Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to the 2nd Grace and
Bountiful Human Empire.
The only Doctor Who flash cast that's happy the Doctor Who is
finally warning an unsuspecting public about the menace of
podcasting.
I'm Nathan.
I'm James.
I'm Simon.
I'm Todd.
And I'm the reason we no longer randomly date anymore, although
mostly armless for this episode.
Well, um, we are here to talk about series 2, season 2, uh, episode
four, which is called Lucky Day, written by Pete McTie, and
directed by Peter Whore, who we saw earlier on this year in the
robot revolution, and then a very long time ago in A Good Man Goes
to War.
So let's just start off by talking generally about how we felt
about this episode.
I'm going to say quite positive.
I liked it quite a lot.
What did you think, Simon?
I really quite liked it a lot.
I think we all have to declare a differing levels of conflict of
interest here because I mean, I've known Pete McTie for 36 years
now.
Even putting that to one side.
I actually, I actually think it was a very, very, very strong
episode, I think it starts in a way that you think, oh, yes, I
know what this is going to be.
And then it doesn't end up there at all.
It uses the single episode format really well, which is something
I'm very positive about when stories do that rather than trying to
ape 4 episodes stories sort of squished together.
Look, it was entertaining.
It was exciting, interesting, well done, well performed, well
written, what's not to like.
What did you think, Todd?
Well, a conflict of interest, also disclosure.
In size of my beat for about 35 years as well, and um, I think
it's really challenging to do doctor light episodes after 20
years.
I think it's even more challenging to put them into an 8 episode
season when people just want the doctor, the doctor, the doctor.
I think it's incredibly difficult to pull things off after an
excellent episode of Doctor Who, let alone 2 in a row.
So I think, you know, um, his back was up against the wall and
actually pulling this one off, and I think he did admirably, and I
really enjoyed it, and I thought it was a very strong episode
possibly my favourite of his so far.
I think it's my favourite episode of his so far.
What did you think about it, James?
What, say, like, what's my general feeling?
Yeah.
Well, I thought that was what Kate was doing with Ibrahim.
Well, that's more than a general. more than a general feeling.
Oh, just feeling the general.
Anyway, I really enjoyed it.
I think I said this here at the pub last night.
Nathan.
It's kind of like love and monsters, in a way, you know, and
that's that's high praise.
I love love monsters.
But if Elton Pope was a bastard.
Exactly.
So, no, no, I really enjoyed it.
I thought it was really strong.
I thought it was like very well written disclaimer.
I don't really know Pete McTai, but I still enjoyed it.
Brilliant.
That's the 1st independent statement we've had.
Yes, exactly.
Hastily backed up with a second.
I only met dear Pete very briefly at Simon and Brian's wedding.
So I hadn't met him really before, and I was delighted to see his
name on this, because of course, everyone's a fan of Wentworth, and
is that, which obviously makes Wentworth Cannon now, because of
the final scene.
I really love a linear tight Doctor Who plot.
I really like something that just allows us and the heel turn was
superb.
The only thing that bothered me was the amount of empathy that the
young actor.
I also loved the duality of the very young fella playing Conrad at
8 and the actor playing him at 2526 because they did look alike.
But he had so much warmth and empathy in his eyes and watching Sky
News, if you managed to enjoy that on Saturday for their local
federal elections in Australia, you could see that no one really
had kind eyes. being reported.
Peter Pretland certainly didn't.
But, um, it was it was just he was too warm.
But then, of course, we're seeing him through Ruby's eyes.
So of course, when the mask falls and it's a flawless.
I want to hear Todd's view on this, but it was a flawless
performance.
And really, a very simple linear plot, a narrative gives the
actors lots of room to do what they do best.
And what Kate does best at whatever time of the morning that is in
her Marvel Tower.
I haven't got questions why unit actually does need to show off
that much.
And I think that was a really nice, I'm sure Pete meant a really
nice nod on, it's not very English, is it?
It's not very British.
You're all being a bit showy.
I quite liked it when you're in an old shoe shop behind the Acton
Hilton or wherever it was that Liz Shaw used to have to budge
into.
Or a country pile.
Ouch.
Yeah.
But anyway, um, perfect casting.
I was getting sort of strong Stuart from Queer's Folk Vibes
actually, from the lead.
But prettier, obviously.
So this is a Dr. Light episode. 3rd Dr. Light episode in what
looks like it's going to be a fairly short era.
And obviously some people are unhappy about that.
But I have to say that really it's only Russell's era that can
probably pull off a Dr. Light story because he creates a world.
And in a sense, this is what I thought that the new RTD era was
going to be like, that we would have more We would have more Mel.
We would have more cherry and Carla and all of that sort of
thing.
So I was really happy to see all that stuff again.
And I think we'd also seen that merely was capable of sustaining a
whole doctor light episode on her own.
Yeah, well, she did that last year, didn't she?
She did that last year and that in 73 yards.
That's when I thought, wow, you've actually got something here.
I wasn't that impressed before that point.
And so having her front and centre here, I knew that she was going
to be good and she was great.
Yeah, I don't find the character that didn't find the character
that engaging when she's playing against shooty, but when she's
got these opportunities to basically have an episode to herself, I
think it really does show what she's capable of.
Yeah, it's funny, isn't it?
Belinda seems to be sort of a much better drawn character.
Absolutely.
A little bit more like the characters from RTD one, whereas merely
was kind of left to just kind of play the companion in a very
generic way.
She didn't have a very well drawn character, I think, which was
surprising to me.
But I thought she was magnificent in this.
Again, I think it hinges on Millie's extraordinary performance, and
once again, 73 yards was a fave for me last year, except I really
want to know what old granny Millie was whispering into her
mother's ear that made her shoot off.
I'm still not really quite bitter about not knowing that.
I want to hear what Todd thinks about that too.
I also want to...
Oh, because you've always got, you've always throw something in
there that no one expects.
But I also want to hear what Tom thinks about her hair because it
did change quite a bit and it's quite long when she comes back.
So I think there's definitely going to be a short experience
there.
I hope so anyway.
But it was also really nice to get just to see, she's got an
innocence.
And as, you know, a friend of the podcast, Alan, in the US, just
messaged and said, um, the scars that Millie shows at 20 years of
age of travelling with the doctor and having seen death and so
much are really, really forefronted here.
And really nicely played and maybe that's why she's so susceptible
to Conrad because she's carrying a lot of unhealed experiences
just after that.
Yeah. well, of course she is.
It's not just being adopted and the whole business with her
mother.
There's always with Russell.
There's deeper levels if you want to dig for them or look for
them.
And I think, and when I say Russell, I mean Russell Zera, because
Pete really really understood the character and why absolute
sympathy for everything merely went through in this one and Kate
as well, but for different reasons.
James.
I totally agree with that and that's one of the things I loved
about this episode is that we we often see how damaging the
doctor's world is to people, but we don't usually delve into it
this deeply.
We don't talk about it in mental health terms, which is I found
really refreshing, her sort of thing, I'm in trauma.
I've, I've, I've got PTSD.
I, like last year was a lot.
I think I need some time.
I found that really, like, like, it actually added to the realism
of this, you know, fantasy world that, you know, she thought gods
like she, what was that, that line?
I was eaten by a double bass.
Yeah, that was refreshing.
Seeing her come to that realisation in real time.
And I just got sucked into her all that and and then Conrad was
there and it was obvious that he was going to be this healing
energy for her.
And then, of course, it all just took a turn and what a turn it
took.
Like, I mean, I was quite happy to go with the story that as it
was playing out.
I thought, oh, yeah, no, that's decent, that's fine.
But then with that betrayal, it just stepped it up a notch and the
way it went then, like it just took off.
What I sort of think makes it work from that point of view is that
there are very few people for her to be able to talk to about the
experience.
I mean, I know at the end of Jody, we had kind of the ex-companion
sort of ex-companion's anonymous group talking about meeting the
doctor and so on like that.
But this is different.
I mean, yes, she's got the unit people, but, you know, there
aren't very many of those that she can really sort of talk to on
the same level.
And the point is that you can believe that she would open herself
up to Conrad and that's what's so refreshing.
You're not sort of, it doesn't feel contrived.
And I think that's that's a very great positive for the for the
script writing.
I really, really bought the romance.
I love a romance.
You know, one of the reasons I loved rogue last year is I'm a big
sucker for romance and I thought that that was well done.
Here, what I think is interesting about this is we've never been
here before with a companion and arguably in RTD one.
The companion who leaves on the on her own terms, but after a year
of real proper trauma is Martha.
And when she comes back, the following year, she just comes back
for contractual reasons to be in a couple of silly, terrible
stories.
And then she's off again.
Yeah, she doesn't really get a good roll of the dice there, does
she?
But anyway.
But this, you know, like, this is kind of what I always wanted, you
know, like, I think Kate has written before about what happens to
companions after, you know, like after they leave the doctor and
stuff.
And so being able to see that and having an off format episode
where that's what it's about was so much more interesting than any
number of other things we could have done.
I think as a doctor lied episode, it's not a kind of formal
exercise, the way that blink is, or love and monsters.
Do you know what I mean?
It is just a story set in the world that's been created by this
new version of Doctor Who.
And I thought it was great.
I thought it was probably good.
This reminds me of the conversations that you often had when you
were recording the classic series at FTE when you'd talk about
Sarah Jane Smith and what she went through and how that really
kind of she ceased being a real person because she went through so
much trauma and and they never really dealt with that, why she's
still travelling with the doctor, this kind of...
Yeah, but there's a good way of doing, look, I mean, I accept that
as a criticism of that era, but I just, I just don't think that's
just the way the show and television works back then.
So it's sort of meaningless, right?
Okay.
But that is the way I do accept that that's something to a greater
extent is the way television works now.
And I think doing it in this way, in this episode is far better
than some of the, let's see, worthy self-indulgent rubbish that
you so often get when they're trying to do these sorts of things.
I'm not just talking about Doctor Who.
I am talking about these sorts of shows generally.
It's like just get on with it.
I just want to go out to the next episode, you know, and I think
this doesn't.
And I have seen people talk in other forums about the fact that, oh
well, you know, they're not really, they don't watch Doctor Who
for a sort of a romance thing.
And I totally get that.
I understand that, but I don't think that's really what we're
watching.
That's kind of the secondary colouring that makes the episode more
interesting than otherwise would be.
That makes it more than just a perfunctory getting from A to B to
C.
Yeah, no, I thought I thought that was great.
One of the things is, though, that we've always had the doctor
improve the lives of the people that have travelled with him in
the RTD era.
You know, Rose gets her family back.
Martha reconnects with her family.
She's perhaps the counterexample.
Donna, obviously, things go terribly, but now they're great.
Do you know what?
I don't think that's unique to identity.
I think as a rule, most companions are better off after they've
experienced life.
Maybe not, Lisa.
I disagree.
I think she's learned SMR.
Perry.
Well, Adric.
I mean, address, obviously. contributing to the subtitle of the
universe, more from Jojo.
Yeah.
So let's move on and talk about the man of the hour, which is
Conrad Clark, which I think is a pretty great performance, and I
definitely didn't see it coming.
He was extraordinary.
Absolutely extraordinary.
Totally bought him as the love interest, and I thought, and then
just the moment he turned.
It was just incredible.
Like he's a really strong actor and having him against her and
then Gemma, who I thought was extraordinary as well on this one.
But what you're doing with an actor like that is it's not just the
fact that the character is all sweet and lovely and then turn
suddenly in that one scene.
It's also because that actor is in general cast in the romantic
lead, the hero roles.
And so we as an audience are expecting his character to be a
certain kind of character.
And that's clever.
That's good casting.
He's Eric in the live action, um, little mermaid, for God's sake.
Yeah, so I haven't either, but I've, you know, checked up his bio
and just to see if I can find any...
I know him for World on Fire, which is sort of a World War 2
leading into World War 2 kind of drama.
He's got that sad face and he's a sympathetic character and
someone like that.
So it all works.
He seems to be making a lot more money out of podcasting than we
are.
Can I just say that?
There are people out there like that.
I didn't know what we're doing wrong, Nathan.
Come on.
You know?
Monetise it. monetise it.
The podcast needs to be sponsored by a kind of mattress, doesn't
it?
Yeah, yeah.
I also thought, too, that we now have 2 female companions in this
era who have horrific alt-right boyfriends.
So obviously in the robot revolution, we had, you know, the
appalling owl.
And now in this episode, we have Conrad, who goes a kind of full
full maga, you know, by the end of the episode.
What did you think, Richard?
Well, yeah, um, this podcast will definitely need to go QAnon from
now on to reap any benefits.
I do want to know Alan races as well.
I want to know, come on, Gran, if you're finding all these titty
pics on the interwebs.
Why aren't you finding his QAnon pages?
Or maybe ladies that age don't even notice it or didn't even
recognise it.
But it is odd that Ruby got no warning.
But that's just, you know, narrative.
Yeah, that kind of irritated me.
And yes, of course, it's narrative necessity, but it's, it's the
so he's, uh, you know, he's an alright weirdo.
But they're not discreet.
They're usually quite loud.
Like, how does she not know that going to the podcast?
Well, the podcast isn't an alright podcast, isn't it?
isn't the podcast?
It's a trap. to gather evidence at a trap.
Yes, yeah.
Oh, okay.
And they're playing the long game.
Yeah, he's playing the long.
And then he gets to and have his logo.
I don't know who his prop makers are, but obviously in Cardiff
because I love those shriek hats that the boys were wearing and
I've definitely got my Christmas sorted if I could get those 2
lads in.
Very festive.
Well, with the reindeer horns.
I mean you're already set, aren't you?
Look, the young man, who did play Conrad?
I didn't recognise him from, I'm not necessarily a little mermaid
fan, but superb performance, and the Vault face is on a dime
perfect.
That lad could play anything.
He really could.
And I thoroughly believed all of it, and I had huge sympathy.
The only people I didn't have sympathy for were unit because
they're so bloody tizzy and twangy and out there, honestly, if
you're going to play Marvel, you know, if you, if you want to be
you know, Iron Man's Castle, then, then, you know, just hire
Robert Downey Jr. and and give the whole damn thing to that woman
who puts stone eggs up her jacksy for a living.
And, you know, I mean, really, it all makes perfect nonsense.
Look, I think the sort of the, in the various shades of alt right
and QAnon and so on that there are.
I mean, Al and Conrad kind of represent slightly different
flavours of them.
I don't think I don't think the Al character was written
particularly well.
I think it was a very one dimensional version of that possibility
whereas I think with Conrad, we actually get a three-dimensional
version of it.
In robot revolution.
He's a function of the plot, whereas here he's actually a
character that you're kind of interested in finding out how you
what do you like?
I think it's so cleverly done because, in the world we live in, you
have all of these people running podcasts and having blogs and
getting into the dark places of the internet because they're
convinced that there are dark forces in the government working to
hide the truth from us about all these things, whether it's
vaccines, how vaccines work or whether it's aliens or whether it's
the moon landing or whatever it is, right?
And now we're kind of turning this on ahead because in this
universe, which the current Doctor Who program is in, we do
believe the general public does believe in aliens and unit is a
real thing.
And so the fact that, of course, what these people believe is the
fact that it's all fake.
It's like people, because I mean, I've known people, I've
encountered people who believe the COVID vaccine was a way to
control this.
When you press it, of course.
They don't actually admit that it's because they think that we're
being injected by microchips or whatever the hell it is because
it's constantly shifting and that's why this is so cool because
even when comrade is confronted with the evidence and with the
doctor actually materialising his TARDIS around him at the end
even the hard evidence is not enough to convince him because he
then just goes off to another explanation as to how it's all
fake.
And I just think it is such a beautiful and more subtle take on
the problems of the modern era.
And I think the problem with some of the other, the stuff that's
actually written by RTT is that it's got a great big hammer that
comes down and beats us over the head with it.
Whereas here, it just happens in front of you and it, it's the
same thing, but just that difference in execution is, makes all
the world to man why I think this is so much better than some of
the stuff we've seen before.
Well, I think that's a really good observation, Simon, and I do
like what you said there.
I just was enthralled with what they were doing with unit, and I
thought Jim and Redgrave and and her plot line and what she
brought to the table was far more than, I mean, I think I
generally think she's very good.
But just seeing the whole team there.
And then I had to laugh when the blinks evacuated from the
situation.
But pushing her, like, you know, with her father and all of that
stuff, all those little bits that, you know, Pete knows the
history of Doctor Who, I just thought was just icing on the cake.
It's that thing where he's actually got the thing in front of
him.
Like the wretched shriek is right there, next to him, and he says
brilliantly.
Your special effects have got a lot better before it chomps his
arm off, which I just think is so great.
Even when it's there, it's still special effects, and of course
the special effects have got a lot better.
It's nice to have a rubber monster every so often and just to see
how well executed they can be nowadays.
I have a question about it.
What sort of security screening these people getting?
I mean, like, Josh is like a new, a new staff member.
He doesn't seem to have gone through any sort of security
screening.
Um, like suddenly they just go, oh, look at all this alt right
stuff.
And he's a conspiracy theory.
I said, oh my God, obviously he's dodgy. you didn't do that before
you employed him.
Yeah.
Oh, well, it's interesting.
Oh, well, I didn't notice that till now.
That's the point.
If you don't notice it when you're watching it, it doesn't matter
for me.
So we didn't get to see, we didn't get to see the doctor until the
very end.
What did you think of that final confrontation?
I have to say that I loved the line and I've been thinking of it
over and over again, the line where he just says, you're
exhausting.
And, you know, the last...
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I can just hear Pete saying that actually.
Yes.
I thought it was phenomenal.
I thought it was really good and I thought it, it showcased
shooting in a different way, you know, I was relieved we didn't
have tears, which I keep putting up, but, you know, it was funny.
I didn't really miss the doctor and Belinda from the episode, I
think they were used, you know, well, and coming in at the end to
bookend at both ends.
I thought it was good.
Um, I think sometimes we love what we love more for their absence
and holding his powder till that last scene gave shooting enormous
gravitas and presence and it is a perfect scene with 2 formidable
young actors.
I'm just impressed that the skills, the the actual just basic
physical skills of these actors at such a young age, whatever the
training is they get now, it isn't what we saw in the 70s.
Um, it really isn't.
It's spot on.
It was absolutely proper national theatre, rage and repression and
perfectly done.
And of course, whatever wisdom will fall on deaf ears, that's the
whole point, and it's the futility of opposition with those who
choose to remain deaf.
That, again, what, which Russell's era does so well.
We realise whatever we do, there's no point because we won't be
heard.
Very dark.
But then that's what this that's what this show does now.
It's the, I deny your reality almost as if it's, you know, like a
science fiction thing.
You know, it's Colin confronted with a giant fly in Vengeance on
Faros.
But what he's denying is the reality of actual reality.
Like the doctor tells him the truth.
And he says, I'm sorry, but that's not where I choose to live.
And that's basically what we are kind of facing.
The same cognitive dissonance we get with the turf walls that we
get with, it doesn't really matter. climate change.
It doesn't matter what the topic is.
It's all horrific.
And it all meets the same brick wall.
So do we think this is going to lead into something?
Is this where we go?
Is this what the finale is about?
I don't know.
But I hope it didn't.
I just want it to exist.
You know what I mean?
I don't feel the need to have it all.
I don't want there to be a resolution.
I just want it to end where it ended.
I think that's nice.
It becomes a little vignette that's a thing that happens.
But I just wonder whether it's playing the sort of utopia role
or...
Yeah, you know, or to a lesser extent, 73 yards, which introduces
Roger App Willam, who has a pretty negligible role in the finale
but is at least mentioned.
But here I wonder, you know, you've got Mrs. Flood releasing him
from prison.
Does that mean that we see him at the end in the reality war, which
is the name of the final episode?
I want Mrs. Flood's character in this episode to be called Vinegar
Tits.
Yeah, she is.
No, she doesn't need to.
No, no, she needs to be called something like, no, he calls her
something sensible. like Joan.
I love the fact that all 4 episodes this season have all been
slightly different.
They've all been very strong.
I give this a strong age with a highly recommendation that it's
going to go up when I watch it again.
Seeing her family back.
You know, I just thought that was just lovely.
And both mums and all the mums really.
He's lying about collecting mums.
Yes, you've already got 2 what you do collect.
Russell and East frigging mums.
Love it.
Yeah, I thought that was very cute.
I love the, you know, you know, that they were looking up
shirtless peaks of him on Instagram and all of that sort of
thing.
I did think that that was kind of cute.
And kind of unresolved.
And it was kind of what you wanted to see.
Like, you did want to see that whole situation working.
I think we were left with the feeling that it would be like that
but just seeing her biological mother in the kitchen with the
other 2 was pretty great.
Hmm.
One little thing I just wanted to touch on too, which we probably
otherwise won't cover is talking about exhausting.
And something that was not exhausting about this episode was the
music.
Murray was seemed quite reeled in and providing what I would judge
to be a suitable score for the episode as opposed to just
something.
There's a lot of Ruby's theme, which I thought was really
beautiful last year and I was happy to hear that back.
Yeah, but there's not... it's not that stuff.
It's the other stuff that Murray does, which where he intrudes on
the action rather than supporting it, which I object to, but
that's that's me.
I didn't hear that this time.
Did you hear the Blade Runner's stings?
To be the vangelist.
I didn't notice that.
Yeah, there were 3 of them.
And they come in, that marvellous scene with Conrad, working into
the warehouse and the dummies have tulle veils over them exactly
like JF Sebastian's apartment when you 1st see Chris under the...
Oh, there were some real little visual cues there.
And yeah, there's 3 chords that Vangelis uses throughout the Blade
Runner score.
Oh, lots of lovely depth in this, yeah.
And I do have to say that I did like her hair, Richard.
I think it's.
It's very late, Joe Grant.
I'm making playing the Daleks.
So, you know, thumbs up for me.
And she even got stuff squirted all over her neck and face like
planted.
Oh, yes.
And it was the right colour as well. did love that.
Please tell me I haven't been peed on.
I just thought it was really great.
That's very cute.
All right, that's all the time then that we have for this week.
I've got some things to plug.
The 2nd episode of the 2nd season of 500 year diary was released
on Sunday.
And in it, we talked about the moon base.
Next week.
We'll be back with everyone's favourite giant green fibreglass
lizards from Mars in the seeds of death, their 2nd appearance on
the show.
You can keep up with us at Flightthrough Entirety.com on Blue Sky
and we're FDE podcast just about everywhere else.
And a new episode of the three-handed game dropped on Sunday.
Brendan tells me.
It's a new Avengers episode called Emily, and Emily is a car.
It is the very last thing they ever filmed and also, I won't spoil
the powder if you want to listen to it, but we had a lovely time
doing it.
And there's fascinating facts in it.
Yes.
And then, of course, your weekly dose of Star Trek nonsense with
Joe Ford and Me is available at Untitled Star Trek project.
So all that remains is for me to say, until next time, remember
that those people are exhausting.
So take good care of yourselves.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
See you soon.
And good night.