We take a single episode of a science fiction TV series and overanalyze it to within an
inch of its life.
This is the Fusion Patrol podcast.
Welcome to the discussion.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Fusion Patrol. I'm Eugene.
And I'm Simon.
And tonight we're looking at the final Series 12? 11?
Which is it? 11?
Well, Series 11 or Series 37, depending on whether you are correct or not.
We'll call it Series 11 because that's generally what the BBC does.
Even that's wrong.
But the final episode of Series 11, the Battle of Ranskur Av Kolos.
Two religious zealots stand prepared to build a temple when their god appears before them.
That can't be good.
3,407 years later, the Doc and the gang pick up multiple distress signals
coming from the planet Ranskor Avkos,
a planet whose name literally means Disintegrator of the Soul.
Armed with neural blockers to prevent their souls from being disintegrated,
they go to investigate.
On the planet, they find the wrecks of many spacecraft and one survivor, Patraxia.
His memory has been damaged by the planet, but with the addition of a neural blocker,
he begins to remember, with things coming back just often enough to keep the mysteries going
and reveal info as needed throughout the episode.
They discover that Tim Shaw, erstwhile Stenza from the Doctor's Regeneration episode,
has been trapped on this planet and is manipulating the Ux, the previously mentioned religious zealots,
to turn whole worlds into trophies,
rendering them devoid of life in the process.
The fleets of ship were races attempting to bring Tim Shaw to justice for his atrocities.
Graham vows to kill Tim Shaw,
while Tim Shaw vows to extract revenge on the Doctor
by making Earth his next trophy.
Battle of Ranskor Avkolas, I can't help thinking of the pirate planet.
Yes, you're not the only one.
Yeah.
Which was a cool idea in the pirate planet.
Kind of weird that Earth was going to be next.
But there you go.
In that one and this one anyway.
So what did you think of this episode?
Well, it's not an episode that it's not the first time it's been ripped off.
Because, well, we talked about it on this very podcast.
But I've forgotten the title of it.
The Infinite Quest.
Oh, yes.
The Infinite Quest was very close to many of the ideas in the pirate planet.
Douglas Adams, of course.
So there are lots of good ideas to plunder by other pirate Doctor Who writers.
But yes, there you go.
So what did you think of the episode?
This episode, not Pirate Planet.
Unless you want to talk about the Pirate Planet.
I mean, either one, but we'll stick with this one.
Well, I have to say I haven't watched it that recently.
So whereas this one I have actually watched in the last couple of days.
So I think I mentioned that I wasn't quite sure
whether I actually wanted to have a kind of season finale ending.
I definitely thought that I didn't really care
for those kind of big blowout endings
because often they were done very badly.
And what I really just wanted was a good episode.
So if it was another week, another good episode, just fine.
And then last week I was feeling like,
oh, actually, maybe I want something
that feels like it completes the series.
And in that respect, I kind of think this episode delivered.
It wasn't so much that there was an arc running,
or at least a plot arc running through the series.
I think there were character arcs, which is the way it should be.
But even though, as we speculated and rather weren't looking forward to,
even though Chibnall did bring back old Timbo,
the rather annoying Stenza,
Yeah, the fact that he brought him back gave us this link to,
I mean, you say it's the Doctor's Regeneration episode,
the woman who fell to earth,
but it's also the episode that introduced us to all of the characters,
all of the fam, and Graham in particular.
And I think more than this being about Tim Shaw,
it's about Graham confronting his feelings,
his unresolved feelings of anger that have become mixed up in his grief
when he realises he's likely to come face to face
towards the creature who killed his wife.
And I think I mentioned when we discussed the Witchfinders,
or was it?
No, maybe it was when we discussed Kablam,
certainly when I was vlogging about midway through the series
and T'Ping or Pting, whatever it was called.
The Gremlin, yeah.
The Gremlin escaped alive from that episode.
that I concluded that there was something going on in certainly that first half of the series that I quite liked,
where you got unsympathetic characters like Robertson,
who in the hands of many Doctor Who writers would be conveniently killed off.
And I say conveniently because it was in a way that avoided, you know, it's a 45 minute, 50 minute show,
avoided facing any difficult consequences from that choice or any kind of unresolved quiet, disquiet.
And I actually think that's what was being picked up here when you got that terrific scene between the Doctor and Graham
with the Doctor basically facing him down and saying, you're not going to kill this monster purely from vengeance.
if that's what you're going to do you go you go back to the TARDIS and the and Graham being equally
resolute that uh if if he only did one one more thing with his life it was going to be to to wipe
this stenza out right and I will I will take and say that that was good and I don't mean it was
That was good. That was a nice piece of character for Graham and a nice solid result.
And I mean, the doctors, I thought it was, again, one of Jodie Whittaker's strongest performances.
I'm honestly not getting that.
And I'm not, I will go out that very few of the Doctor's performances,
any Doctor, are particularly strong to me.
I don't see that as a, I've never seen the Doctor's character
as a particularly strong dramatic acting point.
Occasionally, you'll catch one, but for the most part,
they're kind of pantomime.
And for the most part, they're kind of pantomime.
You know, I...
It's a bit of a shame if you've been waiting 55 years
for someone to do some acting in the role.
I really...
I mean, there have been pantomime moments.
There are frequently pantomime moments,
but I think there have been some terrific performances.
There are from time to time.
With some of the various doctors.
I'm not taking that as saying,
oh, they're terrible.
I don't mean it like that,
but they don't rise up beyond the level of,
I know this is...
I don't know.
It doesn't...
Capaldi had a couple of moments where he was giving a speech that were...
You really felt it.
And long speeches.
I wouldn't say it was much during Matt Smith's or David Tennant's era.
Or Eccleston.
David Tennant was amazing.
He's a good actor.
It's absolutely...
It's a great actor, but you have to be given the part.
You have to be given the role to...
I don't know.
That's not trying to diss it.
They're all absolutely positively competent.
I just don't look at it and go, that's an amazing bit of acting.
So when I'm saying I don't agree that it was an amazing bit of acting on Jody's part,
I am trying to say that that's because I didn't rarely see amazing bits of acting on The Doctor.
The Companions have had much better chops with that in the new series in a way,
but, and as witness in this.
But I, there are some things, well, okay, trying to put that aside.
Because I think that was a great bit for Graham.
This is a great episode for Ryan.
This was another not much episode for Yaz.
I've noticed that she's pretty much mostly been sidelined.
She's there.
She does stuff.
But, you know, they've been given the lion's share to the Graham-Ryan arrangement, I think.
And of course, it had a buildup, right?
It's got something.
Yaz has nothing.
She's just running away from her family.
It's kind of annoying.
They seem nice enough, except for her sister.
But they're kind of annoying.
I mean, you can see this is a young person who just wants to get out of the house for crying out loud.
I've lived with them my whole life.
I want to go live my life.
That's what I see in Yaz.
But Graham and Ryan have an arc.
They do have something.
They have an unresolved, prior to this episode, unresolved status between them.
They have unresolved feelings about the death of their loved one.
And so they've been given this really good piece.
And they cleaned it up nicely.
I complained, was it last week?
I don't know, the week before?
About that I felt it was too long.
Yeah, it was last week.
But too long before Ryan called him granddad.
Oh, yeah.
I felt like they dragged it out just a little too long.
But I guess they were trying to coax it for this moment at the end.
The I love you moment.
Which I felt was too soon after last week.
Exactly.
Well, yes, that as well.
It feels like maybe there should have been a little gap of time there.
And if they'd done the other a bit earlier,
this might have balanced a little bit better, but I don't know.
Well, yes, because I didn't agree with you it was too late last week,
but it did feel like these two were too close together.
So in that respect, it would have felt more natural to me
had Ryan made that concession that he made in last week's episode calling Graham granddad
and then for him suddenly to be so expressive emotionally you know it would feel to me like
they would need that it's part of a journey it's not like the down breaking it should still be part
of a journey this there's further for him to go after last week before he reaches this point I
mean we don't know how many adventures they've had in the TARDIS in between but from the viewer's
of view, we haven't been taken on that journey. And so it certainly feels rushed.
Right. But, you know, the pieces in place, just not necessarily where they are,
you know, I don't know if I'd go so far as say as I love you. That's an interesting question.
I've never had a step-parent. And, you know, I suspect it would matter how old you were when
you got your step-parent or step-grandparent or whatever it is. It never would occur to me that
you'd pass on to anything other than that's a pretty damn good friend but but maybe so i don't
have that in my i don't have that in my repertoire so of emotional range but you know i mean he was
also kind of laying it on a bit thick to get him to do what he needed to do which is not kill tim
shaw yes well yes yes and and i think that that did just that justified the kind of emotion of
the moment um but i i was going to say i've got a step grandparent and i i you know i i think yeah
she's not listening to this oh yeah but but you know she yes she feels to me like my grandparent
really and uh so in but i mean how you how you express that that's very much down that's a
personal and indeed the particular relationship you have is very much a personal thing yeah i
There is that scene where he calls him Granddad again,
and he says it's too late, something like that.
He said it was tried hard, that was too late coming.
And maybe that's why they held that so long into the show,
so that arguably...
This is a reaction to that.
Arguably Granddad, Granddad, Graham.
Granddad.
I think of him as my granddad.
Arguably, Graham is making a point that, you know, that's just sort of a new thing and it's way, way too late.
And if it had happened earlier in the series, perhaps he would have gotten more time to adapt to that and understand how Ryan's feelings have changed.
Perhaps. But I think I think if it if it had happened, if it had happened earlier in the series, Graham would have felt it was a long time coming because we you know, we we we've picked this up after he's been married to Grace for four years.
So clearly, clearly he's been working on it and he he feels it's very apparent that Ryan has been very unresponsive.
So I'm sympathetic to Graham's feelings of frustration over that.
Yeah, and I think it has been clear Graham has spent a lot of that four years trying to get on Ryan's better side.
Yeah, I mean, he's not a guy who likes to be, you know, he wants to be liked.
He wants to be friendly.
He's put in the effort.
You know, well, we saw that even with the bike thing.
I mean, he was there cheering on Ryan even before we realized Ryan kind of didn't like him.
Yes.
But he was there.
I mean, he was putting in the time, like I say.
so yeah i think you've got to i mean you've got to bear in mind that it's not necessarily that
ryan didn't like him it is that that that thing in a in a step relationship of the interloper
because he has a pre-existing relationship with his grandmother and graham is the in the new
character but the one who gets all his grandmother's attention and so therefore
there are feelings of jealousy etc etc yeah and i can i that that i can put in my that i can put
in my repertoire. I mean, my mother died
before I remember her.
I have absolutely no, I have
no feelings, memories, anything
about my mother, right?
So I should not be jealous.
But I do know that when my dad
would have a girlfriend, it would be like
she's not good enough for him.
So it's not, I don't think it's jealousy.
Or maybe, I don't know.
But it's definitely, there's a
snobbery or
yeah, you know,
why why that what does he see in that i i don't know so it's not yes it's not it's not simple but
it's it's yes there are there are all sorts of tensions and undercurrents and i i i think that's
something that has been an an arc running through these 10 episodes that you know it's more it's
more it's been more about character development than it has about any kind of contrived plot
plot arc but i think you're right it's given it's particularly for for ryan who in in some other
respects is not particularly satisfying the interesting character to watch it's given that
whole dynamic uh something to to keep you interested and to to keep you engaged with them
well i was going to say i i agree i agree with you in the sense that yaz hasn't really developed
in that respect because i think that yaz is much more the traditional companion type role if if
there were only one companion i'm thinking i'd want it to be yes because she big for all the
reasons we've discussed before but she's she's smart and she's resourceful and she's interesting
she's likable and she's got this amazing uh screen presence you know as an actor where you you do just
feel you want to watch her but although i mean there were episodes like uh the demons of the
jab where there was a kind of very character focused story for her character that's pretty
much the the routine for doctor who companions in the sense they will you know they'll get those
once in a while and then they'll get the other episodes where they're doing the what is it doctor
bit and she's certainly been back to that for the last three or four stories you know it kind of
occurs to me that so Yaz's character development has been pretty flat and Ryan's has he has been
growing throughout the course of the starting from a low base starting from a low base he has been
growing but it also occurs to me with with the exception with the exception of what happens here
at the end Graham has not Graham has been if you will he's already kind of there and it's partially
probably because they're portraying a character who is uh an older person who has has a life of
experience and uh behind them but you know he's been kind of there his character has not changed
significantly throughout the course of the episode well i'd agree until you get here well i think
go ahead does does his does his character change here i'm not sure i think what's changed with
graham is his attitude has changed i think you're right in the sense that he he's a very he i mean
I was going to say mature, but obviously, you know, he's Bradley Walter's age.
But I'm not really talking about age.
I'm talking about the fact that he has a kind of terrific self-awareness and also a very strong sense of.
I feel that he's got a very strong sense of who he is.
And he has grown quite comfortable with who he is and his relationship with Grace,
even though in some respects,
Grace was still able to embarrass him,
for example, by displays of affection on the train
in The Woman Who Fell to Earth.
But I guess it's that sort of slightly laid back sense
you get with Graham,
but it's laid back with,
there's something underneath that.
It's not wishy-washy.
And I think that hasn't changed.
What I do think has changed is that at the beginning,
He wasn't, he wasn't, he was, he had this kind of distrust of the Doctor, coupled with a kind of slightly more risk-averse sense.
And he's grown to both respect and trust the Doctor, and also to, I guess, develop a bit of a sense of adventurousness, which, you know, maybe he sort of almost inherited from Grace.
It's her legacy.
But didn't they all get through that point by the time we ended Arachnids in the UK?
Yes, I would say it was definitely in the first half of the series for him.
So obviously he wasn't a reluctant companion when they left Earth initially.
Yeah, yeah.
All right.
Well, let's talk about Tim Shaw.
Kind of a worthless villain in The Woman Who Fell to Earth.
He's an absolute cookie cutter of a baddie, I think.
Boy, he is. And if you think about what he's done, he has all this power. 3,407 years. All he's come up with is converting planets to trophies. That's it. With all the power of the Ux available to him, that's the best he could come up with. What a lame brain cartoon.
Well, I'm not sure it would have made it any better if he'd come up with some plan to destroy the universe.
I mean, I have appreciated it.
I think in the first five years, maybe.
Well, perhaps.
But by and large, in this series, the scale of the danger has not been overblown.
And I think that has been a strength of the series because they've managed to find a real sense of jeopardy from things that are much smaller and much more personal than perhaps some of the things in, say, the Russell T Davies era.
And this episode, I kind of ups the scales a bit by taking out the Earth.
But it could have been worse.
It could have been the galaxy or universal destruction.
Like last week.
Well, yes, except last week it was.
Didn't feel like it. It was a much more interesting story and it didn't feel like it. Absolutely. It didn't feel like it. It didn't it didn't have the the kind of grandeur that those stories are supposed to exemplify. It felt much more kind of personal, really much more small scale.
This did feel a bit bigger because it was threatening Earth.
But then again, it is the end of the series.
But I don't mind that it took him 3,407 years and that's all he came up with.
And also, I'm glad that it was 3,407 years and not 3,000 years or 3 billion years, as it probably would have been under RTD.
Yeah, yeah, it's, yeah.
Those small details that, you know, the coincidences of things happening to fall exactly on a century or a millennium that they did all the time.
So, okay.
When the doctor beamed out of Earth, the end of the woman who fell to Earth, and they were on a planet somewhere in another galaxy, or they were near a planet somewhere in another galaxy, and we had the ghost monument.
I think Ben and I speculated, is that present day Earth?
A teleport is a time-neutral form of transport.
The ghost monument wasn't on Earth at all.
No, no, no, no, no.
But I mean, barring the vagaries of relativity
that say no two times can be the same.
In other words, it's an instantaneous transportation
between two parts of the universe.
It is not a time transport.
It's not a time machine.
Oh, no, it wasn't.
It wasn't.
So it would have been, if you could have,
if there's a such thing as contemporaneousness
between two points that far away in space,
It would have still been 2018 Earth.
So this is not a period far in the future where Earth's empire has butted up against the Stenza or anything like that.
This is, this is, right?
Therefore, we can assume, we can assume that this is also 3,407 years forward from the time they sent Tim Shaw away.
So it's 3,407 years from today in the future.
So when he was blowing up Earth, I mean, that's not going to be a problem for us because that's far in the future.
Yes.
So, I mean, they didn't have anything to worry about.
They could have gone back at any time.
It might be upsetting.
Oh, I suppose.
No, they did do a fair job.
The tension building, the structure of the story was such, and it wasn't a great story.
But I will say when they were racing for time there at the end, it was a little bit good.
It was a little like, ooh, I hope they can do it.
You know they're going to do it, but because it's Earth and they can't destroy Earth.
That's the way the game is played.
But, you know, they did a much better job of making this seem like there was a real threat than they did in the last episode, where I didn't really buy the threat.
Just like, eh, it's going to blow up the universe.
Whatever.
And I'll buy it.
Let's close the door and be done with it.
We're fine.
Yeah.
I can see that.
Absolutely.
I also do appreciate, I very much appreciate that Ryan called the doctor out for what we've been calling the doctor out on all year long.
Her sense of morality makes no sense whatsoever.
What I really like, I've got a note to say is that the doctor totally called you and Ben out on this.
No, I think Chris Chibnall has been listening to our podcast and has gone, oh, I better fix that.
Well, and no, I better explain it.
I'd better explain what's going on here because I...
No, in fairness, she conceded that her creed changes,
but she made exactly the points that I would have made to you.
I think it was in your conversation about Rosa.
No, I think it was in your conversation about the ghost monument.
The ghost monument.
Where you were complaining because the doctor had a bit of a grump at Ryan
he'd picked up a gun yeah but then the doctor had had used the the pulse weapon to knock out all the
robots as if there were and and i i know you made the point you weren't trying to be an nra spokesman
and this wasn't all about the whole kind of mantra of guns don't kill people americans kill people
but actually there it there it there are all of these kind of cultural associations with guns and
the fact of the matter is and I you know I say this as someone who is has has enjoyed going
shooting and so I'm aware there are there are other uses for guns but by and large and certainly
with particular types of guns there is really just one primary use for them and therefore and I think
the doctor did make this point when she's got a new companion she's breaking them in the last thing
she wants is to in any way let them get away with the sense that their first resort should be to
pick up a projectile weapon it felt very much retconning to me when she said that this is
exactly what i thought at the time that you were making the point so when i watched the ghost
monument i'll be honest it didn't the point didn't even occur to me when you had the conversation
afterwards i thought absolutely what you're missing here is the fact that there is a difference
between using a gun as a weapon when a gun really is only a weapon and using something else as an
improvised weapon in particular circumstances and after all the fact that the doctor doesn't
doesn't do these things as a first resort she's not a pacifist and i i get i mean obviously the
fact that her creed is very variable is due to the fact that she has been written over the years
by all sorts of people, you know, communists, Christians, anyone with whatever particular
set of beliefs is going to project them onto the doctor in their episode, you know, so far as they
can get away with it. But in as much as anything is constant in the doctor's attitude, the doctor's
approach, it's the fact that she won't start by picking up a gun and killing people. It's not
going to be shoot first and ask questions later it's going to be if we can do this without without
killing i'm already thinking of exceptions to this but if we can do this without killing you
know if we can do it through destruction of property or whatever if we can do it through
some peaceful means of protest we'll you know we'll start there we will escalate as necessary
but we will only kill as a last resort it will never be um just a a means to an end and i and i
think I think from what I was saying about the the kind of the story about vengeance that
Chibnall tried to tell in this episode and certainly successfully explored in some of the
earlier episodes in this series is a contrast to the approaches of because because I think
Russell T Davis was very much more the the the doctor was someone who intervened and took action
And yes, that did involve killing.
Yes, in fact, that did involve genocide.
That was something that was too far for Stephen Moffat,
something that he wanted to undo in the day of the Doctor.
And yet even Stephen Moffat was willing to have the Doctor
deliberately kill Solomon and dinosaurs on a spaceship,
which was basically murder.
So I guess that does go against what I've been saying.
Okay, well, I'll take one stab, though.
is just the distinction between the gun and improvising another way, okay?
Knowing that the doctor knew that the gun would not hurt the sniper bots
because, A, the sniper bots are machines, okay?
So don't run out there with a gun because that's the wrong thing to do.
I'll come up with this alternative explosive.
And, you know, okay, she could run him over with a car.
You hear that argument from NRA nutjobs all the time.
Well, we ought to be banning cars then because you can kill somebody with a car.
It's like, no, that's not the point.
absolutely not the point the car actually has a useful regulate cars i mean yeah yeah that we
make people have a license for them oh or take a test or or you know have their picture taken or
anything but um so i mean it's it's a rubbish argument um but i do get what you're saying
the gun is absolutely is a is a thing designed for killing even though you're using it in this case
not to kill because it's not alive she had absolutely no qualms letting yaz run off with
a gun, in fact, told her to do so with the gremlin, even though it really is alive.
But again, she knows it can't really hurt it.
So if that is, don't use guns here, take a grenade instead, or take this stun box instead
that I've just whipped together, they haven't been consistent even in this series.
And that's why I feel like this is a retcon.
It's literally the doctor is saying, do as I say, not as I do.
Oh, don't worry about continuity.
I'm going to change all the time,
but just pay attention to what I'm saying at this moment.
There's an element of truth in that.
I mean, I think, I don't know in what sequence
the kind of writing and filming occurred.
So it seems more likely to me that it would be possible
to fix the earlier episodes than to actually be necessary
to have to write something in to this later episode around this.
I think it is an acknowledgement that this is something that, as you say, has not, the doctor has not been consistent.
But I also think there's a reasonable argument there for saying, actually, it's more complicated than that.
That she doesn't, she's been acting out of a number of different motives when she's made those calls,
when she's given Yaz or she's encouraged Yaz to take the gun or she's discouraged Ryan from taking the gun.
And that has to do with things like their personality and their attitude.
Well, I suspect Yaz's risk to the situation.
Despite, you know, the British police not carrying weapons, I suspect Yaz has had some training too.
I don't know that she necessarily would have had training, but certainly she's trained in situations where she is fully aware of the lethal force of a gun.
And Ryan has played video games.
Ryan is tramping off in his Wolfenstein 3D mode.
Or whatever the kids these days play.
Well, don't ask me.
But I think it's absolutely that distinction.
But nonetheless, he should have seen it earlier.
See, that's the thing.
We kept seeing it.
We kept several episodes through.
You keep seeing this.
The doctor's attitude is not consistent here.
Why are they not calling her out on it?
It took a long time for Ryan to call her out on it.
or anyone to call her out on it.
And the explanation we get is...
Well, I'm not sure it was top of Ryan's list to, you know,
he didn't necessarily have a reason to call her out on it before.
He didn't.
He was, I can't even remember whether he saw what was going on when Yaz had the gun.
Was he aware of that?
I don't know.
I don't remember.
So he, in other words, he doesn't necessarily see everything from our privileged position
of the kind of viewers of everything interesting in the story.
He just gets to see things from his own particular perspective.
So it didn't seem to me that there were any obvious opportunities
in earlier episodes where he would have,
the Doctor would have done something or said something
where he would have gone,
well, that's completely unfair in the way that he does here.
Okay.
Oh, by the way, was Tim Shaw waiting for the Doctor?
Yes, I think so.
I couldn't tell.
I couldn't tell if this was his, I'm just going to keep wiping out planets until the Doctor shows up,
and then I'm going to take the Earth down to be nasty.
I couldn't tell if that was what this plan was or not.
Yeah, maybe it was just a bonus that the Doctor turned up.
I'm not sure either.
Because otherwise, wouldn't Earth have been the first planet he wiped out?
Just to be Tim Shaw.
You know, it's like, well, let's see, I've got to wipe out a planet?
Let's see, where did I get my butt handed to me on a plate?
Oh, yeah, Earth.
Let's take it out.
I was also pleased, and it's not a lot I can say.
I kind of enjoyed this episode.
I didn't think it was a great episode, but I kind of enjoyed it.
I'm with you.
I thought it was a solid episode,
and it was because of the links with the first episode,
which I didn't enjoy so much,
but still it kind of bookended the series.
It made me feel satisfied.
The fact that the questions that I had at the time
which is, and again, just going to say, the doctor DNA bombed him.
That should have been dead, right?
The guy on the crane tried to trip him, and she got all pissy about that.
Like, oh, you didn't need to murder people.
It's like, you just put bombs on him.
And, yeah, there's that moral culpability.
It's like, don't flip that switch.
Don't flip that switch.
I remember reading an article many years ago.
You familiar with Leslie Charteris?
The saint.
The saint, yep.
Not really.
Well, the character of the saint kills people, bad guys, all the time.
He is vengeance.
He is, you know, his own sense of justice.
That is the character.
When they translated it into television, whereas in the book, saint could trap the villain, get him to a place, and provided that he could get away with it without being arrested for it, he'd kill him.
Assuming the baddie was bad enough, right?
Mass murderer or something.
In the TV series, even if they adapted an episode like that, they'd have to put it into position where the bad guy would have to take an action that that action caused him to die, as we've discussed.
They would have to rework the plots because it was simply unacceptable for the hero to pull the trigger.
Even if they set it all up, they were not allowed to pull the trigger.
And that's exactly what happened with Tim Shaw there.
but you know we couldn't tell at the end of the episode was he dead did he did she send him back
why did she why did she she you can't say she didn't kill him if that had been a lethal blow
you you can say on paper technically speaking he pulled the trigger but i'm afraid i wouldn't
i would say if you put the bombs on him and he didn't know you put the bombs on him and he had
the trigger and he did that you are still morally culpable for leading to his death and maybe not
actually heck that's first degree murder um but anyway you know boom up and sent him back
you're like well i don't know what i'm supposed to take it i don't know what i was supposed to
take out of that at the end of that episode is he dead did she send him back did if she hadn't
sent him back would he have died if you know maybe he goes back and he has medical attention i
I don't know. So I thought it was kind of interesting that they, you know, plopped him here.
And I guess the Ux have all that power, but they can't heal him. But they can keep him alive
somehow in his Darth Vader kind of mode. But at least they mentioned the bombs. At least they
remembered to tell us so that at the end of the story, I'm like, okay, well, I got it. The bombs
did go off, they did hurt him really badly
and he got teleported to the wrong
place.
What about
the Ux? What do you think about this
addition to the universe?
Well, they're right.
They're okay.
I quite like them.
It's another
really
unbelievable thing.
I guess
in the grand scheme of things.
It's just like, wow, that is a race of plot contrivium, if ever I've heard of him.
Yeah, it's pretty silly, really, in a show about a person who travels around through time and space in a police box.
No, I think it's a whole other order of magnitude.
There's only two of them in the universe.
That's Sith level.
That's Star Wars agents of the Sith.
There's only allowed to be two in the universe at any given time.
Where do they come from?
seen that one um but where did the other guy come from the the one that was crucified there
well i don't know i don't know but he's only 17 years old so i thought well he's only 17 years
old at the end no at the beginning okay right i was gonna say because at the end he's got to be
something like 3,464 no something seven anyway yeah 24 so anyway yes he's got to be he's got a
He's got to be older than he was at the beginning.
Anyway, yes.
You know, there's a war.
I didn't feel like the arcs were interesting enough
that I wanted to know the answers to the questions you're asking
or that I particularly cared.
But by the same token, it didn't bother me that I didn't know.
Okay, so I do have one, though, with regards to their...
I don't think they're interesting.
I'll agree with that.
And I don't think that this was the way to go about it, but okay.
There is a story there that might have been interesting that we didn't get to see.
And that is when we're introduced to these two characters, they're clearly one's older and the other is much younger because there's a there's that whole I've been walking for 17 years.
And the more you teach me, the less I the less I seem to know.
And she's like, oh, well, that's good.
That's the way of the creator.
So we have we have the the I can't think of the word to go.
So he would be the acolyte more and then she would be the whatever.
the higher muckety-muck of this religious pairing.
And he has his doubts about what he can do.
He has his doubts about his understanding.
And then at the end, we see nothing that happens in the intervening years.
But in the end, she is willingly helping Tim Shaw.
And he is chained to a crucifix, clearly a prisoner.
I'm more interested in how that came about than I am anything that they did.
I feel like there was a story to be told there
but we don't even get a mention of it.
You just have to infer entirely.
It's like, well, why is he chained up to the machine?
And presumably it's because he didn't want to do this.
In fact, we see that.
He didn't want to do this.
We do see that when she forces him into engineer mode
or whatever it is.
And that kind of, because there's themes of faith
and themes of conscience and doing what's right
or not doing what's wrong,
even though your God tells you to do it,
there are those themes that could have been brought into it
and they were just largely, largely just there
as sort of a backdrop thing to ignore.
But I'm with you.
I hope we never see him again.
It's a big universe.
I hope we never see Tim Shaw again,
but I'm afraid they didn't kill him.
Well, I'm not sure we're going to see Tim Shaw again.
I certainly don't want to,
but I'm a little bit more optimistic than you
because I think the point about that ending was
they couldn't kill him.
The whole idea that you could have come up
with some convenient plot contrivance
that would have written him out
would have undermined the whole non-vengeance thing
in a much more serious way than the fact that actually
what they did was still a form of vigilante justice,
actually did.
But now he can escape,
and while there's life, there's hope.
And unfortunately, even without life,
There's hope for a villain to come back.
It's possible, but why?
His story is over.
I mean, I think one of the reasons that we thought it quite likely that he would be back
was that the Stenza story clearly wasn't over in The One Who Fell to Earth.
I feel like the Daleks story was over at the end of The Daleks.
Yes, all right.
But that's where you have the Daleks in that first season.
And it turns out that they are the the hit of the show.
So you bring back a sequel.
And I felt the Weeping Angels stories were over at the end of Blink.
It's the same kind of thing.
It's in a later season.
You bring something back because the original reception for it was so good.
Now, if it turns out that Doctor Who fandom is so alive with praise for the Stenza,
I don't think there's any stopping them.
They're going to return.
But I'm not sure that anyone was that much more impressed than we were,
unless I missed something.
That I'm not sure about.
I hope not.
It certainly...
I mean, the fact that Tim Shaw is back in this episode,
in the same series as the episode in which he was introduced,
is because that episode introduced him and left an unresolved storyline.
Speaking of returning villains,
They all recognized the cyberbots.
I do not recognize cyberbots.
Cyberbots?
Yes.
Oh.
The tin robots that were running around.
Were they in The Woman Who Fell to Earth?
No, but they were in something, weren't they?
Were they?
I can't remember.
I mean, the only place I can think of would be the ghost monument.
And those were sniperbots, and I didn't think they looked the same.
Like, I thought.
And I'll tell you something.
I tried Googling it, and I could not find it.
Because apparently the word cyberbots is used a lot in some other stuff.
So the noise ratio was way too high.
They should have given them an SEO-friendly name, yeah.
But I didn't recognize them.
But the second the first one showed up, they go, cyberbots!
I'm like, what? Do we know them?
Do we know them from somewhere?
If so, they were even less memorable than Tim Shaw.
Although I've got to tell you something.
When we saw Tim Shaw, he's so utterly generic.
I'm looking at it going, is that the same costume?
I don't remember.
He was kind of silvery and body droidy kind of looking guy.
Power armor-ish.
Wasn't that what he was wearing at the start when he appeared in that garage in The Woman Who Fell to Earth?
He was wearing some sort of a silvery, garment-y, power-y, sooty thingy.
Yes, absolutely.
I just, it's so generic that I couldn't remember when I saw him.
It's like, I guess that could be the same costume.
I don't remember.
It's so nothing.
I think it was.
It could be the Silver Power Ranger for that matter.
I don't know.
It's like, it just.
Well, yes.
But that is because he's a pretty standard issue type of villain.
To be fair, Daleks are pretty darn distinctive.
Oh, yeah.
The design is terrific.
Absolutely.
I can't find any reference to cyber, cyber bots in this episode.
They call them Sniperbots.
They call them Sniperbots in this episode?
Yes, yes.
I wonder if that's a...
Well, I think they are from the Ghost Monument.
Okay.
Maybe that's why I couldn't find them searching them,
but I would swear that the subtitles have been Cyberbots.
I'm looking at the subtitles.
Yeah, but you're looking at the BBC subtitles,
and I was looking at the iTunes subtitles.
I'll have to go back and look.
It's possible that...
I only managed to get through this one once.
Not because it was so bad.
I had to only get through one.
But I only had the time to give it the first watch.
So, but when they, the first time they.
See, I.
If they're sniper bots, that would explain why.
Well, their Stenzo technology.
Chibnall put the reference to the Stenzo in the ghost monument.
So he could save on costumes.
Well, so that he could explain why you see the same monsters
on whatever the planet is in that one,
because it's been ravaged by the Stenza.
Desolation.
And on Ranskor, because it's been colonized by old Mr. Timothy there.
I think we'll go with Timbo.
I think that was a...
Timbo, yeah.
Timbo.
I think that's a good one.
Timbo the Toothman.
Well, you know, you should take that down to the nearest calcium deposit box on the streets and turn that in.
I suppose that one fly over most of the listeners.
Look Around You.
Have you ever seen that?
I haven't.
You should absolutely look up, look around you.
It's a...
Might BBC?
You know what?
It might be a BBC show.
It might be ITV, but it makes fun of open university courses.
I know I should watch it.
Yeah.
The calcium deposit boxes.
In Britain, people take their teeth and drop them in these boxes for collection and grinding down.
They're made into high-quality calcium.
It's a weird, weird show.
But every time I see Tim Shaw, I think of that.
I think, wow, he's got a whole...
He could make some money there.
Let his teeth off.
All right.
Well, so how about the...
I also will say I really like the fact that they ended it without ending it.
They ended it about the same as they ended Survival.
It's funny.
I was reminded of Survival.
And I think the reason for it is because there's that voiceover they added to Survival
when they thought the show was going on hiatus.
And, you know, it has that kind of slightly poetic quality.
You know, whatever there is out there, Ace.
And it's that speech from the Doctor at the end of this.
that's why we keep looking keep your faith travel hopefully the universe will surprise you and it's
it's yes it's a it's a bit it's as if he knew they were going on hiatus till 2020
except it's not it's totally it's not you know we've been we've been talking about it like it's
some big episode to end the season it's the last episode of doctor who for a full 23 days
because that's how long we're gonna have to wait for the next one when the daleks come back hardly
hardly an age, they better not.
I have no idea.
Let's give credit.
I know it's not specifically about this episode,
but hasn't it been great not having returning monsters this year?
There's good to that,
but then there's the downside to that, Tim Shaw.
Well, there's no guarantee you wouldn't have got Tim Shaw
in between Dalek and Cybermen episodes.
Pating, that's it.
Not T'Ping, it's Pating.
Pating, yes.
there we go aka nibbler from futurama yes oh yeah yeah i guess so yeah well anyway yeah but
so it did come to an end and i mean if if i'm not pretending like they were can't saying there's
anything to it you know if they were ending the show they were canceling the show i would have
much preferred it to go off the air there like that i don't like the fact i hate the cliffhangers
and i think the cliffhangers are even worse when it came time to having a christmas episode i mean
they absolutely freaking destroyed um capaldi's proper last episode by having to take it on into
the christmas special you know the christmas special or now new year's special is is just
like this sort of growth that forms on it if you're if you're gonna carry on from one season
to the next do so but don't do it by way of the christmas special or the holiday special let's
call it the holiday special for the sake of argument but i don't like amending on cliffhangers
anyway um no it was a good ending it's a good ending just just do it and go into the christmas
or the holiday special and end it the same way maybe without the same speech but you know mission
saw back in the tardis take off to all we need we know the adventure continues or doesn't but
you know it continues but i yes i i i like the lack of i lack the lack of old villains because
They rely on them too much, particularly the Daleks.
Well, and the Cybermen too.
But at the same time, they didn't come up with any memorable ones this year.
No, but they've created the space for it.
Yeah, I guess that's true.
Besides which, I'm not sure that's entirely true,
because I think people are going to remember the Sentient Frog universe for some time to come.
Sadly, they're going to remember the Sentient Frog universe.
And if the Sentient Frog universe ever comes back, it will come back in the form of a frog.
despite the fact that that was, you know, just a momentary whim.
Yes, yes.
It's now cemented in...
It shouldn't come back in the form of a frog.
It shouldn't come back, I think, not because I didn't like it,
but because I don't think there's anything else to do with it.
But yes, I agree that it would be a mistake
to have a whole series of frog sequels.
Yeah, so that's what we remember from the Chibnall era.
The frog in the chair, Kermit.
There are worse legacies.
I suppose so.
I don't believe that I have anything else.
I have very little else, except I think it deserves a word of praise
that this episode is unashamedly filmed in a quarry.
I mean, a proper Doctor Who quarry.
This could have been filmed in the same place as Death to the Daleks
or Time and the Rani.
It was that kind of quarry.
And it looked ace.
Really good.
I appreciate that it was in a quarry.
Yes.
Uncle along with that.
I think they need, well, I don't know if they need more quarries.
But it was great.
It's a nod to the roots, I think.
And I like that.
You know, there's a good, I think perhaps Ben and I had this discussion once.
But I mean, I think when you're doing production of a television show, particularly in the older days,
you do have to work around what's available.
And I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination,
having only been to the United Kingdom once,
but we drove around up to Scotland
and around the east and west sides and whatnot.
And there's not a whole lot of places that you'd look at and go,
wow, alien desolate landscape.
You only say that because you live in alien desolate landscape.
Exactly. That's exactly right.
And if you were making a TV program here, you would have a hard time finding lush jungle.
And, right?
I mean, it is what it is.
This is why so much American television, people have the wrong impression of so much of America
because all of it was shot in California, which has its own unique look and feel to it.
And for so many decades.
And so I, you know, I don't begrudge Dr. Who its quarries.
Those are pretty desolate looking.
Maybe, you know, sometimes in, say, I don't know if it was Death to the Daleks.
No, it wasn't Death to the Daleks.
It was the, maybe it was Death to the Daleks.
I don't know, which is the one that came after the frontier in space?
Oh, oh.
Right, where they had the Ogrons and they went to that planet and they were in the quarry
and they didn't bother to remove the roads.
It wasn't Planet of the Daleks, was it?
That might be Planet of the Daleks.
Well, no, that was Spiridon, the jungle planet.
Yes, no, that was definitely Spiridon.
You're quite right.
And yet, Wikipedia, its frontier in space is followed by Planet of the Daleks.
Okay, they went there in frontier in space.
That's it.
They went to the planet of the Ogrons in frontier in space.
Right.
Yes.
So that's why I was thinking.
That's where the Daleks make their appearance at the end.
And then the Doctor goes to the planet of the Daleks.
Yes.
Popping on the court.
Yes.
That's an incredibly poor use of a quarry.
That's a very long detour to get to.
That's a very poor use of a quarry because, you know, they might as well have just left the quarry equipment out.
It looks so much like a quarry.
At least here, it looks like a shattered planet, a desolate shattered planet.
So that's what you do with it.
The time you spend and the money and the effort.
Yes, it is.
And it's using it in the right way.
And it's being willing to do it even after it's become something of a joke that Doctor Who gets filmed in quarries.
So good on them.
I think next that they should intentionally make a wobbly set.
They should go to a planet where they go to a planet where the aliens build basically light frame wobbly plastic walls for their buildings.
So that everything they touch wobbles.
You can't get through it because it's like super alien plastic.
But nonetheless, they wobble all the time.
I think I'm going to, does Chibnall have Twitter?
I need to submit that idea to him.
Totally needs to do that one.
Let's get them all out of the way right now.
All right.
Okay, well, this is it for the season series proper,
but we will be back for the New Year's special,
which name is Resurrection?
No, no, no.
Resolution.
Well, I hope they solved that.
yeah it's the res
oh
oh darn it
resolution of the Daleks
I wish I hadn't thought of that
I really wish I had crossed my mind
they're gonna bring those Daleks back
I know they're gonna bring those Daleks back
they're not gonna resist bringing the damn Daleks back
Chibnall will have kept his word
I told you we're not bringing back
any old villains this series
yeah
Yeah, well, it's fair.
He did.
So.
Fair game.
Whatever's next.
Fair enough.
Yeah.
Didn't break his word.
He's made it through to the end.
All right.
Well, Simon, thank you for joining me.
It's a pleasure, as always.
And listeners, I do hope you'll join us all again next time on Fusion Patrol.
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