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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.
just for her companions to sniff the air around some famous historical figures and then leave.
They've popped back to the infamous night when Lord Byron challenges his guests,
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Godwin, a.k.a. Mary Shelley, Claire Claremont, and Dr. John Polidori,
to write the most terrifying ghost story imaginable.
It is the infamous night that gave rise to Mary Shelley's story, Frankenstein, or the modern Prometheus.
But Percy Shelley isn't there, and the others are more interested in parlor games to pass the time than writing ghost stories.
The doctor detects an evil vibe in the house.
Plus, there are apparent ghosts and animated human bones flittering about the place.
Then the walls go all funhouse on them, except no one is laughing.
During this time, ghosts feed Graham some lovely nom-noms.
Percy is found in the coal cellar.
He has been infected by and become the guardian of the Siberium,
a database of a bunch of stuff from the future about the Cybermen.
And the lone Cybermen wants it back.
You know, the one Captain Jack warned everyone about?
About which he said, whatever you do, don't give it what it wants?
Yeah, that lone Cybermen.
Not coincidentally, the lone Cybermen, whose name is Ashad, is here too.
The Siberium will kill Percy if it stays in his head.
If he dies, Earth's history is irrevocably altered, and all the companions probably won't have existed.
The Doctor takes the Siberian into her head, so the Lone Cyberman threatens to destroy the Earth to get it,
unless the Doctor does the one thing she's been warned she must not do.
So, of course, she does it.
History and the planet are safe, but the future has been threatened.
For some reason, the departure of the Lone Cyberman also undoes all the ecological disaster that was the aftermath of the eruption of Mount Tambora the year earlier.
Also, it now seems like Lord Byron's poem Darkness is not about the apocalypse, but about the Doctor.
Byron scholars will be confused for centuries.
The end.
All right, so what are your initial thoughts on the haunting of Villa Diodati?
Well, I'll tell you my initial thoughts.
on the haunting of Villa Diodati, which were, it didn't really work.
It seemed to be three stories which didn't seem to quite hang together comfortably
because there's the story there about the Night of the Ghost stories
and the kind of, the historical.
So we've got a nice historical setting with Barry Shelley and Percy Shelley
and Lord Byron and John Polidori and some famous works being developed.
And that in itself is a fascinating setting to explore.
And then we've got a fantastical moving Castrovalva type house thing,
which is spooky and exciting and weird and quite interesting to explore.
And then we've got a story about cyber wars and the lone cybermen and the Siberian and all that kind of jazz, which is quite good in its own way.
But you kind of feel that that story, at least, and possibly the other story, would work absolutely fine without these historical figures kicking around.
I mean, you might want a few extra players just to be able to kill them off or whatever,
but they're not necessarily needing to be significant contributors to English literature.
And those were my initial thoughts.
Fair enough.
Well, I'll give you my initial thought.
I would say, and your criticisms are completely valid.
I found this the most entertaining story of the year so far, hands down.
Not great, not like an instant classic.
And I can't exactly point a finger to why, but I at least enjoyed this episode by the time I got to the end of it.
And even on rewatch, I enjoyed the episode.
So your points are all valid and they're a list of things that we could go into that don't make a lot of sense or don't hang together well.
But for whatever reason, it managed to overcome that to a degree for me.
So your comment about initial thoughts implies to me that you've got some secondary thoughts.
I have some secondary thoughts because, well, now the thing is that for the listeners, we don't normally give each other any clue as to how we've reacted to the episode before we hit the record button on the podcast.
I did manage to infer from something you said that you didn't hate this one.
And I kind of wanted to give you my initial thoughts to bounce off, because at first I thought that's where I would be coming from this discussion.
However, what happened then was I rewatched the episode and discovered that everything I thought was wrong.
It does work together as a single story. And in fact, it's really, really cleverly constructed.
And I wouldn't quite go as far as to say the episode is flawless, but it is very impressive.
And I, having rewatched it, I get all the kind of hype around it.
Certainly some of the discussions, I mean, you'll find Doctor Who fans anywhere who have any opinion you care to hunt for, I guess.
But probably so.
I was a bit surprised by how positively it was being regarded.
And then when I watched it again, I actually completely changed my opinion on it.
And I'm not quite sure why, although I think a lot of it has to do with expectations
and particularly expectations around the story that is going to be a historical.
And not only that, it's not just a historical setting, is it?
It's got to be an homage to Frankenstein, right?
yeah it kind of does you can't do this story without there being elements of of
shelly's story in this so you're already you're already expecting it to unfold in a certain way
added to which is the is the heavy burden of the thing that you alluded to
in last week's synopsis which is that the doctor has been here before he's been here
at the creation of Frankenstein and Shelley has met him and met Cybermen on a previous occasion
and so not only is there a bit of my brain even while I'm watching it trying to think
okay how can we fit the different parts of the Doctor's history together in a way that doesn't
conflict um but it's but it's also it's also running over the way that the the the five key
characters in this were portrayed in mary's story because the performances in this are
different and the characterizations are different um so so and there are some actually some other
sort of fairly key things that are different like William is in this but not in Mary's story
whereas Percy is in Mary's story but barely in this so all of those things affect what I was
expecting and I guess the dynamic I was expecting going into it and once you've watched it through
once and you've you've sort of got through those expectations then I think you see it in a different
Well, I guess that's why my first impressions, my second impressions, so radically different on this occasion.
That one thing I thought was interesting, a couple of small points.
One, it's weird that this one's not co-written by Chibbers.
He has rewritten practically everyone.
No, let's let's not use rewritten.
Let's say he has co-written practically everything this year.
This may be the only one that wasn't.
And yet, with all the lone Cyberman stuff, which we know is his two-part finale, it feels like he should have had a hand in here.
A hand sufficient to get a co-writing credit.
So, I just thought that was interesting.
Especially when, you know, the Cyberman shows up and you're like, wait, this isn't supposed to happen until next week.
Which, by the way, listeners, we will not be doing a Doctor Who podcast next week.
We're going to digest the so-called supposed, according to all the promotional hype material, two-part finale as a single episode, even though it appears like this is part of it.
But we didn't know that going in and we're going based on the hype machine.
And another thing.
Well, on that question, I think the reason he hasn't got, the reason he may have handed this writer over, he may have handed this story to this writer is because there are two things I discovered this week.
One is that he seems to have instituted some kind of writing room arrangement.
So really, the only element that affects the arc in this could be just on a standard shopping list.
You know, you've got to get the lone Cyberman in there.
You've got to get the Siberian in there.
But if there's some kind of writer's room, then there's an opportunity to input any way through that.
The other thing is that apparently Maxine Alderton is definitely coming back for the next season.
And someone tracked down something on her online CV saying she was a, quote, core writer on season 13.
Interesting. Well, maybe she'll take over for Chibnall.
Well, I think the idea of there being a core writer is an interesting idea because it suggests that the story is being developed in a more collaborative way.
The story arc is being developed in a more collaborative way, which isn't commonly how Doctor Who has been done.
It was done on Torchwood for Children of Earth and that seemed to be very effective.
But it's not been the usual pattern on this show.
And she has no prior Doctor Who cred, but she has been script editor Emmerdale for ages.
Yeah, she's written about 100 episodes of Emmerdale as far as I can tell.
I haven't watched any of them.
No, I don't really know anything about Emmerdale except I assume it's a soap opera.
Yeah, Emmerdale Farm. It's about farm, I think.
Wow.
Get me in my in-depth knowledge of British culture.
Chibnall calls her an expert or pro on Byron and Shelley.
But, you know, I don't know that to be true.
Apparently she is a buff at the very least.
So he really talked her up about her expertise on the subject prior to the episode going out.
So my list is once again in an illogical order.
I've got more important things to talk about.
But one thing that kind of does bother me about this episode is the almost dismissal of the scientific fact that the year without a winter summer, the year without a summer, was caused by the 1815 explosion of Mount Tambora in Indonesia.
Very famously, it was particularly bad in the area of Lake Geneva, which could be what they were trying to go for, that it was made worse by the Cybermen.
I don't know, because the visual of it going away and suddenly being a sunny day was way over the pow.
And I just kind of, you know, Doctor Who can play fast and loose with some stuff.
But in a way, they shouldn't play that fast and that loose with the events.
Because that was a significant event that killed tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people.
Not just the explosion, but the famines, the freezing, the human suffering on a mega scale.
And it didn't end in June of 1816.
But at the same time, we get a lecture about how we cannot allow time to be changed later in the episode.
So, again, it's that uneasy.
Pick something and stick with it.
I can't see what the problem is there, apart from the not allowing time to be changed.
What the doctor is saying, and the effect you see at the end of the skies clearing or whatever,
is not that the eruption of Mount Tambora was not a significant event,
but that its effect on Lake Geneva in the summer of 1916,
1816, was wrongly attributed to it.
in fact there was another cause for it now obviously it wasn't but yeah well it wasn't but
but but it could have been it's not that's not a that's not a big difference because you're not
saying that the volcano didn't erupt you're not saying that there wasn't global anomalies just
that this particular local weather wasn't due to it.
It was due to something else.
And it would be entirely understandable why people thought it was due to it.
But it's not a big fictional leap to say, actually, in this case,
this particular thing, that was due to something else.
Hmm. Well, I'll stand at disagreeing on that one and move on. I'll ask it got a couple of things that didn't seem to fall together, even on the second viewing to me. What was animating the hand and the skull?
i've got that and why okay why does the hand attack ryan yeah yeah i i and and later it takes
the place of the baby and it's chattering in the jar and also so that's one that doesn't appear to
be anything that shelly is doing and it it doesn't appear to be anything that the cyberman would be
doing or would have the ability to do i think there's a lot about it being the siberian but
i don't see what why it's the yeah exactly what what's the purpose of it doing that
yeah and then the ghosts that appeared to gram which i think is either one of two things either
it's just a throwaway to create a spooky ghostly atmosphere in which case i kind of think it's a
little lazy or it leads to something else. And, and timeless child. I don't know if it's a timeless
child. What crossed my mind and I Google failed me. So either I'm wrong, which is very possible,
or my Google foo is just not up to it. I just have this weird, familiar feeling
that there is some legend somewhere probably contemporary to these events or older that had
something to do with about not eating food supplied by ghosts that there was something
certainly seems a bit dodgy to me but that's that's just my kind of natural caution over
hygiene right like that obviously you're not supposed to know that the ghosts are getting it
But like if a ghost supplies you with food and you're unaware of that and you eat it, there's something about that.
But I could find nothing.
All I could get was hungry ghosts, which is Chinese, which is a different thing altogether.
So or two other theories here go in.
One, is it some sort of metaphor for the return of the cancer that's going to be eating Graham to death by the end of the series?
Or I don't think it's that.
Or this was some sort of infection, just like the Siberian was.
Graham has been infected with something from the future that these ghosts brought back for him.
And he is now a pawn in this somehow.
Otherwise, it is just lazy.
You know, so it's spooky.
I agree.
It works well.
But the fact that they leave it at the, well, you know, there are no ghosts unless there are.
Okay.
didn't uh uh you know the doctor has been pretty firmly on the side of ghosts or temporal anomalies
for for a long time going all the way back to at least the fendal and maybe even further
day of the there's no way there's no way that these are ghosts yeah i i would like to think
that yes i would like to think that they are at least not going to go there with the show
and that they are.
I mean, the doctor states in this episode,
clearly there are no such thing as ghosts.
Unless there are.
Yeah, but it's a tongue-in-cheek line.
It's not that...
It's there as a throwaway.
Maybe that's bad delivery.
No, I don't think it is.
I think it's clear.
I think it can be there
because they've already established
during the episode
what the doctor's standard response is so that they can make a joke about it at the end.
But it's not just there for the joke, because they're clearly drawing attention to
the fact that Graham saw them and only Graham saw them right at the end. And they wouldn't do that
if there wasn't some kind of purpose to it. Future payoff. There's definitely something to be
resolved you would definitely think that but then on the other hand there's been so many things that
do not pay off throughout doctor who that are just i i i don't trust them to complete this
i would like them to but i don't trust them to do it anymore so i can see you know they're just
too many times they've put the puzzle out on the table and they've been missing 30 of the pieces
and when you're all done putting it together you're like well i get the gist of it but
who stole my third of the pieces um also it would be remiss if we fail to mention that dr john
polidori is the writer of the vampire which also came out of this thing which is uh the uh basically
it bugs me a bit that they they they they haven't i mean either in well any of the big finish stuff
actually but you know they they obviously had the this other story that was set on the night on which
vampire was also conceived and and they have this notion that our vampires the you know the vampires
of uh our literature are inspired by the real vampires who are the gallifreans you know good
most deadly so there's so there's this whole vein of doctor who mythos and backstory they
tap into in terms of explaining um how polidori's story was inspired especially given that it's
you know that it's the it's essentially the first one that puts together the vampire myths into some
kind of coherent narrative and yet basically was a foundation for dracula which everyone thinks is
the the the first but it really it really isn't i'm i think it's polidori is definitely a second
fiddle character in this you the the the kind of lead guests are mary and lord byron and then
claire and polidori are so you know they have they have a couple of decent scenes they're they're
quite good or whatever but they're they're easily trimmable you know you can see how if they'd had
to lose a bit there there are there are bits of the plot that wouldn't have gone and then there
of those scenes that they could just have left out i'm gonna i'm gonna come back to something
you said earlier because i wanted to bring it up but this is a great time to do it i would have
much preferred i think it would have been much more interesting exploration if the events that
had occurred in this house had been vampire related you said you know it's got to be what
inspires frankenstein no it doesn't it could be what inspires the vampire yes it could have been
completely different. It could have been somebody could have taken a take on this who knew what they
were talking about and said, I'm not going to do the thing everybody expects. I'm going to go with,
I'm going to go with this other thing that people don't know about because I want them to learn
something about it. And, you know, just as likely there is vampire fiction in Doctor Who. So could
have done that. I would have, I'd have been much happier with that, actually. Not that I'm
displeased it's just frankenstein and cyberman is actually not even exactly a great mix um
because cybermen aren't really frankenstein and and no and we could frankenstein's monsters and
we could talk about the fact that this cyberman is a weird one a very weird one that did in fact
appear to be stitched together no i well i don't i don't think i mean i part partly that that was
where I initially thought this wasn't a good fit. And yet running back through it, I think it is
because some of the things that I was a bit, I don't know, I was a bit taken aback by when,
for example, Mary says to the Cyberman, he is made of several people. But it's a misconception,
isn't it? But if you look at his hand, his left arm, when he hands it out, it does appear to be
like the hand is stitched on somebody else's arm it does look like that oh i must have another look
at that but yeah but it's still it's still i mean primarily he is it's he still he still fits the
standard cyber model for what we understand a cyberman to be yes he he was he was a person he
was ashad and he he he was mechanically augmented and possibly then biologically augmented but
there's a there's a world of difference between saying you know adding a hand to something that's
mostly already you know a single person to say um assembling a selection of different organs or
putting a brain in someone else's skull or something like that so i i my interpretation
of that was that actually mary was seeing something that wasn't necessarily there and
it was going to inspire her but it wasn't it wasn't inconsistent with our understanding of
cybermen and what they are right and and getting his power from the lightning mary didn't see that
that was just the doctor true so it's another piece that that is there in the story that we
see but not in the story that mary sees um i was just going to say while we're talking about things
that conflict with uh established cyberman law from the show there was something that definitely
did conflict with it or seemed to conflict with it but it was something that was said by the doctor
and I thought it was odd.
I don't know what you made of it,
but she described what cybermen are
by talking about how they've had parts of themselves
replaced with mechanical parts.
And she said explicitly without consent.
Without consent, yes.
She did say that.
And I have a note here about that.
I thought that was very strange
because obviously some cybermen, yes,
have had all their parts augmented.
Probably most Cybermen have had their stuff replaced without consent.
But that is not what makes the horror of the Cybermen.
It's whether with or without consent.
And some of them went willingly, as far as we know.
That's what's so wonderful about the origin stories,
you know, in Tenth Planet or whatever,
is that they did this to themselves.
That's what is so horrifying.
Right.
That is the doom that we should be watching.
It is.
Right.
And that does.
Yes, it was a very strange line.
And when she said that, you're just like, I was.
Am I supposed to make something out of that?
Are they just driving home a point about consent because they haven't got any other social justice issue at all in this episode?
Maybe that was her concession to Chibber's checklist.
She said, make sure you talk about consent.
Okay, got it.
Done.
It's hardly a controversial social issue.
I agree.
Well, I didn't say any of them should be controversial.
Well, it is controversial to people who don't agree with it.
Like, as with all things.
You shouldn't have your body parts replaced without consent.
I'm sure that there's some, well, consent as an issue as a whole,
not necessarily that specific,
that specific aspect of it for,
for body replacement.
But yeah,
I,
it was an odd line.
So the other aspect of it that I thought was,
is worth asking the question is,
is that a Cyberman that's broken down or is that a Cyberman that was put
together from spare cyber parts?
It's a,
it's Cyberman that isn't complete.
I'm sure there's a line.
The doctor says something.
It's like,
You're not all complete or something like that.
But yeah, because because because he's he's not had his emotions fully removed.
He does get, you know, he sweeps he sweeps everything off the table in a very kind of cliched soap opera ish kind of angry way.
Isn't that what people do in real life?
When they're angry. Cybermen don't have emotions.
Right. Well, he was angry and he touted several other emotions, irritating, irritated, and a number of other things.
And the doctor specifically says he hasn't had his inhibitor in place.
But no, I guess what I was getting at is you look at his helmet and it looks like it's busted apart.
And my question is, is that, is this a Cyberman that for whatever reason didn't, um, didn't
get finished or he was finished?
How do I phrase this?
The question is, did they put a, did the helmet that got put on him, was it complete and it
got broken away?
Or did they dig, uh, did they dig the helmet out of a pile of cyber rubble and put it on
somebody?
And is it possible because of a line that was said in this that it was done with consent?
Because he said he slit his children's throats when they joined the resistance.
Yes, that's yeah.
And that's not something a Cyberman would do.
True.
That's something a human would do.
And so is it possible that this guy, is it possible that there is a group of people who are working with the Cyberman?
I think there is a potentially interesting story here.
I hope that the next episodes deliver on it
because I had a sense.
I mean, I wasn't even kind of questioning this stuff
about how his helmet was broken.
The strong sense I got,
and I guess it's maybe from the sort of background
around what little we know,
is that this is a cyber man from late in the cyber wars.
I think that's referred to in future things that you do.
And therefore, it's not, you know,
you don't have the pristine cyber conversion,
you know, all the kind of clinical,
well-oiled machinery to do this stuff.
What you're basically doing is you're just making do as best you can.
The stuff may be failing.
That could be why he is mid-processed.
And it would also explain why parts of him are missing or in poor condition.
Of course, that doesn't preclude the possibility because clearly in those circumstances,
you're going to extreme measures to try and put together whatever you can to make some kind of army.
even if it's not perfect just to to you know get them out there on the front line so it's it
certainly doesn't preclude the possibility that he has been uh shot about a bit in the wars too
but i guess the one the one thing the the one strong feeling i've got from that and i you know
i can't i can't put my finger on definitive proof it's just a an impression i got from what we've
been shown is that he was never a pristine cyber man from the start yeah i think yeah i think that's
possible and i i i just have this i have this feeling that we're gonna get somewhere and this
is totally speculation not any kind of spoilery stuff i'm just i get this feeling that those lines
like the with consent in the and the and the bit about slitting his kid's throat we're gonna find
in the future that there is a, I don't know, cult of the Cybermen trying to resurrect them.
And to do that, they turn Ashad into as close to a Cybermen as they can to go back and get the
information in the Siberian. I think that's what the lone Cybermen is going to be. He's going to be
A lunatic, basically, because I think there's I think there's a lot of mileage in current social activity about talking about the lunatics who follow fascists and or support them or try to bring them into power.
So, yeah, I and that would explain a resistance and that would explain special advisers in Downing Street.
exactly so uh yeah that that i if they go there i'll be a kind of okay now my next question is
but i mean connected with that is there is there is some other agency acting because
someone has sent the siberian back and the siberian itself going yeah yeah what is that
Yeah, it doesn't want the Cybermen to get it.
And yet it seems to be billed as the cyber technology, I don't want to say the controller of the Cybermen, but it sounds like it's a thing built by the Cybermen to do cyber-y stuff.
And yet for some reason it doesn't want to go back.
Well, and I find it intriguing.
I think it feels to me like there are potentially three different interested parties involved in whatever it is that is sending things back through time here.
Could there be cyber factions?
The purists?
We'll call them the cult of the Cybermen, if you like.
But whoever it is who is, the lone Cybermen and whoever his creators or acolytes or whoever may be, there is the Siberian, which is very mysterious and it's unclear what that's going on.
But I think that may be the idea of a pure cyber race.
I don't know.
But I mean, pure cyber race doesn't make much sense because Cybermen have always been.
Right.
They've always been augmentations.
And then there's obviously the actual resistance, the Captain Jack and whoever else.
Yeah, now the Cybermen have always been the communists.
I mean, the Daleks were the Nazis and the Cybermen were the communists who come in and take you over from within.
Yeah, so I don't know.
I don't know.
I suppose there's what happens if Mondozian and Talosian Cybermen came up against each other one or or Mondozian and Cybex ones from another universe?
I mean, would they would they all get along or would they all be like, no, we are the better cyber race.
You will become like us.
I don't know.
I can imagine them, you know, getting together and have a sort of cyber swapping party where they exchange various bits of their augmented anatomies with one another.
Hey, cool handles.
Let, you know, let me swap that with your head, with my head.
I've got this lantern.
This is great, huh?
I can see in a dark room.
Yeah.
So that.
Yeah.
I.
It raises some interesting possibilities.
It raises interesting questions a week before I expected us to have any questions about Cyberman.
I will ask this question.
Throughout, well, okay.
Cyberman or the Siberian or Captain Jack's people.
Well, we know Captain Jack's people because Captain Jack's a time agent.
They have time travel.
He's not a time agent.
He's an ex-time agent.
All right.
But he is from a culture that has time travel.
Sure.
Okay.
So, and so therefore his civilization has time travel.
So human civilization has time travel.
I know we've talked about the problem, the fact that everybody seems to have time travel now.
And I agree.
But if you had a thing and you wanted to keep somebody from getting it, is sending it back in time really a good idea?
I mean, that seems like just the worst possible place to send something that you don't want people to find.
The people sending things back in time are the people trying to change history.
Is the Siberium, are they trying to change history with the Siberium?
Is that what we're going for?
I'm assuming so.
I thought Jack said they sent something back in time to hide it.
But I don't remember now.
That's what I took out of it.
I could be completely wrong.
And the lone Cyberman is coming back to find it.
So also, you know, if you are going to send something back in time for crying out loud,
don't send it to Percy Bysshe Shelley's house,
you know?
Well,
to be fair,
it was in the lake by his house,
but by his house.
Yeah.
It's like at the time when he would be there.
I mean,
you have all of time and space.
I'm thinking,
gosh,
there's lots of places you could send it to and it would never be found that
don't have people or we don't know.
They sent it back to 1816.
Yeah,
we don't know.
We don't,
we don't know,
but it could have been there for a few thousand years.
fair enough fair enough um i just my general conjecture hiding things in the past seems like
a bad idea um for everyone in the present um well while we're on the while we're on the cyberman
i want to record the fact i love him he's such a good cyberman that's because he's got emotions
and he's kind of cool looking and yeah he's cool looking he's there he's cool looking the whole
thing of being able to see his you know his face and his arm and and you know getting that kind of
the the horror of the the graying body parts inside the metal shell and all of that kind of
thing and not just that the the way he the way he moves and the sounds when he moves and oh goodness
me that you know the the hydraulics in his arms as he picks the baby up and and uh oh oh yeah yeah
shivers for that bit it definitely is uh mostly better than all of the uh cybermen we've had in
the new series and mary mary's aware that he doesn't kill the baby so that's another element
in frankenstein isn't it yeah i guess it is i i like the fact that mary mary gives him the big
speech about you know how trying to appeal to his humanity um and obviously the monster has
this degree of humanity.
And yet it completely doesn't wash with him.
It looks like it's going to.
And then he just turns on her
and it's a brilliant scene.
So I had a question about that then.
You've read Frankenstein
far more recently than I have,
I'm quite certain,
because I recently read your post on that.
But I think I haven't read it
since about 1980.
So it's been a while since I read the book, which was a hard slog, as I recall.
But what I recall is that when you come out of it, the monster is Frankenstein.
Frankenstein's monster is more human than Frankenstein himself.
Is that not what I remember from that?
Remember, Frankenstein is the monster, not the doctor.
No, I'm saying Frankenstein is actually the monster in this story.
The Dr. Frankenstein is the monster.
His monster is actually the more human of the two.
Yes, Frankenstein is the monster.
So if you were putting together a story where a woman was inspired by something that she
encountered to write, I don't know that having her think she got through to the Cybermen
and then have him prove that she was wrong would be maybe the story would have come out differently
if you had if you had done that okay the monster is the monster though i mean the monster is
the monster is a killer he's driven mad for understandable reasons but i don't think she
tries to justify his actions so it i think the thing the thing there that doesn't fit is that
you don't see you don't see the circumstances of his creation you know there's there's not
there's nothing in the haunting of villa diodati that explains the character of frankenstein it
it gives you the inspiration for the monster sure but frankenstein himself no but then on the other
hand the the downside of stories like this fun though that they are where you kind of say oh
this is how you know this is how this historical figure came up with this idea um is that you
slightly diminish their creativity in inventories in the first place so perhaps in a way it's better
that there is some distance between what we see in this story and what's actually in in the novel
Do you know, if my wild speculation about this guy being assembled from parts of busted up Cybermen is true, which I don't know that that's explicitly enough stated.
I mean, if somebody had never seen a Cyberman, you wouldn't necessarily get that.
But that would be – then the person who did it is Frankenstein and Dr. Frankenstein.
And, you know, there's no inkling of such a person or where he came from or what he did that Mary would get out of what she gets a chance to see in this story.
So one thing that was kind of interestingly done, I guess, is that they were very adamant.
And I don't know what the ages are, but they hired very young actors to play the parts because they were young, apparently.
Particularly the women were quite, I think, teenagers still.
18, 16.
Mary would have been, yeah, she'd have been 18 or 19, I guess.
Yeah. And so they hired people who were genuinely close to that age compared to, they're usually kind of aged up. Supposedly, I didn't look at the actors.
I was unfamiliar with them.
Another thing, either Chibnall or the writer said that they had, I think people will be interested because we've hired actors who are more appropriate to the actual age of the characters.
They certainly looked the right age. What impressed me was they were really, really good. I mean, the actors playing Mary Shelley and Byron, especially, I just loved the performance of Mary Shelley.
and that that did surprise me got that first time round I just I was just instantly taken
with the way she portrayed her and I I really enjoyed Julie Cox when she was playing
against Paul McGann as his companion as Mary Shelley but and and so I came into it with
some expectations of of the character of Mary Shelley who I was expecting to see she did play
completely differently but i i really i i don't know there was just there was there was something
about her her glee in the the horror of it and her yeah i just yeah it was lovely i thought
it was it was it was it was well done i will say the guy who played um byron um i i did occasionally
look at him and think well i mean if they ever launch up a a revival of sherlock without benedict
cumberbatch um maybe oh i didn't see him he kept reminding me of cumberbatch and i don't know what
it was but something i mean yes but the hair maybe and and general stature but there was something
else there that that uh you know and he was actually playing a different he wasn't playing
sherlock holmes i don't don't mean to imply that just uh no no i'm not and i'm not saying
i'm not saying i could imagine him as holmes but i i thought i thought his his performance as byron
didn't you know it didn't it it was it was quite different it was quite distinctive and i i did
i did like his um the way his mind was obviously working it it was yeah it was entertaining his
his pursuit of the doctor who well i can't remember what the phrase he used he was something about how
she was just enchanting or particularly lovely in a crisis something like that and she shot him down
just like john pertwee would have if he tried that on her on him yeah um yeah which
so makes her in some ways makes her more like older doctors and it would have david tenet or
matt smith because i think both of them would have probably blushed um yeah i mean i think i think
there is no doubt that this doctor is far less um well actually no it's true the the i must stop
myself i hate that term this doctor the doctor currently but also the doctor in her past couple
of incarnations i think it is fair to say has a lot less interest in that whole side of things
than she did in the two incarnations preceding that.
Yeah.
At least two.
And I welcome that.
I welcome her spurning his advances.
Good job.
It was very funny.
I do not like her licking bones or tasting bone dust.
I didn't like that tasting dirt in Norway.
Why didn't you like that?
I just think it's a ridiculous too far.
It varies due south.
And due south is comedy.
Due south is meant to make the Canadians look ridiculous in many ways.
Whereas the Gallifreyans are all terribly, terribly dignified and serious people.
It would be one thing if I thought the doctor who was licking it and was lying.
Was lying.
Yeah, this is just...
But the fact that she's pronouncing that that actually is the correct comical composition,
age, and no things from tasting a bit of a bone is just...
You know...
It's bad enough she could do it with a sonic,
which at least is an instrument designed for detecting...
Oh, no, I much prefer this to the sonic.
I would prefer if she actually couldn't do either.
and would have to rely on not that kind of shorthand.
But anyway, let's see.
I guess probably my one thing that comes to my mind at the episode
is that the ultimate solution to this problem is to just give up,
which is what the doctor did.
You mean the dilemma?
Yeah.
Yeah, we'll just give it to him.
Yeah, I liked that.
I liked the fact that it was set up with a clear, you mustn't do this.
And yet, when you get into the actual situation, how could you do anything else?
Could the cybership have really have destroyed the Earth?
Did he really even have a cybership?
It seemed...
You wouldn't find out, would you?
I mean, if he had a cybership, you'd be dead before you knew it.
I can't think of any specific examples, but I'm going to say that there have been occasions in the past where someone threatens something like that to the doctor.
And the doctor does not back down because the doctor will outsmart them and or outplay them.
And if it weren't for the fact that we had set up this, oh, don't give it to him under any cost.
You know, I mean, I knew from the moment Captain Jack said that, that there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that the doctor will give it to them.
And well, it's Chekhov Siberia, isn't it?
Pretty much. Yeah.
Well, you've got to give them the MacGuffin because otherwise you never get to find out what the MacGuffin does.
So, you know, it's got to happen and then you can then you can deal with it.
I must say, one of the things I like about this Doctor, and I think, you know, I've mentioned this in the past, is that, I've done it again, this Doctor, the Doctor in this incarnation, the Doctor in this series in the Chibnall era, is fallible in, you know, in the way that Davison's Doctor was fallible.
There is that scene at the end of the ghost monument that I think sets this up where you get a sense for a moment that she can be defeated.
And it does, it does when when used appropriately, I think, create a real sense of jeopardy.
The feeling I had in this was that when she when she was making the call, when she was saying, can I can I risk the fact that, you know, there could be a cyber ship that will destroy the earth.
I believed it. I believed that she, you know, whatever, whatever you want to say about what
the doctor has done in previous episodes, and there are goodness knows enough of them.
I believed that in that moment, the doctor was weighing up the odds and was sufficiently convinced
that this was a really, an impossible corner to get out of. And yes, there may have been a long
shot she might have been able to outwit them or do something else but it was too big a risk to play
with hey thought just occurs to me is captain jack trying to change the past well he comes
he's either trying to change the past or he's trying to stop someone else from changing the
past don't give it he's come to warn the doctor he says don't give them what they want
she does not have what they want at the point in time that he contacts her she doesn't get what
they want until they arrive at this place entirely through happenstance sure but
happens to the right place to do is to encounter her before she has what he wants not you know
But that means he has to know that she will get it.
And that it is catastrophic that she not give it to them.
There's no point in telling her not to give them something that she's never going to have.
So he must.
But my point is, is that if he knows she's going to get it, then he is trying to manipulate his past.
Because that's a thing that's happened.
He's certainly trying to manipulate it.
what all i'm all i'm saying is he he might he may be he may be changing the past as it originally
was whatever originally means or he may be trying to stop someone else from who has tried to or who
has changed the past to some other course because it comes back to this thing i was saying earlier
that there are these different there are these different operators involved in this situation
and it's not quite clear who they are or what their agendas are or even because there appear
at least two people trying to change the past,
whether either of them have succeeded.
Well, do you think that the Cybermen is trying to change the past?
Yes.
How so? He's just trying to get the Siberian back.
Because the Cybermen have been defeated in the Cyber Wars.
But we don't know that's why he wants the Siberian.
But it's a pretty good motive for wanting to change the past.
I'm thinking getting all of your, if it is, but I see no evidence that he's trying to change the past.
I see evidence that a defeated Cyberman is trying to get something that will allow them to rebuild and start again.
And I think that even Captain Jack said that, that they're trying to start again or they're trying to get it going all over again or something like that.
So it's not about changing the past or at least there's no definitive thing.
The only thing that sounds like it's changing the past is Captain Jack.
And in so doing, we ask the question, well, how is that different than if they just killed Byron in the first place?
Sorry, Shelley in the first place, but and let the Siberian go or stay.
Well, because changing the past is not a goal in itself.
There are parties involved here who have an interest in how future history plays out.
And so it may be that they want it to go a certain way, or it may be that they want it not to go a way that someone else wants it to go, someone else who is trying to change it.
There is no doubt that there is some changing of history going on here.
And by the end of this episode, apart from the, as I say, the timescale, the fact that there's several days has turned into just one night, Percy wasn't involved in it.
So that's all wrong.
So at the end of this episode, the history is broken.
The, you know, the story that took place within the episode was not how it should have happened.
This is totally what's creating Dr. Ruth somehow.
Well, it could be.
I mean, I'm certainly wondering if the existence of Dr. Ruth is the reason that the doctor doesn't remember traveling with Mary Shelley in the past.
Oh, nice try.
She wouldn't turn up at the Villa Diodati knowing that she'd been there in the past and that she'd been traveling around with Mary in the past because that would be wildly irresponsible.
Yeah, and the Doctor never does that.
Exactly.
What about this little Time Lord trick of showing you your death?
Nice. I like it.
It raises some interesting implications for the villains that the Doctor has defeated.
It kind of makes that whole predestination thing kind of a little more real.
So Time Lords can tell you how you're going to die.
So if Morbius is, or not Morbius, if Solon is trying to, you know, if they could just take a quick look and see how Solon's going to die.
Oh, okay.
Well, then never mind.
He's not going to succeed.
I didn't.
It doesn't necessarily work on other Time Lords.
Well, Solon wasn't a Time Lord.
Solon was the surgeon.
I was trying to bring Morbius back.
But that's why I switched from Morbius to Solon.
But, yeah.
Anyway.
I haven't seen the brain of Morbius for quite a while.
So I can't remember how Solon dies.
Or what difference...
The doctor murders him with cyanide gas.
Oh, naughty doctor.
It's like...
So, yeah.
Just a note.
Shelley, Percy, Beth Shelley.
Bish Shelley, obviously quite famous, and he did die in 1822 of drowning, although not in the shallows.
He was in deeper water.
But I thought it was kind of interesting.
Shelley, if this wasn't known, was kind of a bit of a notorious atheist for his era, one of the scandalous things in his thing.
When he died, the Courier in Britain, which I guess is a is or was a Tory paper, wrote the following to mark his passing.
Shelley, the writer of some infidel poetry, has been drowned.
Now he knows whether there is God or no.
Hmm.
He wasn't very popular in his lifetime.
It's only afterwards that his writings were.
And he wasn't popular with the British because he wrote in favor of Irish independence and all sorts of interesting, interesting, scandalous stuff, as did Byron as well.
Because I guess we've kind of covered the lead guests.
I'm a bit cheesed off that the staff get rather unceremoniously topped.
That didn't sit so well with me.
It kind of reminded me of, oh, what's his face in Madagascar?
Oh, yeah.
Dies and no one even remembers that he was alive in the first place.
Or can't remember his name.
Right.
I can't remember his name because he's an instant character.
I mean, I liked the character of Fletcher, the valet, in this.
And I especially, especially loved it when Polidori announced that he would be his second.
And he makes a sigh that's almost exactly like, you know,
Zach Brannigan's Lieutenant Kiff in Futurama.
Whenever Brannigan comes out with some outrageous declaration,
normally wildly sexist or self-aggrandizing, and he just makes this sigh.
And I just, I was irresistibly reminded of it by Fletcher in that scene.
I did like the character of Fletcher.
I think it's a little different from the guy in Madagascar
because at least Byron, when he finds the body,
seems to be, I'm not going to say moved,
but at least, I don't know, poor Fletcher or something like that.
So, I mean, he wasn't completely forgotten.
Poor Fletcher, I knew him.
I think it maybe ties in, or my disquiet with it ties in with the,
I like it, but partly because it is making me think.
And so there is this confrontation between Ryan and the Doctor
because Ryan essentially puts the case for letting Percy die
because it will save X other many lives.
And the Doctor's response to that one is quite an interesting one
because she doesn't, as I might expect,
she doesn't kind of chastise him for his consequentialist approach.
She doesn't say,
I never met a person who was not important or whatever.
She actually talks about how Shelley can't be allowed to die
because he is important,
which kind of the corollary or the flip side of that is,
well, then these household servants, these nursemaids and valets are not important.
And so in the end, she goes to argue, she convinces him by,
Shelley is not a question of saying it would be worth saving him, whoever he is.
She doesn't even try to make that argument.
She says he's important. He will have a consequence on the way that history plays out.
If history doesn't play out the way it's supposed to play out, you will be dead.
Therefore, you should agree with me in order to preserve yourself.
Yeah, it was. I did not care for the whole the whole piece there.
I know a lot of people are cheering finally a Jody speech, but I did not.
It is a good speech. It is a good speech.
What I like about it is partly that I don't...
We've had this thing now running through this whole series
where essentially this set of companions who are played by good actors,
we're getting good performances from them,
and they are interesting characters in the way that they were introduced and written,
and I enjoyed them in the last season.
But there is no doubt that the Doctor has been written in a way
that she is essentially just treating them as pets.
This speech acknowledges that.
The fact that, you know, she actually explicitly says
all of this fam stuff is just so much bullshit
as far as she's concerned.
They are not equal to her.
She is the one who has to make these decisions.
And while they may be amusing and pleasant company
to have around the TARDIS,
They don't matter to her.
In the end, yep.
I took that out of this as well.
And I like that being acknowledged.
I think it fits with your notion that she's being built to a big fall for this.
For her arrogance.
You know, it's all...
The moral dilemma of it is different from...
That's fine.
The moral dilemma of it is fine because she...
I'm not saying she's right.
I'm just saying that she has to make the decision.
She feels that the ultimate decision-making process falls upon her.
I guess the other part that bugs me is, as you say, with the whole Shelley being important, the other people are not being important.
It comes down to what the heck is it that they're doing with time travel that isn't anywhere that they go that they couldn't screw something up.
And without any kind of limitations on it, a la the Aztecs, it seems like they are kind of floundering around with different ideas that they can't reconcile.
And the the Butler versus Shelley is one of them.
Well, I know I I don't I don't think that's what bothers me about it, because I don't think what bothers me about it.
Oh, well, fair enough.
I wasn't trying to paraphrase what it bothers about you.
It bothers me for those reasons.
Like the doctor cannot possibly know whether or not that butler isn't Ryan's great grandfather for all we know.
But we've never really had any kind of butterfly effect in Doctor Who.
I mean, the closest I think is Pyramid of Mars.
And that's another big, you know, you make a big change.
that Doctor Who wouldn't work if you had that and so it's in in that there has been any
consistency about time travel and I think we've spent a good couple of hours just discussing all
of the different and entirely contradictory approaches to time travel that the show has
adopted throughout the years it it is it is at least it is at least that the the thing that
The thing that bugs me about this is that the characters in the story, and particularly our supposed heroes, don't take those deaths seriously.
They take the deaths of the toffs seriously.
And there is a story reason for that.
And OK, fair enough.
And, you know, this may be the exception to rule.
I just.
Those are the names history remembers.
And that's all that's important.
Yeah.
We have no idea if Fletcher was the name of their actual ballot.
In the end, that could be.
I don't know.
They may have not had one.
If Matthew Nolston is a brilliant scholar on Mary Shelley, she may have done the research and she may have discovered the records.
And killed them off.
Maybe.
It turned out they died that night.
They actually died of heart attack, both of them that night.
and uh coincidentally so she decided to work it into uh into her her story uh the thing is i don't
think that whatever i although i like it being acknowledged that she is she is sort of um arrogant
yeah arrogant she she has that she has this it's acknowledged the regard that she holds the
companions in is is this kind of um view of them as being very far from uh equal and and their
agency doesn't does not really play a part when it comes to the important things that's not for
me necessarily going to make up for the fact that they have had very little agency throughout this
series and that has made for some disappointing stories because though I say that I like
I like them all I think they're interesting I think there is lots of potential it is quite
frustrating when you see that not being realized and in many ways I think because I think this
season for me I loved the previous season of Doctor Who it's really really good this season
I haven't enjoyed it nearly as much not because there haven't been some good episodes but because
there have been some real ups and downs and it feels to me like that the the good episodes would
actually perhaps have been better if they just had the doctor traveling on her own in a story like
this you know a mechanical dog percy had had to be written out you've got a lot of interesting
supporting characters and yet what they what they have to do then is find something for these three
extra people to do in this whole haunted house thing on top of the doctor and and it's not that
i didn't enjoy some of it i mean i i loved ryan and polidori's uh confrontation uh you know ryan
trying to talk him down from fighting a duel and all that that that was very good graham's usually
good value even if they they're kind of oh cheers mate some lovely nosh shtick is wearing a bit thin
it's just you could do without it yep you could you could sorry i was just gonna say while we're
on the companions i probably ought to mention we have a another reference to the zero chemistry
um apparent uh what what should we say uh crush that someone has on someone else in the tardis
i'm assuming where was that yaz says to claire who claire is mooning over byron she's actually
it's not mentioned in this she's pregnant with byron's child at this point yeah um yaz says
i know someone like that who's she talking about well um she's obviously talking about the doctor
i was not willing to go so far as to think she was thinking about the doctor romantically i thought
she was talking about i thought she's thinking about ryan based on really no nobody nobody would
describe ryan in the terms that claire was describing byron exactly yaz says my person's
different uh well no i didn't get that i thought she was just referring to the fact that the cult
of magnetism that the doctor has is you know claire is drawn to the magnetism of byron yes
they hang around to the magnetism of the doctor is what i was i'm not sure about that i think i
think there is something else going on you were the one in spyfall who said that ryan was interested
in yaz oh yeah it was clear in spyfall in orphan 55 it's not that way around no it's the other way
around and i think that's that i think that's what's going yeah yeah seems to be interested in
right but but when you get scenes with them together i never sense it and i never there's
no i never i never understand i don't have any sense of why she thinks it's not reciprocated so
you never get any sense that in spy fall there is the scene where the two are sitting on the bench
and and ryan is talking about how i would never let anything happen to you yeah so i mean that's
a scene where they're together just just to contradict that you never see it when they're
together they're there they were um no no there are scenes when they're together what i mean is
you never get any scenes that make you sense that either yaz has this crush on ryan it's not it i
don't i don't see any indication of it in those scenes nor have we seen anything that suggests
that Ryan isn't interested in her.
Ryan did go awfully fast for the crazy woman in Orphan 55.
Yeah, I guess it could be that.
And maybe Yaz is taking him at his face value
when he talks about Sonia, I don't know.
Or, you know, Yaz is pining after the doctor.
I mean, that was set up in the first season as well
when mom made a crack about Yaz being a lesbian.
True.
And it sort of explains some of that stuff in Praxeus, where she's obviously trying to impress the Doctor.
She's trying to be seen by the Doctor as being an equal.
Could be.
I wonder where this is going.
If the Doctor is saying, none of you are my equal.
They're all leaving.
All three of them are gone.
They're out.
I don't know.
I will put out this for the record.
It was interesting.
It was nice to see Chibnall acknowledge something that happened in the Moffat era and not try to pretend it didn't happen in the cyber conversion of Bill.
We did get a call back to that.
I'll never let that happen.
I'll never let that happen again.
And my final question to you.
The poem that Byron is reading at the end, which was indeed written in about July of 1816, is called Darkness.
And it is apocalyptic.
Many people think of it as a post-apocalyptic view of the world.
Many people thought, scholars thought for many years, that it had to do with the year without a summer.
Because not only did that happen, it was an incredibly low solar minimum.
Sunspots so big they could be seen with the naked eye.
There were a lot of people thinking it was the end times.
There were riots.
There was all sorts of confusion and consternation that the world was coming to an end.
It was also a period of time when we were discovering that there were fossils, that there were extinct species.
this is a notion that to some people was an unacceptable notion because God created the
earth the way it is. And all the species are here for man and they can't go extinct.
And we know that was in the thinking of Byron in some of his work, that he knew that and that
he recognized that as problematic for some people. So anyway, the point is, is that in the end,
I think the schools of thought are, is that he was talking about this whole end times thing.
And he's also, he's talking about religion, because there's a lot of religious imagery in that poem.
And the bad things.
And the way this episode ends, by having him read that and end it over a sort of glamour shot of the Doctor,
makes me feel like the writer is trying to say, no, no, no, no, no.
Byron was talking about the Doctor.
She is the darkness.
and that's probably just the directing
but did not think that worked right
because not only that
I don't think that's what Byron would have taken out of it
out of his encounter with the Doctor
she didn't bring the darkness
she brought the light
so did any of that resonate in any way
as you were watching that
because that's what I was thinking as I saw it
I don't get that
I would not associate her with
and if you go read the poem even more so
But, well, I am reading the poem now, but I haven't studied it.
So this is very much my off-the-cuff opinion.
But I felt that there was more of the darkness about this Doctor
than we have seen for quite a long time
because of the decisions that she was making,
because of the way in which she was making them
and the attitude and the way she was treating the people whose lives she was weighing up, I guess.
I liked the episode ending with the poem.
I liked it at the time.
I still like it now, looking at the poem.
I felt that cutting to a shot of the Doctor was a bit on the nose.
You could have...
It's an episode of Doctor Who where he's just spent the whole thing mooning over the Doctor.
you don't need that cutaway to get the the possibility that he could be writing about her
so that was my main feeling it was i still get the feeling you know he he sees her as amazing
he says as much you know she is she is it just it feels like the wrong choice of a poem to try
to associate with her at that at that moment anyway do you have anything else because we've
run long on this one. No, I'm
all done. Finally an episode of
Doctor Who worth talking about.
For a long
time. Well, listeners,
remember it's going to be two weeks.
Next week, we are going to be releasing
a podcast we did
in 2019 for
our patrons, but
we're going to be releasing it to the public feed
to fill in your week, and we're going to be
talking about... Sex Olympics!
Sex Olympics! The year
of the Sex Olympics. An amazing
an absolutely amazing piece of work by Nigel Neill for the BBC,
that if you can find it, find it, watch it, and join us for our discussion.
And Simon, thank you for joining me this week.
It's a pleasure, as always.
And listeners, hope you'll join us all again next time on Fusion Patrol.
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Our music is fight the future by Amber Wolf.
This has been a lone locust production.
If he dies, Earth's history is irrevercably irrevercably.
Irrevercably.
Wow, that's a good word.
Yeah, you're not going to be doing any verking after that.