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. 00:00:31.180 --> 00:00:32.500 Welcome to the discussion. 00:00:59.480 --> 00:01:01.180 Two episodes to synopsize here. 00:01:01.780 --> 00:01:02.720 I just made that word up. 00:01:03.940 --> 00:01:06.520 Following the coordinates obtained from Percy Shelley, 00:01:06.650 --> 00:01:09.820 the Doctor and the gang arrive on a planet in the far future 00:01:10.240 --> 00:01:12.060 where there are seven remaining humans. 00:01:12.880 --> 00:01:17.460 She has them set up defenses against the Cybermen that fail. 00:01:18.160 --> 00:01:20.480 The Cybermen are led by the lone Cybermen, 00:01:20.720 --> 00:01:24.920 who is a nutcase who wanted to be a Cybermen but got rejected as inferior. 00:01:25.680 --> 00:01:27.380 Isn't that how Hitler got his start? 00:01:27.940 --> 00:01:32.380 The team is split, with Graham, Yaz, and some humans escaping in a rickety old spaceship, 00:01:32.680 --> 00:01:35.620 while the Doctor, Ryan, and some humans steal a cybership. 00:01:36.400 --> 00:01:39.700 They all make their way to a planet which is home to the legendary Boundary, 00:01:40.020 --> 00:01:43.420 a mysterious gateway for escape to some random part of the universe. 00:01:44.180 --> 00:01:49.280 Along the way, Graham's team capture a cybercarrier complete with a lot of dormant Cybermen. 00:01:49.780 --> 00:01:53.300 The Doctor in the faster cybership gets there first and inspects the Boundary, 00:01:53.580 --> 00:01:56.760 which shows Gallifrey behind it and belches forth the Master. 00:01:57.300 --> 00:02:02.060 Oh, and there was some stuff with a guy who was a policeman, but he died, but he actually didn't 00:02:02.310 --> 00:02:08.800 somewhere. End of part one. Part two. The Master forces the Doctor to go to Gallifrey. He imprisons 00:02:08.850 --> 00:02:14.040 her in the Matrix while at the same time inviting the Cybermen to come through and visit. Incidentally, 00:02:14.260 --> 00:02:18.620 Graham's team escaped from the Cybermen. The Master shows the Doctor a story about the origin 00:02:18.670 --> 00:02:24.140 of the Time Lords. One of their early explorers discovered an immortal child and adopted it, 00:02:24.340 --> 00:02:25.320 returning to Gallifrey. 00:02:25.690 --> 00:02:28.100 The Child was immortal because it could regenerate. 00:02:28.600 --> 00:02:31.060 The power of regeneration was copied from the Child, 00:02:31.170 --> 00:02:32.400 and the Time Lords were created, 00:02:32.960 --> 00:02:35.440 limited as they were to only 12 regenerations, 00:02:35.800 --> 00:02:36.780 unlike the Child. 00:02:37.560 --> 00:02:40.240 The Child was the Doctor, 00:02:40.680 --> 00:02:42.180 who apparently is erased, 00:02:42.540 --> 00:02:43.540 forced back to childhood, 00:02:44.000 --> 00:02:46.060 and starts all over again once in a while. 00:02:46.500 --> 00:02:46.940 The purpose? 00:02:47.740 --> 00:02:50.520 To save the universe while allowing Gallifrey 00:02:50.520 --> 00:02:52.420 to maintain a policy of non-intervention? 00:02:53.140 --> 00:02:59.080 The Master is mad because the Doctor really is special, and he owes his existence to her. 00:03:00.180 --> 00:03:08.140 So, being nuts, he's saved all the Time Lord bodies, and he's converting them to a new race of immortal Cyber Time Lords. 00:03:08.640 --> 00:03:12.720 Oh, and somewhere along the line, he dispensed with the lone Cybermen with no difficulty whatsoever. 00:03:13.280 --> 00:03:17.240 Most of the Matrix has been redacted, so the Doctor's story is still a mystery. 00:03:17.660 --> 00:03:21.640 we'll probably have to suffer with as long as Chibnall is calling all the shots 00:03:21.980 --> 00:03:25.180 before it's forgotten like a bad shower sequence in Dallas. 00:03:26.000 --> 00:03:27.940 The Doctor escapes by blowing up the Matrix. 00:03:28.900 --> 00:03:32.180 That would be the Matrix that contains all the memories of all Time Lords, 00:03:32.640 --> 00:03:34.660 past and present, throughout all time. 00:03:35.340 --> 00:03:39.320 The Doctor blows that Matrix up by, and I'm not making this up, 00:03:39.780 --> 00:03:43.360 remembering everything she's done in an ordinary Time Lord lifespan. 00:03:43.820 --> 00:03:45.580 Anyway, having killed the Lone Cyberman, 00:03:45.660 --> 00:03:47.440 the Master took the Siberian into himself 00:03:47.600 --> 00:03:50.260 and confronted with the possibility of an immortal cyber race 00:03:50.360 --> 00:03:51.640 with the ability to regenerate, 00:03:51.980 --> 00:03:54.260 the Doctor has the humans blow up the Cybership, 00:03:54.420 --> 00:03:55.280 killing all the Cybermen. 00:03:56.220 --> 00:03:58.240 The Doctor sends her friends home in a TARDIS 00:03:58.360 --> 00:03:59.540 and then goes to detonate a bomb 00:03:59.600 --> 00:04:00.960 which contains the Death Particle, 00:04:01.220 --> 00:04:03.920 a spurious non-sequitur devised by the Siberian 00:04:03.920 --> 00:04:06.000 to destroy all organic life in the universe. 00:04:06.760 --> 00:04:08.640 Detonating this bomb will destroy the Master, 00:04:08.880 --> 00:04:09.740 the Cyber Time Lords, 00:04:09.940 --> 00:04:11.060 the spare bodies in the refrigerator 00:04:11.440 --> 00:04:13.300 and all organic material on Gallifrey. 00:04:13.560 --> 00:04:15.360 Of course, she can't do it, 00:04:15.500 --> 00:04:27.600 So one of the human characters who turns out at the last possible moment to be one of the idiots who thought sending the Siberian back in time was a good idea blows up the bomb instead and the doctor escapes in another TARDIS. 00:04:28.120 --> 00:04:35.660 Retrieving her own TARDIS and then being captured and imprisoned forever by the Jadun in a prison that wouldn't keep River Song secure on a Friday night. 00:04:36.200 --> 00:04:36.780 The end. 00:04:37.020 --> 00:04:44.480 Oh, and no spoilers here, but both the cliffhanger and our Christmas New Year season has been ruined already by the title of the next episode. 00:04:46.360 --> 00:04:51.400 Now, I'm going to preface this right off the bat for this discussion. 00:04:52.520 --> 00:04:58.340 I did a Fusion Reaction Live episode Sunday morning before the Doctor Who episode aired, 00:04:58.520 --> 00:05:00.780 and I said something that turned out to be a lie. 00:05:01.120 --> 00:05:07.960 I said that I was going to go watch Ascension of the Cybermen again before I watched The Timeless Children. 00:05:08.720 --> 00:05:20.760 And as it happens, I couldn't watch it again. So I watched The Timeless Children. And then after that, I just could not be bothered to watch both of them because, oh, my God, it's so long. 00:05:21.440 --> 00:05:32.860 And so I am on this totally cold, having watched them once without taking notes during the course of the episodes. 00:05:34.000 --> 00:05:42.860 And I made a conscious effort not to write notes down because I didn't want to be the guy, although I am that guy, 00:05:43.240 --> 00:05:51.520 I didn't want to be the guy that just spent hours documenting stupid, stupid things in a tediously boring episode. 00:05:52.400 --> 00:05:55.100 Now, I may have already come down on where I stand on this. 00:05:55.160 --> 00:05:56.720 I understand there are people who like it. 00:05:56.960 --> 00:05:57.760 Perhaps you liked it. 00:05:58.960 --> 00:06:00.020 I'll put it out there. 00:06:00.180 --> 00:06:09.760 I still wrote down some things, but because I woke up in the middle of the night needing to write down some things that were causing me not to sleep well. 00:06:11.060 --> 00:06:13.560 So how did you like this episode, Simon? 00:06:13.840 --> 00:06:16.380 Both of the episodes as a total thing. 00:06:17.260 --> 00:06:18.380 As a total thing? 00:06:22.319 --> 00:06:28.600 The problem for me is that The Timeless Children is so deeply flawed 00:06:29.340 --> 00:06:32.640 that any enjoyment I had of The Ascension of the Cybermen 00:06:32.880 --> 00:06:35.880 isn't going to outweigh it when you take them as a unit. 00:06:35.920 --> 00:06:39.179 And I've got to say, I enjoyed The Ascension of the Cybermen 00:06:39.200 --> 00:06:43.080 as I often do, the build-up episodes entertain me 00:06:43.200 --> 00:06:46.440 because they are, in some sense, they are quite low stakes. 00:06:46.480 --> 00:06:47.800 It's build-up, build-up, build-up. 00:06:48.300 --> 00:06:51.000 You don't have to have a resolution that's inevitably disappointing, 00:06:51.720 --> 00:06:53.940 even though actually having the master appear, 00:06:54.160 --> 00:06:55.540 I somehow found disappointing. 00:06:56.500 --> 00:06:59.340 A lot of the stuff in that episode was nice world-building 00:06:59.660 --> 00:07:07.699 and there were, you know, the fun kind of little fan service things 00:07:07.720 --> 00:07:11.580 like the super duper new old retro Cybermen 00:07:12.090 --> 00:07:16.120 and all of that kind of post-Cyberwar stuff 00:07:16.700 --> 00:07:18.500 was quite entertaining. 00:07:18.610 --> 00:07:23.680 But then the Timeless Children didn't really do it for me. 00:07:25.720 --> 00:07:28.600 Okay, well, I guess we're roughly perhaps on the same page. 00:07:28.700 --> 00:07:31.740 Now, I will say I also enjoyed the ascension of the Cybermen, 00:07:32.120 --> 00:07:32.960 having watched it once. 00:07:33.640 --> 00:07:37.880 I had two moments that bugged the heck out of me. 00:07:38.620 --> 00:07:43.280 One was the cyber drones, which is just a dumb idea. 00:07:44.620 --> 00:07:45.700 And it is. 00:07:45.780 --> 00:07:49.000 But on the other hand, you can understand it and it doesn't spoil the episode. 00:07:49.280 --> 00:07:50.980 It's just like that. 00:07:51.120 --> 00:07:54.940 Here's the marketing department saying, hey, guys, we need to sell some of these. 00:07:55.020 --> 00:07:56.100 Can you stick them in somewhere? 00:07:56.440 --> 00:07:57.540 OK, moment's over. 00:07:58.140 --> 00:08:10.780 I suppose it does kind of come back to a question that's raised in the Timeless Children about what happens to the Cybermen when we go without organic. 00:08:10.850 --> 00:08:15.060 Are those cyber heads, heads in there, sans body now? 00:08:15.860 --> 00:08:17.340 Or are they just made in the shape? 00:08:17.410 --> 00:08:17.700 I'm concerned. 00:08:19.220 --> 00:08:26.060 So one of the many problems of the Timeless Children, and there's no way we're going to have time to go into all of them. 00:08:26.120 --> 00:08:51.900 But the whole death particle thing is the only reason that even talking about having organic, sorry, completely non-organic Cybermen, which as the master correctly points it, it's like they've got, Chibnall's looked at the scene he's just written and gone, you know, he's pulled this death particle out because he's got to have some way of resolving the story. 00:08:51.980 --> 00:08:53.960 and that's what he's come up with. 00:08:54.520 --> 00:08:56.400 And obviously it's going to kill all the Cybermen. 00:08:56.560 --> 00:08:57.540 So, oh, that's no good. 00:08:57.740 --> 00:08:59.840 So, oh, what the hell? 00:08:59.940 --> 00:09:01.080 I'll just make them into robots. 00:09:01.920 --> 00:09:04.160 But being robots is just a bit boring. 00:09:04.320 --> 00:09:05.760 Anyone could turn themselves into a robot. 00:09:06.420 --> 00:09:06.660 Never mind. 00:09:06.810 --> 00:09:08.080 We'll just have the master say it 00:09:08.080 --> 00:09:10.600 and then that makes it okay. 00:09:11.320 --> 00:09:13.280 Are you ever going to watch this episode again? 00:09:15.000 --> 00:09:16.440 I have a thought experiment. 00:09:16.750 --> 00:09:20.100 I probably am, but I've got to say, like you, 00:09:20.140 --> 00:09:26.980 I was planning to watch the two episodes back to back so I could watch the whole thing as a thing. 00:09:28.760 --> 00:09:31.780 And partly time defeated me, but partly I'll be honest. 00:09:31.860 --> 00:09:35.780 I mean, I did this for Spyfall and I found that a bit of a slog. 00:09:36.500 --> 00:09:46.820 And I think I only managed it with the kind of start of the series enthusiasm that I had, which has slowly been beaten out of me. 00:09:47.100 --> 00:10:00.860 I mean, there were episodes in this season that I liked, but yeah, I'd somehow had that energy zapped from me that the thought of watching this whole thing again just was too much. 00:10:00.960 --> 00:10:07.040 I watched the Doctor defeating the Matrix sequence several times, including in slow motion. 00:10:07.040 --> 00:10:08.160 I tried to frame through it. 00:10:08.560 --> 00:10:09.600 Yep, yep, I tried that. 00:10:10.480 --> 00:10:12.020 But apart from that, the rest of it, no. 00:10:13.220 --> 00:10:19.520 So here's what I'm going to suggest to you or to any listener out there who watches this again. 00:10:20.800 --> 00:10:26.080 Imagine every line by the master spoken by Chris Chibnall. 00:10:26.760 --> 00:10:31.380 In fact, I want to see somebody doing a deep fake and put Chris Chibnall in that spot. 00:10:31.520 --> 00:10:38.440 Because I feel like this script is a metaphor for what he is doing to Doctor Who. 00:10:39.660 --> 00:10:48.040 And picture his scenes where he's talking about, I've shown you this stuff and now I've broken you. 00:10:48.200 --> 00:10:49.000 I've beaten you. 00:10:49.840 --> 00:10:53.300 And the doctor says, and pardon my sense, so f***ing what? 00:10:53.980 --> 00:10:54.680 You didn't beat me? 00:10:55.040 --> 00:10:55.220 What? 00:10:55.860 --> 00:10:56.000 Huh? 00:10:58.620 --> 00:10:59.960 Doesn't change who I am. 00:11:02.440 --> 00:11:03.800 And he's like, but it did. 00:11:03.830 --> 00:11:04.160 It did. 00:11:04.300 --> 00:11:05.220 I'm going to beat you. 00:11:05.360 --> 00:11:06.260 I'm going to destroy you. 00:11:06.380 --> 00:11:07.180 I am going to do it. 00:11:07.500 --> 00:11:07.720 No. 00:11:08.360 --> 00:11:08.520 Okay. 00:11:09.000 --> 00:11:09.100 Well. 00:11:09.520 --> 00:11:10.600 That's how I feel about it. 00:11:11.520 --> 00:11:12.960 I think there's an... 00:11:13.080 --> 00:11:15.300 I really, really don't want to impugn 00:11:16.220 --> 00:11:17.100 Chibnall's motivation. 00:11:17.300 --> 00:11:18.820 I mean, I think he's a fine writer. 00:11:19.500 --> 00:11:20.960 He just has written 00:11:21.200 --> 00:11:22.420 a not very good episode, 00:11:22.570 --> 00:11:23.460 not for the first time. 00:11:24.440 --> 00:11:26.300 And I definitely think 00:11:26.620 --> 00:11:27.600 he loves the show 00:11:27.740 --> 00:11:29.320 and has loved it for a long time. 00:11:30.160 --> 00:11:30.760 But there are... 00:11:30.760 --> 00:11:32.420 I think the master loves the doctor too 00:11:32.740 --> 00:11:34.500 in a mad sort of insane way. 00:11:35.340 --> 00:11:35.680 Well, yeah. 00:11:35.870 --> 00:11:37.140 Well, yes, yes, yes. 00:11:37.260 --> 00:11:37.400 Okay. 00:11:37.760 --> 00:11:39.560 Yes, love is a strange thing. 00:11:40.740 --> 00:11:43.860 And it's certainly the case that characters in this episode 00:11:44.320 --> 00:11:49.000 try and explain what our relationship should be 00:11:49.160 --> 00:11:51.760 with the changes that are being made, 00:11:51.980 --> 00:11:54.640 as in, you know, rewriting the Doctor's history. 00:11:55.780 --> 00:11:59.260 But, you know, the Joe Martin Doctor was popping up 00:11:59.280 --> 00:12:01.220 to say what Chibnall wants to say to us 00:12:01.360 --> 00:12:03.880 about how, you know, it doesn't actually change the character, 00:12:04.040 --> 00:12:04.680 yada, yada, yada. 00:12:05.100 --> 00:12:10.860 I think in a way you're right about, it would be interesting to have the master just, 00:12:11.340 --> 00:12:16.060 the fact of the matter is the way that, and it's probably the biggest problem with The Timeless 00:12:16.200 --> 00:12:24.000 Children, because there's nothing in it that I particularly hate. It is purely that it's a really, 00:12:24.260 --> 00:12:31.120 really badly structured episode in terms of giving you any kind of dramatic tension or a 00:12:31.100 --> 00:12:36.260 reason to care about anything that's going on and the biggest reason for that is because it is mostly 00:12:36.520 --> 00:12:44.500 just the master explaining stuff twice yeah exactly and and this this this in two different 00:12:44.640 --> 00:12:52.800 places at once yeah so that so this is why he is a he is a he's a proxy he's a proxy right and that 00:12:52.880 --> 00:12:57.440 two different things at once it is like you need the master to do all of the exposition but the 00:12:57.400 --> 00:13:02.300 master is already engaged somewhere else in the plot including at one point being possessed by 00:13:02.300 --> 00:13:08.740 the siberian which you think is probably something that is going to take over your entire consciousness 00:13:09.160 --> 00:13:15.660 at least temporarily but doesn't no he's still half in the matrix and the half that's in the 00:13:15.740 --> 00:13:28.920 matrix isn't even batting a virtual eyelid so yes i was like it it just i i feel him talking and i'm 00:13:28.980 --> 00:13:37.420 and i wasn't actually in trying to put um malicious intent there the master yes but this is this is 00:13:37.620 --> 00:13:44.600 that sort of if you you know you give a knife to a surgeon and you give your knife and you give a 00:13:44.440 --> 00:13:52.260 knife to a plumber uh you know who do you want cutting open another human being and it's the 00:13:52.430 --> 00:13:57.300 surgeon not the plumber and i think this is the case of the plumber's been handed a knife 00:13:58.360 --> 00:14:05.280 and and then he's trying to justify it and and like i said it just it felt like a mess i mean 00:14:05.520 --> 00:14:11.080 for crying out loud the big empty meta the big empty matrix right when he hits the point where 00:14:11.080 --> 00:14:18.460 it's all erased he's like it's it's an on your head metaphor for here is now the mystery i have 00:14:18.620 --> 00:14:24.960 created for doctor who so that it can be filled in again i have created a new empty canvas to work 00:14:25.020 --> 00:14:35.100 upon like it just it's his okay okay his his his i'm quite interested in what what he what he thought 00:14:35.100 --> 00:14:41.040 he was doing and i and you you may you may have the explanation there because i think there is a 00:14:41.380 --> 00:14:48.940 a parallel this is the chibnall master plan the i know i know and and the interesting thing is how 00:14:49.060 --> 00:14:57.100 much praise and joy that this episode and this series is filling uh some fans with who's you 00:14:57.100 --> 00:15:03.440 know including a number of commentators whose opinion i respect but it's interesting that it 00:15:03.600 --> 00:15:09.699 isn't doing it for me and i think that's partly just doctor who it's like i i like the andrew 00:15:09.760 --> 00:15:16.220 cartmel era you don't like the andrew cartmel era that's you know that's doctor who fans you 00:15:16.380 --> 00:15:22.580 pick anything there'll be someone who likes it and so and so you know with the cartmel master plan 00:15:23.220 --> 00:15:29.120 i really i really admired the the what the direction that cartmel took the show in and i 00:15:29.180 --> 00:15:37.660 also admired the fact that in in doing that he had a a coherent plan for where he was going with it 00:15:38.020 --> 00:15:45.980 even if I didn't admire the coherent plan itself because it was silly. And in a way, 00:15:47.440 --> 00:15:53.160 I would like to admire Chibnall for coming at this with a coherent plan. And obviously, 00:15:53.300 --> 00:15:59.160 we haven't got all of the answers in this. There is some more to go here. But I was sitting there 00:15:59.340 --> 00:16:07.260 thinking, I really don't understand what exactly it is that he's trying to say with any of this. 00:16:07.460 --> 00:16:09.460 I liked some of the ideas he had. 00:16:09.980 --> 00:16:15.220 I really thought some of them were extremely pointless, to be kind. 00:16:15.720 --> 00:16:21.300 And I couldn't quite figure it out because does it really create a mystery? 00:16:21.840 --> 00:16:22.600 Do you think it may? 00:16:22.900 --> 00:16:23.480 I mean, I like... 00:16:23.480 --> 00:16:25.700 Well, only if the doctor then pursues it. 00:16:26.180 --> 00:16:28.260 Well, now I have to find out where I came from. 00:16:28.980 --> 00:16:29.060 See? 00:16:29.220 --> 00:16:29.680 Well, maybe. 00:16:30.460 --> 00:16:30.600 Yeah. 00:16:30.800 --> 00:16:56.780 But the problem that Cartmel was dealing with was that all of this kind of stuff with all the Time Lords and the Time Lords turning out to be these kind of arrogant, pompous, venal politicking, and just generally kind of bureaucratic and up themselves and awful. 00:16:57.540 --> 00:17:02.640 It's a fair criticism. I think a lot of the Gallifrey stuff is is pretty kind of. 00:17:03.230 --> 00:17:14.199 Yeah. So so you think when when when the days when it was just when it was just the doctor in a police box wandering around the universe, having these adventures. 00:17:14.370 --> 00:17:18.180 Great. Without this whole kind of backstory. Maybe we could do that again. 00:17:18.650 --> 00:17:25.560 And so we've had various situations where they've tried to address these things. 00:17:26.199 --> 00:17:29.880 you know the cartonel master plan might have been one of them there's obviously the whole kind of 00:17:30.560 --> 00:17:37.160 um you know addressing it by destroying gallifrey well russell t davis did this when he just said 00:17:37.700 --> 00:17:44.360 there was a time war and the time lords were wiped out he actually was on to something with that 00:17:44.920 --> 00:17:49.940 because then you could what he realized was that the way to deal with the time lords and 00:17:49.940 --> 00:17:57.160 and all that kind of baggage was not to talk about it stick a line in here or there to and 00:17:57.190 --> 00:18:01.840 the trap he fell into of course was by the by the time he left the show and did the end of time was 00:18:01.900 --> 00:18:07.560 he was that was where he was going with it and it's like chibnall doesn't seem to doesn't seem 00:18:07.610 --> 00:18:14.580 to figure that the the if what he's after is to is to shed this baggage what he should do is exactly 00:18:14.600 --> 00:18:21.260 what he did with the last season which is have a bunch of stories that are about the doctor and her 00:18:21.300 --> 00:18:28.740 new chums and aren't connected with all of the kind of 50x years of bump whereas this season he 00:18:28.760 --> 00:18:35.660 just seems to have got mired in all of this and and and for everything that he's fixed he's created 00:18:35.660 --> 00:18:41.300 a new problem so you say you don't feel he has a coherent plan and i will i will go so far as to 00:18:41.200 --> 00:18:45.780 say that that is one of the things that stood out to me. I think he has a coherent plan. I don't 00:18:45.860 --> 00:18:50.420 think he has a coherent plan. No, he does not have a coherent plan. And I can demonstrate why he 00:18:50.520 --> 00:18:53.420 doesn't have a coherent plan. What I'm saying is I think he's got a goal. I think he's got a goal. 00:18:53.620 --> 00:18:59.820 I just, I can't quite figure out what it is. Coherent plan. And I'm not sure he had exactly 00:18:59.940 --> 00:19:10.360 a goal. And I will tell you why. Let's start with, well, maybe I can forgive Spyfall for the 00:19:10.700 --> 00:19:17.660 whole ah i know a secret but i'm gonna not tell you for another 10 episodes or eight episodes 00:19:17.830 --> 00:19:25.860 because that's just clickbait but if if i understand this correctly what we saw on the 00:19:27.030 --> 00:19:34.320 screen the doctor is this child that was picked up by a shabogan um and can apparently regenerate 00:19:34.320 --> 00:19:39.760 an unknown number of times perhaps infinitely yes the time lord stole genetic material and 00:19:39.780 --> 00:19:46.220 made themselves capable of regenerating and made themselves into the Time Lords. And then 00:19:47.230 --> 00:19:55.400 the Division decided to send the Timeless Child out into the universe to do good works while 00:19:55.740 --> 00:20:03.260 Gallifrey does not. Okay? So far, so with me, am I on plan with that? And then at some point, 00:20:03.960 --> 00:20:12.000 they take the doctor back in wipe the doctor's memory regress the doctor to a child in this case 00:20:12.220 --> 00:20:18.240 they regress the doctor to a child young william hartnell uh young william hartnell grows up with 00:20:18.280 --> 00:20:24.520 the master and the ronnie and barusa galfrey and then goes off and then one day decides to steal 00:20:24.680 --> 00:20:32.640 a TARDIS with his granddaughter, who he has procreated with, or not procreated with. 00:20:32.820 --> 00:20:32.960 Whoa! 00:20:33.340 --> 00:20:34.980 Yeah, yeah, my bad there. 00:20:35.280 --> 00:20:36.500 That was the wrong choice of the word. 00:20:36.640 --> 00:20:48.820 He has procreated children who have then produced a grandchild, and he has stolen a defective 00:20:48.940 --> 00:20:49.200 TARDIS. 00:20:49.340 --> 00:20:51.700 He's traveled around the universe for a while. 00:20:52.540 --> 00:20:59.020 he lands up in totters lane where the chameleon circuit gets stuck like a police box and then 00:20:59.720 --> 00:21:06.460 goes on his adventures becoming the hero that we know now where that problem fails is that if dr 00:21:06.760 --> 00:21:14.180 joe is a pre-hartnell doctor which why is her tardis a police box yeah no she has to be she 00:21:14.420 --> 00:21:22.500 can't be a pre a pre-hartnell but she has to be based on the way this is laid out that that has 00:21:22.520 --> 00:21:27.740 i'm still not sure about that because because obviously i think that the joe martin thing 00:21:28.080 --> 00:21:33.920 hasn't been resolved in this episode and didn't didn't make any sense would have been just as 00:21:34.080 --> 00:21:41.580 good as if they had uh you know paul mcgann substituting there in the in the matrix um 00:21:43.100 --> 00:21:49.480 yeah it it if they're specifically stating that they are regressing her to a child she 00:21:49.780 --> 00:21:53.720 was regressed to a child. She grew up with a master. The master confirms that. She confirms 00:21:53.920 --> 00:22:01.760 that. Yes. That part of her life, and the master must know that because his life is, you know, 00:22:02.080 --> 00:22:06.800 commensurate as opposed to being an infinite time. The Joe doctor has to be one of the prior 00:22:07.400 --> 00:22:11.540 regression doctors. Has to be. It's just that they didn't think about that when they put the 00:22:11.660 --> 00:22:16.420 TARDIS together because they didn't have a coherent plan. They just threw that out there and said, 00:22:16.860 --> 00:22:19.420 Okay, first off, let's have a doctor we don't know anything about. 00:22:19.960 --> 00:22:21.100 That'll add some mystery to it. 00:22:21.180 --> 00:22:21.700 And then we'll explain. 00:22:21.860 --> 00:22:22.860 Don't worry, I'll figure it out later. 00:22:24.700 --> 00:22:27.920 They should have done anything but make that TARDIS look like a police box. 00:22:28.580 --> 00:22:31.420 If anybody else had shown up with a TARDIS and she said, I'm the doctor. 00:22:31.580 --> 00:22:32.320 No, you're not the doctor. 00:22:32.440 --> 00:22:33.500 Whoa, you are the doctor. 00:22:33.960 --> 00:22:35.380 Then that would have been a proper mystery. 00:22:35.520 --> 00:22:39.660 But this says that nobody was planning this out. 00:22:39.820 --> 00:22:46.960 They were just pulling it out of their Siberian death particle cavity and going. 00:22:47.740 --> 00:22:50.520 Except we don't know where the Joe Martin Doctor fits. 00:22:51.200 --> 00:22:51.520 Neither did they. 00:22:51.520 --> 00:22:56.120 And it seems likely that the Joe Martin Doctor is going to appear in the next episode 00:22:57.120 --> 00:23:01.060 because the next episode is obviously a sequel to Fugitive of the Jadoon. 00:23:01.560 --> 00:23:03.220 Do you think? 00:23:03.740 --> 00:23:07.960 I mean, I may be wrong, but I'm certain the Joe Martin Doctor is going to come back 00:23:07.980 --> 00:23:12.280 and there is going to be some sort of an explanation of that part of it. 00:23:13.440 --> 00:23:17.740 Also, if Gallifrey is dead and gone and dead and gone again and again and again, 00:23:18.040 --> 00:23:20.020 and this was to get rid of the Time Lords, 00:23:20.480 --> 00:23:23.120 but we know that the Doctor can bump into the Joe Martin Doctor 00:23:23.400 --> 00:23:26.080 and the Joe Martin Doctor is running around with Gallifreyans, 00:23:26.420 --> 00:23:28.560 then the Gallifreyans will never, ever be truly gone. 00:23:29.140 --> 00:23:31.320 It doesn't matter whether you organically wipe them out or not. 00:23:32.180 --> 00:23:33.600 That which was quite weird in itself. 00:23:33.960 --> 00:23:38.980 And it seemed to me at the time in need of an explanation. 00:23:39.280 --> 00:23:52.280 I don't know whether we are going to get that explanation or not, because one of the things that always seems to get ignored is the way in which time travel could resolve some things. 00:23:52.390 --> 00:23:58.500 And then it's just ignored if it would be inconvenient because you have to resolve them. 00:23:58.750 --> 00:24:01.000 I mean, this is the thing I don't really understand. 00:24:01.420 --> 00:24:10.860 Is Chibnall, does he feel he needs to fix all of this backstory to Doctor Who? 00:24:11.680 --> 00:24:13.980 Because somehow it's bugging. 00:24:14.290 --> 00:24:18.840 It seems to me that if you watch this without knowing all of the kind of, 00:24:19.400 --> 00:24:22.700 say you started watching this at the beginning of the Jodie Whittaker Doctor, 00:24:23.460 --> 00:24:26.440 then all of this means nothing to you. 00:24:26.530 --> 00:24:28.240 Does anyone watching it care? 00:24:28.800 --> 00:24:29.000 Yeah. 00:24:29.670 --> 00:24:30.280 And the answer is no. 00:24:30.340 --> 00:24:33.380 I mean, obviously Chibnall is a proper nerdy fan. 00:24:33.520 --> 00:24:34.780 He's been a fan for years and years. 00:24:35.540 --> 00:24:40.060 Maybe he deeply cares about some of these kind of historical inconsistencies. 00:24:40.260 --> 00:24:43.060 But for the structural reasons we've talked about in the episode, 00:24:43.200 --> 00:24:47.460 what he hasn't actually managed to do is turn them into something 00:24:47.680 --> 00:24:52.700 that I can imagine the casual audience really engaging with, 00:24:52.920 --> 00:24:57.380 because there's no obvious reason why it should matter to the Doctor 00:24:58.020 --> 00:25:03.360 what what happened to her before she could remember being William Hartnell essentially 00:25:05.080 --> 00:25:11.100 someone very astutely pointed out that the doctor is one of the most in the moment characters on TV 00:25:11.400 --> 00:25:15.340 so this whole idea of caring about your history is a bit of a nonsense it certainly doesn't seem 00:25:15.460 --> 00:25:21.640 clear why the master cares about it so much so we're getting told a lot of stuff and and yet 00:25:21.660 --> 00:25:27.820 not even getting any clues as to why it affects the characters that we're trying to care about 00:25:28.380 --> 00:25:32.880 as much as we're told it does. And yet we're also told that it doesn't. I mean, 00:25:32.880 --> 00:25:37.600 the master is back practically begging the doctor to be broken when he tells her this news. 00:25:38.120 --> 00:25:42.760 I mean, he's, he's, he's like, ah, I've done it. I've broken you. No, I've broken you. No, 00:25:43.340 --> 00:25:51.620 but, but I've broken you. No. And then the doctor is feeling a little, maybe a little broken. And 00:25:52.220 --> 00:25:55.260 So what? Oh, yeah. Good point. All right. Fine. Whatever. 00:25:55.380 --> 00:25:58.440 Yeah, but that's because we don't care about it in the first place. 00:25:59.000 --> 00:26:04.780 There's a, I mean, there are a number of good comments made by Andrew Ellard about this one. 00:26:04.840 --> 00:26:11.680 But the one in particular that I thought relevant to this was because the actual, 00:26:12.360 --> 00:26:17.180 the history of regeneration bit is one of the elements of this that I found quite, you know, 00:26:17.740 --> 00:26:21.060 there was something neat about it. I quite liked the ideas in it. 00:26:21.160 --> 00:26:43.040 But it's still structurally problematic in terms of the episode, because what he was suggesting was if you had had some other third party who, you know, the Time Lords who are often a bit of a naughty bunch of people had been experimenting on their DNA or something. 00:26:43.160 --> 00:26:49.220 and the doctor met them and and they feared her because she's a time lord and the time you know 00:26:49.340 --> 00:26:54.500 the time lords had been experimenting on their dna or whatever and then they had you know had 00:26:54.500 --> 00:26:58.660 this reveal about the fact that well the time lords have been experimenting on her dna and 00:26:59.560 --> 00:27:03.840 that there's something dramatic to a story like that whereas just having a couple of time lords 00:27:04.400 --> 00:27:09.460 talking to each other about the distant history of regeneration is as he puts it basically just 00:27:09.480 --> 00:27:15.820 gossip and it's hard to care about it because it could all be fake ancient calendar well that's 00:27:16.000 --> 00:27:20.360 you see that's the other thing that's the other thing that i was watching this episode and i was 00:27:20.580 --> 00:27:28.300 absolutely 100 certain as the master was saying don't you get it yet your doctor you're the 00:27:28.440 --> 00:27:34.660 timeless child that the master was the timeless child because everything the doctor knows about 00:27:34.640 --> 00:27:41.440 the timeless child she is being shown by stuff that the master has discovered including all of 00:27:41.560 --> 00:27:47.640 the division stuff because all of that you know brendan and the guarder is beamed into her mind 00:27:48.180 --> 00:27:52.820 by the master so it's all coming from the master so i thought we were going to get a twist at the 00:27:52.940 --> 00:27:59.120 end where it's actually oh no the timeless child isn't the doctor it's the master which to me would 00:27:59.080 --> 00:28:04.360 kind of make some sort of sense because the history of abuse would have given some kind of 00:28:05.320 --> 00:28:12.040 meaning to why the master is quite so unhinged it would also uh why he's why he destroyed 00:28:12.300 --> 00:28:16.860 gallifrey yeah exactly yeah exactly you lied to me about the doctor i'm gonna kill you 00:28:17.420 --> 00:28:20.160 there would have been there would have been a kind of yeah there would have been a dramatic 00:28:20.640 --> 00:28:26.400 um resolution at least to the way that every yeah everything you know is not the case 00:28:26.380 --> 00:28:26.580 It's not. 00:28:27.200 --> 00:28:29.640 Well, I'm still not certain it's the case, but... 00:28:29.820 --> 00:28:32.160 Well, as the Master said, everything you know is a lie. 00:28:32.320 --> 00:28:41.620 Well, it's not actually, because the history of the Time Lords is still relatively the same, except for we don't even know how they first got the power to regenerate. 00:28:41.790 --> 00:28:52.120 So the fact that you omitted a detail that a person had it and you transferred it to the others doesn't really change the history of the Time Lords. 00:28:52.400 --> 00:28:58.540 And a secret organization known as The Division, which is run by someone who wears the Valyards clothes. 00:28:59.520 --> 00:29:00.320 Did you notice that? 00:29:00.800 --> 00:29:01.840 I didn't notice that. 00:29:02.300 --> 00:29:07.520 In that scene where she's talking to the boy saying, you understand all this? 00:29:08.580 --> 00:29:09.820 It's wearing the Valyards outfit. 00:29:10.440 --> 00:29:13.540 Okay, that could be a pointer to something coming down the line. 00:29:14.180 --> 00:29:14.940 But I agree with you. 00:29:16.010 --> 00:29:20.380 The whole general way this thing was sold, that it was a big deal, is not a big deal. 00:29:21.180 --> 00:29:25.160 it all actually seems somewhat inconsequential. 00:29:25.660 --> 00:29:28.060 It's just trying to shoehorn in an extra, 00:29:28.680 --> 00:29:29.960 that empty cloud of the matrix 00:29:30.280 --> 00:29:31.540 so they can write in more history 00:29:32.320 --> 00:29:34.540 or give the doctors something to worry about. 00:29:34.660 --> 00:29:36.460 It's like, I used to think I was from Gallifrey, 00:29:36.560 --> 00:29:37.460 but now I don't know. 00:29:37.700 --> 00:29:41.520 So I guess I am not going to spend the rest of my life 00:29:41.700 --> 00:29:43.960 doing what I've been doing for the last 2000 years. 00:29:44.180 --> 00:29:46.500 I've got to go wonder about this now. 00:29:47.160 --> 00:29:50.360 Well, yeah, except I hope she doesn't. 00:29:50.540 --> 00:29:59.720 I'm quite happy with the idea that suddenly the Doctor discovers that she's an orphan and not actually from Gallifrey in the first place. 00:30:00.680 --> 00:30:01.920 And why timeless children? 00:30:02.600 --> 00:30:08.040 You set that up as a, this is just, well, I'm still wondering about it. 00:30:08.040 --> 00:30:15.960 I think the intention might be that everyone's going on about how Chibnall has now canonised all these kind of additional Doctors. 00:30:16.420 --> 00:30:22.460 And it's the idea that there are now all these additional incarnations. 00:30:23.140 --> 00:30:26.660 I don't like that because I think the Doctor is the Doctor. 00:30:27.300 --> 00:30:31.460 In a way, the only thing I've got to celebrate here is that we can stop flipping wrong, 00:30:31.840 --> 00:30:34.660 saying it's the 13th Doctor or whatever, which is wrong. 00:30:34.660 --> 00:30:35.140 You still can't. 00:30:36.040 --> 00:30:38.700 But it's not wrong because that's what people will do. 00:30:38.720 --> 00:30:38.860 She is the first Doctor. 00:30:39.400 --> 00:30:40.400 She's the only Doctor. 00:30:41.180 --> 00:30:41.600 But yeah. 00:30:42.640 --> 00:30:44.000 Well, yes, I know people will still do that. 00:30:44.000 --> 00:30:45.700 Except that you can't differentiate them. 00:30:46.960 --> 00:30:52.320 in their own timeline so but that's but that but you don't need to differentiate them in their own 00:30:52.340 --> 00:30:58.340 time that that is the whole point it is it is the same character which is caller 13 prime so 00:30:58.940 --> 00:31:06.320 you know matt smith is 11 prime and and joe martin will be and i'm thinking joe martin is probably 00:31:07.819 --> 00:31:15.680 13 uh subprime one i think she's probably the last one before the transfer to hartnell that's 00:31:15.700 --> 00:31:15.940 Yes. 00:31:17.100 --> 00:31:22.140 Well, because she's being chased by Gallifrey, she wants to avoid it. 00:31:22.320 --> 00:31:26.220 So Gallifrey captures her, takes her back, wipes her memory, puts her into the heart and will run. 00:31:26.700 --> 00:31:31.420 That seems like the logical progression for that character. 00:31:31.760 --> 00:31:32.280 But anyway. 00:31:32.700 --> 00:31:33.280 Could be. 00:31:33.560 --> 00:31:34.120 I mean, honestly. 00:31:34.350 --> 00:31:35.180 And I will agree with you. 00:31:35.330 --> 00:31:37.460 The master makes much more sense. 00:31:38.140 --> 00:31:39.580 But you know what also makes more sense? 00:31:40.120 --> 00:31:42.040 If it's both the master and the doctor. 00:31:42.620 --> 00:31:44.100 What, you mean that they're the same character? 00:31:44.700 --> 00:31:44.840 No. 00:31:45.360 --> 00:31:49.620 that they're both timeless children they were both the time there was anyone child 00:31:50.500 --> 00:31:56.540 according to the master oh okay yeah all right i'm with that according to an unreliable crazy 00:31:56.840 --> 00:32:03.340 narrator at one point i did i did wonder if he was going to go for the master is a previously 00:32:03.660 --> 00:32:09.420 now forgotten set of regenerations of the doctor um here's another one that's would have been 00:32:09.640 --> 00:32:13.660 interesting another one's gonna just irritate the hell out of people it irritates me you know 00:32:13.580 --> 00:32:16.900 the guy at the end who i didn't even bother to memorize his name that blew himself up 00:32:17.440 --> 00:32:22.440 maybe he was the doctor too in fact maybe everyone we ever meet is actually the doctor 00:32:23.460 --> 00:32:29.200 well maybe the doctor is everyone we filled up the universe with chameleon arch doctors 00:32:29.470 --> 00:32:37.060 they're all over the place it's it's like it actually kind of felt like that when he ran in 00:32:37.380 --> 00:32:46.280 run doctor as if he knew uh it just yeah it's like oh man you've just 00:32:48.140 --> 00:32:56.380 no no captain jack yeah i i yeah no apparent reason for captain jack to be involved in that 00:32:56.400 --> 00:33:01.760 warning i'm sure we're getting more more captain jack at some point i think i think captain jack 00:33:01.880 --> 00:33:06.720 should have been involved in the kind of resistance story i mean here here's another 00:33:06.850 --> 00:33:14.740 problem with this two-parter it's not a two-parter it is it's actually two two separate stories 00:33:15.040 --> 00:33:20.900 basically you've got the this this whole thing about the lone cyber men so the lone cyber man 00:33:20.990 --> 00:33:25.280 i should say who wasn't ever really that alone because he seemed to have some other cyber 00:33:25.300 --> 00:33:32.780 henchmen but whatever and you've got you've got that nice that nice kind of i'm assuming it's sort 00:33:32.780 --> 00:33:43.560 of 26th 27th century post cyber war you know human race is on its absolute uppers and there are the 00:33:43.660 --> 00:33:47.340 there are these kind of resistance groups and they've done this clever thing of sending the 00:33:47.640 --> 00:33:51.780 siberian back through time and jack is somehow involved with that and all that's quite intriguing 00:33:51.800 --> 00:33:58.080 and everything and like i say i was quite enjoying that story then you've got this separate thing 00:33:58.340 --> 00:34:06.680 about the the doctor's early history and the connected with the destruction of gallifrex 00:34:06.740 --> 00:34:12.899 it's something's a bad idea but all right whatever all that being explained and the problem is the 00:34:13.040 --> 00:34:19.440 cybermen story crashes into that story but the cybermen don't have anything to do as you say 00:34:19.740 --> 00:34:26.560 you know the the lone cybermen gets pointlessly defeated by the master in an instant and 00:34:27.179 --> 00:34:32.720 the the role of the cybermen which demonstrates the cybermen are not a threat yeah the role of 00:34:32.720 --> 00:34:38.080 the cybermen is instantly reduced to just basically the master's henchmen again which 00:34:38.200 --> 00:34:44.599 you know has happened we seem to have had quite a lot of master and cybermen stories over the past 00:34:44.620 --> 00:34:50.340 few years i just want to throw in here so too are the cyber time lords because if that tissue 00:34:50.639 --> 00:34:54.860 compression eliminator would work on them i don't think regeneration will fix that problem 00:34:55.440 --> 00:34:59.340 so i don't understand i don't understand why the tissue compression eliminator worked 00:34:59.900 --> 00:35:06.520 on the non-organic parts that aren't tissue but it always worked on clothes too so well they could 00:35:06.520 --> 00:35:12.300 be organic they could have been organic but what we should have seen is people disappearing inside 00:35:12.320 --> 00:35:17.120 their acrylic jumpers or whatever because it wouldn't work on anything made of artificial 00:35:17.380 --> 00:35:23.660 fiber our cybermen i mean we have the plot where he talks about turning the cybermen into robots 00:35:24.080 --> 00:35:30.520 which as you rightly point out uh doesn't make any sense but really is the fact that the the 00:35:30.750 --> 00:35:37.000 human bits inside humanoid bits inside the armor able to rebuild itself is that really how you 00:35:37.120 --> 00:35:41.140 destroy a cyberman it's like oh you know it doesn't matter what we do to their armor or their 00:35:41.040 --> 00:35:48.340 head or anything like that as long as that those bits inside can regenerate they'll they'll 00:35:48.640 --> 00:35:54.120 regenerate into cybermen and so they'll be invulnerable except if they regenerate and 00:35:54.200 --> 00:35:58.940 there's only bits of gallifreyan's left wouldn't they regenerate into a whole gallifreyan 00:36:01.640 --> 00:36:08.500 just set all that aside and i still think you've got i still think you've got a fundamental problem 00:36:08.520 --> 00:36:18.100 with these cyber time lords, which is that essentially the reason robotic cybermen aren't 00:36:18.540 --> 00:36:25.400 interesting is because the thing that makes cybermen special and scary and all the rest of it 00:36:25.500 --> 00:36:32.560 is that they are augmented humans who have added all of these cyber bits to themselves, 00:36:33.940 --> 00:36:40.600 but they are still they are still organic in you know in in brain they're just they've they've 00:36:40.680 --> 00:36:47.060 taken out the they've they've worked they've worked on their brains to take out all of the 00:36:47.480 --> 00:36:53.880 emotional parts and everything and they have made themselves into machine-like things a machine is 00:36:53.960 --> 00:36:59.240 already a machine-like thing there's nothing interesting about that one of the reasons why 00:36:59.260 --> 00:37:07.120 an organic life form might do this to themselves i would have thought is yeah partly there is this 00:37:07.120 --> 00:37:13.960 thing about conquest and all of that but really that's that's the daleks bag in doctor who the 00:37:14.640 --> 00:37:22.160 the kind of the more interesting thing about it if you think about why why these people did this 00:37:22.220 --> 00:37:30.100 in the first place is because it allows them, not their race, but them as individuals to survive 00:37:30.500 --> 00:37:37.540 where they weren't able to before. And in a way, what it's giving them is immortality, 00:37:38.300 --> 00:37:45.580 because they are able to replace the parts that wither and die of an organic being with 00:37:46.480 --> 00:37:51.820 artificial replacements. And if those artificial replacements get damaged or whatever, 00:37:51.880 --> 00:37:58.100 they can replace those and presumably there are organic elements that are that are still in there 00:37:58.220 --> 00:38:04.640 they're essentially so protected and armored or whatever they are invulnerable so what the cyber 00:38:04.760 --> 00:38:13.120 men represent in effect is some form of immortality already and therefore giving them the immortality 00:38:13.200 --> 00:38:19.160 that regeneration is supposed to confer on them is completely meaningless i mean regeneration is 00:38:19.180 --> 00:38:25.400 another form of immortality it's interesting because it changes all sorts of things you know 00:38:25.560 --> 00:38:32.320 your whole um physiology is is changed and your personality is changed but that doesn't apply 00:38:32.680 --> 00:38:40.260 if you're regenerating inside a cyber suit yeah it doesn't make any sense at all so it's i mean 00:38:40.540 --> 00:38:45.660 not only does it not make sense but it doesn't have any it doesn't have any real additional 00:38:45.680 --> 00:38:52.380 threat it's like suddenly these these cyber armies are supposed to be this threat that's worse than 00:38:52.400 --> 00:38:59.540 the existing cyber armies but they're not they've just got the stupid collars i guess they do have 00:38:59.600 --> 00:39:07.540 the stupid collars uh well the other thing that that i mean what i what we are shown is that you 00:39:07.620 --> 00:39:13.620 take a cyberman you shoot him and he's dead you take a cyber uh time lord you shoot him he's dead 00:39:13.640 --> 00:39:20.440 and then he gets back up again so weebles wobble but they don't fall down he's that's supposedly 00:39:20.590 --> 00:39:26.660 the advantage being conveyed by the time lords but if these are time lords if these are time 00:39:26.710 --> 00:39:33.200 lord bodies let's start with they all only have 12 regenerations and what happens if you blow 00:39:33.290 --> 00:39:39.760 them up with a bomb so they're not that much more resilient they're not and and it's not that much 00:39:39.780 --> 00:39:45.660 bigger and advantage if you're if you if your cyberman gets if your cyberman is down and 00:39:46.060 --> 00:39:55.020 damaged or whatever then i guess you take that cyberman back to the cyber factory and you know 00:39:55.140 --> 00:40:00.620 either either the the organ there's enough organic elements surviving in there for you to be able to 00:40:01.140 --> 00:40:06.320 do a repair job or i guess you can use it for spare parts and you've got a new cyberman so 00:40:06.280 --> 00:40:11.760 from the point of view of having an army the main advantage of your regeneration is it's 00:40:12.380 --> 00:40:18.220 quick repairing and we've already had quick repairing in these kind of nano cyber nano 00:40:19.020 --> 00:40:27.580 nonsense or whatever so even that's not really new yep no it did it i can't i can't see i can't 00:40:27.580 --> 00:40:33.080 see why the cybermen are in this story i honestly can't i like i liked the cyberman story we're 00:40:33.100 --> 00:40:39.040 having it was fine but if they'd wrapped it up in ascension of the cybermen then they could have cut 00:40:39.050 --> 00:40:46.660 a good 25 minutes out of the timeless children and just had it about the the gallifrey shaboggan 00:40:47.810 --> 00:40:52.700 um yeah time lord origin story of course um regeneration lord as they would have been called 00:40:52.780 --> 00:40:59.120 back then presumably yeah uh yeah and and you know it's funny that that i know i've made this 00:40:59.120 --> 00:41:05.320 comment before dalek plans are stupid right they don't make any sense they're just insanely 00:41:05.720 --> 00:41:15.920 over complicated to ridiculous ends so is every plan in this story the time lord's plan of creating 00:41:16.700 --> 00:41:22.660 the the doctor by wiping a person and sending them out there to do the secret good works 00:41:23.140 --> 00:41:31.940 is a stupid plan the the lone cyberman's plan is a stupid plan i'm going to turn them all into 00:41:32.240 --> 00:41:37.460 robots and then i'm going to destroy all organic life in the universe is a stupid plan the master's 00:41:37.700 --> 00:41:50.260 plan is a stupid plan uh chibnall's is a stupid plan it just there this is a litany of dumb plans 00:41:50.540 --> 00:41:54.780 hang on a minute hang on let me let me just so let's go back to the master's plan i don't know 00:41:54.780 --> 00:41:59.220 what the master's plan is about he's gonna show the doctor the truth and she's gonna crumble 00:42:00.000 --> 00:42:04.280 that's his plan i don't know what the master wants that's one of his two plans i mean we 00:42:05.480 --> 00:42:11.840 we i was almost i'll be honest when when when the master turned up in at the end of the 00:42:12.260 --> 00:42:19.620 ascension of the cybermen before any of this episode happened i was not filled with eager 00:42:19.640 --> 00:42:26.660 anticipation shall we say there were moments in spyfall where i thought this could be this could 00:42:26.780 --> 00:42:34.040 be quite an interesting incarnation of the master it didn't feel like this is an interesting 00:42:34.340 --> 00:42:40.600 incarnation back in spyfall there was some kind of plan of some sort in this i had no idea what 00:42:40.870 --> 00:42:48.120 the master's plan was he was just back to being completely deranged deranged yeah which is not 00:42:48.120 --> 00:42:54.120 you know there's there's potential for that to be interesting it doesn't seem to me that is the most 00:42:54.380 --> 00:42:59.560 interesting aspect of the master and if you don't understand why it is the case the master keeps 00:42:59.670 --> 00:43:06.320 saying that you made me you made me what i am but i don't even understand i i felt like that could 00:43:06.320 --> 00:43:12.040 be spelled out because obviously over the history of doctor who we've had various explanations of 00:43:12.300 --> 00:43:19.360 how the master came to be how he is and that you know the doctor's early friendship with the master 00:43:19.500 --> 00:43:27.000 and Chibnall is obviously paying some attention to the what they call the extended universe i.e. 00:43:27.000 --> 00:43:37.100 the other Doctor Who stories in books and audios and things like this but given that it's helpful 00:43:37.120 --> 00:43:41.980 when you're telling a story like this to kind of reiterate exactly what you mean it wouldn't have 00:43:42.120 --> 00:43:49.860 hurt in my opinion to explain exactly what the master feels the doctor has turned himself into 00:43:50.120 --> 00:43:55.460 and how i just didn't understand that so if you're playing the range master you need to know 00:43:56.160 --> 00:44:02.760 yeah i thought some of it had to do with the fact that he wouldn't be the time lords wouldn't be 00:44:02.680 --> 00:44:08.720 what they are without the doctor's regeneration so it's just because he's a time lord but then 00:44:08.880 --> 00:44:14.680 that is not like most time lords are as barking as the master although to be honest most of the 00:44:14.680 --> 00:44:20.260 ones in the tv show are but anyway that's because we don't get to see the time lords that sort of 00:44:20.420 --> 00:44:26.800 work in offices and clean people's phones and things but hey ho yeah the master's plan i don't 00:44:26.820 --> 00:44:33.520 get the the lone cyber man's plan okay the non-organic parts that was stupid i really 00:44:33.800 --> 00:44:43.360 really really liked the whole lone cyber man reject um you know trying to try trying to 00:44:44.080 --> 00:44:53.480 it's like uh making making the cyber race great again is he's that kind of that in that kind of 00:44:53.400 --> 00:45:05.000 inadequate who is who has kind of been hijacked by some right-wing ideology that he is pursuing 00:45:05.860 --> 00:45:12.780 relentlessly and the fact that he was so emotional despite the fact that the kind of cyber ideal is 00:45:12.920 --> 00:45:20.420 this emotionless efficiency worked really well for me and I was looking with anticipation to 00:45:20.440 --> 00:45:26.020 see where that was actually going to lead and how those aspects of his personality would either 00:45:26.640 --> 00:45:32.740 help him in his quest to resurrect the Cybermen or would ultimately lead to the kind of renewed 00:45:34.599 --> 00:45:40.660 Cyber Army's downfall. But of course, we didn't get any of that because at some point in the story, 00:45:41.320 --> 00:45:45.540 Chibnall just decided, oh, right, we're done with him and tissue compassion eliminated him. 00:45:46.100 --> 00:46:00.060 Yeah, it was kind of interesting. The notion that a fanatic would be the one that revived the Cyberman. It's not the first time we have seen a fanatic who wants to lead an army of whatever. 00:46:01.280 --> 00:46:04.220 No, but it's an interesting take. 00:46:04.220 --> 00:46:07.760 It's more interesting than that he's this emotional Cyberman. 00:46:08.600 --> 00:46:17.720 And of course, he's going to wipe out all of their robotic parts or he's going to wipe out all their organic parts by first making them all into robots. 00:46:18.130 --> 00:46:19.740 So they're not even Cybermen anymore. 00:46:20.230 --> 00:46:31.460 And then after he's done all that and after he's wiped out all life in the universe, then he's going to, you know, carry on to his great reward or whatever it is. 00:46:31.780 --> 00:46:36.140 And did you notice at one point the Siberian will destroy all organic life in the universe? 00:46:36.480 --> 00:46:37.460 but later in the episode, 00:46:38.160 --> 00:46:40.840 the Siberian will destroy all organic life on this planet. 00:46:41.520 --> 00:46:42.720 Yeah, you mean the death particle? 00:46:43.420 --> 00:46:44.480 Yeah, the death particle, I'm sorry. 00:46:44.600 --> 00:46:46.000 Yeah, the Siberian's death particle. 00:46:46.800 --> 00:46:50.000 It's seriously downgraded from earlier in the show 00:46:50.480 --> 00:46:52.640 to when they needed it to just wipe out Gallifrey. 00:46:53.160 --> 00:46:53.340 Yeah. 00:46:53.980 --> 00:46:57.680 But the death particle thing is another rubbish. 00:46:58.680 --> 00:47:02.060 I'm not defending every aspect of the Lone Cyberman's plan. 00:47:02.300 --> 00:47:06.960 I just liked something about the Lone Cyberman story. 00:47:07.740 --> 00:47:10.120 And therefore, it was another disappointment that it sort of petered out. 00:47:10.840 --> 00:47:11.100 Okay. 00:47:11.430 --> 00:47:15.520 I do want to say I've forgotten my list of litany of plans that are stupid in this episode. 00:47:16.220 --> 00:47:22.600 The human's plan to take the Siberium and send it back in time to get rid of it is a stupid plan. 00:47:22.600 --> 00:47:23.840 Yeah, you mentioned that that was stupid. 00:47:24.420 --> 00:47:26.080 And I was expecting that to be explained. 00:47:26.630 --> 00:47:30.100 And they didn't really explain it other than saying they didn't send it far enough back. 00:47:30.420 --> 00:47:31.400 We sent it far enough back. 00:47:31.520 --> 00:47:32.660 And we sent it to Earth. 00:47:32.920 --> 00:47:39.840 I mean, what a great place to send something that does cyber conversion stuff is the place where humans are handy. 00:47:39.950 --> 00:47:56.300 I wanted to understand what the Siberian's plan was and how it differed from what the lone Cyberman's plan was, because it seemed to me that in the haunting of Villa Diodati, the Siberian wasn't actually on the same page as the Cyberman. 00:47:56.780 --> 00:47:59.880 There was a kind of resistance there. 00:48:00.300 --> 00:48:01.140 As if it had its own mind. 00:48:01.140 --> 00:48:02.460 That was why Siberian chose the Doctor. 00:48:02.650 --> 00:48:02.760 Exactly. 00:48:03.190 --> 00:48:15.600 So there was a kind of, and I don't know what it was, whether that was a schism, because the Siberian believed in a kind of pure cyber race or whatever, or something. 00:48:16.490 --> 00:48:20.100 And the lone cyber race of converts, yeah. 00:48:20.360 --> 00:48:42.340 Or vice versa of whether the lone Cyberman who would actually be rejected by a pure cyber race still believed in the pure cyber race, whereas the Siberian was more pragmatic because it was more interested in universal domination and less in the specifics of how you are when you achieve that. 00:48:42.540 --> 00:48:49.360 So, again, there was something there that piqued my interest, but which never really landed. 00:48:49.400 --> 00:48:55.240 yeah but yeah i would have sent it forward into the far future in the middle of a sun 00:48:55.950 --> 00:49:02.800 well unless unless you were sending it back because you wanted it to pursue its version of 00:49:03.440 --> 00:49:08.780 future history because its version of future history was easier to defeat or what i mean i 00:49:08.900 --> 00:49:15.020 don't know that there are endless possibilities in i i would i would have liked to see a little 00:49:15.050 --> 00:49:19.360 bit more of this resistance group and what they were doing and what they were thinking and how 00:49:19.380 --> 00:49:24.440 they had been fighting the Cybermen and ideally how Captain Jack was helping them because I would 00:49:24.440 --> 00:49:31.180 have liked him back and it seems like a Jack kind of thing to be doing to be you know he is he is 00:49:31.340 --> 00:49:40.960 this immortal fearless um and somewhat cocky super duper chap who is going to help out the the 00:49:41.100 --> 00:49:49.080 underdog yeah it's it's it it's it's right up it i can imagine him being with this small small 00:49:49.440 --> 00:49:58.620 group of ragtag resistance fighters in this kind of post-cyber war um humanity laid waste era 00:50:00.220 --> 00:50:08.040 but again opportunity missed and and and we won the cyber wars right well i think you would i 00:50:08.060 --> 00:50:13.500 think you would call it according to history we won those right because we wiped out uh 00:50:14.720 --> 00:50:18.680 yeah i mean how many humans are wiped out are those supposed to be the only seven humans left 00:50:18.760 --> 00:50:23.540 in existence or are those no no they clearly weren't they clearly weren't well i hope i hope 00:50:23.540 --> 00:50:28.800 not but then if you defeated that huge fleet of cybermen and you left behind a carrier with 00:50:29.860 --> 00:50:36.520 thousands of cybermen on it you have not defeated the cybermen no but if there is no way of those 00:50:36.540 --> 00:50:43.580 cybermen being wakened then you don't know that you haven't defeated the cybermen and and yeah 00:50:44.100 --> 00:50:51.360 history could record one version of events but if if you were wanting to change history and you knew 00:50:51.360 --> 00:50:56.660 that all you had to do was trigger that cybership to be awakened then there's your means for doing 00:50:56.840 --> 00:51:03.140 it again you know potentially interesting story and and i you know partly what happened in it i 00:51:03.060 --> 00:51:08.140 thought the essence of the cybermen because it was the the lone cybermen lone cyberman 00:51:09.140 --> 00:51:15.740 reawakening that ship but hey last last thing i'm going to just pick on before i but i actually say 00:51:15.860 --> 00:51:22.120 things that i thought were interesting okay um uh the last thing is it a plan is it a plan because 00:51:22.220 --> 00:51:26.220 i've still got one of your plans here oh really no it isn't a plan do you want to throw the plan 00:51:26.320 --> 00:51:31.840 in first well the other the other plan was the division oh yes well that's the gallifrey plan 00:51:31.860 --> 00:51:36.980 yeah yeah well i know i wasn't saying it was your personal plan i meant it was one of the plans you 00:51:37.100 --> 00:51:43.260 just enumerated um because you didn't like them so i would just like to say i really didn't like 00:51:43.420 --> 00:51:48.520 this either because i couldn't for the life of me see what the point of it was in fact it was 00:51:48.660 --> 00:51:52.620 doubly disappointing so one thing is you've got this story about the timeless children 00:51:53.860 --> 00:51:59.020 and it gives you the regeneration origin and it gives you the idea that the doctor is an orphan 00:51:59.040 --> 00:52:07.280 from a mysterious dimension both of which are ideas that you know i'm okay with i'm not wild 00:52:07.480 --> 00:52:11.320 about them but they're fine they're quite interesting and takes the show in an interesting 00:52:11.320 --> 00:52:19.900 new direction cramming in this whole extra stuff about the doctor working for a cia precursor 00:52:20.620 --> 00:52:27.340 isn't an obvious parallel to that it doesn't well i or possibly subdivision maybe it is a division 00:52:27.380 --> 00:52:36.820 of the CIA I don't know but regardless I can't see why that whole idea is necessary other than 00:52:37.290 --> 00:52:45.740 to explain a continuity error that occurred in the show 44 years ago which no one literally no one 00:52:46.020 --> 00:52:51.060 cares about I obviously some people care about it because we just mentioned Doctor Who fans 00:52:51.920 --> 00:52:57.800 if you pick something then someone will care about it but okay hold on so 44 years ago 00:52:59.140 --> 00:53:04.760 brain 1976 wasn't it yes okay yeah it sounds about right the other the other reason the 00:53:04.940 --> 00:53:11.920 division stuff annoyed what is the continuity error oh it's the the morbius doctors oh oh oh 00:53:12.190 --> 00:53:17.880 okay right right all right right okay who who we can now we have a license to assume they were 00:53:18.320 --> 00:53:25.800 working for the division although to be honest if you if you watch the sequence in which the doctor 00:53:26.540 --> 00:53:33.580 defeats the matrix there's nothing in there that's actually contrary to the idea that 00:53:34.240 --> 00:53:39.480 all of this is a lie because it's all stuff from her existing history you know when you see the 00:53:39.550 --> 00:53:43.120 footage from brain of morbius it is actually the footage from brain of morbius brain of morbius 00:53:43.210 --> 00:53:47.080 yeah which is an adventure that she remembers so it's just something from her actual existing 00:53:47.080 --> 00:53:52.500 memory and when you see the footage of the timeless children it is just the stuff that 00:53:52.580 --> 00:53:57.560 she's been experiencing in the matrix a minute ago so it is also stuff from her actual memory 00:53:57.580 --> 00:54:02.240 so none of it is none of it is proof that there is anything before Hartnell but anyway 00:54:03.500 --> 00:54:08.840 that that aside the division as a concept seemed to me completely unnecessary over complicated 00:54:09.380 --> 00:54:15.140 and entirely pointless and especially annoying because I got quite intrigued 00:54:15.860 --> 00:54:19.700 by the whole Brendan stuff in Ascension of the Cybermen. 00:54:20.130 --> 00:54:22.320 I thought it was quite, I thought it was quite, 00:54:22.630 --> 00:54:24.960 it was a bit, it was a bit like up, 00:54:25.120 --> 00:54:27.240 this kind of fast moving story of his life. 00:54:27.350 --> 00:54:29.080 I thought it was very effectively done. 00:54:29.910 --> 00:54:34.580 And I found the mystery of why he, you know, 00:54:34.700 --> 00:54:37.280 he had aged, but the others hadn't. 00:54:37.530 --> 00:54:38.940 I found that quite intriguing. 00:54:38.980 --> 00:54:40.320 And then they hadn't aged. 00:54:41.140 --> 00:54:41.860 Well, yeah, exactly. 00:54:42.160 --> 00:54:43.800 They, yeah, they hadn't aged. 00:54:43.940 --> 00:54:47.760 why he didn't die and he came back to life 00:54:47.960 --> 00:54:50.400 in exactly the same way that Captain Jack 00:54:50.880 --> 00:54:51.940 always comes back to life, 00:54:52.080 --> 00:54:53.740 which seemed to me couldn't be a coincidence. 00:54:54.160 --> 00:54:55.920 I found that quite intriguing. 00:54:56.500 --> 00:55:00.520 And so I liked the way all that was set up 00:55:01.020 --> 00:55:01.980 because I like setups, 00:55:02.820 --> 00:55:05.600 but I was hoping for some kind of resolution 00:55:05.840 --> 00:55:06.660 that went beyond, 00:55:07.360 --> 00:55:08.960 actually, this has nothing to do with Ireland. 00:55:09.780 --> 00:55:11.020 It's just that, 00:55:11.500 --> 00:55:13.180 and this is a bit that loses me, 00:55:13.620 --> 00:55:21.620 loses me somewhat that was it who was it who's who hid these memories in the matrix was it tech 00:55:22.380 --> 00:55:29.000 yes according to the mass so some some shibogan had decided that the way to hide it in the matrix 00:55:29.800 --> 00:55:36.580 was to make it about this somebody else instead of erasing it well yeah but this this 20th this 00:55:36.680 --> 00:55:43.160 20th century earth story because obviously all gallifrey all gallifreyans know about earth 00:55:43.570 --> 00:55:49.220 in much so the connection must be because anyone anyone who you mentioned gallifrey too who's not 00:55:49.380 --> 00:55:55.600 doctor who fan assumes you're talking about somewhere in ireland well gallifrey is ireland 00:55:55.600 --> 00:56:01.520 yeah i suppose maybe that's what the metaphor is supposed to be maybe because the doctor because 00:56:01.540 --> 00:56:08.660 Because the Doctor has had people, when he says Gallifrey, they go, in Ireland, and he goes, yeah, probably, or something like that. 00:56:08.950 --> 00:56:18.700 So maybe that's how the perception filter that was, yeah, I know it doesn't make any sense for somebody who have done this century, millions of years prior to. 00:56:21.420 --> 00:56:27.020 And if we go back to Trial of the Time Lord, somebody could probably tell us how long the Time Lords have been a civilization. 00:56:28.280 --> 00:56:33.700 Which, if this is true, then the Doctor has been the Doctor through that. 00:56:34.120 --> 00:56:38.900 And I can't remember how long it was, but it was a very long time. 00:56:39.540 --> 00:56:43.140 Oh, can I pick on another thing that annoys me about The Division? 00:56:43.840 --> 00:56:44.000 Yeah. 00:56:46.080 --> 00:56:51.300 If Joe Martin is indeed from that era, why is she called the Doctor? 00:56:52.480 --> 00:56:58.100 Because just because the doctor is the doctor, the doctor isn't the doctor's name, right? 00:56:58.530 --> 00:57:04.640 I mean, unless I guess we're completely overwriting the Moffat area, which Chibnall does seem somewhat keen to do. 00:57:04.640 --> 00:57:08.840 But it's like, why would the doctor be called the doctor? 00:57:08.930 --> 00:57:18.140 I thought the doctor was a nickname that came from when the doctor was in the academy, which was the period when the doctor was young William Hartnell with the master. 00:57:18.980 --> 00:57:21.320 Because Chibnall didn't think this out very far. 00:57:21.520 --> 00:57:22.040 That's why. 00:57:22.480 --> 00:57:22.960 Hmm. 00:57:23.520 --> 00:57:26.860 I mean, no, I think it's absolutely, 00:57:27.180 --> 00:57:28.140 it's got to be a continuity, 00:57:28.900 --> 00:57:30.860 a continuity, because it's not continuity. 00:57:30.950 --> 00:57:32.020 It's a retcon failure. 00:57:33.860 --> 00:57:35.980 But he's not just retconning it. 00:57:35.980 --> 00:57:39.740 I mean, so the kind of the point with a capital P 00:57:40.380 --> 00:57:43.100 of this whole having their division in there, 00:57:43.620 --> 00:57:44.720 as far as I could tell, 00:57:45.280 --> 00:57:48.460 was that it gave the Doctor a slightly unsavoury past 00:57:48.800 --> 00:57:50.960 that she could be uncomfortable with momentarily 00:57:50.980 --> 00:57:54.220 before she decides, oh, it's not who you were, 00:57:54.360 --> 00:57:55.600 it's who you are now in the moment. 00:57:55.880 --> 00:57:58.500 And okay, there's our lesson for today. 00:57:58.680 --> 00:58:00.100 This is what this story is all about. 00:58:00.880 --> 00:58:04.240 Except, hang on a moment, in order to do this, 00:58:04.920 --> 00:58:08.260 they seem to have had to use amnesia to, 00:58:08.780 --> 00:58:10.860 or it's not memory wiping, whatever, 00:58:11.620 --> 00:58:13.740 however, whatever is the appropriate time. 00:58:13.760 --> 00:58:15.000 I'm not a psychologist here, 00:58:15.640 --> 00:58:20.080 but I want to point out that I think this is more complicated 00:58:21.459 --> 00:58:23.440 than it's given credit for. 00:58:23.970 --> 00:58:25.620 Because if your memory gets wiped, 00:58:26.260 --> 00:58:28.000 it can be wiped in a number of ways, right? 00:58:28.360 --> 00:58:30.660 I mean, if you've forgotten something, 00:58:31.460 --> 00:58:32.040 that could be, 00:58:32.260 --> 00:58:34.560 I've forgotten what the capital of Belarus is, 00:58:35.100 --> 00:58:36.280 which actually I have. 00:58:37.279 --> 00:58:38.160 Is it Minsk? 00:58:38.880 --> 00:58:38.960 Anyway. 00:58:39.440 --> 00:58:40.820 I'm going to just go out on a limb in here 00:58:40.830 --> 00:58:41.780 and say I have no idea 00:58:41.790 --> 00:58:43.600 what the capital of Belarus is ever. 00:58:44.080 --> 00:58:45.140 So I haven't forgotten. 00:58:45.200 --> 00:58:46.540 Okay, so you haven't even forgotten it. 00:58:46.740 --> 00:58:47.680 But if you knew what it was, 00:58:47.790 --> 00:58:48.580 you could forget it. 00:58:48.820 --> 00:59:06.340 And that probably, you know, if you had some kind of memory wiping thing, it could do things like wiping out little bits of memory, a bit like a retcon pill slipped into your drink would do for the past 24, 48 hours or whatever it is, I forget. 00:59:07.940 --> 00:59:08.960 So you've got something like that. 00:59:09.040 --> 00:59:23.400 But then, I mean, there are other instances where people forget, like if you have severe brain damage as a result of an illness or an accident or whatever, you could forget how to use a knife and fork. 00:59:24.240 --> 00:59:25.480 You could forget how to speak English. 00:59:26.200 --> 00:59:31.940 The doctor forgets who he has been before he is William Hartnell. 00:59:32.480 --> 00:59:35.080 This is this seems to be what we are told. 00:59:35.840 --> 00:59:41.140 but it but it's not just forgetting those kind of identity but it's also forgetting a load of 00:59:41.720 --> 00:59:49.000 like the doctor has been a traveler in time and space piloting a tardis and all sorts of knowledge 00:59:49.220 --> 00:59:55.500 goes along with that presumably the doctor has been through the gallifreyan education system 00:59:56.120 --> 01:00:03.360 so he's going back to the academy and reload relearning a bunch of stuff that he knew before 01:00:03.380 --> 01:00:08.580 so presumably that has all been wiped but why i mean because it's a bad plan 01:00:11.960 --> 01:00:19.660 it's it's a it's a dalek level stupid plan that's why it's just like yeah it does seem like we need 01:00:19.660 --> 01:00:24.600 a bit more information about what exactly is being wiped here because you when it's something like 01:00:24.720 --> 01:00:30.280 this it's not as simple as just saying oh yeah the doctors had their memory wiped because memory 01:00:30.400 --> 01:00:37.300 isn't singular like that it's much it's much more of a complex thing and if and if it was a if it 01:00:37.300 --> 01:00:43.100 was a question of you know basically being completely wiped everything everything you ever 01:00:43.220 --> 01:00:49.280 knew everything you ever remembered but also all of your kind of lit you know right down to your 01:00:49.360 --> 01:00:54.200 motor memory and things because the whole point of this is the point that Chibnall is trying to 01:00:54.320 --> 01:01:00.260 make is about identity raises from a philosophical perspective are you even the same person 01:01:00.280 --> 01:01:03.340 If all of those memories have gone because you've regenerated as well. 01:01:03.420 --> 01:01:05.240 It's like you're physiologically different. 01:01:06.170 --> 01:01:09.840 And the way in which the doctor's identity has been preserved through 01:01:10.140 --> 01:01:12.480 regenerations is through memory. 01:01:13.360 --> 01:01:13.440 Yep. 01:01:14.000 --> 01:01:14.080 Yeah. 01:01:14.280 --> 01:01:17.960 No, not, not well thought through, by the way, 10 million years. 01:01:20.000 --> 01:01:20.440 Gallifrey. 01:01:20.660 --> 01:01:22.560 10 million years of absolute power. 01:01:22.760 --> 01:01:24.740 That's what it takes to be absolutely corrupt. 01:01:25.460 --> 01:01:30.680 At least if I can believe the internet from that line from Trial of a Time Lord. 01:01:31.740 --> 01:01:35.060 So the Timeless Child's really, really old. 01:01:35.760 --> 01:01:36.460 Really old. 01:01:38.380 --> 01:01:39.520 I don't know where to go with that. 01:01:39.520 --> 01:01:41.740 But honestly, I don't care. 01:01:42.560 --> 01:01:45.700 This is such a thing that I just don't care about. 01:01:46.380 --> 01:01:47.040 It doesn't matter. 01:01:47.780 --> 01:01:48.340 Why does it matter? 01:01:49.420 --> 01:01:54.460 Yeah, I mean, unless next season we're going to have 10 episodes where the Doctor meets a totally different incarnation. 01:01:55.300 --> 01:02:04.800 oh of course that's exactly what this is oh of course next year each episode the doctor will 01:02:04.940 --> 01:02:12.060 meet a past unknown incarnation of themselves so they can get the asian doctor and they can get 01:02:12.700 --> 01:02:17.980 the the doctor of color well we've already got the doctor of color you know they can go through 01:02:18.060 --> 01:02:25.220 all of those cycles so that we can say look anyone can be the doctor so he's going to hit his quota 01:02:25.520 --> 01:02:32.920 of all minorities and all or ethnic groups minorities is only correct in terms of where 01:02:32.920 --> 01:02:39.860 you live but yeah yeah that's what it is i i have no problem i have no problem with general 01:02:40.080 --> 01:02:46.480 increasing representation in this i actually really by this way it would be it would be quite 01:02:46.500 --> 01:02:52.260 interesting if the reason for this was to have meeting a different past incarnation of the doctor 01:02:52.300 --> 01:02:59.480 in every episode it would it's like it's almost like the sort of the doctor who unbound um series 01:02:59.720 --> 01:03:05.980 that big finish did where what what you saw was a was a different kind a different version of what 01:03:06.140 --> 01:03:11.500 the doctor might have been if different choices had been made in the way the television show was 01:03:11.460 --> 01:03:17.460 made and in a sense what Chibnall has done with this quite deliberately is to say let's embrace 01:03:17.880 --> 01:03:26.040 everything anything goes the Doctor is essentially infinite in who she can be and so if his reason for 01:03:26.580 --> 01:03:32.060 doing that was to open out and explore these different possibilities as stories within 01:03:32.220 --> 01:03:39.760 themselves well I found a number of those unbound stories actually really quite interesting stories 01:03:39.780 --> 01:03:42.240 despite their being a bit nerdy in their pretext. 01:03:43.280 --> 01:03:44.920 So there's potential for that, 01:03:44.990 --> 01:03:49.200 but I don't think that there is anything as daring as that being proposed. 01:03:49.800 --> 01:03:51.820 I think actually this whole thing is much more conservative. 01:03:52.940 --> 01:03:55.960 The two aspects, the one thing I wanted to say, 01:03:56.000 --> 01:03:58.940 the one other thing I wanted to pick on was the ending. 01:04:01.200 --> 01:04:02.240 You ended on a cliffhanger. 01:04:03.240 --> 01:04:05.180 Has to be the lamest cliffhanger ever, 01:04:07.080 --> 01:04:12.960 not only do they put her in something that reminds me of storm cage which we know can't hold river 01:04:13.200 --> 01:04:19.520 song i mean he did anyone watching this show think well that's anything more than a minor 01:04:19.860 --> 01:04:28.020 inconvenience trap that and then no but if you don't make it bad enough by doing that which just 01:04:28.150 --> 01:04:32.240 gives the appearance of this is not a prison that the doctor is going to have any trouble getting 01:04:32.280 --> 01:04:37.720 out of you put up the name revolution of the daleks coming in the next episode you go so 01:04:38.180 --> 01:04:43.060 it's got nothing to do with this prison anyway so well we don't know we don't know that surely 01:04:43.560 --> 01:04:48.240 surely the fact that it's it has to you know the jadun aren't working for the daleks you know the 01:04:48.260 --> 01:04:51.780 jadun aren't working for the daleks but you don't know why you don't know 01:05:02.260 --> 01:05:08.020 or i don't know i mean obviously i would prefer it if it didn't have no i think it's already been 01:05:08.280 --> 01:05:14.260 filmed i i i would be happy if it didn't have the daleks in it i don't really understand why 01:05:14.560 --> 01:05:20.620 no it's probably bbc marketing who have said no you must put daleks back in um because people 01:05:20.760 --> 01:05:25.080 will tune in to watch it if they know the daleks are in it and when you did revolution sorry 01:05:25.100 --> 01:05:32.740 resolution god this is even worse than um what were the 80s ones called um revelation 01:05:33.500 --> 01:05:37.880 revelation and remembrance yeah revelation and remembrance whereas resolution and revolution 01:05:38.120 --> 01:05:46.600 they're literally just one letter changed um but yeah i guess i guess we've gone back to having to 01:05:46.660 --> 01:05:55.060 have the daleks in the title to make sure people tune in so the only uh maybe not the only you 01:05:55.080 --> 01:06:00.340 you did mention riversong i did it did just remind me of something which is why is it the 01:06:00.340 --> 01:06:07.480 river song can regenerate um darn good question because she's a tardis baby that's why she's got 01:06:07.480 --> 01:06:13.580 a time head or whatever it is that rat smith talks about and therefore the the implication 01:06:13.770 --> 01:06:21.660 of that is that regeneration is a product of being in the vortex or something not having your 01:06:21.660 --> 01:06:27.880 gene spliced from a baby that you just found who's fallen from in another dimension yeah just saying 01:06:30.180 --> 01:06:36.180 yeah but that's moffat era and we're erasing that as best we possibly can okay i i guess the only 01:06:36.250 --> 01:06:41.100 thing that i'm going to say in benefit to this plan is i don't think it's a good plan i don't 01:06:41.220 --> 01:06:46.960 think that the timeless child is the timeless child the whole doctor more mystery yeah the 01:06:46.980 --> 01:06:54.920 chibnall master plan it's like it does not deserve the word master although it is it is 01:06:54.960 --> 01:07:03.560 master master in it it is a master plan in it but it is not a master plan um it is yeah it 01:07:04.200 --> 01:07:11.140 the only thing i say going for it is that unless you are correct and that the joe martin doctor 01:07:11.160 --> 01:07:17.680 is after Hartnell, it at least doesn't screw up the actual known canon of the show. 01:07:18.560 --> 01:07:22.400 It is worded in such a way that... 01:07:22.400 --> 01:07:24.280 But I think there are two reasons for that. 01:07:24.280 --> 01:07:26.820 Yes, everything you knew about Gallifrey and growing up, 01:07:27.580 --> 01:07:29.700 and apart from the fact that you're genetically identical to them, 01:07:30.840 --> 01:07:34.440 and all that stuff, at least that's all still there. 01:07:34.640 --> 01:07:35.960 That wasn't wiped out in a, 01:07:36.100 --> 01:07:39.700 oh, you've just forgotten that we planted false memories or something in there. 01:07:40.040 --> 01:07:46.220 that he's just trying to go this is just yet another cycle so you regenerate and then eventually 01:07:47.100 --> 01:07:53.140 you get put back to baby form and then you start again for some illogical reason but that's where 01:07:53.140 --> 01:07:59.080 it starts falling apart but at least they didn't screw up the hartnell to whitaker but you can't 01:07:59.760 --> 01:08:05.740 you can't screw up the show's canon for two reasons of course you can one one is the show 01:08:05.760 --> 01:08:11.920 is already full of contradictions so really adding more contradictions isn't going to change much 01:08:12.520 --> 01:08:19.040 and two is you can't you can't you know you can't change the show as it's gone before i mean you 01:08:19.140 --> 01:08:24.480 can't wipe that out unless you literally are the department in charge of wiping out the bbc's 01:08:24.560 --> 01:08:28.940 videotapes in which case yes you can wipe it out because they did that didn't they but yeah apart 01:08:28.940 --> 01:08:34.020 from that uh that's what it had that's what it had going for it was if he was going to take a 01:08:34.040 --> 01:08:39.640 had to do it at least he picked one that didn't what he would have to do wasn't the worst possible 01:08:39.880 --> 01:08:45.680 he'd have to literally track down every every recorded copy of the moffat era show and destroy 01:08:45.920 --> 01:08:50.220 it and and even then he would miss some of the soundtracks and we'd end up with animations of 01:08:50.220 --> 01:09:00.040 the moffat era day of the doctor animated version recreated yeah time of the not not time uh twice 01:09:00.060 --> 01:09:07.060 upon a time animated but see that see here's the here's the is the thing with um twice upon a time 01:09:07.200 --> 01:09:13.700 that's that's where that's where moffat was trying to do this kind of thing he was inserting into 01:09:14.680 --> 01:09:20.680 the 10th planet an additional bit of backstory that's supposed to change the way in which you 01:09:20.839 --> 01:09:27.000 view the 10th planet which i pretty much didn't really like and chibnall's just doing that on a 01:09:26.920 --> 01:09:32.240 slightly bigger scale but it's fine i can still watch the tenth planet without thinking of twice 01:09:32.350 --> 01:09:39.140 upon a time yeah and i don't even really get that he inserted anything meaningful in twice upon a 01:09:39.240 --> 01:09:44.339 time i mean so the doctor walked to the tardis and he had a little adventure along the way okay 01:09:46.820 --> 01:09:53.500 but not even a good one well that but that is the fact when it comes down to it that that to me is 01:09:53.520 --> 01:09:59.740 the problem which is it wasn't twice upon a time was not a good episode the timeless children was 01:09:59.840 --> 01:10:05.560 not a good episode and if it had been a good episode any number of contradictions of canon 01:10:05.610 --> 01:10:10.140 or whatever i would have just forgotten with them and i've given them a nod because i'd have enjoyed 01:10:10.140 --> 01:10:16.120 the episode and that's it's it's like that i i dug it out and stuck it in the comments on the 01:10:16.290 --> 01:10:22.240 fusion patrol website under the haunting of villa d'adati which is a piece from an interview that 01:10:22.260 --> 01:10:28.140 Tom Baker gave to Doctor Who magazine in the 1980s saying yes we didn't we didn't think about 01:10:28.620 --> 01:10:35.280 the show's continuity he didn't care what John Pertwee had done Graham Williams wasn't you know 01:10:35.500 --> 01:10:41.100 thinking about what the what had been previously established in the show the thing that guided 01:10:41.480 --> 01:10:46.560 them was that whatever Doctor Who they were making they wanted to make it the best one yet 01:10:47.020 --> 01:10:53.340 you can argue that they didn't always do that but that was what they were looking for not trying to 01:10:53.500 --> 01:10:59.380 fit it in with the the way the show's continuity had gone in the past and the haunting of Villa 01:10:59.520 --> 01:11:04.660 Diodati is an excellent example of that because we're saying well it doesn't fit it's really 01:11:04.840 --> 01:11:10.700 really difficult to make it fit with what is established in Mary's story from the company of 01:11:10.840 --> 01:11:16.540 friends but does anyone really care about that because it's a damn good episode and that's what 01:11:16.560 --> 01:11:22.480 matters well but what what point do you say well we don't do that now next year so do they go back 01:11:22.510 --> 01:11:27.440 to that night again next year next season and tell a completely different story about mary shelly 01:11:27.540 --> 01:11:33.820 it's a good one yeah i'm up for it see i don't think that flies i mean at some point you have 01:11:33.960 --> 01:11:39.420 reached the point of why bother i mean you just told because it's a good story you just told us 01:11:39.560 --> 01:11:45.920 this is what happened and now you're telling but there's timey-wimey you if people care about it 01:11:45.940 --> 01:11:49.400 They can pick up on the, you know, we had the Lone Cyberman changing history. 01:11:49.610 --> 01:11:54.720 We had the, I can't even remember what it was called in Mary's story, but there was some kind of. 01:11:55.060 --> 01:11:57.300 Why make problems for yourself? 01:11:58.200 --> 01:12:00.060 Why not tell a good story somewhere else? 01:12:00.090 --> 01:12:01.900 They could have told a good story anywhere else. 01:12:01.970 --> 01:12:03.500 They don't have to go back. 01:12:04.000 --> 01:12:09.980 And, you know, when you go back over established continuity, you are making a continuity error. 01:12:10.300 --> 01:12:14.080 They have people whose jobs aren't supposed to prevent continuity errors. 01:12:14.840 --> 01:12:24.560 And I don't think that they came up with a different story for the destruction of Atlantis because they just said, eh. 01:12:25.680 --> 01:12:28.900 Perhaps in the 70s because, well, we've wiped them all and nobody cares. 01:12:30.060 --> 01:12:33.220 But you just don't do that. 01:12:33.340 --> 01:12:35.560 And the fact that Tom Baker says it, well, so what? 01:12:35.680 --> 01:12:36.140 He's an actor. 01:12:37.100 --> 01:12:37.760 Yeah, sure. 01:12:38.380 --> 01:12:43.220 His job is to bring whatever you put in front of him to life and does it well. 01:12:43.640 --> 01:12:51.580 But somebody's job is to not, if you're telling this story, to keep it at least semi-sensical. 01:12:53.590 --> 01:13:00.140 And this is all just nonsense instead of just going out and telling new stories. 01:13:00.920 --> 01:13:02.280 That's all they need to do. 01:13:02.330 --> 01:13:07.740 They do not need to go back and redo old stories or tell you a new way. 01:13:07.810 --> 01:13:10.180 Just go make new stories. 01:13:10.460 --> 01:13:14.720 You've got an entire universe in all of time and space to go to. 01:13:15.140 --> 01:13:22.520 You do not need to keep going back to the same thing because you thought you had a better idea than the last guy that did. 01:13:22.940 --> 01:13:30.220 No, no. But there's a difference between going back to the previous thing because you think you've got a better idea than the guy before. 01:13:30.280 --> 01:13:33.680 Or just telling the best story you can. 01:13:34.100 --> 01:13:42.480 And if it turns out that as that idea is forming, there's some continuity correction or whatever, fine. 01:13:42.640 --> 01:13:46.860 You know, don't worry about that stuff because that's not the important stuff. 01:13:47.040 --> 01:13:53.680 What is important, and I entirely agree with you here, is just, you know, move the thing forward, move the show forward. 01:13:54.760 --> 01:13:56.080 Can the Doctor die now? 01:13:56.460 --> 01:14:03.640 I don't think there's ever been a, you know, regeneration has never been, it will always happen, has it? 01:14:04.180 --> 01:14:07.620 well but that's because that's the way it is with time lords but the doctor isn't 01:14:08.020 --> 01:14:14.480 the doctor is the time but it's it's it's the same it's the same thing you know time lords 01:14:14.940 --> 01:14:20.380 have just got the regeneration from well i don't know like i mean 01:14:22.120 --> 01:14:27.380 it's just another another question along the along but it's an unimportant question it doesn't matter 01:14:27.520 --> 01:14:31.179 no one's going to care about that question because anyone watching it is going to know 01:14:31.500 --> 01:14:36.360 well actually the doctor can't die the doctor can't die because if the doctor died that would 01:14:36.360 --> 01:14:45.820 be the end of the show and the show will never end it changes it changes how a character would 01:14:45.980 --> 01:14:50.620 act so i'm not talking about from the the audience standpoint i'm talking about from the internal 01:14:50.900 --> 01:14:58.700 standpoint captain jack behaves differently than a regular human being because captain jack knows 01:14:59.220 --> 01:15:05.560 that he's immortal captain jack believes he's immortal he's got ample evidence that says it's 01:15:06.100 --> 01:15:11.760 basically true but at some point well it's that's why it's you know if you're the person that the 01:15:11.760 --> 01:15:16.080 thing that changes his behavior is not whether it's true or not it's whether he believes he 01:15:16.380 --> 01:15:21.280 believes he didn't know he was immortal he wouldn't behave in that way yes my point being 01:15:21.700 --> 01:15:28.680 is that the doctor has until this point believed that you know 12 regenerations were the limit 01:15:28.700 --> 01:15:36.640 And then they got this other thing where the Time Lords gave him a few more, but we don't know how many more. 01:15:37.080 --> 01:15:42.100 So the Doctor always could walk out of this going, yeah, who knows? 01:15:42.400 --> 01:15:44.060 My next one should be my last. 01:15:44.260 --> 01:15:52.060 Maybe I shouldn't charge across the field towards the bullets just in case, unless that is a sacrifice of death. 01:15:52.660 --> 01:15:53.660 No, she didn't. 01:15:53.660 --> 01:15:57.160 It was always the case that she didn't want to die and regenerate because. 01:15:57.840 --> 01:16:03.220 There's a difference between I don't want to die and regenerate and I don't want to die, die, dead, done. 01:16:03.380 --> 01:16:04.180 This is it. I'm over. 01:16:04.460 --> 01:16:12.200 I mean, Matt Smith showed us that because at the end he went into his sort of melancholy over, you know, this is it. 01:16:12.240 --> 01:16:13.180 I'm the end, I'm the done. 01:16:14.500 --> 01:16:15.600 Yeah, I didn't like that much. 01:16:16.140 --> 01:16:23.320 So if that's the option of saying, actually, yeah, you can have an infinite number of regenerations, then I'm up for that. 01:16:23.840 --> 01:16:29.560 And does that mean that these regenerations are in any way different and or more powerful? 01:16:30.220 --> 01:16:45.960 Because if the doctor has gone through 10 million years of this, then surely they haven't had one where somebody chopped his head off, you know, or something. 01:16:46.140 --> 01:16:47.860 I mean, something we don't know. 01:16:47.860 --> 01:16:49.560 We don't know whether that inhibits. 01:16:49.780 --> 01:17:01.220 The only time I'm aware of being anything that inhibits regeneration is some kind of Time Lord doohickey that says, oh, the phaser is set to regeneration inhibiting mode or something. 01:17:01.520 --> 01:17:02.760 I mean, it's... 01:17:03.240 --> 01:17:04.500 Would that work on the Doctor? 01:17:04.700 --> 01:17:11.980 It really, really doesn't matter because it's dealt with on a story-by-story basis if regeneration is going to cause an issue with the plot. 01:17:12.480 --> 01:17:16.080 Do you have anything good to report on these stories? 01:17:16.840 --> 01:17:21.020 Well, I've reported on Ascension of the Cybermen, so that was good. 01:17:22.260 --> 01:17:23.740 I don't think I have anything else good. 01:17:23.960 --> 01:17:25.440 We've given basically zero time on the Companions. 01:17:26.320 --> 01:17:27.360 Oh, the Companions. 01:17:27.920 --> 01:17:28.820 Yes, I did have something to say about the Companions. 01:17:28.820 --> 01:17:29.660 Absolutely not a word about them. 01:17:31.560 --> 01:17:34.900 Because we've talked about the Companions throughout the series 01:17:35.360 --> 01:17:42.640 and how their underuse was going to need to lead to some sort of comeuppance, I guess, 01:17:42.760 --> 01:17:46.400 or the way in which the Doctor was treating them as pets was going to lead to some comeuppance. 01:17:47.240 --> 01:17:52.060 i tell you what i think about the companions in this episode like the cybermen they shouldn't 01:17:52.060 --> 01:17:57.460 have been in it because they had nothing to do this was a doc i mean even the doctor really 01:17:57.660 --> 01:18:02.140 shouldn't be in this episode because she doesn't do anything herself it's it seems to me a really 01:18:02.340 --> 01:18:06.400 bad way again structural problem bad way to structure the episode where the doctor is 01:18:07.240 --> 01:18:15.540 literally incapacitated for 45 minutes but the the companions are actually in a worse 01:18:16.240 --> 01:18:20.020 position because they they have nothing to do there's the there's the scene where graham 01:18:20.420 --> 01:18:25.260 goes on about how brilliant yaz is where you think right yaz is literally about to peg it 01:18:25.300 --> 01:18:32.860 in the next five minutes but that doesn't happen either i i i can't understand and ryan's learned 01:18:32.760 --> 01:18:37.640 not to use guns why why wouldn't it have been better to write the companions out at least for 01:18:37.720 --> 01:18:42.480 this episode yeah they could have done that there are there are two things i wanted there are two 01:18:42.600 --> 01:18:48.320 things i would have wanted from this this series um into you know in overall terms regardless of 01:18:48.360 --> 01:18:52.840 whether the fact that there were some good episodes as well as some real clunkers and it and it and 01:18:52.840 --> 01:18:59.860 it's this that either the companions was more was made of them or they were written out i think in 01:18:59.880 --> 01:19:03.060 a way you could have you could have done but because you've never had entire episodes where 01:19:03.060 --> 01:19:09.860 you just said actually this is a doctor a doctor solo episode because there really isn't anything 01:19:09.920 --> 01:19:14.100 for the companions to do so why write them in we've established the fact that the doctor sometimes 01:19:14.420 --> 01:19:18.500 goes off traveling on her own make this one of those episodes and there are a number of episodes 01:19:18.640 --> 01:19:21.860 where you could just you look at the episode and you go well this would have been better 01:19:22.380 --> 01:19:26.320 if it had been the doctor on her own plus you know whatever incidental characters have been 01:19:26.280 --> 01:19:31.780 written in for this story alone and then there are other there are there could have been other 01:19:32.000 --> 01:19:37.140 episodes where the companions were the focus of the episode it didn't have to be all about the 01:19:37.260 --> 01:19:43.560 doctor we actually focus in on the companion and part of their story and move move their character 01:19:43.800 --> 01:19:49.380 on and we didn't get any of that throughout this series at all i just for those people who are 01:19:49.580 --> 01:19:54.821 saying oh my goodness me how much better this season has been compared to the last whitaker 01:19:54.840 --> 01:20:01.140 season i don't understand it because last season we got real development for the companions and 01:20:01.140 --> 01:20:08.200 there was a there was a kind of there was a proper arc to their stories i i i feel like 01:20:08.800 --> 01:20:15.340 if i'm summarizing um from our discussions of last season in this season that you thought last 01:20:15.440 --> 01:20:22.501 season was a lot better uh i i did i would agree with you uh with regards to character development 01:20:22.520 --> 01:20:28.140 for the companions okay but i thought it was new it was not original but i did not think it was 01:20:28.200 --> 01:20:34.420 very good uh i personally don't think that no i don't think it's better or worth no or this it 01:20:34.420 --> 01:20:39.300 was the same okay they're pretty much the same that's interesting i see a lot of people saying 01:20:39.340 --> 01:20:43.940 they think this season better i have seen that and i was assuming anyone would say this season 01:20:43.980 --> 01:20:49.501 is worse regardless of whether they liked the previous season or not it's like what all the 01:20:49.520 --> 01:20:54.480 things that made the previous season particularly interesting or exciting for me were to do with 01:20:54.480 --> 01:21:02.340 the fact that we had a new take on the Doctor, a new actor playing the Doctor, combined with a new 01:21:02.480 --> 01:21:08.540 set of characters who were her companions, and then we had a whole series of stories that didn't 01:21:08.820 --> 01:21:13.960 rely on any of the show's continuity whatsoever, so there were no recurring monsters or anything 01:21:14.160 --> 01:21:18.961 like that. All of the stories were new and original, and we got to take it to some interesting 01:21:18.980 --> 01:21:26.000 places including you know the partition of india we got to meet those parks we got you know which 01:21:26.180 --> 01:21:34.440 trials you're all of this kind of stuff and i enjoyed all of that because it was new and then 01:21:34.800 --> 01:21:39.940 suddenly it's like oh we're going we're going to have daleks we're going to have cybermen we're 01:21:39.940 --> 01:21:44.219 going to have jadoon we're going to have gallifrey we're going to have the master we're going to have 01:21:44.120 --> 01:21:51.240 the Time Lords were going to have every little piece of the show's canon is going to be picked 01:21:51.460 --> 01:21:57.980 over for some kind of spurious story reason and it really has bogged it down and that's exactly 01:21:58.120 --> 01:22:03.240 the reason I think that RTD was very careful about it in the first place and it is the reason I had 01:22:03.440 --> 01:22:08.841 assumed that Chibnall steered clear of it in the previous season and it makes no sense to me that 01:22:08.860 --> 01:22:16.900 he suddenly reversed that i'm trying to put on balance i cannot remember any particularly good 01:22:17.100 --> 01:22:20.520 episodes last season i can't remember any particularly good episodes this season 01:22:21.460 --> 01:22:26.500 i'll maybe i'll maybe i'll go on a limb and say yes this one's a little bit worse because it did 01:22:26.700 --> 01:22:33.661 have a little bit more of having boards smacked up the back side of my head which i don't like 01:22:34.060 --> 01:22:40.560 so yeah all right this one's worse but i don't didn't think the other one was good so i would 01:22:40.560 --> 01:22:45.780 not put i would not rate last year as a good year no but then you wouldn't rate season 26 as a good 01:22:45.900 --> 01:22:56.920 year which one's season 26 the 1989 season said sylvester mccoy uh no probably not a great year 01:22:57.100 --> 01:23:02.802 no i might have i might have rated it better than last year or this year oh that's interesting 01:23:02.820 --> 01:23:08.080 because yeah i know you rate it quite low whereas i actually think and the blu-ray of it has just 01:23:08.130 --> 01:23:13.860 come out and so i've kind of been diving back into it but it is it's one of those seasons that 01:23:13.860 --> 01:23:18.760 i do here's a thought experiment you know you you asked the question about somebody who just 01:23:18.980 --> 01:23:24.740 started watching with jody whitaker yeah um doctor who i think there's another question if doctor who 01:23:24.820 --> 01:23:29.721 had just started with jody whitaker the show wouldn't have made it to a second season i think 01:23:29.740 --> 01:23:35.640 that's and it would not be it would be gone it would i think that's what i mean i we we yeah 01:23:36.000 --> 01:23:44.660 there's no way of proving that but right that my my gut reaction to that is i i thought last year 01:23:45.220 --> 01:23:50.760 there was a huge amount of critical acclaim for it but all that critical acclaim was coming about 01:23:50.920 --> 01:23:56.762 from people who are contrasting it to the old if if you had never heard of the concept of doctor 01:23:56.820 --> 01:24:02.320 who you had never had any of that and you just came at this show it just wasn't that interesting 01:24:02.820 --> 01:24:09.740 well that's not for me i mean i i i loved the previous season mostly um well yeah actually 01:24:10.180 --> 01:24:18.660 really quite yeah so it it went it went for me from being a great season to another great season 01:24:18.840 --> 01:24:24.962 just in a very very different way whereas this has gone to being not different enough i guess 01:24:25.580 --> 01:24:29.140 but the things that are different are markedly worse. 01:24:31.260 --> 01:24:33.740 Well, obviously this is going to be a long one, 01:24:34.020 --> 01:24:38.480 but that's only fair because it was a long episode of Doctor Who. 01:24:38.610 --> 01:24:39.380 And I don't know about you, 01:24:39.420 --> 01:24:43.160 I was checking my phone at a couple points along the way. 01:24:43.770 --> 01:24:46.640 I didn't check my phone, but I did watch it. 01:24:46.780 --> 01:24:48.360 Unusually, I watched it with my dad, 01:24:48.560 --> 01:24:51.320 who I wasn't particularly expecting to like it anyway. 01:24:52.200 --> 01:24:53.000 And he loved it. 01:24:55.800 --> 01:25:00.740 no okay he said he said i he said how long was that and i said an hour and five minutes and he 01:25:00.860 --> 01:25:06.080 said was that all was it only an hour and five i thought it was an hour i don't understand why 01:25:06.620 --> 01:25:10.680 i know it's an hour and five i think he said i don't understand why anyone would but there you 01:25:10.780 --> 01:25:15.540 go you're like him you thought it was longer i don't understand why anyone would watch this show 01:25:15.920 --> 01:25:22.100 why why wouldn't they read flower bird instead but there you go it's not for everyone it's not 01:25:22.060 --> 01:25:27.500 for everyone but i am happy and relieved that there is no more doctor who until later in the 01:25:27.560 --> 01:25:35.600 year we can we can go back to fun stuff like i really feel bad about feeling that way much 01:25:36.160 --> 01:25:42.540 i i i genuinely feel bad about feeling that way but it's like i i'm looking forward to the gap 01:25:43.040 --> 01:25:50.362 between the episodes better than i am more episodes i i yeah i i think about on balance 01:25:50.940 --> 01:25:56.360 this season doesn't feel like it's delivered a whole lot of fun for me there are episodes i will 01:25:56.580 --> 01:26:02.140 enjoy re-watching i'm always glad of new doctor who but the reality is we're we're actually in 01:26:02.140 --> 01:26:07.300 a sort of golden age of this stuff because there's so much doctor who being produced if you if you 01:26:07.380 --> 01:26:13.882 listen to the audios as i do that there's plenty of it to tickle your fancy whatever it is that 01:26:13.900 --> 01:26:21.980 does tickle your fancy so um it i yes i won't i won't be missing it in the gap certainly not in 01:26:21.980 --> 01:26:28.340 the way that i felt i missed it after the previous season because it was so distinctive and there was 01:26:28.440 --> 01:26:34.800 nothing else like it well we don't do this very often but i can tell you what next week's episode 01:26:35.240 --> 01:26:41.022 a fusion patrol will be oh what's it gonna be we're gonna be looking at the bbc 01:26:41.260 --> 01:26:43.100 2019 or early 01:26:43.300 --> 01:26:44.600 2020 2019 I think 01:26:45.020 --> 01:26:45.660 War of the Worlds 01:26:46.820 --> 01:26:47.780 Oh yes 01:26:48.680 --> 01:26:50.460 Before we get back to our regular stuff 01:26:50.880 --> 01:26:52.740 No spoilers about what we thought of that 01:26:54.340 --> 01:26:56.140 We're trying to keep it upbeat 01:26:59.200 --> 01:27:00.780 Simon thank you for joining me 01:27:00.980 --> 01:27:02.380 It's a pleasure as always 01:27:03.120 --> 01:27:03.500 Listeners 01:27:04.360 --> 01:27:05.820 I hope you'll join us all again next time 01:27:06.180 --> 01:27:08.160 for War of the Worlds on Fusion Patrol 01:27:09.220 --> 01:27:11.000 You've been listening to Fusion Patrol 01:27:11.020 --> 01:27:12.260 a listener-supported podcast. 01:27:13.020 --> 01:27:14.300 Find out how you can be a sponsor 01:27:14.300 --> 01:27:16.680 and get early access to all episodes and more 01:27:17.220 --> 01:27:19.860 at patreon.com slash fusion patrol. 01:27:23.460 --> 01:27:25.840 Come join the conversation on Facebook or Twitter. 01:27:28.200 --> 01:27:30.940 All episodes are available at fusion patrol.com. 01:27:34.000 --> 01:27:36.520 Our music is Fight the Future by Amber Wolf. 01:27:39.500 --> 01:27:42.060 This has been a Lone Locust production.