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This is the Fusion Patrol podcast.
Each week, we look at a different science fiction TV episode or movie
and overanalyze it to within an inch of its life.
Welcome to the discussion.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Fusion Patrol. I'm Eugene.
And I'm Simon.
And tonight we're going to be looking at the Doctor Who episode Orphan 55 by Ed Heim.
Episode Synopsis.
Graham wins an all-inclusive vacation at Tranquility Spa.
Unfortunately, the vacation begins before they can adequately prepare, as they are immediately teleported from the TARDIS to the spa.
Seemingly unconcerned by being isolated from the TARDIS and with only the clothes on their back, the gang immediately split up to enjoy the amenities.
I'll accept the doctor, who pokes around, looking for trouble.
In the spa control facility, Kane and Vorm are dealing with both a virus incursion into the spa systems and a breach.
An alien life form has entered the spa.
Yaz meets Benny and Vilma, an elderly couple, and intrudes on their special moment as Benny is about to propose,
signifying that one or both of them are dead meat walking.
Ryan finds trouble almost immediately when a vending machine gives him a hopper virus.
The doctor cures this by pulling his ear and having him sneeze in a plastic bag, then sucking his thumb,
a virus remedy that every Microsoft Windows administrator knows by rote.
While Ryan is recovering, he meets and rather successfully chats up Bella, another guest at the resort.
With a creature on the loose, the guests are asked to come to muster stations, disguised as a drill.
But when Ryan sees a security guard with a gun, he and Bella follow to find out what's happening.
The doctor has found the control room, hidden in a linen closet.
She quickly deduces that not only has a virus been attacking all the systems, including the now inoperable teleport,
but that something has gotten in and is killing the guests.
She redirects all the guests to the linen closet,
at least all that are alive or bother to listen.
Amongst those that fail to listen, Ryan and Bella.
The doctor repairs the ionic barrier,
a biological filter that forces the creature known as a dreg,
back out of the spa.
With the creature expunged,
it is now revealed that this spa is a vacation location.
A walled-in simulation of a vacation,
typically located conveniently in cities
so that people don't have to travel to an exotic spa.
But this one is different.
It's built off world on a planet known as Orphan 55.
Orphan planets are worlds where the one percenters are able to escape their dying world,
leaving behind the others.
One might even call them the dregs of humanity to die.
Somehow on Orphan 55, life has survived.
Benny has somehow gotten outside and Vilma pleads that they go get him.
Cain reluctantly agrees, and everyone left piles in the van and heads out across the wastelands.
But when it becomes apparent that the dregs have him, Cain wants to turn back.
Vilma pays her to continue on.
The dregs lay a trap, and the vehicle is destroyed.
Casualties start to mount up as they make their way to an access tunnel.
They reach a teleport, but then Bella throws a metaphorical bombshell.
She's the saboteur that unleashed the virus because she has mommy issues.
You see, Kane unknowingly is Bella's absent mother, and Bella is disproportionately upset about this.
In fact, she's here to burn the place to the ground in a fit of pique.
She is about to be killed by a dreg when Ryan rescues her by pushing her and himself into the teleport, returning to the spa.
Alas, there's no more power to use the teleport again, and the others must continue the tunnels on foot.
At the base, Bella reveals she's not just got metaphorical bombshells, she's got real ones too, and goes about planting them.
Sort of with Ryan's help?
Certainly, Ryan puts up little or no resistance.
In the tunnels, the Doctor discovers they are on the planet Ravlox, sometimes called Earth, and it's been destroyed by global warming.
This greatly distresses Yaz and Graham, but what can you do except demand accountability and action from your elected officials and or overthrow the capitalistic system which exploits people and resources, generating a filthy rich class of elites who can afford to abandon their world, leaving the poor behind in the thoughtlessly ravaged world that their own apathy perpetuated?
The Doctor runs out of oxygen because, just like I've been saying for years, she talks too much.
But she's able to refill from the dregs because they oxygenate.
Cain appears to sacrifice herself to save the Doctor.
Finally, back at the control room, the Doctor hatches a bit of a plan.
Nevi and Silas, two characters I haven't bothered to mention up to this point because they've been mostly superfluous,
are to fix the teleport, but Silas, Nevi's son, runs into the danger area in a fit of pique
because he's mad at his dad. Does anyone else think that writer Ed Heim is mad at one of his
parents because they don't believe in anthropogenic global warming and wrote this episode in a fit of
pique? Apart from the fact that Silas is actually the brains of the pair, they also need cerilium
four to power the teleport, and they only have cerilium two. Now, I know what you're thinking.
Why not just add two ceruleum threes and subtract two?
But apparently you can't do that.
But you can take a hypervirus, conveniently stored in a plastic bag in the doctor's pocket,
and infect ceruleum three, transmuting it into ceruleum four,
because apparently that's how computer viruses and particle physics do.
There's some running about, rescuing the boy, setting off bombs, getting the teleport working.
There's a surprise moment when Bella sacrifices herself to save the others,
And then Kane shows up to sacrifice herself again to help Bella sacrifice herself.
And they all escape back to the TARDIS for a downer lecture from the Doctor about the Earth's future being a choose-your-own-adventure book.
And it's not too late to pick the right choices.
Otherwise, humanity will turn into a race of vicious, carnivorous, CO2-breathing, cruel monsters.
The end.
Okay.
Orphan 55.
What did you think of this story?
Well, I like this one better than Spyfall because it was an hour and 10 minutes shorter than Spyfall.
Okay.
All right.
Fair enough.
I actually, I will say, as I was watching it, I was just enjoying a good old-fashioned base under siege and trying to ignore some of the shorthand scaffolding that was taking place along the way that didn't really help much.
But I did enjoy it more than Spyfall.
I did not enjoy it more than Skyfall, which I actually quite enjoyed.
Yes, I concur on that.
I mean, I think in fairness, there's the fact that also the Doctor didn't use anyone's skin colour against them in this episode.
That has to count as a plus.
And there probably is a decent or, you know, an average base under siege story struggling to get out from.
The thing that really weighed this down for me again was the direction from Lee Haven Jones, which just was dire.
I think it's quite important that he isn't allowed to direct any more science fiction or at least anything with special effects in it.
Because the shots with the shots, I know that you do a lot of work when you're watching science fiction, particularly low budget science fiction, because you have to suspend your disbelief to a certain extent.
But the deal is the director has to make it look like when you've got a cutaway to a monster or whatever, that they might actually be round the corner and that it isn't in a completely different studio slash inside a CGI virtual world.
okay i will say that in spy fall part two i remember your criticism of the direction
and what i recall about the direction even having listened to your commentary about it
was that it was just very much uninspired and as you say the actors didn't seem to really
be giving in the performance no it was more about performances were the issue in that one
this i didn't i didn't have as much of an issue i mean spy fall part two it felt like there were
some good performances i don't want to denigrate that same as the way but it felt like particularly
because you had an episode where people were the the teams were split the doctor was split up from
the companions the doctor had new companions they were in different time zones and so on
and there was no tonal consistency to it whereas this one it was much it was much more to do with
And I mean, maybe some of this is down to the editing, but there are still a lot of choices about what was filmed and what wasn't filmed that absolutely bemused me about this.
Could you give me some examples? Because when I watched it, my impression was just simply, again, it's just pedestrian.
I didn't see anything. I don't recall anything that just glaringly made me go, ah!
but I didn't see anything about it.
I mean, it's not.
Let me give you some examples
because it's the clunkiness of it.
It's when initially Vaughn encounters the first dreg
and the dreg is around the corner
and he's shooting around the corner.
And so we obviously don't see the dreg at that point.
That's a reasonably effective strategy
for saving on your special effects budget
because you're not having to do a combined shot.
But then you get a shot of the dreg
in close-up and that's it you know there's no it doesn't look like it's around the corner it doesn't
look it's not lit to look like it's around the corner it and and there's no okay i'll i'll i'll
also say i had issue with that scene because with as much of the human being that you can see
crawling on the floor it it did seem impractical that you wouldn't see something of what dragged
him away yes that makes sense it it's you know if it'd only been maybe his head and his arm or
something like ah yeah something but no yeah there's a there's a very similar there's a very
similar shot near the end where yas and ryan are planting the bomb and they're they're running down
the corridor with the bomb and then you see the dreg again in close-up and you what you don't see
is Yaz and Ryan with the bomb and the dregs beyond them. Yaz and Ryan then run away, you get a shot,
a long shot with the dregs and the trolley with the bomb on it. And I don't understand the choices.
I mean, maybe it was, maybe in that shot, the trolley that we were seeing was a computer
generated model of the trolley so they were they were saving on some sort of compositing shot um
but i don't know it really i'll just jump i'll just jump ahead for for one thing that i wanted
to bring out since you've got that scene right in everybody's mind right now um yes and ryan are
pushing a bomb down a corridor right they're heading somewhere and then suddenly they see
the dregs. And they leave the trolley and they run at just exactly as you describe it. We then
immediately see a ton of dregs standing in front of a trolley with a bomb that has eight seconds
left on its timer. That means Yaz and Ryan were pushing a bomb down a corridor with less than 20
seconds on that timer with apparently nowhere in mind to go or to dispose of that bomb.
Yes. Right. That did kind of I assume that was poor writing, but actually it's not writing.
That's that's all about how it's realized. That's about what you're seeing on the screen.
Well, partially. But I mean, you know, there is you were sure that the writer wrote, yes,
and writer pushing bomb and counter the dregs, leave the bomb. Bomb goes off.
Yeah. But the issue with it is the timing. It wouldn't it wouldn't have been a problem if you
didn't have a shot with it being eight seconds left on the timer or whatever it is you don't
think that the you don't think that the writer might have put in the number of seconds on the
timer i mean i seem to recall a film called goldfinger i'm thinking that was the writer
you know with the with the bomb and the double seven seconds the bomb because it's so turns it
off at double oh seven why eight why eight well i'm just i'm no i'm saying the connection is is
that the writer probably wrote in that the bomb stops at 007 so i'm making a point that writers
do sometimes put that kind of detail in the story oh the writer of goldfinger put that in
right so therefore ed heim might have put that in i don't know why but hang on the writer of
goldfinger so but do you know the writer of goldfinger put that in i don't know that the
writer of goldfinger that put that in but i think it's a high likelihood maybe not but i don't know
that for a fact but supposing it was the writer there's a reason for the writer to do that
yeah i mean there's equally a reason for anyone else who thinks it's a good joke to insert it so
you know the director may have done that maybe the suggestion came from the design team i don't know
the point here is when you're when you're just dealing with script on a page why why would you
put in eight seconds what what you would put in is the action so ryan and yaz are and this is fine
Ryan and Yaz are trying to place the bomb wherever it is they're trying to place it.
I'm not quite clear, but it probably doesn't need to be clear.
It needs to do maximum damage to the dregs, yada, yada, yada.
They haven't reached where they're going to put it, but the dregs come along.
That's fine because they can leave it there and it will blow up the dregs there and then, and they run away.
The issue is entirely to do with the timing and the kind of making sense of that sequence.
And there are loads of sequences in this that don't make sense in a way that, as far as I can see, has entirely to do with the choice of shots that we've got here.
So I don't think it comes from the script on the page.
It's possible.
It's come about when this has been storyboarded.
And, of course, those poor dregs, they're really just humans and intelligent, apparently.
So they murdered them.
Nasty.
Yeah.
I.
I come back to that.
But there are other examples of instances where I don't understand the choice that was made.
So, for example, how did the trap that the dreg set for the vehicle actually work?
I have no idea.
How did they drive over something that obvious unless they were driving blind?
Yeah, yeah, that made no sense.
It's a really, really strange choice of shot.
There even appears to be some barbed wire there, but why is the barbed wire?
Because it's a trap.
Because it's a trap? I don't know.
So they won't climb over it in their truck?
It makes no sense whatsoever.
It doesn't make any sense.
There are all the choices about when Benny isn't shown,
which strike me as pretty weird,
although I can see some of that might be to avoid terrifying the children.
But even then, it feels kind of clunky.
There's the choice about when Cain is thrown by a dreg.
I kind of get that we don't necessarily have the,
maybe it's the budget, maybe it's the time
to have a dreg actually interact with Cain.
That may be too complicated a shot.
Couldn't we at least have seen her landing?
Yeah, it's not good.
It's not good.
Let's take a look.
No, I've got more.
I've got one more.
Okay, okay.
No, I'll pick one more because I thought it was kind of symptomatic
of another type of problem in the episode to do with the clarity,
which is as we get into the conclusion,
there's all this big deal about how the dregs don't like oxygen
and they do like co2 and you have two shots in counterpoint one where there's a dreg with yaz
and she's grabbed a hose and fired a load of oxygen at the the dreg there's another where
there's a dreg with the doctor and the doctor uh sorry the dreg has found a hose that's leaking co2
and it's breathing it in happily except that well okay i don't remember that scene the effects are
pretty well it's not surprising how you're supposed to keep track of the fact that i mean
you only get it from the from trying to figure out what the reaction is supposed to indicate
but how are you supposed to know what co2 and what's oxygen couldn't we at least have had
different colored pipes or something and i i grant they do have an international design department
standard it's galactic i hope oh well yeah well come to that too um yeah yeah it's it's anyway i
didn't like there's a lot of it though it's not just the direction i think a lot of this is just
for want of a better word half-assed um well that brings me on to the costumes
okay they are they are kind of cheap green wig and a cat outfit with a tail you don't even really
hardly see even the doctor keep i think so i wanted to be balanced about this so i i have i
have i have my various criticisms which are primarily those you've listed um but on the
other hand graham's cardigan is superb i didn't even see it i mean he's always wearing something
that's where the budget went okay yeah okay yeah i i was surprised when i watched through the episode
the second the first time every time the doctor kept saying nice tail to hyphen with a three
which would you really i mean even i don't go up oh my name's eugene with an eu you know um
to people although i do have trouble in starbucks no in starbucks i do explain it to them or or or
wherever and they still get it wrong but that's another story but the fact that hyphen always
He says, my name's hyphen with a three.
But the fact that Doctor, it was a nice tail.
And I thought, does that costume even have a tail?
Do we ever even see the tail?
And it is kind of in shot once.
Kind of sticking up.
But it's like, okay, if you're going to make a big deal about what a nice tail it is,
at least show it to the audience.
Yeah.
Let us get a good look at it.
Throw a couple green wigs on the other two people.
And costuming is set.
um stepping aside from that for a minute because like i said i kind of enjoyed just sort of the
the running and exploding and stuff part of the episode and i kind of appreciated it being a base
under siege but is this the single most heavy-handed episode of doctor who ever made it does kind of
make the green death look subtle doesn't it well yes it does it does make the green and i was
thinking you know you have stories like sunmakers which is absolutely over the top criticism of
taxation and the inland revenue service and all and and but it's they don't have to take the time
for the doctor to stand there and give you a speech about it that is my objection to it it's
it's not it's not what's in the story it's the fact that we get to the end of the story
and then the doctor has to give a speech which it's like because she's obviously she's not
talking to her companions any longer oh no giving a speech to us which then cuts again coming back
to the direction but then cuts really clunkily to that shot of a a dreg and it it's it's it's also
So it doesn't even fit in the Doctor Who continuity
because suddenly she's like, you know, okay, I'm not,
no, I'm probably not going to pretend there is any Doctor Who continuity about.
There is a bit.
Time cannot be rewritten, not one single second.
This is obviously a very specifically unfixed point in time.
That must be it.
it's a it's a special unfixed point in time it's got a bit loose you know we've we've talked about
the in in a past sidecar years ago we talked about the fixed point in time and and the the
aztecs and not one line can be rewritten and or the no vesuvius has to go off and all these people
have to die because it's a fixed point in time the doctor has to be shot because that's a fixed
point in time all of those things what makes them fixed point in times and and if you have a fixed
point in time that's in, say, 95th century Earth, does that mean that nothing can change prior to
that fixed point in time? Because it's a fixed point in time. And we have seen...
Well, no, the thing about fixed points in time seems to be that you can engineer things to make
them happen if other things have thrown them off course. So as long as the events coalesce to
result in whatever it is that is the fixed point, that's okay.
But the broader history of the human race in Doctor Who, which has had its has had its changes, there's no doubts about it.
But but generally speaking, we know that the Earth grows up.
It colonizes the stars.
There are solar flares.
The planet is destroyed.
The planet is repopulated.
The the colonies come back, you know, and humans are there at the end of existence.
at utopia i thought they i thought they i thought they left earth again to go to new earth and they
left earth to go to new earth as well right is it that earth is it earth in utopia is it old earth
in utopia i'm not sure it's a darn good question but it is earth in um uh whatever the second
episode of christa eccleston new earth uh um no not sorry the end of the end of the end of
the end of the world
yeah that was it
the end of the world
none of that involved the earth being destroyed
and left by greedy capitalists
a la Ben Elton's
Stark
story
from all those years ago
I was distinctly reminded of this
but there's room
given that the earth gets
repopulated
after the solar flares or whatever
There is room in Earth's history for it to maybe get toxified and then, as is evident from the plot of this episode, that it could be re-terraformed and repopulated before it gets destroyed in the end of the world.
There is a gap in there for it to happen.
How far in the future is this that this happened?
Well, this is the thing. The speech at the end is saying the problem is, the thing that leads to this is your politicians right now not doing anything about it. I mean, the thing is, the thing is, right.
And we're not disagreeing with anthropogenic global warming here.
We are absolutely not. Nor am I saying it shouldn't be part of the story. I'm quite happy for the story to tell the tale of what happens when a race is as careless and as cavalier with the resources and generally just as dreadful as we all are.
um what bugs me is that a speech like that at the end beating you about the head with it it does
it does nothing for you or i who are already very much in sympathy with the central message because
if we have been enjoying the story before we wouldn't really be enjoying the lecture
i don't think it does anything for those who are set against the idea you know have a religious
that global warming is a myth being perpetrated by an equally shady elite who just want to,
well, I don't know, but anyway. And the floating voters in between, the probably vast majority of
agnostics, they're not going to be swayed by the speech either. They're going to be much more
receptive to what's being told in the storyline. That's going to stay with them. That's perhaps
going to be at the back of their minds when they hear people talking about global warming in the
news or whatever but we don't need it right there at the end of the episode no no and if you can
give an episode you can even have a ham-fisted message if you can deliver it in a way that the
that the watcher comes to it even if you're guided to it and i'll give an example and i've probably
given this example before. A lot of times in talking about Star Trek, sometimes they'll say
this is the bonk bonk on the head moment, because a lot of episodes about Star Trek were addressing
issues. There's an episode I don't like. I never liked it as a kid. I just, it was boring. It wasn't
interesting. It's called Let This Be Your Last Battlefield. I think, I'm sure we've talked about
this, maybe with not necessarily with you, but maybe with Ben or in the past. But there are two
aliens that encounter the crew of the Enterprise, and they have the dumbest makeup you've ever seen.
They're two white guys.
One of them is painted absolutely positively pale, pasty white, mime white on the left,
and shoe black on the right with a line right down.
I mean, it goes right down the center of the body.
So completely left white, black and white.
Pantomime black and white.
Not like human black and white, but like comedy black and white.
bad that you look at the makeup and you can see the cake on their face. I mean, it's bad.
And then another one comes along and the two of them hate each other. And they're all talking
about, oh, his kind are evil and they destroy things and I'm just for law and order. And you
just, you listen to these guys and you think, God, this sounds a lot like political discourse
between the cops and the hippies or whatever. And then suddenly when one of them says, well,
his kind and they go what do you mean his kind you're both the same he goes what are you blind
i am white on the right side he is black on the right side we're nothing alike and you're just
like oh that is that is incredibly ham-fisted but but in retrospect you're watching the episode
and you never got a hint of it until that moment.
You just never noticed it.
And suddenly it's like,
oh, see, this is such a stupid difference.
Gosh, racial inequality is a terrible thing
and we shouldn't be judging people
based on the color of their skin.
But it actually, in a way,
as I get to be older and I watch that episode,
it kind of works because it slips up on you.
The stupidity of it slips up on you.
It has a dramatic purpose within the story,
I think.
Yeah.
Is the key thing.
I would also point at the Zygon inversion slash invasion and the speech in that.
Yeah.
Yes.
There's a strong speech, but at least it works because it's needed in the story.
Yes.
Yeah.
And, you know, my notes are in a terrible order, so I'm just going to kind of plunk them fast here and try not to make this a three hour podcast.
This is Orphan 55.
Yes.
Does that mean that we went on, colonized other planets, expanded into the stars, destroyed 54 planets before they finally got around to wiping out Earth?
That does rather suggest that it is sometime in the future, actually.
So that was one.
And like I said, it reminds me of the film, not the film because I've never seen it, but the book Stark by Ben Elton, where the rich people are secretly building a base on the moon because they know the earth is done for ecologically.
And so rather than try to fix it, they spend their money to get away.
Yeah, I think it's very similar.
It's not a film.
It's a TV series.
It has John Neville in it.
Oh, OK.
OK, I haven't seen that, but I've read the book.
I've got the book.
The Dregs.
The dregs.
Name's a bit on the point, isn't it?
I mean the dregs, yes, sorry.
The dregs of humanity.
Are they mutated humans or are they the evolved descendants of humans?
They're the evolved descendants of humans.
I'm sure that the doctor refers to, I don't quite know how she works it out,
but they're having to have these generations,
which does make you wonder how they procreate,
because they're not wearing any clothes and they don't appear to have the right equipment.
And you wonder how they eat because they're the apex predator and there are thousands of them out there.
And that's not the way apex predators work.
I want to say it's something like a ratio of one to 100 predators to prey animals.
So either it's a thriving planet or it's not.
And are they intelligent?
Well, this is the problem.
You mentioned the ethics of murdering them all,
and this is the problem with having the doctor read their minds,
because clearly the fact that they are generations away
from the memories they have in their mind
must mean they have some way of reading about their culture,
passing on the stories, understanding that information,
and therefore they must be capable of civilization
and redemption and yet all that anyone does in this episode is trying to kill them
and they're clearly better than humans because they're stronger and they can adapt and you know
so you'd think they would start building rocket ships and go after the capitalists that abandon
them um but i yeah i couldn't get my head around exactly what i was supposed to think because
the doctor does make that bargain with a dreg to swap places in the cage but at the same time the
way the doctor says it yeah but the way the doctor says it is i hope he understands what i'm saying
okay so is he intelligent or are you just hoping he's intuiting that i i don't know i don't know
if only she could have suggested that uh he makes some sort of reaction i don't know perhaps
Oh, there's a thought.
Agitating his head up and down in some kind of signal of affirmation, if he understands.
Yes, there we go.
They could have tried something like that.
And also, it's just one of those things.
Could a creature adapt an evolved creature, a highly evolved creature?
I'm not talking about a bacteria, but something switched from oxygen to CO2.
Yeah.
Life cycle.
That seems like, if not, I won't say impossible, because quite a lot of amazing things can be done with evolution.
But it would seem like it would take a really, really, really long time.
Between it breathing oxygen on the doctor and the doctor reading its thoughts, it did occur to me that it might be an evolved tree, which I would have quite liked.
But I'm not sure that trees evolving lungs and teeth would be any more plausible than humans evolving the ability to breathe in CO2.
The forest of Chim in the end of the world.
Indeed, yes.
It reminded me of that very thing, although it seemed a little bit...
I thought that's where we were going.
I really did.
I thought that's where we were going,
the point when the doctor said,
they're like angry tree,
because we had seen trees on the surface as well,
which made no sense.
But I guess they just couldn't find a filming location
without trees completely.
Yeah, that was my assumption.
So I thought that was going to be mankind's gone and dead
and the trees now are mad.
okay fair enough fair enough they have right to be mad so i would if i would if i was a tree and
some humans had done that to me i'd be trying to eat them i would yeah absolutely absolutely
you got to get your nutrients somewhere what yeah you know uh i just want to point out that there are
two sets of characters in here we haven't talked about bell and kane yet uh that the child has been
wronged by the parent and gets really busy about it and that the story you like so much and what
i recall not liking so much they take you away also bed at time was about a parent who was an
absolute monster to his child yeah seems to be a bit of a theme here um which is and and and
this this i i have i have to say the the writing in this it did not thrill me in the way that
they take you away did i i've kind of slated the direction where you were criticizing the writer
but that doesn't mean that all of the writing is exemplary i mean there were some good lines
but i have to say i particularly liked when uh kane kane told the doctor she couldn't make an
ionic barrier out of from scratch she said if i had crayons and half a can of spam i could build
you from scratch which is now my new favorite insult just need an opportunity to use that one
I will say that skipping ahead here in my notes, that Ed Heim has, although I did not, as I recall, in retrospect, I don't like They Take You Away.
As I recall at the time, it was half-assed and I was more offended by the parent and that I didn't like it.
But, you know, looking back on it, I was like, yeah, no, I didn't like that one.
And I probably will look back on this one and go, yeah, you know, not particularly very good here.
But if nothing else, Ed Heim is my hero from this point on, because you talk too much has got to be the most important thing anyone has ever said to the doctor since David Tennant.
Yes.
Because that's when it started and it's just gotten worse and it's not getting better.
And doggone, take that to heart, doctor.
Stop babbling.
The Doctor Talking Self-Out of Artigen was on my short list of things that I really did love about this episode, along with the Hopper virus and the...
Oh, please. You liked the Hopper virus.
Oh, yeah.
I liked the Hopper virus as a comic gag at the beginning.
I wasn't quite so taken with the idea that it happened to be what you need to get Cerulean 4 from Cerulean 3.
I, yeah, no.
I also really like the Siberian underground station sign for Marble Arch.
Yeah, yeah.
So me on the virus, I would not have a problem with the concept of the virus.
I would not even have a problem with a concept of a virus that far enough in the future could make the jump between machine and biological machine.
I could tick off the box and say, all right, fine.
I can accept that one.
But here I'm going to tug your ear, sneeze in a bag, suck your thumb and run around and remember that those bats are hallucinatory.
No, just no.
Comic relief for two year olds.
And maybe three.
Yeah, that's why I like it.
Maybe three year olds.
It's kind of like, it's like the doctor shaking the radiation out of his converse or.
Didn't like that.
Or the business with the chocolate in the unicorn and the wasp.
Oh, yeah.
No, no.
Didn't really like that one either.
You know, I'm not crazy about the doctor's...
You're getting a sense of my level here.
The respiratory bypass system, which should have saved the doctor, which makes no sense
either, because the doctor can survive without air for a lot longer than we can.
That's been firmly established.
I'd forgotten that.
Except I never understood how respiratory bypass system works.
Well, you...
Breathe through something else?
So anyway.
Yeah.
I don't know.
But yeah, the Doctor is the last person that should have run out of oxygen.
Even talking too much.
They should have been fine.
Still worth it for the talking yourself out of it, Gabe.
Yes.
That I will.
I will.
Good.
Let's see.
I can skip the teleport problems with them getting in and out of the TARDIS.
And obviously, part of the lazy, lazy writing, I mean, for crying out loud, Benny is like, I'm pulling out the ring.
I'm going to show you.
No, I'm putting the ring away.
It's like, wow.
I've never seen anyone who's been painted with your dead better than that ever.
And Vilma deserved to die.
Yeah.
She definitely, you gotta go after my Benny.
Sounds harsh.
But.
It does.
Probably earlier.
You know, the fact that she couldn't work cotton on to the fact that he's dead.
I mean, he may be alive, but he's dead.
There is no getting out of that.
And there's a scene.
She'll say she's just a bit annoying.
There's a scene where she, you know, Vilma wants to take it.
The doctor is like, no, Cain, you have to take us.
We got to do this thing.
And Cain's like.
And driving along.
And then the doctor is babbling about her theories.
And she finally realizes that they're heading into a nest or something.
It wasn't a nest, but they're heading into their territory.
And suddenly the doctor sounds like she's frightened, like it's a bad idea.
And you're just driving into it.
I'm like, Cain is driving into it because you and Vilma forced her to drive into it.
Now suddenly you think it's a bad idea?
The way it was played, I don't get what the doctor is trying to say.
Are you trying to say, turn back?
So that didn't make any sense.
No, it didn't.
It didn't.
And because I thought the Laura Fraser was very good as Kane in general.
I found her quite a believable character.
But there's a conflict there in her motivation because you want to know whether she believes what she says.
Obviously, she's running a cut price holiday resort in order to try and raise the cash to terraform the planet, yada, yada, yada.
And, you know, that in itself is not a bad thing.
The question is whether she is compromising the safety.
And she appears to believe that she's not.
So there are good qualities to her.
She is very clear.
She's very good at instructing people, explaining to them how to use the oxygen thing, saying, yes, we're going to do this.
No, we're not going to do this.
And so when she says, we're not going to go any further, you think, okay, she is actually looking
out for the people that she is responsible for. And then you get that thing of Velma throws the
bracelet on the floor that is going to pay for all this terraforming or whatever. And I don't get
what goes through her head at that point. I don't either. Because I think the doctor is still...
Yeah. I don't, I, no, I, I, I don't see what the doctor is thinking. I don't see what,
I don't see why Kane makes the choice that she does at that point.
Well, the doctor is still arguing in favor of, we have to go save him because he's a person. We
need to save the person. Vilma's doing it. Well, okay, then if, you know, take the money,
you know, it's a twofer there. You're doing the right thing and you're making a fortune. So,
but you know, why did they take everybody in the van in the first place?
I was just going to ask that because I, I wandered that all the way. And again,
surely in the direction, couldn't we get some kind of indication?
I wasn't even clear when they went in the van that that was everyone who was left
in the hotel. I rewatched it and it, it is actually, it is everyone in the hotel and it,
And it is, there is, the doctor says, I'm going to go and assemble everyone.
So it's there, but there's nothing to signal to us the significance of that.
And in particular, I still don't know why she said that.
Why did she say, I'm going to go and assemble everyone?
Why didn't they decide that they were going to, three of them go out and rescue Benny?
Because there's no advantage to them all being there.
no because apparently the base is safe again so it's yeah it didn't make a whole lot of sense
and also to your direction point there is a scene where we're watching the display where all the
life forms are being killed yeah right the numbers going down do the math because in the next shot
we see that many people on the teleport pad just before the screen goes out like wait if you had
those people no one was paying any attention to the details of what we're actually seeing as an
audience yeah so you add those people up and then you take those people plus the doctor and kane and
vorm and and ryan and kaz and whatnot and you go there's more people here than are alive in the
base right now but okay um that was careless that was just careless but yeah uh the other thing is
take away the dregs take away the dregs uh is is uh kane's plan a bad idea is it is it a bad idea
to have a vacation place on a dead planet if it were truly a dead planet if it was a safe
and and terraforming that's what i'm saying the the bad the bad thing is doing it in a way that's
unsafe and so that's why that's why it matters whether she believes that what she is doing
is actually compromising everyone's health and safety to make a quick buck,
or whether she is genuinely convinced that she's taken every possible precaution and that this is
a legitimate enterprise. And another problem that I have with the performances, and it's Jodie
Whitaker's performance, is when she realizes that she says something to the effect of,
you take the money you roll a profit you turn it into you terraform the planet and you make
a nice tidy profit i can't tell if she's criticizing her or she's admiring her
for that i got that statement i got the sense that it was supposed to be a criticism but i
didn't understand why it was a criticism right the words were not a criticism exactly they were
like good move wow you you know okay fine you make habitable place and then you you okay so
you get paid for that all right it's like unless you're just absolutely anti-capitalist and say you
can't make money for anything which maybe the doctor is but yeah maybe maybe maybe the writer
is but i don't i don't i mean there's obviously there is a there is a political message and it's
not unconnected with um capitalism in here but it that that doesn't necessarily mean that it's an
all-out condemnation of capitalism there's a lazy reading of it by the director maybe that
every line should be delivered as a as a critique so but i don't know if we if we're talking about
performances i want i want to talk about the fam okay i mean just on yaz and ryan i'm going to
accept that there is something going on there although it seems to me more like yaz is into
ryan yeah the other way around or maybe that's deliberately meant to be different this week but
given that we don't really know what the director's intending i'll put that one on hold um yep the
thing that's worrying me a bit is that graham is turning into a caricature of himself i kind of
thought in spyfall he he was he was bradley walsh was in variety performance mode and i kind of
it's the bank holiday special all right i mean i wasn't that excited about his soft shoe shuffle
stuff but fair enough he's showing what he can do but in this it's all getting come on graham's
graham's son and call blimey right on me nut feel the lump on me bonce yeah i i didn't get that last
year last year graham was an actual character and bradley walsh was acting he was doing dramatic
acting and and i found i found his performances right from the opening and the woman who fell to
actually quite moving and also in in they take you away so i don't i don't know what's going on
here we know he's capable of better than this but either he's being written material that just
doesn't give him anything or he's being directed in a very superficial way but it he was one of my
favorite characters in the team and my enthusiasm for the fam has just sort of dribbled away because
there's nothing going on anymore there's nothing to them at all yeah they're just well there has
been but but last year it felt like there was i mean as we've talked about the the development
ryan got we've talked about the fact that yas maybe didn't even though you know we we like the
character and we liked the performance and i i thought the the kind of whole graham storyline
and the bradley walsh powerhouse performance in it was fantastic so i i want to see more of that
but if they're just going to tread water it's not going to satisfy me in the same way
i mean i i i get where you're coming from and i didn't think that there really was much going on
with those characters.
They were just kind of there,
all of them in this.
Brian got maybe the lion's share
and even there,
I didn't understand
what he was doing.
I would frankly prefer
to see Graham doing his,
you know,
oh, I got to get my Speedos
and all the stupid lines like that,
which are basically bad dad jokes,
then tugging ears
and vomiting viruses
in plastic bags.
But, you know, choose your humor where you get it.
But I agree.
I don't object to the humor per se.
There's a certification.
It's just if that's all there is to him.
Yeah.
So what about, we can talk about Ryan and Bella.
Obviously, Bella is nuts.
Bella didn't convince me the motivation there.
I mean, you say she's disproportionate to being abandoned by her mom.
I kind of think, well, actually, I don't know.
I mean, being abandoned by your mum, you're going to have quite a response to that.
The thing is, she's obviously, the way in which she is reacting to that is the action of someone who is deeply, deeply unstable.
And yet...
That would be a definition of disproportionate, wouldn't it?
The reaction is disproportionate.
Yes, that's what I meant.
You said she was disproportionately upset.
I think she's justified in being upset.
She's just not justified in how she acts on it.
But also when you are upset,
can you behave in a way that is as functional
and as stable as she does
when she is deceiving everyone at the start?
That she shouldn't take enough precautions
to keep herself from getting her own virus.
Yeah.
Or that in itself is a deception,
which is part of the whole premeditated thing,
which just doesn't chime with the kind of uncontrolled rage
that she's supposed to be feeling when she's talking about
just doing everything to the ground.
Yeah.
And then when Ryan goes with her,
yes, he makes that one half-hearted attempt to go for the gun,
but that just wouldn't have been any problem stopping her.
Well, you've got to show it.
You've got to show how he's having a problem stopping her.
So you've got to direct her.
Well, but them in a way that.
I mean, clearly she doesn't have the gun on him all the time.
Yeah, well, but she could have.
If there was more power to her character,
if the performance indicated that
and we saw every second that not just that the gun was pointing
at least in his general direction,
but that her trigger finger was that twitchy
he wouldn't go or that she had that much of a hold on ryan that he was that he was in some way
enamored of her in such a way that maybe he's you know taking up to the wrong side of the equation
here but he makes he makes no little or no verbal argument that this is wrong that this this is not
what i expect from a companion of the doctor i expect them to to at least put up the the fight
that if if not the physical fight and at least the verbal fight a little yeah very little she's
Either with me or I'll say, all right, fine, whatever.
I guess, you know, it just.
But I agree.
It's not clear.
When the gun was on the floor.
It's not clear what he is thinking when he isn't acting to stop her.
And as you say, it could be because he is taken with her,
because obviously that's, you know, that's part of the storyline.
So is that the reason why he lets her carry on like she does?
Or is it because he is frightened for his own sake?
I do not know. I couldn't make sense.
And I mean, maybe this is direction.
Maybe we can come back and we can pick on the direction.
But the scene where he does sort of try to go for the gun,
she is working in the computer.
She has set the gun down on the floor next to Ryan's feet.
And Ryan telegraphs looking at the gun
and then sort of bending a little bit towards it.
And then she just like quickly stops him from doing it.
I'm thinking that the way that's positioned, Ryan putting a foot on that gun and pushing her would have solved that problem.
Right.
I mean, it's just literally so absurd the way that that scene plays out.
It looks like Ryan is like, yeah, I'm just doing this to be kind of, you know, like to pretend like I'm trying to, you know, I should probably.
But that doesn't make sense.
Stop it.
That doesn't make sense.
Who's he pretending to?
I know.
Exactly.
It doesn't make any sense.
But if later it turned out.
So again, it's basic stuff.
We want to know what the character's motivations are.
And it's not clear to us.
And it is to do with the way it is staged and the way it's shot.
I mean, it couldn't be more basic.
And so just to keep with the Bella is a disproportionate response.
Let's call it that then.
Disproportionate response to her hurt.
That's what I was going for.
Not that she's truly upset.
When I said that, I was thinking in terms of the actions of her upset were disproportionate to...
I agree killing everyone is disproportionate.
Although I think she said she was trying not to kill everyone.
I think she said that, but I don't know if that's true.
Silas.
Dad, you got to have a pass key to work on it.
Listen, I'm doing my work here.
You never listen to me.
And I'm now going to run out where the dregs are and lock you guys in.
Am I really supposed to believe that kid's that stupid?
Upset?
Comes out of nothing.
Yeah.
Because all the rest of it, he's given a performance that indicates that he knows more than his dad acknowledges that he knows.
But he's kind of like, you know, dad, you know.
He'll correct him.
But he doesn't seem to mind about it until that critical moment when it actually has a consequence.
And then he does what shouldn't be done.
The last thing I have on my list is, it's a trivial point, but I'm just going to bring it out anyway.
Russian subway.
I can buy that.
I mean, I can buy them getting into the tunnels and finding a Russian subway sign and going, oh, this is Earth.
Maybe it's because of Ravlox.
Yeah, it's Marble Arch.
maybe i can you know okay i it's it's stolen right out of planet of the apes or beneath the
planet of the apes it was the made in china vending machine does not make any sense are
they trying to say that either kane found a vending machine on the ruins of the planet
and refurbished it to be a vending machine at her vacation spa actually or that that things
made in china were taken off world or that they've built a new china somewhere and they're still
making cheap stuff in it no because yaz yaz says it's been there all the time but it she does say
that but yes doesn't know that it's not a hotel that's been preserved in a dome while the rest of
the planet devolves it's a hotel that has been built in a dome that is protect to protect it
from everything else on the planet the hotel is a new hotel why would they have a vending machine
they found outside in the rubble.
Half-assed.
That's what it is.
So finding something in the tunnel, fine.
Find it, yeah.
Also, would it say made in China in English,
not Siberian?
Good point.
That's only just occurred to me,
but if we're picking.
Yeah.
All level of things.
All right.
I don't see anything else on my list
of miscellaneous stuff.
I kind of actually like the idea of the vacation.
You mean you want to go on one?
Because I'm pretty sure they're basically center parks, aren't they?
Do you have those in Arizona?
No.
Describe what it is.
I've never heard the term.
Well, I've never been to one, but my understanding is it's sort of holiday inside a dome.
You know, entirely sort of self-contained.
Everything's in there.
The only dome we've got in Arizona is a biosphere, too.
And that's, you know.
Parkland.
hotel i don't know i don't know i've seen brochures i'm guessing you know if you a lot of times what
people do on vacations is they go to the spa and they stay there at the spa even though it's at
some beautiful exotic location and they don't actually go outside the hotel in fact the hotels
are designed to keep you there to spend more money even in the all-inclusive ones they they
still have their way of doing that it yeah it's just i'm like well it's not a bad idea
but they're kind of treating it like it is in the story like it's like it's putting it on this
planet maybe perhaps a kind of holiday snobbery kind of could be like whether you're whether
you're a proper traveler or whether you're just a tourist or whether you're whether you're visiting
the real Orphan 55
and whether you're just going to the tourist spots.
Yes, that could be.
That could be.
I mean, I was thinking more likely
it would be them just putting on VR glasses
and having their vacation there.
But do you have anything for them?
No, no, gosh, no.
I'm very much done with this episode.
So, Nicholas Tesla next week.
Yeah, I know.
There better be a death ray.
on this now because i was thinking by this time last series we do we'd had we but the third episode
was rosa i mean goodness me the contrast could not be greater so yeah um and and you you'll be
pleased to see from the trailers that uh there are going to be american accents by yes and
giant scorpions or spiders or something yeah yes i i don't know how you rated robert glenister's
accent from that clip. But of course, there's always the possibility, especially since I think
of him more as the guy from Hustle than the guy from Caves of Androzani, that it's all part of
some con and he's actually putting the accent on. So we shall see. We shall see. I just, I expect a
Nikola Tesla death ray. If they do not work the Nikola Tesla death ray into this, I will be
severely disappointed in this story.
I'm just saying that now.
Simon, thank you for joining me.
It's a pleasure, as always.
And listeners, I hope you'll join us all again next time
for Nikola Tesla and the Death Ray.
And Fusion Patrol.
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Our music is
Fight the Future
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This has been
a Lone Locust production.
A center park.
I'm going to write that down and look it up.
Yes, it might be with a C.
How else would center be spelled?
Park with a C.
Oh, park.
Center with a C.
Well, all right.
British spelling is weird.
I don't know.
Oh, it's probably with an R-E too, isn't it?
Yes.
Center park.
It's obviously with an R-E.
Er park.
Oh, yeah.
Park.
*laughs*