WEBVTT 00:00:00.020 --> 00:00:02.320 Fusion Patrol is a listener-supported podcast. 00:00:03.220 --> 00:00:08.300 Find out how you can help support us at patreon.com slash fusion patrol. 00:00:18.640 --> 00:00:20.460 This is the Fusion Patrol podcast. 00:00:21.340 --> 00:00:25.280 Each week, we look at a different science fiction TV episode or movie 00:00:25.840 --> 00:00:29.280 and overanalyze it to within an inch of its life. 00:00:31.260 --> 00:00:32.500 Welcome to the discussion. 00:00:37.700 --> 00:00:40.580 Hello and welcome to another episode of Fusion Patrol. I'm Eugene. 00:00:41.320 --> 00:00:41.860 And I'm Simon. 00:00:42.680 --> 00:00:44.720 And tonight we're looking at the Doctor Who episode. 00:00:45.660 --> 00:00:48.660 Praxeus by Pete McTighe and Chris Chibnall. 00:00:49.100 --> 00:00:50.320 Episode Synopsis. 00:00:50.880 --> 00:00:52.780 It's a tale of three threads. 00:00:53.430 --> 00:00:57.920 In one thread, UK astronaut Adam Lang is lost on re-entry. 00:00:58.340 --> 00:01:04.300 only for his estranged husband Jake, an ex-copper, to receive a text message from him asking for help. 00:01:04.900 --> 00:01:08.700 The message originates from Hong Kong, where he meets Yaz and Graham, 00:01:09.300 --> 00:01:11.520 who are investigating strange energy readings. 00:01:12.180 --> 00:01:18.380 They find Lang strapped into an alien machine and rescue him from the hazmats, who have imprisoned him. 00:01:18.940 --> 00:01:23.440 There's the thread of two travel vloggers, Gabriela and Jamila, visiting Peru, 00:01:24.100 --> 00:01:28.240 who discover not only a lot of garbage, but birds that attack. 00:01:28.820 --> 00:01:33.080 When Jamila goes missing, Ryan turns up investigating the mystery of the birds. 00:01:33.780 --> 00:01:39.600 They discover Jamila, dead, sort of, in a nearby inexplicably deserted hospital. 00:01:40.400 --> 00:01:45.920 She is soon covered with a strange alien skin condition and explodes into a pile of dust. 00:01:46.560 --> 00:01:51.659 And finally, it's the threat of a missing U.S. submarine and the lone sailor the doctor rescues 00:01:52.060 --> 00:01:54.740 after he washes up on the shore of Madagascar, 00:01:54.860 --> 00:01:58.420 near a research facility looking into cleaning the oceans of microplastics. 00:01:58.920 --> 00:02:05.000 And when I say rescues, I mean drags ashore only to watch him get covered in a strange alien skin condition and explode. 00:02:05.800 --> 00:02:10.920 Also, the research facility is being watched by flocks of non-native birds. 00:02:11.520 --> 00:02:14.700 In each of the first two threads, the doctor turns up to retrieve the team members 00:02:14.740 --> 00:02:19.000 and takes them all, minus Yaz and Gabriela, back to the research facility in Madagascar, 00:02:19.240 --> 00:02:23.820 where, with the help of scientist Suki, she tries to piece together the clues to the mystery. 00:02:24.360 --> 00:02:28.140 Yaz and Gabriela stayed behind in Hong Kong to investigate the alien lab, 00:02:28.460 --> 00:02:32.900 and later impulsively travel through a teleport where they find the missing U.S. submarine. 00:02:33.580 --> 00:02:37.080 A dissection of one of the dead birds reveals that it is stuffed full of plastic, 00:02:37.480 --> 00:02:40.420 and at this moment, the 2x4 swings forth from the television set, 00:02:40.580 --> 00:02:43.940 smacking the viewer up the backside of the head with today's moralizing. 00:02:44.360 --> 00:02:47.220 Humans are poisoning the planet with all their plastics. 00:02:47.660 --> 00:02:52.300 These plastics break down into microplastics and are ingested into everything, even humans. 00:02:52.700 --> 00:03:01.100 An alien bacteria that eats plastic has come to Earth, but instead of contenting itself on eating all of the plastic all over the place, 00:03:01.680 --> 00:03:08.400 even in the planes that fly in the sky, they instead concentrate on eating the plastic in birds and in humans. 00:03:09.120 --> 00:03:15.420 This has the unfortunate side effect of making birds die and fall from the sky, but making humans explode. 00:03:15.900 --> 00:03:21.520 The doctor and Suki, along with some helpful Earth-based enzymes, seem to be on the verge of a breakthrough. 00:03:22.160 --> 00:03:28.320 Gosh, it's quite the convenient coincidence that Suki has a well-equipped lab working on microplastic-related research. 00:03:28.950 --> 00:03:32.440 That is, until Yaz reports in from the bottom of the Indian Ocean. 00:03:33.040 --> 00:03:38.720 Readings on the alien doohickey thingy pinpoint a point right there in Madagascar. 00:03:39.200 --> 00:03:40.600 And the gig is up. 00:03:41.000 --> 00:03:47.940 Suki is an alien working to save her people from a nasty alien plastic-eating bacteria named Praxeus. 00:03:48.480 --> 00:03:51.040 Now, just to be clear, the bacteria is named Praxeus. 00:03:51.800 --> 00:03:54.080 Suki is still named Suki. 00:03:54.700 --> 00:04:00.860 It was Suki who brought Praxeus to Earth because humans are a special kind of destructive monster. 00:04:01.340 --> 00:04:08.420 It took her people scouring three galaxies to find a planet as screwed up as this is. 00:04:09.340 --> 00:04:13.200 Suki disappears, but not before giving her thanks to the doctor and a warning. 00:04:13.900 --> 00:04:17.560 Praxeus is a smart bacteria, and it's coming for her. 00:04:18.239 --> 00:04:22.300 And indeed, the Praxeus-infected birds do a poor man's hitchcock on the gang, 00:04:22.840 --> 00:04:26.020 attacking everyone, yet not managing a single scratch. 00:04:26.880 --> 00:04:30.160 Back to the TARDIS, where she tests the experimental antidote on Adam. 00:04:30.590 --> 00:04:32.840 If it doesn't kill him, she'll have found the cure. 00:04:33.440 --> 00:04:36.420 They pop to the bottom of the ocean to retrieve Yaz and Gabriela. 00:04:36.900 --> 00:04:43.920 They also find Suki, who dies, not entirely of Praxis, but rather the combination of the doctor's experimental cure, 00:04:44.380 --> 00:04:49.180 which Suki tried on herself, Praxis, and her alien biology. 00:04:49.860 --> 00:04:52.480 It makes things worse, and she explodes. 00:04:53.340 --> 00:04:56.120 Too bad she already transmitted the cure back to her people. 00:04:56.530 --> 00:04:57.620 I hope they don't try it. 00:04:58.240 --> 00:05:03.880 Adam recovers, and with a clinical trial sample size of two, with one fatality, 00:05:04.320 --> 00:05:09.420 The Doctor rushes to use Suki's spaceship to disperse the cure into the Earth's atmosphere. 00:05:10.360 --> 00:05:16.560 Suki's ship has a malfunction and Jake has to fly it into space because being a spaceman is easy. 00:05:17.280 --> 00:05:23.580 And he disperses the kill or cure into the atmosphere, spreading it to the entire planet. 00:05:24.140 --> 00:05:27.320 And as the ship explodes, the Doctor rescues Jake. 00:05:28.120 --> 00:05:28.580 The end. 00:05:29.060 --> 00:05:30.940 Now I just want to ask a quick opening question. 00:05:32.580 --> 00:05:34.120 Do they have 2x4s in the UK? 00:05:34.200 --> 00:05:35.760 Okay. Do I have to explain what that is? 00:05:36.380 --> 00:05:38.040 You mean like we're talking timber here? 00:05:38.460 --> 00:05:39.320 Yes. Yes. 00:05:39.920 --> 00:05:40.540 Okay. Yes. 00:05:41.260 --> 00:05:46.940 Oh, okay. So yes, two by four, in case that's not common, because I know it's imperial measurement, sort of. 00:05:47.120 --> 00:05:52.080 I mean, a two by four is really one and three quarters by three and a half because of capitalism. 00:05:54.360 --> 00:05:58.460 But yeah, two by four. Okay. Yeah. A nice board that you could whack somebody with. 00:05:58.560 --> 00:06:01.760 Okay. Just checking to make sure that that reference was not. 00:06:02.660 --> 00:06:04.500 What do you think of Praxis? 00:06:06.479 --> 00:06:09.700 Well, I wish this one had been about the talking cat in Ontario. 00:06:11.520 --> 00:06:15.480 And I wish they'd never mentioned the talking cat in Ontario, but I see your point. 00:06:16.140 --> 00:06:21.420 I'm still holding out my hopes that next week is going to be about the talking cat in Ontario, 00:06:21.820 --> 00:06:23.440 who's going to say, can you hear me? 00:06:27.120 --> 00:06:30.320 But maybe, I don't know. 00:06:30.800 --> 00:06:35.900 I mean, when I started watching this for the first time... 00:06:37.060 --> 00:06:38.820 Okay, I know where we're going. 00:06:39.090 --> 00:06:39.400 Go ahead. 00:06:40.170 --> 00:06:40.380 Sorry. 00:06:40.420 --> 00:06:45.800 I was quite enjoying the fact that it has possibly the most X-Files vibe 00:06:45.910 --> 00:06:48.180 of any Doctor Who episode to date. 00:06:49.060 --> 00:06:51.840 And at that point, it hadn't quite... 00:06:52.240 --> 00:06:56.560 I mean, it definitely falls apart towards the end. 00:06:57.300 --> 00:07:04.380 And on the rewatching, you can see all of the sort of plot holes as they emerge. 00:07:04.390 --> 00:07:12.320 But you don't necessarily realise at that point that they are going to be quite so disconnected and contradictory. 00:07:14.080 --> 00:07:17.860 So I kind of quite like the atmosphere of that. 00:07:18.970 --> 00:07:23.540 I thought it was badly directed again. 00:07:24.360 --> 00:07:27.980 And yes, it turns out it's the same director as Spyfall part one. 00:07:28.760 --> 00:07:38.240 But this time, I really don't think there's any getting away from the fact that the plot itself, 00:07:39.759 --> 00:07:45.840 both on a kind of, you know, you look at something from 10 foot away and you kind of go, 00:07:45.920 --> 00:07:48.580 you know, is the rough outline there? Is that roughly the right shape? 00:07:50.400 --> 00:07:53.200 It doesn't really make any sense. I mean, what is this episode about? 00:07:53.820 --> 00:07:58.460 And then when you look at it close up in detail, no, it definitely doesn't make any sense. 00:07:58.860 --> 00:07:59.920 You're stealing my thunder. 00:08:00.480 --> 00:08:01.780 You're stealing my thunder here. 00:08:01.920 --> 00:08:07.440 That's my whole central premise of this is that I will say when I was watching the beginning of this episode. 00:08:07.870 --> 00:08:09.440 And again, the directing didn't bother me. 00:08:10.960 --> 00:08:15.620 But as we're in fact, in some places, I thought they were doing a fairly decent job. 00:08:16.320 --> 00:08:23.780 As you go through the episode and you're building the mystery and you've got the three threads and you don't know what's going on. 00:08:23.780 --> 00:08:32.760 on, I was genuinely, for the first time, I think all year, enjoying an episode of Doctor Who 00:08:33.519 --> 00:08:41.060 wholeheartedly going, I'm quite, I like, they built an atmosphere here. I'm kind of, I don't 00:08:41.060 --> 00:08:48.280 have a clue where this mystery is going. I want to know where this mystery is going. The whole, 00:08:48.700 --> 00:08:54.520 And I'll tell you, actually, I kind of lied at what point that I got hit upside the head. 00:08:55.000 --> 00:09:04.320 When they zonked the shot and showed the camera fly up through the huge patch of garbage in the Indian Ocean gyre, 00:09:04.780 --> 00:09:08.880 I can't repeat the exact words that I said to my family. 00:09:09.360 --> 00:09:11.920 But I said, oh, blank, blank, blank. 00:09:12.220 --> 00:09:18.460 It's the blanking, blank, blank, fake, blanking, blank, Indian garbage patch gyre. 00:09:19.180 --> 00:09:22.240 And then it all started to fall apart in my head. 00:09:22.500 --> 00:09:29.180 And I'll just clarify, I'm not claiming that the garbage patch in the Indian gyre is fake. 00:09:30.020 --> 00:09:32.080 But it don't look anything like that. 00:09:32.380 --> 00:09:33.880 And that irritates me. 00:09:33.890 --> 00:09:35.980 But anyway, we can come back to that later. 00:09:36.170 --> 00:09:36.920 It was terribly, terribly badly realized. 00:09:37.100 --> 00:09:39.920 I mean, what they showed on screen didn't look like anything. 00:09:40.440 --> 00:09:44.400 Yeah, it looked like garbage going down a drain or something. 00:09:44.680 --> 00:09:45.620 But yeah, it was... 00:09:45.680 --> 00:09:48.420 I don't know what it was supposed to be. 00:09:48.560 --> 00:09:51.920 But equally, I don't know why they bothered. 00:09:53.060 --> 00:09:54.500 She just explained what it was. 00:09:54.620 --> 00:09:58.600 We didn't have to see it if they weren't capable of realizing it. 00:09:58.680 --> 00:10:03.800 I mean, obviously, in an ideal world, yes, we'd get a decent rendition of it. 00:10:03.880 --> 00:10:10.620 But if you showed a picture of what it actually looked like, nobody would be impressed because it doesn't look like that. 00:10:10.760 --> 00:10:12.900 It looks like not much. 00:10:12.910 --> 00:10:15.100 In fact, try finding good pictures of it on the Internet. 00:10:16.079 --> 00:10:19.480 I dare you because I spent some time trying. 00:10:19.880 --> 00:10:21.660 But again, I'll come back to it. 00:10:22.250 --> 00:10:28.200 But yes, this not only did the story fall apart at that point because I got whacked upside the head and I was now annoyed. 00:10:28.660 --> 00:10:33.140 Literally irritated and annoyed that they had done this again. 00:10:33.940 --> 00:10:41.360 but as you say when you watch this through the second time it's a complete shambles none of the 00:10:41.480 --> 00:10:48.160 things they do fit with with what the ultimate resolution or what the ultimate problem is or 00:10:48.190 --> 00:10:55.040 and i've got a list a mile long here of questions that i can just ramble through and go why is it 00:10:55.160 --> 00:11:00.479 this why is that why is the hospital deserted why is that this today today we just none of it makes 00:11:00.500 --> 00:11:05.360 any sense. And it, you know, and this, this comes back to, I know I've said it before, I'll say it 00:11:05.520 --> 00:11:10.380 again. You know, it doesn't matter to me how a writer gets to the conclusion of a story, i.e. 00:11:10.780 --> 00:11:14.740 do they, do they just sort of read through it in their mind as they're writing it, they come to the 00:11:14.920 --> 00:11:19.000 conclusion or do they come to a conclusion and then work their way backwards or whatever? I don't 00:11:19.110 --> 00:11:26.239 care how they do it. But when I know the conclusion to a story and I watch it again, everything going 00:11:26.260 --> 00:11:35.740 up to that should work. It should make sense in context of what happened. And they can write the 00:11:36.260 --> 00:11:42.840 greatest dialogue or the most emotional scenes ever, but none of that works for me if when the 00:11:43.460 --> 00:11:50.660 story just, it's like it doesn't fit the pieces. They've got to go back and read it a second time. 00:11:50.940 --> 00:11:55.300 And it's exactly what it feels like. It feels like they finished writing it, put the dot on it, 00:11:55.340 --> 00:11:57.320 transmitted it off to Chibnall and said, I'm done. 00:11:57.640 --> 00:11:59.760 I'm not even going to read it because it's amazing. 00:12:02.860 --> 00:12:04.580 And Chibnall's co-writer on this. 00:12:04.780 --> 00:12:05.560 I noticed that. 00:12:05.570 --> 00:12:08.240 You say that as if writing dialogue and emotional scenes 00:12:08.600 --> 00:12:12.000 isn't part of the story, but the story is the dialogue and the scenes. 00:12:12.060 --> 00:12:12.580 Plot then. 00:12:14.240 --> 00:12:16.100 Yeah, plot is something else. 00:12:17.470 --> 00:12:18.420 And to me... 00:12:18.460 --> 00:12:20.660 Well, no, dialogue by itself is not a story. 00:12:21.300 --> 00:12:22.600 A story must have plot. 00:12:24.340 --> 00:12:28.000 You know, if you're just going to write dialogue, go write speeches or something. 00:12:28.180 --> 00:12:28.600 I'm not sure. 00:12:29.740 --> 00:12:32.200 Well, it must have plot, but the plot can be incredibly minimal. 00:12:32.900 --> 00:12:33.320 Yeah, okay. 00:12:33.600 --> 00:12:34.680 I'm going to concede a point here. 00:12:34.840 --> 00:12:38.380 It must have plot, and it doesn't necessarily have to have dialogue. 00:12:40.179 --> 00:12:42.160 But usually a story has both. 00:12:42.800 --> 00:12:49.240 And my overall point here is that there isn't any great dialogue and emotional scenes in this. 00:12:49.780 --> 00:12:50.800 No, there isn't any of that either. 00:12:52.180 --> 00:12:52.280 No. 00:12:52.380 --> 00:12:56.260 So there's some genuine like, ooh, this is kind of, 00:12:57.460 --> 00:12:59.200 tense isn't quite the right word, 00:12:59.460 --> 00:13:04.840 but I at least had a sense of tension or something going into something. 00:13:05.120 --> 00:13:07.500 It's atmosphere that you mentioned, 00:13:07.760 --> 00:13:12.880 and it is the atmosphere that made me think about the X-Files 00:13:13.020 --> 00:13:16.500 when they're sort of playing their torches 00:13:16.760 --> 00:13:20.179 over the interior of that Hong Kong warehouse 00:13:20.200 --> 00:13:24.960 or when they're all stranded in that base on Madagascar. 00:13:25.510 --> 00:13:28.660 You know, there are direct links going off in my head. 00:13:28.780 --> 00:13:34.660 Oh, yeah, this is, you know, it does have a nice atmosphere to it. 00:13:35.520 --> 00:13:37.660 But the X-Files wasn't flawless. 00:13:38.600 --> 00:13:38.720 No. 00:13:39.380 --> 00:13:40.180 Particularly recently. 00:13:40.500 --> 00:13:45.020 But nevertheless, I don't think they would have, you know, 00:13:45.450 --> 00:13:48.640 there might be key details. 00:13:48.880 --> 00:13:55.100 There might be even some fundamental things within the plot where you go, well, the science of that is just wrong. 00:13:55.680 --> 00:14:01.140 But overall, the story has a trajectory to it. 00:14:01.720 --> 00:14:08.280 Whereas I don't even know what the trajectory of this story is, what I kind of mean about the overall shape, 00:14:08.480 --> 00:14:15.580 because it's like the plastic thing seems to have been almost bolted on. 00:14:16.220 --> 00:14:23.720 it's as if in order to give this story depth we have to say something powerful and relevant oh 00:14:24.000 --> 00:14:30.060 let's you know let's make this a story about another story about how humans are polluting 00:14:30.120 --> 00:14:34.540 the planet now i'm not saying we shouldn't have another story about that we can't really have 00:14:34.700 --> 00:14:41.779 enough stories about that until we bloody well stop doing it but that just bolting that on doesn't 00:14:41.800 --> 00:14:47.940 automatically add depth to the story and in particular the moral doesn't tie in with what 00:14:47.940 --> 00:14:54.680 we get in this story because it's it's it's half about the plastic pollution but it's the plastic 00:14:54.860 --> 00:14:59.840 pollution in itself within this story isn't actually a problem it's only a problem when the 00:15:01.000 --> 00:15:08.360 alien pathogen gets introduced and then starts somehow controlling the plastic and at some 00:15:08.300 --> 00:15:13.280 points in the story appears to be acting as a sentient entity which is you know potentially 00:15:13.640 --> 00:15:18.580 interesting except oh no this isn't actually about oh yeah except the doctor just wipes it out 00:15:18.880 --> 00:15:25.740 so yeah but yeah and and wipes it out um it and and because it's alien it's nothing to do with 00:15:25.780 --> 00:15:34.040 i think you probably deliberately made an allusion to doom watch in your in your i picked it up 00:15:34.020 --> 00:15:35.500 because I was thinking the same thing. 00:15:35.520 --> 00:15:37.340 But the point about the Doomwatch story, 00:15:37.420 --> 00:15:39.820 which actually was a much more coherent story, 00:15:40.520 --> 00:15:44.560 was that the plastic eating bacteria in that 00:15:44.780 --> 00:15:47.540 was introduced by humans. 00:15:47.720 --> 00:15:49.900 It wasn't that... 00:15:50.380 --> 00:15:52.760 Trying to solve our plastics problem, though. 00:15:53.080 --> 00:15:57.320 It wasn't that we had this benign plastic pollution 00:15:57.560 --> 00:16:00.360 that was suddenly weaponized against us 00:16:00.540 --> 00:16:01.540 by some pesky aliens. 00:16:02.120 --> 00:16:15.040 It was that we had this terrible problem with the plastic pollution that was so terrible, it drove us to create another problem, which then was the subject of that storyline without wishing to go into any spoilers. 00:16:15.300 --> 00:16:18.700 There is nothing that consistent in this. 00:16:19.360 --> 00:16:25.620 Correct. I mean, it would be a big enough problem if indeed the alien bacteria was just eating all our plastic. 00:16:26.520 --> 00:16:26.740 Yes. 00:16:27.300 --> 00:16:30.240 We would be, you know, up a creek without a paddle. 00:16:31.540 --> 00:16:36.920 if that happened so we and then there's then there's then there's all of the kind of 00:16:37.700 --> 00:16:45.660 the biology that is associated with that so like like like you say it's only affecting the plastic 00:16:45.870 --> 00:16:52.480 inside things which suggests to me that it's targeting the plastic it's going for which is 00:16:52.700 --> 00:16:58.639 why i wonder and and when the birds attack it's as if they are behaving as a single entity which 00:16:58.660 --> 00:17:04.260 is i wonder why why that is unless there is some sort of sentience to it and there is a reference 00:17:04.680 --> 00:17:11.720 that i picked up the second time when i was going what what what's that when the the submariner on 00:17:11.720 --> 00:17:17.560 the beach says it was already inside the sub yes i don't even know what it was because i think it's 00:17:18.079 --> 00:17:23.980 because it's on my list yeah it's not and how and what what was what was it in the sea that the 00:17:23.900 --> 00:17:29.040 plastic was that fish you know is it is it the same thing again is it plastic inside biological 00:17:29.340 --> 00:17:33.580 entities because it wants to control or possess the biological entities for some reason whatever 00:17:33.650 --> 00:17:40.220 that is and explanation would be nice but you know at least confirmation would be a start and then 00:17:40.930 --> 00:17:48.459 the biology of the bird the the the bird's enzyme seems to be fighting back against the the oh god 00:17:48.760 --> 00:17:57.280 the fighting back against the pathogen in the plastic and that allows them to uh with a little 00:17:57.460 --> 00:18:07.020 bit of uh techno babble come up with some sort of um some sort of vaccine or whatever the hell it is 00:18:07.420 --> 00:18:14.899 that they then decide to use on adam where the doctor says we can't possibly use it on adam 00:18:14.820 --> 00:18:20.960 because it's too dangerous even though adam is dying and there's absolutely no hope of him living 00:18:20.960 --> 00:18:30.120 if they don't try it on him and then they find one of suki's crewmates who is infected with the 00:18:30.240 --> 00:18:35.640 praxeus and has it all over his face like we've seen with the other bodies but the doctor says 00:18:35.840 --> 00:18:43.599 ah they have a different biology that's why they haven't exploded and then she says to suki i hope 00:18:43.620 --> 00:18:49.360 you didn't try this vaccine on yourself because it's been designed for humans despite the fact 00:18:50.000 --> 00:18:57.600 it was designed for birds and they've only just tried it on a human and then suki explodes even 00:18:57.700 --> 00:19:03.100 though the doctor says that they don't explode because they have a different biology uh-huh 00:19:03.680 --> 00:19:11.280 yeah it makes it it makes no sense i i'm just gonna i'm gonna do something different in this 00:19:11.220 --> 00:19:15.560 podcast because I have another one that I have a deeper discussion that I want to talk about. 00:19:16.780 --> 00:19:22.780 I'm just going to, I'm going to real quick list my, my list of questions. I'm not expecting any 00:19:23.060 --> 00:19:28.380 answers for them, but if any of them interest you, we'll, we'll cycle back to them. But this is just 00:19:28.780 --> 00:19:33.540 as I'm watching it the second time, I'm just writing stuff down and I have switched their 00:19:33.660 --> 00:19:39.399 order a little bit in, in a logical order, but okay. So here they are. I'll tell you when the 00:19:39.340 --> 00:19:43.720 list is done. How long have the aliens been working on Earth? How long has that submarine 00:19:43.980 --> 00:19:50.080 been missing? It seemed very embedded in that Praxeus world. And it doesn't seem like the 00:19:50.300 --> 00:19:55.700 sailor could have gotten out of the bottom of the Indian Ocean and made it to Madagascar in exactly 00:19:55.700 --> 00:20:02.560 the same place as the lab. Why are the aliens where they are? Why is Peru in this equation at all? 00:20:02.800 --> 00:20:07.940 It's nowhere near the Indian Ocean gyre. Why did the aliens need to snatch an astronaut when there 00:20:07.900 --> 00:20:13.640 are millions of humans available in hong kong how did adam get a cell phone and contact jake 00:20:14.180 --> 00:20:21.660 how who knows phone numbers by memory anymore is aramu an alien why is the hong kong lab filled 00:20:21.660 --> 00:20:27.040 with alien tech but not suki's lab why is the virus attacking birds and humans but the results 00:20:27.050 --> 00:20:32.699 of the virus is dissimilar in them why is that hospitals deserted why were the birds traveling 00:20:32.720 --> 00:20:33.740 to non-native areas? 00:20:34.360 --> 00:20:35.880 Those weren't seabirds, were they? 00:20:36.060 --> 00:20:37.480 So were they eating plastics? 00:20:38.140 --> 00:20:39.960 How are they able to crew the spaceship? 00:20:40.480 --> 00:20:42.100 How is Yaz able to understand 00:20:42.440 --> 00:20:43.620 alien scanning doohickey? 00:20:43.980 --> 00:20:45.940 Is there something wrong with Yaz's 00:20:45.940 --> 00:20:48.100 sea attitude about discovering alien colony? 00:20:48.440 --> 00:20:49.840 Why did Praxeus, a bacteria, 00:20:50.190 --> 00:20:51.860 build an undersea atmosphere bubble 00:20:51.950 --> 00:20:52.580 for the aliens? 00:20:52.970 --> 00:20:54.520 Are humans really the worst thing 00:20:54.530 --> 00:20:55.460 in three galaxies? 00:20:56.840 --> 00:20:58.280 Is the comment, 00:20:58.500 --> 00:21:00.320 three idiots roaming, 00:21:00.660 --> 00:21:02.020 it's snappy and accurate, 00:21:02.320 --> 00:21:09.260 a really appropriate line for these people to say at the end. And just ask, is the TARDIS a cure-all? 00:21:10.160 --> 00:21:15.180 This time it generates the antibacterial. I wish they'd been able to do that in the Silurians. 00:21:15.980 --> 00:21:18.880 Okay. So- 00:21:18.880 --> 00:21:20.680 That wasn't a question. 00:21:20.680 --> 00:21:23.820 I know it wasn't because I think I was running out of questions at the end and I 00:21:23.820 --> 00:21:25.460 wrote that note in the wrong spot. But yes. 00:21:28.760 --> 00:21:31.140 It just kept rattling. 00:21:31.650 --> 00:21:32.720 And some of them might be interesting. 00:21:33.080 --> 00:21:36.200 But here's what I really want to talk about. 00:21:37.010 --> 00:21:37.320 It's different. 00:21:37.480 --> 00:21:38.020 We can come back. 00:21:38.420 --> 00:21:39.600 Like I said, we've got some others there. 00:21:39.600 --> 00:21:41.320 We can come back to those and look at. 00:21:42.920 --> 00:21:48.700 This episode, and indeed this entire series, it hit me today. 00:21:49.280 --> 00:21:50.800 Well, not today, but when I was watching it. 00:21:50.840 --> 00:21:57.860 It hit me when I was watching it that the question, the thing that's bugging me is that 00:21:58.090 --> 00:22:02.460 the whole series raises the question of evil. 00:22:03.230 --> 00:22:09.720 And so for listeners who may not be familiar, the question of evil is a philosophical argument 00:22:10.320 --> 00:22:12.500 concerning the existence or non-existence of God. 00:22:12.950 --> 00:22:18.260 And it goes, and I'm summarizing, if God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibonelent, 00:22:18.580 --> 00:22:26.480 then how can evil exist? And you can go into the whole theodysseys of free will or 00:22:27.980 --> 00:22:33.180 I forget what some of the others are, but there are mental gymnastics that people perform to try 00:22:33.200 --> 00:22:41.960 to get around that three point problem. Now, the doctor is not a god, is not God. But if you take 00:22:42.020 --> 00:22:51.200 humans and you take god and you put the doctor on the scale of omniscient it's far greater than 00:22:51.320 --> 00:22:58.920 humans the doctor is far more closer to omnipotent than our human and certainly far more towards 00:22:59.460 --> 00:23:05.800 omnibenevolent the doctor omnibenevolent yes she's not omnibenevolent but she is benevolent 00:23:05.900 --> 00:23:09.879 she's more benevolent than humans the others don't work she's more potent than humans okay 00:23:09.900 --> 00:23:15.560 she's more yeah well i think yes being omnipotent being a bit omnipotent it's a bit like being yeah 00:23:15.620 --> 00:23:22.140 right but on the scale between us and omnipotent it's further on the scale she knows more she's 00:23:22.640 --> 00:23:29.600 got more power power and she's nicer and she's she's more proactive and probably the doctor 00:23:30.539 --> 00:23:38.099 has always been the moral guidepost in this show russell t davis famously said that the doctor is 00:23:38.420 --> 00:23:45.160 you know basically the the morality that comes into the story and sets things in action um 00:23:45.980 --> 00:23:51.220 and she's always been kind of the poster child for getting out and doing things which is of course 00:23:51.260 --> 00:23:57.420 the problem with evil is that if god can is all those things it shouldn't allow evil or it should 00:23:57.560 --> 00:24:03.199 solve evil or it should whatever but and the doctor is always doing that wherever the doctor 00:24:03.220 --> 00:24:09.220 goes, the Doctor lands, the Doctor, Jodie Whittaker's Doctor says, I'm the Doctor sorting 00:24:09.400 --> 00:24:14.400 out fair play around the universe. I think that's almost her first line after she identifies 00:24:14.680 --> 00:24:20.160 herself as the Doctor. She's out there, she's fixing things up. If all of these episodes week 00:24:20.480 --> 00:24:25.440 after week are going to be telling us of how screwed up we are, why isn't the Doctor doing 00:24:25.700 --> 00:24:30.080 anything about it? They walk away from these episodes. Oh, you're destroying your planet. 00:24:30.140 --> 00:24:36.640 bye-bye oh you're messing up you're polluting things bye-bye like and why aren't uh graham 00:24:36.960 --> 00:24:42.900 ryan and yes going hey doctor what can we do about these things and maybe do something because 00:24:43.110 --> 00:24:49.700 certainly the doctor is not a non-interventionist right so because they have decided to take this 00:24:49.980 --> 00:24:59.380 tack of moralizing at us and then the doctor is curiously not taking any action so the doctor is 00:24:59.360 --> 00:25:07.520 losing her moral authority here, in my opinion. It doesn't jive. It doesn't fit with who the 00:25:07.660 --> 00:25:14.280 Doctor is. I get why she's opposed to all these things, but she is not doing anything about them. 00:25:15.870 --> 00:25:22.360 I think the answer is usually the web of time. It's a more difficult one in this case. I think 00:25:22.360 --> 00:25:29.040 the problem of evil in Doctor Who arises with the sort of let's kill Hitler type thing. 00:25:30.020 --> 00:25:38.560 any kind of any kind of historical where there are evils evils that take take place particularly 00:25:39.420 --> 00:25:50.160 evils that led then lay down the foundations for massive social change um and you know you could 00:25:50.260 --> 00:25:54.680 argue till the cows come home about the consequences i think that's a much more difficult 00:25:55.480 --> 00:26:01.180 that's a much more difficult explanation for why the doctor wouldn't do something to stop 00:26:01.840 --> 00:26:07.740 a race destroying the planet it lives on because if it were another planet she probably would 00:26:08.780 --> 00:26:17.660 i think my feeling is that although i think i'm i'm not paying as much i'm not giving as much 00:26:17.760 --> 00:26:25.500 weight to the utterances about setting things right around the universe or whatever, because 00:26:25.500 --> 00:26:35.520 I don't like it. I don't think the doctor has a perfect moral compass. There are much 00:26:35.520 --> 00:26:43.180 more interesting stories told when you actually think the doctor makes mistakes or acts in 00:26:42.920 --> 00:26:51.340 a way that is quite, I don't want to say selfish, but is partisan, because it really is impossible 00:26:51.540 --> 00:26:58.580 to be completely impartial. And then as soon as you have partiality, you can explore both sides. 00:26:58.620 --> 00:27:03.400 And that includes exploring the side the Doctor is not on. And to me, that's interesting 00:27:03.840 --> 00:27:09.219 storytelling. It's also much more interesting, i.e. because the jeopardy is greater, if you don't 00:27:10.100 --> 00:27:17.240 present the Doctor as being massively, massively omnipotent. The Doctor is already very, very smart 00:27:17.600 --> 00:27:23.200 and has a machine that can travel through time and space, which would give her a lot of power 00:27:23.860 --> 00:27:31.060 if she were willing to use it in certain ways. But this idea that she could somehow save the 00:27:31.170 --> 00:27:38.380 human race from itself, you'll say that the show has set up the premise that she can do that, 00:27:38.440 --> 00:27:44.360 and maybe it has but i just don't like it so i prefer to ignore it well and i think that's 00:27:44.600 --> 00:27:53.160 i think that's a fundamental structural flaw i mean that's the flaw with with uh the the problem 00:27:53.160 --> 00:28:00.440 the question of evil is that people tend to self-justify it by ignoring some part of it 00:28:00.640 --> 00:28:08.400 so that it fits with the the their idea and i don't disagree we are absolutely ignoring it 00:28:08.480 --> 00:28:12.840 No, no, it's not a question of ignoring it. You can solve the problem of evil and you can solve 00:28:12.840 --> 00:28:18.720 it very simply in an entirely consistent and rational way. Yes, you can, but... 00:28:20.980 --> 00:28:24.520 But we're not... You know what it is. We're not here to convert people to atheism. 00:28:25.580 --> 00:28:32.100 The Doctor is not a god. And when the show makes her a god, it creates the problem, 00:28:32.460 --> 00:28:36.200 I grant you, but I prefer when it doesn't. 00:28:36.440 --> 00:28:39.860 And so that's when I start ignoring evidence. 00:28:40.660 --> 00:28:48.360 There is plenty of evidence that she is flawed and that she is not as powerful as she thinks. 00:28:48.800 --> 00:28:52.060 And I'm clinging on to that and I'm ignoring the rest of it. 00:28:53.280 --> 00:28:53.540 Yeah. 00:28:53.560 --> 00:29:00.220 And I'm not saying that I'm recommending that she should go solve the problems on the planet. 00:29:00.660 --> 00:29:13.600 I just think that because it's what the showrunner has decided to emphasize these problems to the audience, 00:29:14.260 --> 00:29:22.380 then they're beginning to ignore the fact that they've got a, let's call God-like creature. 00:29:22.380 --> 00:29:27.500 I mean, River Song literally called the doctor that at one point. 00:29:29.460 --> 00:29:40.580 I guess something about it. Yeah. And from most people's perspective, she would she would appear like a god purely, you know, if you take the one fact that she can apparate from thin air. 00:29:41.100 --> 00:29:47.680 Yeah. But I think the problem, the scope of the problem is fairly narrow. 00:29:48.260 --> 00:29:54.820 It's not that we have episodes that highlight the ecological dangers that we are putting the planet in. 00:29:55.520 --> 00:29:59.920 It's that we have the doctor giving speeches about it. 00:30:00.480 --> 00:30:03.100 And she's making a big point of it, too. That's right. 00:30:04.180 --> 00:30:10.840 We touched on it in Orphan 55, where it was particularly clunky because it came at the end and served no plot point. 00:30:11.520 --> 00:30:23.940 But most of that speech that she gives in the lab in Madagascar, you could cut because when I watched it the second time, I can't remember what the lines were. 00:30:23.970 --> 00:30:29.120 But she's explaining. She's explaining why it's a problem that we've all got microplastics in our body. 00:30:29.720 --> 00:30:34.140 So she says, you know, she gives the facts we all have microplastics in the body. 00:30:34.140 --> 00:30:39.260 And I was thinking, well, that's true. So why did I find this speech jarring so much? 00:30:39.740 --> 00:30:47.100 And the reason was I'd forgotten that she then goes on to pontificate for two minutes about what a bloody mess everyone's made of it. 00:30:48.800 --> 00:30:51.560 Which is, it could have been cut from the episode. 00:30:52.400 --> 00:30:56.060 It wouldn't have made the episode any less impactful. 00:30:56.860 --> 00:31:08.360 And it would have improved the pacing, especially when they're supposed to be in an urgent situation when moralising a great deal about the kind of generalised problems is probably not going to help. 00:31:08.940 --> 00:31:11.440 especially to people who are going to agree with her anyway. 00:31:12.140 --> 00:31:13.080 I mean, the people in the room, 00:31:13.300 --> 00:31:15.220 as well as the people like you and me. 00:31:15.640 --> 00:31:21.900 Yeah, it's just, yeah, they need to, I hate to say it, 00:31:22.140 --> 00:31:24.020 if you want to tell a story about something 00:31:24.400 --> 00:31:26.080 and you want to moralize a story about it, 00:31:26.260 --> 00:31:29.840 you've got to lay it in integrally 00:31:30.300 --> 00:31:33.080 and let the audience come to that conclusion, 00:31:34.180 --> 00:31:36.720 not have the character stand up and tell you. 00:31:37.200 --> 00:31:37.960 Yeah, absolutely. 00:31:38.500 --> 00:31:44.160 Absolutely. And to labour the point we're making earlier, the plastic eaters does that. 00:31:44.670 --> 00:31:53.600 This story doesn't do that because it doesn't tell a story where the actual peril is the plastic 00:31:53.840 --> 00:32:04.700 itself. It's this alien pathogen. And the aliens are therefore the problem, not the plastic. 00:32:06.840 --> 00:32:18.440 Well, but remember, this is by the guy who wrote Kerblam, the story we thought was going to be an amazing indictment against Amazon and in the end turned out to be a warning against Amazon. 00:32:19.270 --> 00:32:19.420 Yeah. 00:32:21.360 --> 00:32:24.600 He's just expanded from bubble wrap to plastic more generally. 00:32:25.220 --> 00:32:27.320 Yes, that bubble wrap is part of the... 00:32:28.059 --> 00:32:30.740 This guy's got a problem with plastic. 00:32:33.200 --> 00:32:35.180 He's got a thing on for plastic here. 00:32:36.100 --> 00:32:37.840 And yet he hasn't written an Auton story. 00:32:38.440 --> 00:32:39.320 But he mentioned them. 00:32:40.180 --> 00:32:40.340 Yes. 00:32:40.640 --> 00:32:43.740 I'm thinking Chibnall probably did that, but that felt like a Chibnall ad. 00:32:43.740 --> 00:32:45.840 I mean, if it had been an Auton story, it would have been better, 00:32:46.100 --> 00:32:50.480 because you could at least have understood Autons controlling birds. 00:32:51.100 --> 00:32:52.340 How would you like this one? 00:32:53.060 --> 00:32:55.500 This is how the Autons came to be. 00:32:56.040 --> 00:32:56.700 Yeah, yeah. 00:32:57.020 --> 00:33:00.100 An intelligent creature formed up out of bacteria and plastic. 00:33:01.380 --> 00:33:02.900 Could have been their origin story. 00:33:03.560 --> 00:33:05.200 Yeah, it could be something there. 00:33:05.760 --> 00:33:17.400 I don't know. There were things in this story that could have been a good story if they had been paired up with other things that made sense and were consistent. 00:33:18.100 --> 00:33:25.000 Question on the morality of the thing. Do you think the doctor and the gang leave Earth and try to save Suki's people? 00:33:25.540 --> 00:33:27.440 I don't get the sense that they do, no. 00:33:27.480 --> 00:33:34.560 I don't either but we know Suki said she transmitted the the uh cure quote unquote cure 00:33:35.320 --> 00:33:41.220 to her people and and then she blows up because it turns out it's a death sentence um but yeah 00:33:41.400 --> 00:33:47.680 but I but I've got a much I've got a much more immediate moral problem that is similar okay it's 00:33:47.780 --> 00:33:52.899 probably not on the same scale but because of its immediacy it's much more striking within the story 00:33:53.440 --> 00:33:58.740 and that is you mentioned quite rightly i had the same question that we don't know whether 00:33:59.420 --> 00:34:08.060 aramu is one of suki's people is is he also an alien but if we don't know the doctor and the fam 00:34:08.399 --> 00:34:16.340 don't know either when aramu gets pecked to death by the birds and then the birds start attacking 00:34:16.800 --> 00:34:24.139 the lab no one even mentions him let alone goes where's aramu or is he all right or i hope he's 00:34:24.280 --> 00:34:30.179 right or oh my god aramu's being killed it's just literally they appear to have completely forgotten 00:34:30.399 --> 00:34:35.399 about him so the idea they might forget about the rest of that race of whatever they were 00:34:36.220 --> 00:34:41.079 is not especially surprising well and there were a few moments there 00:34:42.000 --> 00:34:45.800 awkward that's that i consider that an awkward moment another one that i thought was when 00:34:46.139 --> 00:34:50.879 they were out looking at the birds swarming and dangerous there on the beach and graham comes out 00:34:51.000 --> 00:34:56.500 you know he's the old geezer in here is gonna die if you don't do something quick we need your help 00:34:56.679 --> 00:35:01.360 quick are you just gonna stand around looking at those birds swirling around menacingly and 00:35:01.580 --> 00:35:07.319 dangerously worrying us and he's completely ignoring the fact that he must know the birds 00:35:07.340 --> 00:35:15.360 are a threat yeah and and he's trying to impose his priorities over of in and i mentioned that 00:35:15.420 --> 00:35:19.180 because that scene is the immediate scene where armu says i'll stay out here i'll stay out and 00:35:19.180 --> 00:35:24.860 then that's really the last thing that we care about him when we see him running he might as 00:35:24.860 --> 00:35:30.480 well be putting a red shirt on at that point yeah and i also think you know the birds did a number 00:35:30.540 --> 00:35:36.419 on him but when they burst into the lab one scratch and you're infected nobody nobody i don't 00:35:36.440 --> 00:35:43.320 I think swinging a bat or a piece of wood at a bunch of birds is going to stop them from pecking you or scratching you. 00:35:43.880 --> 00:35:49.040 It just, especially bacterially plastic controlled zombie birds. 00:35:49.240 --> 00:35:49.340 No. 00:35:49.920 --> 00:35:52.720 That was terrible direction, but also. 00:35:52.980 --> 00:35:53.460 I'll agree. 00:35:53.580 --> 00:35:54.640 In effects, yeah. 00:35:55.900 --> 00:35:59.860 If I may pick up on a very similar piece of appalling direction. 00:36:00.640 --> 00:36:10.760 These guys in their hazmat suits or whatever the hell they are with their alien guns are absolutely abysmal shots. 00:36:11.420 --> 00:36:12.040 Yes, they are. 00:36:12.240 --> 00:36:16.160 They're just firing all over the shop and not hitting anyone at all. 00:36:16.600 --> 00:36:23.120 And then D.I. Willis picks one up, probably not firearms trained, given he's British anyway, but whatever. 00:36:23.280 --> 00:36:25.100 He's not going to have used an alien gun before. 00:36:25.780 --> 00:36:30.440 And suddenly he's a crack shot and he nails one in the head from the other side of the building. 00:36:30.620 --> 00:36:37.780 i mean what yeah well that that was definitely a stormtrooper stormtrooper moment notoriously 00:36:37.930 --> 00:36:43.800 worst shots in the in a galaxy far far away that but that could have been directed differently so 00:36:43.800 --> 00:36:50.900 that yeah they they got closer and he got lucky or you know i or our heroes did something clever 00:36:51.020 --> 00:37:00.700 to avoid being shot yes yes but but they they did not um so are we getting clues here to our 00:37:00.880 --> 00:37:08.180 question of by fall that yaz is a plant or an undercover agent because she was acting really 00:37:08.420 --> 00:37:17.840 weird in this episode i well i i i don't know i don't know i mean there have we we i don't think 00:37:17.760 --> 00:37:24.040 it is that i don't think it is that i don't buy your theory from spy fall and i think there is 00:37:24.200 --> 00:37:31.160 another reason for this in this episode which is that they are they're they're trying to they're 00:37:31.240 --> 00:37:37.920 trying to develop yaz by showing her sort of standing up to the doctor and trying to explore 00:37:38.010 --> 00:37:42.819 in her own right but it it ties in with the general problem in this series that none of the 00:37:42.840 --> 00:37:51.740 companions are getting any development and even though i liked tesla and i liked the way that the 00:37:51.840 --> 00:37:59.500 companions were written in that someone's actually done an episode an edit of that episode where they 00:37:59.620 --> 00:38:06.580 have taken out every line of dialogue for all of the companions and it doesn't run much shorter 00:38:06.640 --> 00:38:16.700 and it's very hard to notice where the cuts are oh i can yeah i so to to your comment in another 00:38:16.880 --> 00:38:23.160 podcast and i can't remember which one it was but you know the doctor has a time machine it's a time 00:38:23.280 --> 00:38:30.360 machine and so yes it's like no i'm not going with you i gotta go back in that room and i've gotta 00:38:30.860 --> 00:38:35.779 i've gotta pull that thing out and the doctor's like we're in a hurry we gotta go wait it's quick 00:38:35.800 --> 00:38:44.260 it's fast it's gone all right well i'll come back for you in an hour how right how does that jive 00:38:44.280 --> 00:38:48.500 with the fact that you've got a time machine well i assume that's because yaz needs an hour to do 00:38:48.660 --> 00:38:52.720 whatever she's going to do well they could have just hopped in the tardis pushed the button 00:38:52.960 --> 00:38:56.720 forward one hour and gone blip and then been right back for her but they didn't bother to do that 00:38:57.120 --> 00:39:01.460 that would have that would have been much better yes i agree why were they in a hurry they've got 00:39:01.400 --> 00:39:07.560 a time machine well okay maybe adam's get into the time machine but yeah when they got into it 00:39:07.580 --> 00:39:13.840 they should have they should have zipped forward an hour in time i mean again i think i think the 00:39:14.000 --> 00:39:18.560 fact that the doctor is so good at piloting the tardis is causing a lot of problems and i don't 00:39:18.760 --> 00:39:27.600 just mean with why she didn't save adrick in earth shock i just i just mean if you if you 00:39:27.540 --> 00:39:32.020 all over the place yeah well yeah well yeah because suddenly she can save someone from an 00:39:32.180 --> 00:39:40.100 exploding spaceship her precision is that that good the the the tardis the tardis is an excellent 00:39:40.440 --> 00:39:50.580 story device i mean it's just absolutely brilliant if you use it as a way of arriving in any place 00:39:50.840 --> 00:39:57.500 in space and time at the beginning of a story and then leaving and going somewhere else afterwards 00:39:57.660 --> 00:40:02.540 And as we've discussed, you don't even need to be able to pilot it accurately or whatever. 00:40:03.120 --> 00:40:09.760 If you don't take care of it during the story that you don't have access to it, 00:40:10.080 --> 00:40:14.320 and both this one and Spyfall have this problem because they're using it as a kind of, 00:40:16.020 --> 00:40:21.140 essentially as a terrestrial teleport, a space hopping device. 00:40:22.600 --> 00:40:25.120 But it can do so much more than that. 00:40:25.460 --> 00:40:29.880 there is and as soon as they have access to it you must ask the question why aren't why aren't 00:40:29.880 --> 00:40:35.340 they doing more with that it needs to be taken out of the if you're going to have something like 00:40:35.360 --> 00:40:40.300 that and as i say it's brilliant it needs to be taken out of the story during the story 00:40:44.060 --> 00:40:52.859 yeah um yes just plunking around around on alien equipment understands it reads it makes perfect 00:40:52.880 --> 00:40:58.680 I mean, I guess that's more of the fitting with your theory thing. 00:40:59.440 --> 00:41:03.620 I, yeah, I can't really explain that. 00:41:04.140 --> 00:41:08.140 But there is the scene at the end where they all seem to be able to understand how to, 00:41:08.680 --> 00:41:11.920 even though they're trying to make a joke about they don't understand what they're doing, 00:41:12.500 --> 00:41:17.160 they clearly do understand what they're doing because of the way they're speaking their dialogue. 00:41:17.680 --> 00:41:24.020 I've inverted the polarity on the nuclear pile inverters. 00:41:24.540 --> 00:41:27.800 It's like, or how about I push that button, doctor? 00:41:28.580 --> 00:41:28.720 Yeah. 00:41:29.000 --> 00:41:29.280 Yes. 00:41:29.840 --> 00:41:35.120 Even Graham's faux pas is apparently him misspeaking 00:41:35.260 --> 00:41:38.120 rather than him getting something wrong and quickly correcting it. 00:41:38.580 --> 00:41:39.720 I agree. 00:41:39.780 --> 00:41:40.540 I worry about Graham. 00:41:41.100 --> 00:41:44.460 He doesn't get his directions wrong a lot nowadays. 00:41:45.440 --> 00:41:48.740 But it's because he's been turned into the comic relief. 00:41:49.580 --> 00:41:49.680 Yeah. 00:41:50.200 --> 00:41:56.000 Rather than having his own personality like he did in Series 37. 00:41:57.859 --> 00:42:02.060 I've got another piece of poor direction, 00:42:02.440 --> 00:42:05.300 a couple of pieces of poor direction that I want to pick on 00:42:05.520 --> 00:42:08.420 just to finish making my case on this. 00:42:08.700 --> 00:42:19.060 the scene in the bar the first time that we see jake realize adam is missing it's not clear to me 00:42:19.280 --> 00:42:23.000 whether that certainly from the first watching i think on the second watching it was the first 00:42:23.100 --> 00:42:28.120 time he realizes adam is missing it's the first time we see any connection between he and him and 00:42:28.180 --> 00:42:37.360 adam but his reaction is very strange it's not it's not yeah it's not it's not as if if 00:42:38.400 --> 00:42:44.940 if you suddenly turned on the telly and saw that your life partner was crashing into the indian 00:42:45.080 --> 00:42:51.500 ocean or was lost after re-entry or whatever you would have a very instant and sudden reaction 00:42:51.860 --> 00:42:58.420 to it and it's and it's not he's just like turn the sound up mate it's not quite clear i mean he's 00:42:58.480 --> 00:43:03.000 looking upset sure but it's it could be because this is someone he knew at school kind of thing 00:43:03.200 --> 00:43:08.460 or it also because he just got kicked out of a job and he's drowning his sorrows too 00:43:08.980 --> 00:43:15.759 it's why he looks upset i mean yeah yeah and then and and then at that very moment that he discovers 00:43:16.240 --> 00:43:17.800 Adam is missing he gets a text 00:43:18.570 --> 00:43:20.180 from Adam which is 00:43:20.740 --> 00:43:22.420 kind of a weird coincidence 00:43:22.840 --> 00:43:24.580 he gets a text from a Hong Kong 00:43:24.880 --> 00:43:26.560 phone number that is not 00:43:26.640 --> 00:43:27.740 in his address book 00:43:28.420 --> 00:43:30.480 yes because presumably you don't get 00:43:30.480 --> 00:43:31.960 to take a mobile into space 00:43:32.520 --> 00:43:33.460 right and 00:43:34.460 --> 00:43:36.200 I asked that in one of my quick questions 00:43:36.500 --> 00:43:38.520 does anybody know anybody's phone number now 00:43:38.840 --> 00:43:40.100 yeah do they 00:43:40.250 --> 00:43:42.340 I mean do you think he would be able to 00:43:42.840 --> 00:43:44.439 A. how the heck did he get 00:43:44.460 --> 00:43:50.460 a mobile phone if he's been captured by aliens and strapped into a machine and well that's a 00:43:50.530 --> 00:43:57.880 valid question and and then you know in that condition he remembers jake's phone number 00:43:58.260 --> 00:44:05.480 complete with international dial codes and he sends him a text can you all right yep all right 00:44:06.840 --> 00:44:11.720 well i guess you would know your own international dial code okay that's fine yeah and i and i know 00:44:11.700 --> 00:44:16.740 phone numbers for close friends and family i i think very many of them are listening don't test 00:44:16.740 --> 00:44:24.720 me on that yeah i think a lot some of you guys it's not personal i mean i i find that you know 00:44:24.940 --> 00:44:31.000 even i know my wife's i have no clue what my kids phone numbers are i just don't because yeah yeah 00:44:31.160 --> 00:44:36.260 that's what i mean you might you might know some of them because some people change their number 00:44:36.350 --> 00:44:41.660 more often or whatever you ring some numbers more often doesn't mean you don't speak to the person 00:44:41.680 --> 00:44:42.940 Maybe you just WhatsApp them instead. 00:44:43.260 --> 00:44:43.780 So, yeah. 00:44:44.160 --> 00:44:44.440 Yeah. 00:44:44.670 --> 00:44:50.400 And since it's in your address book, it through lack, just from lack of doing it. 00:44:50.940 --> 00:44:51.080 Yeah. 00:44:51.500 --> 00:44:53.360 You know, call my dad. 00:44:53.870 --> 00:44:53.980 Okay. 00:44:55.200 --> 00:44:57.540 So I thought that was strange. 00:44:57.970 --> 00:45:02.800 And then the fact, you know, the fact that it comes from somebody who doesn't know or a contact he doesn't know. 00:45:03.480 --> 00:45:04.840 And, you know, he says, help me. 00:45:05.120 --> 00:45:06.340 Who is this, Adam? 00:45:07.200 --> 00:45:14.600 You would never in a million years get any emotional connection between those two people. 00:45:15.240 --> 00:45:20.480 And so when they get to the point halfway through the episode and they're dragging around, how do you two guys know each other? 00:45:20.700 --> 00:45:21.340 We're married. 00:45:22.360 --> 00:45:22.540 Really? 00:45:24.280 --> 00:45:28.160 But that's because the bar scene is so badly directed. 00:45:28.940 --> 00:45:32.700 All of it up to that point is so badly directed or conveyed. 00:45:33.220 --> 00:45:33.820 Well, yes. 00:45:34.030 --> 00:45:35.700 But I'm just I'm picking on the examples. 00:45:35.920 --> 00:45:38.920 I will also, because this is my final example, 00:45:40.700 --> 00:45:44.220 when they say we're married or they say we're separated 00:45:44.310 --> 00:45:45.480 and they say it at the same time, 00:45:46.520 --> 00:45:48.640 you can't hear what either of them are saying. 00:45:49.240 --> 00:45:50.440 I know I had to use the subtitles. 00:45:51.220 --> 00:45:54.540 I mean, it's ridiculous because, first of all, 00:45:55.020 --> 00:45:58.180 they should show us how they're related. 00:45:58.800 --> 00:46:01.460 So as I've just been complaining, 00:46:01.590 --> 00:46:03.620 we should already know at that point. 00:46:04.000 --> 00:46:09.780 But then when we get this crucial revelation, it's impossible to make it out. 00:46:10.480 --> 00:46:13.460 So you're still essentially in the dark. 00:46:13.530 --> 00:46:17.460 You can make an intelligent guess at that point. 00:46:18.120 --> 00:46:19.100 It's what I guessed. 00:46:19.520 --> 00:46:29.560 But it seemed so contrary to what had gone before that I was still questioning myself rather than confirming it. 00:46:29.840 --> 00:46:33.040 I mean, the closest I would have put is that they might have been brothers. 00:46:33.740 --> 00:46:35.080 from the way we saw the scene, 00:46:35.700 --> 00:46:37.780 but more likely just it's his friend. 00:46:38.640 --> 00:46:39.260 That's what I thought. 00:46:39.390 --> 00:46:39.600 At most. 00:46:39.640 --> 00:46:40.180 That's what I thought. 00:46:40.250 --> 00:46:40.380 Yeah. 00:46:41.320 --> 00:46:43.740 So, yeah, it's all, 00:46:44.170 --> 00:46:47.640 the characterization is not fantastic. 00:46:47.920 --> 00:46:51.560 I was vaguely amused by Gabriela's, 00:46:51.840 --> 00:46:55.180 you must have seen us throughout the course of the episode. 00:46:55.600 --> 00:46:57.680 But I found that very strange. 00:46:57.990 --> 00:47:00.800 The idea that she would expect to be recognized 00:47:01.090 --> 00:47:02.060 because she did a vlog. 00:47:02.680 --> 00:47:03.920 Oh, I agree that it's strange. 00:47:04.260 --> 00:47:07.860 I just think it's amusing that she's so egotistical that she thinks that. 00:47:08.720 --> 00:47:10.660 That would be like me going to somebody and saying, 00:47:10.940 --> 00:47:12.580 you must have heard a Fusion Patrol. 00:47:13.560 --> 00:47:17.900 Well, I'm just going to say, you don't recognize my voice, Fusion Patrol. 00:47:18.460 --> 00:47:19.340 You must listen. 00:47:21.000 --> 00:47:21.180 Okay. 00:47:21.440 --> 00:47:24.700 To be fair, I was once recognized in a restaurant 00:47:25.740 --> 00:47:29.360 from the old pre-podcast Fusion Patrol TV show. 00:47:30.200 --> 00:47:31.740 That did happen to me once. 00:47:32.160 --> 00:47:32.980 And that was freaky. 00:47:33.060 --> 00:47:37.240 So after that, did you go around to everyone saying, 00:47:37.920 --> 00:47:39.060 you must recognize me? 00:47:39.280 --> 00:47:39.840 Recognize me? 00:47:40.580 --> 00:47:42.840 No, no, no. 00:47:43.300 --> 00:47:45.700 But it was a weird experience. 00:47:45.700 --> 00:47:51.800 I was once recognized in a pub for being on a quiz show the night before, 00:47:52.500 --> 00:47:53.800 but I hadn't been on the quiz show. 00:47:54.520 --> 00:47:56.960 Oh, well, did you win? 00:47:58.860 --> 00:47:59.460 Well, I don't know. 00:47:59.460 --> 00:48:00.540 I didn't even watch it. 00:48:01.000 --> 00:48:02.240 Was it a good quiz show? 00:48:02.290 --> 00:48:07.220 I mean, was it like Mastermind or Eggheads or... 00:48:07.960 --> 00:48:08.320 No. 00:48:08.520 --> 00:48:09.620 What's the Connect the Dots? 00:48:09.820 --> 00:48:11.880 What's the Victoria Corrin one? 00:48:12.300 --> 00:48:12.960 It was that one. 00:48:13.190 --> 00:48:14.960 Yeah, Victoria Corrin was the presenter. 00:48:15.640 --> 00:48:16.620 That was the one I wasn't on. 00:48:17.160 --> 00:48:17.520 Connections? 00:48:17.910 --> 00:48:19.980 I mean, I wasn't on the other ones as well, but... 00:48:20.200 --> 00:48:20.520 Oh, well. 00:48:21.080 --> 00:48:21.380 Darn. 00:48:24.000 --> 00:48:24.660 Yeah, it's weird. 00:48:25.060 --> 00:48:27.600 Yeah, but yeah, I thought it was funny that somebody's... 00:48:28.400 --> 00:48:31.540 they were just trying to portray her as having such an inflated sense of ego. 00:48:31.920 --> 00:48:36.660 And who knows, maybe she gets 50 billion views on, you know, 00:48:36.980 --> 00:48:41.120 she's cutie pie or cutie Kai or whatever. 00:48:41.600 --> 00:48:44.360 Some of those big name YouTubers are, 00:48:44.360 --> 00:48:46.940 even if you're in a game of Thrones, you wouldn't go around saying, 00:48:47.500 --> 00:48:50.120 what do you mean? You don't recognize me. What's wrong with you people? 00:48:50.760 --> 00:48:54.880 Because there are actually, believe it or not, people who haven't seen that. 00:48:54.880 --> 00:48:57.760 I mean, whatever, whatever TV show, whatever it is, 00:48:57.880 --> 00:48:59.980 there are still some people who haven't seen it. 00:49:00.240 --> 00:49:04.460 Yeah, no, I absolutely agree. 00:49:04.620 --> 00:49:07.940 I just think that it does kind of fit with a certain, 00:49:08.960 --> 00:49:13.180 you know, there's sort of like the Big Bang Theory TV show 00:49:13.840 --> 00:49:15.760 where some people love it and go, 00:49:15.860 --> 00:49:20.340 yeah, I recognize those people as nerds I know. 00:49:20.460 --> 00:49:23.460 And other people think the show is a horrible, 00:49:24.260 --> 00:49:26.720 stereotypical presentation of them. 00:49:26.780 --> 00:49:36.480 um i fall somewhere in between on that but the from the milieu of people i have known and met 00:49:36.700 --> 00:49:43.460 and i can kind of see how certain stereotype vlogger would think that they are much more 00:49:43.780 --> 00:49:48.140 popular than they are and i and and that was what was amusing me about that it was like this is 00:49:48.600 --> 00:49:53.780 this is the the type personality it takes to get out there and do that to start with 00:49:54.220 --> 00:50:00.600 then also might lead you to self-aggrandize your impact. 00:50:02.839 --> 00:50:07.080 But yeah, that one was just one piece that popped up. 00:50:07.500 --> 00:50:07.900 Let's see. 00:50:08.450 --> 00:50:14.600 Were there any of the questions that you recall that I hit through that were worth talking about? 00:50:15.090 --> 00:50:18.000 I think the one that bugged me the most is why was the hospital deserted? 00:50:18.880 --> 00:50:20.840 Yeah, I have no idea. 00:50:21.150 --> 00:50:21.760 I have no idea. 00:50:21.860 --> 00:50:26.920 great tense scene but you know if you know i like i liked it when i thought we were getting an 00:50:27.140 --> 00:50:33.240 explanation jamila you know if she's patient number one and she infected everybody else 00:50:34.180 --> 00:50:39.900 why is her body still there's have theirs are all gone i mean that was 00:50:41.340 --> 00:50:46.900 it would make more sense if everyone had run away in fear but we don't get any sense we did 00:50:46.840 --> 00:50:51.660 see the bird so maybe maybe birds flew in and everybody ran away from the hospital and then 00:50:51.820 --> 00:51:00.180 nobody came back it would yeah it would be nice to know so that was the and you know it's unclear 00:51:01.180 --> 00:51:07.640 why the alien labs are where they are um i don't know if they actually went to madagascar and 00:51:08.200 --> 00:51:13.920 hong kong i doubt that was really hong kong no they went to south africa again oh they 00:51:13.860 --> 00:51:20.980 South Africa okay the the Hong Kong set looked remarkably like I need to re-watch it to check 00:51:20.980 --> 00:51:27.960 if it actually is the same street but the the shots they the establishing shots they used in 00:51:29.140 --> 00:51:34.700 the gathering episode nine of Torchwood Miracle Day in Shanghai because it's almost certainly a 00:51:34.700 --> 00:51:42.880 street in Cardiff right and well okay yeah yeah I suppose I I I mean I suppose a fair amount of 00:51:43.280 --> 00:51:48.820 miracle day was shot in la so it could be out there but i i bet it's the same street in cardiff 00:51:49.420 --> 00:51:55.460 i actually thought it was possibly an indoor set it wasn't it wasn't convincing enough to me the 00:51:55.460 --> 00:52:00.080 way it was shot that it was that i would have said they wasted their time to go out on location for 00:52:00.140 --> 00:52:07.420 that those two or three shots yeah but but it was it wasn't it wasn't location in hong kong 00:52:08.040 --> 00:52:13.940 it's probably located in grangetown or something um i'll say this my comments earlier about the 00:52:14.080 --> 00:52:22.380 gyre the gyres are real obviously the garbage patch is a is a real thing um the the indian 00:52:22.490 --> 00:52:29.380 ocean gyre takes about six years and swirling around from australia to to madagascar and 00:52:29.660 --> 00:52:35.060 probably south africa which you know probably they could have uh just said we were in south 00:52:35.080 --> 00:52:37.040 Africa instead of going to Madagascar. 00:52:37.080 --> 00:52:37.700 But okay. 00:52:39.360 --> 00:52:46.680 And yes, stuff that has been thrown in the ocean does tend to work its way towards the 00:52:47.260 --> 00:52:48.120 center of the gyre. 00:52:49.120 --> 00:52:57.280 But if you were floating through it, it isn't what they're portraying it to be in this. 00:52:57.340 --> 00:53:01.160 Yes, it's trash suspended in the water column. 00:53:01.240 --> 00:53:03.040 So that means it's not just floating on the surface. 00:53:03.280 --> 00:53:09.580 goes down. I really did try to find some pictures of it. And the best I could find were really 00:53:09.820 --> 00:53:13.220 close-up shots where you might get a little bit of garbage together so that you could, 00:53:13.480 --> 00:53:19.260 but it's really dispersed. They estimate there are only 10,000 particles of microplastic per 00:53:19.560 --> 00:53:26.020 square kilometer of water in that garbage patch because it's all breaking down and it's 00:53:26.860 --> 00:53:32.320 into smaller bits. Yes, you might see some garbage on the surface, but it's just not the 00:53:32.340 --> 00:53:37.960 thick layer that the environmentalists would really like you to think it is. I'm not saying 00:53:38.000 --> 00:53:42.280 we shouldn't do something about it. That's totally, but you know, if it were a big patch of garbage, 00:53:42.400 --> 00:53:49.520 you could trawl it up, right? You could net that stuff and make a difference, but it isn't. It 00:53:49.680 --> 00:53:56.840 isn't what it's like. And in a way, it's a disservice to continue to perpetrate that myth. 00:53:56.900 --> 00:54:10.580 It's kind of like when people used to think the Sargasso Sea was just this solid mat of seaweed, which incidentally is Atlantic Ocean gyre, brings all that stuff into that kind of location. 00:54:11.380 --> 00:54:13.320 It just isn't like that. 00:54:13.410 --> 00:54:15.120 I mean, it's a lot of water out there. 00:54:16.140 --> 00:54:26.040 And it doesn't do any science literacy very good either for putting these things the way that they did in the situation. 00:54:26.240 --> 00:54:38.060 Also, I do want to mention the whole thing about they had to go through three galaxies to find a planet like Earth that was polluted in this way. 00:54:38.640 --> 00:54:41.880 That's a lot of space to traverse. 00:54:42.860 --> 00:54:43.840 Sure, but we don't know. 00:54:44.380 --> 00:54:48.480 I mean, how populated is space in the Doctor Who universe? 00:54:49.080 --> 00:54:52.400 Who else shares the three galaxies? 00:54:53.260 --> 00:54:54.980 Well, our galaxy and the two nearest. 00:54:55.120 --> 00:55:03.260 it feels mighty it feels mighty populated throughout the galaxy and i admit you know 00:55:03.260 --> 00:55:10.840 in the future earth is expanded out across the the galaxy so and that's just in our solar system 00:55:11.420 --> 00:55:17.740 that's two planets in one solar system there's 100 billion solar systems in our galaxy who else 00:55:18.210 --> 00:55:25.080 who else have we got who is in our galaxy the doctor has referred to ones in in our galaxy 00:55:25.120 --> 00:55:30.820 but a lot of it is in the future of Earth. I will admit that. But the point is, is that not only are 00:55:31.000 --> 00:55:38.860 galaxies really, really big for Suki's people to traverse, but the space between the galaxies 00:55:39.520 --> 00:55:47.400 is really, really, really bigger. And Suki's technology didn't seem to be on par with that 00:55:47.560 --> 00:55:53.040 task. That looked like, you know, kind of a little bit of a rockety thing with some organic fuel 00:55:53.140 --> 00:55:56.740 cells, which was enormously convenient that organic fuel cells can handle anything. 00:55:59.400 --> 00:56:04.460 But, you know, considering what we've seen of other planets, they all seem to be just 00:56:04.510 --> 00:56:06.020 as bad as Earth, right? 00:56:06.050 --> 00:56:08.420 I mean, I mean, they're all analogs for Earth. 00:56:08.450 --> 00:56:12.460 So therefore, they're all just it. 00:56:12.940 --> 00:56:19.200 Once again, it portrays, you know, you know, it really takes humans to screw stuff up. 00:56:19.820 --> 00:56:26.160 All those other, I mean, sure, other galaxies or other planets, they created Daleks or Cybermen. 00:56:26.420 --> 00:56:27.780 Cybermen, there's another one in our galaxy. 00:56:29.760 --> 00:56:34.500 But to pollute your planet with plastic takes humans. 00:56:40.560 --> 00:56:46.820 I certainly can't think of anything that serves as disproof of that. 00:56:47.960 --> 00:56:51.320 Well, the doctor really likes humans. 00:56:51.430 --> 00:56:52.000 A counter example. 00:56:52.530 --> 00:56:56.340 No, no, I mean, I can't think of anyone, 00:56:57.260 --> 00:56:59.120 of any of the planets that we've seen 00:56:59.920 --> 00:57:04.920 that are in the neighboring galaxies 00:57:06.040 --> 00:57:08.800 and are worse than Earth and are at this time, 00:57:10.120 --> 00:57:12.780 which incidentally is a year in the future or later. 00:57:13.670 --> 00:57:17.920 I don't know if this adds to the unit 00:57:17.980 --> 00:57:25.640 dating controversy are you saying that because uh you think that the writer was smart enough to 00:57:25.740 --> 00:57:32.240 know that the decade doesn't start until 2021 or i think the doctor is smart enough to know that 00:57:32.690 --> 00:57:40.180 yeah but the doctor said the line the writer gave the line to the doctor and if the writer 00:57:40.420 --> 00:57:45.200 doesn't know the difference between the start the end of a decade which most people don't 00:57:45.780 --> 00:57:49.660 I totally believe that could be 2020 because the writer just didn't know any better. 00:57:50.220 --> 00:57:58.920 But nevertheless, what the writer said, or the line the writer gave the doctor to say was that this is 2021 or later. 00:58:00.220 --> 00:58:02.940 So in the third decade of the early 20th century. 00:58:03.420 --> 00:58:03.560 Indeed. 00:58:03.560 --> 00:58:04.300 Or 21st century. 00:58:04.500 --> 00:58:06.420 Which is to say it's 2021 or later. 00:58:07.040 --> 00:58:08.980 So that is what she says within the episode. 00:58:10.180 --> 00:58:13.380 But my point being is that the writer may be an idiot. 00:58:14.560 --> 00:58:15.740 That's my point. 00:58:16.290 --> 00:58:19.320 The writer may have thought that was a fancy way to say 2020. 00:58:20.400 --> 00:58:21.520 I understand that. 00:58:21.700 --> 00:58:24.420 But that's not the line that he gave the doctor. 00:58:25.010 --> 00:58:26.560 He didn't say 2020. 00:58:26.890 --> 00:58:28.220 He said 2021. 00:58:28.840 --> 00:58:30.320 He may have thought he was saying 2021. 00:58:30.320 --> 00:58:31.680 Third decade of 2020. 00:58:33.860 --> 00:58:34.520 But yeah. 00:58:36.060 --> 00:58:37.360 And of course, it might not be. 00:58:37.400 --> 00:58:41.900 It could be 2024 because it was the first half of it. 00:58:42.140 --> 00:58:43.600 So it could be the future. 00:58:45.119 --> 00:59:12.380 Which is why? Let's ask that question. Considering that the last few years of Doctor Who, and I think maybe even during Chibnall's era, but I can't put my finger on it just quite yet, even in Spyfall, that they have been making the dates of the modern day episodes pretty much on target with the actual air date of Doctor Who. Think of Amy's wedding. 00:59:12.640 --> 00:59:20.100 and yes yes all that stuff they they have been tying it pretty darn close to today until and 00:59:20.100 --> 00:59:27.760 then for until now and then they sort of do this poetic which she repeats reversed at the end yes 00:59:28.200 --> 00:59:32.100 i thought it was just because the x-files ways does the kind of cheesy voiceover and 00:59:32.460 --> 00:59:37.920 so they were trying to oh she's doing her fox molder okay exactly all right reading the report 00:59:37.940 --> 00:59:43.900 that she's typing at the end or whatever i had not put that i had not put that two and two together 00:59:44.080 --> 00:59:50.720 but yeah it is sort of i just what what is the significance of and i'm pretty sure i i'm not 00:59:50.720 --> 00:59:57.640 going to watch it and i watched this three times um i'm pretty sure that she says in the first one 00:59:58.020 --> 01:00:03.160 we're all connected from the depths of the ocean to the tip of the stratosphere and at the end 01:00:03.640 --> 01:00:07.900 she says the same thing except we're all connected from the tips of the stratosphere to the depths 01:00:07.920 --> 01:00:17.180 of the ocean. And is that because the virus is at the bottom of the ocean and it reaches up and 01:00:17.340 --> 01:00:25.460 grabs the astronaut? Somebody reaches up and grabs the ship's engines somehow screw up the astronaut 01:00:25.620 --> 01:00:31.180 and they happen to use him as a lab. Still doesn't make sense. But it's going, the virus is at the 01:00:31.300 --> 01:00:35.980 depths of the earth, of the ocean, and it's reaching up into the atmosphere because it's 01:00:36.000 --> 01:00:36.980 getting the birds and everything. 01:00:37.350 --> 01:00:40.560 And at the end, they've put the antivirus in the atmosphere 01:00:41.120 --> 01:00:43.700 and it will eventually reach the depths of the ocean. 01:00:44.130 --> 01:00:46.440 Is that why that reversal? 01:00:47.180 --> 01:00:47.560 No idea. 01:00:48.240 --> 01:00:50.120 It just seemed like an odd, well, 01:00:50.530 --> 01:00:53.480 amongst many other odd things in the course of this episode. 01:00:53.880 --> 01:00:56.540 I don't know that I have anything else to say. 01:00:58.280 --> 01:01:00.100 It just raised too many questions and just, 01:01:00.500 --> 01:01:03.020 it's like it fell apart so badly on second viewing. 01:01:03.480 --> 01:01:09.880 It just really pains me because I really, really was enjoying it at the beginning. 01:01:10.810 --> 01:01:19.920 I was really sitting there going, I am finally, actually enjoying an episode of Doctor Who this year. 01:01:20.560 --> 01:01:22.480 Really, genuinely enjoying it. 01:01:22.600 --> 01:01:24.060 Not just like, yeah, all right, I'm amused. 01:01:24.740 --> 01:01:28.680 But actually like, finally, finally whapped me. 01:01:30.140 --> 01:01:30.740 Do you have anything else? 01:01:31.240 --> 01:01:36.100 I want to mention that Warren Brown, who plays Jake in this episode, 01:01:36.940 --> 01:01:45.040 is a regular in Unit alongside Osgood and Kate Stewart 01:01:45.620 --> 01:01:51.200 in the Big Finish audio range, which is rather good. 01:01:52.240 --> 01:01:53.660 Does he play a dim soldier? 01:01:54.820 --> 01:01:57.460 He certainly plays an action hero. 01:01:58.580 --> 01:02:07.780 He's the kind of globe-trotting lieutenant who, yeah, I guess Petronella supplies the smarts to the outfit. 01:02:08.380 --> 01:02:13.520 So, yes, he is a soldier and he's not the brains of the organisation. 01:02:15.020 --> 01:02:21.600 He's also the same character in the surprisingly good Lady Christina series. 01:02:23.280 --> 01:02:27.140 So since he is a regular ongoing character, 01:02:27.190 --> 01:02:29.220 I thought that was worth mentioning. 01:02:30.380 --> 01:02:34.460 I've also got something else which is not connected with this episode, 01:02:35.060 --> 01:02:40.240 but which is from Ade Rickson on Twitter, 01:02:40.330 --> 01:02:45.700 who picked up that when we were talking about Fugitive of the Jadun, 01:02:46.340 --> 01:02:55.260 One thing we didn't mention is that Lee and Ruth are living as husband and wife. 01:02:55.860 --> 01:02:58.260 I thought of that after the podcast. 01:02:58.720 --> 01:03:00.360 Like, is he taking advantage of her? 01:03:00.760 --> 01:03:04.020 There is a massive issue of consent there. 01:03:04.620 --> 01:03:04.840 Yeah. 01:03:05.380 --> 01:03:17.160 And I think it's hugely worse because of the fact that he knows that she isn't in her own mind, as it were. 01:03:18.820 --> 01:03:27.780 So, I mean, if you compare it to the Doctor and Joan Redfern, for a start, I don't think that they were. 01:03:29.440 --> 01:03:31.380 Well, you don't compare it to Joan Redfern. 01:03:31.420 --> 01:03:33.440 you compare it to Martha who was 01:03:34.599 --> 01:03:35.420 pining away 01:03:35.560 --> 01:03:36.180 from the Doctor 01:03:36.580 --> 01:03:37.940 but what I'm saying is 01:03:39.540 --> 01:03:40.100 whilst 01:03:41.380 --> 01:03:42.380 chameleon arched 01:03:42.940 --> 01:03:45.120 the Doctor was carrying on 01:03:45.660 --> 01:03:47.440 a romantic liaison 01:03:47.600 --> 01:03:49.380 in each of them but yes Martha was 01:03:49.380 --> 01:03:51.400 the protector so you're quite right 01:03:52.060 --> 01:03:52.940 to say 01:03:53.740 --> 01:03:55.200 the difference here is Lee 01:03:55.440 --> 01:03:57.340 is in the position of being 01:03:57.380 --> 01:03:59.220 the protector he's the one who should be 01:03:59.440 --> 01:04:01.380 stopping that sort of thing from happening 01:04:01.540 --> 01:04:27.800 He is a caregiver in a way. So he is, I wouldn't say it's a parental role exactly, but I mean, it's, you know, it's very, it's very hard to imagine that's not happening. And, and, and as Abe rightly says, we don't know whether that is, whether that is intentionally written because we don't know whether we'll ever find anything more out about Lee and who he is and what his motivation is. So the jury will have to remain out. 01:04:28.020 --> 01:04:44.880 My question that came up after the podcast was, you know, were we supposed to believe that this was the relationship that existed between the doctor and whatever Lee's original name was before they went into the chameleon arch? 01:04:45.520 --> 01:04:57.540 Or did he then use her wiped memory to go after her and fulfill his unsated desires? 01:04:58.520 --> 01:05:03.760 I think I don't I don't think either of them resolve the question of consent. 01:05:04.680 --> 01:05:06.120 But and would even like her. 01:05:06.740 --> 01:05:07.620 She's not the doctor. 01:05:08.220 --> 01:05:11.120 This this is this is a completely different person. 01:05:11.930 --> 01:05:13.380 I mean, that's one of the things. 01:05:13.860 --> 01:05:15.680 I'm not sure it's him I'm concerned about. 01:05:16.240 --> 01:05:30.900 One of the things that I am not on board with the Dr. Ruth personality, and, you know, I was rather harsh, and I'll maintain it, is that there is not enough of it there to know what the heck Dr. Ruth is like. 01:05:31.340 --> 01:05:34.380 But the human character loved her, which is great. 01:05:34.940 --> 01:05:40.140 Nothing like Ruth, Dr. Ruth, or didn't appear to be anything at all like Dr. Ruth. 01:05:40.140 --> 01:05:41.000 No, she's very different. 01:05:41.700 --> 01:05:42.760 You know, I would. 01:05:43.460 --> 01:05:47.300 So, you know, would he, in fact, fall in love with that woman? 01:05:48.040 --> 01:05:49.860 The human version. 01:05:50.460 --> 01:05:57.240 And, you know, so what is Lee's mindset going on there? 01:05:57.940 --> 01:06:02.440 In that he's like, oh, gosh, she got transformed into the woman I fell in love with. 01:06:04.820 --> 01:06:08.180 Yeah, it's probably, yeah, it's definitely problematic at many levels. 01:06:08.940 --> 01:06:09.460 Many levels. 01:06:10.100 --> 01:06:11.680 Well, we're done with this episode. 01:06:11.900 --> 01:06:13.220 We're done with the last episode, too. 01:06:13.630 --> 01:06:13.740 Again. 01:06:14.980 --> 01:06:15.040 Again. 01:06:16.000 --> 01:06:17.120 Simon, thank you for joining me. 01:06:17.600 --> 01:06:18.560 It's a pleasure, as always. 01:06:19.340 --> 01:06:22.140 And listeners, I hope you'll join us all again next time. 01:06:23.020 --> 01:06:23.600 Fusion Patrol. 01:06:25.740 --> 01:06:28.500 You've been listening to Fusion Patrol, a listener-supported podcast. 01:06:29.320 --> 01:06:36.180 Find out how you can be a sponsor and get early access to all episodes and more at patreon.com slash fusion patrol. 01:06:39.420 --> 01:06:42.080 Come join the conversation on Facebook or Twitter. 01:06:44.380 --> 01:06:47.380 All episodes are available at FusionPatrol.com. 01:06:50.160 --> 01:06:52.780 Our music is Fight the Future by Amber Wolf. 01:06:55.800 --> 01:06:58.320 This has been a Lone Locust production.