you're listening to fusion patrol a listener supported podcast
each week we take a single episode of a science fiction tv series movie or
audio and overanalyze it to within an inch of its life welcome to the discussion
Hello and welcome to another episode of Fusion Patrol. I'm Eugene.
And I'm Simon.
And tonight we are looking at season 2025 of Doctor Who episode 4, Lucky Day, episode synopsis.
It's New Year's 2007. London and the Doctor and Belinda arrive for another Vindicator reading.
They meet a small street urchin named Conrad, and the Doctor gives him a coin,
says it's his lucky day, then buggers off. Conrad goes to tell his mom about the appearing blue box,
the doctor, and Belinda Chandra, and she spacks the little liar upside the head for being such
a little shit. Fair dues. The year is 2024, and Conrad, now grown, self-proclaims that he's spent
years tracking down appearances of the blue box and the doctor, but then he sees it again.
Investigating, he observes, while the doctor and Ruby put paid to the shriek,
a multi-dimensional creature that vomits on its plurie,
then stalks it to terrorize its victims.
Conrad observes the doctor give Ruby the antidote,
but he too has been vomited on and receives no treatment.
As the doctor and Ruby leave, he snaps a picture of Ruby.
A year later, and Ruby is on his podcast,
talking about aliens, the doctor, and to a lesser degree, unit.
It's a meet-cute right out of a Nora Ephraim screenplay.
They go out for dinner, then Ruby reveals the truth.
The shriek returned for him.
Unit has captured it, and she gives him a vial of the antidote,
making him promise to take it before bedtime.
The next few weeks, C's romance blooming,
and Ruby confiding in Conrad all of the things she's done and seen.
Finally, feeling like she can open up and trust someone.
They go away for a weekend in an English village,
and Ruby begins to notice the telltale signs of a shriek on the prowl.
She calls Kate Lethbridge-Stewart at unit,
but there are no telltale signs of a shriek on the loose,
and Kate verifies that the shriek they captured is still secure.
The pub they are in appears to be surrounded by multiple shriek,
and when Conrad's pal, Sparky, goes missing,
and Conrad admits he never took the antidote,
things are looking grim.
Ruby goes outside with a fireplace poker in an effort to,
I'm not sure make the Shriek laugh at her just before they eat her.
She's joined by Conrad, who feels responsible.
They spy the Shriek just as the unit helicopters arrive.
Kate wants them alive to investigate how they got to Earth without being detected.
And then the truth is told.
Conrad is a lying little shit that needed to be hit upside the head a whole lot more often
and a whole lot harder when he was a child.
The Shriek are his friends in costumes.
and this has been an elaborate setup to lure out Unit and expose them live-streamed to the world.
Conrad's not just a scheming jerk, he's also a cruel asshole,
and he makes sure Ruby knows just how much he really loathed her and hated pretending to be her boyfriend.
Kate has them arrested, but they are soon released because terrorizing a little village
and screwing up their electricity is just a harmless prank,
and the disaffected youth of the world turn against Unit.
It's looking bad
And then everyone in UNIT is doxxed
Geneva orders the UNIT assets
Alien and Tech retrieved to Geneva HQ
Lest the British government seize the UNIT tower
There's a traitor in UNIT
And he lets Conrad in
And gets shot for his pains
Conrad makes his way to the command center
And Kate lets him in
He is armed
With not just a stolen UNIT gun
But also a live stream camera
He demands that they admit that UNIT is a scam
To cover up their real agenda
Conrad is a nasty piece of work
But he crosses a line when he calls Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge Stewart a coward
So Kate lets the shriek out to hunt him down
Which it does
Everyone except Kate is pretty much horrified that she's going to let it kill him
She even hacks his live stream to send pictures from all the unit HQ cameras all around the world
So they can watch Conrad be killed by the so-called fake monster
Terrified, Conrad relents, and Ruby tases the Shriek, which apparently isn't very formidable
after all. And then Conrad goes right back to his former ways, claiming the air effects have
improved. Then the Shriek bites his arm off. The opinion of the world changes, and hashtags are
all pro-unit. Huzzah! Recovering in his prison cell, the TARDIS materializes around Conrad,
the doctor gives him a stern talking to, and then when Conrad isn't impressed, the doctor drops him
his cell, only to have Mrs. Flood let him out. The end. Okay, what'd you think? Well, I think...
Wait, wait, wait. Before I ask that, I do have one thing to do first. Because right for cover
up for last week, right after I clicked the shut off recording button last week is when it occurred
to me that the mineshaft in last week's episode, the well, is not a well. It's a mineshaft.
And this supports my theory that they rewrote the episode and that that was probably meant to be a
mercury well. They were trying to pull mercury out of the planet. And then the story got rewritten
to be about diamonds so that they could make it a midnight sequel. Just putting that out there.
Okay. Sorry to interrupt. Go on. What did you think of the episode?
Yeah. Back to this week. So, I mean, I'm a big fan of the Doctor Light episodes. I
struggle to think of a Doctor Light episode that I haven't enjoyed.
I don't.
Love and Monsters.
Yeah. Well, you see, Love and Monsters, I still don't totally understand why that's such a
Marmite episode. I don't understand quite why it's so divisive. I accept that it is. I recognize that
not all Doctor Who fans think it is as wonderful as it is, but it is wonderful.
There is a sense in which this is kind of retreading that love and monsters thing,
although it's obviously doing some slightly different things with it in the sense that our
Clive Banks, Elton Pope character here, there's a twist. And obviously, it's centered on
ruby in a story that's kind of at least you know nominally a kind of post post companion
story yeah but yeah i just i thought this was terrible sorry it was awful it was awful there
were bits i liked but there is there is there are so many things in it that i found unsatisfying and
unconvincing that it really felt like less than some of its parts which were not great to begin
with interesting interesting i actually kind of liked it i mean really it is dr light and that
is a huge improvement you know in this current era i like last year's dr light yeah you know
i don't particularly like ruby but and i don't and i actually so i don't have much empathy for ruby
But even in this episode, even I had empathy for her because she really, really got dumped on hard.
And in it, it just absolute.
I don't know that anybody has ever been as as a despicable, disgusting villain as Conrad in an episode of Doctor Who in all the years.
And I'm including Davros.
I mean, at least Davros, you can kind of understand him.
This guy.
I don't know.
Just so the viewers know, we're in just a little bit of a time pressure this episode, so I'm going to kind of run through my notes as quickly as I can, and we can just kind of see if that bounces off all our topping points.
I want to say, I also think this is a clever approach to a Dr. Light episode, just kind of the way that they interwove the current companion and past companions and the way it's structured.
I do think it's interesting that RTD era, I know this is not an RTD episode, Pete McTie,
I believe, unless it's McTeague.
Okay, it could be McTie.
I thought it was McTie, but RTD really does have an obsession with checking back in on
companions.
I mean, we've checked in on Rose, Martha, Donna, Ruby, Mel, Sarah Jane.
Maybe Joe Jones, because that was in Sarah Jane Adventures, right?
Even though that was Matt Smith era, you know, it's kind of an obsession.
rtd it wasn't rtd wrote it i probably i mean i'm not sure whether you count sarah jane adventures
that were made when matt smith was the doctor part of the rtd era you do right i mean
like yeah i mean i think even marfitt wasn't producing them no well no i i'm pretty sure
that was executive produced by rtd i not stake my life on it but i i'm fairly sure so
it's kind of interesting they never really seem to have great post-doctor times it's kind of a
it's almost a melancholy but in this case ptsd ruby so which i mean so i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm
gonna agree with the point that i think the structure is interesting i think checking in
on a companion at this point like after oh you know after she's come home and what what that is
like is interesting. I also think that the timeline is generally interesting in the sense
that the logic for this episode being where it is in the series is because for the Doctor and
Belinda in the cold open, we're in the sequence following the well and before presumably whatever's
coming next week but i'm also presuming the other appearances of the doctor in the episode
are from some other earlier point in his timeline yes i think oh yeah at the same time checking in
on ruby is a bit of a throwback but this is taking her forward in her timeline to a kind of
almost contemporary period with belinda kind of pre pre-traveling with the doctor so all of that
is kind of quite an interesting setup i think and i think the reason that it doesn't that doesn't
satisfy me because you know potentially that's that's what would have kind of saved the episode
for me is that like you i'm have i'm struggling with with ruby i think i didn't have much of a
problem with her last year but since she's left i kind of realized that she didn't leave much of
an impression on me so when she comes back in this i'm struggling to get a handle on what her
motivation is really because i don't necessarily really have much of an insight into her character
so that leaves me with lots of questions about the way she acts in the way that she does like
why is she appearing on conrad's podcast and why i i don't i don't want i don't want to kind of put
it all on but why is i don't i don't want to blame her for being treated so badly i agree he's a bit
of a villain but why is she so easily seduced by this this con artist i'd i'd like to have seen not
that she not that she's to blame for it not that she shouldn't have been but i'd like to have seen
a bit more about why and then when she is like that sequence outside the pub was weird like why
what was she going out there to do?
With a poker.
Yeah, that it was a discussion that we had.
And you asked me about, prior to the recording,
you asked me about what the not we thought.
And I watched this with three of the not we.
And that very point came up.
So it felt like it stuck out like a sore thumb.
And to me, what all that added up towards was,
I don't really get what Ruby is thinking or doing in this.
When she says she thinks she has PTSD, it's kind of like that's a potentially interesting
take on, yes, what the kind of extreme experiences that you would have traveling with the doctor
could do to you, but it doesn't land for me because I just have lost my sense of this character.
I don't think we ever really had much of a sense of the character, but I mean, one, and this is just being as harsh as possible.
She's just dumb and reckless.
And she kind of was last year, too.
And that's kind of her personality.
It's an interesting thing.
She's supposed to be about the same age as Rose was, right?
Yeah.
Rose seems so much more mature.
Ruby seems like a foolish kid.
And sorry, kids, but sure, the youngers, the youngs listening to this podcast are probably all up in arms in that.
But she's always seen dumb and reckless.
Yeah.
To me.
Yeah.
And it is.
Yes.
I mean, Rose was Rose was smart and brave, I guess.
And so the kind of smart is opposite of the dumb.
The brave and the reckless could easily be mistaken for one another, but they're not the same.
that and even even the reckless you know if you think about i mean this is obviously straying into
the big finnish companions but if you think about flip jackson who was a companion to colin baker's
doctor in the audios one of her kind of defining features is her recklessness like she is very
reckless to the point where the doctor is a bit alarmed by it but you kind of understand that is
part of who she is she's quite kind of she's wild and impulsive in a in a in a way that is
a bit unusual a bit exceptional i don't get the feeling that ruby is like there is some
there is some particular character trait there is just that she does a lot of reckless things
if that makes sense uh you know and and as you say the ptsd notion kind of makes sense i could
see how somebody who everywhere you go, monsters are attacking you and now you've returned to
normal life and you hear noises. You think monsters are attacking you or, or however,
I mean, that's an oversimplification, but you know, you're, you're back in it and I can totally
see that, but I really think unit probably has some really good counselors for that much better
than a ratty little support group meeting in a library. Yeah. Or Kate saying, you know, you come
and you come and talk to me. I'm going to come to one of the other things that really dissatisfied
me about this episode, which has a lot to do with Kate Stewart. But one of the things was Kate
Stewart just saying, you come and talk to me when Kate Stewart should have said, you come to me and
we will get you the best counseling that unit has. Yeah. With that tabernacle, they probably at least
have too you know i mean that surely that's and and all the people who see monsters and things i
mean yeah okay just switch roll back here for a second about the time frame we were explicitly
told that the early sequence with ruby and the shriek and the doctor was immediately after the
beatles yes which is odd because we all have complained and i mean we all as in fandom in
general it's like it's really weird that there's a six month or so gap between snot babies and the
beatles sing about dogs and yet they don't place this in that gap they place this after that gap
and that was like such a perfect instead of saying oh i'm gonna have a coffee with john
lennon and she should have been talking about i'm still cleaning snot off my clothes or whatever
the case may be but it's just it's just odd and then well i don't think it is i don't think it
is odd i think i think the reason for that is it's very difficult to place it in that gap
in half a line of dialogue it's like it perhaps mentioning the beatles you don't the audience
doesn't have to think about it they you know they know oh it's okay it's after that episode
i've got it whereas saying you know oh it was six months since we met the snot babies
i don't know how you actually make that sound right clearly ruby is post-sutec
in her thing because they literally mentioned turning everyone to dust and fighting gods
yeah so that is true and the doctor does not yet know belinda chandra when he kept
traps Conrad in the TARDIS.
So that is person.
And the question is,
is that the person he heard her name from?
Because it was very awkward on the doctor.
And this is Belinda Chandra, right?
When he, when he calls her all the time.
And then the kid remembers that Belinda Chandra and then passes it on.
So it's kind of, it's, it's kind of weird, but yeah.
And, and, okay, let's just pretend I'm,
this is probably later in my notes.
Conrad tells him about Belinda Chandra.
She didn't even imagine Belinda Chandra yet.
The doctor later says he came looking for Belinda Chandra because he heard about her from a guy.
Well, this is a guy.
Slimy guy, but a guy.
But would he do that?
Would you go hunting for a companion before the companion is fated to do this?
What about the web of time?
Has anyone thought about the web of time here?
I think not.
It doesn't make any sense.
But okay.
Also, what does everyone remember?
Clearly, the people at UNIT remember being turned into dust, right?
When the doctor undid that, everyone seems to know what was happening.
So the world must all know that something really dusty happened and that got undone, right?
I mean, so how is an organization like Think Tank, we'll come back to that name in a bit, able to...
No, that's the point of the episode.
We'll come back to that later.
Let's see.
Ruby's crushed, rightly so.
I mean, that's worse than a betrayal, right?
A betrayal is someone you did that.
I mean, yes, it's a betrayal.
She trusted him and he betrayed her.
But I mean, it's not just a betrayal.
It was a setup betrayal.
Those are those are even worse than just I was your friend.
And then I decided to stab you in the back.
He was never her friend.
He was he was.
And and staying on Ruby, she says at the end of this, you know, I'm just I'm going away.
I'm going to get away from people.
I'm a long time.
Is that the end?
Have we gotten rid of Ruby or will she be back for the finale?
Oh, no, this is not the end.
No, I'm sure.
I'm sure she's down.
Damn.
I was hoping that was her.
Sayonara.
You're never going to see me again.
I'm going to go live on a desert island somewhere with my with my PTSD.
And and is that the same performer as biological mom?
Same actor?
I think so.
I didn't check a little different, but okay.
Let's looking at Conrad here.
I've got, obviously he's a horrid little shit from the word go, but what does he believe?
What does he actually believe?
Not counting what he's selling, but is he trying to expose unit as a fake, but he knows
they're not?
I mean, he's seen the freaking TARDIS land.
He's seen the Doctor and Ruby track down and deal with a monster, which he saw.
And they didn't know he was there.
So it's not like he should be making the argument.
This is like, oh, this is some unit covert operation to spread disinformation because there was no disinformation.
There was no information spread.
So it's like, I feel like he actually believes these things and yet he is deliberately lying about them.
And wow, he built up a podcast to expose this stuff.
But at the same time, the podcast is a front to get Ruby so that he can execute his real plan.
That whole thing is a problem.
The podcast thing didn't make any sense to me. Generally, the whole idea that Conrad would be able to do what he did as well as he did is something I find a bit difficult to accept. He doesn't seem that skilled, and if he is that skilled, why is he such a loser? I don't know.
What I think there is and what I think maybe doesn't come across enough is there is a bit of the kind of psychological reasoning behind why he is invested in kind of proving that unit is a front, even though he may not, like you say, 100% believe it himself, which I think has to do with his mum.
and that scene in the opening where she reacts to him. Because there's the point in the episode
where he says to Ruby that his mom's died. And I was instantly like, his mom hasn't died.
His mom hasn't died. And my friend watching with me was like, oh, and she was instantly into,
is this a timey-wimey thing? Is so-and-so his mom? And it's like, no, no, it's just,
he's lying. He's lying about this. He's clearly lying about this. He was lying about it because
what was going on there, I thought, and I saw nothing to contradict this, was that he had
convinced himself again of a lie that made him feel better because his mum was clearly
an awful awful woman and he preferred the idea that she had died and horribly you know he'd been
left an orphan rather than that she abandoned him and you know and yet he pays for her to live
comfortably that was listed that they said that in the episode later on she's not dead but i
He pays for her to live in France or wherever.
But I think that's because she's controlling.
I think, I don't know, I think it's part of the psychology.
I could see the stuff being woven in there.
I just didn't think it kind of came across in the,
we didn't really kind of get a handle on Conrad and who he was.
And the kind of twist came too fast.
It was a bit like the way in which the master's relationship with, in The Sound of Drums, the master's relationship with his companion, there's a load of implications about a pretty dark and unpleasant relationship there that doesn't ever kind of get surfaced.
but at least there there's kind of like you you understand why not right i mean it's
like i think rtd wanted to suggest something but wasn't willing to say it wasn't going to
kind of go there on a on a on a family show whereas with this i felt like those were the
elements of who conrad was and therefore what was motivating him to do what he did
but it just the dots were not joined that i yeah i'm not i'm not really i mean we can there is
clearly this episode that the central theme is of course talking about again the social medias and
gaslighting and and misinformation and whatnot so okay but trying to figure out because he also
and it's self-proclaimed. He claims he was searching for information on the blue box for
17 years and collecting all this stuff. So it's not like he isn't obsessed with it. And again,
I don't know whether he, I don't know whether he believes it or not, or whether he's convinced
himself that it's not real, but yet at the same time, I mean, he didn't take the antidote. Is
that, is that a stand in for vaccine denialism? I don't know. He kind of reminds me of possibly,
he kind of reminds me of Alex Jones. And I don't mean Alex Jones appeared in this episode. I mean,
Alex Jones, the guy that, you know, could not possibly believe all the things that he espouses
on his show without being completely insane, but he makes a lot of money from it. And is that what
this is? Is, is Conrad supposed to be Alex Jones? Is he supposed to be a guy that is peddling this
stuff so he will enrich himself? Because I don't see how that's happening here, apart from TikTok
streams. I'm not sure that... He's definitely Alex Jones, right? That was my thought during the
episode. This is kind of RTD's take on Infowars. The reason Alex Jones does what he does or did
can't just be money. It can't just be money. So I think part of what's going on here is to do with
the psychology of where his obsession with the doctor and connected with that unit and all the
rest of that comes from. And in this case, it's mummy issues. But I think that RTD probably has
in mind when you're talking about kind of misinformation and all that kind of thing,
he's probably also thinking about why Trump does what he does. And the fact that in the end,
it comes back to he wants people to make him feel like he matters. And in Trump's case,
that's coming back to issues with what his mom thought of him. She thought he was weak.
And he wants to prove that that is not the case, despite the fact everything he does seems to prove it is.
And I think maybe something similar is going on here with Conrad.
And I think he hates his mother, but I also think he loves his mother and wants to prove something to her.
And I think it's all a bit kind of mixed up.
And in the end, what it comes down to is he wants the doctor and unit to make it seem like he matters.
He wants them to pay attention to him and nothing else matters.
None of the truth, the lies, none of that is important to his psychology.
Well, he did try to apply to get into unit and Kate's assessment don't trust him.
The question is, was he trying to legitimately get into unit because he was obsessed with the doctor and the blue box and the monsters and things?
And then when he did not get it allowed, then it turned to wanting to destroy them?
Or did he want to destroy them to begin with?
And that was part of his attempt to do it.
I don't think.
The suggestion is that he genuinely wanted to get in and then he was kind of motivated by revenge.
Revenge.
Okay.
But I, you know, I think he's unstable.
He's unstable.
So if he had got in, it wouldn't have been like, well, that would have meant that he
never needed to seek revenge.
So he would have just been a model employee.
He would clearly have been a problem whatever happened.
Yeah.
Okay.
So he works for an organization called Think Tank, who were, in classic Doctor Who, the
people who created the robot and wanted to take over the earth as a fascist dictatorship
ruled by scientific thought.
And that would have been in the past because it was the Brigadier.
And he did have a particular bug against the Brigadier as well, which, you know, would
he have really known much about the Brigadier anyway?
So is Think Tank an homage to the original Think Tank?
Or is this in some way a carry on, like the children of Think Tank or the grandchildren
children of Think Tank who are still bearing a grudge against Unit because it's Unit and the
doctor. But I mean, the name doesn't make much sense otherwise. I completely missed the reference
and I thought that he had established Think Tank. Well, they all popped their shirts and said,
we're members of Think Tank. I was like, yeah, maybe he did create it. Maybe he didn't. Where
I think you're right. It has to be a reference back to Robot.
Okay. One of the things I like about this episode, particularly in a way,
you and I are not stupid in this.
Go on then. Make the case for that.
They are, the Shriek came to Earth. They captured it.
They are securely holding it, safely and securely.
They have monitoring going.
When Ruby reports it, they check all their stuff.
They've got scientific information and data to find and locate Shriek.
They cannot see it.
Fair enough, because it's not there, right?
Kate checks it.
We don't assume that the thing is still locked away.
We verify that it's still there.
Ruby, who should be considered a reliable witness, basically phones in a report and says, I don't know, kind of tells them not to come.
but they do anyway. It's like, no, we have a companion of the doctor who's reporting a shriek
and that's worth investigating. So in all that, the way unit operates, the way they're set up and
the way they're functioning, I think Kate's got them on the ball. This is far, sorry,
sorry, Brigadier. This is kind of far better than the way the Brigadier handled this,
which was, oh, that's ridiculous.
No monsters every freaking time.
And so, right?
So the doctor's like, no, no, no, I think we really do have some cave monsters down there.
Yeah.
Right.
So, no, I think that's done it well.
I've got, you know, scientific advisors who are actually good at their job.
Not as good as the doctor, but, you know, and Bingham is Bingham, right?
Is back.
It is.
Yeah.
I've got a question about Bingham, which is that she wasn't in the SUTEC two-parter. She'd been replaced by some nine-year-old scientific advisor. And I knew that she was going to be in the war between the land and the sea. So I guess I was expecting her to come back. There's no explanation of where she'd been or why she'd been replaced and now she'd been unreplaced.
It's probably in Hong Kong, like Mills.
Or Sydney.
Was it Sydney?
Okay.
Yeah.
Somebody was on the way.
Someone was on the way to Hong Kong too, though, weren't they?
I seem to recall that.
Maybe I was watching something else.
Yeah, I think Mel was in Sydney.
Yeah, she was on her way to Sydney, but yeah.
Not even something else I was watching.
It was Hong Kong the same day.
Fringe, maybe.
A couple of things about UNIT.
Geneva is still there.
Seems to be the controlling.
Well, seems to be the controlling entity over UNIT.
And so I've kind of had this question about it since Doctor Who came back in 2005.
You know, why did they change that name to the stupid unified intelligence task force
when then it would be UN period I period T.
She drives me to the bonks.
But isn't it because they were all...
The UN got upset.
Yes, the UN got pissy about it.
Yep.
I verified that today.
They apparently did.
But yet, this now once again appears to be very United Nations.
Just not in name.
I think the only thing that the UN could actually, to be honest, I don't even know on what basis they could say you can't use the name.
I don't think they did.
I think they asked for it to be changed.
But yeah, I don't see they have a leg to stand on.
They're paid for with our taxpayers' money dug on it.
We're going to use their name.
But if it is the UN, could the British government really take control and get the assets in the Black Archive and whatnot?
Just because a few politicians who obviously do, in fact, know that this stuff is real.
You know, if anybody knows, it's the government people that these things have really been happening and they've been covering them up or whatever.
But it's not unit doing the cover-up, it's anybody above and beyond.
There is, just talking about cover-ups for a moment, there is a problem with this public
knowledge of aliens thing.
And I think it's specifically a problem because of the longevity of Doctor Who.
It's a bit like the fact that every week, as you were complaining about the brigadiers,
It's like, no, it can't be aliens, absolute nonsense.
It's like, how many times does this have to happen
before he's willing to say,
well, maybe actually it could be aliens
since it was aliens every other single time.
And it was his idea to create units because of the Yeti.
Well, yes, indeed.
So then you've got the problem that once,
And I feel like this is particularly an issue with Russell T Davies.
I can't remember it happening before RTD, at least as much.
I mean, there are things, right?
But there are often things in the future,
like the Mondas being ejected from the Earth's solar system
or whatever is like, it's in the far future of 1986.
Okay, you set it in the future, it's not such a problem.
But once you start, and I guess there's in Battlefield, I think it is, there's a reference
to the king and there's a five pound coin and whatever.
So there's some kind of small nods to there being a parallel presence that Doctor Who
is set within.
But once you start getting into the kind of Battle of Canary Wharf and Aliens of London
and all of that kind of stuff, people are obviously not going to be unaware that there
are some pretty strange things happening. And so the kind of world that the citizens of Earth
in Doctor Who live in and the world that we know is diverging. And it's diverging now over sort of
the 20 years since aliens under nor so it that makes it that makes it kind of quite hard to get
a handle on how plausible is it that all of that could be special effects or whatever and it feels
like rtd is trying to do what they did in the x files the the kind of are aliens real or are they
not thing that sustains the kind of tension between Mulder and Scully because Mulder always
thought everything was aliens and Scully was always, there has to be another explanation for
it until at some point Mulder became disillusioned and Scully became believer and they swapped and
then that lasted for a couple of series. And even in the kind of short run of the X-Files,
they managed to have to swap that back and forth just to keep it going. I don't think it's necessarily
a problem to tell a story in which there is a kind of big public threat to Earth. I will say
one of the best things ever is Torchwood Children of Earth, which is absolutely that. But I think
the problem is in kind of...
This in this universe.
Yeah. But the problem with kind of bringing this tension out of this and
trying to set up the kind of the think tank perspective that everything is special effects
and is the government trying to fake you out and then and then you do get into those those
questions like you've just been asking about well what do the what do the actual politicians believe
how and i guess you know if you wanted to make the whole show about that you could properly
explore that stuff but on its own it's a bit like i it's hard to know what you're supposed to think
i i think that you know in in this universe there shouldn't be a person on this planet who doesn't
know that there is some form of alien life or that there's some form of alien threat the cybermen
were taking over the world the you know just the spacecraft and all that stuff i mean yes there'll
always be people who are like, oh, no, no, no, it's not. What I think is the intent is to take
hard, obviously established facts of the world and some numb nuts on the internet can convince
people that it's not true. I mean, that's the whole point here is that people are dumb as posts
and we're going to prove it because we can just have a guy live stream something and everybody's
stupid as hell. I mean, this is
very, very pointed.
It's not even satire. It's just
very pointed social commentary.
Except, you know, the problem
is it's hard to believe the reality
we live in, right? We
live in that reality where people believe
the dumbest, dumbest things
because some moron with a
megaphone tells them
that, and it's, I have trouble
looking at those people and going, I don't understand
how your brain can be so
flippant,
stupid. And yet, right, that's what they're presenting here. The problem is I'm watching
it in a fictional universe, and it's harder to believe in a fictional universe than it is in
the real world. But I get that that's the point that they're trying to make. But the problem is
that the facts that they are stating are supposedly so well-established, because they've
had this problem before and they keep trying to have their cake and eat it in terms of do people
know about aliens or not is that there's some i think it's one of donna's lines about how you know
there was there were those hallucinations or something referring back to the the battle of
canary wharf when so they've already established this idea that the public can be convinced of
the the the kind of the fake the fake nature of these massive public events that that you know
are the kind of day the earth stood still style do you do you want do you want to have
worse you've seen war of the world the the 1950s one okay and so what happened you know the aliens
came? George Powell, flying triangular spacecraft, come to Earth. They try to nuke it. It's War of
the Worlds. I don't know. You and I haven't done it. John and I did it on the podcast. But
it was the first movie adaptation of War of the Worlds. It's a big color, spectacular.
But basically, it was set in 1950s. And they came to Earth, and they wiped out all our cities.
And we tried nuking them, and that didn't work. And eventually, they died from bacteria.
And, you know, with our cities in tatters and ruins and the world destroyed, the aliens all died.
Well, in the 1980s, perhaps the 1990s, late in the 80s, 1990s, they made a sequel TV series to that.
And they had to set it up.
The premise was everyone on the planet just basically forgot that that happened.
Right.
And people are like, well, how come nobody remembers this?
It's like, ah, it's an amazing how a human mind can do stuff like that.
Yeah.
Yeah. And so I'm sure RTD has done that before. And this is the problem. You can do these things as a one-off, but it becomes more of a problem in an ongoing series. And I can see why they kind of try to reset things and say, oh, yeah, everyone's forgotten about that.
or they've moved on to discussing what happened in EastEnders this week, because it's much easier
to tell these stories in a scenario in which something like UNIT operates in a very covert
way. You can't have a tower in the middle of London. Exactly, exactly. So the idea that they
are hidden in the Tower of London, not the tower that they're in, but the actual Tower of London
as they were in kind of Moffat era unit or you know with the with the the brigadier they weren't
quite as in your face it it it to me I don't know there's just something much more kind of
satisfying about it and I guess it's partly my kind of like the the x-files version of things
You can believe that you are in the world of the X-Files, that there really could be a secret unit of the FBI, and that the signs of aliens on Earth are, subtle may not be quite the right word, but are so well disguised that the world that your average punter in universe is in.
in the x-files universe it could be the same world that you're living in and i i cut that i can see
the appeal of that it appeals to me well we're not living in that world anyway because that
because this is this is this fictional storybook reality which which is started yeah the world of
with the giggle and if it started with the giggle that's the first time we saw unit tower so
basically none of this is happening except that this is you know this is what i'm complaining
about is not a new thing. It's an ongoing thing. It's what Doctor Who has done in the past couple
of decades, and I'm just being a grumpy old man about it. Let me hit a couple more things about
Unit. One, I still absolutely detest the idea that Kate and Ibram are having some sort of
relationship. I mean, it's human, perhaps, but if you want to destroy an organization-like unit,
you start by having the boss boink the staff. That's a, you know, the big boss boink the staff.
That one's a big no-no. Maybe two people in different sections, but supervisors and subordinates,
It's just a disaster.
Also, on that and linking with that,
your, I guess, a rebuttal to unit did everything right in this episode
is that I don't think Kate's doing the right thing there, as you say,
but also almost everything else that Kate does in this episode is the wrong thing.
They overreact to what is just, in the end, a social media campaign.
Then when they more than a social media campaign, it is, it is a, it is a well orchestrated hoax, which involves endangering people's lives by having Sparky nickname for an electrician.
I think they even mentioned that he was an electrician, which is a nice call in so that you know that he could screw up the power at the pub and at the bus signs and whatnot.
But that's not the safest thing to do.
And I am not happy that it's like, oh, it was just a harmless prank in a village.
No, you intentionally draw out any form of emergency services with a fake emergency.
You deserve to be in jail.
Or at least sternly fucked.
So did they overreact?
They got a credible report of a monster from somebody who should know.
I don't think so.
I mean, helicopters are the fastest way to get there.
But yeah.
Well, I'm not defending what they did.
what I'm saying is that in the face of these jokers,
the unit response was an overreaction.
Like they shouldn't have arrested them.
That is kind of just playing into what they want.
Kate gets riled by it and she makes errors in judgment.
And similarly, letting the shriek eat Conrad's arm
doesn't seem to me a particularly...
but there's a point there and that and this but the other thing i was going to mention here is
the back to the future moment right it seems to me like kate has the same trigger almost the same
trigger that marty mcfly has what's the matter mcfly chicken and then he'll do any stupid thing
he can think of what's the matter kate rigadier chicken don't talk about my dad eat him like she
has that trigger right she's very very possessive of her dad she does and i don't mind seeing that
she's annoyed by it but i want to see that she's got a bit more smarts i want to see a bit more
self-control and the reason for that i i like i i like the character so much i really the russell t
davis had a take on unit when he brought doctor who back in 2005 that was very much more kind
of militarized and very much less sympathetic and he was telling stories in the kind of immediate
aftermath of the the gulf war and the the way in which he wanted to have a military organization
and portrayed them i'm sure was influenced by that and unit was the kind of convenient
vehicle for it and okay fair enough so that's that's an organization that's obviously very
different from the organization that the doctor worked for back in the 1970s or 1980s
don't have a unit dating argument just now but then you got kate stewart and and chibnall and
and Moffat I mean it's really the way Moffat wrote Unit because I thought bringing in Osgood was
was just a masterstroke so all of those kind of stories with those two at the at the core
and I guess I'm slightly influenced by the big finish spin-off which takes both of those
characters and adds a team around them and it's one of you know one of the better audio
spinoffs or better any spinoffs actually from doctor who and so i feel i feel this kind of
from all of that this kind of enormous affection for the character of kate stewart and i don't
feel she's being done justice by rtd who seems to be kind of reverting back to this more militaristic
model of unit it it feels much more like the unit of his first era yeah and yet it's it's still being
run by by kate stewart and she's not quite the same person who she was in the moffat era or even
in the chibnall era because chibnall brought her back without without osgood yeah well he got it
Yeah, he got rid of Unit and then he gave them their own Unit tower, etc., etc.
I mean, it wasn't great, but he was the one who wrote the original Kate Stewart story.
So I'm cutting him some slack on this.
I'm disappointed with this episode partly because of the way that Unit is being handled
and partly because I know that we're getting a spinoff which is focused on Unit and this
is not boding well for it.
is definitely the setup for that. I feel like the bit where Ibram says to Kate at the end,
you went too far. I mean, first off, there's why you don't point the staff, but it's like,
because that relationship's going to crack and that's a problem. And my first thought when I'm
watching this, I'm like, this feels so much like, you know, Kate went too far intentionally so that
they have got some sort of controversy going into War of Surf and Turf.
And then I thought, you know something?
Actually, I think that is the setup for the finale.
It is this mistake that Kate made that will ultimately mean that units not there or whatever
to prevent the destruction of the planet when conrad does that however conrad does that because
he and this is you think conrad's coming back absolutely i think absolutely i mean i was i'm
50 50 on it i was definitely i think the master let him out and so that he could help with revenge
on unit she's not the master of course it is of course it is who else would have a vendetta
against the master and unit and who can travel through time i mean who else how many others are
there i think she's i don't know i don't know i don't know whatever it is no reason for the
storyteller to have a thing in for unit but clearly this is yeah maybe maybe so i'm not sure
my friend my friend said we're not gonna do we're not gonna find out who mrs flood is and i was like
Yeah, we are going to find out who Mrs. Flood is.
R2D has sworn that we would.
And it's going to be a terrible anticlimax.
Oh yeah, it's going to be awful.
This is why they should never give the doctor's name, because you can't.
There's never going to be a way to give that up, and it's going to be satisfactory.
It'll either be stupid, or it'll be stupid.
There is no clever way out of that one.
But R2D is not just going to tease us with Mrs. Flood and then leave us to figure it out for ourselves.
No, he said he won't.
Banging her into every single episode.
He said it will be really kind of make us keep asking the question.
And I'm bored of asking the question.
I don't care.
I,
I it's,
I do not like the way this is hammered in at the end of episode.
It's,
it is as bad as bad wolf and it's not funny and it wasn't good.
It's a lot worse than bad wolf.
And,
and yeah,
bad wolf was at least relatively benign.
This is far worse.
The other thing I'm just going to pull out here is somebody mentioned this the other day that I was listening to.
And I'm like,
Oh,
you know,
they're right. There have been an awful lot of spoons in the show the last couple of years.
Just saying, just saying, it's been a lot of spoons. And so if the doctor solves the universe
problem with a spoon at the end of this series, you heard it here, probably not first, because
I'm sure somebody else's must have come to that same conclusion, but a lot of spoons,
a lot of spoons. Go back and think about it. A lot of spoons. This, by the way,
Surf and Turf is written by RTD and Pete McTie.
Yes.
So here we have Pete McTie setting up.
Pete McTie also wrote two absolutely awful episodes, Kerblam and Praxis.
I quite liked Praxis.
Well, I thought Praxis was okay, but I agree Kerblam was terrible.
The thing that had given me some hope was that he also wrote all of those really wonderful
trailers on the Doctor Who collection box sets.
Well, let me just come back to something about Praxeas.
An episode of another show I liked.
So it's not that he's a bad writer, it's that he's written a lot of bad Doctor Who.
I thought this was far better written than anything RTD has done since he came back.
It's not a perfect episode by any stretch of the imagination, but man, was I pleased
not to hear RTD in every word in this episode.
But I don't remember whether you and I agreed on this,
and I'm not going to go back and listen to the podcast to find out,
but I know that I definitely was of the opinion
that Praxeus felt like it was written as a sea devil story,
and then the sea devils got yanked out of it.
Oh, I see.
So you think that Pete McTire's got a sea devil's obsession.
Yep.
I think he wanted to do it back then,
and he didn't for whatever.
you know, they just couldn't get the rights at that particular time, or they didn't, you know,
there was something to it that they just, it's just like, just like the well. It's like, oh no,
I've got a better idea. Let's make it the, let's make it midnight as opposed to your Mercury planet
thing. For whatever reason, Shibnall was like, yeah, I like the story, but let's not do sea
devils for whatever reason. And I'm thinking that, that, you know, McTighe is really likes the sea
devils and jumps at this chance.
And well, he wrote a story that made me think of the sea devils.
So that's a good sign.
He didn't write whatever that horrible one was with the sea devils at the end of Whitaker's
time.
Can't think of its name.
No, he didn't.
Yeah.
That's what I'm saying.
He didn't do that.
That's in his favor.
Pirates of the Silurians or whatever it was called.
I've forgotten what it was called.
It was something of the sea devils though, wasn't it?
I don't remember.
I really don't remember.
okay so does everyone that works at unit that stands at that desk are they a
because if so maybe they should just rearrange the furniture so that nobody
stands in that spot because that's jordan lang was sitting in the same place
as as as the harbinger was also jordan lang was that guy's name there are no
anagrams that i could find conrad clark no anagrams that i could find but but
and this is important both names at least have the letters l a n d in them land which is a synonym
for turf in the war of the surf and turf just saying it's a hint
this is not crazy conspiracy stuff this is hard and analysis conrad can't be anyone else he
Conrad is a new character because of that defining moment when he's a young boy, very much the Elton Pope kind of a way. It shapes who he is. So there can't be an anagram in his name or anything that says he turns out to be someone else.
Yeah, no, I don't think he's going to be like, you know, the master, you know, Mr. Saxon. I don't think it's anything like that. I just, I just checked because those are pretty, really dull names and they're kind of quite similar, but in a, in a sort of boring kind of way.
I thought I had caught a mistake in this episode.
Well, okay, no.
I thought I had caught something incredibly clever in this episode, but it was not.
And that is, so we see the shriek early in the episode with Ruby and the Doctor, right?
Sort of.
And then we see the shriek in the town.
And I noticed something that I don't think I've ever noticed in a Doctor Who monster before.
Well, if not, not for a very, very long time.
They had kaiju legs.
now now let me describe that kaiju japanese monsters godzillas that kind of thing going
all the way back to gojira no gyakusu which is the second godzilla film godzilla raids again
and the creature anguirus or angirus it's a guy in a suit pretending to be a four-legged creature
and the problem with a guy in a suit pretending to be a four-legged creature is that he's got
knees and they bend the wrong way and they have to crawl on their hands and knees.
So you always look at a creature like that or from like Gamera films or whatnot, they've
always got man back legs and it looks terrible because they're obviously their knees.
It's like, why would a creature evolve to walk on its knees?
These creatures were walking on their knees when they were in the town.
And I saw that and I saw the bit where they were talking about, you know, we're not getting
any signals. And about the time it jumped up on a car while Ruby and Conrad were outside,
I'm like, those are men in suits. I mean, those are actually men in suits, not just
they're men in suits, they're men in suits. And I thought when we see the shriek later,
because obviously we're going to see the shriek later in the episode, it's going to be a CGI
shriek and it's going to have proper rear legs. And it wasn't, it was still a man in a suit with
bent knees, which was very disappointing
to me. But nonetheless, it tipped
me off to the
twist
in the episode,
or some of the twists in the episode,
because they had very
poor costumes for these
creatures.
I thought at the
end when Kate released
the shriek, that that was
going to be a fake shriek, that Kate
had got someone
to dress up as the shriek.
in order to spook Conrad on camera because he would believe that it was real. And that was her
goal, but that she wouldn't do anything as reckless as release a real freak. But apparently
not. She would do that recklessness. Yeah. I'm surprised that we didn't let him get eaten. And
that's why I'm pretty sure that he'll be back, especially since the master let him out.
Or the governor.
Governor Flood or whatever.
So, uh...
Mrs. Flood's gonna turn out to be
Jean-Paul from
Spook Bugs.
Could be.
Or Rogue from Rogue.
Ooh.
So, I'll give them this.
I will give them this.
Finally.
For once.
In an episode of Shooty Got What Doctor Who, he got a Capaldi's B, or as close as he's
probably ever going to get, with his condemnation of Conrad there at the end.
Like, just for a few moments, it was like, it is the Doctor!
Not for long.
But what was he going to do?
Was he going to invite him onto the TARDIS to fly around?
I don't know.
It seemed odd to me that he would know what had happened.
I couldn't work out how he would have known what had happened between Conrad and Ruby.
How would he have been alerted to that?
Like, has he...
I realize I don't know exactly where he is in his timeline,
other than that it's before he meets Belinda Chandra.
But it suggests that there's a point after he's left Ruby,
and after we've seen Ruby in this episode, when they do talk to each other again.
Is he wearing the same clothes in this when he picks up Conrad?
that he was at the beginning of robots of death or robots of war robot robot revolution wow i don't
know but it's not it's not so much its position in relation to just be interesting if that's what
straight went off to do like we know it's got to be before that but it's it's where is it in in
relation to the last time he sees ruby like has he seen has he seen ruby since the since dropping
her off like has she yeah you get what i'm you get what i'm saying like is there is for ruby
she is back on earth after after her adventures with the doctor does she see him again
after the events of this episode i would like to think ruby's not going to be back again
but yeah maybe you know until the doctor regenerates and then you know a brief scene where
her head floats around in his vision or something but yeah i i think i i'm 50 50 on conrad being
back i'm 99 on ruby being back we're going to see ruby again i do think they kind of said a couple
episodes what i mean is how how does the doctor know about conrad in this is there an unseen scene
where ruby is reunited with the doctor in the course of this episode fills him in takes off
monthly reports oh it could be kate yeah yeah okay you know time space telegraph she just types
up a report every month well we defended against the earth against a shriek and then then somebody
was really mean to ruby boom i'm there yeah i guess that i guess that's plausible i mean obviously
the other thing that kind of the the kind of question that i'm still not really caring about
but which is overhanging all of this
is that this is 2025
so the events
in this episode are still
before are happening
sometime before May 2025
and possibly happening
before the robot revolution so
you know before the Doctor actually
has been on Earth in which case fine
it's within bounds
but we see the Doctor and
Belinda get as late as
2007
so the Doctor wherever he is in his
current timeline from our perspective probably can't i go to any of the places in this episode
that he's in the fact that he's there is because he's already been there in the past in his own
personal timeline which is fine until you start thinking about as you suggest kate sending him
reports in which case where in his personal timeline is she sending the reports from 2025
five. I didn't seriously mean to imply that there was any logical explanation for it. But I just,
like I say, I'm kind of curious about the clothing now. And I am going to go back and take a look,
because if this happened in the moment where the doctor drops him off and says, all right,
well, I got to track down Belinda Jenner. Maybe that's happening right now. Maybe that event in
the doctors, literally on earth
in this moment, maybe
the doctor just hops right
over to Belinda Chandra's place.
Well, at first he hops over to a phone booth,
looks her up in a phone book, then he hops over to
Belinda Chandra's house, and then
those events start.
It's possible. It's possible.
I recall, I think I
recall the outfit he's wearing
in this episode, which
isn't, you know, one of the problems with having so
many outfits is
continuity outfits.
but yeah okay i don't have anything else on my list what have you got well i actually have one
other thing on my list but what have you got i think i've hit almost everything on my list but
the one thing i did note down was that and this isn't particularly groundbreaking trinity wells
is back again she was i know i hate her she's so obnoxious and so not actually what an american
newscaster sounds like it's just funny it's oh i didn't know i did have i had one other i had one
other note that i didn't manage to hit when we were talking about the shriek itself and that was
that it looked very green death i thought there had to be a connection but there isn't i can kind
of see that yeah yeah i can see it's a little lumpy and bad effects got a rubber suit well no
it was it was it was the green the green on the skin yeah and being infected it made me think
there has to be some connection here especially with the kind of what is essentially a throwaway
monster like i can't even remember the name of the once the monster in love and monsters but
absorbaloff which is another reason not that monster the monster that the doctor is chasing
around at the beginning of the episode that looks like a weevil from Torchwood, but isn't a weevil
from Torchwood. And that Shriek looks like it's something to do with the Green Death. And I
thought, well, there's an opportunity. If RTD is so keen on callbacks all the time, and I didn't
even pick up the Think Tank thing, I was thinking, oh, this is a reference to the Green Death. But
no, in fact, it's not. Well, you know, there's maybe Think Tank, the Master, Boss, all of them
together to take their revenge on unit it's the the one thing i do want to say is i'm i'm beginning
to feel like i understand why rtd came back to doctor who i mean you know we could argue cynically
that it's the money or we could argue cynically that it's the money or it's not but i i really
do believe, based on the way
it's going,
that RTD has brought the show back
with the
premise that the world
really needs Doctor Who.
We really need
the Doctor telling us all
the things that are wrong with us
right now.
I think it's
like, we need our heroes,
and he's...
I think that might be it.
I think it actually might be altruistic
on his part.
Oh, I, I, I think he's, I mean, I've said,
before he wanted Dr.
Who back because he loved Dr.
Who, but now he wants Dr.
Who back because we need.
Well, I don'T know because I, I, I think,
I think, I think he would still want Dr.
Who back because he loves Dr.
Who.
And if it'S a question of the BBC or whoever
saying we're, you know what's going to do,
we're thinking of putting it on hiatus and the
only way they're going to be convinced to
get,
carry on with it is if he comes back it's so much like jnt not leaving because the bbc will shelve
it if they're put in a position where they have to find another producer but will they shelve it if
if disney with all their money says well we've got an idea for another producer well i think what
rtd is planning i think i mean i think if there's if there's if there's something you know if there's
something motivating him that is a little less altruistic it might be the sense and i'm not
saying that it's wrong although i you know i i'm much more of a fan of his first run than than this
it's the sense that he may have that he and let's say very few other people would be capable of
saving the show and what he thinks he can do is use his kind of understanding of television and
his capability to make event television and his success previously in creating doctor who
spin-offs because he has undoubtedly made the most successful doctor who spin-offs there's ever been
that he thinks he can put the show on a footing where it it will be impossible for the bbc
to think about shelving it.
Apart from K9 and Company,
what other Doctor Who spinoffs
have you created from the show?
Well, the fact that you've forgotten it
shows that it wasn't very successful.
But K9 and Company wasn't
the least successful non-RTD spinoff.
There was another one called Class
written by Patrick Ness in the Moffat era.
Oh, yeah, well, yeah, that was awful.
That was truly dreadful.
all right in that case do we have anything else i think i'm done i think earlier in this episode
we both had no clue what next episode of doctor who was but the answer to that question is
the story and the engine with story time and the little engine who could okay simon thank you for
joining me it's a pleasure as always listeners i do hope you'll join us all again next time
on fusion patrol
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