Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to the 2nd Grace and
Bountiful Human Empire, the only Doctor Who flashcast that doesn't
just sit there watching Doctor Who, surrounded by merch and giving
its scores out of 10, we podcast about it as well.
I'm Nathan.
I'm Brendan.
I'm Peter.
I'm Todd.
I'm Bugs Bunny and a push-up bra and Sigourney Weaver blonde wig
for this one.
So we're here to talk about the 2nd episode of season 2 of the new
era, which is Lux by Russell T. Davis and directed by Amanda
Brachi, who I know literally nothing about.
And I want to start us off by just going around the group and
talking a little bit about how we felt this landed.
Let's start with you, Todd.
I was captivated.
I thought it was a visual tour de Force, and I actually felt for
once.
Russell T. Davies hit all the marks really well, push boundaries
without going over.
Yeah, I thought this was absolutely magnificent.
It is possibly the best of the era so far and that's considering
that I really loved things like dot and bubble, boom, 73 yards
last year.
So it's in great company.
Richard?
Oh, I hate to be bland, but I agree with everyone.
Maybe it's the best arc so far.
I'm really loving how the H word is being brought in and makes
more sense now and just seems to have more impetus.
Everything felt to me a bit messy last year.
This is my 1st go on this flash cuss, so I'm going backwards, but
I really loved how it handled things that were touched on last
year, but socially and politically as well as narratively, and
it's gorgeous, and it looks sumptuous.
Can we just say marigold, I think is my safe word for this.
The dress, I was waiting for Todd to talk about Belinda's hair.
I want to hear his opinion on that Divine, it's just gorgeous to
look at.
It really is.
And Peter.
Well, 1st of all, Richard, I want to say, if that's a big call
calling it the best arc so far when 1966, the arc is right in
front of me.
I think this was, I would agree, possibly the most successful
shooty episode so far.
I think the 1st 15 minutes are actually a very good traditional
Doctor Who set up an investigation and I would have had no issue
if the episode had continued along those lines.
It reminded me heavily of the idiot's lantern, I think, and I also
like that story.
But then when it spins off into something altogether more
interesting and left field.
Um, it turns into a different episode and I'm also looking good
for that.
Yeah, I think Russell's discovered a new thing that Doctor Who can
do and we seem to be doing it once a year.
And so we've had the giggle, the devil's chord, and now this.
And I think, you know, they give us a chance for a spectacular
villain.
They give us a chance to go back to the 20th century.
It occurs to me that going back to the 1950s is like Philip
Inchcliffe going back to the Victorian era given how time has
moved on.
And it's beautifully done.
And I think that that's probably what we should talk about next.
What did you think about just the look of Miami 1952?
Brandon.
I I loved the colour of it because there's a temptation when we go
back into history where television was black and white to assume
that everything is sort of shades of brown with just the
occasional pop of colour here and there.
It reminded me of Batman the animated series where they drew all
the backgrounds on black paper.
So it was like we had in the exterior night scenes and in the
cinema, we had this dark palette behind everything and then all
this colour coming at us, absolutely beautiful.
It kept the scales small.
Oh, I thought, which was a benefit because you can then dress very
successfully.
You're not overstretching, you know, even the budget, the dock 2
has now.
I just thought the production as a whole was successful, and I
think much better than the devil scored, which was attempting the
same thing, but in some ways was hand fisted.
So even elements like the loops of film coming out and sort of
snagging, the doctor just looked better integrated with live
action.
And the final moments of Mr. Ring a Ding had a sort of majesty to
them, the way that they were put together.
And it followed on from last week's episode where the sequence
where the certificates touch had some real creative visual
storytelling to it.
So I thought it was good.
Todd, we need to ask you about the hair.
I liked her here.
I thought it was very much of a time.
I much prefer female assistants here when it's longer, Nathan.
Richard.
She looked wonderful and, you know, that waste, what's with that
impossible waste?
I knew you'd love that line, Todd. don't know.
Costuming was just sumptuous and it was just the lighting, the
sets, the costumes, everything just worked so well together.
And as I said, it was sumptuous.
I just revelled in it as well as the cartoon aspect, which was
just sublime.
Yeah, well, we'll get there.
We'll get there.
But I want to shout out to Shooty's outfit as well and his period
here.
I thought that that was particularly good.
And just the 2 of them together just looked magnificent, like
really quite extraordinary.
I thought, you know, like it would have been slightly cheesy for
him to have a yellow bow tie to match her kind of yellow dress.
And he didn't.
But gee whiz, he looks great.
And the decision to give him new clothes, you know, on a regular
basis, I think ends up being a really good one.
It's very clear that he's the doctor even in long shot and we just
get just beautiful clothing.
The idea that the doctor dresses up to go back into the past, which
is something that we haven't always had, even in modern Doctor Who
is a great thing.
It's what Hartnell did, and I'm absolutely in favour of it.
What did you think of 1952, Richard?
Well, of course, the architectural motif's got me a bit giggly and
excited.
So architecturally, of course.
I really like that it contains itself to just one part of a street
and it doesn't, it's not over ambitious, and of course, that makes
the threat tighter and harsher.
It's the intimacy of it.
And then, of course, there's the intimacy of the cinematic
experience.
This is super clever.
Can I go on about antecedents yet or shall we do that a bit
later?
Well, I think it might be a good segue to talk about the cinema
and the way cinema and things work and then we can talk about Lux
Imperato himself.
So yes, go on, I think.
Well, I will lead into why the optional, like, I love the way
they've realised Lux as an animated character from the 1940s
actually.
Um, because he looks like some of the ant creatures that Bugs has
met Rabbit Rampage, um, by Chuck Jones in 1955 is the one that
comes to mind.
Do you remember when they're always exploding the miss on scene
and breaking the frame and doing that very French thing that we've
talked about on podcasts before of, you know, of breaking the 4th
wall and animation, actually talking about what film is.
I love that Russell is so onto this.
It's a thinniest dream.
And then, of course, we get to the fan folk.
But what I love about this as a cinematic experience is that it
really pays homage to being in a theatre, and being immersed, and
what immersion actually means, and the danger that you feel in, um
the immediacy of being in a theatre and watching it is completely
different from watching something at home.
I got a bit of that watching this.
And when he does climb out of the screen, just as Bugs did in many
many Chuck Jones and Matthew Maltese, Warner Brothers cartoons at
the time, is actually quite a frightening.
It really hits the mark.
I'm actually thinking of the Chut Jones animation from 1953, which
is called Daka Mark. which has...
Duck a muck is excellent.
Yeah, yeah.
And again, has that sort of thing.
And of course, that's Chuck Jones, again.
Daffy, isn't it?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. just a year after this.
It's good.
But, you know, watching TV, as we know, is so immersive.
You know, here we are talking about a TV show that we experienced
we used to watching Doctor Who to be scared and to laugh and to
feel things.
And so the screen is always porous.
And so this is not a new idea by any stretch.
And what we get to is that all 3 of those gods, not including
puppy Soo Tech, but the other 3 gods, all have some control over
Doctor Who the TV show, as does Mrs. Flant.
And so, you know, in the Devil's Court, we had that moment where
Maestro strikes the set so that they can do a musical number.
Here, we have that absolutely much more explicit because this is
about a god who is in charge of the visual medium.
And so like, I just think all of that stuff worked incredibly
well.
Just having shooty tap on the inside of my TV screen was like so
incredible.
I did think that it worked well.
But by the same token.
I do think the conceits were all that well developed.
Being turned into cartoon form, you know, escaping by breaking the
frames, entering a reality where, you know, you're the fiction and
being observed.
That's all being done before, and in some respects, it's sort of
the low hanging fruit.
So yeah, I really did enjoy this episode.
I thought it was very good on its own terms, but I did also think
that in the hands of a more imaginatively thorough writer like
Stephen Motha, it might have been developed a little bit more
beyond quite obvious trips.
But what I liked was the fact that the animation didn't outstay
its welcome.
We had the 2D and then they got depth and then it began to pop and
then they went back into reality.
And I think if we just had the 2D for too long, it would have not
worked.
I'm thinking back to one of the Chibnell episodes where I sort of
just tuned out, whereas I think here it was just long enough and
it kept on moving and kept on moving and that was really good.
Many episodes of chip or 0 work cartoonish, I would agree.
On that notion, Peter.
I partially agree with you in that.
I think another writer would have fleshed more of those out, but I
think possibly we would have had fewer of them in order to give it
time to breathe or that the story may have needed to be longer.
For me, I really enjoyed what we got.
I love animation.
So I was kind of like, I'd love to see more of animated Dr. and
Belinda running about.
But at the same time, instead, what we get is we get this
beautiful, self-contained, animated bit that is about them opening
up to each other, and it's doing the whole, under last of the time
lords thing in a new and interesting way, which is something that
continues to astound me about this era.
Like Russell is having to do all the things he's done 5 or 6 times
before, and do them in new ways, and for the most part, he
succeeds.
The the 4th war break.
I got a shiver when they came right up to the screen and there was
a little like 10 year old part of my brain that's going, no.
I'm not going to come through my television.
I think that that was incredibly well done.
Just, you know, having them tap, having the screen fall down and
smash, so the glass falls out of the tally, and then having them
walk out and the, just the way that that's erected works really
quite well, I think.
And so I think that we'll talk about those 3 fans a little bit
later.
But what I would like to talk about now is our villain.
So we've had Neil Patrick Harris.
We've had Jinx Monsoon, and now we have Alan coming back in Doctor
Who, playing Mr. Ringa-Ding, ding.
Don't make me laugh.
It's very good.
Really very good.
What did you think of that, Richard?
It's period, isn't it?
I think it works.
You know, I love animation so much.
I actually spent 25 grand learning it 20 years ago. and then
realised it isn't actually a career you can make a living out of
anyway.
Well, I couldn't.
Um, I adore it.
The animation's flawless, but really, as in with all of these
things, the voice artist is 1st and then the character is animated
around him in 3D because that's how we do it now.
So when you see the rendered ant creature with the pig nose, I'm
trying to work out what those references are about.
I don't think it's very kind to Mr. Cummings.
But, um, you know, he would have, he would have done some of the
movement as well.
And it's flawless animation.
Do we know Disney, did the Disney crew work on that or is it all
Cardiff?
I don't know, but I mean, the interesting thing is, you know
there's those things in Mickey Mouse and all of those characters
that have those dog noses and you kind of be going, are they
dogs?
Like, what the hell even?
And so it was very definitely that, I think.
They even make reference to it, and that is blue.
Um, there's a... because of moonlight.
There's lots and lots of film references here and the ant feelers
that it has are also nods to just anthropomorphism in animation
but it goes much dark. the max Fleischer cartoons of that are the
earlier ones that were really dark, as in, like, you know, as dark
as this, um, had more of a, of a look of this character.
This isn't really a Disney looking character.
So whoever's worked on this really knows their stuff.
But if you're talking about the character itself, it is my
favourite villain so far of the new era, as in its realisation.
I watched like Peter, I went back and watched the Jinx Monsoon
episode and it actually landed a lot better for me today after
watching Lux, but it is flawed and I think it's about timing in
just the way it got itself over onto the screen, which this does
not suffer at all.
It's a lot tighter.
It's a lot more closely realised, and it's a lot closer to, it's
antecedency.
I think it understands what it's trying to do by aping what has
gone before it in a very visceral way.
The character is unsettling and there are animation tricks for a
character design in what you do to make a character warm and
friendly and accessible.
Bugs life and ants both did that very well.
And then you look at this one and there are deliberately drawn
things to make you mistrust the character.
And the pig's nose is one of them.
It's mixing up.
It's mixing up types Have we said tropes yet in this episode?
I don't think we have.
We need to in that case.
Yeah, so it is deliberately designed to be just slightly off.
I think it does it very well.
I thought he looked a little bit like Jiminy cricket.
Um, and it also put me in mind of um, do you know Steamboat
Scratchy from um, The Simpsons?
I don't have that kind of thing when he started malevolently
looking out of the screen.
It sort of had that dark turn to it, which I really liked.
The whole thing put me in mind of the idiot's lantern.
And I think if the idiot's lantern had been an episode now, you
could very well transplant that to the wire, being one of the
pantheon.
Um, and even some of the story bits were the same because you had
if you'd replaced Mr. Magpie, Reginald Pie, and you replaced the
wire with Lux Imperata, and you replaced people having their faces
drawn out of them by the TV screen with people getting trapped in
the film cells.
Then you start to see, you know, the plots moving gear by gear.
But, you know, like I say, I think that's a pretty good basis to
work from.
I think Idiot Lantern's a pretty good episode.
I think the thing that it does differently, though, is that
porosity between the real world and the world of fiction, I think
and that is a feature of this pantheon, really, with the exception
of Zoo Tech, and I really like it.
Maybe a big hint of where we're heading.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, there's that great thing in in the Devil's Cord
where the doctor and Jinx Monsoon are kind of trying to rest
control over who gets to look at the camera.
You know, when the doctor's winning, he gets to regard the camera
for a 2nd and all of that sort of thing and he gets to take
control of the TV show at the end.
All of that sort of stuff is something that we couldn't have done
earlier, and I'm glad that Russell brought it in.
What do you think, Brendan?
Um, yes, yeah, I thought it was incredibly effectively realised.
In answer to Richard's question earlier, the animation was done by
Frame Store.
Oh, they're great.
Yeah, a long history, including most of the Daniel Craig bonds and
a lot of the more recent, well, I spent more recent, a lot of the
Marvel films over the past 10 years, although they are not a
Disney subsidiary, I should point out, but it wouldn't surprise me
if Disney put them put them onto it.
But I'd like to point out something from friend of the podcast and
also former podcast guest Maxwell, which is all 3 members of the
pantheon we've seen so far have been played by gay or otherwise
queer actors.
And I...
Always the villain.
Yep, And I said to him, and the original Harbinger of Soutech
Bernard Archard, was, of course, in a relationship with his
partner for 60 years.
So I don't, I don't know, I'm not, I'm not saying anything about
that.
I'm just pointing it out as Max pointed it out to me.
We're divine.
He's essentially the take away.
And watch it.
Alan was fantastic.
He really, he just made that role his own.
It was just mesmerising to watch.
And I think that's one of the things about this story is that they
were all so good.
I thought Belinda was was fabulous.
All the lines about Brock Hudson and HIV and were just handled so
well and then all the talk about segregation, how all that was
done.
And the mother of the boy.
My God, she just sold the whole thing.
Like if, if that, if she had been a bad actress or even half
standard, it would have fallen down a bit, but she was so good.
I just was thoroughly engrossed in her performance, that when they
did the fake out with the policeman, I actually thought that she
had turned because it was so easy to blame black people for what's
happened to her boy, like, and I was so convinced that that had
happened.
I thought she was tremendous.
There's that scene in the diner and you've got a little gay boy
behind the counter.
You've got this Jewish woman and you've got these 2 people of
colour and it's 4 o'clock in the morning and the normal rules are
suspended.
You know, they suspend the rules.
And I just think that that's just that little kind of, you know
all of these people on the edges that are meeting together in
silence and in darkness.
I thought was terrific.
That stuff about segregation, I think, was just, you know, like
quite extraordinary.
And it has to address the problem.
Why doesn't the doctor overthrow it?
That's one of my major problems with Rosa, is that the doctor
should trick the governor of Alabama into blowing up the state
house with him and his family in it because that's what the doctor
would do in that situation.
But because the doctor's fictional, he can only deal with
fictional problems.
So here he just says, I'm waiting for other people to topple this
world.
And in the meantime, I'm just going to shine.
I thought that was terrific, a very good way of dealing with that
problem, I think.
I also thought that scene in the diner was the best scene in the
episode, even with the more attention grabbing things going on, it
played to the better aspects of Stuti's performance, I think.
And it really shows, I think, like, as the whole episode did, what
a breath of fresh air, um, for Rada, C2 has been.
She's an adult companion, following the fairly irritatingly
juvenile ruby, and it really ups the program, I think.
That bit where she asks the doctor whether he should be just
introduced as just doctor and he says yes.
And she just says ridiculously.
So good.
That's Barbara.
Yeah, Barbara Verney, I thought...
Like it's just so natural and she is in that category for me
Barbara.
Sarah, Liz.
It's got to go nuts yet.
Richard, did you want to talk about the segregation thing or
anything?
That would be interesting.
I mean, none of us are really qualified, but we have a new friend
of the podcast, Alan, who's in the States, and he's been following
everything we're doing, which is so sweet, and thank you.
And he's a black man in his 60s who does a lot of podcasting
himself and he said, oh, guys, if you're going to talk about this
please mention for us just how fantastic this episode is.
And I went, you're talking about the sun down a thing.
And he went, yeah, yeah, but it's, he said, it's just the way that
and I'll quote him, that Russell pays attention to the race issue
in such a simple and direct and conversational manner, and then
absolutely turns on its head and uses it as a taunt from Lux.
Because of course, it's always the villains who misinterpret
what's going on because they can only see things from their own
viewpoint.
And I think that's fabulous.
I really do.
All right.
So we want to talk about the fan reaction, obviously, and it's our
3 fans, Lizzy, Hassan, and Robin, who get a visit from the
doctor.
I spent a fair bit of time this afternoon just checking out their
shelves, and seeing how many Doctor Who the collection things they
have.
They definitely have the key to time DVD release, that big box
release, and they have the little Slaveen figurine, which you gave
me, Brandon, which is on my Doctor Who DVD shelf.
They have that just sort of sat in front of the thing.
And like Tellos.
For God's sake.
This is the 1st mention of Telos in the new series. 30s.
What did you think?
Todd?
Oh, I think some people are going to be outraged because they
can't take a joke.
I actually thought they were, they were really great.
And, um, you know, he pushed the boundaries with it and then
pulled back on it and I was, it was quite delicious.
You know, he can take a joke by going with the blink thing, even
though we all know that if you're a classic series fan, you're
never going to vote blinkers number one, but, you know, that's
part of the joke, really, isn't it?
And so I just, I just love that.
And I love the fact that at the end they actually had, had a 1st
name and a 2nd name in the credits.
They just weren't, you know, just one name and then I kept
thinking, well, are they something more?
Are they the gods of Ragnarok was all I could think of?
So, you know, because they've been mentioned and I thought maybe
they are.
Oh my god, entertain us.
That's what Alan said, actually.
You mentioned it.
Yeah.
Oh, I hadn't thought of that.
I mean, obviously they're real and the doctor's fictional, right?
But there is enough plausible deniability so that you can have it
how you want.
I mean, it is that what really breaks it is their appearance at
the end.
And the moment, I think that Lizzie gave it 7 out of 10.
I was convinced that Todd was saying the same thing at the same
time, but it's a solid 9 point something, isn't it, I think?
It's a nine.
It could go either way, depending on how the arc was sold, but
it's definitely a 9, Nathan.
There you go.
If it's a 7 now, let's wait a couple of years and it'll be a 9
then.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
I didn't care much for that scene, honestly.
I love the idea of it.
Um, and I really liked the ultimate breaking of the 4th wall, but
I think there was a better and harking back till I was saying
earlier, less obvious take on it that would have worked a little
bit better.
The door 2 fans were very broad strokes, jewellers decked out in
their kind of scarves and fezes to sit down together and watch a
TV show.
I know they're not meant to be real.
I know that they're just meant to be sort of cyphers in the
fiction.
That's absolutely fine, but we have to, we have to look at what
we're actually watching and what's being fed to us.
And regardless of that, I just think they came across as somehow, a
less nuanced and maybe less sympathetic take on fans than the
Wizkid.
And so while I loved the idea of that scene, and I really did like
it on some respects, I think it could have been actually a lot
better.
Oh, I just thought that, yeah, they're meant to be tunish, and I
pertrified and all the other things because everything else in
this story is, and the truth is the little subtle exchanges
between them all, when the script drops or the little asides, or
the little moments at the end, when they say, oh, we're actually
still real.
Um, for better or for worse, I have lots of friends exactly like
those people.
And I, when I was 15, I made that scarf and I had those toys, so
I'm feeling seen.
Yeah, yeah.
We're here doing a podcast about it 2 days later.
I think, you know, I also really not love the nod to the to the
spectrum quality of them when when one of the the girl says, oh, a
lot of people find us annoying. and I thought, well, anyone with
ADHD or spectrum has said that at some point in their lives and a
lot of fandom crossovers with spectrum. and I found that just so
sweet and poignant and I really think that would have reached
out.
You think about a young person watching this, who will identify
with that.
And it's just recognition in a really sweet way.
I thought there was something really warm too about giving them
the role of saving the day.
So they tell the doctor how the day is to be saved because they
noticed the thing about flammable film stock.
Also, Russell, you're a bastard because we got to watch all of
those canisters of film go up in flames at the end of the
episode.
I thought there might have been the myth maybe.
God, it was very Pamela, wasn't it?
Yes.
Great Pamela Mash, yeah.
But also, because this is the episode, it's like Gridlock, the
episode where the companion properly gets to know the doctor, one
of the ways that she gets to know him is by seeing the reaction
that his fans have towards him and how they feel about him and how
included she is in that immediately.
And I think that that's, you know, like it's not just a sketch in
the middle of the episode. crucial to how the episode plays out
both in the science fiction thing and in the character arc, and
that it's not as good as blink.
Yeah, well, yes.
I do agree with that.
I think it's a very important scene and I think it's a good scene
on a lot of levels.
I just think it could have been a much better scene.
It played into that stereotype of Doctor Who fans where they're
sitting intently watching the screen, like not moving.
And those comments about, oh, you know, I always knew it was real
just plays into, I think, a weird stereotype that doesn't really
exist.
I just thought it could have been clever.
Yeah, maybe it could have been clever, but I also think on the
other hand, it could have been far worse, and I know in other
things, Russell has been quite pointed and and sometimes is just
too on the nose, and this time, for me, it was just like the rest
of the episode, he was just on and it did enough without doing too
much.
You're only saying that because you don't have a last name.
Look, I think, however we feel about this scene, it's Russell's
attempt to make up for killing a bunch of Doctor Who fans the last
time he shot a doctor.
Exactly.
All right.
So, um, we should wind up, but before we do that, let's just sort
of go around the table and talk about how we feel about the end of
it and how we feel about the show at the moment, Todd.
I love the way in which luck's sort of just became the light.
Like, I thought that was actually really quite clever.
The get out of jail free card for 15 people, I would have liked to
have seen perhaps Belinda grab the film and then something
happening to it rather than just like, you know, but it was there
but you know, you know what I'm like.
Yeah.
And, uh, no, so I was really happy with that.
And, and then having Mrs. Flood turn up, the 1st time she's been
out of a present day as an next door neighbour is interesting to
me, right?
How would she now been able to do that?
And I think her knowing how the TV show works and, you know, even
nominating the date of episode seven, which obviously came up last
week, you know, she has to be in some way involved with a pantheon
because she has the same power over the TV show that that is
characteristic of them.
What do you think, Brendan?
I really loved the ending and I think, um, going right back to
what Richard was saying about antecedents.
I think it deliberately pays homage to 1957, the Incredible
Shrinking Man, in which a man is incredible and shrinks.
And eventually, eventually he shrinks past the subatomic level, and
that's where the film ends, and it ends with him giving a long
monologue, which will just read a part of it out.
So, Mr. Ringading ends by saying, I am everything and I am nothing
goodbye.
Um, what uh, Scott Carey says in the incredible shrinking man is
so close, the infinitesimal and the infinite, but suddenly I knew
that they were really the 2 ends of the same concept, the
unbelievably small and the unbelievably vast, eventually meat, like
the closing of a gigantic circle.
And it has very similar visuals of him falling into a cosmos of
atoms that Mr. Ringading expanding into the galaxy in the
universe.
But it's a lovely tribute in that you don't have to have seen the
incredible shrinking man to get it, you know, and that also being
1957 ties into nuclear power and what have you.
And I'd also just like to finish by saying, I've got my link to
the Dalek invasion of Earth, which is a new friend sacrifices
himself to save our heroes, and at the crucial moment is reunited
with a lost, loved one, whom the villain had transformed in some
way.
So, just like the guy who's helping Ian runs into his brother
who's become a robberman and sacrifices his life and he's with his
brother at the end.
You've got the lovely thing between Reginald Pye and his wife and
somehow she appears and hands him the matches.
Yeah.
And and I think that's the one of the areas for me that this
improves on the devil's cord, which is the devil's cord.
Yes, the Beatles come along and save the day, but they never
really know why they're saving the day.
Whereas here, Reginald Pye is absolutely, he knows what he is
about to lose as well as his life.
He knows what's at stake.
He's been there the whole time and he takes the decision.
And I think that's a lot more powerful.
And Brendan also, I think if you're looking for a thematic link to
Dalek invasion of Earth, um, there's some, again, Dalek invasion
of Earth about nuclear power and the Aten bomb that the idea of
like the Daleks are tampering with the forces of creation.
I think that's there as well.
Yeah nice.
Richard, do you have any final thoughts?
I saw Incredible Shrinking Man at the Cremon Orpheum 35 years ago
this year and it's all just come back.
Thank you, Brendan.
Um, I was going to note that it, it's really keying into modern
quantum theory, Buddhism and cosmology and spirituality, the final
line about being swamped by light, um, Mr. Morningstar, if you
were indeed the fallen god of light, and then you come back to the
light and you become one with the light, is all of those things
and it's right at the apex of all of that thinking, and I love
that it was in a 1957 sci-fi film and that it's something are
talking about all the time now.
Yeah, it's kind of perfect.
I mean, of course, it's not completely perfect because it's Doctor
Who, and we'd have nothing to say if it was, and we don't want it
to be, and that's the point.
Yeah, I really hope this is getting the attention it deserves
because the whole team seemed to really be pulling it together
even when we weren't so sure last year.
I'm really feeling a confidence in the mix this time.
Yeah, you know, Richard, not perfect in many ways, I think, but
also trying for something and having some interesting ideas and
actually toying with the format a little bit.
I think this is, as we said earlier, maybe the most broadly
successful episode of GT Zero so far.
Yeah.
So that's all the time we've got for now.
We have one or 2 things to plug.
Well, just one thing, really.
This Sunday, 500-year diary, season two, the 2nd coming, will
start with our episode on the Dalek invasion of Earth.
If you are wondering what on earth all that was about.
And you can catch up with 500-year diary at 500-year diary.com.
And of course, if you are already subscribed, it will come
directly to your podcatcher of choice.
Brandon, is there anything else that we need to mention, do you
think?
No, but I think we will have a new three-handed game next week.
So, and I will reveal what that is next Monday because I can't
quite remember.
I think it's Emily.
It's Emily.
It's the very last episode ever filmed.
That's right.
The very last episode of the New Avengers.
And it's got Joanna Lumley clinging to a car in a car wash.
So it's just worth watching for that.
Clinging to a car wash in Canada.
And of course, we have an episode of Untitled Star Trek Project, in
all likelihood, coming through on Friday.
All right, so all that remains is for me to say, until next time
if you're out there, Lizzy Abel, Hassan Chaudhary and Robin
Gossage, thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
See you soon.
And good then.