You're listening to a podcast of spurious morality. I reckon we should name her a star that. Get a little bit of paper. This star is called Spodcast. Hello and welcome to a podcast of Spurious Morality. I'm Johnston and this week I'm joined by Mansour. Hello. Hello. And we've got a new episode of Doctor Who to talk about, which is always exciting. We're going to try and keep up with this series. We've kind of paused our podcast schedule that
we had planned out last summer. And we're going to talk about the new series week on week and see how we get on. So quite exciting. New Doctor Who. The Robot Revolution was episode one. Had quite a lot to do. Fit quite a lot into, I think it was about 50, 55 minutes. Introduced new companions. Set up a few things for the rest of the series. Carried on a few mysteries from the last one. And just generally, generally was a pretty decent episode, actually. I think it was quite good.
What were sort of your initial thoughts on it? uh same i thought um like quite a solid opener and like with a lot of season openers even going back to rose uh the the villain and that thread was relatively light but it was focusing on introducing a new companion and just doing some of that character work and i thought it was yeah really successful uh yeah in terms of introducing belinda and yeah Yeah, introducing Belinda was definitely the
priority. And I quite liked how for the first sort of 15 minutes or so of the episode, it pretty much focused on her. The Doctor was kind of in the periphery and the Doctor kind of became the main character as the episode went on. But it took a little while to get there. But it wasn't... You know, we sort of have done similar things before, particularly with Rose and Smith and Jones, where there was a heavy focus on Rose and Martha for the first little bit. Yeah, same
sort of template. Yeah. But I felt this actually spent a little bit more time on Belinda than either of those two. It felt like it was just a little bit later into the episode before the Doctor got fully introduced and had the, you know, I'm the Doctor moment. He'd been working away in the background, obviously. It's established that he'd been on the planet for six months and all that kind of thing and seemed to have a sort of pseudo -companion already, although she got
killed pretty quickly. So, yeah, I quite liked that focus and I think that worked well. We just spent a little bit of time getting to know the companion and getting to see their reaction to all the weird stuff going on. alien world and all that kind of thing before the Doctor is introduced. Whereas in Smith and Jones and Rose, the Doctor is introduced kind of before slash as it all gets weird, whereas we kind of got the weird moment before the Doctor came into it this time.
So I quite like that. It's, like I say, similar template to what RTD's done before, but it just sort of... went a step further. And I feel as though I know Belinda a little bit better after one episode than arguably any other companion. So that's good. Same. And I think it really helps that Belinda, I feel, is already a relatively interesting and different companion. She's got those elements of like Tegan and Donna and being like a bit more challenging or oppositional with
the Doctor. But I felt like in this episode, it's played a lot straighter and a lot more sincerely than in those other examples at times. Like with Donna, certainly it was much more played for laughs, like when she's getting to know the Doctor in those first couple of episodes. But here, and I guess we'll get into it when we get into those final scenes, but it's much more kind of dramatic and interesting and layered, I thought.
Yeah, and it just feels as though we know this character, this companion, a little bit better than we have any others after one episode. And I think we might not be spending all that much time with her. It could well be that we have eight episodes with Belinda now and that's it. That could be all of it. And we know Ruby's coming back into the series at some point. Do we know what point Ruby's coming back into it at all? Is it episode four? Is it the unit one? Episode
four, I feel like. Fair enough. Yeah, I've kind of not looked into that. I think it's Lucky Day. Yeah, the fourth one. So, you know, we're going to spend more time with Ruby anyway. We know about that. And Ruby's already had nine episodes, ten if you count the Joy to the World cameo. So it's... Yeah, I think it's important that we did get to know Belinda a little bit quicker. And I think just giving her a little bit more focus of that first episode was the right way
of doing it. And obviously, you know, it turned out the entire focus of the episode was kind of on her. You know, we go to a planet named after her and all that kind of thing. And there's still a mystery there for the Doctor to pull
apart. But then you kind of have this moment at the end where the Doctor kind of... goes through her time stream and knows everything about her and all that kind of thing and it it sort of it kind of skips a lot of the doctor getting to know the companion while we've actually had time to get to know her as well so they're diving straight in anyway they're not sort of messing about and taking a few episodes to introduce her i think you need to do that oh sorry go on
well i was going to say which they kind of did with ruby you know we kind of got church on ruby road we got space babies and then by the time we got to devil's court it was oh we've been together for six months now and all this is going on and the tardis is perfectly normal and all that sort of thing i wonder if that's going to be if that if that gap is going to be filled in this series because i've heard something about like a russell d davis had said something about
like a flashback to something in series one um So I wonder if there's like some grand plan and that wasn't just a bit of, that wasn't just an odd time jump. It was something that's going to be filled in. But what you're saying about getting stuck into getting to know Belinda, I think the same with like the series arc. I think with eight episodes, you don't want to, you don't want to pad, you can't pad things out and, you know, wait a few episodes to start introducing
this stuff. You have to get it going in episode one to... to have room to do anything interesting with it. So I liked that they set up her character and they got the arc story for the season kicked off as well. Yeah, and continued kind of brings us on to our next talking point, actually. Continued what's going on. We had Mrs. Flood pop up at the start and it turns out she's living next door to Belinda, which isn't where she was last series. And she breaks the fourth wall again,
which I think is quite significant. She's done that a few times now. At first we kind of all just sort of cast it off as a bit of a gimmick and, yeah, good joke, she's broken the fourth wall. But it seems to be something she does. It feels like more than that now at this point. You're right, like once or twice, like end of the Christmas special, end of series one, you could maybe write off a couple of them. it's
becoming a very conspicuous thing with her. Yeah, it's good that we've got something that's gone on over more than one series. We've had a lot of one -series storylines that haven't quite padded out or haven't had time to breathe. I'm thinking back to Series 9 when we had The Hybrid, which was a... A fairly cool idea that never quite got explored beyond the idea of a hybrid being mentioned once per episode. Whereas Mrs. Flood, it feels like there's genuinely a mystery
being built up. There's something going on there. And I think I've read somewhere that she's in every episode this season. I don't know if I've made that up or not. Yeah, because there are cast lists. for some of the episodes at least. But yeah, she's definitely popping up in, it seems like, the majority at least. Yeah. Which is worth noting we did kind of have last year with the Susan Triad character. So I'm not entirely sure, you know, are we just repeating the sort
of tease from last year again here? Or is this going to go in a different direction? Because... I liked the idea of the same face, the same actor turning up in each episode. That really worked well. But then at the same time, it worked well last series. Is it going to work as well this series or are we just sort of going to go weekly cameo again? Yeah. Like on the surface, it's
the same. But I guess like... the implication at least is that this is the same mrs flood and all these locations and that's the mystery of like how does this person get to all these different places when he thought she was just ruby's neighbor initially uh so so yeah it's it's kind of but then that's this is one of the things i was thinking about this whole era and mark and i talked about it a bit in the the retrospective episodes um i'm enjoying a lot of it and those those retrospectives
reminded me of how much i enjoyed in series one and at the same time i keep getting reminded of how and this might this is completely like my expectations like going into this second russell t davis episode in my head i sort of thought he's going to do something really you know mad and radical he's going to take all of those other dramas that he's done in the in between years and and completely reinvent what Doctor Who is.
And that's probably a silly expectation because it's a format that you can't stretch beyond a certain point. And yeah, like you're saying, repeating between series one and series two, there's a lot of things that are repeated or echoed from the last 20 years or even further back of Doctor Who. But even just like the season structure, like the fact that you have a mystery, that that is just being something that we expect
now. Yeah, and I'm a big fan of every season having an arc or arcs that stretch across a few seasons. I remember how sort of radical it felt at the end of Series 5 when... You know, the Earth, well, the universe had been undestroyed and rebooted and, you know, the consequences of the mystery had kind of been solved, but the mystery itself hadn't. And then, you know, we had all the stuff with the silence and that kind
of thing that followed. And it was nice to just have that little sort of acknowledgement at the end of Series 5, oh, there's still a few questions to answer and that kind of thing. And then we've got a similar thing here, but this. This feels more ongoing, like the whole thing with the silence
in Series 6. I like Series 6 generally. I think I'm one of the people that probably enjoyed it more than others did, but it did feel a little bit clunky going from that mystery setup at the end of Series 5 to it sort of turning quite a bit in Series 6 and going in various different
directions. Same. I thought Series 6 was like a really, really... strong interesting like six or seven episode mini series with like these other random stories slotted in in between and kind of in that transitional thing of like do we make doctor who like an ongoing serial drama like like all streaming shows are or do we stick to the monster of the week thing and the x -files had that a bit as well like you know years ago like they had their very archy episodes and then
suddenly it was a bit of whiplash going back to like your monster of the week stories and with doctor who series six being just you know much shorter uh yeah it took up time when and especially when you had those big revelations we're getting into a bit of a series six retrospective now but especially when you have those big revelations about you know amy and river you you want to pick up on those like in the next episode and run with them and it kind of knocks the momentum
out of it to just have like a traditional story and it does that story a disservice as well because it might be a good story but it's in the wrong place um but yeah but i agree with you i liked i liked a lot of series six like i liked what it was trying to do yeah i mean you know maybe maybe the shorter episode count now could actually benefit this because like you say you know series six could probably have been four or five episodes shorter and actually been a really, really tight
little piece. But when you're watching through series six, you get to sort of night... It's not night thoughts, is it? That's Big Finish. Another one you mean, the one with the peg doll? Yeah, the Mark Gatiss one. Yeah. I can't believe I've forgotten its name. Night Terrors? Night Terrors. It could be Night Terrors. Whenever you get to that one, it feels like you've just hit a barrier. It really does feel like we've been moving in directions. We've had the big
two -part opener. We've had the flesh two -parter that went straight into A Good Man Goes to War, which went near enough straight into Let's Kill Hitler. And then it just feels like a big... doesn't it? I mean, by looking to the future, it sounds like Russell T Davies wants to stick around from what he's saying. If Disney did renew, it sounds like he'd carry on for at least another few seasons. And I'd be interested to see what
he comes up with. But I also really want someone new to come in because you look at the changes in showrunners, those are the times when the
format has shifted a little bit. yeah you know series five was a bit safer but it was moffat's one of moffat's early seasons series six where you had that experiment with the format of the arc and the season and then um tribunal had some like other approaches like i think like culminating in flux which was i guess flux is what we're saying series six could have been like six episodes telling a much more concentrated story with more momentum And then it feels like we've come back
full circle and we're now getting eight episode compressed versions of Russell Davis's original 13 episode structure. So, so yeah, always excited to see what he comes up with, but I would really like a new fresh take on what Doctor Who could be next. You see, I think what I'd like to see is sort of a period of. I think one thing that has sort of perhaps negatively affected the series quite a bit is every so many years, the whole thing just seems to pause while we change over
showrunner. Yeah. And it's not a hard reboot. I mean, you know, in context of the series, it is kind of a hard reboot. You know, it's actually quite jarring going from, I don't know, Twice Upon a Time to Woman Who Fell to Earth, for example. And I wish we would actually have some kind of crossover, you know, how kind of Barry Letts and Tony Stick hung around for a bit of season 12 and, you know, Robert Holmes and Philip Hinchcliffe
were involved with 11. Like on screen, companions would carry over to like bed in the new doctor and have some continuity. That was a bit of a tradition. Yeah, that would help as well. So I'd quite like to see that. Let's say Russell T Davies, I think he said in an interview in the last week that his intention is to stick
around for four or five series. Well, could he be sort of co -show running with the next person for series four and five and then just give us a sense of continuity, give us a sense that it's the same series? Because sort of... bringing down a hatchet and going it's a different thing now every five years I think might actually have
been to the series detriment. We haven't had War Between the Land and the Sea yet but I wonder if spin -offs might be a part of that as well because again at the start of the new series we had Sarah Jane running and Torchwood and those are a form of continuity as well because you could have the spinoffs running alongside the main show, and they don't necessarily need to stop when the main showrunners take over. But,
yeah, anyway. And, you know, having a spinoff is a pretty decent proving ground for the next showrunner, absolutely. I mean, look at Chibnall. Chibnall did a pretty good job on Torchwood, actually, particularly the second series. I think the first series was slightly chaotic production -wise in terms of who was actually in charge and was it a Russell T Davies series, was it Chibnall who seemed to be brought in last minute
and all that kind of thing. Whereas the second series, which was pretty much Chibnall all the way, that was really good. It was pretty solid, pretty coherent storyline. Just tone and everything.
It felt like it knew what sort of show it wanted to be, whereas Tortured Series 1 was... had some good bits but like when i was watching it at the time i i remember just the whole time trying to work out okay what what sort of tone are they going for like what what sort of vibe is this and then yeah series two just felt like much more self -assured like you know this is what talk should is yeah and it you know it had things like that very sort of loose three -parter featuring
martha through the middle and you know the whole owen being killed story and that kind of thing And that was brilliant. It was really, really good. So maybe just, yeah, some kind of moving forward, some kind of showrunner crossover, handover series or two, just so there's a smooth transition and not like a hard, it's different now, knock on the head, feels like you're restarting. I suppose Russell T Davies has brought things through
from other eras. unit characters and that kind of thing coming through from other eras so it's not it's not entirely sort of locked off the past whereas woman who fell to earth really did feel like complete and total divorce from what come before as did the 11th hour um and yeah i think i'd rather have just sort of a more smooth sense of things moving forward i guess showrunners might This is just speculation, but I'm assuming when a new showrunner comes in, they kind of
want to put their stamp on it and draw a bit of a line and say, like, this is what my vision of the show is. And then I think in both those
eras, they did start... Well, like, you know, Kate comes back in later Chibnall episodes, and so they do start bringing in more bits from... previous series eras but yeah like that that is one thing russell davis has done this time like fully embraced the timeless child stuff and i think actually built on that in like an even more interesting way than we actually had in in uh in the 13th doctors era so yeah he's been like very open to embracing like the past
20 or further further well with sutek much further back than 20 years as well Yeah, but I guess Russell T Davies has got the confidence to do that because it's something he did very, very, very, very slowly throughout his first run. It wasn't all dumped there in rows. We didn't get a reference to Scarrow until the end of the second series and Gallifrey came after that. He felt
like he was very cautious. He was worried about, because I guess this is coming off the back of the TV movie where in the first like 30 seconds you get like a Wikipedia article about the Doctor and the Master and the Daleks and that opening narration. And I felt like I imagine that was at the back of his mind when he's writing Rose and thinking about those first couple of seasons to not do that and to very consciously and carefully introduce things in a way that makes sense to
new people. which there's definitely been a shift in over 20 years of New Doctor Who now. Like you say, we had Sutec in Series 1, which still kind of strikes me as mad. We got a special edition of Pyramids out of it, which is fantastic. So, yeah, it's good that we are able to now go back to stuff a little bit more. I guess. And if certain rumours about Mrs. Flood are true, we're going to be doing something similar to that again. So I'll sort of hang a very tentative spoiler
warning before I start discussing this. But there's rumours out there that she is somehow is or is linked to or is bi -generated from or whatever you want, the Rani. Now, okay, we've had 17 million Rani rumours since 2005, but there's obviously something... I don't know. This one feels like it's a little bit more serious. This one doesn't feel like it's as tongue -in -cheek as everything else. I sort of hope, I really hope not, unless
it's for a couple of reasons. I just don't get, maybe she's like fob watched and chameleon arched or something, but I don't get that vibe at all from Mrs. Flood. And maybe it's a thing of like, sometimes Time Lords personalities do change in incarnations. But, and also the other reason is, again, we've got eight episodes and to tell like a really sort of interesting story about.
Belinda and whatever's going on with her and I just feel like it sort of takes a lot of air time and space away if you introduce this big classic series character from decades ago and maybe they've sort of given up on like making it that 2005 approach of just working for a fresh audience but yeah like how well does it work to have like Sutec and Durrani as your big big villains like Amo gives the other rumour isn't it that alongside the Rani same with him that
feels like something that Big Finish or possibly the books should be doing and the TV series especially if it's meant to be this fresh new era with a big international audience should possibly be doing something new I mean I'd have to debate something you said there, actually, which is the Rani's a big villain. The Rani is not a big villain. You know, the Rani is not the Daleks, the Master, Cybermen, even Sontar and that kind of thing. The Rani popped up in two stories.
Dimensions and times, technically. Two stories and a charity special in arguably the most obscure. eras of the classic show um couple of big finishes since and it's just sort of like the rani as a character as a concept i suppose is quite interesting sort of the ethics free ends justify the means scientific it's like a different take on a villain titled Yeah, like the Rani serves a purpose.
The Rani does something specific. I don't see what the Rani would be doing knocking about in, you know, this time where the Pantheon gods, Sutex, Toymakers, whatever, are kind of creeping into our universe. The Rani does not fit into
that. That's not the Rani's MO. Not at all. in the finale to series one the way that mrs flood is talking just before she's dusted is like she's talking as though she is some power like on a level with the gods or is a god herself um and yeah the rani is very you know might be egotistical or arrogant but doesn't feel like the kind of thing that she would it doesn't feel like the way that she would talk about herself she's a scientist like how is she suddenly talking like
some sort of mythical superpower. Yeah. If you've got a good sort of slightly mad scientist story to tell, use the Rani. It makes perfect sense. But if you are messing about with gods and superior beings and all this kind of thing, no, doesn't make any sense. I can see the Master kind of having something to do with it. The Master's gone after godlike creatures before, think like the demons or the time monster, that kind of thing. Yeah, that would make more sense. Yeah,
it's not around anything. I do hope that rumour is absolute bobbins, but if it turns out to be sort of anything at all, I hope it's done well and I hope it's done for a reason and I hope
it's not. Here's the next. level of significant villain that we can think of because we've brought everything else back tune in for series three where we're digging sill or you know yeah we've had all the classic big bads now we haven't really yeah we haven't really got any big classic series villains worth bringing back i think what Russell Tudavis talked about using the Toymaker in the recent specials and how it wasn't originally the Toymaker and then he was writing it and then
he thought, OK, well, this might as well be the Toymaker because he's close enough to this threat that I'm putting in this story. That makes complete sense to me. It's like you were saying, if you've got a story where it's a scientist character, that might as well be the Rani. But it's like... It's when it kind of feels a bit more out of place or doesn't fit with the story in isolation.
And again, the comparison we made in the retrospective was the reveal of Sutec feeling a bit out of nowhere and a bit overblown if you're just watching that series of TV. Whereas if you watch Series 3 and Utopia and the Masters reveal... There's enough seeded in those episodes in that season with the fob watch, with mentions of Gallifrey, with all of that in that same series of TV that you get the significance of that reveal when the master opens the fob watch. And that's like
the big difference for me. Like it works in isolation as a story and has an extra layer if you've watched 50 years of the show before it. They obviously knew SUTEC was a bit of a bizarre reveal because they went, by the way, if you don't know who SUTEC is, we've got a 15 -year -old Doctor Who story that we've stuck a bit of CGI on for you airing on Thursday night. Give that a watch.
Which, you know, again, great. I think it's absolutely great that we got that Tales from the TARDIS and that they did film new stuff for it and we
do have this shiny. very actually tightly edited um and well cgi version of pyramid to mars i'm really happy that exists but it was kind of sort of going to probably a good chunk of the audience yeah we know you don't know what's going on but have a look at this spend 20 minutes sorry spend 90 minutes looking at this and you'll you'll you'll get it you'll figure out I like the idea of the colourisations and the cut -downs and Tales from the TARDIS and making the most of
the back catalogue, but just not at the expense of telling a coherent story in the new current flagship show. It's just dawned on me that in seven weeks' time we could be talking about a brand -new edited 75 -minute CGI'd -up version of Time and the Rami. Oh, no. Don't do it. Dimensions of Time would be the bigger story, wouldn't it, given the rights issues with that. Oh, yeah. That would be pretty exciting to have a lost
story returned to the archive. Just Russell T. Davis going, well, I did say all of the back catalogue. So Dimensions of Time returns to iPlayer before an unearthly child. Yes. As it should be. No, no, not as it should be. Anyway, yeah, the whole Mrs. Flood thing is very interesting and I genuinely can't believe that I've sort of semi -seriously discussed the Rani on a podcast that anybody can listen to as part of this thing
because it's just so damn ridiculous. It's going to be some sort of reveal, but some sort of thing that's meant to make us go, oh, it was them all along. But I hope it's something like it's not
the Rani or Davros. I hope it's like... I think the compromise is something like it's the Doctor's mother or it's like someone of personal significance to the Doctor's history and it tells, it furthers the story about who the Doctor is and where they've come from and these threads about the timeless child that have been dropped in over the last 13 episodes. That could potentially work for me. There's other sort of relatively obscure
villains that I'd rather it be. be like i mentioned i think it was after um after the giggle i think it was in the like the sort of episode we did covering that i mentioned that if we're doing gods and if we're doing you know the pantheon and all that kind of thing let's do fenric like fenric is an actual god that the seventh thought to battle you know interesting character wasn't You know, let's do something with that. And I still think that that would be a very interesting,
you know, big finish brought about Fenric. And it was the culmination of an absolutely fantastic storyline and an absolutely fantastic storyline that's not too different to the approach the TV series is taking now. Yeah, I feel like Fenric should be mentioned or pop up at some point if they're doing a big arc about gods and monsters. But Mrs. Flood. I don't even know if she feels like she's going to be revealed as a straight
-up villain to me. It feels like she could be some super powerful force that is for some reason in opposition with the Doctor or in conflict with the Doctor over something, but not an out -and -out scenery -chewing villain. They both want to stop the big bad butt. She's more ends justify the means, that kind of thing. Yeah, something like that. Yeah, I think that's how I would like, at this point, I think that's how
it would like to turn out. But I think that there's going to be something, there's going to be some kind of twist or whatever that sort of we didn't see coming. At the end. At the end. I was trying to avoid saying that. Okay, well, let's switch back to the robot revolution and let's talk about the Doctor in the episode. We've talked quite a bit about Belinda. We've not really talked about the Doctor. Can't say I noticed any sort of significant changes between the Doctor we've
seen before and the Doctor we've got here. And I mention this because I have... often argued, it's not always the case, but I've often argued that a new Doctor's first series is their weakest and we see some fairly significant level of performance change between the first and second seasons. I think this is the case with most Doctors. Whereas this seemed to just be picking up where we were before. We've still got a very emotional Doctor, we've still got... you know, he's still quite
excitable. I quite like his enthusiasm around, okay, Belinda, you're my new companion now, let's go traveling. And she's like, no, not doing that. And sort of in his enthusiasm, he has, he's sort of crossed a couple of lines. He's crossed a couple of boundaries. And I quite liked him getting the telling off about the DNA test and that kind of thing. So maybe, yeah, a slightly sort of more alien. version of this Doctor, perhaps one that crosses a line a little bit more, but it
was very similar. The performance was very much the same, I think. Not that I'm complaining. I really, really enjoyed Shooty's performance of the Doctor, and I do think that he has more or less got it right since day one. But yeah, I felt as though the tears were earned this time. I felt as though it actually worked with the
episode. you know the doctor had just lost like i say someone who's hinted at being sort of a pseudo companion for the six months leading up to the events there it's pretty telegraphed it was like very much like you know uh three days away from retirement kind of moment when she says like just before she dies when she talks about going off with him in the tardis afterwards yeah But the bit you mentioned where he gets told off, that for me was the newest, most interesting
bit for the Doctor's character. And it kind of built a bit on... Because I think we saw a very different side to him in that moment in Joy to the World when he's... It's almost that Curse of Fenric moment when he's pushing Joy and deliberately upsetting her and provoking emotions in her.
And then in this scene, in this episode where Belinda challenges him or tells him off about the DNA sample, on the surface he apologises, but actually from both of them, I think there's really, really interesting stuff going on under the surface in both of their performances where he's saying sorry, but there's something in his eyes and just something about the body language that tells me, oh, he's a bit... he's a bit thrown or even a bit pissed off about about his his
charm not working on uh a young female companion in the way that it normally does and i don't know there's something between them that goes beyond like you've done something wrong okay i've apologized for it and like from her size when he apologized i don't know if she i don't think i don't think she's she completely trusts it or trusts him And I'm really curious how they get from this point of being a bit like this point in their relationship to where they are
in Lux in the next episode, because from the little clips we've seen, they seem really like on good terms. Are we going to get another six month time jump where they've been traveling around the universe for six months? But anyway, in terms of. The Doctor's character. I thought
that was really, really interesting. And it's an interesting comparison with the main villain of this episode because there's the whole incels thing, which I think works for what it is, but it's not the most subtle approach to that subject. And the villain's performance, both in his pre -robot and post -robot form, neither of those,
I think, are the most subtle. performances um but then you have that yeah that was the most interesting scene of the whole episode for me that that moment at the end where there's it is really interesting and layered like what's going on between the doctor and his companion and again so different from the typical template from like rose or even further back where the two of them instantly get on together and they fly off and just straight away having adventures.
Yeah, I think it's good to have that sort of, that level of doubt in a companion. And I do hope that, you know, the Doctor does sort of get challenged in a similar way as the series goes on. You know, I hope this does become not an overriding thing, but, you know, we've done Is the Doctor a Good Man before to various levels of effectiveness. We've had the Doctor travelling with people that he's not necessarily wanted to travel with. He took the Tenth Doctor a little
while to warm to Martha. But this is the first time certainly New Who has kind of done a companion that doesn't particularly want to be there. And it's good. I'm glad we're exploring that. It obviously all ties into part of the storyline and that kind of thing. There's a reason he can't get a home. which is a mystery that will no doubt be solved as we go on. But it's also an opportunity,
and I kind of hope we take the opportunity. Like I say, I hope it doesn't sort of dominate an entire episode or something like that, but I hope there is just that moment of the Doctor being called out again, because it does certainly seem that this Doctor is driven by... slightly childish enthusiasm, an immature enthusiasm, let's say. And that's the sort of flaw that's built into the character and therefore what we should be exploring. And the opportunity for
that is now clearly set up. Also the planet of the incels thing, which I liked. I liked that that's sort of where the episode came from and where the villain came from. But I don't think we needed the line. I think the Planet of the Incels line was just a little bit too much. Like, we'd all got it. Everyone watching it had completely got it. And that line just felt a little bit too sledgehammery, a little bit too unnatural. It's a good idea. You know, it's a really good
idea. It's absolutely something that Doctor Who should be exploring in 2025. But, yeah, I just felt as though... there was a level of subtlety that could have been used there that wasn't. And it's kind of, we've used that subtlety or will use that subtlety in the TARDIS five minutes later. So can we not use that subtlety again beforehand? I don't know. It's fairly on the nose, but I feel like it's partly, well, there's a couple of things like, you know, whatever the
distribution of the audience is these days. So Doctor Who is in theory a show for like a very, broad range of people so there might be that element of yeah we we all got it but would you know is there those you know to the young teenage audience or like this is that group in between where it does need to be spilled spelled out a little bit more um maybe not you know maybe they are more than capable of getting it without it being spelled out but also i think it's it's
partly russell t davis's style he's he's really really good with character and dialogue i think but he does also have like quite an on -the -nose style to like um even in his more serious dramas you'll have like moments where things are kind of just spelled out in in black and white in that way but then you also have like sort of interesting character work and stories going on around it yeah and it's i guess so again you know it's not something i can specifically aim
at this episode. It's something that happens a lot and it's something that other writers do. I just thought maybe, you know, there was room for more clearly signposted subtext than the actual, the line, as it were. But, you know, it certainly didn't stop me from enjoying the episode. And like I say, I thought it was a really interesting direction to go and the kind of direction
Doctor Who should be going. um more significantly which is you know what what the cast have said is what russell t davis has said so everyone seems to be on the same page at least um so we've we've kind of we've kind of had a few things left hanging obviously we've mentioned belinda wanting to get home um and not being able to but there was that sort of last shot as well that kind of heavily implied that the Earth had been destroyed because we've got an Eiffel Tower
and the Statue of Liberty floating next to each other in space. What are the odds? So that's kind of obviously what the big hook of this series is going to be. By the end of Episode 8, we're going to find out how the Earth didn't get destroyed or how it didn't then got rebooted. We've done this before. We've definitely done this before. But it's, I don't know, is it a good setup? Is
it a good mystery? We've had the Earth gets destroyed on this specific date before a few times, and I'm just kind of thinking, is that where we're going again? Is that indeed where we're going? Because the name of the final episode is the reality war, something like that. And you just sort of think, well, is that what we're approaching? Are we, the Doctor, slipped into another reality here or all that kind of thing? Feels a bit MCU. Let's get that one out of the way nice and quickly.
It feels like it's doing what the MCU's been doing for the last few years. But Doctor Who's going to be doing it in eight episodes. Even down to the titles of the two final episodes. Or is it Wish? What's the second last one? Called Wish World. And then The Reality War. So, yeah, when I heard those titles, that immediately made me think of Battle World and Infinity War and Secret Wars. So, yeah, it's even sort of aping that Marvel style of what you call the stories.
But I think, like, even before... Was it... When was it? I remember at some point before this recent comeback, Russell Davis was talking about the MCU and how that's what Doctor Who should mimic in terms of different franchises and spin -offs and having a whole universe. We've had that branding for this last couple of years, the Who -niverse, which seems very much about
that, about trying to move. Doctor Who towards this big interconnected universe and there's bits of that that I like but like yeah it should also not just ape something else that is successful like it should I think also just carry on doing its own thing to an extent like the the Who universe that we had with Doctor Who Sarah Jane and Torchwood that for me was kind of the ideal level of franchise -iness for Doctor Who where you've got like the
three different shows aimed at different demographics and each each having a distinct tone um I don't know if we want to go even you know even if like budget and production weren't an issue I don't think you want to go much further than that in expanding out loads of other spin -off shows and bits and pieces. And we have still got Big Finish as well, which, you know, Big Finish has kind of had that box ticked for a good 15 years now. You know, it's been regularly producing
so many spin -offs per month. And that might be why we're sort of less excited about Sutec or the Rani on TV is because... We've seen pretty much every other, you know, it's like every other month there'll be some big 70s villain coming back in a book set. But we've had Bilal come
back. You know, it's, it has, yeah, it feels as though as a, sort of in quotation marks, this is, I guess, as an old school Doctor Who fan, I feel very, very... very well catered for and have done for a very, very long time because of not just Big Finish, you know, there's books as well and there's comics and all that kind of thing. And I haven't missed the Daleks on TV at all because I've had so much of them on audio that I haven't even noticed their absence
last year and this year so far. Yeah, I do hope Shooter gets to meet them. I think it would be a real shame. Just for the sake, yeah, for ticking off the list. Every doctor should meet Daleks, should meet Cybermen, should meet the Master, arguably. And I know there's exceptions, but that feels like three reasonable boxes to want to have ticked off. But, you know, your mileage may vary on that. There's definitely a sense
of Dalek fatigue, I think. Yeah, even just on TV, and then if you take all of the audios into account, there must be in the hundreds now of stories, if you count each episode of Dalek Empire and all of those. Yeah. Must be well over 100 Dalek stories. Oh, yeah, must be, easily. But that's the nature of it. They're a fantastic creation and they are a significant part of the
Who universe. But I'm quite happy for the TV to spend a few years exploring other corners and not necessarily just bumping into them again. So, yeah, like I say, I hope Shooter gets to meet them. I hope they do pop up at some point. But I'm not sort of sat here going, oh, I really want the Daleks back now. I'm really, really not. But, you know, Russell T Davies has said there's no Daleks this series, just like he did with series two. So, yeah, which I think is probably
a good point to end on. So, yeah, Robot Revolution. I thought it was great. I thought it was a really, really strong intro. It's given us plenty to talk about and speculate about. It's done a really good job of sort of establishing Belinda. And Belinda and the Doctor's dynamic as well, I think. And I hope it does get picked up on. I hope it
is something that's explored further. I hope that we don't get sidetracked with too many other things that push out that story because I want that to be the focus of these eight episodes right till the end. Those two lead characters and what's going on with them and anything that's brought in as a surprise or a twist is fine. as long as it furthers that main character -based story rather than just being there for a shock or a surprise. So that's my hope for this season.
Yeah, it's got to earn its place, I guess. But, you know, I hope we're sat here in six weeks' time before the finale speculating about things
that we're genuinely excited about. And, you know, if there has been a twist, you know, if there is some big... cliffhanger reveal at the end of Wishworld I really do hope it's earned I hope it's justified and I hope it's not just the Rani was the next character on our tick list of who should be brought back we'll see you never know it could be that we're talking about how well done it was that the Rani has been brought back well the Rani is working with Omega in the
finale but it sounds like the big twist will come at the From what I can work out, at the end of episode six, and that will lead us into the last two episodes. Because it was episodes, I think, three and six that Russell T Davies said, stay off social media or watch those ones as soon as you can. Yeah. So, yeah, I feel like something big is going to happen right at the end of episode six. Yeah, just something that
throws us into the finale. Yeah. Which would be good because I enjoyed last year's finale, but it definitely, it spent a bit of time treading ground, like just getting up to that cliffhanger reveal. Let's get that out of the way early. Yeah, because the second half was quite, the second half in that destroyed universe was quite compressed and yeah, it felt like we could have had more space for that side of the story. Yeah,
definitely. Well, we will leave it there, but Strong starts the series, and I'm looking forward to see where it goes next, definitely. Okay, well, thanks very much for joining me, Mansour. That was The Robot Revolution, and here's to seven more episodes over the next seven weeks. Roll them on. We'll be back to spodcast about all of them. So thank you for listening, and goodbye now.