WEBVTT

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We take a single episode of a science fiction TV series and overanalyze it to within an

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inch of its life.

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This is the Fusion Patrol podcast.

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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're looking at the series 11, is it?

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37. Doctor Who. 37, that's better. I prefer that, even though it's had its 50th. We're okay, we're 37.

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Episode of Doctor Who. Ker-blam! In the vortex, something is on an intercept course for the TARDIS.

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Unable to avoid it, a ker-blam delivery robot materializes on the flight deck and delivers a package for the Doctor.

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Inside, a fez

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Clearly indicating the sender didn't have Kerblam Prime

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And a note for help

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The doctor and the gang decide to investigate

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They arrive at the Kerblam headquarters

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An entire moon converted to retail sales

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Kerblam is the largest retailer in the galaxy

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And while it's 90% automated

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By law, they must employ 10% organics too

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Posing as workers, they go undercover

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and soon discover that the organics are going missing.

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And they soon learn that evil doesn't come from soulless machines,

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but rather from the hearts of men.

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All right, ker-blam.

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And this is the first chance you and I have had a chance to talk about Series 37.

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Indeed.

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So let's just start with what did you think of the episode in general?

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I got some problems with the episode.

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The episode in general was poor filler, I thought, but there were some more serious problems with the actual plot itself.

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Okay, I think we may agree.

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The funny thing is, and maybe it was just the mood I was in, I kind of enjoyed it.

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It was a little bit fillery at times.

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I felt there were times where I was kind of going along a little slow, but I enjoyed it.

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But I can't tell you why, because it's kind of not good.

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Is this guilty pleasure, me?

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I'm not using filler in a pejorative sense.

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There are filler episodes that I think are the best episodes

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because sometimes they create a sense of atmosphere and place.

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They have character moments and humor,

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and they come in between the kind of awful series arc.

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Not that this necessarily applies to the Chibnall era.

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It's too early to say,

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but the awful kind of series arc episodes

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where the entire universe is in danger

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and filler episodes give you a chance

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to have something on a much smaller scale.

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So they're not necessarily a bad thing.

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It's just that it didn't feel to me

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like this did very successfully

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create its sense of place.

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Interesting.

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I feel like this is probably the biggest threat

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that the Doctor has faced.

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Yes.

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In this series.

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Well, in one sense, it's big.

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In the sense of the kind of,

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If you had it on a fatality scale, if you like.

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That's usually how I...

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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.

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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.

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Whereas because it felt to me like this hadn't really gelled in creating a sense of what it's like working.

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I mean, OK, let's cut to the chase here.

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We're talking about Amazon workers being exploited in massive dispatch warehouses.

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And those kinds of jobs we know from where journalists have gone in and done that work and reported on it.

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We know those kinds of jobs are pretty grim and pretty awful.

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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.

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and in order to do that in this sci-fi setting I think you have to be you have to create a kind of

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coherent encompassing world in which all of those details feel properly authentic so that

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you can actually share the same worries and concerns of those characters which might be about

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losing your job because if the consequences of that are your family starve or whatever then

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that's pretty awful because I don't think it was very successful in creating those things okay it

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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.

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But unless you make that feel like a real threat as well, it doesn't actually work.

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Okay.

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I have the questions here.

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You know, what is the message this show is trying to tell me?

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Is it that automation is bad?

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Is it that people are bad?

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Is it that boring jobs are bad?

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Is it just a satire?

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can't tell you who killed

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Dan or why

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or any of the missing people. Was it

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the system doing that to

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kill people so that the

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doctor would have something to investigate

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or that the

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executives would have something to investigate?

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Or, I mean, that's

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what happened to Kira, right? The system

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murdered Kira so Dan

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would feel bad. Not Dan.

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No, Charlie.

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Charlie would feel bad.

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So the system, even though the system was the one that was crying out for help,

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even though the system was the one that was trying to stop this senseless slaughter,

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the system was still just as culpable.

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It was murdering people too.

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Is that how this plays out?

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Well, okay, so here we go to my problem.

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I'm going to answer your question before I forget.

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I mean, it's not definitive on whether this is how Dan met his fate,

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But Charlie says, I needed test subjects to be sure the detonation forces would work.

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So he's been killing the workers.

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Oh, OK.

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I missed that line.

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Well, the whole thing didn't make a lot of sense.

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Why did the system need to send a message to the doctor?

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I don't...

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Anyway, it's clearly got pretensions of satire about it.

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And I think you're right to ask those questions about what it's aiming at,

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because there is an interesting and pretty topical area to explore around what does automation do to an economy

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which is based on the whole idea of full employment.

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And things like universal basic income are now sort of being explored as genuinely politically viable ideas in various places,

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because some kind of...

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Not here.

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Well, it's something that's being talked about even within the main political parties in the UK and elsewhere in Europe.

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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.

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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.

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But this episode, A, doesn't really engage with any of these ideas.

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And then B goes off on this whole separate tack where it doesn't.

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It ends up with the doctor basically saying the system isn't the problem, which it kind of is.

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It is the problem or it is a problem.

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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.

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Yeah, that's always the best way to do that.

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So how can the doctor say that's okay?

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I mean, I can't really get past that.

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Well, you know, we've had this conversation.

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Well, Ben and I have had this conversation.

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The doctor's morals are kind of weird in this incarnation.

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Well, this is very different.

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Well, I'm not saying it's the same, but I mean, it's just, it's another example of,

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it's not, you're right.

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Basically, she's sanctioning the death of Kira.

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I mean, she's not, I assume she's not happy about it, but she dismisses it, really.

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She says it's not a problem.

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So.

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I kind of think, I kind of think the whole thing is a problem.

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The satirical episodes, I mean, Oxygen is the one that comes, well, okay.

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If you, I mean, you want to go back.

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Sorry, not Underworld, Sunmakers.

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Sunmakers.

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Sunmakers is the kind of Robert Holmes script that springs to mind.

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But, you know, more recently on the on the whole kind of question of exploitation that I think this seemed to be going for.

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Oxygen was extremely sharp.

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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,

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is that the theme running through this whole season

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has been about exploring privilege.

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And we've seen that in the kind of exploitative race

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in the ghost monument

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and the kind of background that Angstrom was escaping from.

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And we've seen the kind of uber-privileged Robertson,

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you know, the thinly disguised Trump clone.

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And we've explored what it means in episodes

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like Rosa and Demons of the Punjab. And this seemed to be taking another angle on that whole

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question of what does it mean to be privileged? But it's a more difficult one because the privilege

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here is with the doctor. And even, I mean, if you look at the contrast where Ryan is interesting

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in this because he's worked in a warehouse, he's done this job, and he's felt what that's like

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when you're trapped in the work and the doctor and the companions in this story aren't trapped

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they go in quote undercover or be it you know not for very long and and the thing about their

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situation is they know that they can get out of it anytime that's why it's different for ryan

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because he he's he's been there he's been stuck in a job that he thinks that is going to be the

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rest of his life now he's got away from it he's traveling with the doctor he can afford to step

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back in it because it's not like he's got a daughter down on the planet who he needs to

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save up for to pay for her education or whatever he can just be a kind of tourist in in this

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situation whereas the previous stories I felt had more impact because in for example Rosa

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Ryan in particular really felt the consequences of being in that environment as you and Ben

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discussed so i i didn't i didn't well i was just going to you know finish the thought that it's

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it's a story that seemed to be a tackling privilege albeit less effectively it then

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turns it around at the end and says no actually it the system's not a problem it's fine that the

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the workers are exploited in this way in fact what do you know we're going to make it 50 people

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powered and will have five times as many workers being exploited right yeah i felt when the episode

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started um that we were going somewhere big i thought this was going to be a a very solid

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smack in the face to amazon and companies like that i thought they were going to they were going

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to go somewhere and they were really going to drive home uh a point and it doesn't it fizzles

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out, as you say, because it deviates off to, you know, actually the people working in the

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system are decent people.

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The management are decent people.

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The system itself is, you know, with one minor transgression, trying to do the right thing.

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But what we, I mean, we can make the argument that says that the system is trying to protect

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its profit.

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Therefore, it doesn't want to have its delivery people blow up millions of people because,

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you know, that would be bad for business.

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I think that's much, even within the episode, there's no real pretense that it's anything other than that.

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Yeah, but it's trying to stop what we would consider to be the catastrophe, the human catastrophe that's going to happen.

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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.

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He should be the sympathetic character.

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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.

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So, yeah, it's just all over the place.

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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?

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It's like, are the people on this planet so incompetent and so inept that that's actually a challenge?

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Because in which case then are they exploited if this is a challenging job for them?

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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.

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And that's, you've got to do it for a whole ship.

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I don't feel like that's what she meant by having trouble with it.

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I felt like she meant wrapping it up right.

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was tough. Well, I'm not sure that's what I thought she meant because it was in response to

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a comment Ryan was making about dyspraxia. At the time, I thought it might be that she was a fellow

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sufferer or that there was something about her that made it particularly difficult. But obviously,

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we didn't go there because none of these characters in any way seem to be anything

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more than entirely superficial yeah it's it's definitely um it's definitely a problematic

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episode and i i feel like it could have been a really solid hit but it just wasn't it's a great

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idea in fact there's a there's a whole bunch of great ideas in it the the like i say i think the

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theme fits with the theme of the series the the satire fits into the tradition of great satirical

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episodes of of doctor who the um the deadly bubble wrap is a pretty brilliant idea i think

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especially as as it's this as it's this kind of irresistible thing that even if you knew even if

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you had a piece if you had a piece of bubble wrap in front of you and you knew that it might blow up

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it would be really hard still not to pop the bubbles because bubble wraps like that you just

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can't help yourself funny funny you should mention that because just the day before this episode i

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was clearing out boxes that we got from from amazon and before i dispose of them i pop all

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the bubble wrap so that because we're talking about the big stuff now you know the big cushy

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pillow ones because it takes up too much room in the trash if you don't so it's almost like it's

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filler material and um i had a sheet of it and i walked into to my daughter's room and i said

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you know hand it to the bubble wrap and she goes nah until i walked out so and popped it myself but

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But I did have a comment about that.

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Did not Kira pop the bubble wrap before she even looked at her present?

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Was there a present?

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I don't think people actually do that.

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I thought there was supposed to be.

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Well, there was supposed to be, but we never saw it.

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I thought it was an empty box.

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I thought the only thing in it was the bubble wrap.

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Oh, okay.

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It's possible.

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I mean, we didn't see anything in the box, but I still kind of assume there was something in the box.

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But I guess now that you mentioned that it was an intentional death trap.

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Yeah.

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Maybe you don't need that

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So

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I have to say I was also

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Very very mildly spoilered

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Before watching this

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In that I saw someone saying

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Deadly bubble wrap about this episode

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So I was absolutely convinced

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When I started watching it

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That it was going to be some sort of sequel to

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Ark in Space

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Oh well

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Really? See I thought it was the Autons

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Oh yeah but yes

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I was seriously thinking it was going to be the Autons

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The actual look of the

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look of the Kablam, whatever

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you call it, the Kablam

00:17:48.840 --> 00:17:50.360
man, I thought was

00:17:50.520 --> 00:17:52.240
kind of halfway between the

00:17:52.600 --> 00:17:54.180
robots they had in Smile

00:17:54.620 --> 00:17:56.320
back at the start of last year's

00:17:56.480 --> 00:17:58.280
series and the Smilers from the

00:17:58.380 --> 00:18:00.400
Beast Below. They had that kind

00:18:00.500 --> 00:18:02.620
of uncanny valley weirdness

00:18:02.720 --> 00:18:04.320
to them. It could be Autons as

00:18:04.440 --> 00:18:05.960
well. Well, it could be, but

00:18:07.360 --> 00:18:08.720
if I were to

00:18:09.120 --> 00:18:10.300
guess, especially given

00:18:10.460 --> 00:18:12.060
the comment about Robophobia,

00:18:12.540 --> 00:18:16.840
the inspiration for them, and you could kind of see where this was going,

00:18:17.080 --> 00:18:19.480
was the whole robots of death thing.

00:18:19.920 --> 00:18:21.320
Yeah, that occurred to me too.

00:18:21.700 --> 00:18:26.760
The idea that people are being frightened by the robots,

00:18:27.260 --> 00:18:30.540
but actually it turns out not to be the robots themselves

00:18:31.380 --> 00:18:34.380
that are the evil agency at work,

00:18:34.780 --> 00:18:41.400
which could kind of explain where the plot twist at the end came from,

00:18:41.700 --> 00:18:46.020
even though it made a real dog's breakfast out of the political elements.

00:18:47.080 --> 00:18:50.360
Serious failure of economic understanding, I think, in this episode,

00:18:50.880 --> 00:18:55.040
because, you know, there's the joke with Twirly,

00:18:55.330 --> 00:18:58.580
the first complam delivery robot, about upselling, right?

00:18:59.919 --> 00:19:02.640
But, well, I guess you're buying stuff for yourself,

00:19:02.810 --> 00:19:04.140
so maybe you would be upselling.

00:19:04.600 --> 00:19:07.060
But when the doctor received her delivery,

00:19:07.510 --> 00:19:08.800
there was no attempt at upselling.

00:19:09.220 --> 00:19:11.620
So in fact, there was no point in sending the robot.

00:19:11.790 --> 00:19:13.320
You could have just teleported the package.

00:19:13.510 --> 00:19:17.560
And if teleport takes energy, then teleporting the package is much cheaper.

00:19:17.970 --> 00:19:21.540
It has to be cheaper than teleporting the robot to stand there and say,

00:19:21.720 --> 00:19:25.440
delivery completed, and then disappear for no apparent reason.

00:19:25.440 --> 00:19:28.600
You make a reasonable point that I hadn't even thought about.

00:19:29.030 --> 00:19:30.640
And it would have ruined the story.

00:19:31.440 --> 00:19:34.720
Right, because they had to build up energy to send all those robots.

00:19:34.740 --> 00:19:40.760
So clearly energy is a resource that they have to conserve as part of the equation of delivering.

00:19:41.240 --> 00:19:43.380
And, you know, why are they going on about delivering?

00:19:43.840 --> 00:19:45.420
Oh, there was no shuttle scheduled.

00:19:45.700 --> 00:19:47.860
Like, you have teleport technology.

00:19:49.020 --> 00:19:50.960
Why would you be shuttling your workers up?

00:19:51.020 --> 00:19:53.080
Without teleport technology, actually.

00:19:53.380 --> 00:19:54.780
I think that's the fix, isn't it?

00:19:55.620 --> 00:19:55.840
Could be.

00:19:56.580 --> 00:20:01.800
Somehow the Kablam man is capable of high-speed travel.

00:20:02.260 --> 00:20:06.840
because because what they're what they're going for is a futuristic version of amazon drones isn't

00:20:06.840 --> 00:20:13.600
it i think so and and also i think they said it's a teleport pod in the vortex so what the heck is

00:20:13.600 --> 00:20:20.000
a teleport pod they send a pod into the vortex so it can then teleport the robot i i had some

00:20:20.170 --> 00:20:25.260
problems with you know unfortunately there when i'm watching an episode if i'm completely enwrapped

00:20:25.260 --> 00:20:30.159
i can watch through an episode and i can forgive things and then and then when i'm not these things

00:20:30.200 --> 00:20:35.220
start to bug me. And that's the teleport shuttle thing started bugging me. And I started thinking,

00:20:35.320 --> 00:20:41.500
it's like, you know, really, this is a tatty, single galaxy retailer, and they can teleport

00:20:42.040 --> 00:20:46.260
into the TARDIS? Yeah. You know, there's barely any races in the universe that can

00:20:46.720 --> 00:20:51.440
penetrate the TARDIS. I sat down and tried to think of instances where this happened

00:20:51.960 --> 00:20:56.520
in the series. And with one notable exception, perhaps with one notable exception,

00:20:56.800 --> 00:21:01.800
We're talking about races that seem far more advanced than Kerblam.

00:21:02.040 --> 00:21:05.460
We have Sutek manages to get his face in the TARDIS.

00:21:05.730 --> 00:21:10.800
The Guardians, the white and black Guardian, appear to be able to penetrate the TARDIS.

00:21:12.060 --> 00:21:13.600
Somehow Donna Noble managed it.

00:21:13.810 --> 00:21:14.960
And that's not even the one case.

00:21:14.970 --> 00:21:19.720
Because we have the Rachnos somehow behind that, which is an ancient and powerful race.

00:21:20.030 --> 00:21:24.760
And an advert for The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, which that one I'm kind of not buying off on.

00:21:25.000 --> 00:21:34.440
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.

00:21:34.720 --> 00:21:40.140
But entering the vortex means that you've got to have some form of time travel.

00:21:40.490 --> 00:21:44.620
And as soon as you've got time travel, you get all sorts of other problems.

00:21:44.810 --> 00:21:46.240
I mean, plenty of...

00:21:46.500 --> 00:21:48.340
Even the Time Lords can't get into a TARDIS.

00:21:48.740 --> 00:21:49.940
Well, yeah, true.

00:21:50.020 --> 00:22:00.000
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.

00:22:00.200 --> 00:22:06.560
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.

00:22:07.220 --> 00:22:09.600
Yeah, it's, you know, yeah.

00:22:10.040 --> 00:22:16.860
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.

00:22:17.180 --> 00:22:18.740
Oh, in The Doctor's Wife.

00:22:18.920 --> 00:22:20.900
I think they opened the door to receive that

00:22:21.020 --> 00:22:23.120
The Kablam man could have knocked on the door

00:22:23.360 --> 00:22:24.000
That would have been fine

00:22:24.310 --> 00:22:26.460
Because when the Doctor saw what it was

00:22:26.840 --> 00:22:28.960
She obviously likes the Kablam man

00:22:29.200 --> 00:22:30.560
Who doesn't like getting packages?

00:22:31.160 --> 00:22:31.440
Well quite

00:22:31.840 --> 00:22:33.460
And I think that's part of the satire

00:22:34.700 --> 00:22:37.040
I mean everybody loves to get a package from Amazon

00:22:37.540 --> 00:22:38.020
I think

00:22:38.240 --> 00:22:38.960
I mean who wouldn't?

00:22:39.190 --> 00:22:40.280
You get a box at the door

00:22:40.700 --> 00:22:41.880
Not only do I love it

00:22:41.980 --> 00:22:44.260
But the pirates who live in my neighbourhood like it too

00:22:44.330 --> 00:22:45.240
Because they'll come take them

00:22:45.840 --> 00:22:46.820
I mean it's a win for everybody

00:22:47.120 --> 00:22:53.560
but uh is that a problem in the uk you guys have porch pirates uh no well maybe i i don't have

00:22:53.660 --> 00:22:58.740
porch pirates mind you i've never had anything taken but but they they exist they don't tend

00:22:58.760 --> 00:23:05.300
to leave things outside that much some yeah some delivery people do but they they ask you to

00:23:05.420 --> 00:23:10.540
nominate a secure location leave it with a neighbor i think put it in the show i think amazon is now

00:23:10.620 --> 00:23:15.740
trying to get people to install door locks that they can open yeah here i bet they are so that

00:23:15.660 --> 00:23:21.380
They want you to have Amazon Echo controlled front door locks.

00:23:21.840 --> 00:23:27.520
And I'm going to tell you right now, I shop a lot at Amazon and I love getting an Amazon package.

00:23:28.040 --> 00:23:33.240
I don't trust them as far as I could throw that moon.

00:23:34.420 --> 00:23:42.880
You know, it's like I know that they're exploitive and invasive and and damn it, cheap trumps.

00:23:43.200 --> 00:23:48.900
And I hate using the word Trumps now in this kind of, well, but there's something to be said for it.

00:23:49.000 --> 00:23:57.040
And there's something to be said in the indictment of Amazon that this is of our own making in many ways.

00:23:57.220 --> 00:24:01.200
Because what we're willing to put up with is these kinds of situations.

00:24:01.600 --> 00:24:03.460
So, I mean, there's so much they could have done with this episode.

00:24:03.460 --> 00:24:04.440
All of that should have come through, yeah.

00:24:04.820 --> 00:24:05.000
Yeah.

00:24:05.360 --> 00:24:07.340
So, that was good.

00:24:07.520 --> 00:24:07.740
All right.

00:24:08.120 --> 00:24:09.820
So, let's see.

00:24:09.880 --> 00:24:11.160
I did feel sorry for Dan.

00:24:11.280 --> 00:24:15.180
I knew he was dead the moment he showed that pendant to Yaz.

00:24:15.880 --> 00:24:16.000
Yeah.

00:24:16.260 --> 00:24:17.640
Like, my daughter made that.

00:24:17.640 --> 00:24:19.540
It's like, aw, they're going to kill Lee Mack.

00:24:20.220 --> 00:24:21.080
He's a dead man.

00:24:21.480 --> 00:24:22.540
Should I have recognized him?

00:24:23.080 --> 00:24:23.420
Lee Mack?

00:24:23.720 --> 00:24:23.840
Yeah.

00:24:24.000 --> 00:24:26.200
Gosh, I would have thought you'd have recognized him over us.

00:24:26.520 --> 00:24:28.640
Nobody knows him in this country, except for a few.

00:24:29.000 --> 00:24:31.180
He's a comedian, British comedian.

00:24:31.500 --> 00:24:31.760
Okay.

00:24:32.140 --> 00:24:35.060
TV series, not going out.

00:24:36.580 --> 00:24:40.440
Always as a co-host on Would I Lie to You with David Mitchell.

00:24:41.040 --> 00:24:41.240
Okay.

00:24:41.680 --> 00:24:42.820
I don't know what else he's done.

00:24:43.840 --> 00:24:45.360
End up comedian at one point.

00:24:45.920 --> 00:24:49.940
Plays on his northern underprivileged youth roots.

00:24:50.380 --> 00:24:52.100
That's why I think they pair him against David Mitchell.

00:24:52.470 --> 00:24:53.740
The posh and the women are...

00:24:53.780 --> 00:24:54.120
Fair enough.

00:24:54.440 --> 00:24:54.580
Yeah.

00:24:55.040 --> 00:24:55.140
Oh.

00:24:55.460 --> 00:24:59.960
One of the few people that they showed in the, you know, coming this season where they

00:25:00.140 --> 00:25:03.480
showed people who were quote unquote famous, one of the few I recognized.

00:25:04.020 --> 00:25:04.360
Oh, okay.

00:25:04.700 --> 00:25:05.500
Going through the lineup.

00:25:05.720 --> 00:25:06.500
It's like, oh, Lee Mack.

00:25:06.780 --> 00:25:06.880
Okay.

00:25:07.160 --> 00:25:08.440
One of the many I didn't recognize.

00:25:08.980 --> 00:25:12.920
He put him in the category of, oh, the name has eluded me.

00:25:13.500 --> 00:25:15.060
Engineer, murder on the...

00:25:16.060 --> 00:25:16.820
Oh, Frank Skinner.

00:25:17.420 --> 00:25:18.340
Frank Skinner, yes.

00:25:18.840 --> 00:25:21.620
Yeah, I think I've seen less of Frank Skinner, but I have seen Frank Skinner.

00:25:21.900 --> 00:25:23.620
So, you know, I figured it would be...

00:25:23.620 --> 00:25:24.080
I didn't know.

00:25:24.160 --> 00:25:28.100
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?

00:25:28.480 --> 00:25:33.280
Or, and this is the part I do really appreciate about British comedians,

00:25:33.710 --> 00:25:38.840
is that you can actually apparently drop them into, I wouldn't exactly call it a high drama role,

00:25:39.240 --> 00:25:41.160
but an acting role and they can actually do it.

00:25:41.520 --> 00:25:42.060
Not all of them.

00:25:42.080 --> 00:25:43.300
And make a decent job of it.

00:25:43.620 --> 00:25:44.900
Not, yeah, probably not all of them,

00:25:45.020 --> 00:25:47.980
but, you know, as opposed to pretty much none of them here.

00:25:48.420 --> 00:25:51.760
So, you know, I can be surprised

00:25:51.800 --> 00:25:53.860
at how well they do in those situations.

00:25:54.280 --> 00:25:55.140
And he was fine in this.

00:25:55.220 --> 00:25:58.140
He seemed like a pleasant kind of guy

00:25:58.340 --> 00:26:00.140
who is working to help, you know,

00:26:00.680 --> 00:26:01.580
what they were trying to do.

00:26:01.660 --> 00:26:02.780
They were trying to make all the workers

00:26:03.080 --> 00:26:04.560
seem like really nice people

00:26:04.620 --> 00:26:06.080
who were just trying to make a living

00:26:06.300 --> 00:26:08.260
and do right by their families.

00:26:08.760 --> 00:26:15.300
themselves but they but but they they were literally he was just like the guy with a with

00:26:15.560 --> 00:26:22.660
a daughter who he's working to help that that was all he was yes and yes he was i had it was almost

00:26:22.700 --> 00:26:28.300
a cameo well it was a cameo but then claudia jesse's character was like that as well you know

00:26:28.500 --> 00:26:33.280
she was just the girl who never got given a present and there was no sense of who she was

00:26:33.360 --> 00:26:38.099
beyond that like what do they do at the end of a shift where you know where do they go and socialize

00:26:38.120 --> 00:26:42.240
who are their mates there is no end of the shift who are their who are their mates of the question

00:26:42.440 --> 00:26:47.860
because there's supposed to be 10 000 people in this warehouse and i can see it's going to be

00:26:47.970 --> 00:26:52.360
pretty expensive if you need to fill all the corridors with extras all the time to give a

00:26:52.500 --> 00:26:57.460
sense of that but you can you can do it i guess it's breaking the rules likely to tell not show

00:26:57.620 --> 00:27:03.719
but you can do it by having your token representatives of this 10 000 strong workforce

00:27:04.160 --> 00:27:06.280
mentioning a few other people from time to time.

00:27:06.370 --> 00:27:08.060
Oh, so-and-so, he's such a laugh,

00:27:08.210 --> 00:27:09.400
or so-and-so, she did such stupid things.

00:27:09.400 --> 00:27:10.820
Well, he mentioned, like, seven people.

00:27:11.800 --> 00:27:12.760
They're all dead, of course.

00:27:13.720 --> 00:27:13.880
Yeah.

00:27:14.540 --> 00:27:15.880
Yeah, and you never see any other people

00:27:15.990 --> 00:27:20.680
in the, like, the pulling racks.

00:27:20.890 --> 00:27:22.660
You know, you would kind of expect to see people.

00:27:22.660 --> 00:27:23.940
You'd see more robots running around.

00:27:24.060 --> 00:27:25.780
Why would you only have three racks?

00:27:25.960 --> 00:27:27.540
The scale of the thing doesn't add up.

00:27:27.600 --> 00:27:28.980
And this is another...

00:27:29.000 --> 00:27:29.460
I'm just...

00:27:29.660 --> 00:27:31.220
I'm really having a go at this episode.

00:27:31.500 --> 00:27:38.580
But the thing is, some of the ideas were there, but it just didn't deliver on any level.

00:27:39.100 --> 00:27:44.740
And in the realisation of what this warehouse was like, it didn't hang together.

00:27:45.380 --> 00:27:49.060
And I can understand that some of these things are budgetary constraints.

00:27:49.760 --> 00:27:56.100
But you have to believe that all the locations that they randomly shoot bits of this warehouse complex in

00:27:56.740 --> 00:27:58.760
actually are supposed to all be underneath the same roof.

00:27:59.100 --> 00:28:01.220
And it doesn't feel like that. It really doesn't.

00:28:01.520 --> 00:28:06.500
because no that's true and and the car park they used at the end was a bit was a bit much i assume

00:28:06.680 --> 00:28:12.040
that the you mean right to the bottom level yeah and suddenly there the warehouse is made out of

00:28:12.040 --> 00:28:17.480
breeze blocks because they'd be better off shooting that on a sound stage but yeah i agree but i mean

00:28:17.540 --> 00:28:24.780
there was there was that but then if you look at the the scale of the of the conveyor belt bit you

00:28:24.780 --> 00:28:30.279
know that was obviously just a straight toy story 2 knockoff that that gives you a sense of the the

00:28:30.300 --> 00:28:38.540
enormous size of this complex. So why on earth would anywhere in the complex, you have three

00:28:39.260 --> 00:28:45.380
packing stations on their own? Surely you'd have 300 packing stations, you know, all the chutes

00:28:45.450 --> 00:28:51.080
would come down together, and you'd have rows and rows of workers in a place where they could all be

00:28:51.240 --> 00:29:02.640
supervised together and should we perhaps think that there are in fact uh 300 and that 297 of

00:29:02.640 --> 00:29:07.600
them are automated no but no because no because you've got you've got 10 000 workers here i'm

00:29:07.740 --> 00:29:16.739
thinking 300 would be not even 10 of the packing shoots it would be like there would be 10 sets of

00:29:16.760 --> 00:29:22.200
300. I mean, these guys, they're not the only ones packing, surely. It can't be that there

00:29:22.300 --> 00:29:27.540
are only 30 packers working in this galaxy-wide distribution center.

00:29:27.940 --> 00:29:34.820
Well, I agree. The set didn't make it look that way. It does kind of make me feel like

00:29:34.920 --> 00:29:39.620
these are the token workers. You know, 10,000 people on an entire moon could still just be

00:29:39.620 --> 00:29:40.380
a token workforce.

00:29:40.780 --> 00:29:46.720
It is. It absolutely is. It's stated that that is the case. And presumably, they're

00:29:46.740 --> 00:29:49.960
they're doing the jobs for the equivalent.

00:29:50.880 --> 00:29:54.220
The whole thing would, if it was fully employed humans,

00:29:54.460 --> 00:29:56.880
it would be 100,000 FTE.

00:29:57.980 --> 00:30:01.320
And so, yes, these are the token workforce,

00:30:01.540 --> 00:30:04.120
but you're still talking about 10,000 people,

00:30:04.320 --> 00:30:09.920
which is huge by the standards of any Amazon warehouse packing center

00:30:10.300 --> 00:30:11.720
that presently exists.

00:30:12.180 --> 00:30:16.380
And you wouldn't see three lines in there.

00:30:16.540 --> 00:30:17.900
You wouldn't see 30 lines in there.

00:30:18.020 --> 00:30:19.560
You'd see a lot more people packing at once.

00:30:19.820 --> 00:30:23.680
If you think about the pullers, that's where you're going to have most of the people

00:30:23.870 --> 00:30:26.400
because they're going to all funnel down to the packers.

00:30:26.780 --> 00:30:30.200
Now, I'm not saying, again, I'm not saying three is the right number out of,

00:30:30.480 --> 00:30:32.520
actually zero is probably the right number because, of course,

00:30:32.550 --> 00:30:33.720
the job they're doing is irrelevant.

00:30:34.800 --> 00:30:41.260
But, you know, yeah, it's, you know, another area of satire that they missed

00:30:41.440 --> 00:30:46.380
or another area of indictment that they just missed going into is the trackers.

00:30:46.760 --> 00:30:51.960
yep but that's what they do with amazon workers yep and you know to keep track to make sure that

00:30:52.020 --> 00:30:57.140
they're not taking the wrong they tell them the route to walk to to pick up the stuff to put in

00:30:57.150 --> 00:31:02.120
the cart and that see that we didn't feel the consequences of that that's what it that's what

00:31:02.120 --> 00:31:08.500
it comes back to to me the kind of those small things are so oppressive you don't have to have

00:31:08.560 --> 00:31:14.559
the threat of being liquidized if you go the wrong way when you're being tracked it's just

00:31:14.880 --> 00:31:20.380
that sense of loss of freedom that you know that you're going to get pulled up and that one of the

00:31:20.500 --> 00:31:27.060
best things in this episode was the kind of kablam hello co-workers good conversation but

00:31:27.500 --> 00:31:34.660
and it and it's that kind of awful awful pseudo-friendly um corporate slapdown that you

00:31:34.930 --> 00:31:41.380
that you get working in these places where basically yes as soon as soon as you step out

00:31:41.400 --> 00:31:47.820
line from doing what is the work of a robot frankly because you know any kind of human

00:31:48.080 --> 00:31:52.540
interaction makes you less productive and then that's frowned upon and then that's and then

00:31:52.640 --> 00:31:58.300
that's shut down and the fact that it's done it in a very friendly way is even more sinister it

00:31:58.460 --> 00:32:02.680
feels to me yeah and and i think you might be thinking when you're watching this episode

00:32:03.360 --> 00:32:07.300
based on the way like dan's character says oh they're listening there's no privacy anything

00:32:07.320 --> 00:32:14.500
like that you might i think you're correct uh to be misled that what's going to happen if you get

00:32:14.580 --> 00:32:19.460
out of line is they're going to kill you but the reality there is no menace there they're not going

00:32:19.460 --> 00:32:22.700
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

00:32:22.700 --> 00:32:28.700
the planet at your own expense and you won't have a job but because we know there's a problem and

00:32:28.700 --> 00:32:33.360
then we start learning about the people going missing you would be right in thinking that you

00:32:33.380 --> 00:32:40.400
know sinister robots killing people who aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing and

00:32:40.850 --> 00:32:46.240
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

00:32:46.500 --> 00:32:52.760
but it's also it kind of it kind of undermines the it i think i think what you've got to do with

00:32:52.940 --> 00:32:59.980
with uh if you're if you're trying to make a point about surveillance you know the that that

00:33:00.000 --> 00:33:06.360
kind of surveillance culture is you have to answer that kind of persistent and rather tiresome

00:33:06.700 --> 00:33:12.720
argument of if you've done nothing wrong you've got nothing to hide and to me the the response

00:33:12.860 --> 00:33:20.040
to that is is actually no that's not how privacy works privacy privacy matters privacy belongs to

00:33:20.140 --> 00:33:25.480
you it's it's not it's not up to someone else to decide that your privacy should be invaded

00:33:25.500 --> 00:33:31.520
and it infringes on your agency and your identity if that happens.

00:33:31.520 --> 00:33:34.260
And you've somehow got to make that feel real.

00:33:34.560 --> 00:33:39.100
And if you say, actually, the reason that these kind of infringements

00:33:39.280 --> 00:33:43.960
on people's privacy matter is because when they step out of line

00:33:44.000 --> 00:33:48.780
or they do something that's a mild transgression of the corporate rules,

00:33:49.120 --> 00:33:49.860
they're getting killed.

00:33:50.260 --> 00:33:53.660
It's like, OK, the bad thing here is that they're getting killed.

00:33:53.960 --> 00:33:57.020
it would be all right to be constantly surveilling them.

00:33:57.680 --> 00:34:02.080
And the second they do so much as share a joke with a co-worker or whatever,

00:34:02.560 --> 00:34:05.980
then you slap a warning on them and they, you know,

00:34:06.200 --> 00:34:09.700
are a little bit closer to unemployment and destitution.

00:34:10.080 --> 00:34:11.000
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

00:34:12.840 --> 00:34:14.879
Let's see. I don't know that I have anything else.

00:34:14.940 --> 00:34:18.460
I just, you know, I just feel like there was such fertile ground here.

00:34:18.879 --> 00:34:22.480
And despite that, like I say, I enjoyed it for the most part.

00:34:22.620 --> 00:34:27.320
It was just kind of fun, but you really kind of had to turn your brain off

00:34:27.659 --> 00:34:32.580
and turn off your expectations of pointed satire

00:34:33.560 --> 00:34:38.659
or something with a deep, imbibing message that really drives home

00:34:38.679 --> 00:34:44.040
and makes us all question the nature of capitalism and the world that we live in.

00:34:45.080 --> 00:34:45.980
I didn't get that.

00:34:46.899 --> 00:34:51.040
No, and the problem is that pretty much everything alluded to in this episode,

00:34:51.419 --> 00:34:57.180
whether it was to do with those kind of political questions about labor

00:34:57.720 --> 00:35:01.240
or about automation and robots and robots of death

00:35:01.360 --> 00:35:04.680
and all that kind of stuff has been done already in Doctor Who

00:35:04.960 --> 00:35:05.960
and it's been done better.

00:35:06.900 --> 00:35:10.240
I mean, the one doctor has got to be the best example

00:35:10.480 --> 00:35:15.560
of warehouse automation, the hidden treasures of Generios.

00:35:15.780 --> 00:35:16.340
What is it called?

00:35:16.780 --> 00:35:17.920
Oh, oh, oh, big finish.

00:35:18.760 --> 00:35:20.900
You've got to clear that one up for the listeners.

00:35:21.100 --> 00:35:22.320
That's a big finish, the one doctor.

00:35:22.640 --> 00:35:23.160
Yes, indeed.

00:35:24.000 --> 00:35:26.820
A sort of Christmas audio Doctor Who.

00:35:27.220 --> 00:35:32.160
It's absolutely a brilliant example of an entirely automated warehouse

00:35:32.680 --> 00:35:35.740
in which, yes, indeed, the robots have gone rogue

00:35:35.980 --> 00:35:37.160
and are killing all the humans.

00:35:37.800 --> 00:35:38.200
Fabulous.

00:35:38.540 --> 00:35:39.580
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:35:39.820 --> 00:35:42.940
That's the one with the turdus, if I'm not mistaken.

00:35:43.500 --> 00:35:44.300
The stardust.

00:35:44.820 --> 00:35:45.860
Oh, the stardust, you're right.

00:35:46.040 --> 00:35:48.240
I can see why you think of it like that,

00:35:48.440 --> 00:35:50.440
because it does have one of the funniest sound effects.

00:35:51.160 --> 00:35:53.000
ever committed to all day and Doctor Who.

00:35:53.780 --> 00:35:53.960
Yes.

00:35:55.020 --> 00:35:59.360
So if you want satire on robotic warehouse planets,

00:35:59.510 --> 00:36:01.120
pick up the one Doctor from Big Finish.

00:36:01.640 --> 00:36:03.080
I recommend that one as well.

00:36:03.740 --> 00:36:04.820
It's quite funny.

00:36:05.750 --> 00:36:08.240
And it's perfectly suited to Colin Baker's Doctor.

00:36:08.580 --> 00:36:08.860
Oh, yes.

00:36:09.020 --> 00:36:16.380
Because, you know, that pomposity really goes with this particular type of story.

00:36:16.510 --> 00:36:18.020
Anyway, we digress.

00:36:18.800 --> 00:36:23.220
I don't have much to say about the companions in this episode.

00:36:23.860 --> 00:36:30.720
They fulfilled the necessary function, but not a whole lot actually for them to do.

00:36:30.940 --> 00:36:36.100
They were mostly tailing around just listening to the doctor, listening to the other people.

00:36:37.560 --> 00:36:42.920
But I do want to bring out, because you brought it up, Ryan's dyspraxia.

00:36:43.000 --> 00:36:57.440
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.

00:36:57.620 --> 00:36:59.340
Is this just an inclusion thing?

00:37:00.040 --> 00:37:06.560
Well, you know, I have subsequently looked a little bit more into what dyspraxia is.

00:37:07.100 --> 00:37:12.760
And honestly, every companion the doctor has ever had must have dyspraxia.

00:37:13.480 --> 00:37:18.000
You know, it explains all those companions tripping on flat ground.

00:37:19.080 --> 00:37:21.360
It's inability to follow instructions.

00:37:22.740 --> 00:37:24.620
It's, you know, it has its...

00:37:24.780 --> 00:37:27.980
I'm looking at that going, actually, Ryan may be the perfect companion then.

00:37:28.570 --> 00:37:31.920
I think you may be slightly trivializing the condition.

00:37:32.560 --> 00:37:34.400
Well, I'm not the one trivializing it.

00:37:34.550 --> 00:37:36.280
Doctor Who is the one trivializing it.

00:37:36.310 --> 00:37:40.880
Because Ryan doesn't appear to have actually any of those things.

00:37:41.050 --> 00:37:42.540
He keeps talking about it.

00:37:42.780 --> 00:37:45.220
I'm not so good on ladders, but he does fine.

00:37:45.660 --> 00:37:48.940
I can't jump off this thing, but he does fine.

00:37:49.180 --> 00:37:54.460
All of those things, it feels more like it's an excuse for Ryan to have self-doubts,

00:37:54.920 --> 00:37:58.040
but it doesn't actually seem to manifest itself.

00:37:58.580 --> 00:38:03.580
And if you're going to do it, then you should do it right.

00:38:03.670 --> 00:38:04.740
But I think they aren't doing it wrong.

00:38:04.740 --> 00:38:05.820
He hasn't even tripped over flat ground yet.

00:38:05.900 --> 00:38:18.120
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.

00:38:18.760 --> 00:38:27.720
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.

00:38:28.320 --> 00:38:30.760
That would be fine. Do we know if this is a realistic way?

00:38:31.400 --> 00:38:33.220
Yeah, I think it is from what I've read.

00:38:33.540 --> 00:38:48.620
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.

00:38:49.200 --> 00:38:56.380
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.

00:38:56.860 --> 00:39:01.900
And I bet a whole bunch of people watching it have done very much the same thing.

00:39:02.500 --> 00:39:18.740
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.

00:39:19.240 --> 00:39:32.240
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.

00:39:32.540 --> 00:39:45.740
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.

00:39:45.740 --> 00:39:46.880
They take it at face value.

00:39:47.050 --> 00:39:59.360
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.

00:39:59.360 --> 00:40:00.200
I don't think so.

00:40:01.040 --> 00:40:06.580
And further, you wouldn't know what they are based on what we've seen in the show.

00:40:06.930 --> 00:40:12.080
The only thing we've got so far is it's apparently a lack of balance and not good with ladders.

00:40:12.580 --> 00:40:15.120
And that's not what it is.

00:40:15.780 --> 00:40:18.080
It's coordination, and we've seen that.

00:40:18.360 --> 00:40:18.620
Have we?

00:40:19.080 --> 00:40:23.880
Yeah, well, there's the ladders that you mentioned, but there's also the bike riding at the beginning.

00:40:24.360 --> 00:40:27.300
The bike riding at the beginning is really where it's like, here it is.

00:40:27.580 --> 00:40:29.680
He's trouble riding a bike, but he's going to keep trying.

00:40:29.970 --> 00:40:30.360
Good on you.

00:40:30.720 --> 00:40:33.280
But, you know, the ladders, I don't do well with ladders.

00:40:33.400 --> 00:40:34.420
I don't do well with ladders.

00:40:34.480 --> 00:40:35.060
I hate heights.

00:40:35.680 --> 00:40:36.020
Sure.

00:40:36.020 --> 00:40:39.620
It doesn't come off as like I might get halfway up that ladder and fall

00:40:40.120 --> 00:40:42.240
because I, you know, put discoordinate.

00:40:42.660 --> 00:40:45.060
But I don't know.

00:40:46.560 --> 00:40:49.260
It's not a huge stretch of the imagination to think

00:40:49.300 --> 00:40:52.240
if you have a coordination issue and you're climbing a ladder

00:40:52.820 --> 00:40:56.780
that not only is the task going to be much more difficult

00:40:57.100 --> 00:40:58.140
because you're climbing a ladder,

00:40:58.300 --> 00:41:01.100
but also the dangers are pretty obvious.

00:41:01.700 --> 00:41:03.060
Falling off a bike is bad enough.

00:41:03.380 --> 00:41:05.380
Falling off a ladder or a crane, you know,

00:41:06.420 --> 00:41:07.400
that's going to be a lot worse.

00:41:07.620 --> 00:41:08.840
Well, I agree that it would be.

00:41:09.680 --> 00:41:10.320
I just...

00:41:10.380 --> 00:41:15.220
So I don't know what more about that needs to be spelled out

00:41:15.400 --> 00:41:18.040
other than you'd say, well, we should have him fall off the ladder.

00:41:18.040 --> 00:41:19.280
But I don't think we should.

00:41:19.400 --> 00:41:22.820
I don't think, you know, every time he does something

00:41:22.960 --> 00:41:25.779
that requires coordination, he should fail at doing it

00:41:25.800 --> 00:41:28.880
because that would be an even worse message to be sending out.

00:41:29.080 --> 00:41:29.680
It really would.

00:41:29.920 --> 00:41:30.560
Is it...

00:41:30.780 --> 00:41:32.980
All right, let's try a different approach,

00:41:33.240 --> 00:41:38.000
because you did in your comment mention the deaf actress who was...

00:41:38.220 --> 00:41:39.500
I can't remember which episode it was.

00:41:40.380 --> 00:41:41.760
Before the flood and under the lake.

00:41:42.040 --> 00:41:43.860
Which I thought worked extremely well.

00:41:45.000 --> 00:41:45.720
What worked well?

00:41:46.000 --> 00:41:53.720
Just that situation seemed to be treated realistically.

00:41:55.160 --> 00:41:58.600
There was issue associated with it.

00:41:59.520 --> 00:42:01.380
We had a character who was competent and capable

00:42:01.560 --> 00:42:03.900
or had made their way in life.

00:42:04.620 --> 00:42:05.640
All fine.

00:42:06.600 --> 00:42:09.660
And as I recall, there was an issue at one point

00:42:09.820 --> 00:42:11.420
where she couldn't hear something

00:42:11.940 --> 00:42:13.080
during the course of the story,

00:42:13.640 --> 00:42:14.880
which was a problem.

00:42:15.560 --> 00:42:18.240
And the actress herself was hearing impaired.

00:42:18.640 --> 00:42:18.840
Yes.

00:42:19.060 --> 00:42:22.220
At the point, which from the argument of inclusivity,

00:42:23.000 --> 00:42:30.000
you are not excluding actors and actresses with hearing impairment from the profession.

00:42:30.420 --> 00:42:30.520
Indeed.

00:42:30.680 --> 00:42:31.760
From, you know, being seen.

00:42:31.860 --> 00:42:34.540
So, I mean, that's better than a...

00:42:35.100 --> 00:42:36.420
What's the word for a person who can hear?

00:42:37.520 --> 00:42:38.280
Do you know what I mean?

00:42:38.300 --> 00:42:40.740
They call non-blind people sighted people.

00:42:41.020 --> 00:42:41.140
Yeah.

00:42:41.440 --> 00:42:42.240
Is there a word for that?

00:42:42.560 --> 00:42:42.860
Hearing people.

00:42:43.200 --> 00:42:43.780
Hearing people?

00:42:43.940 --> 00:42:44.060
Okay.

00:42:44.800 --> 00:42:45.160
Heared.

00:42:46.180 --> 00:42:49.820
People who can hear in the character.

00:42:50.020 --> 00:42:57.440
And we have seen in some places people who have missing limbs or paraplegic in roles.

00:42:58.519 --> 00:43:01.300
Definitely positively positive situation.

00:43:02.920 --> 00:43:13.020
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.

00:43:14.140 --> 00:43:26.600
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.

00:43:27.060 --> 00:43:33.820
But the point is, you have someone in a role that isn't a role for a deaf person.

00:43:34.060 --> 00:43:34.980
It's just a role.

00:43:35.250 --> 00:43:39.260
And you don't assume that it is a role for a hearing person or a deaf person.

00:43:39.470 --> 00:43:42.780
I mean, some are obviously written one way or the other.

00:43:43.140 --> 00:43:46.740
But many roles, maybe with minor adjustments, could be suited.

00:43:47.520 --> 00:43:52.860
And I think that goes for a number of other things that you have mentioned.

00:43:53.440 --> 00:43:56.500
Because otherwise, as you say, if you're a deaf actor,

00:43:56.700 --> 00:44:00.760
the number of roles that are actually open to you is basically minuscule.

00:44:01.340 --> 00:44:07.060
Right. From a cold, hard logistical standpoint,

00:44:07.580 --> 00:44:09.920
if you're a producer or casting director,

00:44:10.340 --> 00:44:14.480
it makes far more sense not to do that,

00:44:14.780 --> 00:44:18.060
to hire someone who has the actual, call it an impairment,

00:44:19.260 --> 00:44:21.740
because it will be easier to work with,

00:44:21.740 --> 00:44:25.200
it would be easier to work with an actor who could hear on set.

00:44:26.200 --> 00:44:28.600
And so it would make sense from the dollars.

00:44:28.960 --> 00:44:33.060
Well, I'll make the argument that probably would be.

00:44:33.160 --> 00:44:36.379
Just similarly, it would be probably easier to work with somebody

00:44:36.480 --> 00:44:40.540
who's not confined to a wheelchair on a movie set

00:44:40.960 --> 00:44:45.400
because it's not exactly the most uncluttered environment in the world.

00:44:45.540 --> 00:44:47.080
I can see how you would be going,

00:44:47.160 --> 00:44:48.720
well, we do it this way, we do it that way.

00:44:49.420 --> 00:44:51.540
And someone with dyspraxia,

00:44:51.760 --> 00:44:56.120
which if I read correctly, could even be an issue.

00:44:56.440 --> 00:44:57.720
It's not just with coordination.

00:44:58.180 --> 00:45:00.920
There is an issue with following directions

00:45:02.240 --> 00:45:03.760
and short-term memory problems,

00:45:04.080 --> 00:45:06.140
which I could see is a real problem for an actor.

00:45:06.520 --> 00:45:12.600
yes right so you know whether or not you could actually i i don't know um hire an actor that

00:45:12.820 --> 00:45:18.200
that that position so i don't i assume that that the actor who plays ryan does not um does not

00:45:18.560 --> 00:45:25.500
actually have the condition or have not looked that up um just i i just you know i'm gonna stick

00:45:25.720 --> 00:45:31.399
with it i don't feel like we're getting i feel like we're being told something about ryan and

00:45:31.420 --> 00:45:38.440
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

00:45:38.520 --> 00:45:43.120
i'm making light of it but i'm not making light of it we have had companions who to advance the

00:45:43.320 --> 00:45:48.720
plot they have to trip over the stupidest of situations and that's why it's important that

00:45:48.740 --> 00:45:55.060
you don't do that here because then it'll be this is this is the dyspraxia well it's okay for a

00:45:55.060 --> 00:46:02.560
perfectly coordinated person to do that to advance a story but it's no it's not if it actually has a

00:46:02.760 --> 00:46:08.060
reason to do it no because if no what we're saying what we're saying is something that something that

00:46:08.160 --> 00:46:12.640
happens that there isn't there there isn't there isn't a reason to do it what you're saying is

00:46:12.880 --> 00:46:20.079
this is something that is a thing that drives the plot forward and so then the reason you've got a

00:46:20.280 --> 00:46:27.320
dyspraxic is to fit in with this plot element and the the the problem with it is if it isn't

00:46:27.560 --> 00:46:33.400
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

00:46:33.580 --> 00:46:39.860
the i know next to nothing about the condition but if it's if it's in order to fulfill a kind

00:46:39.860 --> 00:46:47.180
of popular perception of what dyspraxia is like rather than what it is actually like then you are

00:46:47.160 --> 00:46:51.840
just perpetuating something that is completely unhelpful okay i would take it i would take it if

00:46:52.000 --> 00:46:57.580
if we had evidence that it was conveying an accurate representation because then we would

00:46:57.580 --> 00:47:03.940
be doing a service to understanding but again i'm just not getting it out of ryan if there's

00:47:04.380 --> 00:47:11.400
if if he has been capable of doing everything that has been put before him with apart from

00:47:11.560 --> 00:47:16.180
riding a bike in the first and apparently that's the thing they've been trying a lot

00:47:16.200 --> 00:47:22.080
and he's just not able to do that he's been able to do everything along the way and the only thing

00:47:22.080 --> 00:47:27.460
we get towards that being a problem is him saying it in advance i'm not very good with this i don't

00:47:27.460 --> 00:47:32.700
think i can do that i can do this is that true or is that his self-doubt because he seems to be

00:47:32.850 --> 00:47:38.140
capable of doing it is is self-doubt the yeah i see i see yeah i see what you're getting at

00:47:38.500 --> 00:47:44.900
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

00:47:45.240 --> 00:47:48.920
that he has, and it, I don't like to use the word,

00:47:49.040 --> 00:47:51.120
makes him different, but it does present

00:47:51.120 --> 00:47:54.320
a different set of conditions on what we would expect.

00:47:54.480 --> 00:47:56.340
And that's why I'm saying,

00:47:57.040 --> 00:48:00.620
when Sarah Jane runs across a field and she trips,

00:48:00.780 --> 00:48:03.140
we all go, oh, for crying out loud.

00:48:03.620 --> 00:48:04.520
How can you trip?

00:48:04.640 --> 00:48:06.900
I mean, she's not in like six inch heels or something.

00:48:08.380 --> 00:48:10.900
And then, you know, the story of medicine,

00:48:11.120 --> 00:48:13.220
I'm not saying that I want them to do that to Ryan,

00:48:13.540 --> 00:48:18.580
But if you were in a situation where when he grabbed that rope, the gun, and ran out there full speed,

00:48:18.640 --> 00:48:24.900
and like, oh, I play whatever game it was, Full Metal Jacket, or I can't remember, with the guns and running around,

00:48:25.120 --> 00:48:27.280
he seemed pretty damn coordinated to me.

00:48:27.500 --> 00:48:27.980
I guess.

00:48:28.540 --> 00:48:30.000
Incompetent, but perfectly...

00:48:31.580 --> 00:48:35.620
I see the point that you're making, which is, if I've understood it,

00:48:35.980 --> 00:48:41.240
that we don't necessarily know whether his self-doubt is justified,

00:48:41.740 --> 00:48:44.260
other than what we saw pretty much in the first episode,

00:48:44.920 --> 00:48:48.020
which I agree, I think that is an important point.

00:48:48.380 --> 00:48:52.880
The point I'm making is having Sarah Jane run across a field

00:48:52.900 --> 00:48:55.640
and then trip because it's some key plot device,

00:48:56.100 --> 00:49:00.920
and so putting Ryan in situations where the dyspraxia is something

00:49:01.180 --> 00:49:04.020
that is a plot element, and everyone goes,

00:49:04.200 --> 00:49:07.340
oh, you know, Ryan's fallen over again and now he's in trouble

00:49:07.560 --> 00:49:10.480
and the monster's about to catch up with him or whatever.

00:49:10.880 --> 00:49:12.600
That seems to me problematic.

00:49:12.910 --> 00:49:16.460
Whereas if what we were seeing was Ryan saying,

00:49:16.960 --> 00:49:20.840
look, I have this problem, and then because we've seen how he deals with it,

00:49:20.900 --> 00:49:24.260
which is basically he does it anyway and he keeps persisting,

00:49:24.640 --> 00:49:30.600
and he persists and does fail and gets up again and persists again.

00:49:30.740 --> 00:49:33.300
As long as that's... I can see what you're saying,

00:49:33.560 --> 00:49:36.260
that that might be an important thing to show.

00:49:36.700 --> 00:49:36.800
Yeah.

00:49:37.460 --> 00:49:43.120
As long as it's not something that has to be part of the kind of plot every week.

00:49:43.300 --> 00:49:45.120
I don't want him to trip to advance the plot.

00:49:45.940 --> 00:49:46.940
That's definitely not what I mean.

00:49:47.010 --> 00:49:47.460
I'm just...

00:49:48.140 --> 00:49:48.580
I'm...

00:49:48.940 --> 00:49:50.080
But that's what Sarah Jane is doing.

00:49:50.080 --> 00:49:53.180
Okay, let me put it to you this way, then.

00:49:53.700 --> 00:49:58.140
One of the things that I have been very surprised with,

00:49:58.620 --> 00:49:59.160
pleased with,

00:49:59.380 --> 00:50:00.660
maybe surprised is the wrong word,

00:50:01.100 --> 00:50:01.560
pleased with,

00:50:01.880 --> 00:50:07.800
is that the broadening of the writer's pool that they are using

00:50:08.640 --> 00:50:12.380
is bringing us a fresh perspective.

00:50:12.680 --> 00:50:14.740
I may or may not like the story.

00:50:15.100 --> 00:50:17.020
We've got five Chibnals scripts in a row.

00:50:17.360 --> 00:50:19.780
We've got, well, our Chibnals are co-written,

00:50:19.820 --> 00:50:26.640
but we are seeing a different face on the stories that we're getting.

00:50:26.880 --> 00:50:29.480
Demons of the Punjab, Rosa, those are prime examples.

00:50:29.480 --> 00:50:30.360
Yes, absolutely.

00:50:30.580 --> 00:50:34.400
Because we've never had a black writer or an Asian writer on the show before.

00:50:34.600 --> 00:50:36.100
And they are writing what they know.

00:50:36.400 --> 00:50:39.380
They are writing what is germane to them.

00:50:39.540 --> 00:50:48.220
That is the fundamental argument in favor of diversifying your writing base is so that you get more perspectives.

00:50:49.040 --> 00:50:51.080
I'm not disagreeing with that.

00:50:51.340 --> 00:50:52.340
I'm not disagreeing with that.

00:50:52.580 --> 00:50:57.220
But I'd be very cautious about saying that's what they're there for.

00:50:57.440 --> 00:50:59.980
That, you know, it's a black issue episode.

00:51:00.100 --> 00:51:01.900
we're going to get a black writer on it or whatever,

00:51:02.110 --> 00:51:06.480
rather than saying it's an episode about an Amazon warehouse in space

00:51:06.590 --> 00:51:07.920
and a black writer could write that.

00:51:08.050 --> 00:51:10.140
Because that's what Doctor Who hasn't done.

00:51:10.880 --> 00:51:13.520
I do think that there's a little,

00:51:13.880 --> 00:51:16.540
it might be a little heavy-handed in this case

00:51:16.920 --> 00:51:20.620
that we get a black writer and suddenly they write about Rosa Parks

00:51:20.770 --> 00:51:23.480
and we get an Asian writer and they write about Pakistan.

00:51:24.280 --> 00:51:27.200
That actually may be a little on the heavy-handed side.

00:51:27.640 --> 00:51:38.060
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.

00:51:38.120 --> 00:51:39.600
It didn't have to be about those things.

00:51:39.880 --> 00:51:44.320
But I think it is pleasing to see that change.

00:51:44.540 --> 00:51:46.380
So here's my point on it.

00:51:47.640 --> 00:51:48.300
I'm a white guy.

00:51:48.720 --> 00:51:52.660
I could write about racism all day long.

00:51:53.260 --> 00:51:54.600
Well, I couldn't, but I could try.

00:51:55.200 --> 00:51:59.840
But I will never have that perspective because I cannot have that perspective.

00:51:59.900 --> 00:52:03.840
And so that is why it is important to hear these voices.

00:52:04.500 --> 00:52:12.140
So is our writer dyspraxic or is this a white guy deciding what that should be like?

00:52:12.540 --> 00:52:14.080
And that's what it feels like.

00:52:15.020 --> 00:52:22.040
We're not seeing a realistic portrayal through the eyes of someone who really knows what this means.

00:52:22.660 --> 00:52:23.139
We're seeing...

00:52:24.420 --> 00:52:31.380
I have not seen any dyspraxics writing about this in that way.

00:52:32.340 --> 00:52:37.500
Literally every comment that I've seen about it has been,

00:52:37.880 --> 00:52:41.020
and I guess maybe it's coming from low expectations, I don't know,

00:52:41.100 --> 00:52:42.480
but every comment has been,

00:52:42.770 --> 00:52:48.840
this is unusual and welcome to see it represented at all on screen

00:52:49.260 --> 00:52:52.180
and that it's a good representation.

00:52:52.520 --> 00:52:59.600
I guess the caveat is most of the comments I saw were immediately after the woman who fell to earth.

00:52:59.780 --> 00:53:01.600
When he actually was shown.

00:53:01.780 --> 00:53:05.860
Where it was dealt with maybe in a more explicit way.

00:53:07.100 --> 00:53:08.200
Yes, it would be interesting.

00:53:08.380 --> 00:53:13.040
I don't know whether anyone has written anything or any of our listeners can direct us to anything

00:53:13.960 --> 00:53:20.940
by anyone who suffers from dyspraxia giving a kind of longer view of the Ryan arc so far.

00:53:21.280 --> 00:53:27.840
and i do think that that uh you know i'm i'm more than willing to admit it um never heard of it

00:53:28.320 --> 00:53:34.600
prior to the woman who fell to earth i i certainly knew very little about it um i know very slightly

00:53:34.710 --> 00:53:40.200
more about it now but still not that much but i in terms of raising awareness it's absolutely done

00:53:40.210 --> 00:53:45.159
that because yeah i'm much much better informed than i was so i guess that that can't be a bad

00:53:45.180 --> 00:53:51.540
thing but it it's still you know it's a data point of one we have ryan yeah and i don't know

00:53:51.640 --> 00:53:58.120
whether well what what obviously the next thing is more representation of dyspraxics on the telly

00:53:58.720 --> 00:54:03.680
but we might have to wait a while it's it's not like we've seen a sudden proliferation of death

00:54:03.820 --> 00:54:10.619
character death characters following on from under the lake i read i think in wikipedia that it's

00:54:10.640 --> 00:54:17.380
like three to six percent of the population that's hard to believe or dyspraxia really wow i swear

00:54:17.540 --> 00:54:22.180
that's what i saw it's like how could we have not heard of that if three out of every hundred people

00:54:22.940 --> 00:54:27.300
have got that and it doesn't go away how would how would you know i mean that's well that's

00:54:27.440 --> 00:54:32.580
the obvious question with this one in in the sense that if we are to take this as a realistic

00:54:32.940 --> 00:54:38.380
portrayal that ryan isn't tripping over every two seconds and that plenty of people who don't have

00:54:38.380 --> 00:54:44.840
dyspraxia are not necessarily perfectly coordinated themselves you've got to know someone quite well

00:54:45.020 --> 00:54:50.260
and and got to see them doing quite challenging tasks and spot a pattern of something in order

00:54:50.260 --> 00:54:55.460
to even suspect it unless they actually tell you no one is well it's unlikely people are going to

00:54:55.780 --> 00:55:00.940
go around announcing it to complete strangers when they first meet them so it would have to

00:55:00.940 --> 00:55:06.159
be someone you knew quite well i guess still i think i've met and know quite well 100 people

00:55:06.180 --> 00:55:11.900
in the world over the years not all at once but uh i don't think i could handle that but i don't

00:55:11.960 --> 00:55:18.980
know again it just it raises questions it does but you know if it's three to six percent certainly

00:55:19.240 --> 00:55:24.920
not three to six percent of uh characters in television dramas so there's there's room for

00:55:25.080 --> 00:55:30.840
growth unless of course we can't tell because it doesn't actually yes fair point have any visible

00:55:31.000 --> 00:55:35.419
impairment therefore maybe all of them are on television we just don't realize james bond maybe

00:55:35.500 --> 00:55:41.460
dyspraxic for all we know maybe he just he doesn't talk about it although although if it's if it's a

00:55:41.580 --> 00:55:46.480
character on television we often depending on the particular character and the role they play in the

00:55:46.560 --> 00:55:50.600
drama we often know quite a lot about their inner life so if it's an important part of their inner

00:55:50.700 --> 00:55:56.600
life and identity we're likely to know about it that's why we know about ryan whereas well i was

00:55:56.660 --> 00:56:02.440
i was going to say maybe some of the incidental characters in the episodes don't know about it

00:56:02.420 --> 00:56:07.940
But actually, Ryan, being quite open, he tends to tell people about it within five minutes of meeting them.

00:56:08.120 --> 00:56:10.080
So that's not the best example.

00:56:10.619 --> 00:56:11.380
All right.

00:56:12.240 --> 00:56:15.140
Anything else about this episode?

00:56:16.080 --> 00:56:17.980
No, just disappointment.

00:56:18.390 --> 00:56:18.900
Just disappointment.

00:56:21.500 --> 00:56:22.800
The next week is what?

00:56:22.800 --> 00:56:24.160
The Witch Finders?

00:56:24.320 --> 00:56:24.840
Witch Killers?

00:56:25.000 --> 00:56:25.440
Witch Hunters?

00:56:26.060 --> 00:56:26.960
Witch Witch Witch?

00:56:27.400 --> 00:56:31.280
I don't know what it's called, but it's definitely about witches.

00:56:31.980 --> 00:56:35.400
I don't have it in front of me, but it's not the witch smellers.

00:56:36.600 --> 00:56:37.480
I have high hopes.

00:56:38.050 --> 00:56:39.960
The historicals are tended to be quite good.

00:56:40.320 --> 00:56:45.540
And every single time I see a next time trailer, I'm thinking, this one's going to be a pure historical.

00:56:46.280 --> 00:57:01.700
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...

00:57:01.720 --> 00:57:07.840
demons of the Punjab which is just completely pointless i just long i long for a pure historical

00:57:08.220 --> 00:57:16.260
it's it's the albatross that the show has hung around its neck this sense it has that it has

00:57:16.260 --> 00:57:22.700
to have some sci-fi element in order to deliver what the audience expects that absolutely that

00:57:22.820 --> 00:57:28.440
should be enough and the show has had the confidence to do some extraordinary kinds of

00:57:28.420 --> 00:57:34.360
stories in this season that it's really you know never never done anything like before and so you

00:57:34.360 --> 00:57:39.920
know why why could it not have the confidence to do something that okay it hasn't done since 1982

00:57:40.760 --> 00:57:46.200
but still it has done and done well in the past and so we know it's possible and we know that

00:57:46.200 --> 00:57:51.200
they could do it it could be good they could do it and i wouldn't have any problem with them doing it

00:57:51.480 --> 00:57:56.579
i would be delighted you know it would i i think my main you know if you look back at the old

00:57:56.600 --> 00:58:02.520
historicals there's a certain element of we're caught up in events how do we escape yeah like

00:58:02.520 --> 00:58:12.400
the reign of terror the aztecs the the um of the tribe of gum pretty much anyone i can think of

00:58:12.550 --> 00:58:17.240
the romans they're yeah they're always just you know that's unfortunately that's part of the

00:58:17.370 --> 00:58:21.460
premise of the show is you get in the tardis in those days and you left and then that was gone so

00:58:21.460 --> 00:58:22.880
All you had to do is get back to the TARDIS.

00:58:23.540 --> 00:58:24.920
I would be fine with that.

00:58:25.820 --> 00:58:32.680
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.

00:58:32.740 --> 00:58:33.820
Marco Polo.

00:58:34.140 --> 00:58:34.620
There's another one.

00:58:35.000 --> 00:58:36.600
We got separated from the TARDIS.

00:58:37.679 --> 00:58:45.080
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.

00:58:45.480 --> 00:58:46.100
No, no, no.

00:58:46.320 --> 00:58:47.920
I could not disagree more with that.

00:58:47.980 --> 00:58:59.720
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.

00:59:00.100 --> 00:59:01.880
It really doesn't anymore.

00:59:02.860 --> 00:59:03.880
I agree with that, too.

00:59:04.040 --> 00:59:30.940
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.

00:59:31.120 --> 00:59:37.420
or to be an environment, you know, we were seeing it in 1956, Montgomery, Alabama,

00:59:38.160 --> 00:59:44.740
the kind of thing where actually, if you've got black skin, then doing anything at all is a real,

00:59:44.940 --> 00:59:52.280
real challenge. And so to explore some of those kinds of environments, but on Earth, in Earth's

00:59:52.600 --> 01:00:01.000
history, that seems to me vastly more of a kind of well-to-be, I was going to say well-to-be

01:00:01.020 --> 01:00:02.580
but that's rather mixing my metaphors.

01:00:02.780 --> 01:00:03.900
But you know what I'm saying.

01:00:04.120 --> 01:00:06.680
It's much more fertile ground

01:00:07.360 --> 01:00:09.960
than what they're trying to do at the present,

01:00:11.220 --> 01:00:13.560
sticking rather incongruous alien monsters

01:00:13.860 --> 01:00:16.880
into situations where it only detracts

01:00:17.020 --> 01:00:18.240
from the stories that they're telling.

01:00:18.520 --> 01:00:19.240
I completely agree.

01:00:19.240 --> 01:00:20.400
It's detracting from the stories.

01:00:20.640 --> 01:00:23.180
It's not doing the story justice.

01:00:23.540 --> 01:00:27.400
I only wish that they could do more

01:00:28.680 --> 01:00:31.020
even the science fiction stories.

01:00:32.100 --> 01:00:32.860
So if you have this,

01:00:33.220 --> 01:00:34.980
the problem that I was kind of getting at

01:00:35.080 --> 01:00:35.960
was the historicals,

01:00:36.160 --> 01:00:37.900
they can't change history, right?

01:00:38.320 --> 01:00:40.720
So it's really a question of extracting themselves.

01:00:41.200 --> 01:00:42.960
But when you go to the future,

01:00:43.480 --> 01:00:46.420
they have to solve the big bad,

01:00:46.900 --> 01:00:47.300
whatever it is.

01:00:47.860 --> 01:00:49.920
It's like they've set up this dichotomy

01:00:50.080 --> 01:00:51.600
of the two different kinds of storytelling.

01:00:52.220 --> 01:00:56.799
And I think they're doing a disservice to the format

01:00:56.820 --> 01:01:01.740
when they could be a lot more homogenous there they just have to be a little bit more clever

01:01:01.780 --> 01:01:07.840
with the historical ones but but you can't kill robespierre but yeah well yes where where where

01:01:08.060 --> 01:01:12.620
they are actually with the with the kind of famous historical figures and there are there are facts

01:01:12.620 --> 01:01:19.280
that we know but they they can also create the kind of the minor characters who who populate

01:01:19.940 --> 01:01:25.460
these historical periods and and explore their dramas and those are things that we don't know

01:01:25.360 --> 01:01:30.420
the outcomes of and so whether there is real jeopardy and I think the reason I have the

01:01:30.660 --> 01:01:37.140
optimism about this is because this series seems to have been quite good at focusing in on smaller

01:01:37.230 --> 01:01:43.760
scale drama and for me episodes like The Ghost Monument are a great example of where you can do

01:01:44.020 --> 01:01:49.720
a future episode where it's not about a big changing the course of future history type

01:01:49.960 --> 01:01:55.800
scenario it's literally another one of it's i mean literally just getting back to the tardis

01:01:55.800 --> 01:02:02.700
the very thing you were talking about and it works yeah yeah i i i'm i'm i'm fine with the

01:02:02.800 --> 01:02:09.420
smaller scale stories i i'm i'm if if nothing else that i'm kind of enjoying i really detest

01:02:09.800 --> 01:02:16.320
the oh the daleks are gonna destroy all of reality yeah like okay that's just stupid

01:02:16.640 --> 01:02:21.940
yeah and you said it we don't we don't need it you know we didn't need james bond saving the planet

01:02:22.380 --> 01:02:25.860
from total destruction every time that's why moonraker is one of the worst films

01:02:26.560 --> 01:02:32.320
well i'm not going to go along with that one but but you know they they just keep having to rate

01:02:32.320 --> 01:02:37.240
that the writers feel they have to keep raising the stakes and i don't think that that's necessarily

01:02:37.690 --> 01:02:43.340
what you have to do that that's a that's an attitude a very jaded attitude about about the

01:02:43.360 --> 01:02:48.640
audience i want to see them overcome adversity if they don't have to save the planet they have to

01:02:49.260 --> 01:02:55.220
save whoever i'm fine with them saving 10 people's lives it doesn't have to be 10 billion people's

01:02:55.380 --> 01:02:59.960
lives you know saving someone's job that would or saving someone's job would be okay and i do

01:03:00.120 --> 01:03:06.840
remind me of one thing before we before we go on or before we sign off what did you think of the

01:03:06.720 --> 01:03:14.820
fact that this is first episode where the villain gets his own comeuppance hoist by his own petard

01:03:15.540 --> 01:03:20.960
oh yes yeah well actually you know i was going to mention that because it's not just that there's

01:03:21.000 --> 01:03:27.040
actually quite high body count in this for this series and i i have really really appreciated

01:03:27.470 --> 01:03:36.680
the kinds of stories where we have nasty characters like epso or even robertson who in in an

01:03:36.700 --> 01:03:42.920
episode of Doctor Who it'd be like that bad person is going to die right and and we're supposed to

01:03:42.980 --> 01:03:49.800
feel good about that because they're a slightly nasty person and it's it's a kind of writerly

01:03:50.010 --> 01:03:59.280
form of extrajudicial execution that is somehow acceptable so I liked the fact that this series

01:03:59.760 --> 01:04:06.840
was willing to not go there and it was and it was it was taking characters who were nasty and

01:04:06.980 --> 01:04:12.680
presenting them as nasty but not not kind of providing this false sense of closure by either

01:04:12.840 --> 01:04:18.220
having a moment of redemption or by doing away with them another problem with this episode that's

01:04:18.300 --> 01:04:23.300
exactly what it does for no reason and i'm i'm thinking the doctor probably could have saved him

01:04:23.460 --> 01:04:25.880
Of course. And he could have saved himself. Why didn't he?

01:04:26.260 --> 01:04:30.120
Yeah. So it is the outlier in this series.

01:04:30.530 --> 01:04:30.720
Yeah.

01:04:31.040 --> 01:04:39.260
Though I will say I kind of have a sort of deep-seated appreciation of extraditional execution for baddies.

01:04:40.700 --> 01:04:42.360
But that's what you're supposed to have.

01:04:42.580 --> 01:04:46.400
That's a very James Bond fan attitude because that's kind of the whole point.

01:04:46.520 --> 01:04:47.720
They're supposed to die at the end.

01:04:48.720 --> 01:04:51.260
But, you know, the Doctor is not James Bond.

01:04:51.760 --> 01:04:55.780
Yes, and James Bond, when it comes down to it, is an assassin.

01:04:56.160 --> 01:05:00.740
And the idea that we should somehow all be aspiring to be James Bond

01:05:00.820 --> 01:05:02.380
is a load of nonsense.

01:05:02.500 --> 01:05:04.260
He is not a nice person.

01:05:04.840 --> 01:05:07.620
We might be glad that there are people like that out there,

01:05:07.840 --> 01:05:11.240
doing the bad things so that the even worse things don't happen,

01:05:11.660 --> 01:05:14.520
but we kind of wish that he wasn't necessary in the first place.

01:05:14.800 --> 01:05:18.360
And we certainly don't want everyone to be like James Bond.

01:05:18.680 --> 01:05:20.100
No, no, no, no, no.

01:05:20.600 --> 01:05:21.060
All right.

01:05:21.120 --> 01:05:22.940
Well, that's all I've got this time for sure.

01:05:25.480 --> 01:05:26.040
I'm pretty sure.

01:05:26.440 --> 01:05:30.740
I'm sure enough to say we're going to sign it out unless you got anything else you want to bring up.

01:05:30.760 --> 01:05:33.040
No, I'm definitely done this time.

01:05:33.320 --> 01:05:33.640
All right.

01:05:34.200 --> 01:05:36.480
Then thank you for joining me.

01:05:36.960 --> 01:05:41.060
You're going to be back next time for the Witch Finders.

01:05:42.360 --> 01:05:43.000
The Witch People.

01:05:43.200 --> 01:05:44.460
The Witch Episode.

01:05:45.660 --> 01:05:46.560
The Witch Ever.

01:05:47.000 --> 01:05:47.620
The Witch Ever.

01:05:47.920 --> 01:05:48.760
The Witch Ever episode.

01:05:49.820 --> 01:05:50.940
And so thank you.

01:05:51.430 --> 01:05:52.020
Pleasure, as always.

01:05:53.060 --> 01:05:57.540
We listeners, I do hope you'll join us all again next time on Fusion Patrol.

01:06:02.360 --> 01:06:05.840
You've been listening to Fusion Patrol, a listener-supported podcast.

01:06:06.620 --> 01:06:13.960
Find out how you can be a sponsor and get early access to all episodes and more at patreon.com slash fusion patrol.

01:06:15.860 --> 01:06:18.600
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01:06:20.680 --> 01:06:23.200
All episodes are available at FusionPatrol.com

01:06:24.640 --> 01:06:27.780
Our music is Fight the Future by Amber Wolf

01:06:28.820 --> 01:06:31.660
This has been a Lone Locust production

01:06:35.180 --> 01:06:37.680
On the other hand, what is automation doing?

01:06:37.750 --> 01:06:40.760
It's doing the work for us that...

01:06:44.540 --> 01:06:48.640
It's creating an entire set of Foley sound effects here

01:06:51.720 --> 01:06:54.380
um just ignore the sound of tea being poured

01:06:57.380 --> 01:07:00.080
sorry about that um i'll leave it in