 00:31:22.840 And so. 00:31:22.940 --> 00:31:25.780 No, he wanted to get into the tomb. 00:31:26.639 --> 00:31:30.120 Which turned out not to be into the tomb. 00:31:30.260 --> 00:31:32.700 It turned out to be how to get out of the tomb. 00:31:33.420 --> 00:31:34.080 Oh, I see what you mean. 00:31:34.180 --> 00:31:36.720 If you want to get onto the hilltop. 00:31:36.960 --> 00:31:37.080 Yeah. 00:31:37.460 --> 00:31:37.600 Yeah. 00:31:37.900 --> 00:31:38.560 Fair point. 00:31:38.700 --> 00:31:38.800 Yeah. 00:31:38.880 --> 00:31:43.660 I mean, you just seem to be trapped in a, basically a cave. 00:31:44.080 --> 00:31:44.580 But yeah. 00:31:45.100 --> 00:31:46.300 I don't know. 00:31:46.380 --> 00:31:50.420 I just it just isn't the idea of the time hotel. 00:31:51.400 --> 00:32:00.500 I guess if they're sending you for excursions in the past, which definitely seems like the kind of thing the doctor would absolutely have to shut down. 00:32:01.260 --> 00:32:02.100 But let's face it. 00:32:03.240 --> 00:32:04.360 OK, now, wait a minute. 00:32:04.580 --> 00:32:05.280 There's a theme here. 00:32:05.940 --> 00:32:06.660 There's a theme here. 00:32:07.280 --> 00:32:08.720 Hadn't noticed it till this very moment. 00:32:09.400 --> 00:32:10.380 What how does that? 00:32:10.440 --> 00:32:11.840 I did mention it in my recap. 00:32:11.960 --> 00:32:15.080 The doctor shows up in the hotel to steal drinks. 00:32:15.580 --> 00:32:17.040 That's the only way to say it. 00:32:17.560 --> 00:32:23.260 He's got the TARDIS program to show up to get him stolen coffee or tea or whatever it was. 00:32:23.680 --> 00:32:24.960 And fresh milk, I think. 00:32:25.600 --> 00:32:26.840 Yeah, he had two cups. 00:32:27.000 --> 00:32:27.400 Yeah. 00:32:27.700 --> 00:32:28.740 But the point is. 00:32:29.360 --> 00:32:30.640 Yeah, one of those was for Ruby. 00:32:31.440 --> 00:32:31.920 Right. 00:32:32.240 --> 00:32:34.660 Flaunting, basically, the rules. 00:32:35.180 --> 00:32:40.620 He then, he doesn't shut down the Time Hotel, which is clearly flaunting the rules of time. 00:32:41.740 --> 00:32:50.400 And he also tells in a scene that I thought was the most offensive thing I've seen in a long time. 00:32:51.060 --> 00:32:53.700 He tells Joy she should ignore the rules. 00:32:53.800 --> 00:32:55.820 She should have gone and seen her mother. 00:32:56.180 --> 00:32:57.380 Well, I've got that. 00:32:57.480 --> 00:32:59.500 Yes, I've got that to discuss. 00:32:59.880 --> 00:33:02.980 I did not appreciate that idea. 00:33:03.100 --> 00:33:05.220 I mean, I get why he's saying it, right? 00:33:05.340 --> 00:33:11.320 You're supposed to go, oh, you know, he's the iconoclast and doesn't follow the rules and the thing. 00:33:11.460 --> 00:33:13.000 And that's why he's the doctor. 00:33:13.070 --> 00:33:14.380 But sometimes rules should be followed. 00:33:14.380 --> 00:33:17.120 No, I don't think that is why he's saying it. 00:33:17.120 --> 00:33:22.080 I think what he's saying is he is tapping into her guilt around that stuff. 00:33:22.740 --> 00:33:30.540 And so he is trying to make her feel bad because that's how he gets her to or gets the briefcase to let go of her. 00:33:31.180 --> 00:33:35.840 So he's not necessarily articulating his own thoughts about this. 00:33:35.920 --> 00:33:42.460 He's articulating what he thinks are her thoughts about it that she's trying to suppress because she feels guilty about it. 00:33:42.740 --> 00:33:46.640 But I could totally see that being this doctor's modus operandi. 00:33:46.710 --> 00:33:51.040 Well, I see the interesting thing about what I think is going on there. 00:33:51.919 --> 00:34:03.560 There is a sense in which the doctor, you know, there's a problematic dimension where there's a kind of individualistic streak. 00:34:03.940 --> 00:34:12.879 the doctor won't do what he's told just because that's what he's told to do. He has to work out 00:34:12.879 --> 00:34:17.560 for himself whether it's the best thing to do. So he's never bound by any kind of form of 00:34:17.780 --> 00:34:23.919 collectivism. And there's an entire kind of political dimension to that. But also, I think 00:34:24.060 --> 00:34:29.639 quite interestingly within this episode, this is being brought into the context of what happened 00:34:29.659 --> 00:34:38.540 during the lockdowns when the pandemic started and I think from my recollection this is the first 00:34:38.720 --> 00:34:46.060 time that has been explicitly acknowledged on tv doctor who and so that in a sense is quite 00:34:46.399 --> 00:34:51.440 interesting and the take seems to be what is becoming a kind of fairly mainstream opinion 00:34:51.629 --> 00:34:58.819 which is that either the rules themselves were foolish they were they were unnecessary or 00:34:58.840 --> 00:35:05.660 wrongheaded rules or that we were foolish to follow the rules which is kind of connected with 00:35:05.960 --> 00:35:14.260 again a kind of political idea around we were made to look like fools by the head of our government 00:35:14.940 --> 00:35:19.700 who was making the rules completely vouching those rules so you're you alluded to this stuff 00:35:20.280 --> 00:35:28.299 in your recap and i think that may be where that may be where this is coming from like this is 00:35:30.720 --> 00:35:34.400 following the rules seemed to be the right thing to do at the time because what we were trying to 00:35:34.410 --> 00:35:39.920 do was what was best for everyone but it turned out that we were you know being taken for a ride 00:35:40.040 --> 00:35:44.340 by the people who were meant to be leading us meant to be protecting us but either way it's 00:35:44.460 --> 00:35:52.819 kind of problematic that you don't explore what this narrative means because you could just be 00:35:52.840 --> 00:35:58.980 allowing what Boris Johnson and his government did to make it as it inevitably will be to make 00:35:58.980 --> 00:36:06.180 it more difficult to put in place these kind of public control measures in the future because 00:36:06.400 --> 00:36:11.000 people will remember this time and however much more responsible the government may be then 00:36:11.640 --> 00:36:16.360 people will still get go well this is what happened last time people acted out of a kind 00:36:16.400 --> 00:36:23.340 sense of collective responsibility. And yet, look what happened. And I think if you're going to 00:36:23.480 --> 00:36:28.500 raise this, the responsible thing to do is to actually say, look, there is actually a value 00:36:28.540 --> 00:36:32.800 in collective responsibility. There is a reason why we try to do this, even when it doesn't work. 00:36:33.120 --> 00:36:41.940 Yeah, I found that whole, I completely agree with the sentiment that that was a terrible thing to do. 00:36:42.520 --> 00:36:48.820 not not following the rules but what your leadership did was an absolutely inexcusably 00:36:49.180 --> 00:36:56.400 horrible thing to do so i can totally go along with moffett on pointing it out to try to remind 00:36:56.680 --> 00:37:03.260 people how scummy they were but the way he did it was problematic and the missing bit is that joy 00:37:03.460 --> 00:37:10.239 should not feel guilty about the way i did what was right yeah that she did what she did to protect 00:37:10.260 --> 00:37:17.000 other people you know not just trying to protect her mother who she did not know was about to die 00:37:17.400 --> 00:37:22.820 at that moment anyway but also to protect all the other people on the ward that her mum was with and 00:37:23.180 --> 00:37:28.820 who might come into contact with the nurses and hospital staff who she might meet or who might 00:37:29.440 --> 00:37:36.119 contract it if she went and visited physically and in person and so there's that there's that 00:37:36.140 --> 00:37:45.300 entire other dimension to what joy did where in retrospect all she can see is what actually 00:37:45.760 --> 00:37:52.120 happened and feel the guilt from the consequences of that and i felt that that in you know in the 00:37:52.240 --> 00:37:58.580 context if you're going to look at the the lockdowns and all of that era that that part of 00:37:58.720 --> 00:38:03.399 it really did need to be explored a bit more i got i got why it was done because there's a kind 00:38:03.420 --> 00:38:11.200 of emotional purpose to it, but it troubled me. I will agree. One of the things that I thought, 00:38:12.920 --> 00:38:20.100 and Moffat has said, and I did see a quote from him that he knows lots of people who have these 00:38:20.240 --> 00:38:26.300 stories about losing relatives and not being able to see them because of the lockdown rules and the 00:38:26.420 --> 00:38:33.380 anger that people express about Johnson and his cronies flouting the rules that they created 00:38:33.400 --> 00:38:51.520 But if I were structuring this story and, you know, putting the writer's hat on for a minute, maybe her mom should have died at home on Christmas Day, tripping down the stairs or something. 00:38:52.200 --> 00:38:53.280 We would have been together. 00:38:53.900 --> 00:38:54.700 Things would have been different. 00:38:55.300 --> 00:38:56.440 She would not have died. 00:38:57.060 --> 00:39:00.960 Would it have really hurt for me to drive across town to her house? 00:39:01.280 --> 00:39:07.120 As opposed to in a hospital where, let's face it, there's a lot of sick people. 00:39:07.920 --> 00:39:09.520 There's a lot of compromised people. 00:39:10.180 --> 00:39:17.980 And, you know, that's not only is that the worst place to take a disease into, it's also a terrible place where you might get the disease. 00:39:18.900 --> 00:39:24.180 But it's also the place that should have the most protocols in place to allow you to manage to do so. 00:39:24.820 --> 00:39:31.800 So I get it because we hear lots of stories about people having to say goodbye to people over their iPad. 00:39:33.680 --> 00:39:43.200 But I'm not sure that's the right place her mother should have died or not died as the case, maybe because she became part of the Star of Bethlehem. 00:39:43.760 --> 00:39:44.860 Anyway, so happy ending. 00:39:47.300 --> 00:39:53.720 okay so let's let's talk about the star of bethlehem which you know i would say about the 00:39:53.780 --> 00:40:00.320 first time they said we're creating a star uh my head during the episode not during the previous 00:40:01.040 --> 00:40:05.540 in a christmas show yeah it's like oh really they're not they're not they're not gonna do that 00:40:06.120 --> 00:40:14.520 yeah apparently they are yeah i was pretty sure they were uh i yeah so how and this does fall 00:40:14.540 --> 00:40:20.220 into that category of how does this make any sense how is it that everybody saw the star in all the 00:40:20.300 --> 00:40:30.120 time zones because the star did they see it in any in any bc time zones well we i don't we didn't 00:40:30.150 --> 00:40:36.560 show us they showed us a needer they showed us uh the star the star appears in 1 ad doesn't it 00:40:36.960 --> 00:40:43.480 so we assume that it's only it's only there in subsequent time zones not in previous time zones 00:40:43.540 --> 00:40:48.400 So you're saying that the star of Bethlehem appeared in 1 AD and it's still in our night sky right now. 00:40:49.940 --> 00:40:53.840 Isn't, isn't because the star was Halley's Comet? 00:40:54.640 --> 00:40:55.920 Well, I, I don't know. 00:40:56.000 --> 00:40:58.460 I think there's lots of, oh, there was a supernova. 00:40:58.600 --> 00:40:59.380 Oh, there was this. 00:40:59.500 --> 00:41:00.080 Oh, there was that. 00:41:00.160 --> 00:41:06.340 I mean, I've heard lots of people trying to justify the complete nonsense of the star of Bethlehem. 00:41:06.980 --> 00:41:08.360 But this is just another one. 00:41:08.460 --> 00:41:22.760 But I guess the point in my mind from a story standpoint, right, is that when the doctor realized where he was, he, like the audience, went, oh, of course. 00:41:23.680 --> 00:41:28.580 Oh, this is the event that people saw as the star of Bethlehem. 00:41:29.130 --> 00:41:32.900 And that means that already was a thing. 00:41:33.630 --> 00:41:36.780 And so it did happen in the past. 00:41:37.340 --> 00:41:40.140 And this is how that happens. 00:41:40.220 --> 00:41:44.140 So the doctor is watching what happened that was a historical event. 00:41:44.840 --> 00:41:50.240 But if that were the case, then it shouldn't be visible now going forward. 00:41:50.380 --> 00:41:51.960 It should have been a transitory event. 00:41:52.340 --> 00:41:57.080 It just was like, don't go there. 00:41:57.080 --> 00:42:00.040 But if it's like Halley's Comet, it's a periodic event. 00:42:02.140 --> 00:42:06.940 But once again, it would have been seen two years ago when her mother died. 00:42:07.080 --> 00:42:09.120 and people would have known about it. 00:42:11.360 --> 00:42:11.460 Yeah. 00:42:11.860 --> 00:42:13.440 I mean, and obviously it's not a comet. 00:42:13.620 --> 00:42:15.680 It's a star. 00:42:16.900 --> 00:42:19.740 Which, just for the sake of argument, 00:42:20.060 --> 00:42:21.320 how is that a useful system? 00:42:22.000 --> 00:42:23.440 I mean, how does Valengard 00:42:24.900 --> 00:42:26.920 actually make any money at this? 00:42:27.180 --> 00:42:28.940 I don't know, but I do have a, 00:42:29.540 --> 00:42:30.920 since you bring up Valengard, 00:42:31.120 --> 00:42:31.940 I do have a question. 00:42:32.800 --> 00:42:33.640 Is this the same, 00:42:34.340 --> 00:42:35.260 I didn't have time to check, 00:42:35.440 --> 00:42:41.260 Is this the same arms manufacturer as in Moffat's other episode about the stepping on a mine? 00:42:41.820 --> 00:42:50.200 Not only is it the same one stepping in a mine, I think it's the same one in the Doctor Dances when he talks about the banana. 00:42:50.310 --> 00:42:51.340 I think it is. 00:42:52.020 --> 00:42:52.360 Good Lord. 00:42:52.360 --> 00:42:53.800 I haven't gone back to chance that. 00:42:54.060 --> 00:42:54.280 Wow. 00:42:54.350 --> 00:42:54.720 Check that. 00:42:55.420 --> 00:43:00.340 So he was preparing for this Christmas special all the way back there. 00:43:01.000 --> 00:43:01.840 Yeah, that's what it is. 00:43:01.980 --> 00:43:02.980 I think it is. 00:43:04.060 --> 00:43:05.200 I would have to check. 00:43:05.540 --> 00:43:17.880 But but but think about it. You have a technology that can create a star for a customer and you have to go back and see that thing 65 million years before they want it because it's got to germinate. 00:43:18.460 --> 00:43:31.020 And to do that, you decide to go to the time hotel on Earth and destroy the time hotel on Earth because your star will destroy Earth and therefore the time hotel won't exist. 00:43:32.060 --> 00:43:35.980 Well, A, it won't have existed for you to have used it to create the star in the first place. 00:43:36.660 --> 00:43:43.020 Ignoring that paradox, because the hotel has a stabilizer, except, of course, it doesn't because it's been destroyed. 00:43:43.660 --> 00:43:44.660 But ignoring that paradox. 00:43:45.110 --> 00:43:49.400 But then how many other places are you going to be able to sell a star to a customer? 00:43:49.960 --> 00:43:57.240 It's like, yeah, we do need another place that's got a time travel technology, which we clearly don't have. 00:43:57.900 --> 00:44:00.700 Or we wouldn't need to use the time hotel. 00:44:00.920 --> 00:44:02.540 So this is a one and none. 00:44:03.280 --> 00:44:03.640 This is, 00:44:03.840 --> 00:44:06.200 this is the one and only time that they can do this product. 00:44:06.980 --> 00:44:07.300 And, 00:44:07.560 --> 00:44:07.640 uh, 00:44:07.780 --> 00:44:07.960 it, 00:44:08.220 --> 00:44:09.020 it doesn't. 00:44:09.640 --> 00:44:09.740 Yeah. 00:44:10.460 --> 00:44:12.200 It doesn't make any sense. 00:44:12.880 --> 00:44:13.920 If you have time travel, 00:44:14.100 --> 00:44:14.700 why do you need, 00:44:15.140 --> 00:44:16.900 why do you need the star? 00:44:17.000 --> 00:44:19.540 You've got a far more deadly weapon that you could use. 00:44:21.280 --> 00:44:22.000 I don't know. 00:44:22.300 --> 00:44:22.680 It just, 00:44:23.360 --> 00:44:25.160 all of it just didn't, 00:44:25.720 --> 00:44:29.020 it just didn't work for me. 00:44:29.260 --> 00:44:34.100 I just was like, I'm not invested in this story either. 00:44:34.300 --> 00:44:38.760 I mean, I was more interested knowing I'd seen a T-Rex on the on on a commercial. 00:44:38.830 --> 00:44:40.300 I'm like, I'm more interested in that. 00:44:41.760 --> 00:44:45.100 And and honestly, I was hoping and they didn't do it. 00:44:45.400 --> 00:44:58.680 But I was hoping that at some point the doctor would say something like, by my calculations, you'd need some you'd need to go back at least 71 million years. 00:44:58.920 --> 00:45:04.520 because I dislike the idea that, 00:45:04.980 --> 00:45:10.180 and it's true because the public is in general ignorance of these things. 00:45:10.960 --> 00:45:13.980 But if you want to tell people you're talking about dinosaurs, 00:45:14.740 --> 00:45:17.000 you say we go back 65 million years. 00:45:17.500 --> 00:45:19.960 But the fact is, if you go back 65 million years, 00:45:20.460 --> 00:45:22.620 your dinosaurs are dead already, basically. 00:45:23.800 --> 00:45:28.880 You know, that's, I mean, yes, a million years is a very long span of time 00:45:28.900 --> 00:45:33.120 from 64 to 66 million years is a very, very long span of time, 00:45:34.500 --> 00:45:36.680 unimaginable span of time to the human mind. 00:45:38.820 --> 00:45:42.620 But by picking 65, you're immediately on, 00:45:42.760 --> 00:45:46.280 oh, this is the event that kills the dinosaurs like Adric. 00:45:46.460 --> 00:45:48.240 Oh, he's gone back 65 million years. 00:45:48.960 --> 00:45:50.620 Oh, get it. 00:45:51.020 --> 00:45:52.680 That's the event. 00:45:53.080 --> 00:45:53.720 But it isn't. 00:45:54.300 --> 00:45:54.680 It isn't. 00:45:54.800 --> 00:45:57.600 It's just shorthand to say we're gone back to the dinosaur times. 00:45:58.340 --> 00:46:01.400 And I would have picked something a little further back. 00:46:01.680 --> 00:46:03.780 T-Rexes were around for millions of years. 00:46:03.990 --> 00:46:15.580 I would just be on the safe side, because if you traveled back in time 65 million years to see the dinosaurs and then you turn up and they've already died, you'd feel like that was quite a lot of effort wasted. 00:46:16.220 --> 00:46:17.160 Yes, I agree. 00:46:17.190 --> 00:46:18.120 That would be quite a lot of effort. 00:46:18.120 --> 00:46:19.400 I would definitely go back further. 00:46:19.400 --> 00:46:23.980 And of course, there's, you know, Triassic and the Jurassic and the Cretaceous. 00:46:24.060 --> 00:46:25.820 There's several eras that you could go back to. 00:46:25.940 --> 00:46:28.120 And they're millions and millions of years apart. 00:46:30.000 --> 00:46:32.520 And who built the treehouse? 00:46:33.240 --> 00:46:34.540 Well, I assume that was hotel property. 00:46:36.320 --> 00:46:40.520 So they actually are, in some places, going back in time and building things. 00:46:41.220 --> 00:46:42.140 Well, they've got to be, haven't they? 00:46:42.760 --> 00:46:48.640 Well, no, they're using, not necessarily, again, the premise that it might be using all the time. 00:46:49.070 --> 00:46:50.080 The Silurians. 00:46:50.960 --> 00:46:51.960 Oh, yeah, good point. 00:46:52.360 --> 00:46:52.740 Good point. 00:46:52.890 --> 00:46:53.580 Oh, I like that. 00:46:54.100 --> 00:46:56.900 Yeah, they should have had a little scylier and portraits on the wall or something. 00:46:57.680 --> 00:46:59.260 Yes, they could have they could have done. 00:46:59.400 --> 00:47:02.420 Well, that might have tipped it off a little sooner than than they wanted to. 00:47:02.920 --> 00:47:11.660 And if I was building a hotel, if it's the time hotel, if it's the time hotel and you go, yeah, I want to go back to the time of the dinosaurs. 00:47:12.280 --> 00:47:19.620 Let's build a completely exposed treehouse that is easily within the reach of a T-Rex that can bite and chew it up while, you know, while I'm sleeping. 00:47:20.000 --> 00:47:24.280 No, no, at least build something that would withstand a T-Rex bite. 00:47:24.460 --> 00:47:26.400 It, it just, I don't know. 00:47:26.980 --> 00:47:32.140 It's like, it's cute, but it's, and I only watched it once. 00:47:32.220 --> 00:47:36.420 If I watch it twice, I will absolutely, and, and took notes. 00:47:36.960 --> 00:47:39.800 I would, I would probably pop an aneurysm. 00:47:40.420 --> 00:47:44.180 And I think that's, you know, I can tell that from Christmas. 00:47:45.200 --> 00:47:45.280 Yeah. 00:47:45.760 --> 00:47:52.240 Now I, I can tell that just from the one watch when I wasn't even trying to pay huge attention, was just trying to enjoy it. 00:47:52.900 --> 00:48:00.560 Uh, so I gotta, I'm kind of, I, I think I'm going to avoid it for, for years to come. 00:48:01.180 --> 00:48:03.560 It's like years, years to come. 00:48:03.670 --> 00:48:04.140 I think. 00:48:04.800 --> 00:48:04.860 Yeah. 00:48:05.700 --> 00:48:14.380 It's going to fall into the category of the doctor who, of, you know, the Christmas specials on all the other TV shows from my childhood is like, yep. 00:48:14.500 --> 00:48:21.760 mark has watched let's go um it really will it really will and i and i i you already mentioned 00:48:21.780 --> 00:48:30.020 it but i absolutely am sick to death this is me personally of you need to go find somebody doctor 00:48:30.220 --> 00:48:35.680 go find somebody now doctor get on with it like it wasn't even joy that should have been telling 00:48:35.720 --> 00:48:42.459 him that it was anita yes it should have been anita i agree with that at least anita has a 00:48:42.480 --> 00:48:48.620 years worth of having a clue who the doctor is and seeing the the the the loneliness or the 00:48:49.040 --> 00:48:56.140 the wistfulness that he experienced for you know because anita at least you know pegged on and like 00:48:56.720 --> 00:49:03.220 oh see you got a boyfriend somewhere out there um so i mean she could see that the doctor is 00:49:04.040 --> 00:49:12.440 missing something anita no she barely had any time with him at all joy you mean joy sorry yeah 00:49:12.500 --> 00:49:29.820 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I agree with that. I mean, I do think that the kind of sequence in the hotel was particularly good, that the relationship between the two of them worked really, really well, that it probably cemented for me. 00:49:29.900 --> 00:49:38.820 that Gatwa's performance in this is I think what it's giving me when you get him in scenes 00:49:38.890 --> 00:49:43.360 like that because like you say I think there is a kind of there's a certain wistfulness there's 00:49:43.660 --> 00:49:54.000 there's a depth that sometimes the kind of screwy manic stuff can obscure and just a general kind of 00:49:54.340 --> 00:49:59.860 I guess a more comfortableness with the character which may be to do you know as the 00:49:59.880 --> 00:50:04.360 worry is to do with the way it's being written now it may be he's maturing into it much like 00:50:04.360 --> 00:50:12.920 i felt that peter capaldi just got better and better as you know we went through into his 00:50:13.580 --> 00:50:20.680 you know by by by the end of his series with pal bailey i just thought he was almost giving 00:50:20.680 --> 00:50:26.380 a different performance than he was right at the start um and i'm my my knowledge of gatua 00:50:26.400 --> 00:50:31.620 when we came into this was next to nothing. I'd hardly see, apart from seeing him in Barbie, 00:50:31.710 --> 00:50:37.660 I hadn't seen him in anything else. I did have the good fortune to see him on stage in The 00:50:37.920 --> 00:50:43.300 Importance of Being Earnest the other day. And I'm impressed with him as an actor. And I think 00:50:43.560 --> 00:50:50.360 this shows what he can do as the Doctor. So I don't know where it'll go. I don't know that he 00:50:50.380 --> 00:50:56.380 will rise up in my rankings of actors playing the doctor but if it's more more of this it will 00:50:56.520 --> 00:51:05.100 definitely it will that he will definitely rise in my estimation okay so it crosses my mind 00:51:06.220 --> 00:51:13.300 your your comments about capaldi you know that there appeared to be a deliberate effort to make 00:51:13.840 --> 00:51:20.340 capaldi unlikable there appeared to be a deliberate effort to make colin baker colin baker yeah 00:51:20.900 --> 00:51:26.200 a little i think we discussed those parallels right it's multiples of six and there was supposed 00:51:26.310 --> 00:51:34.420 to be the first doctor was not the hero per se and he was a bit of a unlikable character now 00:51:34.480 --> 00:51:41.020 which which is why they reshot the pilot i believe yeah so um but let's not not just 00:51:41.920 --> 00:51:46.600 concentrating on the unlikable ones because of course we know that the first doctor evolved into 00:51:47.120 --> 00:51:58.040 the kindly old man when we got to peter davison i don't really feel like he nailed it till he was 00:51:58.140 --> 00:52:02.520 in his third year colin baker and everything got to a third year but he was definitely improving 00:52:02.610 --> 00:52:08.100 in year two and he nailed it when he started working for a big finish well yeah well they've 00:52:08.100 --> 00:52:13.200 given them years more to perfect it but in but yeah but this is my point sylvester mccoy three 00:52:13.220 --> 00:52:20.360 years he was finally getting to a character uh i didn't necessarily like the stories but he was 00:52:20.520 --> 00:52:27.780 finally getting to a character that it didn't necessarily hey chris he completely changed his 00:52:27.860 --> 00:52:34.160 performance he did completely quite explicitly you know after the first season that he'd got 00:52:34.340 --> 00:52:38.740 this role that he just he'd approached the character role and that he was changing everything 00:52:38.760 --> 00:52:47.340 about it more or less yeah um we we saw capaldi evolve uh we we saw what i'm saying is that three 00:52:47.420 --> 00:52:52.760 years is not long enough for a doctor because by the time you get it nailed down by the time they 00:52:52.760 --> 00:52:59.400 get it nailed down they're leaving and i'll be fine with that if gatwa leaves at three but 00:53:00.460 --> 00:53:05.480 the thing is i won't you know having having having seen him in something else and seen 00:53:05.500 --> 00:53:11.040 the kind of how good he is i what you're saying is that he can actually act this is not him as an 00:53:11.100 --> 00:53:18.060 obnoxious human being coming through this is not a performance this is not just him shining through 00:53:18.780 --> 00:53:24.080 no well well i don't know because i think anyone playing the doctor it's a certain amount of their 00:53:24.700 --> 00:53:31.840 personality you know i think that the the way in which there is there is some david tenant in 00:53:32.220 --> 00:53:38.340 David Tennant's Doctor, for example, and I think there is Tom Baker's Doctor. Yeah, 00:53:39.190 --> 00:53:45.340 well, yeah, although I think some actors, you know, some actors are, when you get a Tom Baker 00:53:45.430 --> 00:53:53.140 or a David Tennant, I think other actors get influenced by that, perhaps. But I do agree 00:53:53.320 --> 00:53:57.480 with you that three years is not enough. And I do agree with you, unless you've got someone in 00:53:57.500 --> 00:54:03.080 a role who just is not a good actor and i don't think that applies to shooty gatwa we need longer 00:54:03.600 --> 00:54:10.960 so i am thinking i want more shooty gatwa not sure i was thinking that before i'm not even sure it's 00:54:11.120 --> 00:54:18.780 three years because three years of trouton is a whole lot more doctor who than three years of 00:54:19.220 --> 00:54:25.480 davison and that's a whole lot more doctor who than three years of capaldi and that's a lot more 00:54:25.500 --> 00:54:30.960 doctor who's in three years of gatua correct i mean like 50 percent hours on the screen 00:54:31.790 --> 00:54:39.620 rather than the number of um calendar years that pass by well i think there may be a bit of both 00:54:39.740 --> 00:54:44.440 because i think there may be the fact that you know when you're filming and you're working back 00:54:44.510 --> 00:54:50.760 to week back week to week you don't have as much opportunity to develop the character as when you 00:54:50.780 --> 00:54:57.240 come back after a break from doing it so i think there may be an element do for season one yeah 00:54:57.340 --> 00:55:03.280 which yeah indeed indeed yeah yeah which will be interesting because i think that may be to the 00:55:03.360 --> 00:55:07.640 show's detriment i definitely think that will be to the show's detriment i think it'll be just as 00:55:07.760 --> 00:55:13.580 bad as last year i i'm gonna write read down my last note that doesn't mean this is i'm want to 00:55:13.600 --> 00:55:19.760 end this discussion here but this is the last bullet point that i put down on my list and 00:55:20.580 --> 00:55:27.140 it's a two-part thing a lot of people say they love this episode i've heard because of the 00:55:27.420 --> 00:55:36.060 sparkling dialogue the problem is for me i don't like the people talking this episode this episode 00:55:36.900 --> 00:55:45.100 yes and i also still find gatwa the most unlikable doctor ever i would not like to be in a room with 00:55:45.180 --> 00:55:52.460 this man he just rubs me the wrong way every time he opens his mouth i'm with every time i would 00:55:52.780 --> 00:56:01.800 rather i'd rather be with sylvester mccoy like definitely that he just you know and it's just 00:56:01.820 --> 00:56:03.080 I think that is the thing. 00:56:03.080 --> 00:56:05.280 It's even down to the fact that he's just stealing milk. 00:56:05.860 --> 00:56:08.120 Yeah, I think it's about the way that he's written 00:56:08.380 --> 00:56:11.440 is that it's not essentially compromising 00:56:11.640 --> 00:56:13.620 what's been established about this character, 00:56:15.000 --> 00:56:18.180 including some of those kind of high-handed elements 00:56:18.520 --> 00:56:21.780 that I agree are not necessarily admirable character traits, 00:56:22.040 --> 00:56:27.260 but it's a degree of self-awareness about some of them, 00:56:27.480 --> 00:56:30.760 like when he talks about when the doctor's in the room 00:56:30.780 --> 00:56:36.920 at being mansplaining central that I think makes it feel like there is something a lot more bearable 00:56:37.280 --> 00:56:45.240 about the character as as written and portrayed in this episode than in some of his previous stories 00:56:45.780 --> 00:56:53.120 that we've had and so and particularly because I think the year in Sandringham kind of rub 00:56:53.240 --> 00:57:01.220 knocks some of those edges off that it seems to it seems to have helped him understand himself a 00:57:01.280 --> 00:57:06.400 bit better almost to the point where you see the scene in the hotel room where there's two of him 00:57:06.960 --> 00:57:13.660 twice and you see the same lines being spoken and they almost have a completely different meaning 00:57:13.800 --> 00:57:18.560 because you feel there's a different there's a degree of personal development that has taken 00:57:18.580 --> 00:57:23.640 in place between you seeing him speak them for the first time and seeing him speak them for the 00:57:23.720 --> 00:57:28.980 second time but will the production order the way that they've produced this show and the way they 00:57:29.160 --> 00:57:35.000 did two years basically at once will that bit of character development actually show up in series 00:57:35.240 --> 00:57:42.340 two no i think i think you're right i think i think there is a risk that that kind of gat was 00:57:43.740 --> 00:57:49.900 character and the way it will be written going forward is still going to be difficult and 00:57:50.120 --> 00:57:56.700 problematic if you don't like the character much, as I don't think you or I have done, 00:57:57.260 --> 00:58:02.580 is now where we're diverging. And I think what I'm saying is I liked the episode because of 00:58:02.580 --> 00:58:06.680 the sparkling dialogue, and I don't agree with you that I didn't like any of the people saying 00:58:06.720 --> 00:58:12.920 it i felt like there was apart from any some warmth and depth that moffat managed to give 00:58:13.040 --> 00:58:21.160 pretty much everyone in this story however kind of irritating high-handed thick or devious they 00:58:21.360 --> 00:58:29.980 might actually have been so i yeah i i i'm much more sympathetic to the sparkling dialogue take 00:58:30.140 --> 00:58:36.660 on it i have heard well i'm not saying that there wasn't necessarily some sparkling dialogue it's 00:58:36.680 --> 00:58:45.140 that sparkling dialogue does not have a shine on it for me when the people are irritating me when 00:58:45.180 --> 00:58:49.560 they're saying it and that's understood but i wasn't finding the people irritating this 00:58:50.040 --> 00:58:57.600 so i have heard again heard don't know for a fact but definitely makes perfect sense to me 00:58:57.610 --> 00:59:04.940 so i'll throw it out there have you seen anything of the uh episode that the scenes that were cut 00:59:04.960 --> 00:59:15.420 from the the sutek fiasco or whatever that was called um okay there is a scene where the doctor 00:59:16.240 --> 00:59:22.380 gets a whistle in the tardis that he uses kind of pulls it out of i think out of the memory 00:59:22.580 --> 00:59:29.200 tardis out of pretty much nowhere above him somewhere that that is there he uses that whistle 00:59:29.320 --> 00:59:36.160 to, I don't know, I don't remember, call the dog. I don't know. It was, it was all kind of 00:59:36.710 --> 00:59:41.880 too dumb to remember. But there is a cut scene where we see where he actually gets that whistle. 00:59:42.520 --> 00:59:47.400 He gets it from himself, who hands it to him through the roof of the memory TARDIS. 00:59:48.130 --> 00:59:55.840 And then later in the episode, he, in the old, in the regular TARDIS, he, he opens a hole and he 00:59:55.860 --> 01:00:01.740 hands himself the whistle he reminds himself to go back and hand himself the whistle so and those 01:00:01.980 --> 01:00:07.560 both those scenes were cut completely from it and there is speculation that because it was an 01:00:07.870 --> 01:00:15.400 important part of this story they removed it so that because it was a gag in that story 01:00:16.050 --> 01:00:21.200 they removed it because it would have been two basically back to back doing the same doing a 01:00:21.220 --> 01:00:29.020 bootstrap paradox yeah yeah but you know in this i just thought it's almost better to have it in 01:00:29.200 --> 01:00:34.240 both because it gives you a kind of foreshadowing of what happens here that is one way to that is 01:00:34.300 --> 01:00:41.820 one way to uh to look at it i could imagine i could imagine seeing it that way i think i would 01:00:42.400 --> 01:00:47.900 go oh god not again i would definitely have done that in fact i did do that you did do that i was 01:00:47.920 --> 01:00:52.320 gonna say you did do that even though it didn't happen before i i did well i had seen those clips 01:00:52.340 --> 01:00:57.940 less bootstrap paradox that we've had in dr i had seen those clips though of of him just like 01:00:58.240 --> 01:01:04.140 opening a hole and going hey hey here's a whistle and then oh thanks and just handing it to himself 01:01:04.620 --> 01:01:12.740 and then leaving i had seen those clips before i went into this episode so when he did it i'm like 01:01:13.280 --> 01:01:22.140 oh again that even though it hadn't actually happened it it it hit me as a like are we just 01:01:22.140 --> 01:01:28.080 gonna is this the new psychic paper because it could be well it's been going on for a while i 01:01:28.240 --> 01:01:36.020 remember you complaining about it in the lodger you know back in the 2010 season so it well okay 01:01:36.080 --> 01:01:43.140 that's 14 years is far enough between those a day day of the daleks going back i thought in the day 01:01:43.190 --> 01:01:49.480 of no wait a minute but in day of the daleks that was the point of it well yes but it's still a 01:01:49.560 --> 01:01:55.640 bootstrap paradox well i don't mind the bootstrap paradox that that's not my complaint here my 01:01:55.880 --> 01:02:02.120 complaint here is it is just a cheap stupid way to get out of a out of a tight bind in in in the 01:02:02.140 --> 01:02:03.880 the Sutek fiasco. 01:02:04.500 --> 01:02:05.400 It would have been a cheap, 01:02:05.640 --> 01:02:06.780 stupid way to get out of it. 01:02:07.420 --> 01:02:13.720 When all he needed to do is to have a flipping whistle on the table, 01:02:14.020 --> 01:02:14.140 right? 01:02:14.240 --> 01:02:15.220 He could have just reached over, 01:02:15.340 --> 01:02:15.940 grabbed a whistle, 01:02:16.440 --> 01:02:17.640 which is basically what he did. 01:02:17.640 --> 01:02:18.800 He grabbed one out of the roof. 01:02:19.160 --> 01:02:19.480 Is he great? 01:02:19.560 --> 01:02:20.120 I needed a whistle. 01:02:20.460 --> 01:02:21.460 This is a memory TARDIS. 01:02:21.600 --> 01:02:22.540 I have a memory of a whistle. 01:02:22.940 --> 01:02:23.420 Here's a whistle. 01:02:23.780 --> 01:02:27.200 That's why you don't need it because there's all sorts of weird stuff in 01:02:27.300 --> 01:02:27.700 that TARDIS. 01:02:27.750 --> 01:02:28.440 You just grab the, 01:02:28.580 --> 01:02:29.080 if you need a whistle, 01:02:29.130 --> 01:02:30.420 you grab a whistle and you go. 01:02:30.880 --> 01:02:36.040 But the fact that he handed himself the whistle is just sort of a stupid gag. 01:02:36.270 --> 01:02:37.440 And it's a stupid gag. 01:02:37.680 --> 01:02:38.780 That's the exact word for it. 01:02:39.180 --> 01:02:47.800 In this episode, it works only because the whole point of it was not the stupid gag to get out of the problem. 01:02:48.420 --> 01:02:53.600 The whole thing was a setup to take you to Anita, which was the only thing of consequence in the episode. 01:02:54.260 --> 01:02:56.440 And that's why there was a four-digit code. 01:02:56.630 --> 01:02:58.400 So why he put the boots around. 01:02:58.800 --> 01:02:59.760 And yeah, it's Moffat. 01:02:59.900 --> 01:03:03.760 and he could have done the same thing without sticking a paradox in, 01:03:04.740 --> 01:03:08.400 the difference, I would argue, the reason that he gets away with it here 01:03:08.560 --> 01:03:11.900 is because he actually, again, almost fourth wall breaking, 01:03:12.180 --> 01:03:14.640 kind of sticks a line of dialogue in there, 01:03:14.940 --> 01:03:17.220 explaining how you shouldn't think about it too hard, 01:03:17.480 --> 01:03:19.700 because it's just, you know, one of those things. 01:03:20.320 --> 01:03:24.440 And there is that great line, speaking of the sparkling dialogue, 01:03:24.720 --> 01:03:27.780 where Joy says something along the lines of, 01:03:28.280 --> 01:03:31.800 Does anyone ever find it helps when you explain anything, Doctor? 01:03:32.320 --> 01:03:33.800 Which I found quite amusing. 01:03:34.480 --> 01:03:36.860 Yeah, it was a fine line of dialogue. 01:03:37.050 --> 01:03:38.780 I mean, Moffat writes good lines of dialogue. 01:03:38.910 --> 01:03:42.880 I just had reached a point where I just didn't care. 01:03:44.040 --> 01:03:45.300 Just didn't care. 01:03:46.980 --> 01:03:49.800 All I can say about this episode is that by the end of it, 01:03:49.810 --> 01:03:52.420 I cared less about it than when I went in. 01:03:53.880 --> 01:03:56.680 And I really did walk out of it. 01:03:57.180 --> 01:04:05.060 My first thoughts were, well, that was a nice bit with Anita, but we know that's not going to have any effect on him at all going forward. 01:04:05.740 --> 01:04:09.280 He didn't that introspection didn't happen. 01:04:09.820 --> 01:04:12.840 Will there be a chair in the TARDIS instead of a jukebox? 01:04:13.460 --> 01:04:17.240 I mean, that would be it. 01:04:17.300 --> 01:04:17.840 That would be a thing. 01:04:17.940 --> 01:04:18.500 Put a chair in. 01:04:19.680 --> 01:04:25.420 At least you would be acknowledging that he has even if it doesn't actually alter the way he behaves. 01:04:25.720 --> 01:04:27.700 But I just have a feeling it won't. 01:04:28.540 --> 01:04:31.920 I don't know that I have anything else on this episode. 01:04:32.060 --> 01:04:32.280 Do you? 01:04:32.720 --> 01:04:33.420 I have. 01:04:33.700 --> 01:04:34.560 Yeah, I've got a few things. 01:04:35.580 --> 01:04:37.320 There was one thing I wanted to mention. 01:04:37.980 --> 01:04:52.720 This is kind of connected with the whole idea that the Time Hotel doesn't work because there are obviously insurmountable difficulties from the point of view of temporal physics around the idea of the Time Hotel. 01:04:53.360 --> 01:05:11.700 On the other hand, the idea of the Time Hotel is easy to, you know, as a concept, think of it more in marketing terms than in physics terms. I think what Moffat is possibly inspired by here is the restaurant, the end of the universe. 01:05:12.640 --> 01:05:23.720 And again, that's a great gag, a great idea, a concept that you can understand in the sense of why people would do it, even though it is completely impossible. 01:05:24.540 --> 01:05:31.020 And even though Douglas Adams specifically says it's completely impossible and then builds that into the marketing. 01:05:31.800 --> 01:05:34.020 Have you done six impossible things today? 01:05:34.140 --> 01:05:38.220 Why not round it off with breakfast at Millyways, the restaurant at the end of the universe? 01:05:39.200 --> 01:05:43.720 So I think the Time Hotel is like the restaurant at the end of the universe. 01:05:44.610 --> 01:05:48.560 And so maybe that's another reason why I'm willing to give it a pass. 01:05:49.100 --> 01:05:55.360 But this is not Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, an explicit wacky, zany comedy take. 01:05:55.940 --> 01:05:56.840 It's fiction. 01:05:57.280 --> 01:06:02.760 It's not, but it is a show that Douglas Adams has written a number of episodes of. 01:06:02.820 --> 01:06:11.640 And more than that, I would say many of the writers of the show since then have been heavily influenced by Douglas Adams. 01:06:12.780 --> 01:06:15.980 And I think more than one of his concepts has crept in. 01:06:16.480 --> 01:06:23.800 And I'm going to go further on that and say I spotted another Douglas Adams reference in this. 01:06:24.520 --> 01:06:27.240 Have you read The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul? 01:06:28.000 --> 01:06:30.400 There's a very long time ago. 01:06:31.080 --> 01:06:44.840 There's a sequence in that where Dirk Gently, the lead character in it, is explaining his principle for navigation, which is basically to follow just some other car. 01:06:45.310 --> 01:06:47.100 He just follows them wherever they're going. 01:06:47.900 --> 01:06:56.340 And his idea for it is that he may not end up where he intended to be going, but he almost always ends up where he needed to be. 01:06:57.220 --> 01:07:06.100 And when Anita says to the doctor, I thought you'd fix my sat nav, the doctor says he has fixed the sat nav, but it takes you where you need to be. 01:07:06.680 --> 01:07:07.260 Oh, no, no, no, no. 01:07:07.260 --> 01:07:10.500 And I'm sure that is a Long Diet Tea Time and Soul reference. 01:07:11.120 --> 01:07:14.300 No, that's a Neil Gaiman reference. 01:07:15.010 --> 01:07:15.840 The doctor's wife. 01:07:16.600 --> 01:07:21.680 You never take me where I want to go, but I always take you where you needed to go. 01:07:22.080 --> 01:07:22.700 Well, I'm going to go. 01:07:24.180 --> 01:07:25.940 You think Neil Gaiman copped it? 01:07:26.000 --> 01:07:42.540 Linking back to the comment I made before about writers on the show being influenced by Douglas Adams and referencing in support of this the fact that Neil Gaiman has written a biography of Douglas Adams, I'm going to suggest that he was also referencing Douglas Adams in that. 01:07:43.280 --> 01:07:46.080 But, okay, all right, hold on, hold on. 01:07:46.130 --> 01:07:54.240 I'm not saying that he certainly is unaware of that, and I'm not saying that he wasn't perhaps even riffing on it. 01:07:54.720 --> 01:07:58.860 But in Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul, that's a joke. 01:07:59.480 --> 01:08:02.500 And in The Doctor's Wife, that's a statement of fact. 01:08:03.020 --> 01:08:08.700 It explains the TARDIS behavior for all those years. 01:08:08.740 --> 01:08:15.580 It explains why the TARDIS always arrives at some place where the doctor has to fix things. 01:08:16.100 --> 01:08:24.580 it's like it was a brilliant way of slotting in a line that suddenly makes sense out of 01:08:25.290 --> 01:08:32.520 some of the the the wild coincidences that that occurred over the years so maybe he was 01:08:33.270 --> 01:08:39.319 doing it but you know here it's a joke in this episode it's a joke but i felt it was self-referential 01:08:39.900 --> 01:08:43.240 back to the doctor knows that's how the TARDIS works, 01:08:43.420 --> 01:08:47.220 so he has now made her car work like the TARDIS. 01:08:47.500 --> 01:08:54.980 I don't think, I mean, I agree that Adams is finding the funny in it 01:08:55.600 --> 01:08:57.900 and that Gaiman uses it very appropriately. 01:08:58.310 --> 01:08:59.640 And I like it in this as well, 01:08:59.870 --> 01:09:03.819 but I don't think there's a huge distinction between what's going on there 01:09:03.910 --> 01:09:07.460 because I think whether it's a funny or it's a more, 01:09:07.759 --> 01:09:11.759 I mean, in a way, it is a more profound thing, which is why it's funny. 01:09:12.600 --> 01:09:14.779 It's for Dirk Gently. 01:09:15.660 --> 01:09:21.500 There's a kind of way in which he is letting the universe guide him. 01:09:21.620 --> 01:09:27.740 It's a kind of the mysterious force of fate, which is essentially what the TARDIS is. 01:09:28.020 --> 01:09:30.480 It's we don't understand how the TARDIS works. 01:09:30.740 --> 01:09:38.620 it's some other mysterious force that has this kind of omniscient power to know where the doctor 01:09:38.880 --> 01:09:44.400 should be and guide him there, which isn't really any different from the concept of fate. 01:09:48.079 --> 01:09:58.060 I'm kind of. I mean, if you personify fate as a sentient entity, yeah. I don't know. And I'm 01:09:58.080 --> 01:10:04.160 sure Moffat too has been inspired in his life by Douglas Adams. But I would say that that line in 01:10:04.160 --> 01:10:10.620 its inclusion in this episode was a reference to the doctor's wife, not a explicit reference 01:10:11.160 --> 01:10:17.440 to Douglas Adams. I don't think it's a reference. I think it's a neat line within the episode, 01:10:17.670 --> 01:10:24.200 but I think he's quoting Douglas Adams. I don't think that line appears in this story if 01:10:24.220 --> 01:10:30.880 Adams hadn't written it in the long time detail in the soul yeah but there is a there is a 01:10:31.420 --> 01:10:39.140 a distinction between I repeat something that somebody else said even if I know that they 01:10:39.140 --> 01:10:46.560 were quoting somebody else but I just feel like he's using it in both the context and the the 01:10:46.640 --> 01:10:55.960 words to what Gaiman's TARDIS said to the doctor. That is the doctor's motivation in this episode. 01:10:56.560 --> 01:11:03.560 That is Moffat's motivation. And remember, that episode was written during Moffat's terror. 01:11:03.760 --> 01:11:11.340 Yeah, no, no. I agree they're the same thing. Well, no, I'm not sure if that's what you're 01:11:11.360 --> 01:11:19.500 saying i think they are the same thing so i so i agree that it's it's it's doing what you think 01:11:19.640 --> 01:11:24.300 it's doing in the doctor's wife i just don't think what it's doing in the long dark tea time of the 01:11:24.380 --> 01:11:30.900 soul is in any meaningfully meaningful way a different thing the i the idea is one that 01:11:30.980 --> 01:11:37.340 they're just they're just adapting because it fits well to the idea of the doctor and you know to be 01:11:37.360 --> 01:11:44.240 fair that that's because the character of Dirk Gently is the doctor right I mean it's not that 01:11:44.280 --> 01:11:50.860 there is not just that Gaiman and Moffat are stealing from Adams it's that Adams has created 01:11:51.260 --> 01:11:58.060 Dirk Gently as the lead character to fit it the first Dirk Gently novel Dirk Gently's sadistic 01:11:58.260 --> 01:12:03.720 detective agency isn't an original novel in the sense that he's basically taken the plot lines 01:12:03.740 --> 01:12:13.060 that he wrote. Adams has taken the plot lines that he wrote for Sharda and, help me out here, 01:12:13.100 --> 01:12:18.480 what's the story he wrote that was set in Paris? City of Death. City of Death, yeah, it's City of 01:12:18.600 --> 01:12:24.180 Death and Sharda combined. And he needed, he obviously couldn't use the Doctor, he needed 01:12:24.810 --> 01:12:30.821 a character to fill that role. And that's what Dirk Gently is. So when he's writing The Long 01:12:30.840 --> 01:12:36.860 dark tea time of the soul he's got someone who's doing a tom baker doctorish kind of a thing in 01:12:37.500 --> 01:12:42.740 you know you can imagine that's how tom baker's doctor would also navigate any others i have a 01:12:42.840 --> 01:12:48.380 couple of other things that are just kind of personal connections with this story one is the 01:12:48.600 --> 01:12:57.921 collection of tardis trinkets i think that the tardis teapot there is the same as a um a tardis 01:12:58.160 --> 01:13:04.820 teapot that a good friend gave me so i was pleased to see that in there i'm not sure that we got an 01:13:05.420 --> 01:13:14.020 explanation of why there were all of these police box trinkets but i liked it ah i i fell into the 01:13:14.160 --> 01:13:19.520 kind of that was fourth wall i think it was fourth wall again because he says i don't know there's 01:13:19.560 --> 01:13:25.341 just a bunch of them online you could buy yeah yeah okay that's just that's just and i appreciate 01:13:25.380 --> 01:13:30.140 that i i did think he was breaking the fourth wall at the end i'm not sure if he was looking 01:13:30.290 --> 01:13:34.900 to bethlehem or looking into the camera but i did think that might have been a feast of stephen 01:13:35.020 --> 01:13:41.400 reference the other the other thing is the sandringham hotel i just i like that because 01:13:41.580 --> 01:13:47.340 i've stayed there the sandringham hotel in london is a real place a real hotel but it's not really 01:13:47.370 --> 01:13:53.760 in london it's in cardiff because doctor who is filmed in cardiff so they filmed using the 01:13:53.780 --> 01:13:59.300 exterior of the Sandringham Hotel as the exterior of the Sandringham Hotel London and then just 01:13:59.880 --> 01:14:04.580 obviously called it the Sandringham Hotel but said it's in London so I'll never be able to book a 01:14:04.590 --> 01:14:09.780 room there now ever again well yeah because it'll be part of the Doctor Who experience what I would 01:14:09.900 --> 01:14:16.100 say in response to your comment in the intro about there only appearing to be one member of staff 01:14:16.280 --> 01:14:21.581 working in it i.e. Anita is that my experience staying there I've only ever come across one 01:14:21.600 --> 01:14:33.640 member staff so that was pretty authentic okay was it anita sadly not oh well it it i it felt odd 01:14:34.320 --> 01:14:43.200 because it was a year and it just seemed kind of um i don't know it just didn't quite fit that we 01:14:43.320 --> 01:14:49.581 just never saw anybody else working there yeah and because i you know i thought anita was like 01:14:49.600 --> 01:14:57.360 the night shift manager or no just you know saving money on cast people working yeah yeah 01:14:58.140 --> 01:15:05.160 especially prior to the doctor getting a getting a job there um all right any others no that was it 01:15:05.740 --> 01:15:16.121 all right well i saw from the trailer that uh that uh the new series will be coming in 2025 01:15:16.140 --> 01:15:23.620 so that's narrowed it down a whole bunch so um it's online it's on youtube too now at this point 01:15:24.160 --> 01:15:31.160 but yeah it was just coming 2025 like really you've got it it's done you made this ages ago 01:15:31.800 --> 01:15:39.940 surely you know when this is coming out surely disney requires you to know when this is coming 01:15:40.040 --> 01:15:48.380 out right it's not like they're just running it on the bbc now and they can just decide you know 01:15:48.580 --> 01:15:53.980 whatever three weeks in advance disney's not going to accept that disney's got a project management 01:15:54.480 --> 01:16:01.040 chart that's probably three years out they must know when it's going to air roughly speaking all 01:16:01.040 --> 01:16:08.681 right uh in that case i who knows when they'll do the next doctor who it's 2025 probably maybe i can 01:16:08.700 --> 01:16:10.560 raised some enthusiasm by then. 01:16:11.140 --> 01:16:12.260 Simon, thank you for joining me. 01:16:12.940 --> 01:16:13.840 It's a pleasure, as always. 01:16:14.860 --> 01:16:19.200 Listeners, I do hope you'll join us all again next time on Fusion Patrol. 01:16:21.700 --> 01:16:25.080 You've been listening to Fusion Patrol. Thanks for listening. 01:16:27.320 --> 01:16:30.500 If you've enjoyed this episode, we hope you'll consider supporting us at 01:16:30.840 --> 01:16:35.600 buymeacoffee.com slash Fusion Patrol or patreon.com slash Fusion Patrol. 01:16:36.020 --> 01:16:41.960 For our monthly Patreon subscribers, we're currently running a special series on Babylon 5. 01:16:44.060 --> 01:16:48.480 Come join the conversation and find other content at FusionPatrol.com. 01:16:49.080 --> 01:16:54.160 And we're back on social media, where you can also follow us on Mastodon and the Fediverse. 01:16:54.880 --> 01:16:58.740 Our address is at podcast at FusionPatrol.com. 01:17:01.280 --> 01:17:04.140 Our music is Fight the Future by Amber Wolf. 01:17:06.860 --> 01:17:09.160 This has been a Lone Locust production.