you're listening to fusion patrol a listener supported podcast
each week we take a single episode of a science fiction tv series movie or audio
and overanalyze it to within an inch of its life welcome to the discussion
hello and welcome to another episode of fusion patrol i'm eugene and i'm simon and this is part
two of our two-part conversation on the power of the doctor and let's just pick up our conversation
right where we left off last time let's do it i did i i did i mean i did quite
enjoy the what that um that kind of ai doctor thing allowed them to do in this episode it felt
like it felt like um so chibnall playing with that whole thing again he did it in one of the
flux episodes of having the doctor kind of split so that he could have the doctor in this kind of
sort of never where out of time place and then also have the doctor driving the actual plot
forward but what i particularly like it's not the doctor
not the doctor well i mean yes and no i mean i i agree and so in a way it in a way it's sort of
one of those things that i would feel shouldn't kind of work because i liked the fact that they
could use ace and tegan kind of psychically projecting who they think the doctor could be
in order to get davison and mccoy to do these lovely little cameos and to have these scenes
with the not doctor i mean as you say it's not really the doctor but i just loved those scenes
i really did those scenes were probably the highlight of the episode and i think it is
kind of sad that the highlight of the episode is the past doctors um well companions but but
yeah um you know and i mentioned the recap and again i'm sure i've seen this online are we
forgetting who left whom uh
when it came to Tegan, because she sure seemed
to be all upset about being
the doctor leaving her.
Yeah, but we forget who this is.
I mean, this is Tegan.
And then, of course,
we get the whole thing with Ace, and
I don't know if they've ever done the
Ace leaves Sylvester McCoy in Big
Finish. Oh, yeah.
More than once, probably. Yeah.
So...
But I don't know what this was referring to.
Because we don't...
You know, what happens a lot in Big Finish
is you get the reunion
of Ace and the
doctor, and then
you don't
necessarily know...
There'll be multiple times when
the Ace has left the doctor
and then they get flung back together again
for some reason. You don't know what order those things happen in
because they don't want to tie themselves down, and it's
perfectly understandable. But I
have no idea. I have absolutely no idea what
this is referring to. And it could be the books. It could
be the books rather than the audios.
And... Or nothing at all.
It could just be an extrapolation of how
did Ace leave the doctor?
Oh, she just got tired of his
annoying behaviour.
Which is exactly
why, you know, the audience has left.
But... I
think that is a perfectly
reasonable projection of where the
storyline was
going. And in a way, it makes more
sense because I think the problem
with suggesting that this is something
that has been
picked up from either the books or the audios
is that as far as I can tell,
and I haven't yet...
I'm literally holding it in my
hand. It's on the desk in front of me. I haven't yet
listened to Tenth Doctor Classic Companions,
which features the so-called
Tenth Doctor with
Ace. And I haven't read A Childhood
End, which I think
features the Thirteenth Doctor
and Ace. Well, it's definitely
Tenth... You definitely can call
Tenet the Tenth Doctor because
RTD has cleared that up already.
In the last day.
No, Tenet is the Doctor.
Well, it's like
you're the only one. But
that works that way. Everyone else
gives him a name. My point is
it's one character. And the Fourteenth Doctor.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's
buying into this modern
concept of regeneration. And I'm
holding out by saying
I think it is a single character.
I think it is just the Doctor
who has been played by a number of
different actors. But
yeah, I could argue this
one until the cows come home.
My point is that
I think suggesting
that there is, for this episode,
a kind of separate continuity
for Ace makes more sense
because I suspect
that the audio I'm holding
and the book at Childhood's
End wouldn't quite work
with... I mean, it's possible
they both feature Ace
in her timeline after this episode,
but that's the only way I can imagine.
That it would happen because she's explicitly
saying, I haven't seen the Doctor in
30 years.
Yeah, yeah, I don't think
I don't think Chibnall was
giving too much of a flying anything
for the audios of the book.
And you know, I've said this before
because we discussed it when Mary Shelley
came in. In a way, you know,
who cares? If you can
fit to the past
continuity of things being equal,
then that'll please me.
But if I had to make a choice,
between a good story and
doing that, I'd go for the good story.
And I just, I thought
Ace and Teagan were brilliant in this.
It was good to see them.
I don't know if I'd go brilliant, but they were
good.
I liked seeing them.
I appreciate the idea of Kate
Stewart recruiting former
companions as operatives.
That is actually a
shrewd move on
her part. Definitely, definitely.
I mean, we've seen it the other way.
We've seen the Doctor
recruiting unit operatives as companions.
So, you know, fair's fair.
So, yeah,
that worked for me.
Yeah, no, it was
good to see them. I'm not entirely
convinced about the whole Ace's
jacket and bat being stored under
a floor. No.
Well, no. And I
felt I didn't really need to see
Ace in her, you know,
her old-fashioned bomber jacket.
And in fact, the kind of pinstripe,
I thought, was tying in with
some of the previously
established. I can't remember whether a
charitable earth appears
in Doctor Who at some point. There's a
reference that, you know, she
is running this charity.
And I thought that was what it
was about. And I was kind of fine like
that. Ace is my favourite character, but
if I want to see Ace,
well, I didn't mind her wielding
a baseball bat or whatever. I want to see her running around
in her bomber jacket. I'll go back and watch
the DVDs from the
late 1980s. The
great thing about this was
just, you know, seeing Sophie Aldred back
again and playing Ace again.
And I really
loved that. Yeah.
You know, back when companions
had personality.
Well, not
always.
Tegan, maybe. I mean, yeah, well, she
certainly had personality. But
I thought Ace
was a fantastic companion. So, you
know, if you're going to bring anyone back,
I think that's terrific.
And the thing about the
Charitable Earth thing was
I thought, well, that is a reference to something
that has come up previously and been established
on the screen. But I wasn't sure where
because I thought it might be. I thought it was the
promo for the
DVDs. It's the promo
for the Blu-ray. That came up in
the recent, in the Blu-ray
collection
release for season
whatever it would have been.
Season 25, season 26?
Somewhere in there.
Whichever one we've got. But
I thought it had been established on screen because
there is, and the only
question I've got in my mind is whether it
happens in Doctor Who.
I thought it might be at the end of time.
But I may have got that wrong. It might be in
a Sarah Jane story
where the
Doctor... It might be a Sarah Jane.
Guests in it. Because it also
establishes, it's
I'm pretty sure it was RTD
writing it. It also,
it also establishes that
Ian and Barbara have not
aged since the 1960s.
Which, this episode
does kind of contradict.
Does just a little bit, yeah.
Just a little bit. But again, you know,
I'm just going to say it. I am
fine with that continuity
being shelved because it
was, I, it was
really probably the biggest surprise of the
episode because William Russell
doesn't really do, I mean
he did a big Finnish audio
Susan's War a
couple of years ago, but he doesn't really
do them anymore. And
he's, you know, he's not a young
man. So
to appear on
screen in the show,
I did not
expect he would do that.
And so he must
now, for
appearing in the same
TV show, in the same character
59 years after he first
did, that's got to be some
sort of record. I mean, has anyone else
done that? I don't know.
I can't think of any example
because right now,
you know, he is 97 years
old, by the way. There you go.
I did think he was,
you know, he was getting
on a little bit. Just a
bit, yeah. But right now,
you know, we can say in terms of
the cast of Doctor Who,
the first episode and
the most recent episode both
feature the same actor.
You know, he's not in every single
episode in between.
But he's
a recurring character
who has appeared
in the most recent episode we've seen
and was right there at the beginning.
I have to say, looking at the crowd of people
at the companion on there at the end,
you know, we know Graham and
Yaz have, well, Yaz
now, but Graham certainly had
never encountered regeneration.
He just met the doctor
when the doctor was the 13th
doctor. Dan,
likewise. Mel
has seen a regeneration.
Of course, yeah. Ace
has not.
Let's see, Tegan has.
What else we had?
Joe Grant has. Has
not. But she knows
about it because she's, but she's
encountered future doctors. She's encountered
the 10th or the 11th and
in Sarah Jane.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. In the Sarah Jane
Adventures. So she's
familiar with the concept. Ian
would be the one with no clue.
I mean, of all of them,
Ian would be the one with no clue.
And the
line, excuse
me, did you say she?
You would think that his real line
would be, oh, I'm sorry, I have the wrong
I'm in the wrong meeting.
Well, I don't know because up to the point
Can he, he's picturing
William Hartnell and is like,
I always wondered about that long hair.
Oh, didn't realize.
Yeah, yeah, it felt like that.
It's one line.
Did it did Mel even get a line?
I think she's not.
How many doctors are there?
Oh yes. Okay. She did get a line.
Okay, got it. Yeah.
So I think they all got a line.
Yeah, someone must have got Annika Will's line
because she couldn't make it.
Is that who the missing chair was for?
Yeah, because there was an obvious missing
or empty chair there in that circle.
And I think it was Annika Will's line. Yeah.
Yeah, I think it was Annika Will's line. Yeah.
And I was like,
and I was like,
in what? Yeah.
In what context?
Everyone was like, oh, it's Sarah Jane.
But actually, it's just Annika Will's wasn't able to make it.
How did Mel get back to Earth?
Last I saw her, she was
buggering off with Saddle on Glitz
for an adventure in space
somewhere in the far future.
We certainly get the kind of post-Glitz stories
with Mel in Big Finish.
But I don't know that we've got an answer
about how she gets back to Earth.
I guess we should just toss,
is there any other things that didn't get cleaned up
from the Flux
or from Jodie Whittaker's time
as the Doctor?
I mean, I feel like the Timeless Child did not
go anywhere.
I don't know.
I mean, it's a difficult one to say
because I don't think there are things that I felt I wanted.
I don't know.
If I went back and rewatched,
If I rewatched,
anything that he shoved on us,
there would be things to do with you now.
There would be things to do with you now.