WEBVTT

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you're listening to fusion patrol a listener supported podcast

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each week we take a single episode of a science fiction tv series movie or

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audio and overanalyze it to within an inch of its life welcome to the discussion

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hello and welcome to another episode of fusion patrol i'm eugene and i'm simon and tonight we

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are going to be looking at wish world and the reality war episodes of the 2025 season of doctor

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who aka the final season the final the last last episodes of doctor who this is going to be a little

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bit of a weird episode because trying to learn from what happened last year when basically the

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legend of ruby rose got just overshadowed by the empire of death so simon and i both recorded some

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thoughts about Wishworld after we watch Wishworld, but before the reality war came out.

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So I'm going to play those in now.

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Simon's never heard my comments.

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I've only heard a little bit of his comments.

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Going to have about 12 minutes here total.

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And we are playing them in live and hearing them along with you as this goes.

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So I'm going to start, though, with a synopsis of Wishworld.

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And that goes a little like this.

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The Rani arrives in 1865 Earth pretending to be a midwife.

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She has arrived somewhat later than a midwife normally would

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after the seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son has just been born.

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And because that's just downright magical,

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she steals the baby and then wishes the parents and siblings to turn into plants and animals.

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The doctor and Belinda wake up in bed together living in their 1950s style life with their child.

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Poppy!

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The doctor thinks he's John Smith.

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Belinda thinks she's Mrs. John Smith.

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Poppy presumably thinks she's Miss Poppy Smith.

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Melanie Bush is their neighbor.

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The bones of giant dinosaur-like beasts roam the streets.

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John Smith works for Kate Stewart at an insurance company,

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and there is much crockery being broken.

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Ruby shows up at the door asking for the doctor,

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but Belinda calls the police on her.

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The Ronnie runs this world from a big tower called the Bone Palace.

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Conrad is using the baby to create a world of his wishes.

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to the Ronnie's specifications.

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Anyway, this is all just make-believe worlds

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so that the Doctor will have doubts

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and then shatter the world with his doubt,

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revealing the one who is lost,

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which turns out to be just the proto-time Lord Omega.

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And now that the Doctor has doubts,

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the world is falling apart,

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and the Ronnie dumps him off the building to kill him.

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The end.

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All right.

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And here are the thoughts of that episode.

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In the 2024 series of Doctor Who,

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there were eight episodes,

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and I imagine that I could name a couple

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and you'd immediately get an idea of what that episode was.

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Perhaps not just an idea, you might even have some sort of a traumatic episode.

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For example, if I said Space Babies, 73 Yards, Dot and Bubble,

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or most notably Empire of Death.

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But in the list of episodes from 2024,

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one always has the same thought from me.

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What the hell happened in The Legend of Ruby Sunday?

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It's a nothing episode, serving no purpose other than to kill time before the reveal of Sutek and the destruction of the entire universe.

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It is also inextricably linked to and overshadowed by the incredible cloud of crap that is Empire of Death.

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I'm writing this not-at-all-detailed review of Wishworld, the penultimate episode of the 2025 series of Doctor Who, prior to the airing of the second part, The
Reality War.

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I'm doing this because I want to give it a fair shake.

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And after the reality war airs, I strongly suspect that Wishworld will go the way of Legend of Ruby Sunday.

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A wasted 45 minutes that did nothing except kill time and cram as many returning characters on screen as possible.

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I said I wanted to give it a fair shake.

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In this case, that means I want the opportunity to excoriate this piece of crap before I completely forget it exists next week.

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I'll also add that before I get into that, I am sick of the word vibes.

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There seems to be a huge apologist camp in fandom lately that has decided that if they can't have a story that makes cohesive sense or has any internal logic, they're
going to fall back on the vibes.

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No, it didn't make any sense, but the vibes worked for me.

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I can only assume that this is either a desperate need to like something so deeply ingrained with one's sense of self-identity, or perhaps a result of the movements to
decriminalize cannabis.

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Vibes don't cut s*** with me.

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Again, this is not a detailed review, just a few of the lowlights.

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One, the doctor and Belinda did nothing.

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They were not themselves, but instead a 1950s sitcom couple, a trope which has been done so much better on other TV shows.

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Two, it's made abundantly clear that this wish world is supposed to be some stylized heteronormative world akin to the stereotypes of 1950s created by Conrad's
worldview.

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Fine, although we'll come back to that in a later point.

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It's also pointed out that in Conrad's world, alternately abled individuals like Shirley are basically invisible because they have no place in his worldview.

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There's a third leg to the trifecta that this sort of worldview embraces, but they ignore that completely.

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The doctor and Belinda are people of color.

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It seems unlikely they would fit in his worldview either.

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3. Conrad is a scummy piece of work.

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In my opinion, one of the most loathsome enemies the Doctor has ever encountered.

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But there wasn't actually anything explicit in Lucky Day indicating that he held the worldview presented in Witch World.

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He's a conspiracy theorist.

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He's got mommy issues.

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He wants to be seen and validated.

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He has no scruples.

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But where was the setup for this world he created?

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Surely Alan in The Robot Revolution was a much better choice to be the architect of this world.

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Four.

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Poppy.

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Susan.

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Rogue.

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Ruby.

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Conrad.

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Kate.

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Ibrahim.

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Shirley.

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Mel.

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Susan Triad.

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Carla Sunday.

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Cherry Sunday.

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There were probably more I didn't even notice.

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But it's just too much.

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It doesn't fill me with jolly vibes just to see some faces on the screen with no purpose.

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It's indulgent twaddle.

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Five, the Ronnie.

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Some people aren't going to like this.

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The Ronnie is a third tier Doctor Who villain who featured in one mediocre and one abysmally bad story in the 1980s.

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She had two basic defining traits.

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She's the epitome of the amoral scientist, and she has an expressed contempt for all the Time Lords.

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The role, as written here, is Missy, without Michelle Gomez's charm.

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And her desire to bring back Omega? That doesn't feel in character at all.

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Six, Omega.

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Also a third-tier Doctor Who villain,

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who was in two relatively fondly, but actually quite pedestrian stories, going back to the 1970s.

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Time Lord history has been a bigger problem than the unit dating controversy.

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Omega was the first, as outlined in The Three Doctors.

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But just a few years later, that seemed to be retconned in The Deadly Assassin,

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putting Rassilon as the creator of the Time Lord's power, including the power to regenerate.

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Jump forward a few years, and the Cartmel master plan manifesting itself in places like

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Remembrance of the Daleks seemed to imply that the Doctor was also part of this

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Omega Rassilon Doctor Triumvirate.

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That never really went anywhere, but it was there.

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Then Chibnall came along and made the Doctor not even a Gallifreyan,

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but also undid the notion that Rassilon and or Omega and or the Doctor was involved in

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harnessing the Eye of Harmy and creating the power to time travel and regenerate because

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that's now something that was stolen from the Doctor's unique biology. It's a freaking mess.

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And unless yet another massive, massive reset is coming, fingers crossed, bringing Omega back

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now can only complicate things further. Seven. As each cameo or callback occurred in this episode,

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I found myself increasingly angry, which boiled over when that damn baby chuckled the giggle.

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Aloud, quite vehemently, I shouted,

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F*** you, RTD. F*** you all to hell.

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And once that genie was let out of the bottle,

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it could neither be put back nor denied for each subsequent moment that angered me.

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Were there any positives?

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I don't know. Maybe?

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With all the cameos and the comment about the ice in the doctor's hearts last week,

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it still feels like we're on a countdown to regeneration.

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I guess that's a positive.

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Like Whitaker before Gatwa, it's not about the casting,

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but about the terrible, terrible stories and plots given to them.

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The real need for regeneration, or the real place that needs a regeneration,

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is the production team.

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But if a new teen comes in, could Gatwa's doctor be salvaged?

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I've reached the throw both the bathwater and the giggle chuckling baby out all at once phase.

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Thoughts about next time?

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Well, by the time you're hearing this, next time will already be on upon us.

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But I think, sadly, that we will not see David Tennant's doctor.

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because in this world of getting eyeballs on TV sets, Tenet appearing at the end of this episode

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would have been a lot more effective than the ineffectual cliffhanger presented. I also very

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much fear the possibility that Susan will appear in the episode and utter the word

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grandmother when she sees the Ronnie. So I have no reason to like or ever even revisit this episode

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and have, if possible, even less expectations for the reality war.

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Okay. I heard that chuckle. I heard that chuckle.

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It came close, I thought.

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I think so too, because I think there's still something in this whole infertility thing,

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but okay. All right. Let's listen to Simon's comments again, without benefit of having seen

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the reality war.

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So here are my very brief thoughts on Wishworld before watching the reality war.

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I did enjoy this one. I usually enjoy the build-up of these two parters in particular.

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My regular recent criticism that RTD is retreading previous episodes certainly applies.

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I thought there were strong episodes in this of Last of the Time Lords and Sound of Drums.

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But also Doctor Who and the Dinosaurs and Inferno, which is no bad thing.

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And the thing that really appealed to me in this was the way in which Conrad's Wishworld presented a version of the ideal of current right-wing populists, but
demonstrating how kind of fragile a fantasy these ideas actually are.

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And the echoes of the Truman show as well seem particularly apposite given the way in which the current US government is combining its fascist tendencies with the
trappings of a reality TV show.

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I was less keen, unsurprisingly, on the Rani aspect, although I do think the casting is pretty perfect.

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I think we've definitely got the air to Kate O'Mara here.

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In fact, you can see RTD thinking he was using his bi-generation to put right something he got

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wrong before when he only had Derek Jacoby in for the one episode followed by John Simm when he

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could have kept him around and had two great actors in the role. Never mind the fact that

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John Simm wasn't actually really great in the role until World Enough and Time, which also

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managed to have two great actors in the role without the need for any bi-generation nonsense.

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But anyway, there's also Omega and yet another big chunk of continuity, another Time Lord

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coming back. I can't think this is going to be good either. In fact, I suspect that we're getting

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a much bigger retcon than Eugene is expecting, possibly on a Timeless Child Chibnall level.

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but I guess by the time you hear this, we will know.

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Well, I certainly was hoping for a massive, massive change.

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I'm going to say no.

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We did not get anything on the scale I was envisaging

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when I recorded that little retrospective on Wishworld.

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I have no actual comments on Wishworld,

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So I guess we'll just, for the moment, plow into the reality war.

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I had one thing, but I think it got rolled in.

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So even my prediction is true.

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So let's take a look at the synopsis.

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Now, okay, hold on.

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Actually, there's one more announcement.

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If you haven't heard this already, it's been posted on our social media,

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but there are only five people on Mastodon.

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So when I watched the reality war, I was as mad as I have ever been watching an episode of Doctor Who.

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It wasn't even a slow burn.

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It was a fast burn from the beginning to the end.

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And I didn't hate this episode as much as the Empire of Death.

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But at the same time, it did make me even angrier.

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I was absolutely livid.

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And I guess I watched it about two or three hours before Ben did.

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And I got a text message from him when he was done.

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And I realized from the language used that he had, A, reached the end of the episode,

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and B, I felt much the same way I did.

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And on a whim, we got on a call and we recorded our anger.

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I mean, that's what it is.

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It's us just absolutely ragging, sweary, hateful.

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Nonetheless, if you want it, it's out there on Patreon for our subscribers.

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You can go to our Patreon, patreon.com slash Fusion Patrol.

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If you're not a Patreon member, that's fine too.

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It's actually available for you to purchase at the absolute minimum that Patreon will

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allow me to charge, which is $3 or $4.50 if you're on an iOS device. Anyhow, that's there.

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If you want to hear Ben and I working our way through our therapy session, have at it. Just

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don't play it in the car with the kids. It's not suitable for going out in the public. It's very,

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very angry. But this, since I've through this, I thought I was through it. I thought I'd get it

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out of my system. There may still be some passive aggressive in my synopsis of Reality War,

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which goes like this. No. The doctor is about to die, falling off the Ronnie's Bone Palace,

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when he does something very clever to save himself. Nope, strike that. Anita from the

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Time Hotel opens a magic door and saves him. In the future that cannot exist because the earth

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was destroyed on May 21st, things are bad and they need the doctor to save the day. Having Anita

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return him to John Smith's home, he puts on a dress, mans up, and takes his family of Belinda

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and Poppy back to the Time Hotel, where most of the effects of Wishworld wear off on them.

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They open a door to unit and let some reality in, restoring some semblance of competency to the unit personnel.

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The Rani comes a-callin' and we learn that the Time Lords were wiped out by a, quote,

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genetic explosion, end quote, that didn't just kill the Time Lords, it also rendered them sterile.

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Which seems a bit redundant, since they're dead.

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The Ronnie did something clever to sidestep that, but not enough that she isn't sterile too.

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So she and the Doctor can't get funky and breed a whole new race of purebred Time Lords,

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despite the fact that the Doctor isn't even of the same species as the Ronnie,

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but who cares about continuity even in the same scene?

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Poppy is somewhat supposedly real and special because she's the Doctor and Belinda's baby,

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But since she's tainted by human blood, this thread goes nowhere.

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Unit planned to restore reality, but that's over Belinda's dead body because Poppy would

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cease to exist because she's clearly not real.

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So the doctor has Sue Tech, not Sue Tech, sorry, that's Sue Tech, construct a zero

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room to protect them from the oncoming return of reality.

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The doctor goes to the Bone Palace to lower the barriers so that Ruby can beam in and distract Conrad, restoring reality.

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The Rani sends the Bone Dinosaur Monsters to attack Unit, so Unit Tower goes into battle.

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And I was genuinely surprised that it didn't turn into a giant battle mecha with a big sword.

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The Rani releases Omega, but he's become a giant zombie and eats the Rani.

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The other Ronnie escapes with a time ring.

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The Doctor stumbles upon the Vindicator, which is apparently also a blaster, and zaps Omega

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back into the nethers.

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Ruby gets to Conrad and steals the wish baby and sets things right with a wish.

00:19:15.730 --> 00:19:19.220
The Doctor shows up and wishes away all of the wishes.

00:19:20.300 --> 00:19:22.080
And hopefully the so-called gods.

00:19:22.150 --> 00:19:23.840
Oh, and hopefully Mavity too.

00:19:24.240 --> 00:19:25.340
And then the episode is over.

00:19:25.510 --> 00:19:25.900
The end.

00:19:26.680 --> 00:19:27.420
Oh, wait, no.

00:19:27.760 --> 00:19:33.180
Belinda and Poppy survived in the Zero Room, and now the three of them, that's Belinda, Poppy, and the Doctor,

00:19:33.380 --> 00:19:40.040
are going to travel the universe in the TARDIS, and everyone is happy, except for Ruby, who's got a case of the Ruby Blues,

00:19:40.840 --> 00:19:44.620
because they're happy together, and she's a fourth wheel.

00:19:45.180 --> 00:19:49.120
But then Poppy disappears, and no one remembers, except for Ruby.

00:19:49.520 --> 00:19:57.320
And we know nobody except Ruby remembers Poppy because she asks everyone, one at a time,

00:19:59.560 --> 00:20:03.960
individually, almost as if the episode was running a little short of its 45-minute runtime.

00:20:04.720 --> 00:20:05.280
Sorry, what's that?

00:20:05.530 --> 00:20:08.500
Oh, I'm being told that the episode had a 66-minute runtime.

00:20:08.570 --> 00:20:09.560
Well, never mind.

00:20:10.120 --> 00:20:11.120
It must not be padding.

00:20:12.100 --> 00:20:18.820
Unit has noticed that Teal is wrong, Norway has moved, and Ernest Borgnine is alive again.

00:20:19.480 --> 00:20:23.400
That is the new reality, and Poppy isn't part of it.

00:20:23.530 --> 00:20:23.980
The end.

00:20:24.580 --> 00:20:25.220
Oh, no, wait, no.

00:20:25.580 --> 00:20:25.720
No.

00:20:26.200 --> 00:20:30.480
Ruby pleads with the Doctor, and so the Doctor goes off to kill himself.

00:20:31.500 --> 00:20:37.880
But first, the 13th Doctor shows up to have a cameo, and then it's back to the Doctor

00:20:38.160 --> 00:20:38.720
offing himself.

00:20:39.070 --> 00:20:47.939
The plan, if we can deign to call this, give it a moniker, a plan, is to burn a regeneration

00:20:48.060 --> 00:20:53.920
into the time vortex, nudging the universe slightly and restoring Poppy. Presumably,

00:20:53.930 --> 00:20:59.700
this will also kill Ernest Borgnine in the process. There is now a mandatory post-regeneration

00:21:00.160 --> 00:21:05.680
sequence where the Doctor hasn't changed yet, and he goes to visit Belinda, who now has a child

00:21:05.840 --> 00:21:11.980
named Poppy, which is not the Doctor's child, just a spooky human child. By the way, Belinda

00:21:12.160 --> 00:21:17.080
is the one who called her spooky, not me. The universe is back to normal? No, it isn't,

00:21:17.120 --> 00:21:22.480
Because now all the previous adventures with Belinda, when she was whining to get back

00:21:22.480 --> 00:21:28.460
to May 24th, are all now punctuated with, because Poppy hasn't got a reliable babysitter.

00:21:29.080 --> 00:21:33.360
So still not the original reality.

00:21:34.120 --> 00:21:34.700
Too late, though.

00:21:34.940 --> 00:21:37.380
The doctor leaves and finally regenerates his face.

00:21:37.880 --> 00:21:41.680
Her first words, oh, hello, I'm a chav.

00:21:42.340 --> 00:21:42.900
The end.

00:21:43.500 --> 00:21:47.000
I may have added three words in there, but I think the sentiment is right.

00:21:47.520 --> 00:21:53.260
All right. Because of our disparate views on the previous episode, I'm just going to go.

00:21:53.940 --> 00:22:01.740
Did you love this episode, Simon? Because I'm so tempted to say yes. I'm so tempted to say yes.

00:22:01.960 --> 00:22:10.380
I tell you what, I clearly had far lower expectations of this. I was listening to

00:22:10.420 --> 00:22:18.640
the synopsis and thinking, my word, the level of attention you have played to the details and the

00:22:18.640 --> 00:22:25.880
things that you were caring about in the last kind of endless 20 minutes of it, I checked out

00:22:26.080 --> 00:22:34.540
mentally by then. It was... Details matter. That should be the subheading for this podcast.

00:22:34.760 --> 00:22:42.600
details matter. I can't help myself there. It didn't make me angry in the way that it made

00:22:42.760 --> 00:22:46.760
you angry. And I'm curious about that because I think, I mean, one of the things I'm going to come

00:22:46.900 --> 00:22:54.900
on to is the kind of emotional impact that Doctor Who in particular does seem to be able to have on

00:22:55.000 --> 00:23:03.000
me and the way in which I kind of fix some of that on the production team of the time.

00:23:04.000 --> 00:23:16.840
But for whatever reason, this one didn't make me as upset, let's say, as, I don't know,

00:23:18.010 --> 00:23:20.180
the timeless child thing at the time.

00:23:20.960 --> 00:23:28.080
Even in the name of the Doctor, at the time, the introduction of the War Doctor just seemed dreadful to me.

00:23:28.190 --> 00:23:33.020
Certainly, I'm still fairly upset about the cyber brigadier.

00:23:34.800 --> 00:23:47.220
Those things stuck for a lot longer with me than this, where I was watching it and I had a sinking feeling.

00:23:48.440 --> 00:24:07.500
This episode didn't land well with me, I'll say that much. And it's been going over in my mind for a couple of days, but then, you know, it's Doctor Who. But I guess I kind of
already resigned myself to some degree.

00:24:08.220 --> 00:24:30.340
I think the kind of summary, I've got a certain amount of detailed notes down here, but I think probably the summary of the broad thrust is when they said that RTD was
coming back, I was worried because I think the essence of this show is that it always makes mistakes, it always gets things wrong.

00:24:32.640 --> 00:24:40.260
it's always been a cure-its-egg and that doesn't matter because it's always also doing different

00:24:40.580 --> 00:24:46.860
things and doing new things and and i just i don't know but i didn't i didn't kind of feel

00:24:47.020 --> 00:24:53.460
that it was the right move to bring back a previous production team and there's quite a

00:24:53.560 --> 00:25:00.359
lot of the old production team have been behind this and that's not just because there were things

00:25:00.380 --> 00:25:06.360
about the original RTD era that I didn't love as much as some of the things that have happened

00:25:06.540 --> 00:25:13.000
since. It's just also because it's so much easier to forgive and get over the things that

00:25:13.640 --> 00:25:19.580
are mistakes being made in the cause of going somewhere different and trying something new

00:25:20.519 --> 00:25:26.900
than in the cause of trying to recapture an old form of magic that you just can't,

00:25:27.220 --> 00:25:30.680
you know, lightning doesn't strike twice and you can't ever step in the same river.

00:25:31.460 --> 00:25:36.800
That is your best justification for that yet. I understand because we have had this

00:25:37.400 --> 00:25:43.720
conversation multiple times about, you know, you, you can't, you know, you want change,

00:25:43.900 --> 00:25:49.660
you want it to move and grow and paraphrasing, right. And our previous conversation. And I have

00:25:49.700 --> 00:25:58.500
always been a little wary of that idea because 1950s american automobiles change every year

00:25:59.040 --> 00:26:05.560
fins up fins down taillights this headlights there it's like that's just capitalism to

00:26:05.830 --> 00:26:13.280
to catch the bright shiny right that's just to to drive the market and change for change sake i don't

00:26:13.380 --> 00:26:20.820
like and that's but that's not change when it's not real is yeah i know who's always been willing

00:26:20.870 --> 00:26:26.420
to be much more kind of radical than that but that would be my thing when it needs to change not

00:26:27.160 --> 00:26:32.940
for the purpose of change i mean you have to do this because an actor leaves or you have to

00:26:34.080 --> 00:26:43.340
yes but your explanation of this and of it's not just rtd coming back it's rtd trying to

00:26:43.340 --> 00:26:44.900
what RTD did before.

00:26:45.700 --> 00:26:48.260
I think that's the best explanation

00:26:48.470 --> 00:26:49.360
of why this is wrong

00:26:49.540 --> 00:26:51.060
because RTD is not the same person,

00:26:51.960 --> 00:26:52.040
certainly.

00:26:53.400 --> 00:26:55.560
And not only does he want to recapture

00:26:55.610 --> 00:26:56.300
what he did before,

00:26:56.430 --> 00:26:57.980
but he wants to push his own boundaries,

00:26:58.580 --> 00:27:00.220
what he couldn't get away with last time,

00:27:01.580 --> 00:27:02.980
which is bigger and grander

00:27:03.100 --> 00:27:05.060
and more flamboyant

00:27:05.070 --> 00:27:07.080
and whatever it is.

00:27:08.200 --> 00:27:10.360
But I don't know if it is bigger and grander.

00:27:11.720 --> 00:27:13.100
It spends more money.

00:27:13.860 --> 00:27:18.360
well yeah yeah yeah no it spends more money impression of being bigger and grander

00:27:19.640 --> 00:27:28.540
it's like his idea in his head that he's doing bigger and and grander and and yeah i mean he's

00:27:28.640 --> 00:27:35.920
got to go and and as of our recording of this we have not heard what i can say did here between the

00:27:36.040 --> 00:27:41.840
time that i recorded my bit because you'll note in that earlier bit i said i don't know if we get

00:27:41.860 --> 00:27:43.580
rid of the production team. Can they keep

00:27:44.380 --> 00:27:45.780
Shooty Gatwin? Can they reform his

00:27:45.980 --> 00:27:47.180
character so that he's a doctor

00:27:47.940 --> 00:27:49.120
that's worth watching?

00:27:50.260 --> 00:27:51.720
And I did not

00:27:51.820 --> 00:27:53.280
know that he had been quoted

00:27:54.580 --> 00:27:55.740
repeatedly that he

00:27:55.880 --> 00:27:57.900
is only here for as long as Russell T. Davies

00:27:58.020 --> 00:27:59.760
is here. Oh, I didn't know that.

00:28:00.360 --> 00:28:01.840
I only found out about this

00:28:01.980 --> 00:28:03.400
week, but yes, he's

00:28:04.360 --> 00:28:05.480
here for RTD

00:28:05.980 --> 00:28:07.780
and no more. So RTD leaves,

00:28:07.920 --> 00:28:09.540
he leaves. And

00:28:10.020 --> 00:28:11.820
apparently some of those reshoots that they

00:28:12.299 --> 00:28:19.540
towards the end was them having two endings of this. So no announcement from Disney as to what's

00:28:19.800 --> 00:28:24.620
happening yet. And I suspect they'll wait at least a week. I know they said, we'll wait till after it

00:28:24.700 --> 00:28:28.940
airs. But what they really mean is they'll wait till had a week of ratings. They've still got

00:28:29.080 --> 00:28:35.120
five episodes of the BBC Disney deal. So they'll wait till they've had. Oh yeah, that does look

00:28:35.200 --> 00:28:40.100
really bad too. I finally saw a trailer. I think it looks really good. I've got to say,

00:28:40.700 --> 00:28:45.560
Despite everything you're going to hear me say about this episode, this is the thing that looks really good to me.

00:28:45.560 --> 00:28:46.560
It looks really interesting.

00:28:47.340 --> 00:28:51.000
It looks like the kind of thing that RTD actually can write.

00:28:51.260 --> 00:28:52.540
Yeah, sex with a sea devil.

00:28:52.920 --> 00:28:54.200
Yep, that's what he's going to do.

00:28:55.380 --> 00:28:57.620
That's going to be totally in a sea devil.

00:28:58.460 --> 00:29:09.400
But what I will say about RTD, because I still have a huge amount of respect for him, is that, okay, I didn't watch Queer as Folk,

00:29:09.600 --> 00:29:12.860
So I'd have to check how many seasons that ran for.

00:29:13.390 --> 00:29:27.660
But the stuff that kind of stands out, the second coming and everything slipped out of my mind.

00:29:28.120 --> 00:29:32.080
It's a sin I didn't see, but I know it got excellent reviews and it supports my case,

00:29:32.880 --> 00:29:37.920
which is that he's extremely good at writing one-offs.

00:29:38.000 --> 00:29:56.060
And what I'm guessing about Queer as Folk is that it maybe didn't run for more than two or three series, because I don't know that he could sustain it for that. I've just
checked and it's run for five. So that's sort of undermined by case.

00:29:56.120 --> 00:30:16.140
But it seems to me that one of the things that Stephen Moffat did incredibly well, and I'm sure I've said this before, was to actually regenerate what he was doing with
the show. He changed the format, he changed the style, he pushed around what he was doing quite a lot.

00:30:16.200 --> 00:30:23.880
I think there are things about the way that RTD wrote the original four seasons that he did.

00:30:24.200 --> 00:30:27.920
Well, I mean, we discussed these early on, the kind of template format of the show and the way

00:30:28.020 --> 00:30:33.580
that it is quite sort of similar, that you can see echoes of that in this version of the show.

00:30:33.700 --> 00:30:38.940
And the fact that it's very easy to kind of pick on things that appear to be him doing the same

00:30:38.960 --> 00:30:46.780
thing again, suggests to me that that isn't really the way he works, that he needs a whole new canvas

00:30:48.440 --> 00:30:53.580
to explore his new ideas, that he doesn't particularly want actually to come back to

00:30:53.580 --> 00:30:58.800
old stuff. And it makes me wonder why he came back to Doctor Who. I mean, I know a little bit about

00:30:58.960 --> 00:31:05.660
it, but at the time he left, he was absolutely adamant that he was not going to come back.

00:31:06.420 --> 00:31:13.560
And I think that was because he knows that for him, he also needs to move on.

00:31:14.060 --> 00:31:14.420
Yeah.

00:31:15.020 --> 00:31:15.140
Yeah.

00:31:15.280 --> 00:31:16.400
Well, he needs to move on.

00:31:16.400 --> 00:31:21.060
And I think there's a sign there that maybe he has, but it'll be a little while before

00:31:21.120 --> 00:31:22.140
we find out from Disney.

00:31:24.060 --> 00:31:26.860
Since we're on that, and since...

00:31:28.260 --> 00:31:32.760
So Shudy Gathwa has done 18 episodes?

00:31:33.740 --> 00:31:34.240
Something like that.

00:31:34.960 --> 00:31:42.780
And Christopher Eccleston, 13. So he's not quite the short, but he feels like it.

00:31:43.400 --> 00:31:48.140
It is the case that it was quite a short, well, apart from anything else, he wasn't in

00:31:48.720 --> 00:31:55.100
a couple of the episodes except for kind of fairly minimal appearances. But we know with

00:31:55.100 --> 00:32:02.260
the benefit of hindsight that Christopher Eccleston's run was not a happy time for the

00:32:02.280 --> 00:32:08.640
relationship between the lead actor and the show's producers that whatever relationship he'd had

00:32:09.120 --> 00:32:15.520
with rdd previously and obviously he'd done the second coming had completely soured and

00:32:15.980 --> 00:32:23.100
shooty gatsworth filmed basically as i understand it pretty much all of his episodes back to back

00:32:23.340 --> 00:32:29.160
although we've got two seasons out of it it was a bit like christopher eccleston going in and doing

00:32:29.180 --> 00:32:36.480
one production run just you know five episodes longer so my assumption was that I mean there

00:32:36.480 --> 00:32:43.180
are there are warm words about from RTD about how brilliant Shooty was and from Shooty about

00:32:43.880 --> 00:32:49.620
what a privilege it was to to to be the doctor and work on the show but my assumption was that

00:32:50.080 --> 00:33:06.640
Give it a couple of years and we will start hearing how miserable he was and how different the kind of views of what the role should be or what the show should be or just what
the working conditions were like on set.

00:33:07.600 --> 00:33:14.240
Because I can't really understand why he took the role and left so soon.

00:33:14.280 --> 00:33:19.560
I mean, if you didn't think you were going to stick with it, why take it in the first place?

00:33:19.640 --> 00:33:24.200
yeah I don't know and it has to be because it didn't live up to your expectations or because

00:33:24.500 --> 00:33:29.140
there was unhappiness unhappiness on one side or the other because it could equally be the

00:33:29.320 --> 00:33:35.400
production team looking at this and going you know what his performance isn't giving us what we need

00:33:35.860 --> 00:33:40.720
from the doctor I don't know if that's what they were looking at and this is the thing that I think

00:33:41.380 --> 00:33:46.800
you know we will have to wait until the revised edition of the writer's tale comes out or whatever

00:33:46.820 --> 00:33:53.020
it is. But I look at Shooty Gatwa's performance, and obviously, this is very subjective, and every

00:33:53.220 --> 00:33:58.920
Doctor Who fan has their own opinion on this. But I look at it, and I think, this is not what we need

00:33:59.000 --> 00:34:06.440
from the Doctor. I do not feel that his performance suited the role. And I say that as someone who

00:34:07.440 --> 00:34:12.980
absolutely welcomes there being incredibly different takes on it. You know, the differences

00:34:12.980 --> 00:34:22.600
that you get between Peter Capaldi and David Tennant that you get between Peter Davison

00:34:23.240 --> 00:34:32.679
and between Sylvester McCoy. I love those differences. There are very few doctors where,

00:34:33.300 --> 00:34:36.940
ironically enough, with the exception, I guess, of William Hartnell, where I kind of feel like

00:34:37.560 --> 00:34:42.020
the performance is a drag on the show. And I feel like Shooty Gat was one of them.

00:34:42.120 --> 00:34:51.860
And I like him as an actor, just as I like Hartnell as an actor. I think his performance in Brighton Rock is terrific. I just don't like him as the doctor.

00:34:51.960 --> 00:35:08.560
Well, I'm going to say that he does a remarkable job as a shallow, glib, insincere stereotype of a gay man.

00:35:09.220 --> 00:35:11.320
And an insincere one.

00:35:11.380 --> 00:35:12.160
It's not just that he's a gay man.

00:35:12.160 --> 00:35:14.260
I thought you were going to be a gay man for a second, Beth.

00:35:16.800 --> 00:35:19.460
It's that babes nonsense.

00:35:19.600 --> 00:35:23.100
It's that laughing all the time.

00:35:23.580 --> 00:35:26.120
Like, it's impossible to take him serious.

00:35:27.160 --> 00:35:30.160
And he's doing a really good job of playing that character.

00:35:30.850 --> 00:35:34.700
But that character isn't, shouldn't be the doctor.

00:35:35.050 --> 00:35:40.080
And combine that with the fact that he does not, we've commented on this over and over again,

00:35:40.280 --> 00:35:43.620
he does not save the day, Mutt, in these episodes.

00:35:44.580 --> 00:35:45.620
He's always kind of maybe...

00:35:45.620 --> 00:35:47.120
You've commented on that over and over again.

00:35:47.280 --> 00:35:47.540
Yes.

00:35:47.800 --> 00:35:49.100
He's facilitated it.

00:35:49.580 --> 00:35:54.180
I, that to me, okay, did he save himself today? No, a door opens up by Anita and saves him.

00:35:54.280 --> 00:36:00.260
It's just another example. I'm not, I'm not disagreeing with the facts here. I'm disagreeing

00:36:00.420 --> 00:36:05.980
with the validity of it. Like to me, I am quite happy with doctors who don't save the day. I love

00:36:06.100 --> 00:36:13.300
Peter Davison. I actually, I know she's never kind of been my favorite doctor, but I actually

00:36:13.320 --> 00:36:20.680
do appreciate Jodie Whittaker far more than I appreciate Shuti Gatwa. It's not that. It is

00:36:20.860 --> 00:36:29.100
the sense of, does he or does he not embody that intangible essence of this remarkable,

00:36:30.140 --> 00:36:34.320
ancient Time Lord alien in that way that, you know, I think-

00:36:34.320 --> 00:36:35.880
The depth isn't there.

00:36:35.880 --> 00:36:43.280
When we were looking back at the 11th hour, and I was just so struck by how within one

00:36:43.300 --> 00:36:50.820
episode, Matt Smith kind of made me feel that. And how in David Tennant's performance, you can

00:36:51.020 --> 00:36:58.620
kind of sense a little bit of everyone who came before him. And how with Shuti Gatwa, even if

00:36:59.240 --> 00:37:06.900
I liked the character that he is playing more, I don't think I still would feel that it was a

00:37:07.160 --> 00:37:12.660
continuation of who the Doctor is for some reason. Okay, so let's pretend like this is deliberate.

00:37:13.320 --> 00:37:17.160
and I think maybe it is, but it's so badly bungled, it is.

00:37:17.660 --> 00:37:21.060
So Matt Smith, you're talking 11th hour

00:37:21.130 --> 00:37:24.460
and we are talking Matt Smith of all the doctors

00:37:25.420 --> 00:37:28.120
was, just because he's not my favorite doctor,

00:37:28.900 --> 00:37:33.600
he was able to portray that old man in a young man's body

00:37:34.260 --> 00:37:37.060
and still be goofy.

00:37:37.570 --> 00:37:41.200
But when he needed it, that age and gravitas

00:37:41.620 --> 00:37:42.520
and whatever was there.

00:37:42.640 --> 00:37:47.980
and arguably that is the centuries of experience,

00:37:49.060 --> 00:37:52.260
or if you go with the whole timeless child thing,

00:37:52.480 --> 00:37:55.260
millennia of most of it forgotten experience,

00:37:55.980 --> 00:37:59.440
then you could say that that is what's building him up

00:37:59.620 --> 00:38:03.420
to being this sort of sad sack doctor, right?

00:38:04.400 --> 00:38:08.320
The Time Lord Victorious, all of that is partially

00:38:08.510 --> 00:38:10.460
because of all that that has come before.

00:38:10.880 --> 00:38:13.600
This bi-generation fixed that.

00:38:13.720 --> 00:38:14.440
They said that.

00:38:14.680 --> 00:38:16.280
He was his own form of therapy.

00:38:16.540 --> 00:38:18.960
He basically got rid of all that baggage.

00:38:19.800 --> 00:38:21.620
No baggage, no gravitas.

00:38:23.040 --> 00:38:23.980
Except they do.

00:38:24.780 --> 00:38:27.620
They are bringing, they're repeatedly bringing back the baggage.

00:38:27.920 --> 00:38:30.700
So it needs to be, it needs to be there under the surface.

00:38:30.700 --> 00:38:31.080
They botched it.

00:38:31.560 --> 00:38:32.340
They botched it.

00:38:32.720 --> 00:38:36.680
I'm just, I think the idea was to get rid of all that baggage.

00:38:37.180 --> 00:38:46.360
And yet somehow they managed to keep dragging it up again because of all these ridiculous callbacks to all the doctors.

00:38:46.720 --> 00:38:47.960
I like it to be there.

00:38:48.180 --> 00:38:54.800
And I don't think they were wanting to get rid of it in the sense of that this isn't part of who he is.

00:38:54.920 --> 00:39:07.000
It's just not necessarily, you know, you can, we've had, we've had the, you know, the latter David Tennant stories where it is, it goes into the kind of darker Time Lord
Victorious stuff.

00:39:07.120 --> 00:39:14.660
and we've had the need to reset so that we could tell lighter, more whimsical tales,

00:39:14.820 --> 00:39:21.480
which I think in a way, arguably, the kind of initial Matt Smith stuff was about.

00:39:22.380 --> 00:39:26.680
And then it kind of gets more into the darker stuff with Peter Capaldi,

00:39:26.760 --> 00:39:32.320
and whether that's because they go, we've got Peter Capaldi, let's do that,

00:39:32.440 --> 00:39:36.620
or whether that's because they thought we need to go in this direction, let's get Peter Capaldi.

00:39:37.300 --> 00:39:43.420
it's part of the show reinventing itself and reinventing itself which is my kind of fundamental

00:39:43.800 --> 00:39:48.960
thesis about what the show should do and I don't mind the fact that they might take someone like

00:39:49.060 --> 00:39:54.940
Shuti Gatwa who is going to do something that is lively and exciting and his performances

00:39:56.000 --> 00:40:03.599
clearly have a kind of energy which has that electric charisma that I think works for the

00:40:03.620 --> 00:40:07.420
Doctor. You know, I'd argue that someone like David Tennant had that. I certainly argue that

00:40:07.490 --> 00:40:13.720
someone like Tom Baker had that. But what I don't think is that Shooty Gats were, I don't,

00:40:14.100 --> 00:40:20.160
my sense is he never got it. I mean, this is pure speculation. But we know that there are those

00:40:20.580 --> 00:40:27.420
actors like David Tennant or like Peter Capaldi, who were absolute, died in the world, Doctor Who

00:40:27.440 --> 00:40:34.700
fans who were the biggest nerds out there. And there were those people like Matt Smith or Shuti

00:40:34.860 --> 00:40:41.240
Gatua who basically got cast in the role without ever having seen an episode. And somehow,

00:40:42.359 --> 00:40:47.660
someone must have sat down and told Matt Smith, this is what the character is, this is what the

00:40:47.720 --> 00:40:53.400
show's all about. Maybe showed him a few clips because I'm sure RTD stuck a choice selection

00:40:53.420 --> 00:41:01.260
of dvds in the post to him uh or martha in that case but i don't think gas were ever got that i

00:41:01.360 --> 00:41:08.140
don't think i don't think he cared i think the whole that whole thing wasn't of interest to him

00:41:08.140 --> 00:41:15.000
for whatever reason and so he never looked to to connect with that in his performance that's i don't

00:41:15.080 --> 00:41:21.339
know but that's the feeling i got and that's it since you know this was his last episode for sure

00:41:21.880 --> 00:41:27.300
whether or not it's the last episode of the show we're looking back on the shooting era and that

00:41:27.500 --> 00:41:32.380
and that is my problem yeah well yes he might come back we'll come back to that but yes yeah

00:41:32.960 --> 00:41:37.540
okay so i suppose we're we're at 45 in maybe we should talk about the actual episode

00:41:39.820 --> 00:41:48.940
we must i'm just going to start with an absolute nitpicky point but it's omega it's not omega

00:41:48.960 --> 00:41:51.280
Yeah, the doctor says it wrong.

00:41:51.980 --> 00:41:54.240
Most people got it right, but the doctor kept getting wrong.

00:41:54.600 --> 00:41:57.300
This is metabolous three all over again.

00:41:58.520 --> 00:41:59.620
Yep, yep, yep.

00:41:59.750 --> 00:42:04.540
But you know, if his mouth can regenerate to like fish custard,

00:42:05.090 --> 00:42:07.400
I guess it can regenerate to mispronounce certain

00:42:09.140 --> 00:42:12.440
very pronounceable Gallifreyan words like-

00:42:12.440 --> 00:42:12.960
Here's the thing.

00:42:12.960 --> 00:42:15.020
I guess metabolous isn't Gallifreyan.

00:42:15.020 --> 00:42:18.360
You've got to show, I know we can go talk about Atlantis

00:42:18.380 --> 00:42:23.620
and whatnot, but you've got to show like Doctor Who, you're intentionally doing all sorts of

00:42:23.780 --> 00:42:29.560
callbacks to old, do and whatnot. Do you not have anybody on staff that can do continuity?

00:42:30.300 --> 00:42:37.380
Was there nobody? Was there nobody on the set when he said Omega that said, no, you sound like an

00:42:37.540 --> 00:42:43.820
American? Say it. Omega. It's like a Gallifreyan would. I know you're not a Gallifreyan. Oh,

00:42:43.960 --> 00:42:46.800
wait, you probably didn't pay any attention to that when you're reading the dossier,

00:42:47.220 --> 00:42:48.880
But it's Omega.

00:42:49.320 --> 00:42:50.200
His name is Omega.

00:42:50.600 --> 00:42:51.800
That's what he calls himself.

00:42:52.580 --> 00:42:53.780
And you should respect that.

00:42:54.400 --> 00:43:01.280
So it's like we don't, you know, I can't pronounce Dalek like Sylvester McCoy pronounces Dalek.

00:43:01.400 --> 00:43:09.080
So I was expecting a continuity announcement that said next week, the Daleks and Omega team up to lure the doctor to Metabellus three.

00:43:11.120 --> 00:43:12.580
It's like that would be a good one.

00:43:13.200 --> 00:43:13.400
All right.

00:43:13.990 --> 00:43:15.720
Take this as the first half of the story.

00:43:15.860 --> 00:43:24.760
I guess the Ronnie's plan is to use Omega's DNA to make a new Gallifrey and new Time Lords.

00:43:25.620 --> 00:43:31.180
This does not fit with the Ronnie at all. I mean, I know that they get the whole bit where she says,

00:43:31.320 --> 00:43:34.980
well, you know, you never liked Gallifrey. Well, you know, I have this one with me at the top,

00:43:35.340 --> 00:43:45.820
but she never had that desire to do. She just wanted to do her experiments and things. And

00:43:45.840 --> 00:43:52.040
can't she reverse the sterility damage i mean come on if the master managed to come up with it

00:43:52.160 --> 00:43:58.500
surely she could outdo it she's smarter than he is assuming it was the master that did it who knows

00:43:59.040 --> 00:44:05.640
and okay we have to rtd has leaned into the timeless child the doctor is a foundling

00:44:06.280 --> 00:44:11.760
right he's he's not ignored it he's just like oh yeah it's like he's brought joe martin's doctor

00:44:11.820 --> 00:44:16.160
back, even though he doesn't seem to understand what Joe Martin's doctor has to represent,

00:44:16.700 --> 00:44:18.800
which is a piece of the doctor he can't remember.

00:44:19.600 --> 00:44:27.920
But along with millions of others, who knows how many hundreds, thousands, you know, over

00:44:27.920 --> 00:44:29.540
the years, because that.

00:44:30.160 --> 00:44:32.940
And so he's not a Gallifreyan.

00:44:33.560 --> 00:44:34.800
He doesn't even have the right DNA.

00:44:37.059 --> 00:44:38.080
Well, he does.

00:44:39.200 --> 00:44:39.740
Does he?

00:44:40.400 --> 00:44:42.520
Well, yes, the Time Lords have his DNA.

00:44:43.700 --> 00:44:46.200
But the Time Lords have his DNA to do regeneration.

00:44:48.020 --> 00:44:53.900
Do they just wholesale wipe out all their DNA and put in this alien's DNA?

00:44:54.260 --> 00:44:56.660
Or did they make themselves some sort of a hybrid?

00:44:57.240 --> 00:45:00.480
Which is what I always took from the timeless child nonsense

00:45:01.220 --> 00:45:03.360
when they finally got around to trying to make sense out of it.

00:45:03.800 --> 00:45:08.020
Was that they experimented on the Doctor until they isolated the genetic piece

00:45:08.040 --> 00:45:15.780
and then instill that in the Time Lords, which, you know, going back to the three doctors and

00:45:15.850 --> 00:45:22.340
going back to the deadly assassin, you know, first it was Omega. They were Gallifreans.

00:45:23.080 --> 00:45:28.140
They needed power to do their time travel experiments. He blew up a star, created a

00:45:28.320 --> 00:45:33.840
black hole, fell in it. Everybody thought he was dead. Okay. Not a Time Lord. Can't be a Time Lord.

00:45:34.040 --> 00:45:41.460
no Time Lords yet. No Time Lords yet. Just stellar engineer who died. And then the doctor

00:45:41.700 --> 00:45:46.360
finds out that he didn't die. Oh, that's a good point. The doctor finds out he didn't die,

00:45:46.780 --> 00:45:51.520
reports that back to Gallifrey, and everybody's like, oh, my God. So that nudge is heading into

00:45:51.640 --> 00:45:57.880
going, no, we should be able to, you know, we shouldn't have abandoned him. We need to save

00:45:57.900 --> 00:46:03.319
him. And that's what brings about the Ark of Infinity bit of the story. But in the deadly

00:46:03.340 --> 00:46:11.100
assassin, they almost tell a different story about Rassilon being, harnessing the Eye of Harmony.

00:46:11.600 --> 00:46:17.080
And you kind of cut forward and they start kind of retconning it to be like, no, those two were

00:46:17.200 --> 00:46:22.040
working together. Omega did the first experiment, which got him killed. And then Rassilon carried

00:46:22.320 --> 00:46:27.500
on. They were working together. And he is the one that established Time Lord. And he used the power

00:46:27.680 --> 00:46:33.300
of the Eye of Harmony was what gave them the power to regenerate. It's almost like Philip

00:46:33.320 --> 00:46:40.920
the doctor about continuity he's got to go yeah so and then of course cartmel was trying to

00:46:41.800 --> 00:46:47.260
kind of throw the doctor into that mix as well as well as the other two of them being

00:46:47.920 --> 00:46:53.400
but the point being is that omega was not a time lord and as they say in a literal quote from this

00:46:53.620 --> 00:47:01.620
episode the time lords of omega were tyrants and murderers no they weren't that was rassilon

00:47:01.640 --> 00:47:07.940
Yes. Yes. I mean, nobody on his staff ever watched Doctor Who?

00:47:09.360 --> 00:47:16.280
Well, no, I take your point about all of that. And I agree it would have been better if they

00:47:16.330 --> 00:47:23.160
had got some of it right. But clearly in The Deadly Assassin, they just did the same thing

00:47:23.320 --> 00:47:28.240
that RTD is doing here. They ignored some of the stuff that had previously been established on the

00:47:28.360 --> 00:47:33.680
basis that the vast majority of viewers would not be picking nits in the way that we are picking

00:47:33.740 --> 00:47:41.660
nits. And the difference for me is that The Deadly Assassin is a great story. And so I think

00:47:41.660 --> 00:47:50.860
my criticism here would be bringing Omega back is not a great story. And not only that, but actually

00:47:51.300 --> 00:48:01.300
bringing Omega back isn't necessary. It's something that is the kind of thing that an ardent Doctor

00:48:01.320 --> 00:48:10.240
who fan would do rather than someone who is trying to tell a compelling interesting story

00:48:11.200 --> 00:48:18.780
about whatever this is supposed to be about the power of whatever fantasy and the depths of depths

00:48:18.780 --> 00:48:27.180
of desire in the connection with children and their parents or something or other the the

00:48:27.200 --> 00:48:32.440
The emergence of Omega doesn't have to be Omega, right?

00:48:32.800 --> 00:48:38.580
The Rani has to have generated this wish world for some reason.

00:48:39.180 --> 00:48:48.620
And like you say, she's an amoral geneticist who could be harnessing this power for...

00:48:48.680 --> 00:48:54.920
I mean, even if you took essentially the same, pretty much the same production that she brings

00:48:55.090 --> 00:48:59.700
some kind of monster through from some kind of underworld who subsequently eats her,

00:49:00.500 --> 00:49:05.900
why does that monster from that underworld have to be connected with Omega or the Time Lords?

00:49:06.600 --> 00:49:07.400
That makes no sense.

00:49:08.280 --> 00:49:14.120
That's the kind of absolute fannish nonsense bit of it. If you'd done that,

00:49:14.260 --> 00:49:17.700
you'd have ended up with exactly the same story with fewer of the problems.

00:49:18.440 --> 00:49:25.520
I want to bring back Omega, and I want to bring him back in entirely nothing at all like Omega ever was.

00:49:26.359 --> 00:49:30.520
He's now a giant skull zombie corpse.

00:49:31.260 --> 00:49:34.260
And let's face it, he was a big nothing.

00:49:35.020 --> 00:49:40.940
Eat Ronnie, other Ronnie disappears, Doctor backs up into a convenient thing behind him and shoots him.

00:49:41.660 --> 00:49:42.000
Game over.

00:49:42.640 --> 00:49:43.940
At least Rassilon was James Bond.

00:49:44.940 --> 00:49:45.060
Yeah.

00:49:45.560 --> 00:49:47.240
I mean, just, just.

00:49:48.160 --> 00:49:50.040
Yeah, and that's how they banished Rassilon, too.

00:49:50.040 --> 00:49:51.020
It was the master doing it.

00:49:51.020 --> 00:50:02.680
But yeah, come to think of it, it is, it really, I hadn't even spotted that parallel to yet another RTD story.

00:50:03.060 --> 00:50:04.620
That's very good.

00:50:08.420 --> 00:50:08.760
Yeah.

00:50:09.710 --> 00:50:13.280
And then just, you know, picking up a couple other things.

00:50:14.320 --> 00:50:18.760
So for listeners who haven't been paying attention, it goes like this.

00:50:19.110 --> 00:50:26.300
The doctor wiped out all the Time Lords on Gallifrey, except it turns out he didn't.

00:50:26.750 --> 00:50:30.620
He actually popped them in a cup of noodles.

00:50:31.440 --> 00:50:33.500
And then...

00:50:34.440 --> 00:50:34.620
Right?

00:50:35.780 --> 00:50:40.900
So the doctor never actually killed all the Time Lords.

00:50:41.080 --> 00:50:47.920
The Time Lords never actually all died until the Master went there and had a hissy fit,

00:50:47.960 --> 00:50:50.960
and he killed them all, of which happens off screen.

00:50:51.720 --> 00:50:53.680
We just go, yeah, I wiped them out.

00:50:54.340 --> 00:50:55.720
And we don't know how he wiped them out.

00:50:56.320 --> 00:50:59.100
And then he took their corpses and made them into Cybermen.

00:50:59.720 --> 00:51:03.240
Okay, that seems like something he didn't do overnight, or it seems like something happened.

00:51:03.740 --> 00:51:10.500
And then at the end of that story, they use Death Blossom crystal-y thing or whatever,

00:51:10.940 --> 00:51:17.340
And wipe out all organic matter on Gallifrey, eliminating the organic parts of the Cybermen,

00:51:17.820 --> 00:51:20.280
or the Cybermasters, or whatever they were called, Cyberlords.

00:51:21.760 --> 00:51:24.820
And that was the end of it.

00:51:24.960 --> 00:51:26.460
None of that is a genetic explosion.

00:51:26.600 --> 00:51:31.360
So we have to assume that the Master killed them with a genetic explosion,

00:51:31.580 --> 00:51:34.220
because that's what we get talked about in this episode.

00:51:34.760 --> 00:51:36.340
But I have a couple quotes here.

00:51:36.540 --> 00:51:38.160
The Doctor to the Ronnie.

00:51:38.800 --> 00:51:42.140
Ronnie, the Time Lords were slaughtered.

00:51:42.740 --> 00:51:42.880
Okay.

00:51:43.180 --> 00:51:46.160
I don't know about you, but the definitionary word of slaughtered is killed.

00:51:47.680 --> 00:51:49.600
How did you survive, Ronnie?

00:51:50.100 --> 00:51:51.160
I saw it coming.

00:51:51.630 --> 00:51:52.880
The genetic explosion.

00:51:53.330 --> 00:52:02.040
I had a split second, flipped my DNA, made a biological sidestep, survived the carnage.

00:52:02.380 --> 00:52:07.520
Also carnage, you know, death, destruction, dismemberment, you know, all the good stuff.

00:52:08.160 --> 00:52:12.740
And then later on, we get this, and I don't have who's saying what here because I'm pulling

00:52:12.820 --> 00:52:15.640
it from the subtitles and I didn't want to go back and watch it.

00:52:16.340 --> 00:52:20.020
Some of this, maybe the doctor, some of this is the Ronnie, some of this is probably other

00:52:20.200 --> 00:52:25.060
people, but the doctor, I'm sure it's the doctor, because she's impossible, the child

00:52:25.480 --> 00:52:26.440
of a time lord.

00:52:27.000 --> 00:52:29.440
And somebody goes, and there's no such thing.

00:52:30.339 --> 00:52:31.060
We're sterile.

00:52:31.520 --> 00:52:33.020
We are infertile.

00:52:33.440 --> 00:52:35.380
The species is barren.

00:52:35.780 --> 00:52:38.000
We are a biological dead end.

00:52:38.440 --> 00:52:41.620
There can never be another Gallifreyan child.

00:52:42.400 --> 00:52:43.300
This, I'm sure, is the Ronnie.

00:52:43.530 --> 00:52:47.880
Sometimes I think that's what bi-generation is, a life force trying anything it can to

00:52:48.140 --> 00:52:48.300
survive.

00:52:49.060 --> 00:52:50.140
And then somebody says, what happened?

00:52:50.460 --> 00:52:52.180
And we get the genetic explosion.

00:52:52.780 --> 00:52:58.640
It didn't kill us, but it roasted us and sterilized us.

00:52:59.220 --> 00:53:00.220
Okay, was it carnage?

00:53:00.840 --> 00:53:01.600
Was it slaughter?

00:53:02.740 --> 00:53:07.520
Or was it, oh, we accidentally forgot to put the lead shield over you when we ran the

00:53:07.540 --> 00:53:15.700
microwave or did your dental x-rays you know what what was it because she escaped it and she

00:53:15.940 --> 00:53:21.820
escaped it so why is she sterile so i don't i don't know if that was kind of careless as in

00:53:22.420 --> 00:53:27.020
she escaped it but didn't escape its effects but then how did it's like in the same scene

00:53:27.690 --> 00:53:34.840
you know well it well it is and it is and it is it's it it is kind of very unclear and it certainly

00:53:34.860 --> 00:53:41.120
seemed to me that the destruction of the Time Lords, the second destruction of the Time Lords

00:53:41.760 --> 00:53:48.300
by the master... No, no, that's the first actual one. The other was a faux destruction.

00:53:49.180 --> 00:53:55.600
Yeah, well, yes, okay. But then... That was cross-communication wires.

00:53:57.080 --> 00:54:04.820
It seemed to me that in the description that we got of that, that the master had killed all

00:54:04.840 --> 00:54:13.980
the Time Lords on Gallifrey, that he hadn't yet killed the Doctor. And so some kind of universal

00:54:15.000 --> 00:54:20.560
bioweapon that targeted Time Lord, I suppose it would have to be some temporal bioweapon,

00:54:20.710 --> 00:54:29.200
that targeted Time Lord DNA through time or something, in order to completely wipe them

00:54:29.200 --> 00:54:31.920
all out, would have killed the Doctor. And it's just...

00:54:31.940 --> 00:54:32.900
Except he's not a Gallifreyan.

00:54:33.300 --> 00:54:35.740
And it can't have targeted the...

00:54:36.200 --> 00:54:39.720
Well, except she has the DNA that he could have targeted

00:54:39.920 --> 00:54:41.280
because they all share her DNA.

00:54:42.140 --> 00:54:43.300
Even if you take your...

00:54:43.300 --> 00:54:43.780
So does he.

00:54:43.960 --> 00:54:47.020
...reputation of that, so does the master.

00:54:47.400 --> 00:54:47.520
Yeah.

00:54:47.760 --> 00:54:48.000
Yeah.

00:54:48.060 --> 00:54:49.740
Yeah, which is an excellent point.

00:54:50.480 --> 00:54:53.880
And which also doesn't quite fit with...

00:54:53.880 --> 00:54:57.880
If you target the DNA, if it is a genetic explosion,

00:54:58.600 --> 00:55:06.820
then how is it that you can use the DNA of the dead bodies in order to create your cybermasters?

00:55:07.700 --> 00:55:09.540
So that all seemed very strange.

00:55:10.160 --> 00:55:13.940
It felt to me like the destruction of the Time Lords was actually localized to Gallifrey.

00:55:14.220 --> 00:55:18.120
And it looked to me like it was violent.

00:55:18.900 --> 00:55:20.080
Yeah, to be blunt about it.

00:55:20.300 --> 00:55:21.500
The domes were all crushed.

00:55:22.460 --> 00:55:26.080
Well, he did say he destroyed Gallifrey as well.

00:55:26.260 --> 00:55:52.460
So I guess it could have been Time Lords first, then going around doing a bit of kind of wanton vandalism. But it did feel like it was a bit more violent, and it did feel like
it was a bit more manual or localized. And the death particle was explicitly localized because it had been shrunk by the tissue compression eliminator. It was only
going to affect Gallifrey.

00:55:54.240 --> 00:56:01.000
why would Durrani have been on Gallifrey? I mean, that in itself didn't particularly make any sense

00:56:01.200 --> 00:56:09.000
either. So, hmm. Yeah, it doesn't. It like, don't, don't, don't dig. If you're going to dig deep in

00:56:09.460 --> 00:56:17.340
2025, okay, in 1974 or five, or whenever the Deadly Assassin came out, when we didn't have

00:56:17.820 --> 00:56:24.440
the internet, the thousands of books and videos to rewatch them and everything in a world where

00:56:24.440 --> 00:56:28.640
they deleted episodes of Doctor Who after a few years anyway, just to reuse the tapes.

00:56:28.980 --> 00:56:33.720
I can understand how the writers are going to go like, eh, whatever. And I'm just, I want to

00:56:33.760 --> 00:56:43.140
tell this story. But in 2025, you cannot do this anymore. It's, you know, it's, yeah. I mean,

00:56:43.240 --> 00:56:47.220
Equally, I'm not sure that you can expect anyone to write a story that's consistent

00:56:47.520 --> 00:56:51.460
with 61 years of completely internally inconsistent continuity.

00:56:51.880 --> 00:57:00.620
Sure, but decisions were made here, like deciding to use Omega, that just made problems and

00:57:00.900 --> 00:57:04.480
didn't make anything make sense.

00:57:04.630 --> 00:57:11.260
But that's, I guess, where I would level my criticisms at that sort of higher level of

00:57:11.280 --> 00:57:15.480
Do these things, never mind the continuity, do these things work for the story itself?

00:57:16.440 --> 00:57:23.940
And so if we take this question of the apparent sterility of the remaining Time Lords, I didn't

00:57:24.080 --> 00:57:29.940
feel that that necessarily made any sense in story terms. Like, why did it matter that Time Lords

00:57:30.840 --> 00:57:37.140
can't have children? Wasn't that part of the Chibnall master plan? That Time Lords were

00:57:37.160 --> 00:57:42.960
sterile and were grown in vats or something i thought that was the cartinal cart not cartinal

00:57:43.140 --> 00:57:46.760
what did i say i didn't say chibnall you said chibnall master plan i thought there was

00:57:46.980 --> 00:57:53.220
did not have a master plan possibly a connection with the cartnet cartmel master plan i think

00:57:53.380 --> 00:57:58.140
chibnall did i think i mean in some ways i'm coming to he had a plan but it's not a master

00:57:58.200 --> 00:58:02.680
i've definitely started reevaluating cartmel much much more favorably and i think there are a lot of

00:58:02.700 --> 00:58:07.760
parallels between what he did and what Chibnall did in the sense of they were trying to reintroduce

00:58:08.600 --> 00:58:16.580
a backstory to the Doctor that had more open questions than because the show had kind of

00:58:16.700 --> 00:58:21.780
filled in so much and closed it all down. I'm not sure that what they did was well advised,

00:58:21.920 --> 00:58:26.440
but I think that's what they were doing. And the novel Lung Barrow goes into all of the stuff

00:58:26.640 --> 00:58:32.000
about the looms, which actually, they have been based on the Cartmel master plan, but

00:58:32.020 --> 00:58:39.300
kind of closes down all of those kind of mysterious questions anyway, so I'm not sure

00:58:39.300 --> 00:58:44.720
what the point of that was. Whether or not we take the novels into continuity, the question here is,

00:58:45.240 --> 00:58:51.740
what role does the sterility of the surviving Time Lords, of whom we are told in this episode,

00:58:52.520 --> 00:58:58.060
despite Susan's apparent appearance and then non-appearance, is just the Doctor and the two

00:58:58.080 --> 00:58:59.900
Rani's, we are

00:59:00.580 --> 00:59:01.980
told that they are

00:59:02.180 --> 00:59:03.260
sterile and therefore

00:59:04.420 --> 00:59:06.200
even if there is more

00:59:06.320 --> 00:59:08.040
than one Time Lord, there are

00:59:08.160 --> 00:59:09.400
not going to be any more

00:59:09.680 --> 00:59:11.940
Time Lords in the future.

00:59:12.620 --> 00:59:14.100
What is the point of

00:59:14.360 --> 00:59:15.220
that plot?

00:59:15.760 --> 00:59:16.840
I don't know.

00:59:17.880 --> 00:59:19.720
I think it is

00:59:20.100 --> 00:59:21.720
connected with this whole

00:59:22.280 --> 00:59:24.100
theme which he keeps coming around

00:59:24.260 --> 00:59:25.340
to in this story

00:59:26.839 --> 00:59:28.040
around this

00:59:28.100 --> 00:59:38.260
the importance of Poppy as the doctor and Belinda's child because of the connection that they have

00:59:38.560 --> 00:59:47.820
felt with her in this family unit that has been part of Wishworld and the sense in which those

00:59:48.100 --> 00:59:52.940
kind of connections, and I kind of get where he was trying to go with this, but in the sense in

00:59:52.960 --> 00:59:59.600
which those kind of connections don't have to be based on any kind of biological reality or

00:59:59.960 --> 01:00:06.220
anything like this that the important thing is the strength of feeling and you know love at the end

01:00:06.220 --> 01:00:12.060
of the day it's a bit like what was the name of the christmas special the doctor the wardrobe and

01:00:12.370 --> 01:00:21.440
the something or other where moffat goes off on on you know and this is me like you know how much

01:00:21.460 --> 01:00:28.520
I venerate Morfitt but this is in retrospect and at the time I was I was very annoyed by that

01:00:28.720 --> 01:00:33.620
episode and I still think you know it wasn't strong what he was doing was he was going off

01:00:33.620 --> 01:00:41.100
on one about kind of the sanctity of motherhood which just felt like nonsense to me the kind of

01:00:41.680 --> 01:00:50.480
the diversity of the relationships between mothers and their children and and the the notion that

01:00:50.500 --> 01:00:54.420
mothers should feel a certain way and that we should all feel the same way about our mothers

01:00:54.600 --> 01:01:02.020
was frankly offensive. And this doesn't make a lot more sense. But more importantly, in story terms,

01:01:02.820 --> 01:01:08.680
it doesn't come from anywhere. It doesn't feel like it's been built up to. It doesn't feel like

01:01:08.860 --> 01:01:17.720
the doctor has enough emotional investment in this to essentially sacrifice his current

01:01:18.180 --> 01:01:24.540
regeneration for it. More like this is an excuse for, you know, we need a reason for the Doctor

01:01:24.600 --> 01:01:28.000
to regenerate. And we didn't feel any jeopardy in this episode.

01:01:28.700 --> 01:01:35.540
Well, I don't know because it often feels to me like the Doctor regenerates for the wrong things.

01:01:36.180 --> 01:01:43.800
But particularly here, if you go back to the question of why were Poppy and Belinda and the

01:01:43.820 --> 01:01:50.840
doctor living as this family unit is supposed to come from this wish but where did that wish come

01:01:50.870 --> 01:01:56.920
from is this is this supposed to be some deep expression of the doctor's internal desire was it

01:01:57.380 --> 01:02:06.580
belinda's wish to have a child what we're told is it comes down to conrad's kindness but none of this

01:02:06.640 --> 01:02:15.240
really motivates for me the sense that the doctor or even Belinda should have this deep attachment

01:02:16.220 --> 01:02:24.360
to the reality well deep attachment to the fantasy I guess once the reality emerges and even even if

01:02:24.420 --> 01:02:31.860
I bought in more to the kind of underlying idea of this story I don't I don't feel that was sold

01:02:32.340 --> 01:02:33.060
sufficiently well.

01:02:33.400 --> 01:02:33.940
And without that,

01:02:34.560 --> 01:02:35.260
the sterility thing

01:02:35.440 --> 01:02:36.080
makes no sense.

01:02:36.520 --> 01:02:36.920
No.

01:02:37.660 --> 01:02:37.820
So,

01:02:39.240 --> 01:02:39.580
Errata,

01:02:39.820 --> 01:02:40.260
the doctor,

01:02:40.300 --> 01:02:40.620
the widow,

01:02:40.700 --> 01:02:41.200
and the wardrobe.

01:02:41.900 --> 01:02:42.280
Thank you.

01:02:42.360 --> 01:02:42.680
What's the name?

01:02:44.060 --> 01:02:45.540
In my bit

01:02:45.640 --> 01:02:46.360
on the first episode

01:02:47.040 --> 01:02:47.540
of The Wish World,

01:02:47.680 --> 01:02:48.740
I did comment

01:02:49.080 --> 01:02:50.240
that Conrad

01:02:50.440 --> 01:02:51.100
doesn't make any sense

01:02:51.160 --> 01:02:52.040
because this is not

01:02:52.760 --> 01:02:53.560
what Conrad

01:02:53.580 --> 01:02:54.680
was presented to be.

01:02:55.340 --> 01:02:55.540
He said,

01:02:55.800 --> 01:02:56.080
Alan,

01:02:56.340 --> 01:02:57.260
from Robot Revolution,

01:02:57.740 --> 01:02:57.840
was,

01:02:58.480 --> 01:02:58.960
I went back

01:02:59.060 --> 01:02:59.520
and looked through

01:02:59.740 --> 01:03:00.620
every line of dialogue

01:03:00.780 --> 01:03:01.840
in the lucky

01:03:01.860 --> 01:03:08.340
lucky day and the closest he got to anything was he accused shirley of being i don't know a

01:03:08.740 --> 01:03:15.680
diversity hire or something he was all about unit lying to the public to scare people to keep us in

01:03:15.820 --> 01:03:21.820
line it was not about and then i need to make the world safe to get rid of all the gay people and i

01:03:21.920 --> 01:03:25.760
need to get rid of all the handicapped people it wasn't about that it was it was that particular

01:03:26.040 --> 01:03:31.220
thing there was nothing in that well i don't think you say that but i mean first of all the

01:03:31.240 --> 01:03:31.700
Yes, it is.

01:03:31.860 --> 01:03:32.800
Because it didn't have it there.

01:03:32.860 --> 01:03:37.780
But secondly, these conspiracy theorists are absolutely wrapped up in this whole.

01:03:37.780 --> 01:03:40.100
Not all conspiracy theorists are that way.

01:03:40.660 --> 01:03:41.260
That's the problem.

01:03:41.620 --> 01:03:44.860
There are left-wing conspiracy theorists too.

01:03:45.180 --> 01:03:49.340
And the point is, if they were setting him up for this, they should have set him up for this.

01:03:50.060 --> 01:03:51.600
They set Alan up for this.

01:03:51.800 --> 01:03:53.480
They didn't set Conrad up for this.

01:03:53.780 --> 01:03:54.740
Yeah, I disagree with that.

01:03:55.800 --> 01:04:00.740
But then they kind of halfway undermine it because at the end of it, he's all like,

01:04:00.940 --> 01:04:02.940
Yeah, I was doing what the doctor told me.

01:04:02.940 --> 01:04:07.380
I was trying to give him a home and keep everybody fed and be all nice.

01:04:07.780 --> 01:04:11.600
And Ruby brings up the point about, yeah, you never mentioned your father.

01:04:11.960 --> 01:04:18.480
And it's like, so in that respect, he's actually, what he was trying to do is to give everyone

01:04:18.560 --> 01:04:19.980
the home he wanted.

01:04:20.880 --> 01:04:24.780
Now that home was mom, dad, child.

01:04:25.200 --> 01:04:32.020
He didn't want anybody to be outside of that nuclear family ideal.

01:04:32.840 --> 01:04:35.300
That was the thing that was driving this world.

01:04:35.300 --> 01:04:38.200
It wasn't exactly anti-homosexual.

01:04:38.320 --> 01:04:40.840
It wasn't anti-handicap people.

01:04:40.900 --> 01:04:47.100
It was, I want a solid family unit for everybody.

01:04:48.060 --> 01:04:50.840
And he was more sympathetic in this, which makes no sense either,

01:04:50.860 --> 01:04:54.300
because he's still just a big scum bucket.

01:04:55.200 --> 01:04:56.580
from the previous episode.

01:04:57.550 --> 01:04:59.180
But it's like, okay, I'll

01:04:59.440 --> 01:05:00.280
grant them that one.

01:05:01.280 --> 01:05:02.180
You know, it's not the

01:05:03.160 --> 01:05:05.040
exclusion of everybody that he's trying to

01:05:05.200 --> 01:05:07.020
pull. It's the, this is

01:05:07.080 --> 01:05:08.900
how I want everyone, how

01:05:09.020 --> 01:05:11.080
I think everyone will be

01:05:11.380 --> 01:05:11.860
happy. And

01:05:13.020 --> 01:05:14.960
it's still wrong, but it's

01:05:15.540 --> 01:05:16.700
at least that part

01:05:17.340 --> 01:05:18.320
with his character.

01:05:19.260 --> 01:05:20.740
That's the kind of part that does fit.

01:05:21.160 --> 01:05:22.320
It's like, now I see it.

01:05:22.810 --> 01:05:24.200
He had a terrible mom.

01:05:24.880 --> 01:05:26.680
and no dad and we don't know why.

01:05:26.680 --> 01:05:28.660
Yeah, and that felt to me like

01:05:28.660 --> 01:05:30.820
what was the strength

01:05:31.180 --> 01:05:32.560
of Wishworld in

01:05:33.140 --> 01:05:34.640
my little recap

01:05:34.960 --> 01:05:36.460
of it. But that wasn't

01:05:36.680 --> 01:05:38.740
Wishworld. That was in this one.

01:05:39.260 --> 01:05:40.740
Yes. None of that surfaced

01:05:40.800 --> 01:05:42.220
until. But it was

01:05:42.940 --> 01:05:44.380
what was underlying

01:05:44.980 --> 01:05:45.200
the

01:05:46.300 --> 01:05:48.640
it was that sense

01:05:49.020 --> 01:05:50.560
of this kind of

01:05:50.700 --> 01:05:52.720
fragile fantasy that is based on

01:05:53.660 --> 01:05:54.220
a

01:05:54.280 --> 01:06:05.440
a kind of psychological issue, for want of a better word, rather than any actual coherent

01:06:05.980 --> 01:06:16.240
fundamental worldview. And that's why cups were falling through the table, because he didn't

01:06:16.260 --> 01:06:24.640
He didn't manage to kind of create a fantasy that was based on any intellectually coherent concept.

01:06:25.520 --> 01:06:31.120
Instead, it was a kind of an idea that he desired.

01:06:31.680 --> 01:06:34.260
It's what he had hoped for himself and he thinks everyone else.

01:06:34.540 --> 01:06:34.640
Yeah.

01:06:35.240 --> 01:06:35.620
Yeah.

01:06:35.920 --> 01:06:36.000
Yeah.

01:06:36.160 --> 01:06:40.560
That he wanted to impose on everyone else and that he didn't want to think too hard about.

01:06:40.660 --> 01:06:43.780
I mean, I think that, you know, again, that's kind of fundamentally it.

01:06:43.860 --> 01:06:45.980
Again, you use the word impose.

01:06:46.080 --> 01:06:53.580
yeah i think it's presented in this is that he's wanted to provide it there is a there's a in his

01:06:53.630 --> 01:06:59.760
own mind right yes he is imposing it there's there's i'm not lying that but in his mind

01:07:00.470 --> 01:07:07.700
he is providing it he is making wishes come true people he is he's he's doing the lord's work

01:07:08.220 --> 01:07:16.060
or in this case the ronnie's work but he is anyway the problem the problem so is just i mean

01:07:16.080 --> 01:07:20.500
to return to the Poppy question very, very briefly. The problem is that doesn't translate

01:07:20.980 --> 01:07:29.080
into the wish on either the doctor or Belinda's part that the fantasy they've been living in with

01:07:29.160 --> 01:07:35.340
Poppy is real. Nothing about Poppy makes sense. That has to come from somewhere else. And the

01:07:35.440 --> 01:07:41.500
sterility thing, it feels like it's supposed to be motivating a sense that because the doctor

01:07:41.500 --> 01:07:47.960
can't have children, that that is a loss for him because he wants to have children. And that's a

01:07:48.020 --> 01:07:55.140
problem for the show, obviously, because there has been no indication at any point in the past

01:07:56.080 --> 01:07:59.040
that he wants to have children. But...

01:07:59.140 --> 01:08:06.240
Well, he never wanted to have children until after he couldn't, after the genetic explosion.

01:08:07.820 --> 01:08:17.200
We haven't been told about now, so then we're having to process that change without it having been actually built up for ourselves.

01:08:18.569 --> 01:08:37.779
I mean, I think for me, the other problem with that is that I can't remember exactly where, but I'm sure that in the Shuti Gatwa era, we have had some suggestion, well,
maybe it was in the Maestro episode, some suggestion that although...

01:08:37.859 --> 01:08:44.600
susan is his granddaughter susan's mother might not be born yet the doctor's offspring has not

01:08:44.600 --> 01:08:53.380
been born yet and so the feeling that this was leading up to poppy being susan's mother especially

01:08:53.620 --> 01:09:03.119
given that susan was expected by me to appear in this episode yeah that that that kind of felt like

01:09:03.259 --> 01:09:08.540
well that would have been that would have been the reason for having all of these kind of

01:09:09.839 --> 01:09:16.980
contorted plot points about why the doctor now wants to have a child or whatever i i i think

01:09:17.020 --> 01:09:24.359
that line in the devil's the devil's court or whatever yeah i think that line was a smart ass

01:09:24.620 --> 01:09:30.979
line right i think that's the doctor being playful he's not he's not really saying susan's mother or

01:09:31.000 --> 01:09:32.920
father wasn't born.

01:09:33.799 --> 01:09:35.020
It's like he's

01:09:35.160 --> 01:09:36.920
just saying, hey, I'm a time traveler. These things

01:09:37.560 --> 01:09:39.100
might happen. Literally

01:09:39.359 --> 01:09:41.319
it might have happened on Gallifrey

01:09:41.380 --> 01:09:43.040
in what is the future

01:09:43.520 --> 01:09:45.060
from 1960 whatever

01:09:45.319 --> 01:09:46.580
Earth. It's just

01:09:47.100 --> 01:09:48.900
it's the future. Yeah. It's just

01:09:49.120 --> 01:09:50.620
63. It was not

01:09:51.220 --> 01:09:53.080
I really didn't feel I know I saw a lot of

01:09:53.180 --> 01:09:55.000
people online that were like given the whole thing. Maybe

01:09:55.140 --> 01:09:57.000
this is leading. I was like, no, I just think he was

01:09:57.180 --> 01:09:58.880
being he was snarking.

01:09:59.300 --> 01:10:00.540
But, you know,

01:10:00.880 --> 01:10:20.900
And okay, we might as well, we're not done with Poppy. We're not done with Poppy. Why? Why Poppy? If she was not created into existence by a wish, which at the end of this,
it seems like she wasn't. Why is it Poppy from Space Babies right down to the same name?

01:10:21.140 --> 01:10:26.580
Why is it that Poppy shows up in the devil in the engine blaster or whatever it was?

01:10:27.420 --> 01:10:31.600
And Belinda A doesn't recognize her and B calls her a spooky child.

01:10:31.860 --> 01:10:33.100
Did you see the spooky child?

01:10:33.780 --> 01:10:42.360
Like, it feels like suddenly the actress that that played actor who played Poppy became available, like when they were filming the last three episodes.

01:10:42.640 --> 01:10:45.120
And RTD just goes, oh, pop her in.

01:10:45.540 --> 01:10:47.200
Just like we're going to do Susan, pop her in.

01:10:48.080 --> 01:10:53.500
It's like, and I don't, it just doesn't, it doesn't make any sense.

01:10:54.110 --> 01:11:01.280
And then the only thing that I can argue in my mind that kind of, and I've mentioned it,

01:11:01.620 --> 01:11:05.520
I know I've mentioned it, is that in all those episodes at the beginning of the season,

01:11:06.020 --> 01:11:09.080
where every time they step into the TARDIS or they step out of the TARDIS,

01:11:09.300 --> 01:11:10.200
it's like, I got to get back home.

01:11:10.600 --> 01:11:11.320
I got to get back home.

01:11:11.520 --> 01:11:12.220
I got to get back home.

01:11:12.300 --> 01:11:13.240
I got to get back home right now.

01:11:13.260 --> 01:11:14.440
I've got to be there by the 25th.

01:11:14.480 --> 01:11:15.240
It's very important.

01:11:15.440 --> 01:11:23.180
going to, you know, like she's got to do her shift tomorrow. Not anything to do with my child will

01:11:23.440 --> 01:11:29.500
starve because her grandmother will toss her out into the garbage tip if I'm not home by 730,

01:11:30.240 --> 01:11:35.520
as opposed to, I don't know, go to the neighbor's house and say, could you look after the baby? I

01:11:35.600 --> 01:11:40.119
mean, that baby's not in any day. But then, of course, they retcon all those scenes and replay

01:11:40.140 --> 01:11:46.600
them with her going, I got to get back to 730 to Poppy. It's like, okay, so this raises yet

01:11:46.840 --> 01:11:52.820
another problem for me. One, the wish world breaks down and the universe is no longer right.

01:11:53.360 --> 01:11:59.600
Teal is wrong. Norway and Sweden have moved. And Ernest Borgnine is still alive. And Poppy

01:12:00.540 --> 01:12:06.019
doesn't exist anymore. And of course, who knows how many other people don't exist anymore

01:12:06.020 --> 01:12:08.120
that the doctor is not going to care about.

01:12:09.480 --> 01:12:13.320
And so he goes off and for no logical reason,

01:12:14.180 --> 01:12:16.020
I mean, oh, you tried to save me

01:12:16.260 --> 01:12:17.280
and you tried to save me

01:12:17.520 --> 01:12:18.620
and he did all these things.

01:12:18.780 --> 01:12:19.340
Yeah, fine, whatever.

01:12:20.100 --> 01:12:21.360
Also, the doctor went through

01:12:21.580 --> 01:12:22.800
all of Belinda's timeline

01:12:23.020 --> 01:12:24.680
in that one episode to save her

01:12:24.900 --> 01:12:25.980
from the temporal explosion.

01:12:26.380 --> 01:12:28.120
And he should have noticed Poppy,

01:12:28.740 --> 01:12:31.080
but guess not because she wasn't there.

01:12:31.480 --> 01:12:32.260
She wasn't there.

01:12:32.580 --> 01:12:33.420
She did not exist.

01:12:34.160 --> 01:12:36.000
So he goes through and creates

01:12:36.640 --> 01:12:39.020
a new reality that has Poppy in it.

01:12:39.020 --> 01:12:42.700
I can only assume he killed Ernest Borgnine in the process.

01:12:43.660 --> 01:12:45.100
And what kind of...

01:12:45.160 --> 01:12:45.500
Maybe.

01:12:45.650 --> 01:12:48.160
Do you know who Ernest...

01:12:48.160 --> 01:12:50.340
How many other people did he wipe out of existence

01:12:51.480 --> 01:12:53.540
because he created this new reality

01:12:54.280 --> 01:12:57.160
that has Belinda and Poppy in it?

01:12:58.040 --> 01:13:00.940
Who's to say which reality is the correct reality?

01:13:01.100 --> 01:13:03.940
Who has that authority to...

01:13:03.960 --> 01:13:09.520
to share. I mean, that's what villains do. I'm changing the world to fit the way I want it to

01:13:09.580 --> 01:13:13.940
be. The doctor changed the world to be the way he wanted. And we don't know what else he did.

01:13:14.220 --> 01:13:19.580
And by the way, I have a question for you. Do you even know who Ernest Borgnine is in the UK?

01:13:20.300 --> 01:13:23.620
I have a question for you. Have you seen Bandea Blackrock?

01:13:24.160 --> 01:13:25.700
Yes. It's a great film.

01:13:25.840 --> 01:13:30.520
Is that a popular, or the Dirty Dozen, or Airwolf, or...

01:13:30.540 --> 01:13:31.540
Oh, was he in the Dirty Dozen?

01:13:32.180 --> 01:13:33.500
He was in The Dirty Dozen.

01:13:33.740 --> 01:13:34.300
I haven't seen that.

01:13:34.350 --> 01:13:34.900
He was in The Airwolf.

01:13:35.170 --> 01:13:42.740
And he was in, oh gosh, he was in quite a lot of films that you would, he was in Escape

01:13:42.970 --> 01:13:46.780
from New York, McHale, like I said, McHale's Navy.

01:13:47.000 --> 01:13:49.760
I mean, that was a classic and, you know, an Airwolf.

01:13:50.640 --> 01:13:53.700
But, and he was an Oscar, he was an Academy Award winner.

01:13:54.380 --> 01:13:54.980
Best actor.

01:13:55.160 --> 01:13:57.560
Yeah, he's certainly, he's certainly a name who.

01:13:57.570 --> 01:13:57.860
For Marty.

01:13:58.520 --> 01:14:00.080
I think people will recognize.

01:14:01.500 --> 01:14:03.980
Okay, I didn't know. I heard that and I'm like, really?

01:14:04.800 --> 01:14:09.880
I particularly love Bad Day at Black Rock. I think also, and I don't know without conducting his sound.

01:14:09.880 --> 01:14:13.200
He'd be 108, by the way, if they brought him back to life.

01:14:14.420 --> 01:14:17.240
Well, yeah, what was he? 95 when he died.

01:14:17.440 --> 01:14:17.960
Died, yeah.

01:14:19.080 --> 01:14:27.320
And I think that he's maybe a name where, I guess RTD may have tried this out on people in the office or something,

01:14:27.620 --> 01:14:32.260
where I don't know how many people would remember whether he's alive or dead.

01:14:33.170 --> 01:14:37.080
It's like people might know him but not know his age.

01:14:37.980 --> 01:14:39.140
And I had no idea.

01:14:39.630 --> 01:14:40.440
I had no idea.

01:14:40.810 --> 01:14:45.740
So I spent a bit of time before I actually checked that he died 13 years ago,

01:14:46.600 --> 01:14:53.400
thinking, is this actually more offensive if he's still alive or if he's dead?

01:14:53.940 --> 01:14:59.080
And would it be more offensive if they had flipped the joke in the episode?

01:15:00.060 --> 01:15:05.760
And I can't think of any way in which this is not in just awful, awful taste.

01:15:06.240 --> 01:15:07.040
It is.

01:15:07.620 --> 01:15:08.760
It is an awful taste.

01:15:09.540 --> 01:15:10.120
I'm not.

01:15:10.800 --> 01:15:11.460
I was a little.

01:15:11.520 --> 01:15:14.820
I mean, they brought him when they said an Ernest Borgnitz back a line.

01:15:14.820 --> 01:15:16.660
And I'm like, that's really random.

01:15:17.640 --> 01:15:20.960
But also, I guess, yay.

01:15:21.980 --> 01:15:23.280
But I mean, I knew he was ancient.

01:15:23.920 --> 01:15:26.220
when he died and it's been a quite a few years.

01:15:27.260 --> 01:15:27.440
And,

01:15:27.490 --> 01:15:27.580
uh,

01:15:28.310 --> 01:15:29.700
cause I definitely remember thinking,

01:15:30.540 --> 01:15:30.800
you know,

01:15:31.420 --> 01:15:31.880
he would have,

01:15:32.500 --> 01:15:33.340
he could have done a,

01:15:33.650 --> 01:15:35.800
a remake on airwolf or something,

01:15:36.000 --> 01:15:36.840
but yeah.

01:15:37.560 --> 01:15:38.120
And then they,

01:15:38.320 --> 01:15:38.380
they,

01:15:38.550 --> 01:15:38.680
they,

01:15:38.820 --> 01:15:39.600
I'm sure they must,

01:15:39.720 --> 01:15:40.780
he's going to die again.

01:15:40.920 --> 01:15:41.380
He's 108.

01:15:42.350 --> 01:15:42.440
I,

01:15:43.020 --> 01:15:43.180
yeah,

01:15:43.900 --> 01:15:44.260
it's,

01:15:44.640 --> 01:15:45.280
it's tasteless,

01:15:46.020 --> 01:15:46.280
but if,

01:15:46.360 --> 01:15:46.480
you know,

01:15:46.560 --> 01:15:46.760
if he,

01:15:46.940 --> 01:15:47.640
it honestly,

01:15:47.860 --> 01:15:50.660
if he asked questions around the office as to whether or not people

01:15:50.960 --> 01:15:52.220
recognized Ernest Borgnine,

01:15:52.560 --> 01:15:54.420
then why wouldn't he ask around the office

01:15:54.560 --> 01:15:56.620
whether anybody remembers what Omega was all about?

01:15:57.220 --> 01:15:59.100
I just feel like maybe if you were doing

01:15:59.100 --> 01:16:00.940
a little impromptu research

01:16:01.160 --> 01:16:02.840
at the Doctor Who production office

01:16:03.100 --> 01:16:04.640
that maybe somebody would know

01:16:04.640 --> 01:16:05.740
what they were talking about there.

01:16:06.400 --> 01:16:06.800
Apparently not.

01:16:07.600 --> 01:16:07.720
Why?

01:16:08.500 --> 01:16:08.760
Why?

01:16:09.380 --> 01:16:09.520
Why?

01:16:10.080 --> 01:16:11.420
I think it's supposed to be funny.

01:16:11.620 --> 01:16:13.500
It's a series of random things.

01:16:14.400 --> 01:16:16.620
Like the color teal is a slightly...

01:16:17.000 --> 01:16:18.160
Different shade, yeah.

01:16:18.780 --> 01:16:20.980
Yeah, well, it's a...

01:16:21.000 --> 01:16:23.840
It's an esoteric color, isn't it?

01:16:24.540 --> 01:16:26.260
You know, if you ask people to name colors,

01:16:26.640 --> 01:16:29.020
how many colors would they go through before they reach teal?

01:16:29.900 --> 01:16:32.680
I would get to teal before I'd get to cerulean blue,

01:16:33.200 --> 01:16:34.840
and I'd get to cerulean blue pretty quick.

01:16:35.560 --> 01:16:38.980
Okay, and the Australians would probably get to teal faster, but yeah.

01:16:40.180 --> 01:16:42.760
Because of their water color around the barrier?

01:16:44.340 --> 01:16:45.600
Well, I was going to say a political party,

01:16:45.800 --> 01:16:50.720
but they have independent candidates who stand under the teal flag.

01:16:50.780 --> 01:16:59.280
the environmentalist right-wingers the environmentalist right wing okay they're

01:16:59.350 --> 01:17:06.440
strange bedfellows okay why is it that ruby is the one who remembers because a ruby is special

01:17:06.610 --> 01:17:14.760
in the way that she's an rtd companion and b because she had this whole 76 yard thing

01:17:15.320 --> 01:17:18.020
of experiencing an alternative reality.

01:17:18.300 --> 01:17:19.040
I have no idea.

01:17:19.380 --> 01:17:22.000
They did sort of say something about that in the first one.

01:17:22.220 --> 01:17:24.400
So yeah, I guess that might have been.

01:17:24.620 --> 01:17:26.880
But I think the fact that the doctor just basically says,

01:17:27.060 --> 01:17:31.000
yeah, whatever, but evs, fucking ignores it.

01:17:31.600 --> 01:17:32.980
Mystery we'll never figure out.

01:17:33.300 --> 01:17:33.860
Yeah, whatever.

01:17:34.600 --> 01:17:34.700
Yeah.

01:17:35.400 --> 01:17:40.660
I am down to the terrible Whitaker cameo.

01:17:41.280 --> 01:17:41.840
Ah, okay.

01:17:42.280 --> 01:17:42.420
Yeah.

01:17:43.000 --> 01:17:50.500
So I'm interested in why you think this was a terrible cameo, because I thought there

01:17:50.600 --> 01:17:52.700
were two reasons why it was a terrible thing.

01:17:52.880 --> 01:17:53.940
But I, yeah.

01:17:54.580 --> 01:17:59.660
I mean, I'm starting with what was the point of having the Whitaker doctor show up?

01:17:59.920 --> 01:18:03.200
It's not like the two of them needed to work together to get the job done.

01:18:03.420 --> 01:18:08.040
I mean, yes, she said one thing that he goes, oh, yeah, but this is nowhere near as clever

01:18:08.740 --> 01:18:12.080
as time crash with the two of them working it out.

01:18:12.260 --> 01:18:14.060
In fact, it's kind of a very...

01:18:14.200 --> 01:18:15.600
So that was just like...

01:18:15.600 --> 01:18:16.680
No, I think...

01:18:16.920 --> 01:18:26.800
I do think that this was actually to get the opportunity for Whitaker's doctor to basically say she loves Yaz.

01:18:27.680 --> 01:18:28.000
Right.

01:18:28.660 --> 01:18:38.820
That was the sole purpose of this was for RTD to correct the ambiguity that was left behind in the Chibnall era.

01:18:39.240 --> 01:18:40.560
I think it could be.

01:18:40.560 --> 01:18:41.060
I can't think of any other reason.

01:18:41.160 --> 01:18:42.160
And maybe she works cheap.

01:18:42.720 --> 01:18:46.940
You know, Tennant was busy or just was mowing the lawn that week or something.

01:18:46.970 --> 01:18:52.100
He said, well, we can get the low rent version of David Tennant, the female version.

01:18:52.100 --> 01:18:53.240
I don't think it was that.

01:18:53.460 --> 01:19:01.540
And, you know, Time Crash, RTD has said he doesn't do multi-doctor stories.

01:19:01.800 --> 01:19:03.040
And he didn't write Time Crash.

01:19:03.500 --> 01:19:09.760
And he explicitly arranged things for the 60th anniversary so that you would get David

01:19:09.800 --> 01:19:15.240
tenant in it without it being a multi-doctor story and said as much as time. And yet he lied

01:19:15.240 --> 01:19:22.740
when he bi-generated them. He's, well, yeah, slightly, but for five minutes. This is a

01:19:23.680 --> 01:19:29.720
multi-doctor thing without question, really. I think this makes it a multi-doctor story because

01:19:29.880 --> 01:19:35.640
you've got two doctors interacting with each other in the way, in that kind of style that

01:19:35.660 --> 01:19:43.240
they always do in multi-doctor stories. So the two things that I dislike about it,

01:19:43.380 --> 01:19:48.140
bearing in mind that I'm much more partial to Whistaker and her doctor than you are,

01:19:48.300 --> 01:19:56.360
so I was quite happy to see her, is that I think that RTD rewriting that conclusion for Yaz

01:19:58.139 --> 01:20:06.000
isn't fair. That was Chibnall's story to write. Chibnall decided to end it the way he ended it.

01:20:06.200 --> 01:20:13.440
We criticized it at the time, but that is the way it was. And even if RTD had felt that there

01:20:13.450 --> 01:20:20.340
was something there that needed fixing, for God's sake, he picked up the doctor straight after that.

01:20:21.200 --> 01:20:27.900
where was he? Where was he? Why didn't the doctor remember to do that much sooner?

01:20:28.860 --> 01:20:34.160
So I think I said at the time, it just felt very strange that as soon as the doctor regenerates

01:20:34.390 --> 01:20:41.060
after this kind of emotional parting scene with Yaz, there are no lingering consequences,

01:20:41.440 --> 01:20:47.881
no further thoughts, not even a mention. And so the fact that RTD ignored it so completely at the

01:20:47.900 --> 01:20:54.800
time and then decided to come back to it now irritated me immensely. The other thing that I

01:20:54.960 --> 01:21:00.300
don't like about this is that this is, however much I haven't really enjoyed him as the Doctor,

01:21:00.500 --> 01:21:06.660
this is Shooty Gatwa's final episode. This is the story in which he regenerates. He gets this

01:21:07.320 --> 01:21:13.321
big extended regeneration, which seems to be, you know, par for the course now. And I can't blame

01:21:13.340 --> 01:21:24.320
RTD for that because both of his successors did the same thing. But it's Shutey's show. It's the

01:21:24.380 --> 01:21:29.900
episode in which he bows out. Why should he be sharing it with another doctor other than the

01:21:29.940 --> 01:21:39.180
one he regenerates in being credited? That to me just seems odd and again, not really treating

01:21:39.200 --> 01:21:47.160
people right. Okay, so I can understand why he might be there with David Tennant's doctor.

01:21:47.880 --> 01:21:56.400
They are, they are, they're twins, they're twinsies. So I can sort of see it. But like I

01:21:56.600 --> 01:22:01.400
alluded to in my thing about Wishworld, if you were going to have, if you were going to have

01:22:01.540 --> 01:22:06.721
another doctor in the story, you put the other doctor in the story just before the cliffhanger

01:22:06.720 --> 01:22:11.680
so that you get buzz going into the next episode.

01:22:12.520 --> 01:22:13.540
Oh, David Tennant's back.

01:22:13.860 --> 01:22:15.780
My kids might have watched.

01:22:16.420 --> 01:22:19.740
There's no way in hell they were going to watch with Shooty Atwell.

01:22:19.900 --> 01:22:25.800
But if David Tennant had been back, I bet that at least James would have watched the episode.

01:22:26.100 --> 01:22:26.360
All right.

01:22:27.140 --> 01:22:34.380
Let me put a third thing in there then, because there's a minor aspect that has been bothering me about it,

01:22:34.680 --> 01:22:40.900
which is that multi-doctor stories will not create buzz if you keep doing them.

01:22:41.620 --> 01:22:46.920
I've never particularly been a fan of multi-doctor stories, but James would have watched it this time,

01:22:47.280 --> 01:22:53.060
okay. But then in a couple of years' time, when the ratings fall still further and they go,

01:22:53.190 --> 01:22:57.020
oh, we better do another multi-doctor story, would he still have watched it then?

01:22:57.640 --> 01:23:06.860
It felt like the day of the Doctor was special because, you know, it was this anniversary story

01:23:07.300 --> 01:23:13.380
and they hadn't done that, well, forever in the 21st century, but they certainly hadn't done it

01:23:13.380 --> 01:23:18.120
for a while. And it still felt actually like it was special in the power of the Doctor.

01:23:18.700 --> 01:23:25.061
It had been almost 10 years. It was a sort of anniversary. And although it wasn't the day of

01:23:25.080 --> 01:23:30.340
the doctor, it was actually pretty well done. But I just don't think you can keep doing it.

01:23:30.540 --> 01:23:36.500
It's the law of diminishing returns. No, I don't. I don't think it had a it didn't have a purpose

01:23:36.740 --> 01:23:43.380
here showing up just to say, hey, look, there's another doctor and to, you know, perv on themselves.

01:23:44.320 --> 01:23:52.640
You're a good looking guy. It's like, OK, that's a little weird. All right. Yeah. I know. OK.

01:23:53.280 --> 01:23:59.300
We briefly mentioned it, but we should at least see if there's anything anybody else wants to say about the fact that there was no Susan in this episode.

01:24:01.040 --> 01:24:02.580
It's a bit like the shooty thing.

01:24:04.420 --> 01:24:10.220
Me feeling that, well, on the one hand, it's an awfully short tenure.

01:24:10.780 --> 01:24:12.760
How dare he take the role and then abandon it?

01:24:12.920 --> 01:24:15.440
And then on the other hand, thinking, well, at least he's gone.

01:24:16.080 --> 01:24:19.880
The Susan thing was like, this has been built up to.

01:24:20.140 --> 01:24:22.180
Surely it should be delivered on.

01:24:22.200 --> 01:24:26.240
Surely we are owed an appearance by Susan.

01:24:26.910 --> 01:24:32.100
And on the other hand, thinking, yes, but it would have been a terrible disappointment in anticlimax.

01:24:32.240 --> 01:24:33.480
So at least we were spared that.

01:24:33.980 --> 01:24:34.220
Yeah.

01:24:35.540 --> 01:24:43.120
Put it this way, it wasn't the William Russell appearance, which, you know, was just absolutely terrific.

01:24:44.180 --> 01:24:45.680
And it was perfectly done.

01:24:45.830 --> 01:24:48.840
Whereas this, well, there wasn't anything really.

01:24:48.920 --> 01:24:53.360
I mean, I don't even understand what its purpose was, but yeah.

01:24:53.640 --> 01:24:59.700
And I'm still not sure whether or not the appearance of Susan in Interstellar Song Contest,

01:25:00.420 --> 01:25:04.040
that that was Susan, as opposed to just the Doctor's mind.

01:25:04.660 --> 01:25:05.280
Oh, yeah, yeah.

01:25:05.700 --> 01:25:08.000
But I mean, she's just having flashbacks.

01:25:08.360 --> 01:25:13.480
And if this Doctor is the one that wants children, which, you know, of all the Doctors wanting

01:25:13.720 --> 01:25:15.480
children, that's kind of funny.

01:25:15.780 --> 01:25:17.080
This one didn't strike me as a breeder.

01:25:18.180 --> 01:25:21.400
And it's just, yeah, I don't know.

01:25:21.880 --> 01:25:23.760
It's pointless.

01:25:24.580 --> 01:25:30.380
I'm going to throw, let's see, I've got two last things here.

01:25:30.780 --> 01:25:35.420
I'm going to start with, wow, if we thought they were all going to clean up all the stuff

01:25:35.450 --> 01:25:38.860
that going all the way back to the Star Beast, nope.

01:25:39.380 --> 01:25:41.680
The boss is apparently in charge of the Time Hotel.

01:25:44.360 --> 01:25:45.060
It's the master.

01:25:45.520 --> 01:25:50.020
Thinking they were going to clear things up was one of the things that when Jodie Whittaker

01:25:50.260 --> 01:25:54.600
appeared, I thought, wow, they really are going to wipe out everything that's happened

01:25:55.480 --> 01:25:58.740
subsequent to Power of the Doctor. But yeah.

01:25:58.960 --> 01:26:00.700
Oh yeah, they could have gone back to her regeneration.

01:26:02.160 --> 01:26:05.440
I wondered whether she was going to come back as the Doctor. I thought, you know,

01:26:05.480 --> 01:26:09.140
they're going to undo that regeneration and just have her back, although I thought that

01:26:09.140 --> 01:26:10.040
was pretty unlikely.

01:26:10.540 --> 01:26:15.480
Well, he could have had to save it. Instead, he would have had to burn his own

01:26:15.500 --> 01:26:21.020
regeneration back to back to jody and so she could have regenerated into somebody different

01:26:21.380 --> 01:26:27.080
undoing the whole timeline yeah no that's what that's what i thought that's where i thought it

01:26:27.080 --> 01:26:33.000
was gonna go for a second but uh it still could because i'm not convinced anyway i'm just gonna

01:26:33.080 --> 01:26:38.620
say let's raise on to that the boss has two hearts we think how do we know that the meep sort of says

01:26:39.380 --> 01:26:45.460
because the meep said well yeah the meep says a line something like uh and dina not not

01:26:45.480 --> 01:26:48.260
many double-hearted creatures out in the universe.

01:26:48.400 --> 01:26:50.300
The boss will be interested to hear that.

01:26:51.200 --> 01:26:52.780
Could mean many number of things,

01:26:52.880 --> 01:26:55.700
but it also could mean the boss is one of them.

01:26:56.280 --> 01:26:58.080
And then there's the line from Anita that says,

01:26:58.160 --> 01:26:59.520
the boss says, say hello.

01:27:00.820 --> 01:27:02.680
I suppose it might have been the Ronnie too,

01:27:03.300 --> 01:27:04.600
but it's the master.

01:27:06.120 --> 01:27:06.980
It's the master.

01:27:07.960 --> 01:27:08.880
It's our out.

01:27:08.940 --> 01:27:11.680
Now both the master and the Ronnie are running around the universe

01:27:11.900 --> 01:27:12.960
because the master's tooth,

01:27:13.280 --> 01:27:16.600
Or the gold tooth was rescued in the giggle by somebody.

01:27:17.620 --> 01:27:20.840
So the toy maker didn't call the master the boss, though.

01:27:21.620 --> 01:27:23.840
No, no, he did not.

01:27:24.440 --> 01:27:30.340
But I really, I hated the way they dealt with that, where she says, oh, the boss.

01:27:30.340 --> 01:27:34.640
And the doctor says something to the effect of, oh, let's set that aside for later.

01:27:36.040 --> 01:27:41.320
It's like that was that did get another F-U-R-T-D out of me.

01:27:41.780 --> 01:27:42.380
It really did.

01:27:42.600 --> 01:28:12.300
I mean, and I was doing so well and I was much madder watching reality war, but these are things, there are definitely things in, in here. And I have no idea what he was
thinking about when he wrote the original reference in the star beast, but bringing it back here is one of the things in this episode that is clearly a, I'm, I'm laying
the seeds for give us a recommission.

01:28:12.360 --> 01:28:19.000
BBC. I don't think that the way to lay the seeds for giving us a recommissioned BBC is Billy Piper.

01:28:19.520 --> 01:28:26.500
Just before we get to Billy Piper, because you've mentioned Anita and I want to just touch on the

01:28:26.640 --> 01:28:31.380
Time Hotel, I've still got quite a few other things to get through. I just wanted to say

01:28:32.040 --> 01:28:39.119
bringing her back really annoyed me as well. It's like, I love Joy to the World. It was the best

01:28:39.140 --> 01:28:46.320
episode since well certainly in the shooty run pretty much since rtd came back i think

01:28:46.960 --> 01:28:51.040
and this feels like it's tainted it don't spoil the good stuff

01:28:53.520 --> 01:28:58.200
yeah the other thing it kind of got me on that one was you know they have that whole backstory

01:28:58.540 --> 01:29:04.040
about how she was searching through time and looking at all the past doctors to try to find

01:29:04.600 --> 01:29:10.540
shoot his doctor and when she finds him he's he's doing his dance with rogue and suddenly she goes

01:29:10.740 --> 01:29:20.080
wait he's gay it's like you spent a year with him you didn't notice how there was something there

01:29:20.120 --> 01:29:26.580
was something about the way in which i don't i mean i don't i'm in danger of getting back into

01:29:26.840 --> 01:29:32.580
re-reviewing the joy to the world but just moffat's lightness of touch in the way that he used that

01:29:32.600 --> 01:29:40.820
montage in order to just present a relationship there through little vignettes and leave you to

01:29:40.960 --> 01:29:46.680
join the dots and not explicitly say what she did or didn't know or how that made her feel

01:29:47.240 --> 01:29:53.900
was part of the appeal of the episode. And there's no subtlety to the way in which the story is told

01:29:54.000 --> 01:30:02.920
here and the way no none he he kind of decides that that nice open-ended finish to to joy to

01:30:02.920 --> 01:30:10.460
the world had to somehow be spoiled yeah it's fixed but spoiled in my book yeah and literally

01:30:10.820 --> 01:30:16.200
fixed like we're going to take something that is open and we're going to pin it down yeah i don't

01:30:16.240 --> 01:30:22.600
disagree i don't disagree so on to billy piper i just want to say billy piper i just want to say

01:30:23.220 --> 01:30:30.120
in in my discussion with ben i will say that we both very much honed in on the fact that the

01:30:30.300 --> 01:30:38.540
wording was odd on the end credits odd it's suggestive i think it's explicit she is not the

01:30:38.660 --> 01:30:45.680
doctor she's not the doctor i i mean okay let me first of all get let me first of all get my

01:30:45.860 --> 01:30:52.680
like Billy Piper as the doctor thing out of the way which is this okay I think Billy Piper

01:30:53.500 --> 01:30:59.540
would do a good job as the doctor I think I would have difficulty accepting Billy Piper as the

01:30:59.760 --> 01:31:06.200
doctor because of how memorable she was as Rose because that character is so stuck in my mind

01:31:06.760 --> 01:31:11.840
but even then I kind of think yeah she's a phenomenal actor she could do a really interesting

01:31:11.840 --> 01:31:21.600
job in the role. That's number one. Number two is RTD going back to rely on the things that he

01:31:22.000 --> 01:31:27.540
did. It's a bit like, I mean, I know he worked with Christopher Eccleston before he cast him

01:31:27.540 --> 01:31:32.520
in Doctor Who, but he'd also worked with David Tennant before. And so he was going back to

01:31:32.600 --> 01:31:38.160
an actor he'd worked with before. If, as I suspect, there have been problems with Shooty Gatwa,

01:31:38.820 --> 01:31:42.080
that he's going back to an actor who he's used before.

01:31:42.700 --> 01:31:46.540
I'm not sure I see that as a good thing.

01:31:46.670 --> 01:31:52.180
And I see that as indicative of why the show needs someone else guiding it along,

01:31:52.490 --> 01:31:57.900
who has new ideas and who has, frankly, a different Rolodex.

01:31:58.840 --> 01:32:00.780
This was the thing that Chibnall was doing well,

01:32:00.960 --> 01:32:03.540
because he was bringing in different writers as well as different actors.

01:32:04.300 --> 01:32:07.780
And to give the show a different kind of sense and feel,

01:32:07.940 --> 01:32:09.040
You need fresh blood.

01:32:09.520 --> 01:32:12.340
So coming back is not great.

01:32:13.960 --> 01:32:16.640
It did feel creatively bankrupt.

01:32:17.060 --> 01:32:20.160
It's like, wow, you couldn't think of anybody else.

01:32:23.000 --> 01:32:27.440
However, there is just this one possibility that I'm going to throw out there.

01:32:28.060 --> 01:32:32.920
Because of the bi-generation nonsense, David Tennant's doctor is still out there.

01:32:33.440 --> 01:32:45.400
So if Billy Piper were also the doctor, you could have a two doctors episode where they do what RTD says all stories are about sex.

01:32:46.240 --> 01:32:48.160
Now it's now it's equals.

01:32:49.020 --> 01:32:51.000
This is get the two of them together.

01:32:51.200 --> 01:32:52.320
And there you go.

01:32:52.940 --> 01:33:00.780
This could be shooty shooty's doctor transforming into Rose, just like Capaldi's put the pick the face to remind him.

01:33:00.900 --> 01:33:07.460
It's transformed into Rose because he knows he's got some unfinished business with the 14th Doctor.

01:33:08.040 --> 01:33:12.420
The Doctor can regenerate into Rose's face.

01:33:12.490 --> 01:33:12.980
No problem.

01:33:14.280 --> 01:33:21.500
This is established in, I can't remember the episode, but Romana decided that she was going to have Princess Astra's face.

01:33:21.790 --> 01:33:24.640
If she can do that, the Doctor can have Rose's face.

01:33:25.060 --> 01:33:25.760
That's not a problem.

01:33:25.790 --> 01:33:27.600
The show can do anything it likes.

01:33:28.220 --> 01:33:36.060
The idea that you have just put into my head, I'm going to have even more difficulty forgetting than I am this whole two-parter.

01:33:37.660 --> 01:33:51.940
I think that the obvious suggestion of what's going on here, or the interpretation most people seem to be taking on this, is that Billy Piper is not the doctor.

01:33:52.860 --> 01:33:57.260
And I kind of think that, yes, that's correct.

01:33:57.430 --> 01:34:00.920
But also, the show hasn't been recommissioned.

01:34:01.580 --> 01:34:03.800
Does RTD know what he's doing?

01:34:04.320 --> 01:34:16.820
Does he have an idea of what the story is going to be with the Doctor having regenerated into some sort of Rose or Bad Wolf or even the moment?

01:34:16.980 --> 01:34:18.500
Probably not the moment, probably Bad Wolf.

01:34:19.400 --> 01:34:22.540
And I think the answer to that is, I'm not sure he does.

01:34:22.600 --> 01:34:23.920
I'm not sure he

01:34:24.240 --> 01:34:26.140
I don't think he writes anything with an idea

01:34:26.680 --> 01:34:27.720
well I'm not sure he

01:34:28.700 --> 01:34:30.680
what he's aiming to do partly

01:34:30.980 --> 01:34:32.640
is get people talking about it

01:34:32.840 --> 01:34:34.620
and it's been in all the papers over here

01:34:34.920 --> 01:34:36.760
and it has definitely worked on that score

01:34:37.340 --> 01:34:38.380
but I also think

01:34:38.960 --> 01:34:41.060
that he has ended up with a problem

01:34:42.180 --> 01:34:43.140
that really

01:34:43.660 --> 01:34:45.660
no one else has had since the show has come back

01:34:46.360 --> 01:34:47.660
which is that he can't

01:34:48.300 --> 01:34:49.280
cast a new doctor

01:34:51.620 --> 01:34:52.580
and so

01:34:52.600 --> 01:34:57.380
what do I do about that? Twice, because that's what he did with David Tennant, basically.

01:34:57.860 --> 01:35:04.340
No, he'd already cast Judy Gatwa before. He could easily, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So he could

01:35:04.620 --> 01:35:12.040
easily have put Gatwa into the Power of the Doctor scene. Most of us, I think, were expecting

01:35:12.660 --> 01:35:18.880
50-50 on whether it would be Gatwa or Tennant. I think the difference here is, as far as I'm

01:35:18.900 --> 01:35:25.420
aware, we haven't had an occasion since before 2005 when an episode of Doctor Who has aired

01:35:25.680 --> 01:35:32.320
without the subsequent one having been made or at least commissioned. They can't cast a new Doctor.

01:35:32.400 --> 01:35:38.360
They can't cast a new Doctor for a TV show that hasn't been commissioned. So he needs to do

01:35:38.580 --> 01:35:44.739
something at the end that leaves it open. He's got to write Gatwa out because he can't guarantee

01:35:44.740 --> 01:35:49.880
he's going to get him back. Otherwise, you get into a time in the Rani situation with someone

01:35:50.040 --> 01:35:54.240
having to black up, which you can imagine would be even more controversial than putting Sylvester

01:35:54.380 --> 01:36:01.340
McCoy in a blonde wig. So what he's done is he's gone, well, we'll stick Billy Piper in there.

01:36:01.400 --> 01:36:08.200
That will get everyone talking. Whoever writes it, there's no real danger that she won't come

01:36:08.380 --> 01:36:13.840
back and do whatever episode is next. But they can do, whoever writes this, whether it's him

01:36:13.860 --> 01:36:15.600
or someone else can do something

01:36:16.360 --> 01:36:17.620
that then transitions you

01:36:17.820 --> 01:36:19.600
into the new Doctor who by then

01:36:19.720 --> 01:36:20.680
they will have cast.

01:36:21.420 --> 01:36:23.460
I mean, as

01:36:24.480 --> 01:36:25.460
I haven't seen the British

01:36:26.060 --> 01:36:27.180
press per se,

01:36:27.860 --> 01:36:29.720
but in the end credits

01:36:29.840 --> 01:36:31.160
if anybody had

01:36:31.860 --> 01:36:33.480
slipped their throats and hadn't finished watching

01:36:33.980 --> 01:36:35.740
didn't get through to the end credits or whatever

01:36:35.880 --> 01:36:37.900
you had to do, you know, it says

01:36:38.540 --> 01:36:39.740
Shooty Gat was the Doctor,

01:36:39.840 --> 01:36:41.760
Jodie Whittaker is the Doctor, and introducing

01:36:42.240 --> 01:36:43.820
Billy Piper, whereas in

01:36:43.840 --> 01:36:48.320
Other instances, it said, and introducing so-and-so as the doctor.

01:36:48.480 --> 01:36:50.300
Introducing David Tennant as the doctor.

01:36:50.480 --> 01:36:51.500
As the doctor, yeah.

01:36:51.500 --> 01:36:52.060
At Power of the Doctor.

01:36:52.640 --> 01:36:54.820
I think maybe in the Matt Smith as well.

01:36:55.340 --> 01:36:56.340
But the BBC did issue a press release.

01:36:56.340 --> 01:37:00.980
Yeah, but I think the issue of Power of the Doctor, because David Tennant wasn't being introduced.

01:37:01.500 --> 01:37:04.840
He'd been in the show before, very much as Billy Piper isn't being introduced.

01:37:05.000 --> 01:37:05.840
He's been in the show before.

01:37:06.660 --> 01:37:06.760
Right.

01:37:07.280 --> 01:37:12.980
The BBC issued a press release saying, you know, should he get what we're regenerated into Billy Piper?

01:37:13.780 --> 01:37:16.960
And interviewing Billy Piper and, oh, it's so great.

01:37:17.120 --> 01:37:20.080
I'm always, you know, happy to come back and do stuff and that thing.

01:37:21.760 --> 01:37:26.760
And then not only do they avoid saying Billy Piper is the doctor,

01:37:27.640 --> 01:37:32.880
but they go multiple times on the whole, yeah, what it means?

01:37:33.600 --> 01:37:35.180
Can't say at this point.

01:37:35.920 --> 01:37:36.760
What does it mean?

01:37:36.960 --> 01:37:37.400
I don't know.

01:37:37.700 --> 01:37:51.540
Like that, that feels like, you know, they're clearly trying to not only get you interested in Billy Piper coming in, but at the same time, they're also trying to
telegraph Billy Piper isn't going to be the doctor.

01:37:52.000 --> 01:37:53.320
I think, I think, yes.

01:37:53.380 --> 01:38:02.520
I mean, I think that I can't find it at the moment, but there's the statement from Russell T. Davis that says something like, who is she or what is this about?

01:38:03.140 --> 01:38:05.980
But you don't even need to wait for the release.

01:38:06.260 --> 01:38:12.240
We don't even need to wait for the end credits because the regeneration doesn't finish before they roll.

01:38:12.800 --> 01:38:18.820
So there is even the scope for the Doctor to kind of go through multiple phases.

01:38:18.960 --> 01:38:30.500
You know, you could grab a few other ex-companions and go through multiple other phases and then regenerate to the next Doctor if you didn't have Piper back for the next
story.

01:38:31.600 --> 01:38:33.340
He's set it up as a placeholder.

01:38:34.080 --> 01:38:41.000
that's fundamentally what it is because there is no way that they can cast a new doctor

01:38:41.820 --> 01:38:53.260
and gatua has gone yeah so that's a sour a sour ending on a sour episode i really hated this

01:38:55.260 --> 01:39:02.400
i really hated it all of it i can't think of anything i liked in the whole episode

01:39:02.960 --> 01:39:04.520
bring the Ronnie back to have the Ronnie

01:39:04.770 --> 01:39:06.080
eaten. Interesting.

01:39:06.900 --> 01:39:08.220
I mean, yes, there's another Ronnie.

01:39:08.700 --> 01:39:10.360
Half the Ronnie, yeah. So, I've got

01:39:10.670 --> 01:39:11.900
a list of things that

01:39:12.920 --> 01:39:14.600
didn't get fixed in this episode. We've

01:39:14.840 --> 01:39:16.380
mentioned, Susan,

01:39:16.640 --> 01:39:18.480
you've claimed that Mavity has been

01:39:18.740 --> 01:39:20.600
fixed. The boss is... No, no, I'm just

01:39:20.740 --> 01:39:22.580
hoping. I'm hoping Mavity's been

01:39:22.770 --> 01:39:24.620
fixed. I wish someone had

01:39:24.780 --> 01:39:26.580
said the word gravity when they

01:39:26.620 --> 01:39:28.660
were talking about the

01:39:28.800 --> 01:39:30.200
Ernest Borgnine and stuff.

01:39:30.680 --> 01:39:34.920
And the Earth's gravity is at now 0.99974 or something.

01:39:35.440 --> 01:39:38.220
It feels like that was intended to be the fix,

01:39:39.140 --> 01:39:42.560
but it just seems strange after they said Mavity 90 million times

01:39:42.780 --> 01:39:44.180
in the Interstellar Stone contest.

01:39:45.040 --> 01:39:45.120
Yeah.

01:39:45.220 --> 01:39:46.960
But they didn't actually finish that.

01:39:47.040 --> 01:39:50.960
So I was expecting that, the boss, but also by generation.

01:39:51.760 --> 01:39:53.940
And it feels weird to me.

01:39:54.460 --> 01:39:59.860
Obviously, the Rani being eaten is one thing where you suspect

01:39:59.880 --> 01:40:06.800
they're actually going to use by generation and that Anita Dobson will be back as the Rani.

01:40:06.960 --> 01:40:12.880
Although, frankly, I thought Archie Panjabi was, I thought she was really good as the Rani. I

01:40:12.900 --> 01:40:16.980
thought, I mean, I agree that the way the Rani was written didn't necessarily reflect the character,

01:40:17.200 --> 01:40:24.160
but her performance felt like a natural successor to Kate O'Mara's performance. Incidentally,

01:40:24.260 --> 01:40:32.900
the clip of Kate O'Mara that was used was taken from dimensions in time that I yeah I've heard

01:40:33.120 --> 01:40:38.860
people I thought they couldn't use that I wish they couldn't use that maybe that's just a reason

01:40:38.890 --> 01:40:44.200
why they can't put it on DVD because it was a charity thing so they can't use it commercially

01:40:44.440 --> 01:40:50.381
but I wonder if that's going to cause any kind of problems when this gets released on DVD I guess

01:40:50.400 --> 01:40:55.880
maybe it counts as a clip just as it would be if it was you know a dvd documentary where there was

01:40:55.880 --> 01:41:01.760
a clip of the dimensions in time as a you know just as an illustration of a point of doctor who

01:41:02.020 --> 01:41:08.720
history i don't know they'll give one p to charity for every dvd and blu-ray sold well yeah but then

01:41:08.760 --> 01:41:12.800
if they could do that they could have released it on dvd before i think the problem is that there

01:41:12.880 --> 01:41:17.901
is actually maybe it's not a problem because they're only using the clip of kate amara whereas

01:41:17.960 --> 01:41:19.540
so they could settle that with her estate.

01:41:19.740 --> 01:41:22.340
Whereas the problem with releasing it for charity

01:41:22.500 --> 01:41:24.480
is probably they would have to renegotiate

01:41:24.480 --> 01:41:26.220
the agreements of every actor who was in it

01:41:26.300 --> 01:41:28.380
and they put every actor they could get from Doctor Who

01:41:28.520 --> 01:41:30.340
as well as every actor they could get from EastEnders.

01:41:30.960 --> 01:41:33.140
And that would be prohibitively expensive

01:41:33.400 --> 01:41:34.120
just in legal fees.

01:41:35.180 --> 01:41:36.920
Why? Why did they use it from that?

01:41:37.940 --> 01:41:39.140
I have no idea.

01:41:39.640 --> 01:41:41.220
That is one thing I have seen online.

01:41:41.560 --> 01:41:43.460
I have seen a couple of things online,

01:41:44.360 --> 01:41:45.340
particularly after Wishworth,

01:41:45.980 --> 01:41:48.280
they're impossible to avoid.

01:41:48.780 --> 01:41:48.920
And,

01:41:49.140 --> 01:41:49.240
you know,

01:41:49.360 --> 01:41:54.540
I've seen a lot of the F bomb and I've seen a couple of reality war,

01:41:54.640 --> 01:41:55.260
nine out of 10,

01:41:55.840 --> 01:41:56.440
nine out of 10.

01:41:56.620 --> 01:41:56.920
What?

01:41:58.080 --> 01:41:58.400
It's like,

01:41:58.660 --> 01:41:58.860
what,

01:41:59.500 --> 01:41:59.740
what?

01:42:00.420 --> 01:42:00.800
It's like,

01:42:01.180 --> 01:42:03.420
get E to a therapist quickly.

01:42:04.220 --> 01:42:07.900
But one of the things I've seen is people going,

01:42:08.300 --> 01:42:08.580
yes,

01:42:08.980 --> 01:42:10.720
dimensions in time is now Canon.

01:42:11.560 --> 01:42:13.440
And I did not spot that,

01:42:13.880 --> 01:42:14.660
but why,

01:42:14.790 --> 01:42:15.360
why would they,

01:42:15.560 --> 01:42:16.220
That would be a good thing.

01:42:16.340 --> 01:42:16.780
From Dimensions in Come.

01:42:17.280 --> 01:42:18.320
Was it like better video?

01:42:18.500 --> 01:42:21.620
Were they using HD when they made Dimensions in Time?

01:42:21.720 --> 01:42:22.360
I don't think so.

01:42:23.020 --> 01:42:25.160
You know, I could see why they might want better video quality, but otherwise.

01:42:25.160 --> 01:42:28.420
Well, they shot it in 3D, so I don't know if that had anything to do with it.

01:42:29.200 --> 01:42:29.820
It would be on film.

01:42:30.540 --> 01:42:31.300
They didn't actually.

01:42:31.960 --> 01:42:34.220
I mean, they shot it in 3D with ordinary cameras.

01:42:34.440 --> 01:42:35.900
It's just about the way they moved them.

01:42:36.020 --> 01:42:42.860
But Dimensions in Time is possibly, I'm not sure if we have time in this to go into that as well.

01:42:43.420 --> 01:42:47.900
I think my point about Durani was that I wonder if they're going to bring Anita Dobson back

01:42:48.270 --> 01:42:51.240
rather than bringing Archie Panjabi back.

01:42:51.700 --> 01:42:57.800
And that therefore her bi-generation fork is actually a dead end.

01:42:58.820 --> 01:43:02.300
And bi-generation is what will allow the character to continue.

01:43:03.040 --> 01:43:03.580
I have no idea.

01:43:03.960 --> 01:43:04.520
Could be.

01:43:05.120 --> 01:43:05.340
Anyway.

01:43:05.600 --> 01:43:07.640
The question is, can Anita Dobson now regenerate?

01:43:08.200 --> 01:43:09.260
Or did she lose that at all?

01:43:09.260 --> 01:43:11.960
The other question is, why did the Doctor not bi-generate?

01:43:12.440 --> 01:43:16.880
Why did the Doctor regenerate into ostensibly Billy Piper?

01:43:17.540 --> 01:43:18.920
Because we fixed the world.

01:43:19.720 --> 01:43:20.720
Yeah, well, it could be.

01:43:21.070 --> 01:43:21.700
It could be.

01:43:22.260 --> 01:43:22.660
I don't know.

01:43:23.280 --> 01:43:23.420
Yeah.

01:43:23.940 --> 01:43:30.540
Or if he had bi-generated and channeled his bi-generational energy into Jodie Whittaker,

01:43:31.050 --> 01:43:35.880
which is how Jodie Whittaker produced David Tennant, who could then bi-generate.

01:43:36.110 --> 01:43:39.620
It could be like this snake eating its own head thing.

01:43:40.340 --> 01:43:45.240
There's so much they could have done with this silly, terrible setup to make it even

01:43:45.520 --> 01:43:48.540
sillier and more terrible, but anything else?

01:43:49.220 --> 01:43:49.860
You know what?

01:43:50.440 --> 01:43:51.140
I'm exhausted.

01:43:52.200 --> 01:43:57.520
I've got some nitpicks, but to be honest, I'm not sure this episode deserves any further

01:43:57.720 --> 01:43:57.980
analysis.

01:43:58.120 --> 01:43:58.900
I think I'm done.

01:43:59.880 --> 01:44:03.240
This episode has gotten an awful lot of analysis from this.

01:44:03.680 --> 01:44:06.320
For me, this is three hours worth of podcasting.

01:44:06.380 --> 01:44:07.820
Two here, one with Ben.

01:44:11.620 --> 01:44:13.540
for something I hated that much.

01:44:13.880 --> 01:44:15.360
I just don't get it.

01:44:15.900 --> 01:44:17.500
Yeah, I think we're done.

01:44:17.800 --> 01:44:19.780
And I think, you know,

01:44:19.960 --> 01:44:21.180
I don't think we're going to have to worry

01:44:21.320 --> 01:44:22.780
about 2026 as a year

01:44:22.900 --> 01:44:24.160
where we're going to have to do Doctor Who.

01:44:24.940 --> 01:44:27.260
So we'll be going back.

01:44:28.160 --> 01:44:29.240
Simon and I will be going back

01:44:29.400 --> 01:44:30.120
to our regular stuff

01:44:30.240 --> 01:44:32.400
where we're going to be picking up with bugs

01:44:33.220 --> 01:44:35.320
if we haven't already put out one.

01:44:35.560 --> 01:44:36.280
I don't think we did.

01:44:37.040 --> 01:44:39.600
So I don't think we did, but I would sweat.

01:44:40.110 --> 01:44:42.180
Season four of Bugs, here it comes.

01:44:43.560 --> 01:44:49.060
So something to be a lot more cheerful and better than what we've just lived through.

01:44:49.760 --> 01:44:52.240
Simon, thank you for joining me.

01:44:53.000 --> 01:44:53.880
It's a pleasure as always.

01:44:54.840 --> 01:44:59.680
And listeners, I do hope you'll join us all again next time on Fusion Patrol.

01:45:02.240 --> 01:45:04.420
You've been listening to Fusion Patrol.

01:45:05.140 --> 01:45:05.700
Thanks for listening.

01:45:08.040 --> 01:45:12.520
If you've enjoyed this episode, we hope you'll consider supporting us at buymeacoffee.com

01:45:12.580 --> 01:45:16.280
slash Fusion Patrol or patreon.com slash Fusion Patrol.

01:45:17.000 --> 01:45:22.560
For our monthly Patreon subscribers, we're currently running a special series on Babylon 5.

01:45:24.700 --> 01:45:29.100
Come join the conversation and find other content at fusionpatrol.com.

01:45:29.620 --> 01:45:34.760
And we're back on social media, where you can also follow us on Mastodon and the Fediverse.

01:45:35.520 --> 01:45:39.360
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01:45:41.860 --> 01:45:44.740
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01:45:47.520 --> 01:45:49.760
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