Hilarious banner content

Episode 264

Absolutely Ainley

It’s happened again: it’s the end of the season, and all our long-dead relatives have come back as Cybermen. Only this time, instead of hanging around the kitchen reeking of tobacco, they’re wandering through graveyards and — well, that’s it really, wandering through graveyards. Fortunately, Missy is here to liven things up a bit. It’s Death in Heaven.

Nathan alludes to discovering during the week of recording some of the terrible consequences of Australia’s presence in Afghanistan. This is upsetting reading, so content warnings apply.

We mention Doctor Who and the Silurians as a previous story where the Doctor comes into conflict with soldiers, and we refer to El Sandifer’s take on the end of that story, a scene which presents this conflict explicitly but which is never followed up in any satisfactory way.

Richard brings up Chris Addison’s Radio 4 comedy series Civilisation, which co-stars the original Ford Prefect, Geoffrey McGivern.

And, finally, the Doctor plummeting to his death from a plane inevitably reminds us of Roger Moore in a similar situation as James Bond in Moonraker (1979).

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, Brendan is @brandybongos, Richard is @RichardLStone, and Todd is @ToddBeilby. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook and Mastodon, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or next birthday we’ll give you a bafflingly expensive and impractical gift.

And more

You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on the entirety of the Whittaker Era of Doctor Who, at jodieintoterror.com, at @JodieIntoTerror on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and wherever podcasts can be found. We’ll be back with a new flashcast on the second Russell T Davies era in November.

Our James Bond commentary podcast is called Bondfinger, and you can find that at bondfinger.com, at @bondfingercast on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and everywhere else as well.

We can also be heard on the Blakes 7 podcast Maximum Power, which has completed its coverage of the first half of the show’s entire run. Recording of our coverage of Series C is nearing its conclusion: it will be ready for you later in the year.

There’s also our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. In our most recent episode, we watch an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called Genesis, in which the crew devolve into various types of monsters and animals, upsetting fans who have the (baffling) expectation that their franchise will take itself more seriously.

Episode 264: Absolutely Ainley · Recorded on Sunday 4 June 2023 · Duration 0:53:09 · Download · Open in new window

Series 8The Twelfth Doctor