Doctor Who - S02E06 - The Interstellar Song Contest

[00:00:17] Welcome to the Sonic Screwcast, where the Lorehounds, your guides to all of time and space. I'm John, the song contest tech with the exact skill set the Doctor needs. And I'm Alicia, ready to, with a protest song to speak truth to corporate power. Welcome to our coverage of the BBC and Disney Plus series, Doctor Who. Ian from Captain's Pod is back with us. Hello, Ian. And I don't get an intro because I messed it up last time.

[00:00:46] I threw this together two seconds ago. Hi everyone. Yeah, you know what, I literally read it right now, so even if you had I would have messed it up again. You want a clip for us? You want to give us a quick one? Oh, and I sing things and don't get recognized for it. That's right. Did you cut off your horns? I did, I did, but it was completely separate reasons. No.

[00:01:11] Okay, obviously full spoilers here, but did anyone else think that as soon as she spoke up and said, you know, like her, Lem, I guess he was her manager? Is that the deal? Anyway, as soon as Lem was like, oh, Hellions are just, you know, cannibals and witches and blah, blah, blah. And she's like, yeah, people say that. I'm like, oh, that haircut actually, it would exactly cover a pair of horns. Yes. But no, she cut them off. Yeah, I thought they could have just left the horns. Yeah.

[00:01:40] Exactly. Yeah, I thought the big reveal was going to be they've been hiding here all along. Exactly. I was like, well, okay, I guess not. Then you just cut them off. That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. It was like a missed opportunity. And then not like fully off either. Like there's some solid stubs there. Yeah, you needed something there for a reveal. Imagine if she just lifted it up and there was just regular head. There was nothing there. It was like, what did you just reveal? Ta-da! May I introduce you to the electric sander? Yeah. Oh no.

[00:02:10] So we are talking, of course, spoilers for season two, episode six, the Interstellar Song Contest. And I see Alicia's put the spoilers river song here, but I don't have that sound clip. So imagine it in your minds. If you're, if you're a classic, classic new who fam. Well, stop it now. No, no. That broke my brain. Okay.

[00:02:34] So this, there's one other thing. The copy that we were given to watch is redacted. So we don't know exactly what is missing from this episode. We think it's just the very end. So if we just glide off into the sunset and you're like, wait, they didn't talk about that last scene. That is why. Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. We literally got a spoiler, sweetie. Yeah, we did. We did.

[00:03:01] They don't, they don't trust. Like it's not enough. It keeps getting this, um, season keeps getting under more and more lockdown as we go, you know, versus like, yeah, here's some screeners to start you out. And then it's like, everything is top secret. And my instinct is of this episode is top secret.

[00:03:20] Yeah. And my instinct is to, I, I feel like they might almost be better off dead pulling it a bit. So, you know, like Ryan Reynolds leaked that clip and I got the movie made. I feel like it could use the publicity. Like it's, it's odd, but I feel like a strategic leak, um, might actually be a good thing.

[00:03:40] Hmm. You know, this was something that I saw Ben Fold, anybody familiar with Ben Fold's music artist? He, he leaked a fake version of his album. He recorded it at five alternate songs with the same title from his upcoming album, just to mess with people. And then he leaked them on like torrent sites. Amazing. Yeah. That's great. People debate to this day, which version is better. And like, it, it was like really good for his publicity as a smaller artist.

[00:04:09] Yeah. And, and I do think you're right. Like what just, just mess with us a little bit. And a lot of people were theorizing early in the season and maybe it's true still that all this talk about like, will it be canceled? Will it get off of Disney plus? Will it go back to just BBC or will it altogether take a hiatus?

[00:04:27] Will it go back to just a little bit?

[00:04:57] I love everything. Maybe I'm oli by Netflix or anything like that a little girl into that show and I did not notice until it was pointed out to me that this was actually Captain Poppy from Space Babies. That's very nice. openings that went over the door doing's like, the little squishy girl who leads Belinda to the shop. Oh, that's cool. And then there was, there was an interview with the Mrs. Flood actress who said like, oh, everything he puts in there is for a reason. I thought space babies was for nothing, but then he's always got a plan. So like, obviously we're supposed to pay attention to this.

[00:05:23] oh yeah and he loves a big reveal as well like i keep trying to work through anagrams of mrs flood um because he loves just rearranging letters on screen for us it will be i feel like all of the clues are there for us to figure it out so in my my brain i'm kind of done speculating and just waiting for yeah the story to unfurl at this point because there's so many more theories are wild yeah the theories out there at the minute are wild i still think the key line from last

[00:05:53] week is when belinda asked him about the little girl he said the stories were leaking out getting mixed up and i think and yes there will be tinfoil hat corner later as well it's all connected i still have one theory even though i'm moaning about theories okay what is it oh my really wild one is that she's the valleyard which is a classic villain and one of my favorites and um spoilers

[00:06:21] for the trial of a time lord from 1987 but he is the amalgamation of all of the evilest parts of the doctor specifically between his 12th and 13th regenerations so all of that got sucked into one person that is like just the pure most evil elements of the doctor and that glimpse of him that we saw this week made me just confirmation bias myself into thinking that's what she is

[00:06:47] okay okay do we think he's gonna pull in um things from so we have the space babies tease but do we think he'll pull together other things like i'm still waiting for certain areas of resolution from that 76 yards episode um we got another reference a few episodes ago to roger abgilliams political party that far right party uh that we said in that episode and um and now i have to

[00:07:16] credit who culture on youtube pointed this out that the nexus model from last week looks a lot like the fairy circle in that episode we'll see we'll see watching it yeah knowing rtd it's all been something since we didn't hear from you ian on the last three what did you think about the well lucky day and the story in the engine okay the well really enjoyed it lucky day the story in the

[00:07:42] engine really really liked it okay so lucky day i'm being a bit mean but lucky day we kind of had that episode already with the season premiere and the planet of the incels i feel like that you can never make that point enough but i feel like that story had been done and this felt like a backdoor see a backdoor pilot if ever i've seen one to the battle for land and ocean whatever it is um

[00:08:14] um the the new unit spinoff show that's happening so from the i from the ocean to the sea land to the sea or yeah war between the land and the sea and part of me wonders if they are if that is another thing where rtd might be messing with us with that title i hope so but i almost think it was a little bit unfair to um it's not millie bobby brown uh millie gibson

[00:08:42] um because i don't think to to i really like the character of ruby sunday sunday but i don't what she didn't need was an episode where we're all like where's the doctor again like she didn't need that extra heat on that character to be like what are we doing here spending a time doing this on a companion that's left and where's the doctor at what's happening we were promised we would get more doctor this season so i don't know it just it feels like an

[00:09:12] oddly placed episode i love seeing more of uh ruby sunday but the episode didn't do much for me at all okay okay well i mean would you call either the well or the story in the engine are they in your top episodes for the season so far oh the story in the engine is excellent that was really fantastic that's that's what i love to see doctor who do and any sci-fi show really like you have this sandbox

[00:09:41] and use it to tell a really specific and impactful story that not everyone is going to appreciate because it may not be your background but so much love and care went into it and they had the right people behind it um so yeah i like that's probably my favorite episode of the season so far until this week okay yeah yeah so and the world was great yeah and the world was great like i i liked the well

[00:10:08] i had a bit of an eye roll when i mean we all knew that it was going to be a tie-in to midnight that was the worst kept secret and maybe that i think that was a deliberate leakage of some sort because i think you want that tie-in to midnight because it's one of that and blinker held up as the two best of the classic new who old new era of doctor who um so yeah i'm i'm not surprised that did the numbers that it did as well but to be fair to it it's a great episode even without the tie-in like i

[00:10:38] think it worked really well even if you know nothing about midnight right and i think it has way more tie-ins than that i think that's another one where he's messing with us i think you're right yeah i have one more callback for this season i just learned yesterday that alan cumming played mr ringeting and i am shocked by this his american accent threw me off i was never gonna i was never gonna recognize that scotsman yeah i think um brits and sorry scotland you are taking

[00:11:08] british but brits and scottish not willingly no and that's fair don't hold that against them at all i'm much better at doing american accents than vice versa i feel oh agreed no that's that's totally true my favorite thing was some of the videos where um hugh lorry was revealed to be english um dr house and just the the national uproar that he's not american damn it did you see his what was it avenue 31

[00:11:36] avenue 5 avenue 5 they use his american versus british thing as like a plot point that's amazing and it's it's really good you know what the show is canceled and the first episode is the reveal and it was like five years ago so i'm just gonna tell you he is the captain of this like luxury cruise liner going through space and they just feel like an american would have been more convincing as like a spaceship captain so they have him be american but when things start going wrong he's in the

[00:12:05] backroom going like blimey this is terrible that's great and they're like you're british that sounds like an episode of doctor who and then and then the whole rest of the show he's just pivoting depending on who he's talking to whether he's american or british yeah that's great i love it yeah okay but we're here to talk about doctor who not and should you lori be the doctor you tell us in the comments so we've got uh you know this great episode the doctor's quest to get belinda home

[00:12:33] to earth leads to a space station hosting a famous song contest but a harmless night of fun soon becomes the battle to survive ian you've just given us your take on the other ones and you've already you know giving your praise to this episode but you want to give us some specifics uh yeah i just this was so much fun like this was just a a fun episode of doctor who and i i that sounds very basic but a

[00:12:59] lot of the times i haven't been having fun and this was just very entertaining this was a kind of non-stop ride like the pacing was great i didn't feel myself kind of like second screening or checking my phone checking the time at all i was really engaged in the adventure and it's not just full disclosure i'm not a eurovision fan i'm so sorry it's in my blood as much as t is because i'm english

[00:13:26] but um i wasn't there because oh this is two of my favorite franchises that are crossing over um but i think it used the um the conceit really really well and i just had a lot of fun i like the side characters um i think it's interesting to have the doctor be a bit darker i i like this a lot um yeah it just and visually it is beautiful it was my my biggest perk of the disney era of doctor

[00:13:54] who is how freaking gorgeous everything looks absolutely it is great what do you think john oh fantastic and i'm not again i i'm a dirty american over here i don't know what a eurovision is never even heard of the thing no i've heard of eurovision but i i i hear about it and i'm like that seems fun now that i just don't ever tune in we have american idol over here we don't need

[00:14:18] eurovision i think eurovision or some version of it would do extremely well in america like yeah this is right up your alley this is the most american thing that europe does so i'm amazed it isn't already there it feels like we stole it from you guys but it would be a very different in tone i feel like i think yeah i think it would be a lot of like yeah oh yeah that's exactly what i

[00:14:42] was gonna say it'd be like god and guns and bibles yeah that song wins every year i heard all right well yeah i mean i really loved it i as ian said the darker side of the doctor is what really sold this episode for me like like made it my favorite episode of the season because that is something that we've gotten teased from chuddy's doctor but not fully given into and we're we were

[00:15:10] almost in like time lord victoria's territory here in a way that i haven't seen in a long time and it's an element of the doctor that has been teased a little bit and twinged on but only in like the extreme moments like mainly with like the time war stuff and uh peter capaldi did the best job of dipping back into that i'm the doctor i don't care you're an ant yeah and he's kind of always had that

[00:15:38] with his companions there's always been a bit like oh pat pat you poor little insignificant creature you have no idea what the big picture is and while that's patronizing i'm kind of okay with it as a character trait because he's a timeless being that is like just a couple steps removed from being a god like he should have this extra perspective and it makes his empathy more powerful when that comes

[00:16:05] into play the new who stuff i feel like has started from a place of empathy which i think we probably need in these times but he then has to work towards the evilness right i think there's always been a base level of jaded evilness to the doctor i mean i have theories about this but we'll talk about it later yeah i mean as i've said i'm in the middle of the perch we era and i've watched probably like a season

[00:16:31] and a half since we last talked to ian and uh i brought this up at least on a previous podcast but just watching john perch we go to joe grant and go joe you idiot i'm like man i miss i we need more of that we need more of that like like just complete condescension of the doctor like he is an asshole of times i mean no we need it that's not the shooty version though no it's really not 15 no

[00:16:53] john perch we is like the height of nonchalant um asshole yeah he's a bit of an ass to be honest he's not he's not a nice doctor he's extremely patronizing to the women folk um but i i know what you mean about having that just extra edge to him but yeah no he's he's an example of like

[00:17:17] oh this is the 70s yeah but but even you know matt smith peter capaldi they both did these like lectures that didn't feel like someone lecturing out of their depth it felt like somebody who had had thousands of your a thousand years of experience and was able to speak from experience be like you fucking morons stop messing it up stop messing it up already why do i have to keep

[00:17:44] fixing this yeah why do i have to keep saving you it's such a burden to me yeah i again one of my favorite capaldi lines is search me up in the mortality index oh you have an entry like everybody else under cause of death yeah i do love that all right alicia your hot takes um yeah so i am like not really that into eurovision either per se for anyone who is outside of europe and randomly

[00:18:14] australia and israel and doesn't know what eurovision is it's basically um it's a song contest where each country gets to send one representative to sing a song on their behalf and then everybody votes through an app and um yeah so i loved i have to say if you don't know what it is this episode was a 100 accurate depiction right down to the cat person announcer you now know exactly what it is it has been held in

[00:18:42] space since 2012 as well sure sure sure i mean it will be someday as soon as they can yeah um but yeah this is you know as they made the reference in this this is what launched the career of of abba olivia newton john a lot of the biggest artists of europe and especially sweden for some reason um have been launched to this contest and and i love how yeah they're like vote uh using your home

[00:19:07] neurosync headset because it's the future and they're like or the app because the app will persist for millennia there will always be apps exactly yeah phones die apps are forever the eurovision app specifically with all of its glitches yeah um i love that there's there's like a whole moment about this and i don't think so john you and i've been talking about the rehearsal season two

[00:19:32] uh nathan fielder's show and the second episode was also about a song contest but randomly not tied to to this but tied to the fact that nathan fielder apparently used to be a producer on canadian idol so i love having a song contest moment um i like that belinda's letting herself have fun i i think yeah i mean i think this was definitely this was the best episode of the season

[00:19:55] uh some things we haven't even talked about yet to susan but also they had the full range of emotions like i really teared up at the song at the end but also it was fully horrifying when you see that funnel of people being sucked into space um yeah some truly horrifying moments that was that was a big one i was like oh we're doing this this is this is pretty not not quite as graphic as i thought

[00:20:19] when you factor in the mavity stuff but right the initial thought was like whoa that's rough right yeah getting sucked out into space is usually a horrible instant death but you know mavity feels so exactly and for the science nerds out there i think it's technically blown into space not sucked okay fair fair because the atmosphere is inside yes

[00:20:44] um was sucked by the vacuum of space though yeah okay fine i think i've been nitpicked yeah okay i'll allow it um but i love how this episode's also digging into the psyche of the doctor you know his guilt is mounting of people he abandoned belinda abena last episode susan is coming back um that's definitely a through line of the doctor's story and they're really

[00:21:10] ramping up that guilt right now and i wonder why now like the doctor says an interesting i think we're jumping around a little bit but i the doctor says something interesting where he's he says his anger was because he was triggered by the threat of that many people dying reminded him of um doing the same thing to what happened to his people and i feel like that has that's got to be tied into the reason

[00:21:37] why he's suddenly seeing susan in his mind like that that's that triggering has got to be linked to that trauma i'm just always going to ask in a thousand years why hasn't something triggered you yeah like there's got to be there's some extra element here we're missing like and she's in the tardis like oh it's oh it's so juicy it's so juicy to have her pop up i love it i love it i want

[00:22:02] more susan i want more classic who tie-ins i think i think it'll be reward and that not just because i'm watching it everybody but i do think i actually recently wrote a blog post don't tell david because he he makes fun of me for never writing blog posts so i wrote a blog post uh for our website about the role of lore and i actually wrote it in relation to the timeless child and sort of how how to change the lore while still respecting ongoing franchises and i think

[00:22:29] doctor who is like a really good case to study on that because it's been upended so many times but also still has this long history that's that has a continuity and i love when they bring back these classic things because it shows you like yeah things are a lot different but they're still the same too and that's that's nice that's something i always really appreciated when we got into um

[00:22:55] especially the david tennant era because christopher eccleston's era didn't do a lot of that nodding back to classic who other than really the daleks turning up but then season two he just like sprinkled in more and more and with each reference i was like oh it still counts everything that i've watched is still there it still happened because it took a while for that for um from i think from to even confirm that eccleston had regenerated from paul mcgann like and and obviously we know that

[00:23:24] although yeah we kind of weren't sure that he was 11 or is this something new entirely so yeah i i love that it's all still there he is uh he is 50 he is doctor who 15 yeah well we've got a lot of episodes to go through so alicia you want to give us the synopsis sure the doctor and belinda make one more final stop to charge the vortex indicator in their quest to triangulate the location of earth

[00:23:54] on may 24th 2025 and get belinda home this time they land in the space station harmony arena just in time for the finals of the 2925 interstellar song contest accidentally stealing the private box of a couple named mike and gary little do they know a pair of hellions named kid and win from a destroyed planet have chosen this contest to take over the arena ejecting the audience into space ah see that's

[00:24:21] like blowing ejecting the audience into space and setting up a delta wave device to hack the airwaves to kill the 3 trillion viewers at home luckily thanks to the doctor the audience is merely held in stasis protected by an extra mavity field while the doctor works with mike the nurse and gary the song contest tech who happens to have the exact skills the doctor needs to turn hologram tech into hard light

[00:24:50] meanwhile yeah meanwhile belinda teams up with cora one of the contestants who is saved by one of the hellions because it turns out cora is secretly a hellion herself much to the chagrin of her manager len uh she understands why kid and win are doing this it's revenge on the corporation who destroyed their planet but killing 3 trillion people is not the way to make a statement in the doctor's galaxy

[00:25:16] so with the help of the others including win he overcomes kid and destroys the delta wave device and uses his and gary's new hard light invention to tractor beam in the frozen audience members and revive them shook from their experience um hosts ryan and sabine and the 100 000 just reviewed audience members uh just revived audience members have it in them for one song before they go contestant cora

[00:25:41] outs herself as a hellion singing a pat singing passionately in her own language sings a song of protest so that the world will know what the corporation has done to her planet so i had to look up the cryogenically frozen host right rylan uh clark neal is his last name but i this seems to be someone who's well known in the uk yeah he's pretty much a household name in england he was a contestant on

[00:26:08] the x factor which is the the biggest version of that format of song competition the kind of the that our country's ever seen we had pop idol and uh the voice as well and there's lots of iterations of this show but the x factor is the one that really kind of got the big gathering and had the longevity and yeah he was a he was a contestant in that but then he went on to be he went on celebrity big

[00:26:37] brother as well and big brother is a different beast over here compared to american big brother um okay and yeah he won celebrity big brother and that kind of catapulted him into orbit for like tv presenting so he kind of like just pops up if there's a random show happening there's a good chance rylan is presenting it or it's graham norton um so yeah they they are just they're just kind of tv personalities okay oh question though about you said big brother's a different beast just a fun side

[00:27:07] fact a lot of these uh reality shows were invented in the netherlands including the voice and big brother but why why is it different in the uk than the us not that i watch what's interesting is that from how i understand it there isn't a public vote in american big brother i don't okay i don't know actually but in the uk big brother it's a public it's mainly a public vote like we choose who leaves

[00:27:34] the house and the way that makes it different is that there's much more of a focus on being kind of yeah on being likable even though they kind of ignore that and end up being very unlikable in america like survivor and stuff it's much more about getting a team and strategizing and having an alliance and having your ride or die and playing tactics within the group which is way more interesting to me but in england when you've got to like fight for the public votes you've those

[00:28:04] alliances don't matter as much and it's it tends to be a lot of people just sitting around being annoying okay okay i i thought rylan was very likable this episode yes rylan's great yeah um i think nina was the name of the woman in the um control room and she at one point she says give me some awe and he goes oh no awe it's so great and i love rylan for this because he does have this stereotype of being

[00:28:32] a bit dopey and a bit just stereotypically not dim is harsh but not the quickest on the uptake so i love that he played into that and it's like anchorman reading whatever's on the autocue in front of him that's what he'll do he'll just read what you put in front of him right right so and again that ties into they just wheel him out for this every year and then put him back into cron freeze and then

[00:28:59] bring him back out this is his whole life yeah it's like being severed yeah yeah exactly they're just going to keep wheeling him out for this like hugh jackman and wolverine it's they're just going to wheeling him out john do you know graham norton i've seen him like i recognized him when i saw him but i have no idea anything about him other than what you just told me okay i mean graham norton is a um he's a bigger personality that that one i did know in advance mostly from his talk show but i loved that

[00:29:26] he had um the hologram and he wishes he hadn't sold his license in perpetuity oh he's the he's the talk show guy i've seen a lot of clips of david tenet my husband on um on wait does listat know about david tenet i have listen it's a polyamorous okay let's that would approve okay let's that would approve well no actually he wouldn't he'd say as long as your heart and then he'd shout i heard

[00:29:50] your heart's dancing yeah there we go drop me out of the sky now graham norton is great his his interview show has been going for a long time now he is hilarious and just like genuinely hilarious he is just effortless like i fully believe that who you see on screen is how he is walking around the house he seems super duper genuine and he's been hosting the uk broadcast of eurovision for a long long time

[00:30:19] um and the person that did it before him was uh a radio personality tv presenter called terry wogan and i mentioned him because he defined how the uk watches eurovision and i think he's the main reason that we continue to watch post never winning it anymore because england is not popular we do not win

[00:30:42] the eurovision song contest i remember some zero votes years yeah for very valid reasons we we very often get zero votes um and but terry wogan would acknowledge that and be like well we got no votes from the germans that makes sense and he would always have like some quip it was like well of course poland voted for this country and someone else voted for that country and he kind of made it okay he was

[00:31:09] he was very much embodied like what we were thinking at home but he did it in a very political way and graham norton has kind of got that same vibe to the way that he presents it it's just it's a very english way of handling defeat and we finally get more uh a little bit more from mrs flood what did you think about mrs flood this week john i was kind of surprised that she was she seemed totally cool

[00:31:33] with the doctor just like blow it out into space but what happened to her because oh that's a good question actually she was in the audience and then we didn't see her after that but it seemed like she knew it was going to happen right she's like all right he did the thing he did the thing now let's sit and watch the show we've got time oh see i took it i i took it um i thought she looked surprised when

[00:31:57] they showed her face right before but i don't know but she she said okay we know she's been interested in him using the vindicator and so he used it and um now she says okay thank you doctor that's the final link and she has this like button portable button that she's carrying around now that she's going to trigger something so i'm guessing that's going to kick off whatever we were redacted from seeing

[00:32:23] for next week yeah that makes sense to me this is it was at that point where my brain was like stop speculating now because you haven't got anything intelligent to say like i genuinely don't it makes sense that she's the god of stories and she's crafting all of this and she's not concerned but you're right she was surprised by this so i wonder if this button was ejected up there

[00:32:49] maybe the post-credit scene or the mid-credit scene whatever you want to call the teaser is just the button floating in space and maybe that's the big button that ends the story of earth um it's it's so so coy and then we see her do a general organa frozen going toward the button and she pushes it oh my gosh yeah exactly exactly mary poppins moment yeah and it's interesting right because we do get this whole

[00:33:16] this whole thing later with grant norton sent gram gram grant wait i think in america it's gram but it's graham what oh rayam graham oh that explains you say graham gram that explains a lot of how jody whitaker was talking in those seasons so anyway um i always thought it was weird because she had a graham she had a gram yeah and yes a graham she had a graham it sounds southern almost southern well did

[00:33:43] you know that the southern accent is um a version of a retained former british accent before the vowels shifted in the uk oh that's amazing wait are you saying england sounded southern for a long time that's incredible it's a real thing diverged but yeah yeehaw and then the upper class decided to the upper class decided to drop their r's and and you know shift everything and then the the lower classes were like yeah we should sound more upper class and then that just became a thing

[00:34:11] and it happened over like 200 years it was not like a long thing yeah yeah that's that's a short amount of time um historically yeah um john did you get murder bot vibes from the guards who were announcing phase activations yeah definitely are you watching murder body in i haven't yet but it's high on my list i i trust apple with everything tv yeah it came out today as we're recording so um but

[00:34:37] that's probably why i haven't seen it yet yeah well no i think it came out at nine last night actually it was apple like uh nine et uh not eastern my god et phone home nine eastern in the u.s um and uh so i think they're doing that apple thing where they're like it's friday but it actually comes out at thursday yeah it makes sense that means 2 a.m uk time yeah i was asleep yeah it's good it's a

[00:35:04] really good palate cleanser after i'll say yeah yeah and if you like doctor who it's got you know it's also quite uh upbeat but also with an emotional core you know that's fun yeah well um it it probably respects science a little bit more i was i was trying to look up they have this delta wave device and like a delta wave is something that's associated with sleep patterns but i'm like you know what brain waves it's fine delta oh rtd does not give a single thing it's just tech thing does the tech thing to

[00:35:33] take the tech tech that's yeah yeah i think somebody else puts those words in there's a bunch of tech speak at the um at the end that we don't need to go through but um but the emotional core was interesting like nina this whole idea of of kid and uh win being less reluctantly so the the hellions the wronged people who lash out because they were wronged it's kind of like they are the

[00:35:57] gorman front but uh rtd it's warning against them rather than you know and she's like i took a chance on you no one employs hellions and he says i'm only doing the things you expected of me um i don't know what did you think about the whole commentary about the hellions and how they're perceived and how kid behaved oh man it's look this is a messy one but i was going through mixed emotions as i went

[00:36:24] because i'm like all right i don't want to tell people to be like the good oppressed person but also i don't think killing trillions of people is the right move either you know like there wait what there can be there can be a nuanced take of like no i'm not gonna police you so much about like be being the good victim but at the same time you can't go and then kill trillions of

[00:36:52] people who probably don't even understand what's happening hmm yeah i think that's a fair assessment right yeah yeah of course there was a balance there of course the the parallel obviously with andor is it's super duper clear you have this rebellion these people that like i wonder if rtd was watching andor and just like oh damn that's some unfortunate timing that's irritating but star wars

[00:37:15] has this and or specifically has this huge um context for it whereas we have 10 minutes with these people and are supposed to be not okay with it but um relate to the fact that he wants to kill 13 trillion um people and the point is it's not the people that hurt him it's to send a message and to

[00:37:40] get something out there that says hey now you're gonna listen to us and that is where the episode lost me because it's really hard to relate to the right the villains when the 13 trillion is such an arbitrary number and it's arbitrary people the really powerful thing to me was the the song at the end like that's

[00:38:03] the way that's for me is is how this episode puts the message out there a lot um better and a lot more impactfully otherwise i'm just kind of a villain wants to pick an arbitrary number of people to kill um the element that i the that i really that i kind of liked with kid was that he was called kid and the hellion aspect because hellion i don't know if it's slang in america but in england it's oh you

[00:38:28] young hellions like you you're get off my lawn kind of energy and he's called kid and we can villainize kids and assume that these hooded youths are tearing up shops and whatnot and if you make that narrative they become what they think they should become and how much of that is our own doing so yeah him being called kid felt um like a nice rtd um layer to the story as well it's not necessarily

[00:38:57] about rebels it's about kids and how they rebel and act out i was to say especially when um we have cora later calls out the fact the reason he's called kid is because his mother was shot and didn't live long enough to say what his name was so you get that extra layer of relating but um i i you know i agree with the doctor he says i've met so many versions of you kid and revenge is just an excuse you know he's saying basically he just wants to hurt people anyway but i am bothered by the

[00:39:26] fact that the doctor does not ask him why he's doing this eventually it comes out anyway but that seems like something that the doctor would want to do you know he's he would get his whole like you know what i will do i will survive and i will find you so i call him liam gloria gainer neeson um but this whole thing about the angry doctor mode okay you've put ice in my heart i'll watch you

[00:39:50] freeze in the void blah blah blah and belinda's like that's not him and then later we he's electrocuting kid and even susan's breaking through whatever we'll talk about susan in a minute to tell him to stop but he doesn't stop until belinda walks in and i'm just i feel like the doctor is getting way too angry we're being told that and then i started to wonder when did the angry doctor start

[00:40:15] and uh when did we last see him do his single tear moment and i feel like the well was the changing point that episode yeah i was looking out for it in the story in the engine and i didn't see the single tear um definitely didn't see one this episode so i think that's a really good point so i wonder i wonder yeah well we're about 40 minutes in let's take a quick break and come back

[00:40:41] and finish this episode we're back i i want to finish off the thoughts we had before the break

[00:41:05] actually because i'm thinking and you know the doctor knows now that a past version of himself killed i think more than that many people right on gallifrey and the daleks for what he saw as the greater good right and man i i have a little bit of i i agree with alicia that like why is the doctor

[00:41:28] not asking why because this this does not comport with previous incarnations of the doctor and his memories my current episode head canon is the a lot of it comes back to what he said about being triggered and that if that if he's talking about like a really deep trauma trigger that just puts

[00:41:53] some blinders on and some fight or flight everything disappears like if it's a truly triggering moment it is he just shuts down and went straight into how do i solve this problem how do i get rid of what's going on and the things that he's saying in the moment for me is trying to him trying to work through that and i don't think he fully realizes that until belinda challenges him and i think he's

[00:42:21] working through it in the moment that yeah i guess him doing that really really triggered me and that doesn't excuse his actions but he's in a different mindset he's in a different frame of mind yeah but it's interesting because again i'm watching the perch we era watched recently the day of the daleks right a day of the daleks he's literally captured and and threatened to be killed by a group of gorillas and the first thing he says basically is like why and and he figures out that they're actually

[00:42:50] the good guys against the daleks yeah and they're trying to change history so the daleks don't come in power and it's it's by the way a really great story and and was very influential on on some later media i forgot is somebody said that they uh they basically like based they accidentally based their story on this uh i'll find it by the end of the episode i'll figure it out but my point is like the doctor has always been curious and that's one of his biggest strengths right is is biggest strength

[00:43:17] is is he can go into a situation and try to see it for what it is instead of instead of just jumping to conclusions yeah yeah i mean i i wonder what they i mean just the fact that if the doctor had probed into that a little bit you know he's saying i'm triggered by because it makes me think about my planet everyone dying in a second but if he drilled down into it it's obviously he and kid

[00:43:44] are more alike than he wants to admit because kids being triggered by the exact same thing yeah and now at the end of this episode we the graham norton hologram says poor old earth died many years ago on may 24th 2025 and he says the same wording that it disintegrated like gallifrey everyone died in a single second cause unknown so it's setting up the exact same thing to happen for earth yeah oh and i do

[00:44:12] want to just quickly say uh it was days of future past that was inspired by that story of oh that's great yeah because the twist in in day of the days of the dalek day of the daleks god i can't say this today um and you know fast forward if you don't want a 50 year old story spoiled but uh it was that the gorillas accidentally caused the rise of the daleks because they tried to kill somebody who was actually trying to prevent it but they thought that because the daleks had changed history and so they thought

[00:44:41] they had to save him so they thought they had to kill him but really they had to save him changed history it was the whole thing it was a whole mess up and then the doctor had to race back to stop the gorillas from making their own history come true i'm going to re-watch that one i've definitely seen it more than once but yeah that's really fun i love that so days of future past x-men based on that nice question do you think they're setting kid up to come back in a future story because it feels like he was sent to something called the justice monolith and it feels like he and the

[00:45:10] doctor have a vendetta now yeah i wouldn't be surprised um i don't think there's an intent for that to happen this season um i think uh if he'd been sent to units arkham asylum perhaps um we saw this definitely gonna come back um but yeah maybe maybe next season perhaps yeah i don't know there's i i wouldn't if they do it well you know anything well i'll watch but i

[00:45:41] i would not hate if he just went away and how many villains have been like i'll get you meddling kids and never come back that's just a thing i think the only thing that makes him different for me is how much the doctor specified i will never forget you i'll always have ice in my heart because of you and i was like wow you've battled like the dalek cyberman the master this kid really right and the master he repeatedly has empathy for too yeah exactly yeah that's why i agree with

[00:46:08] belinda i agree with belinda this is not the doctor there's something something is off around about him and how do we think i mean i know john i was really excited for you to see this episode i we have our private doctor who chat and uh when i i watched i wrote in the chat 16 minutes in side eyes side eyes and i knew you were going to be excited to see susan show up so who's susan for

[00:46:32] those who forget and why were you excited you'll hear her say grandfather a lot she uh she was very whiny in the original i'll just say that like i think she was in her 20s when she was playing susan caroline ford uh but she was playing a 15 year old and in the in the 60s when you wrote a 15 year old you wrote that 15 year old was very whiny and if you write women you write them as very whiny that's that's true so you got the double thing you got the double and uh so she was the

[00:47:00] doctor's granddaughter and she shows up and uh and she's his first companion ever yeah well that we know of well all right well but i think what what i've always understood is that the first doctor and you know we're talking about post timeless child yes whatever that we i won't i'm not going to go into that because we just don't know what happened before then but uh the first doctor

[00:47:27] didn't really start meddling like he did until susan makes him go to earth and susan's the one who's like i want to go to the 20th century and see what's going on because the 20th century england is just so fascinating it's just like it's where every alien would want to go and study and i love i love in the first episode i think she goes but grandfather i love the 20th century earth

[00:47:50] that sounds like something somebody wrote that in 1965 i know yes i know it's so bad it's so like all right we get it pat you know it's it's that obama putting a medal on his on himself meme right yeah okay so susan was left he left her behind in this early and so people have been wanting her to come back and wanting the like explanation how does the doctor have a granddaughter um but so he left

[00:48:16] her behind on earth but the way he talks about her this episode it seemed like he thought she died on gallifrey did you guys get that impression um yeah i think and i think this was inferred last season as well that he because they obviously he mentions um susan during the musical episode um yeah the yeah that's it yeah the maestro and the devil's court that's what yeah that's it he doesn't know

[00:48:42] he doesn't know if the button that he pressed just killed gallifrey and the daleks or every time lord everywhere all at once so i think that's what he was hinting at was okay he doesn't know if he reached out across time and killed susan but the interesting thing is the fact that he doesn't know that confirms that there is a biological relation there because that's always been not explicitly um confirmed because yes she says grandfather but they've been very coy about whether that is

[00:49:12] a affectionate term or a biological thing because the man calls himself the doctor why wouldn't he call himself grandfather um during that iteration of his of his life for whatever reason but um yeah that's how i read that but then you also have this comment the stray comment he made during one of the last couple episodes of last season of season one of new do who uh where he goes you know i'm a time

[00:49:39] lord i can do things out of order because they were like how do you have a granddaughter you don't have kids like i do things out of order so like if yeah i guess you could say like okay if even if it doesn't go beyond gallifrey the the destruction of gallifrey maybe if he needed to have a child with a time lord to get to susan maybe the time maybe it's been interrupted now right like maybe there's no more time lord maybe susan's uh grandmother is no longer around and so

[00:50:09] that whole history is gone but then you get into a bootstrap thing but the doctor who doesn't care about bootstrap paradox oh no he made that explicit in uh the last the joint of the world christmas special but but i will quote the 11th doctor always the paradoxes will largely work themselves out but so i recently re-watched that episode listen because i think that it has ties

[00:50:32] to the new the well episode that we just got and in that episode he says um like at one point he just puts the the kid out uh danny just touches him on the head and he says father skills like he has practice somehow being father they're really messing with and i do think that's intentional because in the same season same writers like what are we doing oh you're saying in listen he said that

[00:50:59] that's not the same season and same writers uh because that's that's capaldi right um but he does say something about having father skills in the uh the first episode with the belinda lookalike what's that episode you know i'm talking about uh with the belinda look oh monday flynn boom yeah yeah he says he says something about being a father in boom father to father i think he says right yeah exactly

[00:51:24] so they are really being fast and loose about this and i and i do think rtd would not let that happen in the same season if that was not on purpose yeah i think that's his way of making us comfortable with the fact that the doctor is a sexual being because he hasn't been until new new who and i think that knowing that you're introducing or reintroducing susan is going to have that

[00:51:49] inevitable well if there is granddaughter that means daughter or maybe not because he does it out of order um but you've you've seen it recently john so do you remember the circumstances under which he leaves susan yeah she again 15 15 years old can we just emphasize that and like okay she might have been a little older we don't know how much time passed between these adventures in the first two

[00:52:13] seasons this is only in the second season of doctor who uh you've got his companions are susan and her two school teachers barbara and ian yeah and uh so he he's saved earth from the daleks and there is this rebel against the daleks i think his name is david and susan's like i love you but i my grandfather needs me and and i must go and then the doctor overhears this and just locks her the

[00:52:40] fuck out of the target tardis yeah and just talks to her over like the loud speaker like the box the police talker and he goes he goes i'll come back for you but it's it's you stay you be in love and i'll come back for you so he just leaves them with people he's known for like days and it's like she'll be fine is that you need to settle down it's time for you to have a family and adventures anymore and

[00:53:04] you gotta settle down fall in love have some kids and i'll be back i'm never oh yeah okay cool not sure i like the doctor anymore it was very bad stuff and the first doctor in particular does some stuff that make you go hmm huh yeah it's not great it's not great now john pertswee's doctor can be

[00:53:28] like a little bitchy but he's kind still the first doctor can be kind at times but he's not always kind no he has to get off my lawn energy he does have to get off my lawn energy i do love i just watched the the three doctors for the first time oh it's so good and and i i think because william hartner was in bad health they had him on a screen and not in the room with them and he goes ah so these are

[00:53:56] my replacements a dandy and a clown like damn just shots fired so rough yeah that that is a great episode oh it's so good it's so so good the special effects horrendous but i love the episode you shut your mouth a question about the doctor's physiology so of course we we have the conveniently nurse uh mike and he says two hearts you show off that was cute but then a respiratory bypass system is that

[00:54:25] new that was that just invented to explain hand wavy why he survived being frozen so i don't remember it specifically being mentioned i am more than certain it has but on more than one occasion the doctor has made himself appear dead because he can slow his breathing down to absolutely nothing and a companion will be like he's dead cliffhanger music and then he comes back no i'm a time lord of course

[00:54:51] i'm not dead i just stopped breathing so yeah i think there was more of a reminder that it's okay he's going to be fine okay which is cute of the show to think i need that i do like when the show winks at itself like did i just fly through space on a confetti can uh cannon camp yeah that was good that was brilliant that's one of the things i really love about new

[00:55:16] who is just unapologetically doing that bonkers stuff like why not let's write it down let's see if we can do it i mean the old who was doing it too it was just taking it more seriously like like i i've watched john perjwe be wrapped in paper and he's like there's just no way i could get out of this um okay but do you think that mike and gary were a little too convenient just the fact that

[00:55:41] they had especially gary had exactly the skill set that the doctor needed and then there was this weird moment later where mike or sorry gary was the first one's like i'd do anything for you and gary's like and mike's like gary he's like anything and then later mike says the same thing i would do anything for you doctor like it seems like they're somehow being thralled to him in some weird way it was a

[00:56:05] little too over the top to be natural yeah i took that as a at the time i took it as a tongue-in-cheek they're both attracted to the doctor kind of thing but now that you've spelled it out i think it makes much more sense the i mean especially if mrs flood is the weaver of stories that she has put these people in place to assist the doctor so that he gets to a place that she needs him to be in and that i i

[00:56:35] hope that's the case because this is some of the most convenient side charactering it almost has to be deliberate like they didn't hang a lantern on it completely but it is incredibly specific the way that they are able to help i wonder if they're ever going to uh explain mavity because i'm sure that there are people who did not watch the 60th anniversary anniversary who's like why do they keep saying this word mavity because they said it a lot this episode which is really calling attention and

[00:57:04] anyone who didn't watch his 60th anniversary basically um donna and dr 14 who is actually nine regenerated um they went back and they met isaac newton and they accidentally messed up him inventing the word gravity so he invented the word mavity instead and now it's just used throughout who i'm i would be stunned if anybody is watching now who hasn't seen those specials because they were

[00:57:33] the first ones launched on disney plus weren't they yeah but they're totally separate so if you click on the series it's not included in that yeah yeah you'll only get maybe maybe it's just it could be as cynical as oh you want to know what mavity is go back and watch the specials to anybody i think it might be that but but at the same time like i don't know if it's cynical as much as it's like all right this is a 60 year show we're going to be dropping easter eggs in here if you want to know more

[00:58:00] about that it's still available go watch it yeah you know and i think that's fine too like again i love how playful it is i really do like it's such a dumb thing to do and i remember i was watching it with my buddy and i was like there's no way they're gonna keep up with mavity are they and the first time it appeared i was like oh they're doing it they're actually they're gonna do that that's great uh good for them i mean i don't mind if it's mavity forever but they did call a lot of attention

[00:58:26] to it this episode in particular um all right important question for you guys so uh kid says tonight i'll be representing revenge against the corporation and the doctor says i'm the doctor the last of the time lords and kids uh kid says good band name so what is our doctor who band name i i would go with the tower of rassilon because i just think that and we would be heavy metal music

[00:58:57] all right i'm gonna center myself in this obviously i'm gonna go with maverty maven and the hounds of lore love it i feel like the velyard itself sounds like a metal band yes it's true it's true take off the make it just velyard and now you are in a metal band i think i think it would have to be the amazing

[00:59:22] right the amazing and righteous directors in rock stars who's our sponsor oh i mean i don't know are you listening on the ad feed right now people you can tell us what sponsors are it's different for everybody it's randomized that's true casio watches specifically

[00:59:50] yeah i mean i okay so in this episode i did clock as soon as they mentioned poppy honey 100 organic golden poppy i'm like okay that's important yeah but i i liked it they did it is a real world uh tie-in because it made me think a planet invaded for honey made me think immediately of hawaii which was taken over by the u.s military for sugar in large part that's really interesting yeah interesting that's the

[01:00:19] only place we have coffee now without tariffs so i guess that's that's uh working out in the end it was the long game it was the long game oh yeah that's fine they just opposed to people in a culture but anyway oh details details the third doctor would be fine with it he's you know what what ian since you've watched some perjury why is he always eating sandwiches can you tell me that it's just fun to watch him eat a sandwich i honestly don't know i think they were

[01:00:48] still working out the the doctor having quirks because the only thing they really did was change the costumes back then and they gave the second doctor a flute yeah um that i think they were in the early days of experimenting with what is this doctor's doctor and his was apparently sandwiches yeah yeah i i see it he's he's got quite the vibe he's grown on me over the last couple seasons

[01:01:14] i'm right i'm done talking about personally we're talking about he was the first doctor in color tv so yeah they deliberately played with his flamboyant like the flamboyant colors we see right is because of color tv suddenly arriving and being able to take advantage of that right but of course they slashed the budget at the same time so they grounded him on earth for two seasons three seasons i think well 20th century is the best place to be of course but i i do actually want to

[01:01:41] say what we're thinking about this is like you know we've we've had kate uh lethbridge stewart around and watching john partwizera really makes me appreciate the brigadier so much more i mean he's he's kind of the first human that pushes back against the doctor he really i love the brigadier so much it is i wish we could have brought him sadly the actor passed away but i wish we could have brought him into new who sooner um yeah he's he's such a great character and he would like put the doctor

[01:02:08] in his place and be like like unit is my toy not yours stop it and he does i believe show up in sarah jane adventures right alicia are you are you not as not as far as i've i'm spoilers yeah spoilers so far i've watched the first most uh the first two seasons except i have not watched this last story in the second season so there's still room for him and i know season three is the crossover with

[01:02:33] doctor who and now i finally know who the characters are so yay um i forget what was i gonna say oh about kate uh i know that uh ian you did not love lucky day but for me even though kate went darth kate this was the episode that really sold me on her oh i love kate i adore her i think i i think she is the right person to lead the spinoff it just felt odd to me to place the the

[01:03:02] backdoor pilot to the new torchwood show in the middle of this season and when ruby's already received so much heat for not being a great companion it just felt like such a such an odd choice but yeah i love kate she's incredible maybe i like ruby but i think maybe she's better on her own and this episode showed that um but yeah it's okay it's a brigadier's daughter if anyone didn't get that connection yes yeah i don't even know his first name because it doesn't matter

[01:03:31] it is it is alistair gordon lethbridge stewart good god that's the most british name i've ever heard it's amazing it's incredible honestly brave for them to do a hyphenated long name for a recurring character you know oh in the credits absolutely yeah brigadier alistair gordon lethbridge yeah that's it uh okay and his mustache speaking of connections we find out that we have this win

[01:03:57] cora connection that win was cora's kin sister but she left her behind so we're drawing parallels between cora and the doctor leaving people behind um do you hear that that's the wheel of time alarm go ahead exactly exactly i did think about that yeah no i mean i just yeah the kin sister obviously but um i agree with you guys that the i think the message of this show was that the final protest

[01:04:26] song is supposed to be like rtd saying this is the way to protest don't blow stuff up uh you know make an emotional connection with the audience what did you think of the moment gary starts the slow clap clap uh it's in my it's in my being to hate it my my day job is nitpicking movies and it slow claps uh just the most jarring they will never not be jarring it's just i think we need to retire them

[01:04:55] he said while clapping they only they only work sarcastically um i i personally thought that the whole song thing was like incredibly naive of a message of like this is the way one song will change the minds of millions trillions and make sure that these people are never oppressed again and the corporation won't fight back they'll know that they've lost now and uh it's just not you know living in the day that i'm living in today i'm sorry but i i have more cynicism than that allowed

[01:05:24] me to buy into i think i think that's fair but i think it can be naive and still something to strive for like sure public opinion can be really important well we know it can be really important and it can have an impact and it can make companies u-turn we unfortunately are just entering a time where companies are realizing public opinion may not actually affect their bottom line and we're seeing more than ever than pushing against i don't care if we're not liked turns out we can still make money

[01:05:53] so there's so many layers to this but the core the core message of it worked for me and the extra element that i loved is that at eurovision you stereotypically get more points and more votes if you sing in your own language so you have the the split the vote is split i think 50 professional um judges that vote and then the other 50 is the public of europe so you you definitely

[01:06:23] get more weighting from the critics and the professionals when you sing in your own language so that nod at the end to sing in the eurovision song in her own language and no subtitles unapologetically here is the song and it's beautiful even in this invented language it's incredible so that was kind of i i couldn't help but think of andor as well and how they how good they are at making up languages and the care that went into this song so the execution was fantastic for me and and i love the fact that

[01:06:53] you know she had her core horns cut off because apparently hellions are not allowed to sing in this galaxy because apparently that's an act of terrorism or something but what's interesting is the very real world rules about in eurovision you are explicitly not allowed to sing anything that's considered political and this has caused uh some controversies especially in recent years about what is considered political and what is not considered political and here this was clearly

[01:07:21] like flat out like we're canceling the entire competition because we almost died but here's a political song yeah and i it's i mean it just has to reflect how can you not be political like especially in europe which is just all over the spectrum but i i love the idea of it being a non-partisan non-political event but it's also downplaying how political our lives are like you can't

[01:07:47] ignore it especially when part of the continent is at war yeah i mean when ukraine won a couple years ago like that was that was a great fun song but definitely there was a lot of politics behind that voting of course yeah and it's the same every year whether there's a war or not there is a huge amount of um who's trading with who right now who has the best tariffs because it's not it's not the european

[01:08:12] union song contest it was we may be able to make it less political but it is all of europe regardless of whether you're in the union right whether you brexited or not yes indeed sorry yeah i gotta watch eurovision this year i think you guys have convinced me i know i don't i'm not watching it probably okay there is one tonight right it's tonight yeah there's one thing that

[01:08:35] tonight no as this episode comes out oh okay yeah all right we're recording this in advance all right okay yeah all right timey-wimey um if you if you're not sold yet um google lordi l-o-r-d-i i believe they were from finland and they are my all-time favorite eurovision entry they are incredible

[01:09:02] they were something else it is a yeah the eurovision is a visual spectacle if nothing else yes yes absolutely i'm putting this on i'm checking out some eurovision yeah i know david's going to um his wife's organizing a eurovision party i think with with jean's wife so yeah it's honestly it's like it's it's very american i think people would absolutely love it my friend um who i stay with when

[01:09:28] i go to when i come over to the states he was offended and said i've just discovered eurovision i've known you for five years and how did i find out about this through someone else and i said because there's so much there's so much like europe i haven't shared with you but he adores it i mean it's fun it's it's especially fun to watch with other people where you can just some of it there are some legitimately good songs every year i put a couple on my playlists um but a lot of it is

[01:09:57] as just watching the spectacle and being like what the hell is is this thing now what's finland up to finland always has something fun up their sleeves yes exactly yeah but yeah it's time to get belinda home she's got a tasty chef on hinge waiting for her i like these teases of her life before i'm like i would like to see some of this too yeah well and then unless it's not real unless she's a construct

[01:10:24] of the tardis and that's why we've never met anybody around her very true so okay so the version that we got ends with uh the vindicator is ready and there's a red light failure in the tardis and clonking noise and the doctor says that's the sound of may 24th and then something explodes into the tardis and then we got it cut off right there yeah so do we think do we think it was just the credits in the preview that was cut off or do we think anything else was

[01:10:54] uh my instinct is it wasn't just the preview for next week there was something something else that we saw because that cut didn't feel like a super clean credits cut i i feel like it's not just the next week i feel like there is something else we get to see behind the tardis doors exploding hmm just susan standing there just susan yeah it's got to be something special because the tardis

[01:11:21] one of the really consistent things the one of the really consistent mcguffins that they've um carried through doctor who is that the tardis is indestructible and it has to be it has to be so that it isn't invaded and it's one of those it's like the warp drive like i just accept it the tardis for reasons is indestructible so to blow its doors off is unprecedented even for doctor who well there was the thing where the tardis exploded in matt smith's seasons

[01:11:51] like there was a version of the world where the tardis exploded and it like set everything into chaos oh man my brain i cannot even remember that we've done this before that's all i'm saying is we've we've seen this happen before in in a different way right it's still yeah it's still big um yeah what i what i love is that that that tone the bong it has a name it's called the cloister bell so whenever

[01:12:16] that bong turns up i get just immediate feelings well up inside me because i think the first time we heard it was the fourth doctor um tom baker when his regeneration was coming the tardis knew and set off the cloister bell and that was the first tweak in his mind where he's like oh no something's coming

[01:12:41] in new who it's been used a lot if you do a rewatch now you'll notice the cloister bell a lot lot more and it comes up so for me it's it still like gives me tingles but it's not the omen of oh no that it once was but it is meant to be end times the tardis knows something big is coming

[01:13:03] okay well the end of earth yeah pretty the end of the show as uh as mrs flood puts it i do think i do think that's just rtd messing with us i don't think this show goes away you know i could see disney being like you know this didn't really bring in the audience we thought it would and uh you know you guys can keep it but i don't think the bbc is gonna let this one go again i think they recognize that the 90s were a mistake to let that go yeah i i think so too i mean it's not pulling in the

[01:13:30] views it did once upon a time but it's still up there it's still outperforming a lot of stuff like you you can't deny that brand um recognition um it's still one of the bbc's biggest shows right even if i think the bbc in general is kind of suffering because it's a it's a public channel yeah i think bbc disappears before doctor who does yeah they sell doctor who for parts

[01:13:52] yeah exactly well shall i take you on a tour through tinfoil hat time after one more break

[01:14:19] we're back and though this is an audio podcast i can confirm that alicia has a tinfoil hat on it's so connected so i've been watching the sarah jane adventures specifically for the trickster plot lines because the trickster was again name dropped as one of the um uh pantheon gods last season so trying to see how it ties in but there is i have to say i am thoroughly enjoying i'm as i

[01:14:46] said almost two seasons through i'm thoroughly enjoying the pure camp of the sarah jane adventures like there isn't uh one of the first arcs of the first season we have it's called eye of the gorgon and we just have people going around chanting save the gorgon serve the gorgon serve the gorgon and sarah jane gets a sonic lipstick so yes she does do doctors sarah jane adventures was great it was

[01:15:14] really under i don't know the numbers but i get the impression it was under watched but it was a great branch out to like olive branch to kids to get them indoctrinate them into doctor who yeah yeah the main characters are teenagers yeah so yeah the main characters are teenagers so it's not as kitty as i feared going in but it's still it's quite silly but yeah the trickster comes up um in the

[01:15:41] first two seasons especially in whatever happened to sarah jane which is uh episode seven and eight of season one and then part two is the temptation of sarah jane which is uh season two episodes nine and ten and first of all to say it looks like john it looks like a mirror draw from the wheel of time tv show looks just like that except fewer teeth um and it feeds on the timelines saying so removing

[01:16:08] timelines and saying chaos is good so this is reminding me of that turn left episode a bit um and it blurs the line between what is a trick of memory and what's an alternate reality so something just yeah messing with the reality of the timelines but not having a new not fully multiverse but just kind of changing things on the spot some more our perception of time

[01:16:36] yeah i mean not perception of time because because it like changes i mean i suppose it is but at the one point they pull the people he pulls from the timeline he's like everybody forget this character uh sarah jane for instance and so sarah jane gets pulled to this limbo which looks like the white void which is uh or the land of fiction which is why i was asking you john about some uh

[01:17:01] some was it second doctor shenanigans that yeah the land of fiction was kind of what that has jamie in it and um the doctor and the jamie one of the first queer couples on tv i uh i will stay i will die on that hill that was the doctor's first love interest we can hope one day they maybe confirm it but yeah i gotta go back and watch those because i'm curious if there's uh any tie into that

[01:17:27] but yeah so basically the trickster uses timey wiminess to take over earth and mine it from minerals to fuel his space conquest and um just in fact that it was name dropped i feel like we we might get this coming back so i'll keep watching and report back um just another couple fun things there's a computer who's actually a living crystal called a xylok which are intelligent crystals trapped

[01:17:53] in the earth and who influence um things around them through technology and in classic who season six there was something called the crotons you watched that one so far there was intelligent crystals who learned through mimicry no man i have no memory okay okay no it's fine but this mimicry thing is reminding me again of what is this entity that was in the well that was in listen yes

[01:18:20] but that was in midnight yeah um just want to point out that the companion in sarah jane's last name is chandra uh rani chandra and her yeah her father and her parents um this could just be it's just a common last name but i i would not hate if they made belinda related to her well what's interesting is that we also have a character called the rani as well right right in the same way she's not the

[01:18:48] rani though that would be some interweaving incredibleness yeah yeah we'll take some processing people want it so badly uh and then there's a debate over whether they even have the rights to the rani because like a lot of the original villains were belong to the writers because that's how it worked more than like the daleks doctor who still has to license them yeah it's terence

[01:19:14] baby quite literally the bbc has to pay him every time they use the daleks it's incredible it's worth his estate i guess yeah um the rani is probably the biggest character that hasn't returned the people are still calling out for every single conspiracy theory starts with the rani right right so a lot of people are wondering if mrs flood is the rani uh it doesn't work for me like there's not enough

[01:19:40] in it no the rani is a third a third time lord for anyone who doesn't know so we have the doctor we have the master and we have the rani yeah um but it's tying back into the pantheon and and sarah jane smith they there's a day of the clown which is one of the first uh serials in season two and i get very toy maker vibes from that so again like menacingly playful but pied piper so this is

[01:20:07] the pied piper of this universe who dresses up as a clown and does this whole array of accents including dressing up just like neil patrick harris's version uh in the 60th anniversary special and doing a german accent well that's interesting i would be amazed if there's this much time back to sarah jane like why what what would what would be rtd's mission here in getting people to watch

[01:20:34] watch the sarah jane adventures i mean i think it's just tying it all together because we're even getting references to things that people thought were made non-canon like what's the uh the alternative eighth doctor the kukuk which is it koku um oh it's richard e gran and um the name of that

[01:20:57] cartoon adventure was starts the k right yes oh it's escaped me that's the worst hang on we'll figure it out we'll figure it out um but it is interesting that this day of the clown entity this toy maker like entity comes from a dark dark nebula where entities were are created from human emotion and must feed on human emotion to survive i mean could that just be the pantheon

[01:21:26] since he's already tied in uh i think it makes sense it's the scream of the shulka there we go sorry i knew there's a k in there somewhere there was a k in there and you know if you if you uh rearrange the letters there it says i am the master mrs flood no i i'm just joking around it actually spells bad wolf

[01:21:50] uh anyway that's been it's all connected i love it i love it every every week you got me going with all these theories and uh i feel like one day we're gonna have rtd in here on the show maybe maybe and uh and he'll be like alicia you saw it you saw it so far in advance you read my mind i was thinking it was gonna be like when we had david goyer on the show and he goes david you gotta stop asking about markley and foundation he's it's just it's just a side character david

[01:22:18] dian i don't know if you've heard that one but he's like what's that character you're all obsessed with that's amazing just stop it the showrunner came on to our podcast to tell us that our theory was stupid that's amazing that's so great i love that no they they love they love hearing us uh i mean statistically if you make enough predictions one of them will be right

[01:22:45] i mean i think they love that you know their shows are inspiring people to be like oh but what is what if what if that's what you want that's the dream like you want people talking about it you want people speculating and the more wild the theory um the better my my more grounded theory about how this is going to end is i i feel like it's the doctor or a version of the doctor or a version of

[01:23:10] reality where the doctor presses this button to destroy earth because somebody on earth has threatened um susan and susan's life is in danger and that is the final straw like that's the if there's anything that's going to turn the doctor against earth it would be somebody threatening his grandchild so i feel like the that susan is calling out for help and that turns the doctor against earth but

[01:23:37] maybe it's all manipulation from mrs flood but why that date because susan was centuries in the future of that date right that's where she got left was a future earth yes i believe so yeah so why may the 24th 2025 because at some future adventure the doctor brings her back to may 24th because that is when the penultimate episode airs i hope it wouldn't be nice though if you know caroline

[01:24:04] ford is is getting up there in years if if they're going to bring susan back have her regenerate and like have a new susan be a companion of the doctor again and rehabilitate the character a little bit because we don't need whiny susan being that would be great yeah sure only susan right love it absolutely here for it it'll be great yeah what if belinda is is regenerated already and she modeled herself off of monday flim

[01:24:34] yes i mean there is there's precedent for that as well romana who is another time lord um a companion of the doctor um literally they meet somebody on an adventure and changes her face and the doctor's like you can't steal a face and she's like of course i can i'm a time lord yeah and peter cabaldy does too right like yeah that's exactly um so yeah it's you can there are certain time lords

[01:25:00] that can absolutely influence um what they what they look like did you um you did you watch um there was a remaster i think it was or a reissue of the um the the second doctors yeah war games do you see what they did with the new doctors it was at least do you know about this it was so so clever so ian do you want to describe what they did well they they're at the end of spoilers um at

[01:25:29] the end of the episode the the doctor has been very naughty and medley and the time lords instead of throwing him in jail banish him and uh banish him to earth and force him to regenerate and the doctor's like you can't force me to regenerate and they're like it's okay we'll let you choose what you're going to look like and he's like well okay fine i'll choose and what they did was beautiful they have the dialogue from um from the from the original episode and you have patrick

[01:25:58] trout and saying no he's too skinny he's too young he's too old and they throw up a picture of matt smith when he says he's too skinny a picture of peter cabaldy when he says he's too old and every insult that he has about the picture throws up a doctor that we see in the future so it's if you're going to remaster something it's such a great way to do it and eventually he can't pick and they force him though we're just going to pick a face for you and i'm i'm more okay with this that i am them

[01:26:27] putting hayden christensen in return of the jedi because there was an actual actor who was supposed to be the character in return of the jedi whereas here this is just like random faces he could choose from and it's more meaningful if it's like oh those are actually going to be his future faces anyway but it's so great it's such a great opportunity to um to stick that in when you didn't even have to force any audio in his audio is right there just pick one of the 14 doctors to slip in it's great

[01:26:56] oh boy well let's see what happens in so we only know the titles of the last two so probably people listening yeah we'll be watching live with everybody else to see what we missed at the end but we know that the last two are wish world and the reality war so hmm both written by rtd all right better do right rtd i mean it's all on you now something interesting as i wish i need to remember

[01:27:24] the name of this book the next time we come on the show because it's it's a book i mentioned a couple of episodes ago it's about it's when he was writing season three and he has this correspondence with um with a journalist and they basically turn those correspondence into a book and he's talking about how he's quite candid and he says yes every episode has a written by credit however every episode

[01:27:49] is written by me so he touches everything so just when it says written by russell td that means it was only written by him every other episode has still had him rewriting it he just doesn't put his name on everything i think he's one of those that has is very controlling about where his narrative is going so yeah yeah because everything's deliberate it's all connected it's all connected he did an interview

[01:28:16] recently a really pretty lengthy interview with david tennant on his podcast and i thought it was really fascinating to get there was no like bombshell doctor who reveal or anything like that so don't go in expecting that but it was nice to hear rtd's process a little bit yeah cool well we did it everybody yeah we did do we have any whovian emails i didn't check no no we didn't this week but uh

[01:28:39] do send them in next week for tardis at the lorehounds.com um yeah i want to hear everybody's thoughts about this is a big episode i know this was i by far the longest podcast we've done on the season i think not just the classic doctor who spent you know tangents but also because there was a lot to talk about so many time streams yeah we'll yeah we'll see the discord um i'm sure

[01:29:05] there'll be much discussion there after this one yeah for sure well you can join us on our discord it's in the link tree in the show notes you can check out our other podcasts we have and or the last of us uh and murder bot we're just starting murder bot that's a lot of fun if you want more like fun sci-fi i think murder bot's gonna be right up your alley and uh and ian can you talk a little bit about

[01:29:29] captain spot yeah um so i have a star trek podcast with my uh lovely co-host danae and we're currently on a hiatus until strange new worlds returns which was just announced for july 17th what season is that up to now uh season three finally it's been kind of an 18 month wait for this third season

[01:29:52] so could i start strange new world season one and enjoy it without eddie star trek yes 100 okay all right absolutely in fact it's my new entry point for people getting into star trek um currently strange new worlds is uh yeah it's a great entry point it's very kind to the new viewer um uh while not alienating fans uh fans of like that level of the law as we are okay um so yeah

[01:30:17] we we're currently on a bit of a break but there are still 200 episodes that you can catch up with until we return in july very nice to take each episode of strange new worlds as it comes out very cool all right i gotta check this maybe i'm gonna try to catch up now that we have and or done i think i could catch i think i could do this i think i could join you on this journey we'll have a lovely companion show to recommend which is captain's pod and we've covered we've covered strange new world season one and two great place to start very nice very nice i'll cue it up

[01:30:46] i'll get my i'll get my watching done i'll get my listening in and we'll be all set nice alicia can you tell us what else is happening on the lorehounds and beyond uh yeah so on the main feed in addition to our weekly stuff uh check out that episode of sinners it came out recently and the next one coming up that jean and i are recording later today is the plan is thunderbolts finally we're talking about

[01:31:09] that uh those were my two favorite films of the year 2025 so far so yeah very happy to talk about them both yeah absolutely absolutely and thunderbolts also is surprisingly uh has a lot of uh emotional depth it's a really great character piece with a lot of fun and just put together really well well paced i think well uh yeah well constructed um and supercast and patreon you get all of this stuff

[01:31:38] ad free of course plus the bonus content for and or and all the other season pass content stuff and the extra second breakfast and elevensies i promise we're doing a real pain plus something a real pain to get done plus something else for may um and you'll find the in the link between the show notes links to all the affiliates never mind the music where psychology meets music radioactive ramblings doing uh fallout lore at the moment uh rings and rituals properly howard

[01:32:07] will shift dust and the star wars canon timeline podcast do you want to shout out some thank yous john i would love to we'd like to thank people here people who make our podcasting experience better and able to justify to our partners when we spend an hour and a half talking about doctor who so our discord server boosters aaron k tiller the thriller dork of the ninjas doof 71 athena a tina

[01:32:33] listoo nancy m ghost of partition and radioactive richard thank you for making sure that we can have a custom discord link so we don't look like noobs and our lore masters who are top tier patreon supercast subscribers and keep the gears turning here at lorehound central they are some martian michael g michelle e brian p sc peter oh and adam s nancy m doof 71 brian 8063 frederick h sarah l gareth c

[01:32:58] matthew m sarah m andrew b kwang yu dead eye jedi bob nathan t alex v sub zero aaron k dally v mothership 61 nars kathy w listoo jeffrey b elisa u neil f ben b scott f steven n julia f collies il mariel forwards last him and adrian thank you everyone may the tardis be with you i

[01:33:24] don't know i've been watching too much star wars later lately and we'll see you next week the lorehounds podcast is produced and published by the lorehounds you can send questions and feedback and voicemails at the lorehounds.com slash contact get early and add free access to all lorehounds podcasts at patreon.com slash the lorehounds any opinions stated are ours personally and do not reflect the opinion of or belong to any employers or other entities thanks for listening