RTD2Date Part Two

You're listening to a podcast of spurious morality Hello and welcome back to the second in our short series looking back at the second RTD era of Doctor Who. Last time we looked at the three David Tennant 14th Doctor specials and this time I'm joined by Mark again to go through the first half of season one. of the 15th Doctor's era, and we're also going to look at the church on Ruby Road before we get into the season as well. Shall we jump right in and start off with the

church on Ruby Road? So this was our introduction to the 15th Doctor, although we'd seen him in the previous episode in The Giggle. What were your impressions of this when... You watched it first. Really enjoyed it. It is not my favourite of the two Intudy specials we've had so far, the Christmas specials. Joy to the World ended up being my all -time favourite Christmas special. We'll talk about that when we get there. But this thing was, yeah, I just found it very moving.

I thought it was a great showcase for... Because, you know, as much as he got a significant part in and really shown in his sort of final, you know, what does he appear in there? The final 15 minutes of the last Tenant special there. This was really him, I guess, just appearing without ceremony. There he is, you know, Ruby first sees him at the club dancing and everything. It's very much just the doctor back to, he's post -therapy, but any viewer starting there

wouldn't know that. They just see this freewheeling guy. He takes things as he finds them. He's a pure soul. He's an adventurer. And he's kind. And all these qualities come pouring out of him

through the whole thing. I think as a showcase for... and shitty is the new lead i think it it served him very well um i think the the bond with ruby is is there straight away you know you see you see how well they work together as a team there's great chemistry there in my opinion um the the storyline with the goblins and so on um it's fun you know and it's it's also an excuse to do sort of really just crazy stuff um including song and dance in the middle of

it um but the the real emotional heart of the thing for me lies in a lot of the time just um it's amazing how much of it takes place within the stillness of that flat actually at times and but but it just allows the thing to breathe i love it when a Doctor Who episode, a regular episode or a special just has allowed time to really breathe and let those emotional beats

play out. And there's moments in that where the Doctor is talking about his recent discovery of having been adopted and being able to relate

to these adopted kids. And when history is set on the wrong track because of the Goblin's interference, we get the first of many, you know, tears from and I know some people sort of have rolled their eyes at how much he cries it's sort of in every episode really but I think what that is is he processes because he is the post therapy doctor he's learnt to have healthy you know in real time processing of things that hit him you know hit him hard or that have real significance to

him so Yeah, and, you know, it obviously introduces quite a few significant elements going forward. We've got Mrs. Flood. We've got Cherry and, oh, I'm so sorry, her name's gone out of my head, Ruby's adoptive mother. And, yeah, so that whole setup's there. There's a bit of mystery being seeded in. There's proper Christmassy vibes at the end. We get the total campery of... A Christmas tree nearly falling on Davina McCall. Viewers in America probably shrugging at that one. I

don't know, but it doesn't matter. By the time we get there, hopefully they've had enough fun with the thing not to be too confused and they can understand it's a celebrity, no one over here. Yeah, no, it left a good impression on me and a great start for the Doctor and Ruby.

Yeah, yeah. And he picked up on one of the bits I thought was interesting, which we talked about with Wild Blue Yonder, the way that... rtd is picking up the timeless child thing and actually building on it and like making it really rooted in like um like real relatable emotional situations like adoption um and that's really interesting because i think that's where chris chibnall's interest in it might have come from originally but it almost gets expressed if i'm i don't know

if i'm misremembering or if i remember him talking about you know his own personal experiences and interviews, but it feels like it's only in this era that it's actually made explicit that connection or is brought to the fore a bit more. Yeah, no, he definitely did talk of that, his own adoption experience and wanting to write a storyline around

that. And yet, you're right, I think RTT has given it the most wit, you know, or I think has sort of... um who teased the most out of that in terms of in terms of just showing that the you know the emotional uh effects of that rather than just sort of stating it as a narrative fact um i think that's what chibnall was going for but he he didn't he didn't necessarily hit all the you know hit all the right very laudable intent but maybe not as well executed as what

rtd has later layered onto it. So anyway. Yeah, and there was some of that in flux with like meeting Tecteun and all of that. But it's kind of, there's so much going on in flux that any sort of, that there is something there, but it's a little bit lost. Whereas in this, like you said, these quiet scenes that have room to breathe in the church in Ruby Road, it's just. really laid out there in a really sort of nice, simple,

effective way. I thought this was interesting because this episode has a lot in common structurally with going right back to 2005 with Rose, meeting the family, taking the companion's point of view, discovering the Doctor through their eyes. But then I also thought on top of that, you've got

these elements. brought in that seemed like a bit of a mission statement about what this new era is going to be like i think the music felt like a big part of that the spectacle and the effects with the the goblins um so so yeah it felt like a really good um sort of yeah like pilot or sort of mission statement for what this new era is going to be um yeah like yourself i haven't watched it in the last few days or weeks, but I felt very positive about it at the

time and I think I still feel the same. The music didn't bother me. It's interesting because I think maybe we can talk about the theories we had at the time, like mid -season, about where this was all going, but maybe we can talk a bit about the inclusion of music and fourth wall breaks and things. as we get into some of the

other episodes. But one bit that didn't do so well on a rewatch for me, if I'm honest, is like the sort of setting up the mystery of Ruby's mother and that big, like, you know, sort of all the sort of ponderous, mysterious moments where you see this hooded figure walking away. And I get that that's the point, that it's like this mystery built up around something that is quite ordinary. But, yeah, it felt like a bit,

like it was built up too much. And, again, I realise that's kind of the point, but, yeah, that sort of felt a bit flat for me. It was interesting to hear Russell T Davies himself on the commentary for that one sit there and go kind of laugh along with, you know, laugh in recognition of the fact that it was a bit overdone and kind of say... why is Ruby's mother wearing this ornamental cloak? He's the one pointing these things out.

Maybe he's the one also that she could have stepped in and said, could we... I think his point is we wouldn't have done it any other way because it just... It sort of painted herself into that corner, so we ran with it. But I'll forgive that

a lot. just in terms of the atmosphere that it creates because you know all that stuff the carol the carol of the bells and um you know the snow and it's it's so beautifully visually and and orally done that that i guess those slight illogicalities of presentation there's a sort of i don't know you can mean it halfway on that one but i do know what you mean it's a bit yeah it doesn't particularly stand up to robust analysis as far as why somebody would look that way in you know,

whatever year, whatever recent year that was supposed to be. I forget what year they said it was, but I'd have to work it out backwards from Ruby's age. But yeah, relatively recent times and somebody dressed like, I don't know, someone from Victoria. Yeah, it didn't bother me at the time before we knew what the reveal was, but it's just like, it's re -watching it that it didn't work quite as well for me. One thing, sorry, just what it is, because it did

come back into my head there. I think this is the one we're both going to be a bit equally woolly on just because neither of us appears to have got to a rewatch of this one in very recent days. But the stuff with... the mathematics of the language of rope and all that stuff. I loved all that because it's another bit of signaling that they, you know, and we also have like this,

this floating wooden ship. It's like, okay, since the, since the salt incident happened, something, something more supernatural has crept into the universe. Things that might've looked a little less, things that might've been just, just outside

the line before of what Doctor Who. feels it can plausibly present has we've moved that line basically and but it allows for some really interesting things and i mean i love the fact that the doctor can can can sort of understand the language of rope and make all these and what was that there before or after the soul change i don't know um maybe maybe there was always that kind of phenomenon and phenomenon in the universe but um yeah it's just it's interesting what's being

toyed with there and i think uh russell t davis is he goes on to sort of finesse that a bit more as a series one and yeah that's that's set up in world beyonder it's it's that the whole idea is it's this discrete change the doctor does something and it releases all these magical forces but kind of out of universe looking at doctor who as a whole if you draw a line from um is it the demons the the one where uh like the third doctor is Talking about superstition and science

and appropriately enough, that story is about a demon and sort of supernatural, effectively supernatural being, but is actually an alien, which is like a recurring thing in Doctor Who. But then I feel like over the decades, you know, you get to Battlefield towards the end of the original run. And then you get into like The Impossible Planet and a lot of stories in the

new run and the books that came between. I feel like Doctor Who has gotten increasingly magical and sort of blurring the lines between science and magic as the years have gone on from taking this very sort of skeptical scientific position of it can all be explained to now sort of saying.

yeah like there is magic there's just weird stuff that seeps in through the cracks and yeah it's all just part of an expanded kind of um realm of possibility and sometimes sometimes it's going to feel like a sciencey one and sometimes it's going to feel like okay uh you know the normal rules of physics may not may not quite apply on this one but but it has its own um yeah freewheeling kind of fantasy fun to it so let's just lean into that. Yeah. I think we have that more than

ever this season. And I'm not saying that critically because I know a lot of people, well, it seems to have been a very Marmite experience, that kind of tonal change. But I personally am on the side of just, you know, it's what we have for the time being. Let's enjoy it. And there's a lot to be said for it. It's brought new possibilities to the table and some of them have been done

very well. Yeah. Yeah, and maybe in our next episode we can talk about looking forward to season two because it feels like it's going to be sort of even more leaning into the whole gods and magic side of things. But shall we go on to Space Babies, which is an interesting one because re -watching this, Space Babies, it's not... It's not bad, but it feels like a bit of an aberration because we've got Wild Blue Yonder, the Toymaker, Goblins, and then the next

episode we have Maestro. And in the middle we have this story that feels like a sort of throwback to the original RTD run in terms of tone and what's going on. Like I said, it's not a bad story, but for me, it's by far the weakest. And I think we talked about this at the time, that it feels like a weird choice to start off the season. But what were your thoughts? Did you get a chance to re -watch Space Babies? Yes, I did. And I have to say, very similar thoughts

to your own on that. I would accept... I would agree with you, and I think the majority would take this view that it is the weakest of that first Tenshiuri series. I'm aware that many people out there absolutely detest it. I am not one of those people. I actually find it, you know, it's fun. In places, it's... Do you know what?

The only real problem I have with it is... it's a little bit try hard you know like it's got that um that energy where you're being slight you know it's it's it's sometimes lots of pace and energy works another time it's just it just feels like okay stay with us stay with us this is going to be an exciting show you know lots is going to be happening it's going to be crazy it's going to be wacky the doctor's going to say you know things that are really quick far

away for you and i don't know it feels a bit like that and um i don't know it's It's an odd one. There's moments in it that I really like. I love that first sequence of just Ruby walking in slow motion into the TARDIS. There's beautiful music. But that's, of course, a bit of a holdover from the church in Ruby Road. I know one of the things that gets criticized quite heavily is

that the doctor is... There's literally a scene where... a series of questions and answers is more or less dealt with in short succession. The doctor says, oh, well, let me tell you about myself. I'm a time lord. Now, some people, I've heard quite a few people say that they find that really clunky. I personally don't. And I think some considerable thought and care has gone into just saying, no, that's what, you know, first

of all, it is helpful for new viewers. But it's not, I mean, it's not unreasonable to think that those would be the, you know, that would be the, there's even a moment where Ruby has to catch up on stuff the doctor had told her 10 minutes ago. And she says, wait a minute, genocide? What? Like, you know, she's acknowledging the fact that there's a lot to take in, but to ignore the fact that there's a lot to take in would also be a bit, I don't know, strange. So I think

RTD has in interviews and things. robustly defended and I think rightly defended that kind of sort of you know let's just have the conversation we may know all this stuff but Ruby doesn't and some brand new viewer may not and it's still interesting to hear it put even stuff we've heard a hundred times before from the Doctor it's interesting to hear how this Doctor puts it this time and so you know that's all fine the actual story with the the snot monster, the bogeyman. Yeah,

that's all fine. The babies are, yeah, I guess a lot of people, that triggers their sort of uncanny valley reflexes. It's a strange sort of thing to sit and watch. You never quite get comfortable with the way they form. And there's a slight, I don't know, I find it, what I find a wee bit tricky is when the Doctor and Ruby first arrive in the baby form and Eric first

sort of rolls in there. He's talking in a way where, you know, he could be, he is talking like an adult in a child's body who just happens to be this, you know, this toddler in a stroller. But he's saying very scientifically intricate things and he's talking in a very professional

manner. And yet when they go back to the sort of control room there, the main control room, which something else I noticed today is just they have, I know they put a lot of effort into the... the the the sort of drawings and the walls and things and i'm thinking which which of those children do that drew that did they did they get out of their prams to draw it how did they get it up to that height anyway um that's the sort of silly stuff i can get distracted by but

um yeah when they go back to that uh control room a lot of the children are talking in this very um childlike way you know just very like the way poppy talks the way that child who who who sort of makes, I don't know, he's made that sort of intricate little wooden hand that pushes the button and he's very proud of cleaning the pipes or whatever. But it's all, do you know

what I mean? There's this sort of slight, from moment to moment, it can't seem to quite make up its mind like how babyish these babies are or how, you know, kind of like adults in children's bodies they are. And I'm not sure RTD ever quite

came down on a consistent. tone there there's a moment where eric goes off to face um this the bogeyman with you know armed with nothing more than like a very blunt looking toy knife and the first time i watched that i thought that's a wee bit silly but you know he's he'd probably be a bit more intelligent than that given what we've seen already but actually what i realized this time around was he's kind of um he's almost embodying some of the qualities of the doctor

there because the doctor would do exactly that. He'd take an intentionally useless weapon to go and give an enemy a stern talking to, you know, and then just throw the thing aside. So there are possibly more nuanced things in it than might first meet the eye. There's some very, like, you know, people who hated the burping wheelie bin must absolutely... to test the, I don't know how to put it, the spaceship's propulsion

method at the end there. Yeah, anyway. But that, yeah, I can roll my eyes a wee bit at that, but also understand, look, it's just the fun and frothy one against which you foreground some introductory stuff, those key character beats where the Doctor sort of... gives Ruby the key and she agrees to travel with him. And she, she, she demonstrates that she understands the stakes, but wants to go anyway. And it's, it's an act of self -agency and all that. So all that stuff

is, is done well. Those, those, those sort of moments between the doctor and Ruby. And it's very much, you know, it's, it's very much Russell T. Davis doing that thing he's traditionally done at the start of a season, which is, okay, let's go, let's go really extra frothy with this one. make it almost intentionally thin stuff and then just build from there. The Autons are a threat, but it's like you don't get much of a sense of them or much of an exploration of

them. It's all about getting to know the Doctor and Rose in that episode. So yeah, maybe it's a similar approach here. Like you say, a relatively

thin story, but the focus is. on getting to know these these characters um should we go on to our second episode which is second episode in the season uh the devil's chord yes uh which has a lot more going on um and i know you've got an interest in music so i don't know if that like there was stuff that you picked up on in in this one in particular but but yeah what were your thoughts on The Devil's Code. I think it's the one that definitely feels most Disney of

the whole season. There are other episodes where you go, yeah, I can see what the new budget has done for the show, but it doesn't feel intrinsically Disney -ish. But this one somehow did. I think something about the visual language of those physical notes floating in the air and being swizzled around and Maestro's own... and stylings and everything. That could be, you know, somebody ripped straight from a Disney cartoon, you know. It's a very impressive piece of work. I like

it. I love the way it plays with music and that business of going into the title sequence with the, you know, and all that and then just gradually fading in the music because here we are into this realm of, you know, how would you describe

it? Reality has been... turned upside down and and and there is a you know here we now really begin the era of the of the uh overt fourth wall break um it it bookends the thing you know we get it there and we get it with the doctor at the end going into a song and dance number and even sort of giving a wink to the camera and talking about non -non -diegetic music at one stage um incidentally there's a thing there just just speaking of the sort of musical side of

it It was actually my girlfriend pointed this out to me, so I'm not going to take the credit for this one. She knows a lot more about music than I do, but she mentioned that 357, the room that Nanny was in in the first, I think she said that 357 is some sort of triad, like an upper structure triad or something like that in music. If you take the bass note as being one, then your 357 gives you this sort of atonal chord,

which sort of, I guess, nearly is its own. little uh mini harbinger of of what's to come um oh one other thing by the way sorry not not to go not to keep going back to the earlier ones but there's a moment um in there's a moment in space babies where the doctor picks up a spoon and he goes that's a great word spoon um and then and then in this one a spoon features again and then what do we have in the finale you know, a key moment with a spoon. So I think there are

subtle little things. But I'll tell you, one oddity that I remember sort of absolutely obsessing me at the time was like, is that a deliberate thing about, okay, this appears to be Ruby's first trip back to the past. It's not necessarily,

but it's strongly signaled that it is. and um and yet here's here she is saying that it's that it's june in her timeline june 2024 yeah there's a bit of confusion about how much time has passed because the line is very the line is very very quick like almost like it was added in later or something but it's like very peculiar because you know obviously six months six months not to have seen um not well Maybe I was reading too much into it and assuming this was her first

trip to the past, but it sort of felt like that. And then we get her first alien planet the following week. And you're thinking, well, that's even further on for her. So it's like minimum six to seven months she's seen her first alien planet. What have they been doing all this time? And that began to make me, well, I know we're going to talk at the end about theories we had at the time. So I'm not leaning too heavily into that

stuff right now. But it did get my mind. taking over on a few things um oh there's there's so much so much stuff in this i love the fact we've got oh i'll tell you what actually um there was a clever thing in this um there's obviously that the whole business about the bad the bad music coming over to you know having entirely replaced the good and and the disastrous um consequences this will lead to you know um nuclear war eventually because people don't have that outlet for for

their emotions but um There's a really clever moment. I don't know if it's been mentioned elsewhere. And maybe it wasn't intentional, but it seemed to me that it was a clever thing. And I'm going to just bring in at this stage as a bit of an oblique but relevant reference, a big Finnish audio story called The Perpetual Bond, in which they manage to use a little bit of Beatles music. sort of, by not using the actual Beatles music. They used the opening, you know, the little French

anthem bit of All You Need Is Love. And they managed to work that into the story in a really clever way. And they do something similar here where they have, when the doctor's racing around trying to see if everybody's affected by this virus of terrible music, he goes in at one stage

and the orchestra is beginning to record. what what appears to be three blind mice but it's the same it's these and that's also the same little to me that was a way of sneaking in the opening notes of of uh all you need is love because it's the same as three blind mice and i just thought oh that's that's clever they've done that they've got that they've got beatles music in without paying them a penny even though it's not you know what i mean it's well the notes

um you know the notes at the end that they actually you know at the climax were those anything were those suggesting i'm not sure it'll probably take a better expert on on the beatles than me i i must admit i'm not uh i'm not steeped in in all that but um uh it could well be um could well be i did i did begin to wonder you know when when the the doctor's having that conversation with paul it's really dumb really well done when they have the two separate sort of interviews

as it were with with uh ruby ruby talking to John and the doctor talking to Paul and he says you know sometimes late at night and it comes from deep within I just have this sequence of notes and it goes and he I meant to go and play that on the piano and see if it if it sounded like anything but I think that is ultimately just what they play isn't it in the corridor after the sort of music battle and everything but yeah I mean this one i know i'm going to

kick myself after this for not having said like a ton more things because i it's it's it's packed with stuff i think i think it's incredible i think they really sell very very well that moment where the doctor it it's rare to see the doctor absolutely like petrified but you get it in this you get it at the moment where he realizes that with each of these guys from the pantheon he's gonna have as he puts it one trick once and he he is thinking on his feet more than he's ever

had to in his life and when he's when he's used up as one tricky he has no idea what he's going to do next and that to me feels incredibly tense and that feels like we really are getting into realms where the doctor's not quite been before i mean he feels out of his depth um you know and it's it's and and then should he plays up brilliantly like that moment where he's down in the cellar hole in the holding the sonic aloft

and doing his one trick once. And that whole sequence with the complete deafening of the world, whatever he does there just cancels out all sound. And that whole, the way they direct that, you know, the silently smashing bottle and the tuning fork being struck with no sound and all that,

it's really, really effective. Yeah, it's making me think that, like, I did also like the fact that, so this era, right from the starburst onwards has set up a lot of things like the meeps boss and um and the pantheon um but it hasn't strung those out too much like coming out of season one we still have the mysteries or questions about mrs flarden and a few other bits but we got a follow -up on the pantheon in the second episode in the season like um you know and that

It sort of comes back in the finale as well. And so I appreciated that, that, yeah, there's loads of stuff teased, but it's not drawn out to the point where, you know, you lose interest in these things. All the Beatles themselves, I think they were used really well, like just the right amount. You have those initial conversations, like you said, and then they come in to, you

know, save the day at the end. This is purely like my sort of expectations looking at like how much they were featured in the promotion before the broadcast. But I think I had in my head that this was going to be much more of like like along the lines of, you know, those previous RTD celebrity historicals. We spend a lot of time with those characters that, you know, we were going to meet all four of the Beatles and

they were going to be. like sort of main characters in this story um whereas you know it works fine with them weaving in and out as they did um but that was one thing that i was sort of expecting going in going in that didn't didn't pan out um what else was this the one we had a reference to to susan was this when they're on the rooftop yeah well that's first first of all yeah you're right he um And he starts talking about how he and his granddaughter lived just over there and

how they'd just been through the great foggy winter of 1962 and all that. And Ruby's just standing there kind of agape at the fact that he's just dropped this fact. There's a really odd moment there, actually, where the doctor, having said to her, you know, what happened to my granddaughter? Well, she probably got killed in the Time War. And then he laughs in a really strange way. It's like, what's funny about that, doctor? But I think when I look at it again,

right, I kind of think. that's a really interesting acting choice and it's sort of playing the truth of that because you know you're either gonna laugh you're gonna cry it's it's like it's chaotic forces of of of your you know the emotions just spilling over in that uh but but he's i guess he's sort of um I don't know, for Ruby's benefit, he laughs rather than cries, you know, but it's a curious one that, you know, it's a choice. Clearly it's a choice, but it definitely hits

oddly, memorably, but oddly. We also have the billboard, you know, with the very early version of what, what is it? The carolers, who will eventually go on to be John Smith and the common men. And so there's... There seem to be further little, I guess what will ultimately turn out to be red herrings, or are they, as far as Susan is concerned? Certainly there were red herrings this season.

I'll just mention, because I know we need to move on in a moment, but in terms of the fourth wall stuff, it's not just what they do with the music and those references to non -diegetic and

those things. We also have... uh it's interesting that in this we actually get uh we get june hudson playing a part and we get um bodger limbs son if i remember correctly as the as the music instructor and i don't know this began to see things in my head that either ultimately went nowhere or are yet still to go somewhere although i have anyway we're going to touch we're going to touch on that soon i know but but um uh yeah just just in case i don't remember to list them all as

bullet points at the end these were some of the things coming into my awareness I was thinking are they doing some really clever stuff here or is it just stuff you know it's just like June Hudson wanted to be in it so you know they weren't telegraphing anything intentionally you know there wasn't some complex meta plan it was just okay June Hudson wanted to be involved and Roger Lim's son happened to be an actor who and it was nice to give him a part or whatever but Yeah,

and the episode's themed around music, so, yeah, sort of out of universe, it makes sense. Also, one final thing, although it's set in 1963, there's a kind of, and this is a game where it maybe feels a wee bit more Disney's than some of the others, there's something about some of their choices. They've got, like, obviously the Abbey Road cover, and I understand why they've done that, but since that belongs a bit more to the

late end of the 60s. um but that you know it already has that feel out in the street with the beetle park and everything and then um they've got uh those very vibrantly colored costumes in the dance sequence at the end and everything uh to be 1963 i mean in my head 1963 isn't black and white anyway but but you know it it should feel i don't know somehow in my head it should feel a bit less colorful than that but maybe it wasn't you know maybe that's just my um you

know my my from having watched William Hartnell's era or something. Yeah. Yeah, I know what you mean. Maybe that was like a conscious choice about tone as well. And it obviously got a lot more colourful in the final scene. So they were probably, I think they were playing with the amount of colour as well as things went through.

Oh, and the first overt mention of although I know we had had Susan twist before, but this was the first time they really hammered on that notion of the twist at the end and what was going on, you know, it's like big, big neon signposted that if we hadn't spotted it already sort of thing. So that's where, that's where things started to get very interesting in terms of what the

heck is going on. Yeah. And again, like adding fuel to theories about in and out of universe connections and, like metatextual references like referencing the the actor's name um but uh yeah yeah there's loads more we can say about this one i'm sure but should we should we go on to our third episode of the season which is boom and this is steven moffat coming back to to doctor who not as a showrunner but again like the first rtd era as a writer um I really enjoyed

this one. I don't have loads and loads to say about it, though, but it was just like a really solid concept. I think Stephen Moffat talked about pitching lots of ideas and being told by Russell T Davies that, oh, you've done that, you've done that, and then landing on this one. Yeah, and I think it's a great sort of concept. It's realized really well. You get into it very

quickly. It doesn't waste a lot of time. getting into the setup is it is it just before the credits or just after that the doctor stops steps on the landmine it's just before it's like you see the lights sort of spin around and then his eyes into the credits yeah that that's that's i think a really good example of um like post 2005 doctor who using the pre -credits section to to squeeze in a cliffhanger um and to to get like a kind of like classic series cliffhanger in there um

like something really exciting that ramps up the tension and uh and then you go away for a minute or two and rather than waiting a week to see the next episode you know you see it play out after the credits but um yeah i like those those cold opens in the post 2005 series that have like a really strong compelling lead in like that um But yeah, what were your impressions of this one, either on first viewing or if that

has changed with a rewatch? First viewing and every subsequent viewing, I have just loved this thing. It is, I love, I just love the beautiful simplicity of that idea and it builds entirely around this one moment, like this one sustained moment of tension. It's just, it's incredibly

mesmerizing. and and yet agony to watch and the doctor sort of getting his zen on as you as you as i'm sorry as he puts it is um you know he has to use every reserve available to him to to stay as centered and as calm as he can even while awful things are happening you know ruby gets shot at one point um he's you know I love that moment where Ruby first comes out of the TARDIS and he's singing the Skyboat song and he uses poetry and songs to sort of you know

just grind himself and pull himself out of the immediate now and into more abstract realms but the whole time he's just right on this knife edge the whole way through and I think it's I think as good as they have been up to that point, I think that was the strongest. A huge section of it is just almost like a two -hander for them. And the way she plays that scene where she hands over the urn, let's say, the squashed, the smelted body thing to him. And he's going to counterbalance

himself. And she says, no, I need a beat. So it comes back to her kind of musical side again. This is one where, I mean, and Shidi gets over -criticized, I think, at times for being the doctor who cries all the time. But I think in this one... Yeah, it's the one where it's justified. Most justified because, yeah, he's controlling. You know, he needs it. He actually needs it to balance himself out. Otherwise, he's literally going to explode, you know, and he's going to

take half the planet with him. We get the introduction, of course, of... uh mundy flynn who you know clearly has has as we now know from the season two trailer um will go on to have a connective significance how loose or or or intricate that connection is we don't yet know but there's there's an overtly signaled um connection um and uh that's very interesting and she comes in and plays that part very, very well. So you can see absolutely why they looked at her and went, can she be given

something else? Can we have her more full time? And yeah, I just think that is such a, it's such a, it sounds a really obvious thing to say, but it's such a Moffat -y script. You kind of go,

yeah, he has this. um down to fine art you know it's very polished um i love some of the things i don't know whether he has scripted it like this or whether and should he kind of workshopped it or whatever but there's moments where this doctor says certain things where you go i can't imagine any other doctor saying that it's just it's like that moment where he's like do you get get get it you know or um I can't do this or a patois or whatever, but at some point he

refers to Faith Gill or whatever. He's got these ways of putting things. You go, yeah, that's absolutely unique to his doctor. And yeah, I love, there's something about the rhythms of the speech in it, the tension of it, the way those moments play out. And he has paced it just

beautifully. one thing layers on top of another and then it hits a total crisis point and of course the old tablecloth trick at the end it's a little bit the one sort of slight weakness of it but I can forgive it this because obviously we're going to have to pull the cat out of the bag somehow but you know the dad sort of using his dad skills to subvert the system is you know it's veering into that sort of same territory as you know daddy's coming home or whatever from

closing time that kind of it's it's there's a very fine line between um an emotional uh payoff and something that's just pure cringe but i think he stays just the right side of the line there um and the sort of kiss kiss payoff and all that is i think like there's i think what makes that work for me is that like a lot of this episode is quite brutal and grim so it's it's it's kind of balancing things out to have a little bit of sort of sweet saccharine resolution because

there's some awful stuff that happens to people leading up to that. There's a beautiful thing at the end where the Doctor says snow isn't snow until it falls and I just love the poetry of that. It sort of slightly echoes Paul Cornell's thing about two snowflakes were the same long ago in an English spring from the end of the human nature, the book version of human nature. I don't know whether Moffat has absorbed some of these little influences and then subconsciously

or even consciously put them in. But yeah, and then he quotes Philip Larkin at the end as well. So that's nice. Yeah, there's lots of, and at one stage the doctor's reciting this poem, you know, which is clearly to do with his own experiences.

stealing of the moon and the president's wife and all that stuff and um yeah there's just some really just interesting stuff thrown in there while he's while he's doing his whole stream of consciousness to to to stay grand he's using every everything he's got in his in his his personal mental armory there and and um it it's it's fascinating to watch and i i think uh Yeah, it works incredibly well. The other thing I mustn't forget to mention is this was Doctor Who's first use, wasn't it?

What do you call that piece of kit, the big wall? I don't know if it was... The thing I'm thinking of is the volume, but I don't know if this was exactly... It was the same kind of thing, that

sort of video wall. But yeah, I was thinking of exactly that because I think Moffat's talked a lot in interviews about how, in theory, this was going to be the cheap episode of very... enclosed uh you know one set uh limited cast um but he's also said this thing about you know there's no such thing as a cheap uh episode and did we talk about this last time about heaven you know like things like that but like actually there's so much more work that needs to go into

like coverage and editing and and and and it's it's sort of other things take the place of the things that you're saving money on um but yes this was and it comes back in the finale in other places but they that that whole battlefield landscape was created on those those screens yeah um it seems to be one of those ones where um different people's eyes seem to work a different way ways for this because for me i was absolutely sold on it like i there was very very few shots in

that where i thought yeah that looks like a person stood in front of a screen once or twice perhaps but i mean you know like if we can sit as fans as we do and watch i don't know like planet of giants you know underworld is the yeah the big giant photographic Yeah, exactly. We can watch all these things, and then you see that it's streets ahead, and you go, well, I can forgive

it, the odd moment of two -dimensionality. And then there's whole other sequences where stuff that you know must be happening just on a flat wall looks absolutely like it's in three dimensions. There's a sort of a phalanx of things that comes across the sky and does the cleaning up of the battlefield and so on, and it looks for all the world. Yeah, I noticed that watching it, re -watching

it, that shot looked really good. And I think they did a lot of this with the Meep and the Wrath Warriors in the previous specials, like doing as much as they can practically. So yes, they might be using this big screen, but they're still dressing and building enough of the set in the foreground with real stuff to sell it

for me anyway, like it didn't. take me out of it at all one thing i really uh like about this is is the doctor's music is on faith towards the end because he sounds quite almost bitter and cynical about it you know yeah at one stage in his his most stressed out moment describes faith as this radio excuse for not having to actually think about things you know but then at the end he admits that as much as he doesn't like faith he he needs it so there's a beautiful

balance to that And, you know, he's a man of willful contradiction, the doctor, anyway. So I just kind of love the way that was done and the exact language used around it. And it's very respectful of believers and non -believers alike, I guess, in that respect. I think Moffat is quite deft and thoughtful in the way he approaches that kind of topic. Yeah. Oh, and one final thing.

You know, you mentioned, obviously, this was this was Moffat's pitch like what if the doctor does that thing he did in Genesis of the Daleks but we just turn that into 50 minutes well this was another thing that got my brain working around the whole hmm are they are they deliberately you know is this the show dropping yet another meta thing in but anyway I'll try and tie that all up in a bow at the end of it when we get to our yeah what was your theory conversation

here and the stuff about religion like Moffat had done a lot of that with the the church of the silence and in a way he's like doing more world building on top of that with filling God and, and all of this. But yeah, like, like you said, I feel like he engages with it more directly in this episode than he has done in the past. Like, you know, lines like, you know, faith being

an excuse for not thinking. And it feels like more like on the nose than it was in the past where it was more dancing around it, which is

like a reference to the church of. the silence or whatever um and uh although we did have like the the anglican soldiers they that they're a returning element as well aren't they because they popped up in previous stories yeah we had those guys in um oh gosh good man goes to war and uh was it in the angels oh yeah of course yeah the first one that matt shot wasn't it the old uh yeah that one so yeah uh well Speaking of which, shall we come on to 73 yards? I always

get the number wrong. It is 73. 73, yeah. Sometimes I say 43 and I've no idea why. So it is 73. And I believe this was the first thing that Mitty Gibson shot, which is pretty impressive given how much is going on in this episode. It's a Dr. Light episode because they were working around.

um and shoot his availability uh for this first run um but i think this is this is the one where there's some really really obvious connections with years and years which is like one of the big things that um that russell davis had done in between his two periods on doctor who um so you can really see a lot of that coming through um uh but it's also It's also like, yeah, like taking that necessity of we don't have the actor who's our lead available for the whole run, but

really, really turning it into a virtue and showcasing Ruby as a character and using the absence of the Doctor as this really unsettling threat that catapults her into this nightmarish world. It's sort of like... When I was re -watching it, you can make a lot of connections to turn left, but it's done in an almost more disturbingly real -world way. It's about very real political positions, and there's a really clear hint of sexual violence or some sort of abuse with one of the assistants

in the later half of the episode. um but yeah i thought there was loads loads going on in this one uh so one thing that generated a lot of discussion was like the resolution but before we get on to how it was all tied up what were your overall impressions of this this episode i really really like this um there were complaints at the time that we'd had you know whether we were about to have a doctor you know this and and an episode we'll talk about next week the very next one

sort of put doctor light episodes back to back but for me not really a problem because the following one dot and bubble which we'll get to um i think you know you I think it's a fan thing to be aware there was less shooting time for Intuiti than necessarily... You feel their presence because they're always popping up in the messages. That's right. So they get the most out of their shooting days that they did have. But in this one, I think just unavoidably, it was going to have to be

Ruby carrying it all on her own shoulders. They turned that into very much a feature, not a bug. It's very... We talked about how... Last week, or last episode, we discussed this. We were talking about what our expectations of what Russell T. Davis would bring back into the show from how he'd evolved as a writer. And in the meantime, of course, he'd done years and years. And we got a very, I think this is, maybe you already said this. Apologies if you did just a moment

ago. But, you know, I think it's the most years and years influence feeling episode of the season. And there's even a wee touch of something like the second coming there, because there's a bit where Roger William is kind of laughing malevolently, and you see almost like those little white dots in his eyes. It's like that kind of demonic kind of feel to him, and you see that he is the absolute monster that he is implied to be. There is something deeply unsettling about it, and yet it's kind

of... There's a warmth to it as well. Ruby's story, the bit I particularly love is that montage you get in the middle where they've chosen an old Libby Siffrey song and they just play out her sort of coming to terms with being halted by this phenomenon and almost in the end making

peace with it. It becomes an old friend and then she realises it's... at some point she has this revelation um of what it all means and and and she goes you know come on we have work to do and she's talking to the the apparition and um but she looks back at the camera at that point so that's like another i noticed i nearly noticed that this time how she looks right at the camera in that moment of we've got work to do and again that's like a bit of a fourth wall yeah um uh

i i know it's It is a slight, it's one of those things we're slightly inclined to roll our eyes at where we say, okay, how many years is Ruby supposed to have aged by now? And, you know, I guess there's only two ways you can really do that. You either add prosthetics to somebody which is never an entirely successful venture, or you do what they did here, sort of style her hair differently. Give her some big glasses.

But on the other hand, it is the future. So, like, you know, you see, you know, when she's looking outside her window there with a glass of wine toasting her sort of frenemy there, you know, there are little nice touches like holograms, like Blade Runner type of holograms going on in the sky off in the background. And you think, well, you know, maybe the average, you know, 40 -year -old does look like a 20 -year -old by that point because there's technological advances.

So, you know, there's things like that. But yeah, I mean, I didn't get too distracted by stuff like that because I think the story itself is so compelling. I think it's really effectively written. And yeah, it's the one where Russell T. Davis sort of manages to get under your skin. There's a whole, you know, it's sort of like darkly comedic, you know, that whole business

with the Welsh pub and the punters all. playing a collective practical joke on Ruby because they want to get back at the English for being so maybe stereotyping in how they view these Welsh villagers, you know. So that stuff's kind of scary and fun at the same time. But yeah, I just love the feel of it. I love that moment. There's something about the exterior shots have been filmed in December, as I believe it was. what that adds in terms of the quality of the light

and the snow gently coming down. And I don't know if that on that occasion was real snow or ruby snow, but we have it nonetheless. And then, yeah, Susan Twist's appearance in that one is a really interesting one because it's her at her most benevolent, I guess, and friendly. And you start to think like, what is going on here?

Like, you know, why is she so... different each time um and this is the point at which like she'd made several appearances and it was like okay they haven't just reused an actor that they liked there's yeah there's some significance to to this yeah so but the way that one wraps up um with the the return to the you know the book ending at the end I love that little payoff where where he says oh yeah you never mentioned the third time you were you were here in Wales and

she just sort of says oh I suppose it must have been now, which is just the last lingering awareness of the reset timeline. And on re -watching it, it seems really clear to me on a re -watch that

that is meant to be her. But I remember watching it the first time around and it felt more ambiguous or vague or there was some wriggle room of is that her or is the woman that she's seeing some other sort of external... entity that's jumping back in time but yeah looking at the way that the voiceover goes over the view of our hands moving it's it's older ruby telling her younger self how to avoid this timeline it's also one of those um in doctor who terms only only occasional

episodes where really there's just a sort of unresolved ambiguity as to what the whole causation of it was, really. Yeah, the fairy circle has never come to be. Russell, I remember it was driving some people absolutely bonkers, and there was quite a divide between the people who said, look, it doesn't need to be explained, and those

who were saying, no, it absolutely does. But I kind of tend to sit on the side of, look, if it's intentional and well done ambiguity, and half the power is in its mysteriousness, Then just take it for what it is and enjoy the atmosphere and the journey. Well, that's the other thing that's not explained is how her older self can loop back. And when we get to the finale, it suggests that there's something to do with the TARDIS because of that distance of the perception

filter. But how does she actually even manage to go back and communicate with herself? Talking of the TARDIS, I remember one of the things I was thinking when I first watched it. I don't really think this now, but when I first watched it, it genuinely was in my mind that, you know, when she first goes to the TARDIS there, you know, he's disappeared. And she checks, you know, around the back and then she goes to the front

doors and she's kind of talking. She goes back a day later and she's talking to him through the doors and going, look, maybe this is something you just sometimes do and you're in there. But I would really love to travel with you again. And if you ever want to do that, I'm here. But it occurred to me that he could very well be on the other side of those doors. And for some

reason, he just needs to... It is one possible explanation, actually, that he did stay in there and that having perceived something that needed to loop and couldn't interfere in, he... he did what he needed to do and maybe did nudge things with the TARDIS from within or whatever. I don't know. I lean towards that not being the case now, but I like the fact that it's at least one

of a number of possibilities. And on the face of it, you could take it as quite a cruel thing, but maybe just one of those needful things that the Doctor just has to do to get things back on track. I feel like he would have come, especially this Doctor, I feel like he would have come clean after it was all resolved. Yeah, possibly. Then, as he will later go on to say, there are no unkind ways to do the necessary to save someone or to

save a situation. So, yeah, I don't know. One image I really love is just the TARDIS on that cliff top. I know I talked about this last week, but when David Tennant had his whole speech about what happens to the TARDIS when it goes off. And, you know, when the hads is triggered and it goes off somewhere and then centuries come and go and civilizations rise and fall. And we get that sort of in miniature here with the TARDIS

just sitting there for decades. And it becomes this, it's something really moving about the fact that people come and leave flowers there

and nobody really knows why. But there's probably this just residual gratitude in people for something that they intuitively recognize to be, you know, associated with it's the iconography of the guy who saved the universe more times than anyone can count and they they feel it more than know it you know um so yeah there's a lot of poetry and atmosphere in it and i just love i just i really i just i could watch it over and over and over again and just um so so one of our like

wrap -up questions was like which which of these um these five episodes is your favorite and i really struggle to answer that question and not to be too negative but it's like space babies is the weak one for me or the or the least good it's it's like okay um i'd then place uh like church on ruby road it's like that solid intro but these last three i really like all three of them devil's cord boom and um 73 yards and i feel like they they're all really good and

interesting in different ways um so i really struggle to rank those last three but do you have a favorite that jumps out it's similar to yourself i would say space babies yeah i i couldn't argue with you that that's the weakest as much as i seem to enjoy it more than some other people and maybe you do as well and uh Then I would put Church next and then The Devil's Chord would

be like a strong 8 out of 10 for me. But those two, Boom and 73 Yards, sit like shoulder to shoulder as just like, certainly out of the first half of this season, the strongest ones, like they're 9 or 10 out of 10 for me. They just hold

up to repeated view time and time again. and just been for the ride every time you know just mesmerized yeah and and given okay so we're both a bit mixed on space babies but maybe see like some some value in it but um like more than more than others might but one other question we had is like if there was a someone new to doctor who or hadn't watched it in ages where would you tell them to start with this new era would it be the star beast or Church and Ruby Road,

or would it be Space Babies? I think I'd go with Church. I think I'd have to go with Church and Ruby Road on that one. I just think it's the cleanest kind of break. And Space Babies is... I'm not saying it's too weak an episode to start with, but I wouldn't want... If it was a betting round, I wouldn't fancy my chances of getting somebody to watch a further episode after Space Babies. They might, you know, depend, because

everybody's got radically different tastes. of what they like out of their doctor who and you could show some everybody's had the experience of well well not everybody but a number of fans like what i've tried over the years to sort of get some not we into watching doctor who and you choose you think that's city of death surely that's the one you show them city of death and they just five minutes and it's like i can't you know and you're going are you kidding me

this is like one of the best things ever made but um yes maybe i could have shown them paradise towers and they'd have been like right Give me everything else. I don't know. It's a strange

alchemy, that whole business. But yes, church to me feels like the one where you go, right, you're not being presented with, as it were, a choice of doctors, you know, because somebody watching the tenant ones and then sort of seeing and should he come in, it's like maybe they were just getting, maybe they were just warming up

the tenant, you know, somebody new. And then they're given this whole other Doctor and they're like, oh, but I want to know more about this other guy and I know he's got older episodes, so maybe they're kind of pulled back towards that instead of forwards towards the shitty. Whereas with Church and Ruby Road, it's like you're giving him fresh out of the box and kind of firing on all cylinders and showing a lot of range. Yeah, I think I agree that Church is

the most solid introduction. The only wrinkle is that there are all these little bits that are set up in those tenant specials and one of the big ones is the the weakening of the walls of reality with salt and it's not essential but maybe maybe the ideal order is like non -linear is to start with church on ruby road and go forward through that first season and then if you're really enjoying it and waiting for the next season go back and like almost as a prequel fill in

those um yeah those uh those tenant specials and then go back to the classic series if you want but uh yeah church on bruby road is that sort of it's it's not overly laden with the history of the show unlike when we got onto the the finale which is sort of the opposite um and because the salt because because a new fan starting there and i mean a completely new fan starting there has no awareness that doctor has tended not to lean quite so far into the supernatural before

it's not a problem for them it doesn't seem as this you know and then then they can discover if they dip back in that it used to be a bit more so it's different yeah so one last question before we we wrap up and it's that one that we've been sort of skirting around is so when we were watching this first time around we were halfway through the season we had these new little uh you know new choices about inclusion of music and playing around with lines about it being

non -diegetic and people looking to camera and what were the what were the theories that were sort of in the air about where this was all going um i know that my own personal theory which i think you know substantially came just from my my own madness but but i think i picked up bits and pieces from from you know discussions on gallifrey race and so on as well and assimilated bits of that in a magpie fashion into this great unified theory um and basically what i was thinking

was um that that the show was trying to build up a was seeding in the whole way along this notion that was going to resolve in in a in a a blind siding um to the casual view or any way revelation that that doctor who actually is a tv program and the doctor doesn't know that he's been in this tv program which of course would not ultimately turn out to be the case but that's what he would be set up at the end of season to believe and i even had this vision that um

you know, like Stephen Powell was going to walk in and sort of, and you'd pull back and it'd be cameras sitting there and, you know, mad stuff like that, you know, in Bad Wolf Studios. It's not unprecedented. There's, you know, like Deep Space Nine and Buffy and I'm sure loads of other shows have done that. Maybe not as a series long arc, but they've, like a lot of these sci -fi shows have had that one episode that sort of plays with the idea of, you know, what if this

is all in? our lead character's head or you know what if this is a show that they've they've written and it's sort of become their imagined reality and so yeah it's not completely out there i'll tell you what the um the real kind of i know russell t this is where particularly took hold of my head as a very uh plausible possibility and then it's my own fault that it ran you know the theory absolutely ran away with me and i got a bit too fixated and turned every non -relevant

detail into something of significance i could start listening to them all but but it would be it would take all night but um there's i know russell t davis is a big fan of um or at least a big advocate of big finish i know he's listened to a lot of big finish and it wouldn't necessarily be just doctor who stuff and there's a story it's a sapphire and steel story called the mystery of the missing hour and i wondered had he heard that or had he taken that kind of idea Well,

I guess this is a spoiler for anyone who hasn't heard that, but then the chances of anybody who's listening to this wanting to hear it is probably relatively slim, you know, or be able to get hold of it at this point. But it's a story in which the twist is revealed to be that the people

in this audio drama are actually in. they're trapped in a recording studio acting out these parts and they don't even know it you know so they've become their sort of fictional counterparts but they're also doing things like they begin to realize as they come as they gain awareness of the fact that for instance actors are doubling up and things like that and then no two people can talk at this you know two particular Characters can't talk at the same time because it's the

same actor. And all this sort of starts to break down their conditioning so they begin to realise where they are and what's been going on. And so I tried to look for the sort of television equivalence in this season because I thought they were starting to see that in, you know, with... The non -diegetic line. Yeah, non -diegetic

was one example. I mean, just to use a totally random one, at the end of Boom... there's a moment where the doctor is standing at the TARDIS door talking about, you know, snow isn't snow until it falls and so on. And he's rummaging around in his pockets looking distracted and he's clearly after, he's clearly looking for the key, the TARDIS key. But he looks sort of distracted by a thought, like something's not quite adding

up for him. And then Ruby just hands him the TARDIS key from her pocket to him and he goes and unlocks the door. And in that moment... completely incorrectly as it turns out, I was going, that's the one that sells it for me. I think I'm all to something with this theory because what they've done there is they've very cleverly given you a moment where a prop that's shared, you know, a single prop that's shared between two actors is shown, literally been handed across on camera.

And against this sort of... You could argue a slightly intentionally fakey -looking background with the volume or whatever you want to call that thing. I think it was still really well done, but if you were the sort of person who thought it maybe looked a bit set -like, you could say this is TV telegraphing itself as TV. Now, obviously, the way the series ultimately went, I was initially very disappointed because none of the steering got blown out of the water

completely down the line. Or it's still to play out in a later season, but I don't think that that's where we're going anymore. Yeah, let's definitely come back to that in our next episode because, yes, it was blown out of the water by the end of season one, but if you look at the season two trailer, there's fresh stuff that you could use as fuel to think about the walls of reality being. No, I've learned my lesson. It's just that you're right to be that the candy

man's coming back or something. No, I'm thinking in particular of that cartoon character that's featured in the new trailer in season two. There's something literally there about a fictional character jumping out of a screen. But yeah, we'll see.

We'll see soon. At the time of recording, just a few... weeks off um yeah from the new series okay all right uh well we'll we'll leave it there we've uh we've got the second half of the the series to jump into and and like i said when we cover that second half and joy to the world which i think will be a nice uh which is one that you know you were really positive on and i i liked a lot as well and that'll be a nice uh nice one to end on and then we'll talk a little

bit about all my homework this time instead of uh yeah and then we'll we'll do a little bit of speculation and looking forward to season two as well and uh and thoughts and then yeah let's let's see whether our predictions for season two pan out or not over the next couple of months um but uh yeah so Thanks very much for joining me again for this look back at the middle part of RTD2 so far. And yes, we will see you soon for part three.