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 the 2025 Doctor Who season, episode 6,
the Interstellar Song Contest.
Episode synopsis.
The Doctor and Belinda arrive for their final Vindicator reading
at the Intergalactic Song Contest, hosted by some unknown frozen guy who appears to be a Monty
Python interpretation of the sparmiest human being ever to exist. And they get sucked into
watching this, willingly, unlike some of us. Kid, a hellion, arrives, takes over the space station,
and ejects the audience, including the Doctor and the TARDIS, into space, where corpses of the
100,000 people in attendance freeze solid.
Mrs. Flood is there too, and she's also frozen.
Belinda survives, but she is distraught.
A vision of Susan appears to the doctor, and he unfreezes himself and uses a glitter cannon to reach an airlock.
Kid, the Hellion, plans to use a device to kill the three trillion people watching the contest because he doesn't like their sponsor,
a company that makes poppy-flavored honey.
Could have been worse.
Their sponsor could have been Disney.
Also, a lot of people hate the Hellions because they've got horns.
The doctor thinks Belinda is dead.
Belinda thinks the doctor is dead.
And clarity ensues as the doctor goes after Kid in a very angry fashion.
He blips the sonic remote a couple times, destroying the controls, the bomb, the weapons.
And then he proceeds to torture Kid.
Oops, Time Lord Vindictivus.
There must be a regeneration coming.
Belinda stops him.
They bring all the frozen corpses back and revive them.
And then Graham Norton tells him that the Earth was destroyed the very day Belinda left.
So they go there and the TARDIS blows up.
Also, Mrs. Flood is somehow the absolute last person saved at the space station.
And she was frozen too long and regenerates.
No, she bi-generates.
So now there's a Ronnie and the Ronnie.
Hashtag, it's never the Ronnie.
All right, give us your first thoughts.
Well, it's deux points for me.
That's a Eurovision reference or French thing, I assume, in some way.
That's it.
I'm not actually going to give it deux points, but it's not nil points.
I'm rating this one pretty highly.
I enjoyed this one a lot.
Is that two points?
Twelve points.
Is that twelve points?
Okay.
Out of a thousand?
Out of twelve, I think.
I'm not a Eurovision expert.
but I know nothing about Eurovision, but those are the scores as I understand them.
Oh, you understand more about Eurovision than me. I'm going to lead with a disclaimer.
And, you know, long-time listeners of this podcast, you know this, but I'm going to
reiterate a couple things that you should know. These are genuine conversations that Simon and
I are having or I and the co-hosts are having. They are not scripted. They are not, you know,
we don't share notes. It's, it's a, it's at least I can say for myself, it's me. And I would imagine
that a long time listeners probably have assembled some sort of mental picture in their minds of what
me personality is. But I will tell you, you know, some of it's a bit, some things are a bit
performative. It's a podcast. You do kind of have to amp it up as if it were a show. So maybe,
maybe you don't. So there's a couple things that I'm going to, because this episode lays bare a
few problems I have. So I'm just going to, I'm just going to put them out there so that you can
understand where I'm coming to. And these are lifelong things. For example, I don't give to,
I'm going to use the word hoots about clothing.
I don't really care what I'm wearing.
I don't pay any attention to what other people wear.
If I do pay attention, it's kind of like when we were at when I was running a summer camp.
I never knew the kids names, but if I did know their names, it was not good.
They were bad.
It's like I only know the problems.
And it's the only time I notice people's clothes are when they're awful.
I don't like bright, gaudy colors.
I don't like costumes.
I will never be a costumer.
I hate crowds, unless they're crowds of puppies.
That's fine.
I do love music, but my preference is always music without humans ruining it.
I hate people who are...
You mean like a bird song or whale song?
You like the hippie records of the humpback?
I did like the doopey-dippity-doo-dee-doo thing in this.
but i hate i hate to break it to you but it was a human that wrote that i know it was but it's not
and it was probably human singing it too but and the and the final thing is that i i absolutely
detest people who are overly familiar like waitresses who call you hun or doctors who call
you babes yeah so the the eurovision which of course this is just a pastiche of is like
hell on earth for me. There is nothing you could do to induce me to watch Eurovision. It would be
like it would be like scraping sandpaper on my eyes and my flesh and my nerves raw. I have no.
I mean, I truly, truly detest this kind of I hate song contests, dance contests, pageants, parades,
you name it. Those things are terrible to me. They're they're just like, get me away from here
as fast as humanly possible.
So this story has dug itself
into a 50-foot hole
before I ever started watching it.
Okay?
Just gonna say,
it would be damn near impossible
to dig out of that hole.
That said, eh.
It's like,
I mean, it could have been worse.
It could have been much, much worse.
That's about the best I got for it.
It was like, eh.
There were really bits of it
that just had me
You know, like I was in a room full of ants crawling all over the place.
I know, but that's about the best I got.
I can say about this episode is it's not it's not going to be up there on my rewatch ever.
I mean, I obviously will someday, but because I'll even watch Space Babies again someday, probably.
Well, I've watched Web Planet more than once.
Yeah, I've watched Web Planet more than once.
that's not worse.
It's like,
but yeah,
it's not good.
I mean,
I'm not going to,
you know,
I can appreciate that they,
they swung and they missed,
but yeah.
So I'm guessing you liked this episode based on your,
on your rating.
Yes.
I mean,
yes,
I did.
I,
I wasn't without its problems,
which is why I didn't think it would,
I didn't feel like it was,
it was a douze point thing,
but overall this felt to me like the kind of,
thing that you could have seen in rtd era one and it would have it's got the it's got the kind of
pace it's got the kind of action the emotion the humor and the kind of surprises i guess that
they're not all of them delightful surprises that sort of typified typified what what the kind of
thing that he was doing first time around and obviously this is the the the only credited
writer on this is juno dawson so it's not it's not that it's not that it's an rtd script but it's
it's the kind of thing that you know he's he's given her the the brief which i believe was
eurovision meets die hard which she's kind of pretty much delivered on so i mean the nearest
thing for me to this i guess in the in the moffa era which as you know i kind of venerate would be
the rings of akatan or akatan i can't remember how to say it wasn't good either it it it didn't
it didn't really it didn't hit the mark and you know i think that's because this is rtd absolutely
100 playing to his strengths yeah i yeah certainly playing to him yes i guess i i hit my notes they're
in no logical order here although i have here at the top the ice you put in my heart i don't think
it's going to go away i mean that's so that's so david tenets on his way out it's not even funny
It did feel very Time Lord Victorious to me, except that that did kind of build up over the four seasons. By the time you get to Waters of Mars, there has been this side of Tennant's performance that RTD is kind of pulling out and actually drawing attention to how problematic it is, I guess.
and maybe you see it first in school reunion or somewhere around there so it's that and that's
what early early in the second tenant no first first first tenant season yeah possibly so it's
you know the seed the seeds are sown early on i don't think he's done that here no he hasn't
i think i think it comes out of nowhere and for that reason it feels much more dinosaurs on a
spaceship to me than than waters of mars everything everything in this season and last season feels
like it comes out of nowhere the stories are structured that way they they just they just
throw stuff at you without any kind of so no i i i don't know if this is because of the the truncated
seasons i you know i'm i'm beginning to think that we can treat last season and this season as one
in a sort of extended way.
But yeah, no, there just is,
this stuff pops up out of nowhere
and it's just kind of,
I wouldn't say throwaway,
but yeah, I'm not happy on it.
But I am kind of looking forward
to a regeneration in two-year-old generation.
God, no.
Why?
Okay, maybe bi-generation
is a function of this parallel non-existent universe that we're going to collapse back
on ourselves and find ourselves back at the moment of Jodie Whittaker's regeneration.
Because, well, let's take Mavity. Let's go back to Mavity. They beat us over the head
with Mavity in this episode. This is the episode that reminds you.
Well, yes, but I mean, in, yeah, it's, it's saying it's still, it's still there and it
needs to be fixed in case you'd forgotten about it. He's going to fix it.
but that's what i think this may be optimism i think that is what's happening with the by
generation like he can't keep doing these by generations he's by generated the rani because
that still needs fixing that it's a result of whatever the toy maker did
back in the giggle and but except he didn't do it that's gonna have to be undone that's the
problem with this mavedy goes back before the giggle mavedy goes back before wild blue
generation is the giggle. Yes, but I think it's part of this, whatever happened at that moment,
because if Mavity has to be fixed, then the fix is something broke before the giggle. Something
broke before Wild Blue Yonder. We're in some, and I'm beginning to wonder if what broke was when
the 15th doctor, the 14th doctor appeared. 13th, 14th, I don't know. David Tennant, Mark II,
appeared. I'm beginning to wonder if that's the point that has to be fixed back to. I can dream.
I can dream. But or it could just be what people just think that was the that was the toy maker.
It wasn't. Definitely wasn't. We still don't know what the whole wild blue yonder nonsense was about.
You know, I mean, if that's if that goes nowhere.
But yeah, this, no, the reason I say they're beating it over our head, they, they use Mavity
and Mavitic and it's like what, eight times in this episode.
Yeah, no, I'm, I'm absolutely in the past.
It was, it was there to remind us that there is something that needs to be fixed.
Fixed.
In exactly, in exactly the same way that the, by generation was there to remind us that
there is something that needs to be fixed.
Oh yeah.
There is something that needs to be fixed.
Yeah. The, the piece, the pieces that he's putting in place, including the whole Mrs. Flood thing and Susan and everything are all being, you know, we're being tweaked with them so that, so that we know that that's what's coming in the.
There's way, way too much in the next step, two episodes. That's what we know.
Well, exactly. Yeah.
We absolutely know. I mean, we know Mel is in it. We know Susan's obviously going to be in it.
The Ronnie's obviously going to be in it. If Mel's in it, then Unit must be in it.
You know, Ruby's going to be in it. Conrad's going to be in it.
It wouldn't surprise me if Donna doesn't show up, you know, to go back to the-
It would surprise me if Donna shows up. I don't even know how they're going to fit in
everyone you've mentioned already.
Well, they're going to do it badly. That's how they're going to do it.
And there's a distinct suggestion in this that Kid's going to be back.
But yeah, that may not be setting up the next two episodes because I kind of think the next two episodes are all about paying off things that have been running through since at least Gatwa bi-generated.
I'm glad you didn't use the word promised.
But anyway, I have the words here and I need to put them out there because if I don't get
there first, Chekhov's Mavity.
This is what was in this.
We got up.
But it's not that.
It's not that.
That was Wild Blue Yonder.
This is getting to the end of the second act and making a big song and dance number about
there's a gun.
There's a gun on the mantelpiece.
Yeah.
I see you brought the gun in from the act one.
Yes.
Yeah.
I'm sure I mentioned this before,
but I'm going to just take another swipe at it because it was particularly
sleaze egregious in this episode.
I mentioned,
I think it was last week that I do not like the new way.
The sonic screwdriver just explodes locks as opposed to,
I don't know,
pointing it at it and kind of like, I don't know, sonicking them.
Instead, it just explodes locks.
In this episode, one click, it blows up locks.
It blows up robot heads.
It blows up Delta devices.
It blows up guns.
Just click, click, click.
What do we even need the doctor for?
What problem?
I mean, the sonic screwdriver has become a magic wand.
People were complaining about that years ago.
What about now?
It's just a remote freaking detonation device.
It blows up anything he wants.
Why didn't he just take care of the whole thing with that to start with?
It's gotten stupid beyond belief.
That was one of the things that was not meh about this episode for me.
I don't think that's, I don't, I think a lot of the uses of the sonic screwdriver in this
episode were him using it as a remote control.
For like when he blew up the security guard's head, he was working on the computer and I,
My assumption was that he was hacking into the system and short-circuiting something that caused them to overload when he remotely detonated it with the sonic screwdriver.
That may have been just me, but I had no problem with any of the uses of the sonic screwdriver in this.
They were, from a plot point of view, they were shortcutting things that were not major
plot problems that he would have had to spend much longer resolving without it.
It just got us there faster, and that's what it's for.
You'd have to be quick.
You'd have to be clever or something.
Yeah, I know.
You'd have to come up with an idea for writing instead of pushing a button.
No, I'm going to push back on that.
No, I don't think so.
He wasn't hacking the robot's heads.
he wasn't hacking if he had all the robots would have blown up they didn't if if he knew where
they were then he didn't turn around the computer yeah he was he was monitoring them from the
computer because he was he was in the system okay why didn't he blow up the delta device from there
then why wait he's in the computers why did he do it then why did he have to get into the
in the room. How did he blow up the gun?
Did he hack
kid's gun? If you'd
already hacked kid's gun, why not blow up
kid's gun before you walked
into the, you popped in the room?
Because that's the sort of thing you do. You disarm
and go on. No.
It was just, he was
just zapping stuff with it.
There was no thought to that.
That was just, look how
powerful my that-that-that is.
No. No. There's,
you're twisting it in trying to come up with logical reason for something that hasn't got one
by saying oh he hacked it and i appreciate that because we all do that it's the headcanon there
but nah it all of all of that stuff was done using hard light projection and he needed some
he had a glove for doing the hard light projection but presumably he could also use the sonic for it
uh-huh uh-huh yeah yeah then then yeah then he should just carry a hard light device around with
him at all times then but he didn't do he didn't he didn't actually do the hard light stuff it was
what's his name from nathan barley gary yeah well i don't know gary the techie one not the nurse one
yes who instantly was another person from slow horses that's two we've had now in this season
coincidence just it's entirely a coincidence but i'm not going to pass up the opportunity to plug
slow horses for our listeners because it's great and he's great in it he was great in this as well
actually let's see i have here oh god not only is it the ronnie one of if not the most overrated
villain in doctor who history but now there's two of them when did they become a ds couple
I mean, obviously in that moment, but why?
Why did they become a Dom-Sub pairing?
We didn't see that with the Doctor and the Doctor, I don't think.
No, but it is a more in-character thing for the Rani, I would have thought.
You can imagine it with Kate Amara.
Which is more, Mrs. Flood suddenly becoming...
It's not, it's not the fact that the Ronnie is snotty or overbearing.
It's that Mrs.
Flood suddenly turned into a toad.
Toady.
Yeah.
I wasn't thinking, I wasn't thinking of her as Kate O'Mara, to be honest.
I was thinking of, uh, Hachi Panjabi as Kate O'Mara.
Also, I mean, let's go there.
You know, we, I'm, we've, we've had our, we've had our,
discussions along the way i'll say i thought it was the master and the reason i thought it was
the master is because the ronnie is worthless and but i'm sure and i didn't go back through and i
meant to i'm sure we've mentioned the possibility that this was the ronnie and we've dismissed it
because we have it's never the ronnie but also the argument for the ronnie stays still it was i told
you we had to be a time lord had to be a time lord why why i can't remember why it's because of where
they are and how they're interacting and what they know about the TARDIS and traveling through
time and following the technology. They have the ability to travel through time. They have to be
more powerful than a time lord. The fact that Mrs. Flood is breaking the fourth wall suggests to me
something that goes beyond the power of the doctor, really. Although now I'm making all of
the kind of connections with the land of fiction stuff and the way in which the doctor came out of
the television in Lux I don't know whether I still think that but the thinking to kind of
defend our position of it not being the Rani and my position of it not even being a time lord
is that it it that that kind of thing suggests a more kind of playful powerful role that's more
akin to like if it was the if she was the black guardian for example i'd have bought that and
particularly in a season that's all about gods you know the the kind of balance in the and and
beings like the guardians can travel through destroyed we were explicitly told they were
destroyed when in the giggle the giggle yeah so i kind of feel like that setting destroyed them i
feel like that's setting it up anything that mentioned is mentioned in the giggle feels like
a setup which is why i think the master is actually a more plausible thing than the rani
like the rani didn't get mentioned in the giggle no one who isn't a doctor who fan watching you
know since gato came on to be honest pretty much since who's this for the show came back in 2005
is going to have a clue who the rani is i i don't i don't i mean he's got susan in here he's got he
he's been dumping old stuff in these episodes like crazy to who is this for when he is not
hitting the mark with old fans and yet this is who we get all this stuff dumped on kate omara i'm
nothing against Kate O'Mara.
She was playing a part that was
meant to be Dynasty
Plus Five in that character,
but this makes no sense
for this character. Therani
is completely
disinterested in anything but her
scientific experiments. Not
revenge, not...
I'm going
to hold judgment on that
for next week.
I'm not...
Anything we've seen from an East
dobson doesn't seem to fit to me but on the other hand i'm more willing to give the rani a chance
than you have because i because i think that that that kind of fundamental that she is disinterested
and will pursue in but she's basically amoral but has has this kind of pursuit of knowledge and
science that is her core driver and then the other aspect of it is as you say dynasty plus five the
campness that kate omara brought to it where i feel like the rani has worked is where you know
since well see i say since those tv stories actually i didn't rate the tv stories that
has appeared in well i feel like rani has worked has been where as is often the case big finish
has taken the character, cast Siobhan Redmond in the part, who is absolutely not the kind of
campy Kate O'Mara type, and really kind of played up into that amoral scientist thing.
And so I hope to see something along those lines, but I don't think that's what we're going to get.
It's not what we're going to get because the first thing out of her mouth practically is that
she's going to go torture the doctor in unimaginable ways.
Yeah.
Yep.
So she is just the master who is a woman.
But we've already had that.
We already have the master as a woman.
So we don't need the Ronnie for this.
This is just,
like I say,
it's fan service for the fans who aren't watching.
Or they're the ones who are trying to get.
What she should be doing if she's in character is going and kidnapping Isaac
Newton.
And figure out what this Mabbity thing is all about.
Well, just because, you know, it's time she went around and collected another bunch of brilliant scientists.
Because, you know, that's what she does.
But she did once.
Yeah, well, she's only been in two stories, so that's what she does half the time.
So, yeah.
No, this is just, he's just setting this up to be a disaster.
I mean, maybe his plan is to make it look like it's going to be so awful that he can't possibly make us think it's worse than the Sutek ending last year.
I mean, my expectations are so low going into this finale, lower than they've ever been.
The only thing that's holding me up, that's keeping me going moment after moment, is that thought that they're going to fix this, regenerate the Doctor, de-bi-generate the Doctor, whatever it is they have to do, get rid of Mavity, because that's just stupid to maintain forever.
And, you know, maybe bring back the Time Lords again.
He's brought back two already, and he hasn't even got into the final double episode.
So he seems to have completely forgotten the fact that the Time Lords weren't destroyed, too.
I don't think he has.
I think there is going to be an explanation.
But the doctor literally said, you know, the Time Lords were wiped out in a second.
And that's, you know, traumatized me.
And that's, you know, I kind of was feeling that.
It's like, OK, I'm not saying you didn't believe that the Time Lords had been wiped out.
But in fact, they weren't.
They weren't.
they weren't they they survived that and then later they were taken out by the master we don't
know how was it in an instant now but that but but that is the current status he is the last of the
time lords except obviously he's not the master he was the last of the time lords since the master
when the master came back there the i mean one of the things about this episode and it ties into my
theme of it's doing stuff that's been done before by Russell T Davies, but better previously.
Like I enjoyed this episode. Most of the things in it I thought were done pretty well, but what
he's doing in this episode in at least one respect is bringing back a time Lord from the classic
series a villain who he you know really appreciates who has been uh presented without
kind of revealing their identity and then pulling off a a reveal at the end of the episode this is
utopia except it hasn't got Derek Jacoby in it etc etc and the it's not you know utopia is one of
the one of the great episodes in my book and this is good i enjoyed it but if he's trying to do what
he did in utopia it's kind of like well he's done that already he's done it as well as he possibly
could why bother i don't know it everything is a retread but done poorer in in these last two years
that's how i feel yeah well like yeah i mean that's kind of been my complaint not everything
But the general problem with bringing someone back to run the show, to run a show that has always, always moved forward.
Well, almost always moved forward.
I know Barry Letts came back.
And yeah, there are probably other examples where you can see it as being slightly more circular.
But still, I feel like there isn't enough of let's do this very differently.
and not doing the same thing again as well or better because you can still tell better stories
even if you're in the the same kind of rut i don't i i think i think utopia was pretty fantastic i
don't think you can do it again and better what went before i'm just talking about the season as
a whole not i i feel that the kind of critic criticisms of of chibnall some were valid some
less so. But what I think it is fair to say is that what he did with the show was unlike
what anyone else had done with the show previously. And that was interesting,
regardless of whether you approved of the things he was doing or not.
No. Okay. Let's talk about the Hellyton. My first note here is poppy flavored honey.
how big are you guys on honey over there is that a thing i mean i know we have honey well yeah we
do have honey yeah yeah yeah and and we have typically speaking flavored honey is because
of the type plant that pollinates it or that the bees collect the pollen for i think yeah you don't
pollinate the honey you could yes they is the pollen is the pollen that the he the bees are
collecting i'm having trouble imagining that as being something so you know as big as coca-cola
for the western galactic uh region but okay it's like that's just a weird is there something more
to this is this is this is this wizard of oz so is this a you know if you're if you're getting
if you're getting into conspiracy theories about that i mean i i personally i think it's
I think it is.
This episode's pretty gay.
Poppy honey.
But,
but the,
but the best conspiracy theorist about that is,
was suggested to me by my friend who said space baby,
Poppy and Poppy honey.
Like,
is there,
is this a coincidence?
Is Poppy,
the spirit of the poppy fields of the planet alien manifesting itself?
Oh,
that's no,
it's.
Yeah.
Ah,
so horns horns these the only aliens we've seen with horns except for the the beast on the
impossible planet the daemons possibly daemons have horns oh yeah yes they did have horns yes
jab with horns five rounds rapid and that was the the the gargoyle not even the not even the the
daemon i i don't know what am i what am i supposed do you guys have a okay this is another one of
things where this episode's likely to lay some of me bare. Her horns were cut off. Now, nobody did
colonialism better than the British. I mean, you guys were top notch at that. I mean, we're,
we're definitely second class colonial overlords compared to the British.
But you've done your best.
We've done our best. I'm not saying we didn't. I'm just saying nobody did it better than the
british does this forced assimilation have any particular does it does it resonate in some
particular way in your mind that makes you think of a particular atrocity or thing that you guys did
over the years i'm not sure that it's it's necessarily a particular thing i think it's
a general thing about discrimination and about yeah i mean yes the whole thing about the
discrimination i've got i've got it right here in my notes prejudice is bad so we got that right
out of the way prejudice is bad but that particular piece the fact that she she had her
horns cut off okay so that she could hide so that even her i don't know partner so she could pass
Yes. So her partner, I don't know, romantic partner, business partner, whatever. When he
finds out, I guess he couldn't be the romantic partner, probably would have noticed the horn
stubs on the back of her head. So let's say business partner.
Form that association.
Yeah. I couldn't tell because he didn't appear to be part of the act. So, but he was dressed up
like he was part of the act. So I don't know. Anyway, but she, you know, so she passes. So,
and that obviously there's lots of examples of new people who do things so that they can pass.
But Belinda asked, did you do that to yourself? She said, no. So it was forced assimilation.
Who did it? Why? If nobody likes them, why would you cut their horns off so they can pass? I don't
quite understand that. But I was wondering if that was meant to be some sort of metaphor. And I'll
Here's where we go back into, well, once again, listeners get a bit of me written out there.
I'm sure that I have mentioned that I am white.
There is nothing we can do about the fact that I'm a blonde-haired, blue-eyed white guy,
but I am also a tribal member of the Citizens Pottawatomie Nation because of my grandmother
or my great-grandmother, depending on how you want to look at that.
in the United States, started by the British, you know, and it was started by the British,
the whole, let's kill all the indigenous people. And then, you know, we carried on in the United
States with programs to eradicate them in any way we can. But at some point, somebody sitting in
back of one of the genocide meetings must have raised her hand and said, excuse me, excuse me,
Maybe we should not, I don't know, murder them all.
Maybe we should all force convert them to Jesus, which they then proceeded to do with gusto.
They would kidnap children from their parents and they would put them in boarding schools.
They would cut their hair.
They would burn their clothes.
They would give them white men clothes and they would eradicate their languages, teach
them English and the ways of God.
And it was an attempt to absolutely force assimilate them into our culture.
And I know they did something like that in Australia.
I'm just far more familiar with it.
My grandmother was in one of those schools for several years when she was seven.
She was not force assimilated.
She was pretty much already there because her mother was a Christian and married to
an Irishman.
And it's that her mother died and her father was a cowboy.
And so he was out, you know, driving a cattle across the country.
So that was an option to put her in a school to get an education when she was seven.
So there was that.
But that's what came to my mind is this is because I still do associate those those atrocities, even though my grandmother wasn't there by by force.
It was still it's still an atrocity.
There is an Indian school right down the street from me.
I live one block from a street called Indian School.
And if you just go three or four miles down the road, the buildings still stand.
It's now in a park and a museum.
But, you know, an Indian school that existed for about 100 years in operation.
So that came to my mind.
But then I thought this is a British audience because it's obviously a British audience
because I guess that guy Rylan's a person, a real person, and not-
I was confused about that because Belinda recognized him.
But then we don't actually know how long he had been being cryogenically preserved for,
so he could be a current celebrity.
Could be.
I don't know.
I think they called him the immortal Rylan.
But but my point is that that wouldn't play in an American audience because, A, I don't think anybody knows who he is. And B, I don't think we really do Eurovision here. So if he's a host of Eurovision, which is this would thud like, you know, a textbook on the floor, it wouldn't fly.
So I still think that the target here is British sensibilities.
And so therefore coming back to that whole forced assimilation,
like what atrocity is he trying,
which particular one is he trying to bring up?
Is,
is there one,
is there anything comparable?
I don't think I don't wipe out a particular race.
I mean,
I,
I think,
I think there are countless examples of where people have been.
Well,
I mean,
you're right.
It's about colonialists and it's about people being driven off their land or resources used and people treated in a way that is entirely because they're seen as being second rate, second class or whatever.
And I think this, I mean, it's not a kind of subtle political message, but then that's where I think these stories, this is the kind of story that I think can work quite well, because it's a simple, easily digestible association with this whole idea.
when it comes down to it so events and organizations like eurovision are all about
soft power and the exercise of soft power and i think that russell t davis very kind of tuned into
to all of that stuff like when we when we we talked briefly a couple of weeks ago about how
unit had evolved from when RTD brought them back in 2005 and the kind of world and context in which
we were was one where the kind of coalition of the willing had been involved in the invasion
of Iraq and the way in which hard power was used was very different I think to the way it is
now like two decades later and you know having seen what's happened with you know just take them
like the withdrawal from afghanistan for example that you're looking at a very different world but
but the things that rtd is interested in are still the same things which is how do the how
how do the the global powers exercise exercise what influence and you know we're talking about
malign influence here over other people's other countries here and it is the way in which that
soft power is corrupted and in which the the kind of corporatism is hide hiding a kind of
ugly ugly truth under all of this and that that doesn't i think connect to any particular example
I think you could come up with innumerable examples of where that applies.
I'm just curious.
Now, you say Eurovision is an exercise in soft power.
Who is exercising that soft power and to what end?
The countries who are engaged in Eurovision.
So, I mean, I literally know nothing about Eurovision, but one of my colleagues is extremely
keen on Eurovision.
And so I have had explained to me quite a lot of the rules around Eurovision, which include
fact that at least half a dozen of the countries in the contest, because I mean, my kind of
initial naive question was, how exactly can you have the, I remember Eurovision as just being like
one night, like the night that Doctor Who was on was Eurovision night and everyone's, every country
sung their song and people voted on each other's songs and whoever kind of convinced enough juries
to give them the votes from the other countries was going to win. But actually now it goes on
it starts much, much earlier than that. And there are all of these kind of previous stages to the
contest. And it turns out that whatever it is, half a dozen countries, France, Germany,
Switzerland, I think the UK, possibly a couple of others who were in it at the start,
automatically qualify. But there are these stages between these other countries.
And there are countries outside, I mean, Russia used to be in it, Israel's in it, Australia is in it.
Australia definitely isn't in Europe.
And so the kind of countries that weren't original countries have to participate in this.
So there are all sorts of kind of shenanigans and rules around this.
But the way in which you exercise soft power in these contests, just like, you know, just like kind of sporting contests or whatever,
that you invest in your own country's talent in this regard and you build your influence through
that and it's it does matter i think that soft power has become a lot it's been dismissed and
seen as a lot less fashionable by well certainly in america where you just pissed us all away
but also here in the uk where the way in which we've exercised soft power through our membership
the European Union has been completely disregarded as being important within the last decade.
On the other hand, I think if you look at countries like Russia and particularly China
and the way in which they exercise economic soft power, I mean, look at China and Africa,
you see a completely different story. The countries in the ascendancy are the ones that
recognize how important soft power is. And this is just kind of one aspect of that. But I think that
it's, you know, it's right up RTD street in terms of the kind of political commentary that he's
interested in. I can't even imagine, I mean, I can, I can imagine rooting for a local sports team.
I can kind of imagine it. The fact that the sport team I root for is New Zealand
in cricket has, has not much to do with the fact that we really don't have a cricket in the United
says, so I can't.
And you know, we do have one, but you know, I can't imagine that for singing.
Now, maybe that's back down to me and the whole, you know, if anybody takes from it
that I don't like any singing, that's, that's absolutely not true.
It's just that given if you played a song, a well-done instrumental version of the song
or a sung version of the song, I'm going to go with the instrumental.
You know it's humans playing the instruments, though, when you sort of dismiss the human
involvement.
No, it's not a human voice.
I'm talking about a voice.
I'm talking about words.
That's the difference.
It's very few songs that the words speak to me.
It's the melody that grabs me.
The words get in the way frequently.
So I don't.
And a lot of people can't sing.
And yet they're still popular singers.
So they have terrible voices.
So I was like, how did this person manage to get a second job?
I don't understand.
But that's again, that's kind of me.
I just can't picture me going, I'm rooting for the British team.
I wouldn't do it in that voice.
Oh, I'm rooting for the British team because I'm British.
You know, I can't I can't picture that.
I would listen to the music and go, that's the better song.
That's the better performance.
I can't picture that being nationalistic.
But there's an element of that to the sport as well.
Yes, there is to sport.
I absolutely agree.
Well, but if you support the New Zealand cricketers,
and I do not even begin to understand how cricket works,
but if they are playing one of the other cricketers,
I think India play cricket. Let's say they're playing India.
Yes, they do. They might even be playing Australia.
India do some particularly exemplary hitting of the balls. Then even the kind of most ardent
New Zealand fan has to kind of grudgingly admire what is going on there.
Absolutely.
Isn't it similar to that?
Could be.
That admiration does not undercut the fact that you remain a New Zealand supporter.
But New Zealand is a team. It has some continuity from year to year.
It has, it has, that is not true with Eurovision.
It's just whatever act we choose to throw up this year, right?
Yes, it's more like Wimbledon, if you like.
It's, we, we support the British tennis player and the British tennis player isn't always
the same person.
Don't do that.
I don't do that.
When it gets down to individual sports, I don't care.
But not that I'm big on sports.
So if you, if you, if you support the, the, how long have you supported the New Zealand
cricket team for?
10, 15 years.
Are they still all the same players
as when you started supporting them?
No.
Like I said,
but there's continuity to the fact
that they come and go
and they ebb and...
It's not like...
It's still triggers broom, isn't it?
The British team is...
It's not like the British Eurovision group
is the Rolling Stones
and they just...
One guy dies
and then they replace him
with another one
and each year it's the Rolling Stones
and after 20 years they're all dead
except that they're not
because they're all preserved
somehow through some sort of black magic.
But Eurovision is just, I don't know why, who picks what group goes up there to be the singer this year?
Who, you know, I have no investment in that.
There's no teamwork.
It's not teamwork, basically.
It's, we're just going to throw something away.
No, but I kind of feel like tennis isn't really a team sport either.
I agree.
And that's why I don't do it for tennis.
I don't think that way.
I don't even think there are teams.
I mean, I know they call them.
I mean, I know they call it, oh, it's Team USA, but it's not.
Yeah.
Sure.
Some people root for their team in Eurovision, apparently.
Yeah.
They do seem to.
And I have to point this.
Like I said, I had to do some research for Eurovision a little bit.
I didn't go into voting or anything like this.
What I find fascinating, and I know I threw the word out there earlier, and I'm going to throw it out there again.
I had no idea until this week that a very popular nicknames for Eurovision are the Gay
Olympics and the Gay World Cup.
But I can totally see it.
Yeah.
Yeah, I can totally see it.
Okay.
Maybe that's the soft power that's being exercised.
What?
You mean the kind of pink power?
Yeah, exactly.
To some degree.
It's perfectly perfect.
I mean, one of the kind of big shifts or parallel to the big shifts in attitudes towards homosexuality here was all the stuff about the pink pound and the kind of economic value of gay consumers, essentially.
Okay, good.
I'm glad you just explained what a pink pound was because that was worrying me.
Never heard that phrase before.
Okay.
Well, I wasn't sure.
I had to explain because I wasn't sure whether that was the kind of internationally recognized term.
But I'm sure, you know, similar kinds of things happen when the...
And again, it's a political and cultural shift, but it comes about through these things.
It's not just preaching to people that, you know, you should respect.
You may be a heterosexual and your God may tell you that heterosexuality is the only true way.
It's not just preaching to those people that they're wrong.
It's actually making the cultural shift through a range of different ways of persuading people,
which includes appealing to, you know, maybe people's own self-interest.
when you're saying actually economically you're going to be better off if you consider that you
know there is a there's a sector out there who actually you know in in many cases have more
disposable income it's gonna say it's not exactly it's not exactly right but you know dinks dual
income no kids exactly exactly and and makes a difference that well but it but what that kind
because you start to get advertising that is aimed at gay consumers and you you know you start to get
shifts in the the kind of public discourse that changes attitudes and so i do i do think that
you know those those kinds of things are this this is just another aspect of that and i think
that the i i suspect that the degree to which people are kind of willing to to kind of come
out as eurovision supporters has also or yeah i mean celebrate its gayness if you like rather
than it being a slightly nod and a wink thing has has also shifted over the years i i have no idea
about this because i don't know anything about eurovision apart from anything else yeah but
that's my guess okay let's see here oh back back a little bit to the hellions i don't know is there
an interesting story here that's lost in the lack of details about what happened to their planet
why they burned the planet instead of using it to harvest poppies to make their their poppy honey
you know about the the fact that they're called hellions okay first off they've got horns that's
a very evocative of Earth pagan
symbology. Is there a story here
about how maybe
there's some reason
that people have encountered
them in the past and taken
from, much like the impossible
planet where you get down there
and there's Satan
in the pit
and you go, oh, that must be where
all the legends of Satan came from.
Is there something here?
Is there something to the fact that
their names are Hellions?
which is an actual word in English,
and I have a connection here
as to what the purpose of this story actually is.
One, Hellenes is an English word,
and it typically means a mischievous or troublesome child
or kid.
Main villain's name was Kid.
The horns are goats,
which goats are kids.
And then the doctor beats him,
and he's a kid.
is this story anti-spanking i think that's what the purpose of this story is it's anti-corporal
punishment on children well i think you've cracked it it must be that but we get nothing out of this
right all of these things are just like all right i think i think you may be pulling a little bit
too much out of that but i got very distracted i didn't make i didn't make the connection between
horns kids and goats and that does seem too obvious not to have been deliberate but i got
very distracted by the fact that he is called kid i know where you're going that was right yeah
i i'm surprised we haven't discussed diamonds forever already he is called kid and she is
called win i know it's not wint and kid and i know from the credits that his name is spelt with
but that cannot be a coincidence and yet i can't see diamonds are forever well they were sadists
and they were presumably lovers yes and then the book they definitely were homosexuals there was
just implied in the movie yeah guys it's like come on are you guys are you guys playing with us now
just drawing this stuff out to see if you can get people to draw conspiracy theories.
I really do think RTD is poking our nose.
I really do.
He's trolling us.
He's trolling people.
Putting Susan in it is trolling people.
Putting the Ronnie in it is trolling people.
The fans.
It just is.
It's not going to be there for good reason.
while we're talking about hellions i'm going to i'm going to give another reason why i mean i
thought one of the things that helped me enjoy this episode so much was excellent casting and
i i i mean i try to have try to avoid seeing what people thought of the episode but i've seen some
kind of some criticism of of freddie fox's kid i really enjoyed his performance i thought it was
spot on there was a kind of level of of bond villainy there and i i did kind of feel like it
was it it justified because of the kind of scale of numbers and also the casual disregard that he
had for that did kind of justify the anger that it provoked in the doctor there's something
incredibly powerful about him and his his kind of um complete disdain for everyone that it's the
opposite of you know last week i was saying i didn't feel like the the proprietor whatever the
barber was called had enough of that kind of villain charisma to to really feel like he was
he was kind of sufficiently threatening to the doctor. Whereas this guy, I don't know,
it was one of those kind of understated performances that made me really react.
It made me really react. And I enjoyed that a lot. Okay. So let's take a step back here,
because you just crossed something in my mind.
Al in Robot Revolution is an incel,
but he's also basically a guy who feels underappreciated.
You know, he's got a huge chip on his shoulder.
The barber was a guy who didn't feel he was getting the recognition
or getting his importance of his contributions out.
This guy is kind of in that same mold.
He's a loser that has a chip on his shoulder a mile wide.
And I think he did a great job portraying it, but I thought nothing of him other than a weasely little word redacted who has taken on this anger towards what's been done to him.
But you just don't get to killing three trillion people without being truly a piece of work.
Conrad too.
Yeah.
But I think there is a difference here.
I think maybe partly it's Wynne that puts that across.
Because she is part of this.
And I think the difference is that the way in which the Hellions have been treated is an abomination and despicable.
And again, you kind of see this in the, you know, we said there, I don't think that there is any specific example of what this is about.
But in any number of these kind of situations where the British or other kind of colonialist
powers have occupied a country or whatever, they've had to put down terrorists.
These things create kind of resistance, and that resistance often takes very unpalatable
forms.
And it's not that you necessarily condone terrorism by saying, you know what, actually,
I don't know what I would do in that situation.
This is obviously completely heinous.
The scale of it is mind-boggling and everything.
But he's not like Al.
He's not like Zababa, where I think it's just about his ego being bruised.
There is something else within this.
He's a piece of work, for sure.
But I don't know that he's quite the same as they are.
I think there's a theme there, though, this year.
But they're not getting what they want.
He's not getting what he wants, which is recognition of what's happened to his people.
There's something.
Conrad wanted recognition from his mom that he wasn't a twerp.
I don't know what Al was.
Recognition he wasn't.
I took something slightly different, which was the way in which Kidd responded to what's happened to the Hellions was to try and wipe out three trillion people.
a kind of form of exercising hard power if you like and the the kind of resolution to the episode
involved cora singing a song about what had happened to the hellion people revealing revealing a truth
that the corporate overlords had tried to suppress and that's a that's a kind of a suggestion that
there are better more peaceful ways of doing things it's a it's through song through eurovision
through soft power well through soft power yeah through through through the through the careful
and legitimate exercise of of soft power you know that's what i thought it was about you say that
the whole three trillion people is heinous okay but we don't actually know how many people are
in the galaxy i mean that could be a day's worth of people dead in car accidents for all we know
it might not be that it might not be that big of it i there is a there is a line you just don't
care because they're all eurovision i mean stellavision they're all eurovision fans that's
right i mean if they're watching eurovision well winner uh no they no but i'll i'll i'll
there is a there is a line because i i try to keep this in my i try to keep this in in my heart
if you will and it not not because i'm planning to go out killing people or anything like that
but i try to keep there is an episode of star trek star trek that that the the the immunity
syndrome and in that episode 300 vulcans are killed in an instant and dr mccoy is having a
conversation with spock and he's like but but 300 people were killed all at once don't you feel
anything? And Spock, and I don't have the exact words here in front of me, but Spock responds
to the effect of how it's strange that humans are more appalled by the death of 300 people
than they are the death of one person. And, you know, you complain about how empty the Vulcan
heart, how much little room there is in Vulcan heart, but maybe there should be more in yours.
And it's a very good point because we do, you know, an airplane goes down and 150 people die.
And we're like, oh, airplanes.
Oh, my God.
Like, they're so dangerous.
But, you know, 500,000 times that are killed in car accidents.
All time.
We have this.
We as humans do have this weird sort of like, oh, we killed two people.
That's terrible.
That's much worse than killing one person.
Is it?
I don't.
And I try to keep I try to remind myself whenever we have something where, you know, the horror of it is the sheer number of people killed.
The horror of it is the fact that somebody wanted to kill or that somebody took up arms to kill someone.
That is really what you need to go.
And it's really easy to look at that and go, yeah, the doctor's justified for getting really mad at this guy for trying to kill three trillion people. Should he really be that much madder than if he just tried to kill one person? I don't know. Should he be three trillion times madder?
Well, arguably, I mean, because the consequentialists would say, without kind of getting deep into the philosophy of ethics around this, the consequentialists would say yes, in answer to your question.
But actually, the subtext of this, well, it's not a subtext, actually, I think it's far more overt than this, is that the reason that he's getting angry is because Keir has killed one person.
It's Belinda.
It's not the three trillion.
But yeah, there you go.
I kind of felt it was both, to be fair.
I kind of felt it was both, but yeah.
Okay, so just some technicological questions.
If Earth was destroyed on Belinda Day, and we know Belinda Day was 2025, and they were
able to recreate Graham Norton from the rubble, what did they recreate Graham Norton from?
Is there a Graham Norton hologram running around already?
Did they find a voice tape and a 3D scan of him
and they were able to turn it into a hologram?
They got a video recording of the original transmission of Rose.
Was it that where he cut in?
No, no, it was Time of Death and Flesh and Angels.
Oh, it was much later.
I didn't realize it was.
It was right at the conclusion of part one of that, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
the infamous incident that I'm sure was in RTD's mind when he thought,
we'll get Graham Norton in this one.
I did think that was possible.
And talk about him getting killed.
Yeah.
Although I think Graham Norton might also be the most famous British gay person in the United States.
It's possible.
I mean, apart from Mr. Humphreys in Are You Being Served?
But it's possible.
We don't get the Graham Norton show.
the top 10.
I couldn't name them.
I couldn't name them because frankly,
most of them,
I can't tell because they're just people,
but some of them play it up a little more than others.
Graham Norton kind of does.
So if that's the case,
then how did they,
again,
how did they do this with Ryland?
Why,
why,
why did,
you know,
assuming it's Eurovision,
it's actually a continuation of Eurovision as opposed to a completely new song contest.
And then why would they,
i think that it is a continue continuation and i feel like linda knows this rylan guy suggests
that he is from the original contest on earth from her time yes yes so how did they sift that
body out of the rubble maybe he was stuck in a mavite bubble yeah i don't know i don't know
because it yeah i've no idea it didn't make much sense but you know i i thought there was a reference
earlier in the episode and i've only watched it once to to humans and the earth being destroyed
in 2025 would pretty much wipe out the human race right by the time you get because they're not off
the planet humans haven't left left the planet right so that doesn't make a whole lot of sense
nor would it make any sense that anybody would go dig it up and go what are we going to salvage
from the earth i know eurovision yeah why hasn't susan regenerated by now i mean oh god it's nice
to see carol and ford but it's wonderful to see carol and ford and you we we talked three years
ago about how excited i was that william russell what was playing the same character in the same
TV series after 59 years. And I thought that had to be pretty exceptional. And Carol Ann Ford,
Carol Ann Ford is playing the same character in the same TV series after 62 years. So that's a
new record. And at the moment, I'm pretty sure she's going to be in next week as well. So I
think this is probably going to apply for a while. But at the moment, you can say she was in the
first episode of doctor who she was in the very most recent episode of doctor who which is
wonderful and and she'll be probably in the last episode of doctor who in two weeks
yeah i'm not i'm not hoping that that's a record that she is going to hang on to for ages and ages
because the show is ending yeah let's see here and of course how would she be here because she
was left on earth and the earth is destroyed back in 2025 so you know no she no she wasn't left on
earth before 2025 no she was left on earth after 2025 which doesn't exist because there is no earth
after 2025 well yes obviously that does kind of create a problem but you know wibbly wobbly
unless she's a time lord in which case why hasn't she regenerated yet
maybe she got left after the five doctors i don't know yeah maybe maybe she'd gotten divorced and
it was you know that that meeting that david campbell guy for a week and then we're like yeah
we have thanks to to big finish we have some account of involvement in the time war so
actually you know we we do know a bit of what happened after the dalek invasion and the post
post-Dalic invasion yeah if our if RTD is is going to acknowledge the the big finish continuity
speaking of which I obviously did not get my reference to Bang Bang A Boom in this although
it felt like there wasn't an obvious place where he could have mentioned it so that
wasn't too bad and as you pointed out Bang Bang A Boom is set during the intergalactic song contest
and this is the interstellar song contest, which they specifically say is actually only within
part of our galaxy. So clearly, it has gone from being the Eurovision song contest to the Earth
song contest to the interstellar song contest, and it will become intergalactic at some point
in the future. Yeah. There is one other thing I'm going to put in this episode that I'm just
going to say is a trope I hate. And I just, and I'm, I'm going to, and it's not just from this
film. It's obviously it's from lots and lots of movies. Gary and Mike will not be a couple in six
months where we start, you know, you start the film where you've got a couple and they've like
reached the end of their, they've reached the end of it. They're, they've got those differences that
Just frankly, if if Gary worked for the intergalactic interstellar song contest in such a massive way and is obviously such a massive fan and gets a booth because he works at the thing, you're not going to be late.
Mike is not going to be late unless Mike is a complete jerk off.
look he is he is not that that is a failed couple i made it on time to the celine dion concert for
my wife and mike and mike can make it to the freaking interstellar i'd even have to go to
the interstellar song contest if my wife wanted to go and i'd be there on time because that's what
you do.
So this is a couple.
In fact, he's about to say
the words. I think maybe we
ought to have a break
just like Ross and Rachel. They were
on a break and
so they were just
about to lose this couple. Then they have
the big exciting adventure and they're like, oh
lovey-dovey again despite the fact
that they were both ridiculously
slutty with the doctor. And I think I can
use that word okay for men. You just can't use it
for women. And
no six months i get a little adrenaline is going to keep them together and then they are done
they are not a suitable couple apart from the fact that you're obviously still not still not
over the way friends ended the i i thought it was explicit about how i thought it was explicit about
how gary and mike had been together for like for ages and ages and they're they're not a failed
couple. I know people like that, and they've been together for ages and ages. Yeah, I'm not
convinced. This is standard Hollywood movie trope where the couple get back together by the end of
the episode because they had an adventure, and they're going to live happily ever after, and I
hate those. They were a bad couple to begin with, and they're a bad couple coming out the other end
with a boost of adrenaline. I don't think they're going to change, but I don't think they're going
to split up, and I don't think the adventure brought them together. I know the trope you're
talking about i just don't quite feel that fits with what's going on here and i'll tell you
something else i'm not remotely invested in them either i don't care i'm afraid we're gonna see
them again in the next episode but i really am along with along with everyone i'm afraid
yeah the barber will be there obviously conrad who else who else can we poppy obviously poppy
obviously poppy kid susan both ronnie's yep yep kate mel yeah donna's i don't know they're
gonna get donna in there yeah i'm not sure about donna rose maybe rose two yeah yeah rose two yeah
yeah it's it's gonna be the final curtain call we brought everybody in we could
heck david tenet might be there oh well he's literally just been denying it this week so
it's perfectly possible yes oh yeah yeah absolutely that he's totally in it he's been denying his
words were if if i was going to be in doctor who i would definitely tell you about it so
i think it's perfectly possible he's in it yeah that's not a denial he didn't say well no it is
a denial it's just it's a lie no no no no see it's a weasel word if i were going to be a doctor i
would tell you about it i wouldn't necessarily tell you about it today but in six months i will
definitely tell you i can totally justify that lie i can totally justify that lie yeah
um totally do you have anything else about this episode apart from glitter canon well i think for
what for one thing we should we should pick up on something that you you mentioned before that i i
hadn't been aware of and that listeners who don't follow the FA Cup avidly might need closure on,
which is that the Cup did not overrun. And this episode in the UK was broadcast on BBC One,
just like every other episode of Doctor Who has been for the past 62 years. But I did find a quote
from RTD that I quite liked. And you're going to have to use your bleeper, I'm afraid, because he
was asked when he wanted to take the risk of scheduling on this day. And he said,
that's the sexiest f***ing risk I've ever heard in my life. Let's do it.
Yeah, that sounds like him. That sounds like him.
Yeah.
Anything else?
There's one other thing, and it's partly I want to pick up something I meant to mention last week,
but this week is even more appropriate to mention it, which is Murray Gold, because I was struck
listening to last week's episode, as I watched it, how we have complained about him doing a lot
to save the planet during the past couple of seasons by recycling his earlier cues,
including leitmotifs for other characters, for new characters.
And also laying them on thick to try to save the story.
Yeah. Last week, it did feel like there was quite a lot of interesting and appropriate score alongside the episode,
which I really appreciated.
And obviously, this week, he was doing presumably what it was that caused him to have to recycle all of the previous cues
because he was writing all of these Eurovision numbers,
including, I think I read,
that he'd written the lyrics for one of them,
although most of them were written by RTD and Juno Dawson.
The songs I thought were quite good,
not as good as the songs in Bang Bang A Boom,
which were really good,
but these sounded quite plausible Eurovision things
to my non-Eurovision fan ears.
Again, I think the only two Eurovision songs
that I'm aware of that I know...
Puppet on a String?
Congratulations.
by lulu the one by lulu in the 60s yeah did yeah i what's that i don't know i have to look it up
you don't know it that well then do you what song did lulu perform you're asking chat gpt
no just as well i'm asking is this thing lulu performed the song boom bang bang of course i
should have known that i should have known that which must be where bang bang a boom came from
it wasn't it was absolutely where back where where boom bang a bang came from i think that
i think that the uk certainly possibly may have won it again recently but when i was younger i
remember only having won the eurovision song contest twice and i think was boom bang a bang
one certainly puppet on a string one i say certainly it probably didn't i don't know what
i'm talking about we needed a euro joint winners expert this week four four joint winners good
lord yeah each receiving 18 points and reached number two on the uk singles chart now the other
one that i know is abba's waterloo was also a eurovision that wouldn't be the uk would it
no but i don't care see it's country thing i don't care i like abba i like lulu to some degree
you like good lord yeah i think you're gonna i'm i'm 60 i grew up in the 70s definitely disco
is there is is definitely there so waterloo and that one uh and the other one i don't know what
the song is but let's see olivia newton john well sang a song that year she's one of yours
no she's one of australia's is she okay yes it came in fourth let's see what that song was
she performed long live love olivia newton john performed the song long live love as the united
kingdoms entry i know she's australian yeah she she sang for britain in 74 came in fourth
with a song I've never heard of.
I don't want to look.
Anyway, we have,
I don't know how to condense some of this,
maybe get rid of some of the typing sounds,
but I think it's all fascinating,
possibly more interesting than the episode in many ways.
Tune in to Fusion Patrol to listen to us
Googling Eurovision winners from the 1970s.
Or losers in Olivia Newton-John's case.
Fourth place, that's not even,
Yeah, that's something. All right. Well, I think I can say something very unusual for an episode of Fusion Patrol. I mean, we have while we're doing the Doctor Who season, I'm able to say, you know, join Simon and I next week as we talk about and then tell you which episode of Doctor Who we're going to be talking about because because we're doing these.
But we are not doing an episode next week.
But I can still tell you what it's going to be.
Next week, Ben and I are going to be looking at the movie Barbarella.
Which, you know, spoilers, Eugene was really keen on.
Yeah.
But possibly we should mention that we will be talking about Doctor Who again in two weeks, though.
That's not it.
We're not giving up.
No, no, we're not going to give up right on the eve of a great plane wreck.
A catastrophic planetary impact wreck.
That's what we're not going to give up on the eve of.
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.
You've been listening to Fusion Patrol.
Thanks for listening.
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