We take a single episode of a science fiction TV series and overanalyze it to within an
inch of its life.
This is the Fusion Patrol podcast.
Welcome to the discussion.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Fusion Patrol. I'm Eugene. And I'm Simon. And tonight we're looking at the series 11, is it?
37. Doctor Who. 37, that's better. I prefer that, even though it's had its 50th. We're okay, we're 37.
Episode of Doctor Who. Ker-blam! In the vortex, something is on an intercept course for the TARDIS.
Unable to avoid it, a ker-blam delivery robot materializes on the flight deck and delivers a package for the Doctor.
Inside, a fez
Clearly indicating the sender didn't have Kerblam Prime
And a note for help
The doctor and the gang decide to investigate
They arrive at the Kerblam headquarters
An entire moon converted to retail sales
Kerblam is the largest retailer in the galaxy
And while it's 90% automated
By law, they must employ 10% organics too
Posing as workers, they go undercover
and soon discover that the organics are going missing.
And they soon learn that evil doesn't come from soulless machines,
but rather from the hearts of men.
All right, ker-blam.
And this is the first chance you and I have had a chance to talk about Series 37.
Indeed.
So let's just start with what did you think of the episode in general?
I got some problems with the episode.
The episode in general was poor filler, I thought, but there were some more serious problems with the actual plot itself.
Okay, I think we may agree.
The funny thing is, and maybe it was just the mood I was in, I kind of enjoyed it.
It was a little bit fillery at times.
I felt there were times where I was kind of going along a little slow, but I enjoyed it.
But I can't tell you why, because it's kind of not good.
Is this guilty pleasure, me?
I'm not using filler in a pejorative sense.
There are filler episodes that I think are the best episodes
because sometimes they create a sense of atmosphere and place.
They have character moments and humor,
and they come in between the kind of awful series arc.
Not that this necessarily applies to the Chibnall era.
It's too early to say,
but the awful kind of series arc episodes
where the entire universe is in danger
and filler episodes give you a chance
to have something on a much smaller scale.
So they're not necessarily a bad thing.
It's just that it didn't feel to me
like this did very successfully
create its sense of place.
Interesting.
I feel like this is probably the biggest threat
that the Doctor has faced.
Yes.
In this series.
Well, in one sense, it's big.
In the sense of the kind of,
If you had it on a fatality scale, if you like.
That's usually how I...
Well, but the problem is, I think that is how some writers see the way to increase the severity of the kind of peril that our heroes face.
Whereas I think what the most successful episodes in this season have done is to create a real sense of jeopardy by focusing more on the detail and the reactions of the characters to the situations that they're facing and making some of those dangers much more personal.
Whereas because it felt to me like this hadn't really gelled in creating a sense of what it's like working.
I mean, OK, let's cut to the chase here.
We're talking about Amazon workers being exploited in massive dispatch warehouses.
And those kinds of jobs we know from where journalists have gone in and done that work and reported on it.
We know those kinds of jobs are pretty grim and pretty awful.
And undoubtedly you could write a kitchen sink kind of drama in which the actual tension and suspense in the story arises from the situation itself.
and in order to do that in this sci-fi setting I think you have to be you have to create a kind of
coherent encompassing world in which all of those details feel properly authentic so that
you can actually share the same worries and concerns of those characters which might be about
losing your job because if the consequences of that are your family starve or whatever then
that's pretty awful because I don't think it was very successful in creating those things okay it
It feels like the, well, okay, we'll make this a story about liquidizing people has been added in as a kind of alternative way of upping the jeopardy.
But unless you make that feel like a real threat as well, it doesn't actually work.
Okay.
I have the questions here.
You know, what is the message this show is trying to tell me?
Is it that automation is bad?
Is it that people are bad?
Is it that boring jobs are bad?
Is it just a satire?
can't tell you who killed
Dan or why
or any of the missing people. Was it
the system doing that to
kill people so that the
doctor would have something to investigate
or that the
executives would have something to investigate?
Or, I mean, that's
what happened to Kira, right? The system
murdered Kira so Dan
would feel bad. Not Dan.
No, Charlie.
Charlie would feel bad.
So the system, even though the system was the one that was crying out for help,
even though the system was the one that was trying to stop this senseless slaughter,
the system was still just as culpable.
It was murdering people too.
Is that how this plays out?
Well, okay, so here we go to my problem.
I'm going to answer your question before I forget.
I mean, it's not definitive on whether this is how Dan met his fate,
But Charlie says, I needed test subjects to be sure the detonation forces would work.
So he's been killing the workers.
Oh, OK.
I missed that line.
Well, the whole thing didn't make a lot of sense.
Why did the system need to send a message to the doctor?
I don't...
Anyway, it's clearly got pretensions of satire about it.
And I think you're right to ask those questions about what it's aiming at,
because there is an interesting and pretty topical area to explore around what does automation do to an economy
which is based on the whole idea of full employment.
And things like universal basic income are now sort of being explored as genuinely politically viable ideas in various places,
because some kind of...
Not here.
Well, it's something that's being talked about even within the main political parties in the UK and elsewhere in Europe.
And it's a reasonable question. If we're relying on full employment as a way of making sure that both the work is done and that there is some kind of equitable distribution of the fruits of people's labour, then automation kind of undoes that because, yes, it's taking away people's jobs.
On the other hand, what is automation doing? Automation is doing the kind of jobs that we might not want to do. So it's doing the work for us, which is great. But then what if that means we can't earn a salary? So there are interesting questions around that and the whole kind of political responses and the 10% idea. I thought, wow, we could explore that.
But this episode, A, doesn't really engage with any of these ideas.
And then B goes off on this whole separate tack where it doesn't.
It ends up with the doctor basically saying the system isn't the problem, which it kind of is.
It is the problem or it is a problem.
And that would be the case even if the system weren't murdering people in order to make a point that it's bad to murder people.
Yeah, that's always the best way to do that.
So how can the doctor say that's okay?
I mean, I can't really get past that.
Well, you know, we've had this conversation.
Well, Ben and I have had this conversation.
The doctor's morals are kind of weird in this incarnation.
Well, this is very different.
Well, I'm not saying it's the same, but I mean, it's just, it's another example of,
it's not, you're right.
Basically, she's sanctioning the death of Kira.
I mean, she's not, I assume she's not happy about it, but she dismisses it, really.
She says it's not a problem.
So.
I kind of think, I kind of think the whole thing is a problem.
The satirical episodes, I mean, Oxygen is the one that comes, well, okay.
If you, I mean, you want to go back.
Sorry, not Underworld, Sunmakers.
Sunmakers.
Sunmakers is the kind of Robert Holmes script that springs to mind.
But, you know, more recently on the on the whole kind of question of exploitation that I think this seemed to be going for.
Oxygen was extremely sharp.
And the interesting thing is that it felt to me, and I think this fits into it, except it fits into it the wrong way around,
is that the theme running through this whole season
has been about exploring privilege.
And we've seen that in the kind of exploitative race
in the ghost monument
and the kind of background that Angstrom was escaping from.
And we've seen the kind of uber-privileged Robertson,
you know, the thinly disguised Trump clone.
And we've explored what it means in episodes
like Rosa and Demons of the Punjab. And this seemed to be taking another angle on that whole
question of what does it mean to be privileged? But it's a more difficult one because the privilege
here is with the doctor. And even, I mean, if you look at the contrast where Ryan is interesting
in this because he's worked in a warehouse, he's done this job, and he's felt what that's like
when you're trapped in the work and the doctor and the companions in this story aren't trapped
they go in quote undercover or be it you know not for very long and and the thing about their
situation is they know that they can get out of it anytime that's why it's different for ryan
because he he's he's been there he's been stuck in a job that he thinks that is going to be the
rest of his life now he's got away from it he's traveling with the doctor he can afford to step
back in it because it's not like he's got a daughter down on the planet who he needs to
save up for to pay for her education or whatever he can just be a kind of tourist in in this
situation whereas the previous stories I felt had more impact because in for example Rosa
Ryan in particular really felt the consequences of being in that environment as you and Ben
discussed so i i didn't i didn't well i was just going to you know finish the thought that it's
it's a story that seemed to be a tackling privilege albeit less effectively it then
turns it around at the end and says no actually it the system's not a problem it's fine that the
the workers are exploited in this way in fact what do you know we're going to make it 50 people
powered and will have five times as many workers being exploited right yeah i felt when the episode
started um that we were going somewhere big i thought this was going to be a a very solid
smack in the face to amazon and companies like that i thought they were going to they were going
to go somewhere and they were really going to drive home uh a point and it doesn't it fizzles
out, as you say, because it deviates off to, you know, actually the people working in the
system are decent people.
The management are decent people.
The system itself is, you know, with one minor transgression, trying to do the right thing.
But what we, I mean, we can make the argument that says that the system is trying to protect
its profit.
Therefore, it doesn't want to have its delivery people blow up millions of people because,
you know, that would be bad for business.
I think that's much, even within the episode, there's no real pretense that it's anything other than that.
Yeah, but it's trying to stop what we would consider to be the catastrophe, the human catastrophe that's going to happen.
And it turns out it's somebody who actually recognizes the problems with the system, recognizes that the people are exploited, recognizes that this is degrading and demeaning jobs.
He should be the sympathetic character.
He turns out to be the villain because he's too fanatical and too far over the other side to try to work through the system and defeat it without murdering millions or thousands or however many robots there were to go out there and kill people.
So, yeah, it's just all over the place.
I do have a question, though. Is there something that we should take from this that Kira, bless her heart, had a lot of trouble getting started on her job? Did you catch that? She's had a lot of trouble my first couple weeks. It's like, how did you have trouble sticking something badly in bubble wrap?
It's like, are the people on this planet so incompetent and so inept that that's actually a challenge?
Because in which case then are they exploited if this is a challenging job for them?
But it's not, well, the question is, wouldn't you find it challenging to do that for, I mean, I would find it challenging to do it for half an hour.
And that's, you've got to do it for a whole ship.
I don't feel like that's what she meant by having trouble with it.
I felt like she meant wrapping it up right.
was tough. Well, I'm not sure that's what I thought she meant because it was in response to
a comment Ryan was making about dyspraxia. At the time, I thought it might be that she was a fellow
sufferer or that there was something about her that made it particularly difficult. But obviously,
we didn't go there because none of these characters in any way seem to be anything
more than entirely superficial yeah it's it's definitely um it's definitely a problematic
episode and i i feel like it could have been a really solid hit but it just wasn't it's a great
idea in fact there's a there's a whole bunch of great ideas in it the the like i say i think the
theme fits with the theme of the series the the satire fits into the tradition of great satirical
episodes of of doctor who the um the deadly bubble wrap is a pretty brilliant idea i think
especially as as it's this as it's this kind of irresistible thing that even if you knew even if
you had a piece if you had a piece of bubble wrap in front of you and you knew that it might blow up
it would be really hard still not to pop the bubbles because bubble wraps like that you just
can't help yourself funny funny you should mention that because just the day before this episode i
was clearing out boxes that we got from from amazon and before i dispose of them i pop all
the bubble wrap so that because we're talking about the big stuff now you know the big cushy
pillow ones because it takes up too much room in the trash if you don't so it's almost like it's
filler material and um i had a sheet of it and i walked into to my daughter's room and i said
you know hand it to the bubble wrap and she goes nah until i walked out so and popped it myself but
But I did have a comment about that.
Did not Kira pop the bubble wrap before she even looked at her present?
Was there a present?
I don't think people actually do that.
I thought there was supposed to be.
Well, there was supposed to be, but we never saw it.
I thought it was an empty box.
I thought the only thing in it was the bubble wrap.
Oh, okay.
It's possible.
I mean, we didn't see anything in the box, but I still kind of assume there was something in the box.
But I guess now that you mentioned that it was an intentional death trap.
Yeah.
Maybe you don't need that
So
I have to say I was also
Very very mildly spoilered
Before watching this
In that I saw someone saying
Deadly bubble wrap about this episode
So I was absolutely convinced
When I started watching it
That it was going to be some sort of sequel to
Ark in Space
Oh well
Really? See I thought it was the Autons
Oh yeah but yes
I was seriously thinking it was going to be the Autons
The actual look of the
look of the Kablam, whatever
you call it, the Kablam
man, I thought was
kind of halfway between the
robots they had in Smile
back at the start of last year's
series and the Smilers from the
Beast Below. They had that kind
of uncanny valley weirdness
to them. It could be Autons as
well. Well, it could be, but
if I were to
guess, especially given
the comment about Robophobia,
the inspiration for them, and you could kind of see where this was going,
was the whole robots of death thing.
Yeah, that occurred to me too.
The idea that people are being frightened by the robots,
but actually it turns out not to be the robots themselves
that are the evil agency at work,
which could kind of explain where the plot twist at the end came from,
even though it made a real dog's breakfast out of the political elements.
Serious failure of economic understanding, I think, in this episode,
because, you know, there's the joke with Twirly,
the first complam delivery robot, about upselling, right?
But, well, I guess you're buying stuff for yourself,
so maybe you would be upselling.
But when the doctor received her delivery,
there was no attempt at upselling.
So in fact, there was no point in sending the robot.
You could have just teleported the package.
And if teleport takes energy, then teleporting the package is much cheaper.
It has to be cheaper than teleporting the robot to stand there and say,
delivery completed, and then disappear for no apparent reason.
You make a reasonable point that I hadn't even thought about.
And it would have ruined the story.
Right, because they had to build up energy to send all those robots.
So clearly energy is a resource that they have to conserve as part of the equation of delivering.
And, you know, why are they going on about delivering?
Oh, there was no shuttle scheduled.
Like, you have teleport technology.
Why would you be shuttling your workers up?
Without teleport technology, actually.
I think that's the fix, isn't it?
Could be.
Somehow the Kablam man is capable of high-speed travel.
because because what they're what they're going for is a futuristic version of amazon drones isn't
it i think so and and also i think they said it's a teleport pod in the vortex so what the heck is
a teleport pod they send a pod into the vortex so it can then teleport the robot i i had some
problems with you know unfortunately there when i'm watching an episode if i'm completely enwrapped
i can watch through an episode and i can forgive things and then and then when i'm not these things
start to bug me. And that's the teleport shuttle thing started bugging me. And I started thinking,
it's like, you know, really, this is a tatty, single galaxy retailer, and they can teleport
into the TARDIS? Yeah. You know, there's barely any races in the universe that can
penetrate the TARDIS. I sat down and tried to think of instances where this happened
in the series. And with one notable exception, perhaps with one notable exception,
We're talking about races that seem far more advanced than Kerblam.
We have Sutek manages to get his face in the TARDIS.
The Guardians, the white and black Guardian, appear to be able to penetrate the TARDIS.
Somehow Donna Noble managed it.
And that's not even the one case.
Because we have the Rachnos somehow behind that, which is an ancient and powerful race.
And an advert for The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, which that one I'm kind of not buying off on.
But I can't think of any other instances where, barring something wrong, like the TARDIS defense screens were down or something, that you just, somebody can pop up in the TARDIS.
But entering the vortex means that you've got to have some form of time travel.
And as soon as you've got time travel, you get all sorts of other problems.
I mean, plenty of...
Even the Time Lords can't get into a TARDIS.
Well, yeah, true.
I would have forgiven all of that anyway, just for the idea that they were trying to outrun someone who's trying to deliver something to them.
It's like they're being chased by someone who just wants to catch them up and deliver something, which I thought was a reasonably entertaining gag.
Yeah, it's, you know, yeah.
Oh, the other instance of something getting to a TARDIS, and I think the doctor even had to open the door, was the Gallifrey in distress cube.
Oh, in The Doctor's Wife.
I think they opened the door to receive that
The Kablam man could have knocked on the door
That would have been fine
Because when the Doctor saw what it was
She obviously likes the Kablam man
Who doesn't like getting packages?
Well quite
And I think that's part of the satire
I mean everybody loves to get a package from Amazon
I think
I mean who wouldn't?
You get a box at the door
Not only do I love it
But the pirates who live in my neighbourhood like it too
Because they'll come take them
I mean it's a win for everybody
but uh is that a problem in the uk you guys have porch pirates uh no well maybe i i don't have
porch pirates mind you i've never had anything taken but but they they exist they don't tend
to leave things outside that much some yeah some delivery people do but they they ask you to
nominate a secure location leave it with a neighbor i think put it in the show i think amazon is now
trying to get people to install door locks that they can open yeah here i bet they are so that
They want you to have Amazon Echo controlled front door locks.
And I'm going to tell you right now, I shop a lot at Amazon and I love getting an Amazon package.
I don't trust them as far as I could throw that moon.
You know, it's like I know that they're exploitive and invasive and and damn it, cheap trumps.
And I hate using the word Trumps now in this kind of, well, but there's something to be said for it.
And there's something to be said in the indictment of Amazon that this is of our own making in many ways.
Because what we're willing to put up with is these kinds of situations.
So, I mean, there's so much they could have done with this episode.
All of that should have come through, yeah.
Yeah.
So, that was good.
All right.
So, let's see.
I did feel sorry for Dan.
I knew he was dead the moment he showed that pendant to Yaz.
Yeah.
Like, my daughter made that.
It's like, aw, they're going to kill Lee Mack.
He's a dead man.
Should I have recognized him?
Lee Mack?
Yeah.
Gosh, I would have thought you'd have recognized him over us.
Nobody knows him in this country, except for a few.
He's a comedian, British comedian.
Okay.
TV series, not going out.
Always as a co-host on Would I Lie to You with David Mitchell.
Okay.
I don't know what else he's done.
End up comedian at one point.
Plays on his northern underprivileged youth roots.
That's why I think they pair him against David Mitchell.
The posh and the women are...
Fair enough.
Yeah.
Oh.
One of the few people that they showed in the, you know, coming this season where they
showed people who were quote unquote famous, one of the few I recognized.
Oh, okay.
Going through the lineup.
It's like, oh, Lee Mack.
Okay.
One of the many I didn't recognize.
He put him in the category of, oh, the name has eluded me.
Engineer, murder on the...
Oh, Frank Skinner.
Frank Skinner, yes.
Yeah, I think I've seen less of Frank Skinner, but I have seen Frank Skinner.
So, you know, I figured it would be...
I didn't know.
Is it going to be a guy that they drop in because he's a comedian and he's going to be a straight comedic role?
Or, and this is the part I do really appreciate about British comedians,
is that you can actually apparently drop them into, I wouldn't exactly call it a high drama role,
but an acting role and they can actually do it.
Not all of them.
And make a decent job of it.
Not, yeah, probably not all of them,
but, you know, as opposed to pretty much none of them here.
So, you know, I can be surprised
at how well they do in those situations.
And he was fine in this.
He seemed like a pleasant kind of guy
who is working to help, you know,
what they were trying to do.
They were trying to make all the workers
seem like really nice people
who were just trying to make a living
and do right by their families.
themselves but they but but they they were literally he was just like the guy with a with
a daughter who he's working to help that that was all he was yes and yes he was i had it was almost
a cameo well it was a cameo but then claudia jesse's character was like that as well you know
she was just the girl who never got given a present and there was no sense of who she was
beyond that like what do they do at the end of a shift where you know where do they go and socialize
who are their mates there is no end of the shift who are their who are their mates of the question
because there's supposed to be 10 000 people in this warehouse and i can see it's going to be
pretty expensive if you need to fill all the corridors with extras all the time to give a
sense of that but you can you can do it i guess it's breaking the rules likely to tell not show
but you can do it by having your token representatives of this 10 000 strong workforce
mentioning a few other people from time to time.
Oh, so-and-so, he's such a laugh,
or so-and-so, she did such stupid things.
Well, he mentioned, like, seven people.
They're all dead, of course.
Yeah.
Yeah, and you never see any other people
in the, like, the pulling racks.
You know, you would kind of expect to see people.
You'd see more robots running around.
Why would you only have three racks?
The scale of the thing doesn't add up.
And this is another...
I'm just...
I'm really having a go at this episode.
But the thing is, some of the ideas were there, but it just didn't deliver on any level.
And in the realisation of what this warehouse was like, it didn't hang together.
And I can understand that some of these things are budgetary constraints.
But you have to believe that all the locations that they randomly shoot bits of this warehouse complex in
actually are supposed to all be underneath the same roof.
And it doesn't feel like that. It really doesn't.
because no that's true and and the car park they used at the end was a bit was a bit much i assume
that the you mean right to the bottom level yeah and suddenly there the warehouse is made out of
breeze blocks because they'd be better off shooting that on a sound stage but yeah i agree but i mean
there was there was that but then if you look at the the scale of the of the conveyor belt bit you
know that was obviously just a straight toy story 2 knockoff that that gives you a sense of the the
enormous size of this complex. So why on earth would anywhere in the complex, you have three
packing stations on their own? Surely you'd have 300 packing stations, you know, all the chutes
would come down together, and you'd have rows and rows of workers in a place where they could all be
supervised together and should we perhaps think that there are in fact uh 300 and that 297 of
them are automated no but no because no because you've got you've got 10 000 workers here i'm
thinking 300 would be not even 10 of the packing shoots it would be like there would be 10 sets of
300. I mean, these guys, they're not the only ones packing, surely. It can't be that there
are only 30 packers working in this galaxy-wide distribution center.
Well, I agree. The set didn't make it look that way. It does kind of make me feel like
these are the token workers. You know, 10,000 people on an entire moon could still just be
a token workforce.
It is. It absolutely is. It's stated that that is the case. And presumably, they're
they're doing the jobs for the equivalent.
The whole thing would, if it was fully employed humans,
it would be 100,000 FTE.
And so, yes, these are the token workforce,
but you're still talking about 10,000 people,
which is huge by the standards of any Amazon warehouse packing center
that presently exists.
And you wouldn't see three lines in there.
You wouldn't see 30 lines in there.
You'd see a lot more people packing at once.
If you think about the pullers, that's where you're going to have most of the people
because they're going to all funnel down to the packers.
Now, I'm not saying, again, I'm not saying three is the right number out of,
actually zero is probably the right number because, of course,
the job they're doing is irrelevant.
But, you know, yeah, it's, you know, another area of satire that they missed
or another area of indictment that they just missed going into is the trackers.
yep but that's what they do with amazon workers yep and you know to keep track to make sure that
they're not taking the wrong they tell them the route to walk to to pick up the stuff to put in
the cart and that see that we didn't feel the consequences of that that's what it that's what
it comes back to to me the kind of those small things are so oppressive you don't have to have
the threat of being liquidized if you go the wrong way when you're being tracked it's just
that sense of loss of freedom that you know that you're going to get pulled up and that one of the
best things in this episode was the kind of kablam hello co-workers good conversation but
and it and it's that kind of awful awful pseudo-friendly um corporate slapdown that you
that you get working in these places where basically yes as soon as soon as you step out
line from doing what is the work of a robot frankly because you know any kind of human
interaction makes you less productive and then that's frowned upon and then that's and then
that's shut down and the fact that it's done it in a very friendly way is even more sinister it
feels to me yeah and and i think you might be thinking when you're watching this episode
based on the way like dan's character says oh they're listening there's no privacy anything
like that you might i think you're correct uh to be misled that what's going to happen if you get
out of line is they're going to kill you but the reality there is no menace there they're not going
to kill you they're just going to fire you if you don't do the job they're going to send you back to
the planet at your own expense and you won't have a job but because we know there's a problem and
then we start learning about the people going missing you would be right in thinking that you
know sinister robots killing people who aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing and
it isn't that you know it's false it's a it's a it's a red herring it's it's a red herring but
but it's also it kind of it kind of undermines the it i think i think what you've got to do with
with uh if you're if you're trying to make a point about surveillance you know the that that
kind of surveillance culture is you have to answer that kind of persistent and rather tiresome
argument of if you've done nothing wrong you've got nothing to hide and to me the the response
to that is is actually no that's not how privacy works privacy privacy matters privacy belongs to
you it's it's not it's not up to someone else to decide that your privacy should be invaded
and it infringes on your agency and your identity if that happens.
And you've somehow got to make that feel real.
And if you say, actually, the reason that these kind of infringements
on people's privacy matter is because when they step out of line
or they do something that's a mild transgression of the corporate rules,
they're getting killed.
It's like, OK, the bad thing here is that they're getting killed.
it would be all right to be constantly surveilling them.
And the second they do so much as share a joke with a co-worker or whatever,
then you slap a warning on them and they, you know,
are a little bit closer to unemployment and destitution.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Let's see. I don't know that I have anything else.
I just, you know, I just feel like there was such fertile ground here.
And despite that, like I say, I enjoyed it for the most part.
It was just kind of fun, but you really kind of had to turn your brain off
and turn off your expectations of pointed satire
or something with a deep, imbibing message that really drives home
and makes us all question the nature of capitalism and the world that we live in.
I didn't get that.
No, and the problem is that pretty much everything alluded to in this episode,
whether it was to do with those kind of political questions about labor
or about automation and robots and robots of death
and all that kind of stuff has been done already in Doctor Who
and it's been done better.
I mean, the one doctor has got to be the best example
of warehouse automation, the hidden treasures of Generios.
What is it called?
Oh, oh, oh, big finish.
You've got to clear that one up for the listeners.
That's a big finish, the one doctor.
Yes, indeed.
A sort of Christmas audio Doctor Who.
It's absolutely a brilliant example of an entirely automated warehouse
in which, yes, indeed, the robots have gone rogue
and are killing all the humans.
Fabulous.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's the one with the turdus, if I'm not mistaken.
The stardust.
Oh, the stardust, you're right.
I can see why you think of it like that,
because it does have one of the funniest sound effects.
ever committed to all day and Doctor Who.
Yes.
So if you want satire on robotic warehouse planets,
pick up the one Doctor from Big Finish.
I recommend that one as well.
It's quite funny.
And it's perfectly suited to Colin Baker's Doctor.
Oh, yes.
Because, you know, that pomposity really goes with this particular type of story.
Anyway, we digress.
I don't have much to say about the companions in this episode.
They fulfilled the necessary function, but not a whole lot actually for them to do.
They were mostly tailing around just listening to the doctor, listening to the other people.
But I do want to bring out, because you brought it up, Ryan's dyspraxia.
And I know from a comment that you took some issue with our, or mine perhaps specifically, questioning of that attribute being assigned to the character of Ryan.
Is this just an inclusion thing?
Well, you know, I have subsequently looked a little bit more into what dyspraxia is.
And honestly, every companion the doctor has ever had must have dyspraxia.
You know, it explains all those companions tripping on flat ground.
It's inability to follow instructions.
It's, you know, it has its...
I'm looking at that going, actually, Ryan may be the perfect companion then.
I think you may be slightly trivializing the condition.
Well, I'm not the one trivializing it.
Doctor Who is the one trivializing it.
Because Ryan doesn't appear to have actually any of those things.
He keeps talking about it.
I'm not so good on ladders, but he does fine.
I can't jump off this thing, but he does fine.
All of those things, it feels more like it's an excuse for Ryan to have self-doubts,
but it doesn't actually seem to manifest itself.
And if you're going to do it, then you should do it right.
But I think they aren't doing it wrong.
He hasn't even tripped over flat ground yet.
I think the kind of demanding that it is a kind of a very visible overstated form of the condition isn't the right way to do it.
I think it's important that it is shown in a realistic way and in a way which shows someone managing it and living with it.
That would be fine. Do we know if this is a realistic way?
Yeah, I think it is from what I've read.
And also, I think the particular point about inclusion and the importance of representation, which I think is the key thing here, is that there are dyspraxics who are glad to see themselves represented.
And there's also an awareness thing, because there's the fact that you have now gone and had a look at what dyspraxia is.
And I bet a whole bunch of people watching it have done very much the same thing.
Or they watch the show and they take his representation of how it is and go, oh, so basically nothing. He can't ride a bike. That's the only thing we've seen that he can't actually do or that apart from self-doubt in the course of this episode or in the course of the series.
And so if you aren't one of those people who's going to go do a little research, which I wish more people did, but I think the sum total of the internet proves that that's not what people do.
They take stuff at face value and they go on, hence Donald Trump, hence Brexit, hence all sorts of horrific things that have happened over the years, is that people don't actually do any study on it.
They take it at face value.
And in which case, then I, you would, you would, I, you would be right, in my opinion, to dismiss dyspraxia as being a non-issue based on Ryan's activities so far.
I don't think so.
And further, you wouldn't know what they are based on what we've seen in the show.
The only thing we've got so far is it's apparently a lack of balance and not good with ladders.
And that's not what it is.
It's coordination, and we've seen that.
Have we?
Yeah, well, there's the ladders that you mentioned, but there's also the bike riding at the beginning.
The bike riding at the beginning is really where it's like, here it is.
He's trouble riding a bike, but he's going to keep trying.
Good on you.
But, you know, the ladders, I don't do well with ladders.
I don't do well with ladders.
I hate heights.
Sure.
It doesn't come off as like I might get halfway up that ladder and fall
because I, you know, put discoordinate.
But I don't know.
It's not a huge stretch of the imagination to think
if you have a coordination issue and you're climbing a ladder
that not only is the task going to be much more difficult
because you're climbing a ladder,
but also the dangers are pretty obvious.
Falling off a bike is bad enough.
Falling off a ladder or a crane, you know,
that's going to be a lot worse.
Well, I agree that it would be.
I just...
So I don't know what more about that needs to be spelled out
other than you'd say, well, we should have him fall off the ladder.
But I don't think we should.
I don't think, you know, every time he does something
that requires coordination, he should fail at doing it
because that would be an even worse message to be sending out.
It really would.
Is it...
All right, let's try a different approach,
because you did in your comment mention the deaf actress who was...
I can't remember which episode it was.
Before the flood and under the lake.
Which I thought worked extremely well.
What worked well?
Just that situation seemed to be treated realistically.
There was issue associated with it.
We had a character who was competent and capable
or had made their way in life.
All fine.
And as I recall, there was an issue at one point
where she couldn't hear something
during the course of the story,
which was a problem.
And the actress herself was hearing impaired.
Yes.
At the point, which from the argument of inclusivity,
you are not excluding actors and actresses with hearing impairment from the profession.
Indeed.
From, you know, being seen.
So, I mean, that's better than a...
What's the word for a person who can hear?
Do you know what I mean?
They call non-blind people sighted people.
Yeah.
Is there a word for that?
Hearing people.
Hearing people?
Okay.
Heared.
People who can hear in the character.
And we have seen in some places people who have missing limbs or paraplegic in roles.
Definitely positively positive situation.
Always seems to be better when they bring in an actor who has those attributes as opposed to having someone play it, at least in terms of in terms of representation.
Yeah, and one of the important things for some of those things, like if you're a deaf actor, for example, it may be that you're never going to be able to convincingly play a hearing person.
But the point is, you have someone in a role that isn't a role for a deaf person.
It's just a role.
And you don't assume that it is a role for a hearing person or a deaf person.
I mean, some are obviously written one way or the other.
But many roles, maybe with minor adjustments, could be suited.
And I think that goes for a number of other things that you have mentioned.
Because otherwise, as you say, if you're a deaf actor,
the number of roles that are actually open to you is basically minuscule.
Right. From a cold, hard logistical standpoint,
if you're a producer or casting director,
it makes far more sense not to do that,
to hire someone who has the actual, call it an impairment,
because it will be easier to work with,
it would be easier to work with an actor who could hear on set.
And so it would make sense from the dollars.
Well, I'll make the argument that probably would be.
Just similarly, it would be probably easier to work with somebody
who's not confined to a wheelchair on a movie set
because it's not exactly the most uncluttered environment in the world.
I can see how you would be going,
well, we do it this way, we do it that way.
And someone with dyspraxia,
which if I read correctly, could even be an issue.
It's not just with coordination.
There is an issue with following directions
and short-term memory problems,
which I could see is a real problem for an actor.
yes right so you know whether or not you could actually i i don't know um hire an actor that
that that position so i don't i assume that that the actor who plays ryan does not um does not
actually have the condition or have not looked that up um just i i just you know i'm gonna stick
with it i don't feel like we're getting i feel like we're being told something about ryan and
it's being it's a it's not being shown it's being told and not shown and i you know i and you said
i'm making light of it but i'm not making light of it we have had companions who to advance the
plot they have to trip over the stupidest of situations and that's why it's important that
you don't do that here because then it'll be this is this is the dyspraxia well it's okay for a
perfectly coordinated person to do that to advance a story but it's no it's not if it actually has a
reason to do it no because if no what we're saying what we're saying is something that something that
happens that there isn't there there isn't there isn't a reason to do it what you're saying is
this is something that is a thing that drives the plot forward and so then the reason you've got a
dyspraxic is to fit in with this plot element and the the the problem with it is if it isn't
if it isn't a realistic and i'm i'm not the best person to comment on this because i don't know i
the i know next to nothing about the condition but if it's if it's in order to fulfill a kind
of popular perception of what dyspraxia is like rather than what it is actually like then you are
just perpetuating something that is completely unhelpful okay i would take it i would take it if
if we had evidence that it was conveying an accurate representation because then we would
be doing a service to understanding but again i'm just not getting it out of ryan if there's
if if he has been capable of doing everything that has been put before him with apart from
riding a bike in the first and apparently that's the thing they've been trying a lot
and he's just not able to do that he's been able to do everything along the way and the only thing
we get towards that being a problem is him saying it in advance i'm not very good with this i don't
think i can do that i can do this is that true or is that his self-doubt because he seems to be
capable of doing it is is self-doubt the yeah i see i see yeah i see what you're getting at
i don't want ryan to have to trip i don't want ryan to have to be able to do but it is a condition
that he has, and it, I don't like to use the word,
makes him different, but it does present
a different set of conditions on what we would expect.
And that's why I'm saying,
when Sarah Jane runs across a field and she trips,
we all go, oh, for crying out loud.
How can you trip?
I mean, she's not in like six inch heels or something.
And then, you know, the story of medicine,
I'm not saying that I want them to do that to Ryan,
But if you were in a situation where when he grabbed that rope, the gun, and ran out there full speed,
and like, oh, I play whatever game it was, Full Metal Jacket, or I can't remember, with the guns and running around,
he seemed pretty damn coordinated to me.
I guess.
Incompetent, but perfectly...
I see the point that you're making, which is, if I've understood it,
that we don't necessarily know whether his self-doubt is justified,
other than what we saw pretty much in the first episode,
which I agree, I think that is an important point.
The point I'm making is having Sarah Jane run across a field
and then trip because it's some key plot device,
and so putting Ryan in situations where the dyspraxia is something
that is a plot element, and everyone goes,
oh, you know, Ryan's fallen over again and now he's in trouble
and the monster's about to catch up with him or whatever.
That seems to me problematic.
Whereas if what we were seeing was Ryan saying,
look, I have this problem, and then because we've seen how he deals with it,
which is basically he does it anyway and he keeps persisting,
and he persists and does fail and gets up again and persists again.
As long as that's... I can see what you're saying,
that that might be an important thing to show.
Yeah.
As long as it's not something that has to be part of the kind of plot every week.
I don't want him to trip to advance the plot.
That's definitely not what I mean.
I'm just...
I'm...
But that's what Sarah Jane is doing.
Okay, let me put it to you this way, then.
One of the things that I have been very surprised with,
pleased with,
maybe surprised is the wrong word,
pleased with,
is that the broadening of the writer's pool that they are using
is bringing us a fresh perspective.
I may or may not like the story.
We've got five Chibnals scripts in a row.
We've got, well, our Chibnals are co-written,
but we are seeing a different face on the stories that we're getting.
Demons of the Punjab, Rosa, those are prime examples.
Yes, absolutely.
Because we've never had a black writer or an Asian writer on the show before.
And they are writing what they know.
They are writing what is germane to them.
That is the fundamental argument in favor of diversifying your writing base is so that you get more perspectives.
I'm not disagreeing with that.
But I'd be very cautious about saying that's what they're there for.
That, you know, it's a black issue episode.
we're going to get a black writer on it or whatever,
rather than saying it's an episode about an Amazon warehouse in space
and a black writer could write that.
Because that's what Doctor Who hasn't done.
I do think that there's a little,
it might be a little heavy-handed in this case
that we get a black writer and suddenly they write about Rosa Parks
and we get an Asian writer and they write about Pakistan.
That actually may be a little on the heavy-handed side.
But no, it is the lens which these people look through when they are telling a story that expands the horizons of the people who are watching the program.
It didn't have to be about those things.
But I think it is pleasing to see that change.
So here's my point on it.
I'm a white guy.
I could write about racism all day long.
Well, I couldn't, but I could try.
But I will never have that perspective because I cannot have that perspective.
And so that is why it is important to hear these voices.
So is our writer dyspraxic or is this a white guy deciding what that should be like?
And that's what it feels like.
We're not seeing a realistic portrayal through the eyes of someone who really knows what this means.
We're seeing...
I have not seen any dyspraxics writing about this in that way.
Literally every comment that I've seen about it has been,
and I guess maybe it's coming from low expectations, I don't know,
but every comment has been,
this is unusual and welcome to see it represented at all on screen
and that it's a good representation.
I guess the caveat is most of the comments I saw were immediately after the woman who fell to earth.
When he actually was shown.
Where it was dealt with maybe in a more explicit way.
Yes, it would be interesting.
I don't know whether anyone has written anything or any of our listeners can direct us to anything
by anyone who suffers from dyspraxia giving a kind of longer view of the Ryan arc so far.
and i do think that that uh you know i'm i'm more than willing to admit it um never heard of it
prior to the woman who fell to earth i i certainly knew very little about it um i know very slightly
more about it now but still not that much but i in terms of raising awareness it's absolutely done
that because yeah i'm much much better informed than i was so i guess that that can't be a bad
thing but it it's still you know it's a data point of one we have ryan yeah and i don't know
whether well what what obviously the next thing is more representation of dyspraxics on the telly
but we might have to wait a while it's it's not like we've seen a sudden proliferation of death
character death characters following on from under the lake i read i think in wikipedia that it's
like three to six percent of the population that's hard to believe or dyspraxia really wow i swear
that's what i saw it's like how could we have not heard of that if three out of every hundred people
have got that and it doesn't go away how would how would you know i mean that's well that's
the obvious question with this one in in the sense that if we are to take this as a realistic
portrayal that ryan isn't tripping over every two seconds and that plenty of people who don't have
dyspraxia are not necessarily perfectly coordinated themselves you've got to know someone quite well
and and got to see them doing quite challenging tasks and spot a pattern of something in order
to even suspect it unless they actually tell you no one is well it's unlikely people are going to
go around announcing it to complete strangers when they first meet them so it would have to
be someone you knew quite well i guess still i think i've met and know quite well 100 people
in the world over the years not all at once but uh i don't think i could handle that but i don't
know again it just it raises questions it does but you know if it's three to six percent certainly
not three to six percent of uh characters in television dramas so there's there's room for
growth unless of course we can't tell because it doesn't actually yes fair point have any visible
impairment therefore maybe all of them are on television we just don't realize james bond maybe
dyspraxic for all we know maybe he just he doesn't talk about it although although if it's if it's a
character on television we often depending on the particular character and the role they play in the
drama we often know quite a lot about their inner life so if it's an important part of their inner
life and identity we're likely to know about it that's why we know about ryan whereas well i was
i was going to say maybe some of the incidental characters in the episodes don't know about it
But actually, Ryan, being quite open, he tends to tell people about it within five minutes of meeting them.
So that's not the best example.
All right.
Anything else about this episode?
No, just disappointment.
Just disappointment.
The next week is what?
The Witch Finders?
Witch Killers?
Witch Hunters?
Witch Witch Witch?
I don't know what it's called, but it's definitely about witches.
I don't have it in front of me, but it's not the witch smellers.
I have high hopes.
The historicals are tended to be quite good.
And every single time I see a next time trailer, I'm thinking, this one's going to be a pure historical.
Yeah, see, I have my, I don't know how far up you are on the listening, but so far the historicals have bugged me for exactly the reasons as I read your reviews that they keep throwing in this sci-fi little, particularly in the...
demons of the Punjab which is just completely pointless i just long i long for a pure historical
it's it's the albatross that the show has hung around its neck this sense it has that it has
to have some sci-fi element in order to deliver what the audience expects that absolutely that
should be enough and the show has had the confidence to do some extraordinary kinds of
stories in this season that it's really you know never never done anything like before and so you
know why why could it not have the confidence to do something that okay it hasn't done since 1982
but still it has done and done well in the past and so we know it's possible and we know that
they could do it it could be good they could do it and i wouldn't have any problem with them doing it
i would be delighted you know it would i i think my main you know if you look back at the old
historicals there's a certain element of we're caught up in events how do we escape yeah like
the reign of terror the aztecs the the um of the tribe of gum pretty much anyone i can think of
the romans they're yeah they're always just you know that's unfortunately that's part of the
premise of the show is you get in the tardis in those days and you left and then that was gone so
All you had to do is get back to the TARDIS.
I would be fine with that.
But I can see how it could get a little repetitive if they couldn't come up with anything more clever than we got separated from the TARDIS.
Marco Polo.
There's another one.
We got separated from the TARDIS.
And we just we have to we have to navigate this historical adventure until we get back to the TARDIS so we can get out of here.
No, no, no.
I could not disagree more with that.
I think that what feels repetitive to me is the trying to come up with some way of sticking alien monsters into the formula that actually feels fresh.
It really doesn't anymore.
I agree with that, too.
The kinds of storytelling where actually being separated from the TARDIS is a genuine problem, a genuine threat that you can't just, you know, because if you are in ancient China or whatever, you can't just hail a bus or, you know, to cross distances and to cross really hostile, unfriendly landscapes would be incredibly challenging.
or to be an environment, you know, we were seeing it in 1956, Montgomery, Alabama,
the kind of thing where actually, if you've got black skin, then doing anything at all is a real,
real challenge. And so to explore some of those kinds of environments, but on Earth, in Earth's
history, that seems to me vastly more of a kind of well-to-be, I was going to say well-to-be
but that's rather mixing my metaphors.
But you know what I'm saying.
It's much more fertile ground
than what they're trying to do at the present,
sticking rather incongruous alien monsters
into situations where it only detracts
from the stories that they're telling.
I completely agree.
It's detracting from the stories.
It's not doing the story justice.
I only wish that they could do more
even the science fiction stories.
So if you have this,
the problem that I was kind of getting at
was the historicals,
they can't change history, right?
So it's really a question of extracting themselves.
But when you go to the future,
they have to solve the big bad,
whatever it is.
It's like they've set up this dichotomy
of the two different kinds of storytelling.
And I think they're doing a disservice to the format
when they could be a lot more homogenous there they just have to be a little bit more clever
with the historical ones but but you can't kill robespierre but yeah well yes where where where
they are actually with the with the kind of famous historical figures and there are there are facts
that we know but they they can also create the kind of the minor characters who who populate
these historical periods and and explore their dramas and those are things that we don't know
the outcomes of and so whether there is real jeopardy and I think the reason I have the
optimism about this is because this series seems to have been quite good at focusing in on smaller
scale drama and for me episodes like The Ghost Monument are a great example of where you can do
a future episode where it's not about a big changing the course of future history type
scenario it's literally another one of it's i mean literally just getting back to the tardis
the very thing you were talking about and it works yeah yeah i i i'm i'm i'm fine with the
smaller scale stories i i'm i'm if if nothing else that i'm kind of enjoying i really detest
the oh the daleks are gonna destroy all of reality yeah like okay that's just stupid
yeah and you said it we don't we don't need it you know we didn't need james bond saving the planet
from total destruction every time that's why moonraker is one of the worst films
well i'm not going to go along with that one but but you know they they just keep having to rate
that the writers feel they have to keep raising the stakes and i don't think that that's necessarily
what you have to do that that's a that's an attitude a very jaded attitude about about the
audience i want to see them overcome adversity if they don't have to save the planet they have to
save whoever i'm fine with them saving 10 people's lives it doesn't have to be 10 billion people's
lives you know saving someone's job that would or saving someone's job would be okay and i do
remind me of one thing before we before we go on or before we sign off what did you think of the
fact that this is first episode where the villain gets his own comeuppance hoist by his own petard
oh yes yeah well actually you know i was going to mention that because it's not just that there's
actually quite high body count in this for this series and i i have really really appreciated
the kinds of stories where we have nasty characters like epso or even robertson who in in an
episode of Doctor Who it'd be like that bad person is going to die right and and we're supposed to
feel good about that because they're a slightly nasty person and it's it's a kind of writerly
form of extrajudicial execution that is somehow acceptable so I liked the fact that this series
was willing to not go there and it was and it was it was taking characters who were nasty and
presenting them as nasty but not not kind of providing this false sense of closure by either
having a moment of redemption or by doing away with them another problem with this episode that's
exactly what it does for no reason and i'm i'm thinking the doctor probably could have saved him
Of course. And he could have saved himself. Why didn't he?
Yeah. So it is the outlier in this series.
Yeah.
Though I will say I kind of have a sort of deep-seated appreciation of extraditional execution for baddies.
But that's what you're supposed to have.
That's a very James Bond fan attitude because that's kind of the whole point.
They're supposed to die at the end.
But, you know, the Doctor is not James Bond.
Yes, and James Bond, when it comes down to it, is an assassin.
And the idea that we should somehow all be aspiring to be James Bond
is a load of nonsense.
He is not a nice person.
We might be glad that there are people like that out there,
doing the bad things so that the even worse things don't happen,
but we kind of wish that he wasn't necessary in the first place.
And we certainly don't want everyone to be like James Bond.
No, no, no, no, no.
All right.
Well, that's all I've got this time for sure.
I'm pretty sure.
I'm sure enough to say we're going to sign it out unless you got anything else you want to bring up.
No, I'm definitely done this time.
All right.
Then thank you for joining me.
You're going to be back next time for the Witch Finders.
The Witch People.
The Witch Episode.
The Witch Ever.
The Witch Ever episode.
And so thank you.
Pleasure, as always.
We listeners, I do hope you'll join us all again next time on Fusion Patrol.
You've been listening to Fusion Patrol, a listener-supported podcast.
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Our music is Fight the Future by Amber Wolf
This has been a Lone Locust production
On the other hand, what is automation doing?
It's doing the work for us that...
It's creating an entire set of Foley sound effects here
um just ignore the sound of tea being poured
sorry about that um i'll leave it in