The Interstellar Song Contest

You're listening to a podcast of Spurious Morality. Only now am I thinking we should have done some kind of intergalactic song contest related intro to this one. Where's Connor? I bet he does a good Ryland impression. No, let's not inflate that upon the world. Hello and welcome to the 803rd episode of a podcast of Spurious Morality. We should have arranged the whole podcast so that this was the 803rd episode. Yeah. A bit

of an oversight. We should have recorded another sort of 670 -something episodes in the last week just to get ourselves there. Yeah, we've slipped up there. Hello and welcome to a podcast of spurious morality. I'm Johnston and with me again this week I have Mansour. Hello. Hello. And we're carrying on looking at the latest new current series of Doctor Who. And the most recent episode is the Intergalactic Song Contest. And I think

expectations were quite high for this one. It was obviously a bit of a high budget episode. you know, a writer that has done some Doctor Who stuff before but hasn't made it onto telly yet. And we were teased, Russell T. Davis teased that you really want to watch this one as quickly as possible so you don't get spoiled. And I think he was very, very right about that. This is the first one this series where I have kind of gone, yeah, I need to watch this as soon as possible

and kind of got to... Got to it on iPlayer as quickly as I can. And I'm glad I did because I managed to get through to it without at least one thing being spoiled. I did kind of see the other spoiled on Facebook. It's my own fault for logging onto Facebook. But yeah, I think this one justified the hype. I think that we've actually got an episode that... Was built up beforehand. A lot of people were kind of expecting an awful lot from it. And I think it delivered.

This is going to be a very spoilery chat. I've not done spoiler warnings for a while, but I kind of feel as though we should do one for this one. Like you're listening to a podcast episode about the Intergalactic Song Contest. I'm hoping you've seen it by this point, but this is going to spoil a lot. Because we've got two big, big, big things. We've got a lot of little things, but we've got two huge things. One of those things was obviously the on -screen return of Susan,

who I think we're going to see more from. She kind of appeared, she said a few lines and then she disappeared. I hope that there's more to Susan's first proper appearance in the series since The Five Doctors to that. And we also found out that Mrs. Flood is the Rani and bi -generated into another Rani. So now we have two Ranis. And I can't believe neither of the next two episodes are not having their names changed to the two Ranis. Why would you not? Surely it's so tempting.

It's very easy to just sort of dig into these things that I've mentioned. It's very easy to just kind of go, oh, it's the one where Susan comes back and it's got two Ronnies at the end. But actually there's the episode itself, which was sort of in some ways like standard political Doctor Who fare, but in other ways it was really, really well done. It was a really engaging story. It was, you know, we had a good villain, a really well played villain, bit of a tragic villain,

you know. They were sort of in their own heads. They were freedom fighters. They were getting revenge. They were making a point. The idea that the Eurovision Song Contest carries on to be this big intergalactic affair with trillions of viewers, I thought was brilliant. Ryland, as himself, was a great bit of casting. The surprise cameo from Graham Norton was brilliant. It wasn't a surprise, actually. We were told about it. But the cameo from Graham Norton was brilliant.

You know, him being the one that tells the Doctor that Earth was destroyed on the 24th of May or whenever it is. That was great. And everything fit together. Like, even talking about this episode now, it feels like I'm just kind of emptying a kitchen sink and then throwing the kitchen sink in as well. But actually, it all gelled together really nicely. It was a really good,

really fun episode. I think the bit that's maybe not getting the amount of discussion that it deserves is the fact that the Doctor went pretty dark in this one. Like, this is the most sinister we've seen this Doctor. I'd say it's the most sinister we've seen a Doctor behave probably since Peter Capaldi when he was running around shooting Time Lords. Really, really good. Like, Shooty got a couple of sinister moments and...

They were good sinister moments. They were well -written sinister moments, really well -performed sinister moments. And I like just getting the odd reminder that the Doctor can go a bit dark and the whole, you know, there's ice in my heart

now speech was absolutely brilliant. Really felt like we got, it felt slightly like this Doctor's sort of Zygon inversion moment, you know, that moment, I think I mentioned it last week, actually, when we suddenly got, This absolutely out of this world, this is what this actor is capable of performance at Capaldi. I feel like we've now got that with Shooty, which is just great.

So I was a really big fan of this one. And I'm actually now at a stage where I've seen some of the people kind of ranking the episodes of this season, you know, putting this one certainly very close to the top, if not at the top. I can't do it. I think any of the last, certainly the last three episodes are potentially the best

episode of this series. It's just so good. Like the quality we're getting this year is, it's some of the best, some of the consistent, most consistently brilliant Doctor Who we've had for quite a long time. I'm really enjoying it. What about you, Mansour? Where were you sort of on

this episode? this series as a whole so far i guess because that's where i went with that um the the it's interesting because i probably feel quite similar to you with all the stuff you mentioned but i've seen very mixed reactions to this episode there are some people calling it i could do the gym just with like you know youtube reviews popping up in the last few days i've seen some people calling it okay and some people calling it like the worst episode of the season or this or this

era um but yeah it's definitely towards the the top for me um like really good spectacle i think that was another part of the expectation that was built up by the whole sequence of uh the audience being um sucked off into space uh and at that point you don't know that they're going to be preserved or or put into um uh like like stasis because you don't know anything about that field the way it's played is that those hundreds of thousands of people are just being

slaughtered immediately in this huge um incident uh so yeah just like so the impact of that and just the visuals of that sequence were really striking um like a lot of things it's there's like elements that feel very familiar from rtd1 like uh you know meeting those side characters who conveniently play uh or conveniently have the skills to rise above just being a sort of standard ordinary person and being really vital to the to the plot um that that was all that

was all great uh oh you mentioned the the uh politics of it as well i think and um that that's one of the things that i've seen people criticize it for as much as praise it for, with a lot of people saying that it was an oversimplification or a ham -fisted handling of politics and a bit black and white and the resolution was too neat. And I can see all those things, but it's like when people are making all these comparisons.

between like lucky day and adolescence and there are some interesting comparisons to be drawn but like one of these is a is a is a major bbc one show aimed at the whole family and one of them is a is a netflix drama that is a bit you know a bit more niche has gotten a lot of attention but is definitely more niche and is something that will have a much more selective audience The fact that Doctor Who has this big mainstream flagship show can even start to engage with these

types of ideas is, I think, itself something. Like, yes, it could be more nuanced. There could be, you know, if you had three or four hours to explore this stuff, you could delve into it with much more sort of political literacy and detail. But the fact that it's just raising that... It's saying words like genocide. Did they use that word in this episode? I'm trying to remember. I'm probably thinking about it because there was a lot of use of the word in the UK Parliament

today. I think, yes. I think it was used. I think so. I think so. I mean, that's definitely how

it's played. Even if the word isn't used, like ethnic cleansing or genocide, that's what's... or like exploitation to the point where it is effectively that we're just stripping that planet of resources and this was written a long time ago because you know in political terms like but all the stuff that's going on today like I said like the day that we're recording this uh you may be listening to it far in the future but there was a lot of discussion about that

word genocide in the in the uk parliament it's something that is really relevant and unfortunately continues to be relevant over the last few decades so yeah i think politically yeah could have been more uh you could have had like a lot more detail and nuance there, but I think it's a massive thing that it even goes into that area and I think does an okay job of it in the constraints of this big flagship BBC One show. Okay, so what else was going on? What else did you talk about?

Because you covered a lot of stuff at the start. Oh, The Doctor as well. You said that was one of the things that stood out to you about The Doctor's turn. Yes. Yeah, I really like that. And again, like I mentioned, Joy to the World and that moment he has there. And I think we're seeing a lot more of that this season. I feel like, again, I think that we're feeling pretty

close to each other. I think we talked about this before, but it feels like in season two, or actually from Joy to the World onwards, that this Doctor, you're seeing a lot more layers to him and you're seeing a lot more depth beyond

that. super hyper happy exterior and that's still there it's like with Peter Davison where you see those layers to him where he's not just this relentlessly pleasant friendly character there's that that irritation and sharpness underneath the surface and and I feel like we're sort of getting far enough in to see those sorts of layers to this doctor now and yeah I think they're really interesting and just how far he goes like because we've had moments where the Doctor has kind of

been pushed or gotten to that point with the whole Time Lord Victorious arc and was it Solomon in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship? That one stood out quite a bit as well, where he was, was he deliberately sending him to his death on that spaceship? Yes. And, but this just. And I mean, if you look at it literally, what he does to the family of blood is much worse. That's like unending, eternal

torture and imprisonment. But he talks here about, you know, hurting him like millions of times for all of the people that he was threatening. And the way it is played in the scene, it goes on for a long time. It's not just like once or twice to make the point of the doctor getting to the point of violence. How many times is it? Like four, five, six, seven? It's like he does it again and again and again. And I thought it

was interesting. Belinda's reaction to it was interesting as well because she comes in and she's quite rightly shocked by it, but she doesn't actually challenge him that much on it afterwards. Maybe they don't get time before the TARDIS doors blow in, but it's... What did you think of Belinda's reaction to seeing how far the doctor had gone? I was certainly expecting a conversation that

we never quite got. Yeah. There was the line about, you know, you do scare me sometimes or something like that, which felt like it was going to go into it. You know, it felt like there was another line that was going to come after that. Like, you know, you can't do that again, doctor. That was... that was too far, you're not, judge,

jury, execution. And we didn't get there. But I can't immediately remember whether we didn't get there because they were interrupted by Graham Norton or whether we didn't get there because it just wasn't going to happen. Yeah, I wanted a bit more of that. I mean, like with Donna in Runaway Bride, it's like a much more deliberate moment of challenging him and shouting at him

to stop. Yeah. it doesn't have to be quite as as dramatic as that but I wanted something afterwards to and and it was a bit it was all a bit mixed up with the fact that this was played as the episode where Belinda is starting to have fun and like you know chooses to to stay and and I feel like there was an opportunity to do something with that of like she's at that point of starting to to like the doctor and to see how great he is and then this could have like pulled the rug

out underneath of that, but it wasn't quite sort of followed through in as clear a way as I wanted. And it's kind of where this series felt as though it was going at the start. Those first couple of episodes, first few episodes, we really did have quite a bit about the relationship between these two characters. And it seems to have been, it's not forgotten. It's still there. And we do, you know, we are getting lights like you

scared me and that kind of thing, but. At the start of the series, Ida expected this episode to have a little bit more of a gut punch in relation to these two characters. And yeah, you're right. It just wasn't, it wasn't not there, but it wasn't quite there. It's like we thought about it and then that was enough. Yeah. And it's like you were saying last week, I think, that we've only

got so much time with Belinda. and we're into finale territory now so again worry slightly that it's a missed opportunity to to give her story a bit more more weight i really like the performance and the character i i feel like more interested and engaged in the character um and not criticism really gives them but just like i feel like belinda's got more interesting stuff to her in terms of the character But, yeah, I'm seeing these sort of missed opportunities to

go a bit further with her as well. Yeah, and I'm hoping that they... I'm hoping that there's a moment in the finale to kind of pause and, you know, discuss this kind of thing. I hope it's not just a case of, you know, at the end of the finale, OK, Belinda, we've got you home now, that's what you wanted, see you, bye, and then that'd be it. There needs to be some conclusion to this that isn't just, okay, Belinda's home

now. But that list of things to wrap up that we talked about last week, that's just gotten longer because now we have two Ronnies. Is Kid potentially coming back? That seems to be the way it was played, unless that's for a future series. Yeah, I get that that might be more of a... this villain will return. Think Cassandra and that kind of thing. Possibly. But then Russell T Davies has also said that this unholy trinity that's being referred to, the Rani only counts

as one of that trinity. Yes, they're still both the Rani. Because I was joking about the Rani in a previous episode. I had no idea she was

real. really going to appear but then she turned out to be real so now I'm worried that Omega is going to turn up next week with zero introduction and two seconds of a classic episode as a flashback as if that helps people understand who he is if they haven't seen all his previous TV stories And I'll be honest, I really don't think Arkham Infinity can be saved by a 75 -minute edit with a bit of CGI thrown in. Then again, can Time and the Rani? Oh my God, are we getting Time

and the Rani? Well, Time and the Rani had some of, for the time, really impressive special effects. I don't think it needs... I guess you could cut it down, but... Yeah. Maybe Mark of the Rani. You could probably shave out the entirety of the second episode of Time of the Rani and not lose too much. Yeah. So maybe that could make a Tales of the TARDIS episode. I don't know. I like to think they'll do that again. I like to think they will go, okay, let's watch Mark

of the Rani, Time of the Rani. If it is Omega, let's watch. Three Doctors and Ark of Infinity, if we have to. Was the last year's Pyramids of Mars, Tales of the TARDIS, was that announced beforehand? I think Tales of the TARDIS was announced, but I didn't think we knew what it was going to be, because I think there was speculation that it was going to be basically a clip show of the series so far. And then SUTEC came back and immediately we all went, oh, right, it's

Pyramid to Mars then. And then they announced it pretty quickly after that, that it was going to be, I think. But we don't have any slot for a new episode of Tales of the TARDIS announced at the moment. And I think we'd know by now. I don't know how far in advance they announced that. Then again, it doesn't necessarily need to be announced. It doesn't need to be broadcast. It can just go on iPlayer without any warning. Yeah. Like Pyramids had a BBC 4 broadcast, didn't

it? Yeah, I think it did, yeah. I think that was around that time there was like something on BBC 1, 2 and 4. I don't know about 3, but yeah, like with the War Games, there was like basically something new -ish Doctor Who on multiple BBC channels. Yeah. That sounds about right.

Just going back to the point you were making about sort of politics before, and it kind of makes me laugh that some people are saying it didn't go into the politics enough because all I've heard for the best part of a decade now is there's too much politics in Doctor Who. And then the moment an episode sort of doesn't really go into the politics, oh, well, that wasn't political enough. Oh, I think it might be. Enough politics.

I think the reason for that might be is that criticism is coming from a different direction. So it's not like the sort of Conrads and right -wing grifters. It's actually more like some sort of left -leaning people who are saying this oversimplified some really important stuff and it should have... Yeah, we could have done something

with that. Yeah. I agree. But yeah, it just shows that... not everyone is always going to be happy and i think there are too many people who seem to think that they should be the person that happy you know the i've watched this show for 45 50 whatever years crowd and therefore i know exactly what it should be like slight warning for i think they're like officially released production stills but there's there's stuff coming out about the finale that's making me increasingly

think that it's going to go in that direction the fact that we've got Conrad set up as sort of representing that type of person who would be at the sort of more toxic end of Doctor Who fandom if he wasn't pushing you know political conspiracies and then you've got a production still of him holding a Doctor Who book so and we've had fans brought up like sort of less toxic kind in in Lux I wonder if it is going to get into that, this thing of not just Doctor Who

is fictional, but turning the mirror on fans and the audience, which stuff like Love and Monsters and other things have done in the past, but I wonder if that's going to be the big thing about the finale. It's going to be interesting to see how Conrad fits into this. I know it's like an unholy trinity and all that kind of thing, but... The Rani working with a right -wing podcaster.

And we're told that... I've seen it mentioned that this isn't just character, this is the Rani, this is an experiment, there's something very Rani -ish going on here. Yeah, I'm kind of curious as to how Conrad fits into all of it. What's called the reality... No, the penultimate is Wishworld and then the final is the reality war. Conrad had that line about denying the Doctor's reality. Is there something about the Rani's experiment allowing her to manipulate reality

and rewrite the Doctor's history to... And maybe that's where this ice in his heart thing is coming from. It's like that's the first bits of... This sounds like exactly her plan from time in the Rani. Like, the third member of the Unholy Trinity is a gigantic brain. I'm calling it now. You heard it here first, and probably last. So yeah, maybe the... Oh, or maybe it's the Valiant. Maybe the Doctor is the third member, and Conrad's

going to turn the Doctor into the Valiant. You see, if it was Moffat, that would definitely be it. The Doctor would be the extra bit of evil. That's very Moffat -y, but I'm not sure Russell T. Davis would do that. Interesting. I think it's going to be something Pantheon -y, or Omega's in control of all the gods now. We'll get a clip from the three Doctors where he goes, I should

have been a god. Yeah, and in extended media, Omega's been... much more treated as a god or god figure, like the novels and, I think, audios as well. But there's also the Master, whose gold tooth was trapped inside the Toymaker's tooth, and that's never come back. So are they going to pop up? Yeah, and I've always taken that as a thing that's just going to be used when. when they need it to. Like, there you go, the master, there's an easy way to bring him back if we need

it. Yeah. We'll see. So we've kind of touched on this, or, you know, the next point of discussion was going to be the doctor in this episode and him, you know, him going a bit evil. Well, not evil, a bit dark, a bit sinister. And we've kind of covered that, you know, it's what he does. But it's interesting that the thing that pulls him back is visions of Susan. Caroline Ford's back. This is proper Susan. We've not regenerated Susan. We've not. And I honestly do not believe

that this is the last we've seen of her. There's no way you bring her back for the sake of those few little appearances that don't really quite make all that much sense. So where do we think the Susan thing is going? I don't know, but yeah, I agree she's coming back. And again, in Unleashed, she was wearing what looked like a different costume from the ones in the shots that we saw, and I think it would not be a surprise if she's

back. So Susan was the one who definitely snapped him out of that moment where he was about to be frozen. But I'm just thinking about how it played out towards the end of the episode, because didn't he ignore her when she was saying, she was telling him to stop. I feel like it was something else that actually made him stop in the end. I think it took her a few times telling him to

stop, but eventually he did. Yeah. And it's, it's, I don't know, maybe she's going to have some role in, like, rather than it being just like happy reunion, she's going to be back and it's going to be her stopping the doctor. Or it's going to be that just her in person is the thing that pulls him back from the edge. You'd certainly hope. Yeah. I'm curious as to how all of this fits together. Yeah, I've got no idea. Yeah, it feels like we've just got a lot of pieces

on the board randomly at this point. Like the Doctor and Belinda are on the board, Earth's Been Destroyed is on the board, the Rani, both Ranis are on the board, Conrad's on the board, Ruby's on the board, Unit's on the board, Mel's on the board, Susan's on the board. How do these pieces play together? What's it all going to? It kind of feels like where we're up to with...

Avengers Doomsday at the moment where we've got a lot of chairs with names on the back and no context and yeah I'm just okay all of this is going to be in the finale there's a lot to fit a hell of a lot to fit in yeah I think that's a good comparison but like even more so with this finale because with Doomsday yeah they'll do some heavy adaptation but we've got the original comic stories to get a sense of how it will play out and how all those characters will form into

teams and come up against dr doom but yeah with this finale i've got no and again it's like we're saying about before about the second half of this season it's it's quite nice to go in not knowing how it's all going to play out um because like with in season one we just had fewer elements and it was like the stuff about Ruby on one side and then Sutec as this late in the day reveal and those two things were tied together just about I can't see all these dozen different things

you listed how they're all going to be wrapped up in a neat little package but we do know they're all there yeah And there's other stuff as well, like we know that Susan Twist's in it, Susan Triad character's in it. Oh, yeah. Well, they announced she was coming back and she's not been in it so far, so that's what I'm getting. Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I sort of go, hang on, that's in there as well, isn't it? Oh, we know we've got Poppy from Space Babies

as well. Yeah, that's a big one as well. Yeah, the more I think about this, the more there is going to be in the next two weeks. And actually, we know nothing about the plot. We just know a lineup of what's in it. Very curious sort of how any of this is going to fit together. What was the Rani's line? Let battle commence. Yes. That doesn't really... Like with who? So this is the other thing. Mrs. Flood has this complete switch of being really meek and subservient after

the bi -generation. I don't buy that at all because you think back to the way that she was talking when she was with Cherry and when they were dusted.

Yeah. So when the David Tennant's 14th Doctor by generated he doesn't become a different character it's played as it's a split and he is the same regeneration splitting off to the side so if it's the same logic with mrs flood she's not going to go from someone who's talking like she can go up against gods to then just being this really meek person i think there's a lot of like sort of barely hidden disdain or superiority and she's just playing the new Rani or giving

her the sense that she's this meek person? Yes, I get the same impression. And that leaves the option open of is the Mrs. Flood regeneration of the Rani actually on the Doctor's side? Because there was hints of that with previous Mrs. Flood stuff. The way she would say... Was it the same episode when they get de -dusted? She talks about the Doctor being that clever boy or something. Yeah, because everyone started going, oh, it's

Clara. Yeah, and that's not the way that the Rani in her traditional camp evil persona would talk about the Doctor. So maybe this is like

an aberration. regeneration of the Rani where it's like Missy and like she's she heals yeah and yeah yeah so I feel like there could be something really interesting going on with her which I hope there is because I hope we get more of Anita Dobson beyond just like following the new Rani around who looks really great as well but I hope Anita Dobson doesn't get too sidelined which is a risk with this these dozen different plot

elements again to link up. At this point, I do sort of wonder if we're going into a Doctor Light episode again. Maybe not like completely Doctor Light, but I'm thinking The Stolen Earth, how it takes the Doctor the whole episode to actually get to where everything's going on. And it's sort of a bit more led by Unit. Torch Wooden, Sarah Jane. I kind of wonder if maybe that's...

We're going to get that as a first episode, you know, the Doctor trying to get to Earth and maybe Unit are leading things a little bit and, you know, by the time the Doctor gets to Earth, everything's already gone dreadful. Oh, yes, Unit as well. Like, yeah, are we going to have space here for... more set up of the spin -off? Or is that just going to be its own thing and kind of not have too much of a hard link into the main show? Or at least a continuation of where Lucky Day left

off. Yeah, because I think things were said by the writer or Russell T Davies about that having important links to the spin -off, like the public reaction to Unit. Yeah, so maybe there's a little bit more of a look at that. Hard to say, but I do like where it's all going. I just hope it can stick the landing. And I did find that last year's finale, I really liked the first part. I thought it really built up suspense. We had the whole extended sequence in the time window.

Yeah, that was good, yeah. It built up and it built up and it built up and it was really tense and I just don't think we're going to have time for that this time because there's just so much there. The majority of that episode was trying to figure out who Ruby's mum was. That was a very, very big chunk of that episode. We kind of had Mel doing a bit of undercover stuff as well, but essentially... Yeah, and we're not

going to get that this time. We're not going to have time for that big build -up if everything that we've just listed is all going to get a decent sort of slice of the cake. Again, I sound like I'm going into this finale really negative. I'm not. I think it's great that all of these things are sort of together. We kind of know what the ingredients are, but not what the final dish is. And we know that Russell T. Davis can handle a finale where there are a lot of characters

that need serving. Like, we've done that. We had it with Stolen Earth and Journey's End. And if this ends up being half as good as Stolen Earth and Journey's End, we're up for a pretty good finale. Yeah. Yeah, I'm really curious. I'm sort of very cautious about... all of this being wrapped up in a satisfied way, but also really fascinated as to what it will look like. Yeah, it's that how for me, like how is this

all, how does it all fit together? Because it just feels like a lot of random pieces at the moment. Yeah. Which is good, you know, we're sat here talking about it, speculating, so that's, it's kind of done its thing. It's the old playground discussion analogy, isn't it? And that kind of thing. So it has done its job. It's got us talking about what it's supposed to have us talking about. But really, I'm really enjoying going into a Doctor Who finale with absolutely no idea where

it's going. And this could be the first time. This could genuinely be the first finale where

I've not really known. what's coming at all you know everything else we've had leaks we've had spoilers we've had set reports we've had you know we've been told stuff we've had stuff going into this time there's it's nothing like i'd struggle to even tell you where it was set like i assume earth on the day that earth gets destroyed like that's that's the best guess but We don't know how it gets destroyed, who destroys it, why it gets destroyed, how it links to any of

the things that we listed before. So the one thing we haven't talked about much is the music in this episode. Yes, I was hoping to avoid that. I thought it was pretty authentic. Yeah. Picking the sort of major types of Eurovision song, it felt very authentic to that. I'd be curious to, because we didn't get them all play out in full, if they do a sort of mini soundtrack release like they did with the Goblin song single, I'd be curious to hear them in full. But you weren't

impressed, it sounds like. You just want that full version of Dugadoo, don't you? I mean, you and the majority of other people I've spoken to about this episode over the last few days. I like the first one as well, the one just before everyone gets sucked off. Yeah, that sounded good. And yeah, just be curious to hear them play out in full. Like I preferred this to, there's always a twist at the end. Yes, absolutely. No,

no, you're absolutely right. The music was entirely sort of authentic to the different kind of styles and songs you get at Eurovision. It totally was. It was very, very well done. There was certainly a better understanding of, Eurovision than The Devil's Chord had of The Beatles. That kind of thing. Again, it's not particularly my genre

of music. I'll sit and watch Eurovision and have one too many to drink and a bit of a laugh with it like everybody else, but I'm never going to be the person sat there going, I'm actually going to get this song and listen to it normally. Do people do that? Is that a thing? Are people doing Eurovision soundtracks? Yeah, I think they definitely do full Eurovision CD soundtracks. They used to do them. There'll be digital ones now. I'll never forget when Sam Ryder with Spaceman, which

did quite well, obviously. UK entry did quite well. I'll never forget the massive mistake he made when it came to titling his album. Because it was, there's nothing but spaceman. Which, it's not what you meant, is it, Sam? But the reviewers picked up on it. But yeah, it's, yeah, it was, like you say, it was perfectly authentic. It genuinely felt like this is what Eurovision is going to be if it still exists in. many, many,

many years' time. Considering most New Doctor Who has been broadcast on the same evening, well, most series have had an episode broadcast on the same evening as Eurovision, I should say. I'm amazed they've not done this before. It's such an obvious thing to do when you think about it. But in the same way... I'm kind of glad that it's happened now because this episode would not have looked as good five years ago, let alone 1520. Yeah, definitely. This was another one

where we saw the Disney budget. I feel the need to put a little TM next to it every time I say Disney budget. But yeah, this is another episode where we definitely saw that Disney budget doing its thing. This is how Doctor Who should look. Yeah, like I said, that sequence near the start, like really early on, that was one of the most impressive, but just generally throughout, like all the visuals outside the space station, all of that was really impressive. Yeah, it was great.

So is there anything else you want to add or discuss or anything like that at all? Yeah, we talked a lot about what this is setting up for the finale. Belinda, the Doctor, the villain themselves. And again, coming back to the fact that if you had lots more time, you could flesh things out. I thought he was in between Conrad and the guy from Robot Revolution in terms of depth and complexity. I feel like Robot Revolution guy is towards the bottom. Conrad's the most

interesting and layered. And then this guy is sort of sitting in the middle where he's got some sort of charisma and depth to him, but it still is a bit, he doesn't really go on any sort of journey. And maybe that's the point of his character. He's kind of already been on the journey at the start. And what goes on in this episode are the actions following that. But yeah, you're right. There was never any kind of moment of

regret. Like the episode ended with him in exactly the same place as it started, which he kind of did with Conrad. But I think Conrad, you can

look at Conrad and you can see. a real person we see these people in the media at the time you know you can yeah he's got the messiness yeah like he's got the messiness to him as well of like is he is he actually does he actually believe this or is he just a grifter and it's played with enough complexity that you could read it either way at times yeah um but comrade is not a pleasant one but very much human yeah yeah and it's whereas Yeah, the villain in this,

I've actually forgotten his name. Kid. Kid, yeah. Yeah. Automatically, Kid wasn't a human and therefore lost all of those links to real people and real situations and real personas. It lost all of that. While where Kid was coming from was definitely

a similar place to. where a lot of humans are um you did sort of lose a level of character complexity there because we're we were only told quite briefly actually about what happened to the home world and there's hints about how the race is persecuted but again there's no real it doesn't go into it at all it's it's it's sort of there but like again like the belinda confrontation it's there but like could have been made more because isn't there a line about where his name

comes from that it's not because of a baby goat it's because he was his parents were killed or he was taken away from his parents before he was named or something so there's little like if you look closely there are those very sort of dark hints and layers there but actually his accomplice was the one who I think had a bit more depth to her in a sense that in the sense that she seemed conflicted certainly more conflicted yeah like she she went on a bit of a journey

but still kind of ended up in the same place yeah nevertheless um yeah it's definitely one of those episodes where the doctor's presence did actively make everything better You know, it's very easy for the Doctor to not actually have that much impact on what's going on, whereas on this one, everybody would have been screwed without the Doctor. Yeah. So, yeah. But, yeah, no, you're right. There just wasn't quite... We did need that little bit more. There wasn't

quite that Conrad level of... But, you know, Lucky Day had... It did take time to explore Comrade and it did explore him on a very human level and he didn't particularly interact with the Doctor much. It was Ruby, another human character who we have spent a lot of time with. That was kind of his main point of contact for the audience. Yeah, but definitely not a bad villain, definitely not a forgettable villain. definitely a villain we have seen in Doctor Who quite a lot before,

I think. But yeah, you know, the motivation was there. We know what it was. You can kind of look at it and go, yeah, see, I can see how he's got there. He just didn't really go anywhere throughout the course of the episode. And like the Disney money stuff, this is where like the new budget lines up with the storytelling maybe, because yes, we've seen characters like him in Doctor

Who loads of times, but we've never seen. their actions or the impact of their actions play out in, I think, quite as much sort of quite horrific detail, like all those people seemingly being killed. You don't see that sort of killing on that scale in most Doctor Who? No, absolutely not. I did kind of wonder, when it happened, I kind of wondered, okay, you know, is the Doctor going to be the only survivor here? You know, is this going to be a, have we just watched the

biggest death count in all Doctor Who ever? Which, you know, we've had the suggestion of mass death in Doctor Who. You know, think back to parting of the ways where the Daleks bombed the Earth and literally reshaped continents. Yeah, but that's from space. Yeah, all you saw was a little computer graphic of continents changing shape. Exactly, yeah. But no, it would have been pretty massive to have just left it. I noticed the line of dialogue, they're all alive, went in pretty

quickly. There was obviously the immediate tension when you saw everybody lift up. Yeah. It was the very next scene where we go, oh, they are still alive, by the way, guys. It's okay. Which I think is okay. Again, it's like a show aimed at the whole family. You don't want little kids to feel that hundreds, thousands of people have been slaughtered and just leave them with that for half the episode. If it was Big Finish, it would be right at the end. Oh, by the way, there's

still a gravity bubble. Everyone's okay. And if it was the New Adventures, billions of people would just stay dead and that would just be part of the Doctor's character now. If it was New Adventures, Kit would have succeeded and the Doctor would have let it happen because maybe he was right. I don't know. All right. Well, I think... I think we've covered it. I think we've got it there. It was a great episode. It

is a great series. I'm really looking forward to talking about the next two episodes because I have no idea at this point what it is we're going to be talking about. And that's quite exciting. So Doctor Who's got me excited. I think it has this whole series, to be honest. I'm invested. I'm wanting to watch it. You know, watching it at 8 o 'clock when possible. That kind of thing. As I said at the start, this is the first one where I've kind of gone, yeah, I want to watch

this as quickly as possible. Everything else I've kind of watched when I can. Always on the Saturday, of course. But this is the one where I've kind of gone, yeah, I need to watch this now. And I think that's how I'm going to feel on this coming Saturday as well. And Saturday after that, it's going to have to be seven o 'clock. Yeah, I've booked it for the cinema and I don't think it's feasible to try and avoid

spoilers for Wishworld. So I think it will have to be at 8am viewing for Wishworld and then re -watch it in the cinema. It feels insane to try and avoid for the whole week. Well, I also need you to watch Wishworld straight away so we can talk about it. It would be really interesting trying to talk about an episode with you that you'd not seen without spoiling it, which is not a challenge. I think we should try sometime. Yeah. Right. Well, we shall leave it there, but

thanks as ever for joining me, Mansoor. It's been really good discussing this. Yeah, my pleasure. And yeah, we'll be back to talk about Wishworld next week when hopefully we'll... we'll know what we're talking about. We'll have something to talk about. And hopefully some of the speculation that we've kind of suggested here will be proved to be right or wrong. We're going to be talking about Omega next week, aren't we? Like we actually are. Yeah, we'll see. Well, thanks very much

for listening, everybody. And we will be back for more Spodcasting soon. Goodbye now.