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 Doctor Who Season 2025, Episode 2, Lux.
Disclaimer. I have a cold. I am on cold medicine. I do not feel well. My patience and tolerance
is on a knife edge. In editing, before I release this episode, I promise to bleep
all the profanities, of which I am certain there will be some. However, that is not necessarily
intended to imply that the episode Lux has achieved a whole new level of awfulness that
warrants profanity, just that my shields are lowered. They certainly were when I wrote this
synopsis. Episode Synopsis. At a movie theater in 1952 Miami, Florida, a shaft of moonlight
bounces off an overly polished spoon, finding its way into the bright light of the movie projector,
and soon, Mr. Ring-A-Ding, a cartoon character, has come to life to cause mischief. The Doctor,
unable to get Belinda back to Earth on May 24th, 2025, rather than take her back to May 23rd and
hang out for a day, uses a device from the TARDIS to effectively triangulate a path back to a desired
date and time. Let's hope Teak and Ian and Barbara never learn that this was an option.
The process involves landing in random places and getting a reading back to the desired date
time. First stop, 1952, Miami, Florida. What a coincidence. It's not long before the doctor and
Belinda have learned of the mystery of the locked theater and the mystery of the 15 people who
disappeared. They also learn that Mr. Pi, the theater's projectionist, is apparently
locked up inside for the last three months, presumably living off a diet of celluloid.
They investigate, trying to communicate with Mr. Pi, but what they find is Mr. Ring-a-Ding,
who soon reveals himself to be Lux, another of the f***ing so-called gods, and he's about to do
something nasty to them. So Mr. Pye starts the Mr. Ring-a-Ding song and forces Lux to sing along
because it eats the crap out of me. They run to see Pye and realize that Lux is keeping him
compliant by bringing a movie of his dead wife to life. Song's over and Lux converts the Doctor
and Belinda into cartoons, but they soon overcome their cartoon limitations by emoting. They then
muck about with the frames of the film they're on and escape back into the theater, where the
New York segregation police have come to arrest the doctor and Belinda for being people of color
in a whites-only theater. The next two sequences prove once and for all that writers like to have
it both ways. First, the doctor uses careful attention to detail to spot continuity problems
in the police officer's uniform, showing how clever the doctor, and by extension the writer,
is. Realizing that they are still trapped, they push their way into a small living room
full of Doctor Who fans, where they show how tedious and annoying fans, paying close attention
to detail, are not so much clever as annoying. At first, the Doctor and Belinda are being convinced
that maybe they are actually characters in a TV show, but soon the fans point out that they
haven't got last names, and they help the Doctor and Belinda back to reality, even knowing they
will cease to exist. I mean, obviously, right? Fans have no life outside of watching Doctor Who.
Back in the real world, Lux wants to suck dry all the Doctors by generational energy
and become a real boy, but instead, they get Mr. Pi to blow up the film store,
exposing Lux to sunlight and causing him to expand until he is no more. The people who
disappeared return, the Doctor and Belinda leave, and Mrs. Flood shows up for another
ham-fisted tag scene. The end. So how'd you like Lux? Well, possibly better than you did by the
sound of it. I truly do want to say that I will swear at this episode, that does not mean I think
it's the worst thing they've ever done. It's not that bad. Bits of it annoy the hell out of me.
Yeah. I mean, I think there are bits of it that I, well, I don't, I mean, I don't know how much
it matters it's it's it's by no means kind of perfect i haven't been converted to rtd writing
for shooty gatwell or anything but the bits that are definitely underdeveloped in this don't matter
very much and the bits that are quite interesting and fun kept me amused for the length of the
episode and part of that is the kind of willingness to do something a bit different and so i my kind
of the the fact that for example mr ring a ding is pretty annoying i'm kind of willing to overlook
that for the fact that i mean firstly he's not in it that much because presumably animating is
a bit expensive
but also
it's playing around
with
the
idea of
fictionality. I think my biggest
complaint is I thought they could have
that idea in itself
there is more mileage
in and so
there are things that I would
like to see in this episode that
kind of got missed out but
for what it was
An enjoyable episode, as far as I'm concerned.
I have to say, you just brought something to my mind. They spent money on animating this when
they could have been working on the Dalek Master Plan. So now I'm less inclined.
I was absolutely thinking that, you know, if we weren't already discussing this episode,
we would have to discuss it on the basis that we have on the podcast talked about every animated
episode of Doctor Who that has been released whether it's reconstruction whether it's you
know a new webcast a big finish with animation or or whatever it may be here or or indeed the
the what was it Dreamland and the Infinite Quest the kind of David Tennant era episodes where they
made special extra Doctor Who episodes that were that were kind of purely animated and I guess
you've got to count this one as an episode with animation in right i mean there are sequences
yeah no i uh again as you mentioned this because i didn't really give him this much thought
i also think when they animated the doctor and bolinda instead of going the scooby-doo style
they should have gone they should have gone animated recreation style oh yeah well yeah
I mean, I think that would have pleased the fans.
I mean, us as well as the in-show fans.
I'm not sure how much the regular Disney Plus audience would have appreciated that.
I can't believe the Disney Plus audience is watching, so I don't think that's an issue.
One thing I do want to say, we had this discussion last week, and I want to bring it up again
because we talked about i i felt last week's episode was talking to the audience not in the
storytellers but like in that meta sort of way okay i was saying he's given a he's given a finger
here and there you can't say he wasn't talking to the audience in this one i mean no absolutely
there's absolutely more of that in this episode and it's just like well it's explicit in it i
deliberate yeah yeah i think it was deliberate last time too i think i think i think that what
this episode does that is unusual and different is that it explicitly calls out what is going on
it's not it's not a nod and a wink it's the doctor kind of being told he's fictional which
you know is going to be a shock to a lot of the viewers but although i do hope all that
merchandise is available the tello shirt the unit shirt maybe even the maybe even the meep shirt
i think they're missing a thing if they don't if they don't have those shirts available for purchase
like now i i think yeah we can we can file that along file that along with the polish polish
robot of things that were definitely there to be sold but i went and looked i couldn't find the
shirts at least not on amazon have you found a polish polish robot yet no i didn't even buy
I don't want that.
It's too annoying.
It probably makes that noise, too.
Well, I would say.
I don't know about you, because you're younger than me, but when I was a kid, you know, you got toys and maybe some action figures, or mostly in my case, it was plastic dinosaurs, but they didn't do anything, right?
And then as I got older and as toys got more sophisticated, then they started putting like
voice boxes in them.
So they say something, do something.
I hated those toys.
I don't know why they thought, I don't know why they thought, because what it does is
it, in a way it feels like it limits your imagination.
Yes.
You know, it does, it does this thing.
You can't make it do whatever you want.
I would take the batteries out of toys like that and just, you know, try it once.
Go, oh yeah.
Okay, fine.
Whatever.
Chuck it out.
And then.
I never like it. Polish Polish is like that. The robot. I have no interest in that also because I already have a floor mopping robot, but and they're crap. They don't work. And I don't think that a Polish Polish wouldn't work. I need to be in the wing. So anyway, I will say this in the positives column. Belinda is much less obnoxious in this episode.
she manages to convey her desire to go back home right now much more humanly whereas in the last
episode i just felt she was just being obstreperous yeah i mean i think there's there's an element of
there's intended to be a development in their kind of mutual understanding in this
i i'm not sure that was good because i think she was intended to be much more kind of impatient
last time round and now there's a more of a kind of mutual respect i guess yeah i i i you know i
we're we were seeing belinda in i've been kidnapped and taken to an alien planet mode and i'm not sure
that i felt like her intransigence or whatever we want to call it really quite i don't know
maybe she just was in shock and that was but i know well i i mean the other the other dimension
to that that i felt was that was the kind of tonal tonal thing with the previous episode where she
was very flippant it was clearly it was it was a kind of comedy storyline and so having any kind
of real drama or jeopardy to her sense of being stuck in an alien future or whatever was was kind
of hard to get a handle on because of that yeah i i i think the the tone of this one is a bit
different i don't know what you could have done last time i mean that she demands the doctor takes
home as if it's the doctor the doctor who is responsible for her being there which
obviously it isn't okay you can kind of i suppose you you can put that down to to kind of this is
another kind of comedic aspect to the storyline i think what we've got in this episode is much more
it's it's a kind of shift to she wants to go home because she misses people she misses her life etc
etc and she recognizes that the doctor is genuinely trying to get her home and that's
where I guess her perception of it shifts could be it could be although you know it's it doesn't
really seem like there's much time between last episode and no no but I think I think it's the
it's the kind of passage of what happens in this episode I think at the beginning she's a little bit
impatient still she's like really you want to go and investigate what's going on here she knows
she obviously knows him well enough to see what's going on with that but you want to go and
investigate here and then by the end of it there is a there is a you know she's she's seen him in
as it were a mortal situation and there is a different dynamic there now i think
I did refer to it in the, and my notes are way more scattered than usual, if that is even possible. But I did make note of it in the recap. But I just want to point this out. I think it's funny that, you know, a good writer, say a mystery writer, let's use a mystery as an example.
They write a novel and they have to put the information in front of you so that when the super brilliant detective at the end notices it, points it out, you go, oh, Miss Marple was, oh, yeah, yeah, got it.
She's smarter than me.
I didn't see it.
Or maybe you did.
Or, you know, you have an attention to detail.
And the hero has to have an attention to detail.
And they cheat a bit of that on Sherlock Holmes books, but because the point is the attention to detail in a different way. But in a lot of other mystery stories, you need to have that. And of course, we see that in this book, the doctor, by being clever, spots the New York police officer.
But it is a little bit of a unfair situation when the fans actually have a stronger attention to detail than the writer does.
And they get annoyed by it.
And I think the writers do get annoyed by it.
Because they're nitpicking.
And particularly RTD, because he has no eye for detail.
He's doing the broad strokes to get from A to B to C.
So I don't know him using that as a, as a way to show that the doctor is clever is, is not really, I don't know. It, it was definitely rubbed me the wrong way. That was, I saw that and I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. Attention to detail. You're gonna, you're gonna use attention to detail. Oh, Moffat attention to detail. I can see RTD. No.
Well, yes, I mean, I think of Moffat as a farce writer, but I think in a way you're right that there is a…
Farce requires attention to detail.
Well, it does. And in that sense, kind of mystery writing of the kind of, I mean, I'm not a particular fan of it, but of the kind of Agatha Christie style is all about that.
It's much about writing a puzzle as it is about writing an interesting story.
I think what's going on here is much more about the lucid dreaming aspect of this.
It's the, do you know when you're still in the fiction or not?
Well, I'm increasingly beginning to think that they have been in a fiction last season and this season.
That this is all one big extra meta thing.
And when we come out the other end, I don't know.
I doubt very much.
Dallas.
Yeah.
I don't know if they're going to undo Schutte completely.
But I don't know what I would think about it if they undid the...
by generation thing which as i may have mentioned i am not a fan of i'd be happy if they undid it
to be quite honest but but i don't know yeah i kind of think i i think anything like that would
kind of massively miss the point because obviously doctor who is is a fiction so you can do an
episode like this and you can play around with it and you can have him step out of a tv you know
with the Doctor Who logo on it and sit around having a conversation with fans of the show
about the show itself and make jokes about whether there are better episodes than Blink,
which, you know, again, coming back to what you were saying last time.
Obviously there are. Inferno, but those people are too young to know that.
Well, I think, yes, there are better episodes of Doctor Who than Blink. I don't know if I
would say inferno is better than blink but certainly certainly none of the suggestions
that the doctor made were were going to carry and and you know rtd to his credit is acknowledging
that and again paying tribute to i'm seeing a pattern here there's like the moffatism's last
time this time he's explicitly paying tribute to moffat's fan favorite episode okay but i have to
say how do you know how does the doctor know what episode was called blink it's a very good question
I mean, it could be Time of Angels. That had a lot of Blink stuff in it.
And I need to rewatch Blink to double check this. I'm pretty sure there's nothing in Blink that
explicitly says that he hasn't met the Weeping Angels before. I think there may be something
that suggests that he has met the Weeping Angels before. So that suggests that it's not the first
time certainly in big finnish terms earlier versions of the doctor have met the weeping
angels so you're quite right that you know there's multiple things that that could mean to him even
if he gets the illusion what does you know what does the title blink mean no just i mean just to
just to kind of finish that thought of that you can you can do an episode like this you you you
can't do it too often but i i don't think that you can tie it in to more than it just being a kind of
bottle episode it's it's a it's a one-off a throwaway a nod and a wink for a bit of fun
i i think he's going to throw away the whole two seasons i began to think that it's it's going to
be i don't know another one of the gods the the storyteller or who is the master of the land of
fiction or i don't know something now so here's here's the thing that the thing that might support
your argument there is the thing that i felt was the the missing thing from this episode and
maybe that's the reason it was missing given that you know rtd is obviously has rediscovered a deep
of continuity you know given that iplayer is literally calling this season two of the 2023
doctor who season and yet rtd is merrily writing an episode we're saying what's your favorite
episode of this show it's like it's an episode from what iplayer now considers to be a previous
show but yeah the land of fiction the land of fiction should have been part of what this story
was because that is the kind of previous time when the show has come close to exploring whether
it might be fictional and what it means to be fictional and all these kind of things and you
know big big finish have done something that i thought was very close to where the doctor talks
to the fans in the legend of the cybermen where that they he literally that there's a there's a
in a recording studio where they're in the sound booth listening to Nick Briggs directing someone
or something like that it you know it's literally kind of stepping out of the show and looking at it
looking at itself being made which is you know as near as damn it to what's being done here but
that's done within the context of the land of fiction and so I don't know why you'd go as close
to that as this does without even if it's just a nod for those who would recognize it
kind of acknowledging there is a connection here because as you say if we're getting into
and you know the gods of rtd are not new obviously they're not the celestial toy maker
first appeared in the 1960s but you know that it the master of the land of fiction is exactly one
of those kinds of powerful figures that operate beyond the kind of laws of physics and causality
of our own universe. Yes, but does the master of the land of fiction have to follow a set of
honor-bound rules? I don't think it's described in those terms, but actually I think yes.
I think that is... Isn't the master of the land of fiction actually a guy stuck in a computer
and that the land of fiction really isn't the real world i think you i think
so i mean i need i need to i need to watch the real world because
if you if you're talking about episodes that might be better than blink
i might put the mind of up there is terrific i thought he was actually human
yeah he was a guy got stuck in a machine of some kind yeah yeah yeah he's trying to get the doctor
to take his place and yeah yeah but you know those are the those are the kind of god origin
stories because fundamentally you're dealing with the same thing by the time someone has those kind
of powers to shape the the universe that everyone else exists within so what you know what do you
mean by god i i i don't mind whether you know whether this story is connected to the the kind
of god stories that have have kind of followed on from the salt in the wild blue yonder this is
this is the the less possibly the least offensive of all of them for me well it felt to be over the
quickest and seemed to have the least amount of peril well that well that might be that might be
why i have i don't know whether this is me kind of like so i think the first episode of of the
fusion patrol podcast that i i ever joined you on was when we were discussing the way in which
in the and this is going back 15 years or whatever the way in which in the early revival of the show
the 2005 revival of the show, RTD followed quite a sort of standard template for his seasons. There
would be a present day episode on the Powell estate or, you know, or with the family of the
companion at least. And then there would be an episode set in the past or, no, an episode set
in the future and then an episode set in the past. And then there'd be a couple of episodes where
they'd bring back some old monsters and you could, you know, within 13 episodes, there'd be some
variation but fundamentally he created a template that acted as a framework for him I think and when
he came back to the show I was very curious I did mention it I think last year whether he would
follow the same template even though he's down to eight episodes and I don't think he did I think
there's I mean possibly because there's less scope for it but there's a different pattern to these
episodes what i'm curious about now though is that as we go through a second season he seems to have
had the the the first episode taking the companion so ruby and the doctor go off to the space baby
spaceship the doctor and belinda go go off to belinda chandra one it's this kind of fantastical
futuristic
very sci-fi-ish
kind of story
setting and then in the second
episode we go back
to
recent history on earth so
1950s or 1960s
and we encounter a past god
now admittedly
I might be jumping
to spot a pattern
too quickly given that we're only two episodes
in and so that could just be a coincidence
but I did
think that the links between the maestro episode and this episode were quite interesting even down
to the fact that the the the maestro episode has all of the kind of song and dance stuff which is
kind of metafictional in the you know in the same way that the the animation stuff in in lux is kind
of metafictional yeah yeah you may be onto something he's stuck in a rut again i'm not sure
I'm not sure I'd argue that it's a rut. I would say that he uses that kind of template to give him... I mean, I kind of feel like... I like Russell T. Davis as a writer, but some of his best stuff isn't Doctor Who.
Right. I think all of his best stuff's probably not Doctor Who, but yeah.
Well, when he gets, you know, my favorite thing of his, possibly my favorite piece of television, or one of my favorite pieces of television is Children of Earth from Torchwood. When he gets five hours of television, and a lot of the kind of recent stuff, I haven't seen It's a Sin, I did see years and years, but these kind of shows that are pretty much sort of five hours of television where he gets to tell a much more complicated story, and all these kind of things we've talked about in terms of pacing.
are very different for that kind of storytelling even even for something like you know one of his
earliest things second coming which i thought was excellent it you know it's a couple of hours to
kind of really get it get into the the story properly and establish all of the all of the kind
of themes and sense of place and character and what it's all about and i i think that because
Doctor Who, he's coming into a show, admittedly, you know, he did kind of reinvent it in 2005,
but it's a show that already exists. And one of the fundamental things about it is how different
it is. As you go from adventure to adventure, they can be in any time and place. And in some
sense, there's a license to tell any kind of fantasy that you want to. And, you know, one of
the differences when he reinvented the show in 2005 is that he's writing a lot of it himself
and the framework i think then is a way of sort of saying is it is it mixed up enough particularly
when he's doing you know different from how the show originally was when he's doing one episode
and then another episode another episode and each one has to be a different setting in time and
place unlike the old serials of four six seven ten half hour episodes all set within you know
the same the the same setting essentially so i can understand why having a kind of framework
for how you set that up for yourself and indeed for your other writers can be helpful i don't know
whether I particularly like it.
I'm not even sure whether that
even makes any sense to ask that.
I guess for me,
I quite enjoyed the fact that Moffat
would come along each season
and upend the format itself
and go, hey, I'm going to do two-parters
for the whole season this time,
or hey, I'm going to do one-parters
for the whole season this time,
or whatever it was that, you know,
and never kind of used these
patterns and decided that he was going to pick big themes and it was all going to be fairy tales or
whatever. But yeah, it was just a pattern that I spotted. So I was curious if that was the case.
Speaking of patterns that I spotted, and I have mentioned it before, I don't remember how many
times I mentioned it last year, but the doctor doesn't solve the problem. And more on that
in this episode, right? It's Belinda and Mr. Pi that do the thing. The doctor is there to sort
of facilitate them solving the problem like a sonic screwdriver. But it occurred to me,
here's a good example of how weird this is. So the doctor arrives. Let's take just a standard
episode of Doctor Who. The doctor arrives in a place and within a very short period of time,
What's happened? He's toppled the dictators. He's undone the time damage. He's right. He is. He is a storm that comes in and bang and the oncoming storm. Right. And that is the format of Doctor Who. What happened in last week's episode? To spare the suspense, the doctor arrived on the planet that was controlled by the dominating evil robots six months ago.
And in that six months, he managed to accomplish nothing.
He got as far as being the historian.
Belinda arrives, and within hours, they've toppled the robot revolution.
And it was Belinda that solved the day by, you know, oh, I got to go smack the certificate.
You know, she went to solve, to sacrifice herself to save the day.
So again, it's like, I don't, I don't like this take.
I really don't.
I mean, I get that you could argue that that is the original.
Ian Chesterton's really the hero.
Yes, I believe I have argued that.
You haven't made that argument, but we got away from that very quickly because the Doctor
is the more interesting character.
And I don't know that trying to bring that back is the right answer.
Unless you want to make the Doctor, you know, 90 years old, physically, not, you know what
I mean?
Yeah.
William Hartnell era, put him in a cane and walking around. I can't do this anymore. You
go get a young man or whatever. But yeah. So let me ask this question. Was Lux the god
or the harbinger? I don't know. I think that I think I sort of filed that under it didn't really
feel properly developed, but also I didn't, I'd say it doesn't matter. It was more like I didn't
care that i didn't i didn't get about the moonlight stuff i didn't understand why he oh yeah so much
to sing along it yeah it didn't it didn't feel like any of these things made a whole lot of sense
but i think he's i think he's supposed to be the god in which case then i guess rock hudson is the
harbinger i mean i don't think that's a nice thing to do to rock hudson first up yeah yeah you drag
hiv status just to remind people that they teach about him in school and and then yeah yeah and
why would he have the same laugh i'm going to get onto lux now why would he have the same
thing you mean it's a giggle yeah yeah why i don't know that that has to be significant but i don't
know and i don't know what it's unless it's you know it's still the toy maker still ultimately
the toy makers current around with us yeah his plan is to just to nuke the earth honestly
kind of boring yeah you know i mean i mean in term you know it's bad bad for the earth but i
mean as a goal for a villain oh i just want to see an atomic bomb go off it's like you want to
see an atomic bomb go off i mean surely you can do better than that they they chained the theater
big heavy chains big heavy chains as if they were keeping in a wild beast per the doctor
that would imply they knew something was trapped in the theater but they don't know there's
something trapped in the theater and either mr pie can get in and out or mr pie is dead
unless he's very large established that lux can't get out so yeah so they just why why would they
Why would they have ever felt the need to chain unless you attempt to?
Yeah, why would you chain it up?
I mean, okay, something happened there.
You don't close a business after the crime investigation is done.
You let them open back up again.
I mean, what business owner is going to sit by for that nonsense?
We don't assume it's not Mr. Pi.
He's the projectionist.
And so, all right, let's hit the, you say you don't care.
I agree, but at the same time, RTD has taught me that continuity is important.
So logic and continuity is important.
I mean, otherwise you can't spot how this stuff's nonsense.
We saw Lux come in on a moonbeam from the full moon.
And he bounces off a spoon and then a non-reflective wall into the projector.
But the moon is full up there in the sky.
And if he came in along a moonbeam, he would have already been exposed to the sun at its full intensity.
Because in space...
Yes, yes, that's true.
So that's just such a poorly thought out idea.
I can't even...
Yeah, I'm not going to argue with that, but it's not what occurred to me straight away.
what occurred to me straight away was if if that was how you know that all of this kicked off that
he moseyed along a moonbeam and bounced into this projector in this cinema in 1952 in miami why
didn't he mosey along some other moonbeam in some other you know what what was what were the
particular set of circumstances that caused that to happen then like moonbeams turn up all the time
and go to all the places.
And there's lots of signs out there.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So what was going on here?
And the kind of corollary to that is why the setting,
like as in stepping out of the story for a moment,
hey, RTD, why have you set this in Miami in 1952?
It wasn't that I disliked it.
But that's interesting because it's almost like
we get into the story and he acknowledges
the kind of situation he does use it as a plot point to be fair but he also straight away kind
of brushes it aside the doctor has to give a speech about how there are some things even though
you know he gets upset about far less egregious things at other times where he just has to let
people get on with it i mean hello what exact words are i believe sometimes i topple worlds
sometimes i wait for them to topple themselves so i get what i got it's a it's a cop out and i get
why he does it because he doesn't want the whole episode to be about segregation and yet he's
chosen to set it in this time and place where he's got these two two cast of color yeah well
yeah he's got he's got an entire an entire non-white tardis crew for the first time and
yeah so he's he's he's he's he's chosen to do that and yet he's chosen to make it a minor aspect of
the episode and you know i i thought the episode did quite well to give a kind of sense of time and
place to some degree i mean it wasn't like i feel i know what 1952 miami was like after watching it
but it's the kind of spooky cinema with the diner and the attitude.
It works okay as a time and place,
and yet so would lots of other time and place.
It needs to feel like...
What I feel it needs in the story is it needs to be rooted.
It needs to be Earth history at some point.
It needs to be a recognizable time and place.
But why that one?
And I do not know the answer.
this is this is tying into that the thing i was saying before it's like he's got a little
checklist that he's just i've got to work this in somewhere and okay fine segregation is bad
let's make sure people know segregation is bad and and remind them and okay so we can set this
in 1952 and in florida fine okay it doesn't integrate into the plot well enough and if he
could just, if it could just make it an important part of the story in such a way that the audience
watching it and really gets why it's so bad. I'm not, it's, it's so bad because it's obviously bad,
right? I mean, that's what we're, that's what we're being shown. We're being shown, see,
segregation is bad and we all agree, but did we really, you know, show why it was so bad?
did it really make a difference in this episode? And it didn't. And that's...
Well, but it's not central. It's not central to the episode. I mean, I...
Right.
I think...
It's added on.
One of the problems there is that, as you kind of allude to, it's that, yeah, we all know segregation is bad. Well, I think, I fear we're in a time where actually it's not ideal to just assume that your audience...
Yeah!
are in agreement with you on that. So I actually think if you're going there, making that point
is worth making. I'm delighted the show is where it is with this, as it were, groundbreaking
team in the TARDIS. But at the same time, I would not like for the show to kind of rest
on its laurels as if all of these battles have been fought and so i i think that's one aspect
of it but i think the other aspect of it is that you bring something like that in and you don't make
it the key focus of the story and it's almost impossible to to do anything about it so for all
the kind of discussion that has come up about how the rosa parks episode treated rosa parks and
whether that, you know, whether she had sufficient agency in the way she was portrayed,
that episode put her at the center of the story. And that was what the story was all about.
And so if you're going there, I kind of feel like that's probably what you have to do.
Yeah. I mean, I just, it just feels like he's bolting these things on and I,
and you know, we can throw Brock Hudson in there as well.
Same. Yeah. Same thing. Same thing. It's a passing mention. And honestly, I kind of wonder in a
Western world, not if you were in Africa, but in a Western world in 2025, does the target audience,
unlike RTD, who we know lived through the absolute worst of the HIV crisis and has written some
amazing work about it but do the young people you know are they getting anything out of that other
than you know rock Hudson never heard of him and I learned about him in my HIV class I mean I think
I think what RTD is probably doing there is he wants wants people to go away and ask that question
in a way that is almost more like it is a kind of throwaway line it doesn't it is it is just he's
tossing it out there for people to pick up. Also, as you say, he has written about this stuff and
just because of what happened to his partner, he may justifiably feel that he doesn't have to write
about this all the time. It doesn't have to be his thing. Although in some ways, if you were to
pick something out of this episode, those are the things that he could write in a way that I'm not
sure he could write about you know the black experience of segregation for example exactly
exactly oh yeah so the other thing i wanted to mention about that whole sometimes i topple
worlds sometimes i wait for them to topple themselves this is the superman problem this
is the superman hitler problem it's like superman exists in the comic book world in 1940s why doesn't
superman go take care of hitler well it's a problem doctor who has i right exactly may have
addressed that in one of his episode titles yeah and and you know i think the premise of a very bad
superman film the quest for peace was the same thing kid comes up you know sends him a letter
and says oh the world's gonna blow itself up with nuclear weapons can't you do anything he says oh
yeah actually i could just go grab all the nuclear weapons and destroy them who's gonna stop me you
know apart from lex luther but for making the world safe for weapons profiteering but you know
it is it's like you you have somebody who is so powerful and the doctor is so powerful he topples
gods yeah in this universe and but if he topples if he toppled slavery 300 years ago yeah he he
would destroy the web of time and all his friends and all his companions and all you know it's yeah
Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I get it. The show has to deal with these things. So the web of time or the fixed point in time or whatever are the writers kind of shortcut or shorthand for being able to push these out of the way in order to go to a particular place in time and have an interesting Doctor Who story.
because if you can't take Doctor Who wherever you want to take Doctor Who, it's not the show it is.
But this was a choice. We're going to set this story about a god of light being a 2D animation
coming to life and all of the kind of metafictional stuff around that. We're going to set this story
in 1952 Miami. And I still don't really see why that story has to be set in 1952 Miami.
also 1952 is an odd year since that's the middle of the korean war so the u.s involvement in the
korean war so a lot of those movie theater goers and probably wouldn't have been there you know
they'd been off dying for some ridiculous cause a couple things about the theater mr ringeting i
don't know if i've ever mentioned this on the podcast it's a it's a pet peeve of mine there
are people who are huge fans of old animation like the old disney stuff steamboat willie and
early warner brothers films i hate them i detest them not not because i'm a dislike animation for
example later 1950s warner brothers stuff and even disney stuff is so much better but like those
shorts like mr ring-a-ding would be they all had this they all had this characteristic to them
that drives me mad. And that is, hey, it's animated. They've got to be moving all the time.
So they're constantly bobbing up and down. And Mr. Ringeting is doing it.
Yeah, they're bobbing up and down, but at least in a fluid way. But it's like, no,
that's a 1930s animation, not a 1950s animation. Also, they really missed a trick,
And maybe they didn't, and I just couldn't find it.
But one of those film cans should have said Marco Polo on it.
I absolutely said that.
You know, as that scene came on, I was like, I cannot see a room like that and not think those canisters could have a Doctor Who, a missing Doctor Who episode in it.
Obviously, difficult in 1952 Miami, but still, that was my first thought.
Yeah.
Yeah, you get all those cans, it's got to be there.
It's got to be there.
So is the doctor Velma because Velma is the smart one
or because Velma has become the gay icon?
I don't know enough about Scooby-Doo to get into this stuff.
Well, in recent years, they've decided that Velma is a lesbian.
Okay.
That's the later interpretations they've moved Velma on.
I think that there is only one character that the new doctor reminds me of in Scooby-Doo,
and that's Scrappy-Doo.
And that is the hill I will stand on.
If he's a Scooby-Doo character, he is Scrappy-Doo.
The most obnoxious, noisy, useless character they've got, unless you need a door knockdown.
By the way, why does the sonic screwdriver explode locks now?
You're asking why the sonic screwdriver does what the sonic screwdriver does?
why not just unlock the lock you twist it and the shackles turn clunk but no it explodes i mean how
is how is that sonic how is it pyrotechnics out of that it just i can see how some things might
explode but not a padlock and it falls open that's what it should do so cartoon characters are two
dimensional if i'm if i'm reading this did was that supposed to imply that the doctor wasn't
able to think well because his brain had become two-dimensional i think the suggestion i i
interpreted it as saying that those kinds of animations didn't have the depth that live
action has i mean it feels pretty nonsensical to me but i don't know not to mention that there
are animation and i'm not a you know again animation's fine but i mean there are animated
stories that have far far more depth yeah well yeah i mean i think i it exactly exactly that
so if you think you know my ohiozaki kind of movies has it you know as opposed to
your Jean-Claude Van Damme blockbuster,
which is live action.
I mean, I guess the justification for it
is actually the language that we use.
When we're talking about any kind of storytelling
and we say the character is two-dimensional
and they're lacking depth,
that's kind of where they go with this,
But as they, in inverted commas, add depth to the characters of the Doctor and Belinda, they add depth to them as animations.
They become literally more three-dimensional.
That was fine for me in the moment.
But the whole 2D, 3D thing, I don't know.
Because there's that weird moment in the cold open where Lux says,
things are going to get 3D now as he climbs out of the screen.
And then he spends the next at least 40 minutes of the episode still in 2D.
So what was he talking about?
Yeah.
I still think, you know, they should try harder to hire actors who have American accents.
I was wondering what the accent would like.
And his dialogue is so awful.
too. I mean,
frankly, it's
insulting. It's truly
insulting. It was so bad.
It's like nobody's that
inane. Unless, of course, you're a
fictional character in the land of fiction.
But there you go.
Oh, please, a shower scene.
Yeah, that'd be nice. David
Tennant pops out of the shower.
Whoa, a weird dream.
And just go on. Spare
a thought for Mr. Pie.
Notice Belinda had no
emotional investment in his death.
Yeah.
Right?
She was pretty pleased about all the people coming out.
Oh, this is great.
We saved them all.
Not even a moment for Mr. Pie.
Yeah, fair, fair point.
So is the wardrobe on the TARDIS a close Aracocycle now?
From the Jetsons, you run in one door and you pop out the other in a surprise outfit?
I think that the problem is they've spent so much money on that enormous space.
Pointless space.
date of that i'd have i'd have appreciated that and you know when she comes out she's like looking
at it like she's never seen these clothes before not like she was gone into the because it could
be editing right they run in one room they we cut pause wait and then they come out it's just
an editing thing but clearly she's not seen these clothes before so she has been miraculously
transformed into 1952 clothing and hair so yeah it is i mean and well i don't know whether it's
It's something that this doctor has rigged up because, yeah, for a lot of previous incarnations of the doctor, the wardrobe has been used only after a regeneration.
And then, you know, once the doctor has clothes that fit the new body, both in terms of, I guess, physique and personality, then that's it done.
Not going to change again until death.
say, I'm going to say that if there is one thing that I will give to either RTD or our Moffat is,
and we don't, we didn't have enough time with Eccleston to really find out, but Tenet wearing
the same clothes, but different colors and Matt Smith kind of wearing the same clothes, but you
know, occasionally change. That's, that's what Tom Baker did. And that's what people do. You,
you have your you have your kind of personal uniform right you you develop a style of clothing
you like and then i don't i don't wear a brown pinstripe and converse all the time but some
people who go to work do wear a suit every day yes yeah and you know you i you know i had a uniform
my war to work. It wasn't, it was chinos and certain style of polo shirt. And I had a whole
bunch of them, but more or less, you could pretty much pin me down to that's what I'm going to be
wearing. It's very, very rare. I would wear something different because it's convenient.
Who cares? I don't care. I like it. And, you know, lots of people do that. Lots of people do
that so when the doctor was in a mode where he wore the same kind of clothes because that's what
he likes but you know different even pertwee changed jackets and frilly shirts some once
you got to davison then that was jnt's fault don't you know that pertwee yeah i mean davison is is
very much a uniform but i think it starts with pertwee and i think that's you know eccleston
How can you say that when Hartnell and Troughton wore nothing?
Same outfit.
But, well, yeah, sort of.
But then it's creating a look for their own doctor.
I think Pertwee was making a statement, and the statement was about kind of costume and flamboyance.
Yeah.
And I think that in the same way, Eccleston was making a statement, which was about saying the costume's not the important thing. And I think Capaldi was sort of saying the same thing, although his take on it was more, I want the fans to be able to play my character without necessarily having to buy merch.
Especially if they happen to have a Pertwee outfit around somewhere.
But yeah, I only have one other thing, and I thought this is kind of outside the realm.
So sure, I've mentioned this before.
I don't listen to other podcasts that review the episodes until after we have done this recording.
And after the last one, there was a really, I don't know that this is a controversial opinion one way or the other.
But I have noticed that there are lots of podcasts and not just Doctor Who podcasts.
I'm talking about any kind of podcast.
And then there are YouTube channels, similarly, where the hosts have adopted a stance like,
I think positivity is the way to go.
Perhaps that's the right answer in this world.
I don't know.
I think that's a bit dishonest.
I personally do not try to adopt negativity.
It just feels like it during Doctor Who season lately.
You don't have to try.
There you go.
See, it's not trying.
I try to be honest.
And I get where that can come off as negative,
particularly if somebody isn't particularly honest.
But I was listening to a podcast where they're always positive.
They always spin the positive.
They find a way to spin the positive.
And I just thought it was really weird that they launched off with this
I watched this episode and I realized that I'm old.
I'm old.
And this is not made for me.
This,
this story is telling style,
this storytelling.
It's just,
it's not made for me.
And I was feeling really old.
Nonetheless,
it's really great.
Well,
I'm,
I've got,
I got some sympathy with that because I kind of feel like, I mean, I did feel a bit like that when I was watching Class, I'll be honest.
But I thought, you know, Patrick Ness, this great rep, and this show must be really good.
But I have no idea why they're doing this the way they're doing it, and it doesn't really work for me.
And that made me feel old.
I don't know that the current Doctor Who makes me feel old.
I think it makes me feel like this is not my favorite version of the show.
And I've talked about some of my reservations or whatever.
But when I watch it, I'm still trying to look for how it works well in its own terms.
And yeah, I guess you could say that's kind of taking a positive spin on it
because I'm taking my preferences, which are, I love Stephen Moffat's Doctor Who, and I'm trying
to sort of set those aside and look at the show that we're watching rather than thinking, you know,
I wish Stephen Moffat was still writing that. I think I did that during the Chibnall era. I'm
certainly trying to do that now. It's definitely become more, this is not a show that is as much
what I want to watch, shall we say. It's still Doctor Who, but it's making me feel when I watch
it, I wish it was something else. I wish it was something else. But I'm also aware when I go and
look at the reactions online, that a lot of people, particularly the kind of people I follow
who are not Doctor Who fans, the not we in Moffat terms, are loving these episodes. There's no
detailed review there's just a bunch of messages from people saying another great episode of doctor
who last night i really loved the kind of energy of this season or whatever and i'm like okay well
good for you then yeah i i i don't know i don't know doctor who has always been like this this is
you know this is the the perspective i am taking from 62 years of the show is that we can sit down
and have a jolly good old argument about the Sylvester McCoy era, because there's stuff there
that I just love. And I know that there is nothing I can do that will make you enjoy it.
And it's got to be the other way around as well. You know, there are, I can't say that there are,
yeah, there are things that can do to make me enjoy it. You can make me watch this first.
Well, all right. I'm never quite sure where to peg your dislike in terms of, is this McCoy bad or is this just?
Of classic Doctor Who, there is nothing worse than McCoy year one. Nothing. He's terrible.
It's like the stories are terrible.
The performances are terrible.
I'm not saying they can't act.
I'm just saying the performance that were asked of them were terrible.
The stories make no sense.
They just, I do not.
I'm going to say right now, I mean, we could really get into this in a whole other episode,
but I'm going to put Paradise Towers above the web planet.
Sorry.
Paradise Towers.
Wow.
Above the web planet.
Yep.
stone cold classic,
like the web plan.
There you go.
I'm not saying the web planet is the best thing they ever did on doctor who
or,
or even in the top tier or even in the top half,
but no paradise towers is worse.
I,
I there's,
I,
you know,
I remember those when they were coming out and thinking,
could they have,
could they have actually gotten worse?
I mean,
we've got,
we've had Delta in the Bannerman.
Wow.
We've had Happiness Patrol, yeah.
That was one of them.
No, no, Happiness Patrol was later.
That was Ace, wasn't it?
It was Ace.
It was, I was trying to remember whether it was McCoy's second or third season.
It was his second season, I think.
It had to have been his second season because we didn't get Ace until the last of an Ice
World there, which that Dragon's Fire, that was terrible.
Wasn't that the last of the first season?
Dragon Fire was the last of the first season.
Paradise Towers.
What was the other one in there?
Time and the Ronnie?
mark of the time in the rani time in the rani paradise towers yeah delta and the bannerman
and dragon fire actually delta yeah delta was first mccoy so that's a good episode
anyway i feel we may be straying off this in wales no the the i guess that i guess the point i'm
i'm getting at here is that there are doctor who fans who like time lash you know it's it it's just
it does have that oscar worther performance by paul darrow well absolutely it's it's a show where
there is nothing constant except the fact that it does keep completely changing and every time it
does and i and you know i get this amongst my friends who who will sort of say oh you know i
stopped watching the show when matt smith took over i was like what you can't be serious this
was the best the show has ever been but then you know oh i i came back to watch jodie whittaker or
whatever it may be it's it's and and and not all the same you know that there'll be some who go
i didn't like that peter capaldi peter capaldi one of our greatest actors okay whatever no yeah
but you know i i definitely for for whatever reason you can say this is definitely not
a show that I would appreciate if it did not have the name attached to it. If you set me down and
said, here, we're going to start the show with the goblins and watch this TV series, disguise the
TARDIS as something else. And if I could divorce this from knowing that this would be an ape on
aping Doctor Who. That's what it's doing. It's aping Doctor Who. It's not actually Doctor Who,
it's aping Doctor Who. No, I think it is Doctor Who. It is Doctor Who because Doctor Who has
always had duds and great episodes. It's just what I think are duds and great episodes is
different from what any other Doctor Who fan thinks are duds and great episodes.
I think, for me especially, that having Russell T. Davis running the show means that it varies
a lot more but there are you know i i'd like say the goblins one i quite enjoyed joy to the world
was great there were a couple of episodes last season that i thought were pretty good i think if
if you sat me down in front of this episode the you know the one we are normally discussing right
now then i don't and i'd never seen the show before then i don't know that i would keep watching it
no i think i can definitely say i would not keep watching it you know i think that's where
your your your point about you know the fact this is doctor who keeps some of us
watching the show is true but then again i think you know like i say from the the kind of comments
that i'm seeing on social media i think there are people who are casual viewers who are watching
these episodes in a way that they weren't watching some of the chibnall episodes when i
found a lot more i was getting a lot more from the show so one of our patrons i think it's mark
i'm gonna i'm almost positive it's mark actually said to us you know he doesn't watch these he he
he just lets us talk about them saves him the trouble from having to watch them he listens
He listens to us talking, even though he hasn't watched the episode.
Mark, I salute your dedication to Fusion Patrol, and thank you.
Exactly.
So anyway, do you have anything else on this episode?
I guess we ought to mention, just because I think it probably proves that Belinda doesn't live next door to Ruby,
that Mrs. Flood appears to live in 1952 Miami as well.
So some of the conclusions I was drawing last week are wrong.
I also, and I think you were probably going to mention this and have done some research
into it.
I just noticed that Murray Gold was doing his bit for the environment and doing a lot
of recycling this week.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was Amy's thing.
Da da da da da da da.
That one.
When they were starting to talk about how, you know, we realize we're not real.
yeah in that scene yeah in that scene there was definitely a track that i i've listened to a lot
and there were other scenes where i noticed it as well it's it's curious that up until
i don't know how to refer to seasons anymore but up up until the last peter capaldi season
season 10 as it was in those days or season 36 as i would insist on calling it they the silver
screen were releasing a soundtrack for every season they didn't release a soundtrack for that
season when seg and akinola took over the show they did kind of rediscover their enthusiasm for
putting out the discs and you know there were like three discs a season or the specials got
their own discs or whatever it was and then since i think as far as i'm aware since russell t davis
and murray gold have come back there ain't nothing from from any of those and murray gold has written
some new music he is definitely recycling now but he has written three music yeah i i mean i wonder
i did wonder this at the time i wonder whether he's still i i admired so much you know he did
what what would it what would it have been it would have been well it would have been at least
10 years wasn't it and he he kind of was discovering new themes and almost kind of new
not exactly new styles because it's all very murray gold but it was it was still feeling fresh
all the way through that original run but now he's coming back i wonder what there is in it
for him does it it's does it feel exciting to work on a show that you maybe feel you did everything
before maybe he's got maybe he's been given instructions to call in on the older stuff so
that we once again kind of get that whole uh it's storytelling technique it's it's the land of
fiction well i don't know because i think one of the things that that that he in particular
is so good at i mean obviously it's a standard standard thing for film composers but but the
the kind of light motifs that he developed.
I think he's good at it because they were so,
so memorable and the different characters,
even the different incarnations of the doctor had their own music.
And so to,
to draw on something,
you know,
there's a,
there's a thing that you associate with Amy to draw on that in a,
in a scene that doesn't have Amy in it feels kind of weird.
It's,
I think it's,
I think it's the Amy fairy tale.
theme so it's just that sort of person caught up in the doctor's world idea in a way having
having no music having no music in the scene where they stepped out of the show might have
been more appropriate perhaps all right i think we're good right next time it's the well i have
some thoughts about that i don't know if i want to say them out here but something about watching
that preview.
If we don't...
All right, I'm just going to say,
I'm going to, I'm going to,
I'm just going to say three words.
And if I'm totally wrong,
I'm totally wrong.
Waters of Mars.
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.
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