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 a special happy new year's edition of fusion patrol uh for for our patreon
subscribers but for everyone else it's probably a march episode of fusion patrol but anyways it's
resolution, the Doctor Who New Year's special. I do want to say just two things before I get into
my recap. The first is I just watched the episode and I mean literally just watched the episode and
I have determined that the quality of my recaps varies depending on how much time I've had to
edit them and think about them. So I haven't even read my own recap yet. That's one. And two,
I just wanted to say that a few weeks ago in one of the podcasts, I and Simon were having a discussion and I made an assertion, an assertion, assertion that this episode should be called Resolution of the Daleks.
Because I was guessing, and this is what I want to stress, I truly was guessing.
I was not privy to any kind of spoilery info.
I was basing it on the same kind of wild ass speculation that I was doing with the whole
Morpath Jetson thing in the Almost Tomorrow People episode where we thought it was the
master and it was totally wrong.
In this case, I was basing it on the weird wording of Chibnall's, we don't have any returning
villains in this year's shows.
That sounded like an abnormal way to phrase it.
So I was surprised, not expecting it.
Let's put it that way.
So I just want to say that we don't intentionally do spoilers on this show.
That's the point I'm getting at.
It was not my intention to be spoilery.
It was my intention to make sure that you understood.
I was just taking a wild theory, crazy guess that didn't really expect to pan out.
Sadly, it panned out.
And the recap goes as follows.
In the ninth century.
I just want to say hello, everybody.
Oh, hi, Simon.
Did I forget that?
It's me.
Hello.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I'm here too.
Simon's here. I'm sorry.
Hello, I'm Eugene.
And I'm Simon.
Welcome to guesting on the Eugene Show.
Yes!
I feel bad now.
I feel really bad.
It's a new year. Everything's changed.
We've been off this for a while.
I just want to say we have not recorded for a little bit.
So I'm out of the swing.
I haven't got my sea legs on land yet.
So, sorry.
Sorry.
Would you like to read the recap?
No, no, I was just worried the listeners might think that there had been funding cuts and the other hosts had been axed.
Yes, this is also part of our no-deal Brexit.
Let's try that recap again.
Thank you for reminding me, Simon.
In the 9th century, based on the context of this story, somewhere that might be in England,
epic armies come together to battle the most deadly foe the planet Earth has ever faced.
They prevailed, and they follow up their victory with possibly the dumbest plan in the history of the universe.
The body of their slain foe is cut into three parts, sent to the three corners of the Earth,
where a lone guardian will sit on the remains for all eternity,
making sure that, hell, I don't know what they were actually expecting,
but they sat there for centuries.
Except for that one guardian who got killed.
And the deadly remnants just lay beside the road,
unmolested for so long that it got covered up in situ
and preserved for our new archaeologist friends in Sheffield to dig it up.
And on New Year's Day 2019, they reanimate the body,
which promptly teleports the other bits back together
and forms into a squid-like thing.
The doctor picks up an earth alarm of alien activity and tracks it where she and the gang are on the trail of the enemy,
which turns out to be a Dalek.
Sounds casing.
The Dalek has taken the body of the female archaeologist and is using it as a makeshift transport machine in order to take over the earth.
As it attempts to collect parts to further its mission of taking over the earth,
Ryan's dad shows up for some heartwarming family holiday special fodder.
He's apparently an engineer peddling microwave ovens door to door.
I didn't catch the brand name, but I think it was Chekhov's gun microwaves and plot devices.
Between raiding a high-tech firm collecting alien technology and a scrap merchant's farm,
the Dalek, using the female archaeologist's strong arms and some mean blacksmithing skills,
builds a new Dalek casing.
Next, the Dalek proceeds to a major communications hub to send a signal to the fleet.
With Ryan's dad's help and his wicked microwave skills, they defeat the Dalek's plan, mostly.
But the Dalek escapes and takes Ryan's dad, blackmailing the Doctor into returning him to Skaro in the TARDIS.
The Doctor tricks the Dalek by opening up the TARDIS to a supernova.
But it looks like Ryan's dad will die too, until Ryan can overcome his dyspraxia and hold his father's hand,
saving him from being sucked into the supernova.
With that, the Earth is saved, and the gang leave.
Resolution of the Daleks.
Resolution, just resolution.
Were there opening credits?
No.
Okay, okay.
That's part of the problem with not getting to watch it twice.
It's like by the time I got to the end, I go, wait, I haven't had the opening credits yet.
Or have they?
Did I forget them?
Because I did miss the whole supernova thing.
The fireworks at the beginning.
They cut to that scene and I reached over to drink a sip of tea.
And when I looked back, it was on their reaction shots.
And I never saw whatever it was they were looking at in space.
So, which I thought was odd.
And I didn't feel like rewinding it because I didn't have time.
So, I'm hoping to catch that.
And I'm hoping it's as spectacular as they describe it.
I was hoping for the return of pre-titles,
but actually the whole thing ended up being pre-titled
for a reason that I don't understand.
But you can confirm that there were no opening titles
because the credits that normally go in the opening titles were at the end.
I saw that, yeah.
By the time I'd given up on the fact that we weren't going to get opening titles,
I was like 99% certain that Chibnall had lied about the title of the episode
and it was actually going to be called Resolution of the Daleks after all,
but he didn't want to put the spoiler in.
I hadn't thought of that.
I couldn't think of any other reason,
but it turned out still to be Resolution, so I don't know.
I'm not sure what the title referred to.
Is it Resolution of Ryan and his dad?
That's my only thinking in terms of this,
because the Dalek story itself wasn't really about,
Well, it wasn't really about resolution, though, whether it's ever been about resurrection or revolution or revelations or anything else.
I don't know.
Or remembrance.
That's got to be the worst of the bunch.
The resolution.
I mean, the whole I think it was meant to be about Ryan, his dad.
That didn't feel like a storyline that was actually resolved to me.
No, it it it was.
something that had been hanging over the show
in the sense that
there had been numerous references to Ryan's
dad and particularly the fact
that he didn't turn up for Grace's funeral
but what we
actually got in this episode was
he turned up and Ryan was
pissed off at him but Ryan
still loves him which he kind of
did before didn't he because you know
that well he wouldn't be hurt by him if he didn't
yeah and that's sort of how it goes with
parents you do and
you are however much you may not want to and yeah as you say that's that's the reason that that
ryan was hurt by him so dad turns up and says a few inadequate things and ryan says those are
inadequate things and dad goes well you're right um and in that supernova moment we get that yes
ryan loves his dad but like i say we knew that already and so what actually was resolved here
we're not saying that dad still isn't
totally inadequate
except for his
microwave skills with a Z
oh dear
I thought of it as Chekhov's microwave
in the first scene
so I'm glad you had that too
and if anyone didn't get it then
when they actually lumbered into
the TARDIS with the microwave for no
particular reason, surely they'd have got it by then
yeah
this means something
This isn't just a microwave and an oven.
It's a microwave and an oven and a plot device.
Woohoo.
The floor wax.
It's a shoe polish.
I can't remember what the...
No, never mind.
Yeah, yeah.
So let's...
Okay, I will just throw out.
It could be the resolution of the Battle of Hope Valley,
finally, after all these centuries.
But even a Dalek invasion in the 9th century
had to be finally fixed by the doctor in the end.
But let's talk about the bit with Ryan and his dad,
Because there were a couple things that did actually stand out to me.
And the first was I was genuinely impressed with Graham in this episode.
He has every right to be pissed off at Aaron and treat him badly.
And yet he didn't.
He tried helping with the box of memories and the words.
He is a genuinely kind and nurturing human being.
And it shows beautifully in here, even knowing all the hurt that Aaron has caused.
He also understands that, you know, without some sort of resolution, he can't, you know, he can continue to hurt Ryan.
And he is, yeah, OK, so he's helping Aaron partially because he's helping Ryan or he's trying to help Ryan.
But I think he actually just genuinely is a nice guy.
No, I think he is.
I mean, I don't think there's been any episodes where I haven't been impressed by Graham.
So he is.
I also hadn't.
And this may be something I missed and didn't pick up before.
But I hadn't realized that Ryan's dad was Grace's son.
It was never it was never clear to me whether Grace was Ryan's maternal grandmother or paternal grandmother.
Oh, yeah, I think it was a discussion I had with Ben.
We went over that in one of the earlier episodes.
And Ben was convinced and he gave me a good reason.
And I can't remember what it was, that it was it was definitely Grace's son.
Yeah. But I was unsure at the time.
You know, clearly, clearly, clearly.
Well, I don't think it was very clear.
And it is now.
I think that probably does make a difference in the sense that it would make Grace's relationship with Aaron more complicated in this.
in that it would be easier to all-out hate the kind of useless, drop-out man who married her beloved daughter,
but harder to hate your useless, drop-out son.
And so, obviously, because he meant something to Grace, he obviously means more to Graham.
But I think that on its own doesn't account for the way Graham behaves, I think, as you say.
It's because Graham is a proper, straight-up, decent guy.
He tells Aaron straight that he's not family just by swanning in and feeling entitled to be.
It's how he acts.
And yet, when it comes down to it, the way Graham acts, it's not just forgiving.
Yeah, like you say, he tries to help him.
Yeah, he's just genuinely trying to help.
And I will say, even though Graham slams the door in his face in the first sequence, right?
It's the doctor who scoriates him.
for being awful.
You know, Graham is more forgiving than the doctor in that scene.
Yes.
Or Yaz, although Yaz doesn't have a lot to say there.
But I thought that was an interesting portrayal of the character
when he comes in.
I also want to ask about Ryan's father.
The other thing that occurred to me when we saw the microwave
was that they were trying to play up Rose's dad there.
Always owning a tank, always trying to come up with a get-rich scheme, right?
But because we really don't know much about his dad.
He's a flippin' engineer.
Are they playing against stereotype there?
I mean, typically, the type of character that they're portraying here, you would think he would be a bit of a layabout.
But this is a guy, apparently, pretty damn well trained, schooled.
And yet, Ryan is not.
It just, I mean, it absolutely happens.
I don't mean to say that in any other way.
I was surprised by them making him more than just a guy who works in an Amazon warehouse, like Ryan, or who's always on a shift, like the guy's in the Only Fools and Horses.
That's what I was thinking of all the time.
Although I was kind of unimpressed by the storyline as such, I did think they did a reasonably good job in portraying Aaron because they didn't do the kind of obvious, slightly one dimensional things that are often a part of these kind of storylines where you have a character who is basically completely feckless and unlovable.
And he wasn't like that. You didn't immediately see him on screen and think, I hate, hate, hate him. You get that. I mean, it's important that Graham slams the door in his face straight away because you get that the characters you know and you like do not like him and there must be a reason for that.
But it's not immediately obvious why that is. And I think that's important in the sense that it gives some depth to the character that there are reasons why Ryan does care about him and does care what he thinks, even if he's actually felt terribly let down by him as a father over the years.
And I also think the way they could have resolved this, if they'd wanted it to be more of a resolution, would have, again, been the kind of very obvious ways of, you know, if not having him being some completely awful person who they, you know, they sent packing, they could have had him be kind of absolved from his deficiencies by sacrificing himself in that final scene.
I was seriously balancing between, you know, is Ryan going to save him in the end or is he going to sacrifice himself to save Ryan?
And I could not tell which way it was going to go.
Well, I would have thought that would have been quite a tiresome and unsatisfactory way.
It would have provided resolution, but it wouldn't have felt in keeping with the way in which they have handled characters with a bit more complexity in this season.
And the fact that they have characters with a good side and a bad side, just because they have a bad side of some sort, doesn't mean that they automatically die before the end of the episode.
I'm going to skip to the, well, we're on that scene, so we'll talk about, there is a resolution, two potential resolutions to this episode.
that I would have liked better for a variety of reasons.
Both of them would involve Graham grabbing the other hand of Aaron and saving him.
Yeah, that would be interesting.
That, you know, there are two ways you could play that.
Ryan could be saving his dad and it's not enough,
and Graham would be the one to step in.
I can absolutely see that.
And it shows, again, that character of the man trying to bridge the two of them.
And the alternative could be for Graham to have been the first one to step in.
And, you know, if Ryan is not yet ready to forgive, learning that from Graham in that sort of parent-child mode,
learning from the example of the dad of Graham, who he sees more of a father figure than his own dad.
And both of those would have been more satisfying endings to me.
What was not satisfying for me in any way, shape, or form is after he walks over there and hands him a hand and hangs on for a few seconds,
That he, not bad for a kid with dyspraxia.
You had to remind us of that.
You're completely and absolutely non-existent disability that you have throughout the entire series.
You had to remind us that this could have been difficult for you to grab your dad's hand.
I'm still wondering where they're going with that.
I don't think they're going anywhere.
I think they are just reminding people that it is difficult for him.
I will say one other thing about the dad, the Ryan dad thing.
The scene where they sit in the cafe and dad starts the line, something to the effect of,
I know that your mom's, your grand's death have been hard on both of us.
And the instant that word was out of his mouth.
Well, the next thing Ryan said was, I don't care how you feel.
I said those exact same words, perhaps a little more colorfully.
But that was exactly the comeback that that man needed at that moment.
I don't give up about your feelings.
It's not about you.
This is about how you hurt me, not about how these other events affected both of us.
And so I look at that scene, which is full of traitness in a way.
I mean, how many times do they sit down and the person says, well, what do you want me to say?
Well, you could start by saying I'm sorry.
And they say, I'm sorry.
Well, obviously that's not a big deal.
I just told you to say you're sorry.
You say you're sorry.
That conversation will never lead to forgiveness
because that conversation has to be backed up with actions,
and actions take time,
and you can't do that in the course of sitting there in the room, right?
But as it goes, it wasn't badly written.
No.
It felt relatively genuine, yeah.
The actual scenes, and the more you talk about them,
the more I kind of think, yeah, there was some really good stuff in this.
The actual scenes themselves were well-written and well-constructed.
The character interactions there were great.
It was more the overall, where that was going with Dad
and the need to come to some kind of resolution within the 60 minutes
without actually finding any real resolution.
It felt to me a bit unsatisfying and it wouldn't necessarily have done so if I thought this was something that was going to be picked up in a future episode.
But I don't think that's the case.
I think the whole point about this being resolution was that it was the story of Ryan's dad.
So is Ryan's dad out from now on or is...
I don't see there's any reason for us to see him again.
Because I've wondered about this. His dad, obviously there were some, I hate using the word unresolved issues with Ryan and his dad. And as you say, they've been sort of hanging over the story. But I've always felt that they've been hanging over the story so that we can explore the Graham-Ryan dynamic.
more so than exploring the Ryan dad dynamic.
And in much the same way as that Ryan's mom's death
is part of this whole equation.
But I don't expect any time to be popping in
and meeting Ryan's mom,
although why not?
It's a time machine and that seems like the thing they do.
But-
It's a thing RTD would do.
Absolutely.
Well, we already did it with Demons of the Punjab with grandma.
So-
So, you know, is he a resource when they pop back down on Earth in the future?
And that leads me to the question of, what about Yaz's family?
I mean, she walked out on them in, what, Arachnids in the UK?
And didn't even say goodbye.
And that's the end, really.
I mean, we sat in a room with her grandmother at some point.
Well, the rest of her family were there in Demons of the Punjab, weren't they?
I thought that was during a flashback when she was talking about stuff in her memory.
And she was remembering a time when the family had been there.
Yes, the family was there.
Or some of the family was there.
But I don't think, I didn't think it was in the part of the story, the timeline that we saw.
I mean, at the end, yes, when she's talking to her gran, that's obviously in the present now.
But the others weren't around at that point.
So I don't know.
I just, it's weird that they even waste their time on Ryan's dad.
But whatever, you know, I didn't like RTD's insistence on coming back for the family.
I understand the logic of it because, you know, Martha, Rose, their family are part of them.
They aren't just free agents.
They aren't orphans like Nyssa that walk off and or Adrick that just, I got nothing.
So I'm out of here.
But I still, I still, I mean, to me, the emotional impact of that scene in Aliens of London,
where the Doctor realises he's come back 12 months too late.
To me, that's the essence of what he was doing,
which is grounding.
Doctor Who hadn't, up to that point,
it hadn't really been about ripping people out of their lives.
It hadn't been about how, you know,
when something as wonderful and as incredible
as travelling through time and space comes along,
you actually give something up.
make a sacrifice in in in going along with that because essentially from our point of view the
lives of every companion to the doctor began at the moment when they met the doctor and we cared
very little about what they'd done before you know they might have been a let's say a computer
programmer but damn they're not going to show any sign of having been one once they've met the
doctor and been whirled off into the time vortex and so i correct 10 points um that so that's that's
like about the way in which rose at least was was grounded in the powell estate and after that i
guess it felt like it wasn't as necessary and i don't think it was as important to the subsequent
companion yes it changed something in the makeup of the show well okay so yes i i will agree the
bit where they come back in aliens of london and we get to see the impact of the doctor taking
somebody away was worthy of a story worth telling. Absolutely. That was new, that was fresh,
that was Doctor Who looking at itself and reflecting on what might really happen in the
world. And that's part of why I said, I see why Russell T. Davies did it. Subsequently,
I didn't really need to see any more of Rose's mom and Pete, because I don't think at that point,
it just it just didn't really well i thought father's day was again an interesting it did
have a take on what would what would you do if you had a time machine go see my grandmother
well yeah that that would that would say but you know it for that particular character the most
important thing to them is to go back and and to see their dad so and i think that you know that
that story the other part of that story is the illusions that you have about someone who's not
their parent that you've never don't know right i mean that that was fine with that um it just was
an over-reliance on coming back to that uh that i don't want to see with ryan's dad um at the flip
side of it it was the whole clara thing where she just come back two seconds later well i hope not
anyway i think i think i think ryan's dad is almost the opposite of what we were seeing in
with Pete Tyler or any of that stuff
in the sense that he was someone
who Rose was desperate to meet,
whereas Ryan's dad,
well, maybe Ryan,
well, Ryan certainly was keen to see his father,
for example, at the funeral,
but he clearly isn't that desperate to see him.
And if anything, this story was about it becoming clear.
But I think, you know, I think Ryan knew it already.
I think Ryan's development had occurred
over the previous 10 episodes,
But he had obviously grown up in ways that meant he no longer needed his dad in the way that had done when he'd been let down by him.
And I think that was a point Graham was trying to make.
And that was certainly something that his dad came to realize.
OK, one last thing on this.
Tangentially.
I can't figure out.
Well, the excuse of the eggs was pretty, pretty lame.
But there are two things that happen in this story that make me think, well, it's either just terrible, terrible writing or they're setting us up for something.
And I'm pretty sure it's the first part.
One, we show up.
The TARDIS takes them to Graham's house.
Basically the minute Ryan's dad arrives to knock on the door.
Pretty, pretty far-fetched coincidence.
And the TARDIS is traveling through 19 New Year's Eves.
And then it happens to pick up an alarm from Earth because they're in time and space.
There is no, it's not New Year's Eve everywhere.
Why did they have to pick New Year's Eve journeys for the day that the TARDIS picks up a New Year's Eve alert from Earth?
And that now makes me ask.
Because it's a New Year episode.
I know, but then that makes me ask this question.
Could the TARDIS, because they're in all of time and space, right?
They were nowhere near Sheffield 2019 when they picked up that signal.
They were neither going there nor coming from there.
Could the TARDIS have picked up that signal at any time for any of the previous doctors?
Is there something going on where the TARDIS is plucking things out of time and space when it feels it's the right time to do it?
because I guess if you think about it,
you could answer all of the distress calls in the universe
one after another in any order you want.
We have thought about it in the sense that I think this comes perilously close
to what we spent a good two episodes thrashing over
when we discussed time travel in Doctor Who
because Doctor Who isn't equipped to do time travel.
There are no ground rules about it.
And this kind of stuff doesn't make sense.
It just slammed to the forefront on this one.
and it started with the New Year's Eve stuff
because I'm like, wait,
it's New Year's Day special, fine.
Land on Earth on New Year's Day and go,
oh, it's New Year's Day.
The bit where we've just been through 19 New Year's Days.
Wouldn't it have been funny if they had said
we've just been through 10 or 11 Christmas days.
Now we're going to do New Year's Day,
which would have been a great self-referential joke
about their Christmas specials.
And then suddenly they're doing a New Year's special, right?
They could have been doing anything.
They could have been doing American July 4th celebrations and suddenly they get this.
Oh, it's New Year's.
OK, that was all.
Anyway, I throw that out there.
We should probably talk about the Daleks.
Dalek.
The Dalek.
Dalek.
Sorry.
I didn't ask.
What do you think of this episode?
Along with not telling you you were here.
I didn't ask what you thought of the episode either.
Well, OK.
I like the score.
There was a score?
You're talking about the music.
I can't believe you didn't notice the music in this one.
It was actually really good.
No.
I mean, I have only watched it the once, but...
And prominent.
No.
Well, I think that's fairly amazing.
Not that it was inappropriate, and I stick to my point that that's when you notice music the most.
But it was quite loud and, you know, in the exciting moments, a little bit bombastic, but not in a bad way.
I will listen for it when I watch through with the family a little later today.
They haven't seen it yet.
Oh, no, I didn't.
I don't know.
Do we have talked about the score at all on the podcast?
I can't remember.
I know.
I know that you keep insisting that you don't notice the music.
I don't notice it.
Very, very rarely.
I have felt in certain places that the music is kind of it doesn't it it's almost it counterpoints the drama.
And I feel it should be, it should almost be unnoticeable because it should be following the grain of the episode.
And in doing that, it enhances it without necessarily drawing attention to itself.
You said, you just said something a minute ago about possibly when you notice music, it's inappropriate.
I guess I don't agree with that. And I'll cite James Bond films for an example.
I could cite Star Trek, the original series, but I'll cite the James Bond films.
Because when he is about to jump off a cliff or car chase or something, the James Bond film theme does not feel inappropriate.
It adds.
And it's very prominent.
That's going with the grain.
That is absolutely going with the grain.
Because it's a racy, up-tempo, brassy kind of piece of music.
And that's what you want when you've got a car chase going on.
And you're caught up in the car chase.
And it's loud.
It's action.
So the music has to be loud for you to even register it.
And it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be in the forefront
because you're so caught up in the kind of adrenaline-packed thrills
that you're seeing on the screen.
If you had that kind of music during a quiet moment.
This isn't what I think Sagan Akinola has done, actually.
It's not so much loud noises in quiet scenes
so much as slightly modern electronic music in 1950s America or whatever.
So because the music is stylized and it's in a scene where the style doesn't fit,
you notice the music.
Okay, I will go back and listen.
You might like the music, but it doesn't necessarily enhance what you're watching.
Now, I will say this.
If I haven't said this, watching the show, there's been like three instances
and I can only name two of them.
There was the bit where he,
Brian's walking through the,
in the woman who fell to earth
in the, looking for the bike.
There was a kind of an ominous noise sound there
that I noticed.
And there was absolutely every time
Nazi boy and Rosa showed up,
there was this,
just over and over again,
absolutely comically overplayed villain beat.
Those two times I noticed it.
And I don't dislike the theme.
The example in Rosa was not well used, that music.
I don't dislike the theme.
I like it a lot better than the Rad accordion they played for the 13th Doctor,
or the 12th Doctor.
And, well, he's the 13th because of the War Doctor,
and this is really the 14th Doctor,
and we're not going to get into that one.
But I never liked...
It's called the Doctor.
Yeah, well, War Doctor.
The Doctor.
It's just a title.
War, the...
Same difference.
Anyhow, so I like the theme.
I like the callbacks to the original theme.
There's little bits off that don't rankle right with me,
but nothing like the Rad accordion.
And I heard an interview or Daco or something with the composer,
and during that they were playing some of his music.
I really liked it.
I mean, it's sort of synth electronic soundscape stuff.
I was enjoying it.
I was listening.
I like that.
That's kind of some of the music I would listen to.
Just not hearing it in the show.
So, which is odd.
It surprises me.
I'm looking forward to having the CD and listening to it.
Because some of those cues that I thought didn't fit with the scenes that they were paired with,
I'll enjoy them listening to them on their own.
And like this episode, where I thought it was all actually very effective.
You know, just as with Murray Gold's music, I will enjoy listening to that on its own, too.
okay we got derailed well i was just trying to find something i liked about the episode okay
that answers the question
there were a few things that annoyed me about the episode i don't want to be entirely negative but i
kind of didn't and i i feel like i'm going against the grain here because
almost everything that i've read in the sort of 24 hours since it's been aired
has been either reasonably positive or wildly enthusiastic.
Huh.
So...
Wouldn't have gone that far.
It's like, is it just because you and I are just not that into Daleks
and the rest of the world thinks they're the best thing since sliced bread?
Might be, but I don't think so.
I think this was kind of not a stellar episode.
It wasn't horrible, but it just wasn't...
It wasn't horrible.
but it wasn't, I don't actually dislike Daleks, and in fact I would happily place Genesis of the Daleks up there,
along with everyone else of course, as being one of the show's finest hours, or finest two and a half hours,
and the concept of the Daleks, this mutated creature bred out of a war, arguably out of necessity,
Although, you know, it takes an extreme form of eugenics too.
So I may be not going to say this, but you know what I'm saying.
It's born out of a terrible situation.
And it's this creature that rides around in this formidable tank.
And there's something worth exploring around that.
What I dislike is when they try to take the, you know, the idea, well, not really even the idea anymore, when they try to take the Dalek concept, this thing that has become incredibly popular, but do a story that isn't like every other story with the Daleks in it, they can't, they often can't.
I mean, obviously, Genesis of the Daleks was intended to be a different type of story, and it was incredibly successful.
But often what ends up happening is they take something that is intrinsic to what I think of as the Dalek concepts,
like the fact that, you know, the mutant inside the machine is fundamentally helpless,
although I guess it can cling on to someone's face like Genesis.
But suddenly, in order to make that work, they have it with this magical ability to take over someone else's body and control their body and mind.
Or, you know, and for reasons that I don't entirely understand, it has been chopped into three pieces after it's dead.
And it has the ability to regenerate itself, not only regenerate itself under ultraviolet light, but then somehow literally to transport the other parts of it from other corners of the globe.
I mean why didn't they burn the parts why why yeah I I don't understand I don't understand why
why they add these I do understand why they go oh we're going to have it control someone's mind
and body but that's just because it's bloody difficult writing a story about an alien it's
a lot easier if that alien can take over a human because then you can have a human actor portray it
and a load of your problems disappear.
And that's why loads and loads of alien stories
are about possession.
It's boring already.
And I'm not really all that convinced
of the threat of this Dalek
because he's going to take over
seven billion people on earth
and he's going to beat them all.
A bunch of tribesmen in the ninth century
took him down.
Dalek, not that impressive.
We had the kind of the prologue explaining that it was a stupendous war.
It was a stupendous war for the ages.
For the age.
Well, yes.
And so you wouldn't have expected that kind of army to have to be amassed in order to overcome an opponent whose troops number won.
Which they apparently burned in a ponfire somehow.
somehow they they managed to build sticks over him and burn him in a bonfire based on the
illustrations it's quite it's quite hard to imagine how how it would have happened but if
you don't think about it too hard it's it's kind of like i i actually thought there was a real threat
from uh now what what's the dalek story what was it doomsday where the three daleks turn up from
the void yeah army of ghosts army of ghosts that might that might have been it that's part one i
think well they they the daleks only turn up at the end um and it's it's through doomsday that
they start bitch slapping these cybermen who are enormously numerous and they laugh at the daleks
going haha there's only three of you and the daleks wipe them out pretty much and it's that
I can believe that one Dalek can be a serious threat.
So I could believe that a Dalek would put the willies up the doctor,
particularly if she thought that it was about to signal to a Dalek fleet.
And, you know, how could you stop it?
How could you defeat it?
But that's a Dalek in its casing.
Okay, let me, yeah, this is, going back to the 9th century,
what was the Dalek's plan there?
Call the fleet?
well we're told it's a it's a reconnaissance dalek so it's it's basically lands on the planet it says
primitive humans call in the fleet why didn't it do that why did it fight a battle is it because
it didn't have the technology to steal to call i again none of that that whole ninth century thing
good question so and then how much of that i mean i would have made it i quite like the i'll admit
now i quite like the idea of there having been a dalek on earth in the ninth century but you could
have done that with you know a damaged dalek somehow spinning into earth orbit and crashing
as a meteor and you know tribesmen come and yeah oh yeah okay and it what it did occur to me that
dalek was one of the stories that they were trying to do trying that what dark what dalek did not
in my opinion the most perfect story but it definitely achieved making daleks scary for a
whole new generation because it did it did do that thing of one dalek being a serious threat
and that's one depleted dalek in chains and part of that's obviously you know the doctor's reaction
and everything but it was it was taking taking a villain who had become a bit of a laughingstock
and re-imbuing it with a kind of real genuine sense of threat yes i if for whatever you can
say about Dalek, good, bad, or indifferent, in that particular aspect of it, it made Dalek seem
like a credible fighting force, whereas it has not been a credible fighting force for a very long time
prior to that. Oh, I've thrown a hat over my eye stock. My vision is impaired. I cannot see.
Exactly. Exactly. Part of that, as the Doctor laments, you know, I never seem to be able to
get rid of them. And part of that is because they've come back almost every season.
Well, not in 2018, though. No Daleks in 2018.
A year without Daleks, let that be remembered.
2019, the only thing we get for Doctor Who is Daleks.
Well, I mean, I said I wasn't keen on the episode, but I suppose I've got to admit it's the best episode we've had in 2019 and will get.
So there we are. But yes, it's familiarity breeds contempt and all of that.
And so it's worth trying to do something different.
But I wasn't convinced by this.
And even the question's an interesting one.
What happens if you, you know, if we had a story like Dalek,
with it falling damaged to earth,
or, you know, somehow being overcome by these tribesmen,
and the Dalek is, the casing is gone, the Dalek is on its own,
and it is more or less helpless.
How does it get out of that?
Because we have seen these kind of fearful monsters in so many episodes,
But how often has it been important that they are these kind of bionic creatures?
Because what's really scary about them is basically the casing.
It's fitted with these fearful, terrifying weapons.
And in numbers, Daleks seem to be completely unstoppable
because their casing is completely impenetrable and they have these weapons.
And yes, they will use them.
And that's part of the consciousness inside.
But if you take that away, are they still so scary?
Or are they, you know, if you have a Dalek without its casing and it is completely helpless, how will it react?
Has it got sufficient cunning and drive?
Because we're certainly told that it should have.
Has it got sufficient cunning and drive to somehow build itself a new casing?
But how can it do that?
You know, no hands, etc, etc.
And to me, it seems like crawling on someone's back and taking over their body.
That's a cop out.
Yeah, that is a cop-out.
And I am reminded of an episode, and I will let you tell me the name of it.
Colin Baker, Big Finish, Monastery, Daleks, Recreating Their Cases, Cover of the...
Order of the Daleks?
What is it?
Could it be Order of the Daleks?
Did it have, um...
Ah, the, uh, WAF.
Had a stained glass Dalek on the cover.
That's the one, Order of the Daleks, yes.
I've forgotten the companion's name.
It will come back to me.
Was it Evelyn?
no no that was jubilee which had a dalek in a stained glass window didn't it yeah it did they
like stained glass in the daleks i guess they do it was a great cover it's better cover than it
was a story i i was thinking i was thinking of that episode when i saw him trying to rebuild his
with blacksmith skills constant spark no order of the daleks no no that's much older than that
i don't think it's constant not flip who else has he had his constant uh we can check that
Put it in the show notes.
I find that hard to believe.
Constance is the military 1940s woman, right?
Correct.
Yes.
No, I don't think so.
I have trouble believing that.
But anyway, we'll carry on.
I was thinking of that, and I was thinking they did that better in that episode.
But again, it was mind control.
Yes.
But it was done differently.
It was true mind control through drugs or something, as I recall.
yeah you're you're quite right i had forgotten about that and i hadn't thought it was a particularly
good story but it it did do the same thing we'd seen in this in what i found a more interesting
way um and the other thing is obviously the doctor says some of there must be a reason that the dalek
went to that scrap yard and there's a line that makes it sound like some of the dalek casing was
there we never see any of that no we see him going to we see him it uh i don't know i yes i don't
know what gender the dalek is um lynn with her dalek going oh good was that her name i totally
you'll notice i ignored it in the recap because i honestly didn't pick it up through the course of
the one watching and i didn't have time to go back that that was that was her name okay so whether
whether we should refer to her as lynn when it's the dalek who's taken her over anyway
mkz industries or whatever it was called i got a bit distracted from what it was because it's the
welsh government building car park i don't tend to notice these things when i'm absorbed in the
story but anyway um when she went down there they went down there it went down there um and the gun
was there she then loaded in a load of other boxes into the car as well oh did she i didn't see the
other boxes i think we were supposed to assume that there was more than just that gun there
there were other bits of dalek bare parts oh okay that's possible i didn't i didn't see that
but then i didn't see the fireworks either so um that's that's completely believable um there is
the line where when the when it shows up at the scrapyard the guy says something like all that
stuff in there i purchased legally or something which made it sound like it was maybe some of it
It was not particularly, maybe it was the missiles.
I don't know what it was, but it made it sound like the guy was shady.
And I was thinking there must have been, you know, like the balls and the skirting or something.
Because I just don't believe that a human and a blacksmith could forge those with such precision that, you know, they have retracting rocket launchers in them.
And I also feel like...
It's kind of like the...
That would have taken days.
Sheffield steel sonic screwdriver.
Yes.
Should have taken days.
Seems to have taken minutes.
Yes.
It's an interesting idea that Dalek casing, as manufactured on Scarrow, is, we are led to believe by, I forget which of the numerous stories that have featured them, made out of Dalek amium, which is supposed to account for their incredible impenetrableness.
And it's a ore bonded polycarbonate armor.
Yes.
Was that from the Empire State Building one?
It was from Remembrance.
Okay.
Anyway, these are things that, well, the Dalek anium is in short supply on Earth.
They must have got it from somewhere in the Empire State one.
But the idea of having a kind of jerry-built Dalek from whatever material is around, and obviously Sheffield steel is not a terrible substitute.
I like the idea.
And actually, I thought the realisation of the kind of cobbled together Dalek looked pretty good.
But to me, that Dalek is not going to be as invincible as an original Scarra manufactured Dalek.
and I felt like maybe that should have been shown somehow.
There is the, frankly, when the tank pulled up,
I said, that's going to finish this thing
because it can't possibly be good enough
to withstand armor-piercing tank shells.
And the fact that it-
Because made out of terrestrial materials.
Right.
The fact that it deflected it instead of being hit
was the only saving grace to that scene.
That it managed to not get hit by the tank
because I really feel like that would have blown it into pieces.
Even if some of those pieces were invulnerable, the bits that were binding it together were vulnerable.
And it should have gone pop.
So, again, especially if some 9th century people could cook it out.
Maybe that's it.
Just to come back to...
Go ahead.
Well, I was just recollecting that you thought that there might be some Dalek stuff in that steelworks where the guy came out.
Wasn't it a steelworks?
Whatever it was.
Farm workshop thing.
Just scrapper.
And I was too distracted from what he was saying
by the way that he was reacting to seeing a police officer.
And I wondered if that came across to you,
because he told her, oi, clear off.
That's true.
If you see a police officer, that's not a normal reaction, is it?
I bought everything here legally, you get out of here.
Yeah, right.
It's not the way you'd phrase it.
And unless it was a police officer you knew,
and obviously she wasn't a police officer he knew,
Because, well, she's not a police officer.
So I was a bit thrown in that moment by the dynamics of that scene.
Obviously, it didn't last very long because he got exterminated.
But I hadn't registered that what he was talking about could be Dalek-related contraband, as it were.
So the other question that this raises to me is, has time been rewritten as such that this is the first Dalek invasion?
Or, you know, is...
Because it sounded like he was cobbling it together from his own shell.
From his own scraps.
And how do we know these weren't from Remembrance of the Daleks?
Daleks in 63, or...
Or the Battle of Canary Wharf.
Or Battle of Canary Wharf.
Or Day of the Daleks, if that ever even happened.
That's more questionable.
I think there was a small force of Daleks destroyed by unit.
Just not the... I don't know.
I don't remember what the outcome of that was, but yeah.
Yeah, it wasn't a great, it's not a great Dalek story.
Well, there's a couple.
I'll say this.
You're right.
The mutant inside should be weak, and it shouldn't be as formidable as this was.
We've seen in Into the Dalek, as an example, that it's not just a casing.
It's part of its brain, that it's wired into that thing in such a way that it needs that to do its thinking for.
it so without that how the heck did this dalek but i don't like the fact that it's oh it's a
reconnaissance dalek that's a special dalek would daleks really make special daleks i special weapons
dalek and i'm not convinced about the special weapons dalek you would think they would just
put that weapon on all daleks well bit unwieldy um so that was kind of iffy about this story i
don't like the fact that and this is starting with dalek i they big the daleks up huge there
they're most incredible geniuses they can work that out in seconds they're like they've never
really been that smart smart but i don't know i don't know that they were but they've now made
they were not very smart in the 80s they were they were smart in even back to the original
They could do things.
They had technology, but they were certainly not Time Lord level.
And I don't know.
I feel they missed a point by making them almost omnipotently powerful evil here, which is kind of what they've done.
I mean, that's because they've made the Doctor almost omnipotently powerfully evil.
Evil.
Well, sorry, powerful.
Evil.
Yeah, okay, evil.
Downright evil.
Destroying the universe.
Wiping out helpless, defenseless little Daleks with a microwave oven.
That's terrible.
Yeah.
So Daleks are problematic.
I would just be happy not to see them again or until somebody comes up with a truly original context and plot line for them.
I'd settle for that.
I think what I feel about the Daleks is that they need they kind of need their place.
What I particularly liked about Into the Dalek was that the Doctor was kind of thrown onto the fringes of a Dalek war.
And so rather than having the Daleks crowbarred into some new particular scenario in space and time, let's say Sheffield 2019,
you actually have the Doctor going into a situation which is, as it were, the Daleks on their home turf.
but it's it's and you you there could be some ongoing storyline the dalek conquest of some
large sector of the universe i mean the problem is with the time war they've sort of they've done
this and pretty much what else can you do up the daleks but it well i mean so if you look at genesis
of the daleks which is a good one to look at go watch it it's a good dalek story people um it's
a doctor like story the doctor is captured by davros davros realizes that he's a time traveler
and Davros asks him for information, demands information from him on all the Dalek defeats.
And the Doctor goes over a whole bunch of them, many of which don't sound like they have anything to do with him, right?
The forces of the universe are out there opposing the Daleks, and they win.
Sometimes they lose, sometimes they win.
The Daleks are a force to be reckoned with, but they are not an omnipotent force to be reckoned with.
And when they stepped up to the level where they are now the omnipotent force that the Time Lords can't take down, now we have a problem.
Of course, what you've got in Genesis is that they don't even know of the existence of life off of Skaro.
But by the time you've got the Time War, they have and can use time travel.
I think that's where it all went wrong.
I do.
When they got time travel.
When they got time travel, it probably was a problem.
Because it's been a problem for the Time Lords.
in telling stories, it gets even worse with the Daleks.
Because where was this?
Where did this Dalek come from?
Is it a pre-Time War Dalek?
It knows about the Doctor.
I don't know.
He's just confused.
Anyhow, let's see.
What else do we have?
They defunded Unit.
I already blew my joke about it being a no-deal Brexit thing from earlier.
Yeah.
I saw Gary Gillett make a comment about that.
He said it would have been better and funnier if they had said...
If they're going to do the Brexit thing, they should have been even more on the nose and just said that we'd voted to leave unit.
Yeah.
It was obviously just there as a gag.
Who was the gag against?
It might have been a funny one.
I couldn't quite figure that out.
A vote of our security partners.
Does that mean NATO?
Does that mean UN?
Does that mean the United States?
It's a no-deal Brexit gag.
It is.
Okay.
I wasn't entirely sure.
Because obviously the purpose of having it there was because having gone and set a Dalek episode on Earth in the early 21st century, they needed to have Unit in it.
Because otherwise you're there, as I was, going, why aren't you calling Unit? Why aren't you calling Unit?
So then they explained it, which should mean that I should be happy.
But Doctor Who fans, never happy.
No, never happy. You know what the Doctor should have been doing?
I'm not pleased to have Unit now written.
I mean, here's the problem with it.
Well, first of all, I think Unit has been one of the successful evolutions of Stephen Moffat's era.
I wasn't as keen on the RTD version of Unit, but under Kate Stewart and with Osgood, I really enjoyed Unit stories.
And Chris Chibnall wrote one of them, a very good one.
So, and in a similar way, I thought Moffat did a good job creating the cast of characters within the Paternoster gang,
which the Doctor could also go back and visit their time period.
You go to these different time periods and then head off into the universe, anytime, anyplace,
and know that you would be able to come back and pick up the story of Kate Stewart and Osgood or whatever.
So I particularly don't like being told something monumental has happened to this particular unit outfit,
particularly not since we're now about seven box sets into the big finish version,
and I've become even more invested in the characters.
But even so, even just with the television, I think if there is some drama going on where unit is being shut down,
and so that's a big deal.
I want to know what's happened to Kate and Osgood.
What are they doing about it?
And are we ever going to see them again?
Having it as a throwaway line, yeah, it's almost a funny gag.
I feel like...
I'm not laughing because I'm too busy feeling bereft.
I think that they were implying...
Applying is the wrong word for it.
I think they were saying outright that this is just a temporary shutdown.
That they've suspended them temporarily until, you know, this episode's over.
Until we have a people's website.
Until we need one.
Yeah, until we need them for the purposes of a story
instead of can't have them for the purposes of the story.
But the doctor would have just picked up the phone
and called Kate Stewart directly.
Yeah, I mean, that thought occurred to me.
I can get the gang back together.
How come she hasn't got a direct line
to Kate's mobile or whatever?
Or look in the directory or however you do that.
It would have worked with the RTD area unit
because the doctor didn't really know
any particular individuals.
just had he he had a connection with an organization that he had formerly actually
been employed by so although maybe everyone who he knew there had now moved on it'll make sense
for him to pick up the phone and see if there was anyone there but that's not the case now
the doctor the doctor is now personally associated with kifa and kate is the brigadier's daughter so
obviously he's not going to lose touch with her she's not going to lose touch with her
Consider the awesome implications of not funding the Black Archive.
Yes, which got a mention at least on screen.
Did it? In this episode?
The Dalek stroke Lynn was Googling or whatever.
It was a Black Archive webpage.
Okay. All right. Well, then I didn't see that.
But yeah, like where is all that stuff?
Did MDZ buy it all?
Maybe that's what happened.
Although you'd think they would have said that in the story.
Also, and clearly, you know, this is actually probably the most important thing.
This episode was set in 2019, on the 1st of January, in fact, completely unambiguously,
which means that we now have one date in the history of UNIT that can't be disputed.
UNIT were defunded prior to 1st of January 2019.
I don't know what that does to the rest of UNIT dating.
No doubt arguments will be raging all over the internet right now.
but we have one fixed point in time.
We have no fixed point.
Yes, we do.
Now, going back to the legend of the guardians of the,
whatever they were,
guardians of the galaxy,
or the guardians of the,
what did they call them?
The Order of the Guardians.
So they had a battle,
which called the Battle of Hope Valley.
They cut the Dalek up,
and they headed to three far-flung corners of the earth.
One was the Aleutian Islands, I think.
One was Siberia.
And the third guy got cut down on his way,
somewhere and he got cut down in Sheffield got cut down in Sheffield our archaeologist guy is
prior to them discovering anything particularly interesting about this guy is trying to make a
connection between him and the order of the guardians and the battle of Hope Valley which
to me makes it sound like the battle of Hope Valley must have occurred somewhere in that general area
otherwise you wouldn't leap to that conclusion right just like he's saying well we're not
expecting to find Richard III because not in Sheffield obviously but it must tie that battle
to somewhere in that general area.
So the Sheffield Guardian didn't get very far.
That's kind of what I took from it.
Well, we presume he wasn't going to Sheffield.
Well, presumably, yeah.
Maybe he was heading to South America.
Don't know.
But he didn't get very far,
and then some stray guy put an arrow in him
and didn't even bother to ransack the body for parts
or money or any meaningful reason for killing him.
I'm not saying you need a meaningful reason to kill somebody.
It'd be nice.
But, you know, shot him with an arrow and they drove off and they just left the body lying there.
And it literally lay there so long in the middle of a field that it somehow got buried in the very position it was laying in.
It looked like it was a road, didn't it?
Yes, it did.
It's like how many people between the ninth century surely must have driven past that, found the body.
And it also, you have to get buried somehow.
And his body would have rotted away.
Would the Dalek have rotted away?
The Dalek in the bag is being...
I'm not sure we know a lot about Dalek biology.
Well, we know it takes a little ultraviolet light,
which I think the sun puts out plenty of,
and it can teleport itself back together.
So problem solved.
Dalek should have been running around all those years ago.
And then, like I said,
I really thought this was the stupidest plot ever devised by man.
So they take the three parts of the body.
They don't try destroying them.
They cut them up.
They take them to three different ones.
They bury them two foot in the ground,
and then they sit down and wait.
And they're going to wait forever.
And generations, which use of the word generations
usually implies familial descendants.
How did they even have kids if they spend all their time
guarding that butt, that sack?
Like, do they bring him in first?
They might have done shifts.
It didn't seem like there was more than one.
I don't know
it's just the way it sounded like
this guy is going to go sit on this thing
all day and night
but they had to have kids
I'm not arguing this is a stupid plot
but if you're going to insist
there's only one of them
well I don't know
that's a darn good question
because it doesn't make much sense
or how did they get kids
there had to have been at least a support team
there had to have been people
how did they get their support team
we get one guy goes out to the aleutian islands and sits down on the aleutian island digs a hole
and goes okay now i have to stay here what does he wait for people to come to him and say hey
really important would you like to join my crazy quest what's this in here no how about not i i
don't know it just all of it was just really really badly thought out story plot it's like
Okay, well, the 9th century people were not great thinkers yet.
That's not even Dark Ages yet, is it?
That's pre-Dark Ages, or is it?
I still think you've got to be overlooking something here,
because why did they go to wherever they were going?
How did they go to wherever they were going?
Well, on a horse.
How did they get to the Aleutian Islands?
No, it wasn't the Aleutian Islands.
I'm sorry, it wasn't the Aleutian Islands.
It was, I don't know.
I don't know, was the caption not big enough for you?
well i you know went past and i was drinking tea i don't i didn't type it down lots of tea
i did not there must have been a reason for them to go there so they must have had
friends or relatives there who cooked for them and maybe him did the odd shift while they went
off to um do conjugal stuff i just i just feel like siberia i can believe i i can buy the siberia
The semi-tropical island just didn't really strike me as within the range of bringing together an army to battle a Dalek in England.
It felt more like I'm just going to go as far as I possibly can and then I'm going to get in a little canoe or whatever it is they had in the 9th century.
And I'm going to keep paddling until I bump into an island and that's where I'm going to sit.
I would have preferred continentally based locations.
uh you know go to china go to go to go to siberia go to india go go somewhere that you could get
maybe by land a little more convinced maybe even maybe maybe even africa way down south africa or
something but i just yeah yeah maybe slightly overthinking this it's what i do it's what i live
for over thinking tv shows well i'm glad i'm glad you found something in this episode to give you
such satisfaction uh let's see what else have i got on my notes um oh i should put in there i also
think that they could have added the opening credits and just deleted the scene with the
family that's internet went out that was not the most biting social satire i've ever seen
No, it wasn't. It would have been mildly amusing about 10 years ago.
Would they possibly be the winners of some contest? Get a scene in Doctor Who's New Year's special on Blue Peter, maybe? Could that have been a Blue Peter contest? Because I can't think of any reason to have that in that episode, unless that's Chris Chibnall's kids, or it's his family, or it's somebody who won a contest.
I don't think so. I think they went, the casting call must have been for the most miserable bunch of people they could possibly fight.
That could be Chris Chibnall's kids. I don't know.
Hey, Dad writes Doctor Who.
Now all the kids make fun of me at school.
Every week I go to school and the kids come in and go, you know, there is no way those people could have taken it to the illusion or whatever.
Right, fine.
Thanks, Dad.
I don't know that I have anything else on this episode.
I didn't hate it.
I really wish they'd do away with the holiday specials altogether.
I don't like them.
I don't think this was any different, really, from a run of the mill.
This could have been in the regular run of the show.
Yes, it could have, and it should have been the next week.
That's fine.
Well, they're selling it to me for a separate price on DVD and Blu-ray.
It's only been just over three weeks since the last one came out.
Right.
They sell it to you separately.
It's not part of the box set.
It used to be part of the box set.
It used to, and they stopped about Time of the Doctor, I think.
No, I've got Time of the Doctor on the box set.
I don't.
I have it as a standalone.
Maybe it's different in the U.S.
It might be.
They certainly, on iTunes, they sold this separately from the series.
This was another five bucks.
Twice Upon a Time isn't in the box set, apparently.
I haven't bought the box set yet.
Yes, that's one that's not.
I haven't bought that either.
And I can't bring myself to buy Twice Upon a Time if it's a separate release.
But I can't see they're going to include it with the regular Series 10 box.
Well, look what they did.
The tribulations of a Doctor Who fan.
Twice Upon a Time destroyed the ending of Peter Capaldi.
He had a fabulous out.
He had a fabulous regeneration scene destroyed by having to have a Christmas special.
Well, yeah, he didn't have to do it.
It could have been the next Doctor doing the Christmas special.
I thought when they had the only time they had a Christmas special introducing a new Doctor, it worked really, really well.
That's really the only way you can make it fly if it's at the beginning or end of a Doctor's tenure.
Yeah, make it the beginning.
Yeah, but...
Anyway, I think my point about this episode is it could have gone in with the rest.
So it's a regular episode.
I'm not a big fan of having a massive season finale, which we didn't this time.
Yes, I agree.
And so if he wants to just have a, you know, an episode every week and then a three week gap before the next episode, that's fine.
It just so happens it wasn't a great episode.
So what about.
But I'm not sure it's the worst episode from the run.
No Christmas episode in 2019, presumably, since they said we're not going to get anything.
I would guess not.
So we'll probably be getting Doctor Who in the winter or spring of 2020?
Spring 20, yeah.
So it'll be a long time for the New Year's or Christmas special or whatever they're going to have, if anything.
Well, unless they do a New Year's special next New Year.
And start the series on January 1?
They could do that.
Well, they could do, yeah.
They did that with Sherlock.
Yeah, I don't know.
All right, well, got anything else?
Nope, I think that's it.
I think that's it.
I'll just, I'll be going, I'll be, I guess this, whatever it is, 12, 13, 15 months,
I've got my new season 12 Blu-ray set and my new season 19 Blu-ray set to watch.
So I'll cope.
That's right.
And we have, you and I have yet another turn at Shada coming up.
Oh, yes.
And also the animation.
What was that off?
What was that terrible one?
Macra's coming out this year.
Which is?
The Terror of the Macra.
Oh, Terror of the Macra.
yes that one yes macro terror yes that's coming out i'm gonna do that one so why that one i don't
know but we'll be back to our animation and otherwise i think uh i think we've come to the
end of doctor who for 2018 2019 thank you for the end of the end of 2019's doctor who
thank you for joining me my pleasure as always episodes and listeners i do hope you'll join us
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