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Episode 260

Dangle Your Lallies

This week, a technologically-augmented interdimensional mummy runs amok on a replica of the Orient Express in space under the control of a terrifying alien intelligence or something. It’s a day at the office for Doctor Who, in Mummy on the Orient Express.

Mummy on the Orient Express marks the triumphant return of Janet Henfrey to Doctor Who after about twenty-five years: she plays Miss Hardaker in The Curse of Fenric. She will come back some time after that to play the Adjudicator in Sil and the Seven Seeds of Arodor.

David Bamber is in charge of this version of the Orient Express: Nathan recognises him immediately as Cicero in Rome and as Mr Collins in Pride and Prejudice. Richard notes that he plays Adolf Hitler in Valkyrie (2008), and perhaps more terrifyingly Noel in Camping, a sitcom created by Julia Davis. Si saw him turn up in an episode of Endeavour, the Inspector Morse prequel set in the late 1960s.

Meanwhile, Christopher Villiers returns to Doctor Who as Professor Moorhouse; thirty years earlier he was young Hugh Fitzwilliam in The King’s Demons. Alarmingly, Richard is right to suggest that he is a descendant of the aristocracy.

And finally, Frank Skinner is a famous standup comedian and radio presenter. The show Richard is thinking of may be The Rest is History on Radio 4, but he has been in many, many radio shows over the years.

You can see John Sessions’s 1994 audition to play the Doctor in the TV movie here on YouTube. He plays the terrifying General Tannis in the BBC webcast Death Comes to Time (2001).

In 2018, Jenna Coleman starred in a TV miniseries called The Cry, which was shot in Australia.

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, Brendan is @brandybongos, Si is @Si_Hart, and Richard is @RichardLStone. 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 we’ll gush effusively at you about how wonderful your terrible new haircut looks.

And more

We’ve got an exciting new Doctor Who project to launch at the start of 2024, but — annoyingly — we’re not going to tell you anything more about it yet. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, 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 is continuing on schedule, and our coverage of Series C 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 watched a massive soap opera event two-parter from Deep Space Nine, complete with long-lost children and scheming lookalikes — In Purgatory’s Shadow and By Inferno’s Light.

Episode 260: Dangle Your Lallies · Recorded on Sunday, 30 April 2023 · Duration 0:45:57 · Download · Open in new window

Series 8The Twelfth Doctor

Episode 259

The Goldilocks Zone

This week, Nathan, Brendan, Simon and Colin are trapped in a room with only forty-five minutes to decide whether Kill the Moon is terrible or a towering work of genius. It goes quite well, surprisingly.

Brendan suggests that Kill the Moon addresses the Guns versus Frocks, um, disagreement, which reached its peak during the heyday of the Virgin New Adventures. Nathan wrote an essay about his take on the debate many, many years ago.

El Sandifer’s essay on TARDIS Eruditorum contains, as you might expect, a clever reading of this episode, and both Brendan and Nathan find reasons to refer to it here.

Colin and Brendan mention science fiction shows called The Expanse and Babylon 5, but I absolutely refuse to do any research into them at all.

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, Brendan is @brandybongos, Simon is @simonmoore72, and Colin is @colin_neal. 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 we’ll make such a fun and ambitious episode of your favourite TV show that you die of embarrassment whenever your friends mention it.

And more

We’ve got an exciting new Doctor Who project to launch at the start of 2024, but — annoyingly — we’re not going to tell you anything more about it yet. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, 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 is continuing on schedule, and our coverage of Series C should 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 were bored rigid as the crew of the Enterprise completely dismantled a horrible authoritarian human colony in The Masterpiece Society. Back to Deep Space Nine next week.

Episode 259: The Goldilocks Zone · Recorded on Sunday, 29 January 2023 · Duration 0:57:25 · Download · Open in new window

Series 8The Twelfth Doctor

Episode 258

Both as Bad as One Another

This week, Pete Lambert and Hannah Cooper join us for a particularly embarrassing Coal Hill School parents’ evening, which goes horribly wrong when a Mechanoid is found roaming the premises. It’s The Caretaker.

Pete has a dim memory of something similar happening during his childhood, but mere months before Series 8 aired, the Troops to Teachers programme was introduced, giving veterans the chance to fast-track their teacher training so that they could work in schools. The Guardian reports on the scheme here.

Vasquez Rocks is a park not far from Hollywood, and was famously used in the original Star Trek episode Arena (the one with the lizard man in a skimpy cocktail dress). A particular famous rock formation, nicknamed Kirk’s rock is recreated in the opening shot of this episode.

Nathan alludes to the fact that Barbara is absent from Episodes 4 and 5 of The Sensorites because Jacqueline Hill was on holiday, and that she returns from her time on the Sensorite spaceship with a spectacular tan in Episode 6.

In the Press Gang episode UnXpected, Mmoloki Chrystie’s character Frazer Davis encounters the fictional Colonel X, who was the main character in a cheesy spy-fi show he watched as a child. Michael Jayston is magnificent as Colonel X. (You might be able to find it on YouTube if you look hard enough. It’s worth the effort.)

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, James is @ohjamessellwood, Hannah is @MrsSimonTemplar, and Pete is @Prof_Quiteamess. 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 we’ll turn up at your workplace with a mop and bucket and make snide remarks about your ability to do your job.

And more

We’ve got an exciting new Doctor Who project to launch at the start of 2024, but — annoyingly — we’re not going to tell you anything more about it yet. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, 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 is continuing on schedule, and our coverage of Series C should 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 watched a barely competent episode of the Original Series called Wolf in the Fold.

Episode 258: Both as Bad as One Another · Recorded on Saturday, 28 January 2023 · Duration 0:49:21 · Download · Open in new window

Series 8The Twelfth Doctor

Episode 257

Mr and Mrs Teller

Nathan, James, Peter and Simon come to in a bare darkened room full of mid-range sound recording equipment with no memory at all of how they got there, only to find — to their horror — that they have agreed to podcast about our next Doctor Who episode, Time Heist.

In a discussion of this very straightforward episode, there’s nothing specifically intertextual or in need of explanatory notes. So you get the week off this week. Or, if you like, you could listen to Untitled Star Trek Project’s take on Star Trek’s take on the heist movie, Deep Space Nine’s Badda-Bing Badda-Bang.

It’s just possible that the Doctor’s “shutetty up up up” owes more than a little to Malcolm Tucker’s famous farewell in In the Loop (2009).

About all those baffling Blake’s 7 references ten minutes from the end: a pivotal Blake’s 7 episode, Pressure Point, featured a long descent into a space base where each level was identical apart from the colour of the gel used in the lighting of the set. You can hear more about that in the episode of Maximum Power which deals with it — Project Managing His Adventures.

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, James is @ohjamessellwood, and Simon is @simonmoore72. 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 we’ll menace you with a Dyson handheld for lying to us about your bank balance.

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 is continuing on schedule, and our coverage of Series C should 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 welcomed Seven of Nine to the Voyager family in the two-part season finale/season opener, Scorpion.

Episode 257: Mr and Mrs Teller · Recorded on Sunday, 8 January 2023 · Duration 0:48:56 · Download · Open in new window

Series 8The Twelfth Doctor

Episode 256

Level of Ambiguity

This week, we’re joined under the Doctor’s bed by Fiona Tomney, to discuss whether monsters are real or imaginary or both, and to squee repeatedly over the Capaldi performance. It’s Listen.

We don’t actually talk about the Missy Reveal in our episode on The Time Meddler. The Missy Reveal at the end of Dark Water was first broadcast the day before the release of Flight Through Entirety Episode 13, Airwick Gatport, which means that the Capaldi Era was broadcast into a world where Flight Through Entirety was still discussing Doctor Who from the 1960s.

The Blair Witch Project (1999) was a found-footage style horror movie that was absolutely huge at the time of its release. Like Listen, it hints at the monster repeatedly without ever really showing it on screen.

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, Brendan is @brandybongos, and Simon is @simonmoore72. 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 we’ll literally never move out from the comfy spot we’ve found under your bed.

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. Plans are already well underway for our coverage of Series C later in the year, probably.

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 tracked the terrifying personal journey of Kira Nerys from beloved terrorist to hidebound administrator in the Series 1 Deep Space Nine episode Progress.

Episode 256: Level of Ambiguity · Recorded on Sunday, 15 January 2023 · Duration 1:02:12 · Download · Open in new window

Series 8The Twelfth Doctor

Episode 255

Phallocentric Energy

This week, Nathan, Richard, Todd and Adrian Phoon leave the peasants of Worksop to their mud-eating and get together to ask themselves the questions Is the Doctor as big a hero as Robin Hood? and Is Robin Hood even real?, only to come up with some very surprising answers. It’s Robot of Sherwood.

There have been any number of film versions of Robin Hood, which is part of the point, but Richard is mostly reminded of the 1938 film The Adventures of Robin Hood, starring Errol Flynn as Robin, directed by Michael Curtiz, with an Oscar-winning score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

Errol Flynn didn’t go to Scots College in Sydney, Nathan: it was Sydney Church of England Grammar School, commonly known as Shore. He claimed to have been expelled from Shore for having sex with one of the ladies who worked in the laundry.

Star Trek: The Next Generation did its fantasy Robin Hood episode in its triumphant fourth season. It guest starred John DeLancie as Q and was called Qpid.

Here is an article in The Guardian from 2014, reporting the cuts made to this episode because of the beheading of two American journalists by members of Islamic State.

We spend some time talking about Ben Miller’s career. He’s one half of Armstrong and Miller, of course, as well as doing two series of Death in Paradise. Paul Cornell’s Primeval episode which featured Miller hunting a dinosaur was called Traitor Revealed.

When this was shot, Tom Riley was also playing a young Leonardo Da Vinci in Da Vinci’s Demons. He was also in St Trinian’s 2: The Legend of Fritton’s Gold (2009) with David Tennant and Jodie Whittaker.

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, Richard is @RichardLStone, and Adrian is @the_iphoon. 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 we’ll assault you with cutlery until you do.

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. Plans are already well underway for our coverage of Series C later in the year, probably.

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 watched another episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds — this time, the delightful fantasy romp The Elysian Kingdom. There are new episodes out every Friday.

And finally, Brendan and his friend Bjay have joined forces to play and review videogames on The Bjay BJ Game Show. Take a listen: it’s funny, well-informed and completely enjoyable.

Episode 255: Phallocentric Energy · Recorded on Sunday, 8 January 2023 · Duration 0:52:44 · Download · Open in new window

Series 8The Twelfth Doctor

Episode 254

Animosity and Horror

This week, we’re joined by Adam Richard, shrunk to a microscopic size, and sent on a mission consisting mostly of ruthless moral self-examination. Meanwhile, somewhere else completely, a romcom is taking place. It’s Into the Dalek.

Some of us are old enough to remember the constant television repeats of Fantastic Voyage (1966), in which a small submarine and its crew are shrunk to microscopic size to remove a blood clot from the brain of a scientist who is defecting to the West. The glamorous catsuited assistant to the crew’s chief scientist is played by a young Raquel Welch.

Richard identifies as the chief influences on this episode Fantastic Voyage and Rob Shearman’s Doctor Who episode Dalek. (Which we discuss on Episode 137, To Mainsplain Aliens.)

Of course, Peter Capaldi was most well known for his role in Armando Ianucci’s political comedy series The Thick of It, in which he played Malcolm Tucker, the Prime Minister’s sweary and frankly terrifying political enforcer. Ianucci will go on to create Veep, in which Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays the hapless Vice President of the United States, and Avenue 5, starring Hugh Laurie as the captain of a luxury space cruiser which goes catastrophically off course.

Moffat’s first sitcom Joking Apart has been mentioned before on the podcast. Its main character also discovers how terrible he is as a person during the course of the first series.

Class was a short-lived and ill-fated Doctor Who spinoff, written by Patrick Ness and set at Coal Hill Academy. Peter Capaldi appears as the Doctor in Episode 1, and the season itself is broadcast between Series 9 and Series 10 of Doctor Who. It is cancelled after the first eight-episode run.

Trinity Wells, the American newsreader during the first RTD era, does have her very own Big Finish story: Driving Miss Wells by James Goss, which is part of the second Lives of Captain Jack box set, released in 2019.

Follow us

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

Adam is @adamrichard on Twitter, adamrichard on Instagram and Fabulous Adam Richard on Facebook. His website is at www.adamrichard.com.au. He can currently be found theorising about Doctor Who on his own podcast Adam Richard Has a Theory. And there’s also his other podcast Me. I Am. A Memoir. The Meaning of ‘The Meaning of Mariah Carey’, which is a deep dive into all of the most illuminating details of the entire Carey œuvre.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll continue to make almost no effort at all to learn any of your names.

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. Plans are already well underway for our coverage of Series C later in the year, probably.

And finally, there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. We’ll be back with a new episode this coming Friday, but while you’re waiting for that, you can still catch our most recent episode, in which Joe and Nathan got together in person for the first time ever to watch the notorious Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Justice.

Episode 254: Animosity and Horror · Recorded on Sunday, 8 January 2023 · Duration 0:48:51 · Download · Open in new window

Series 8The Twelfth Doctor

Episode 253

A Peter Capaldi–Shaped Time Tunnel

After half a lifetime of waiting, the time has come for Peter Capaldi to finally take on the role he was born to play. But is twenty-first century Who ready for this spiky and unpredictable leading man and his sexy and unhinged mortal enemy? We’re about to find out — but first, let’s take a Deep Breath.

The new “bees in a theremin” theme music reminds Simon uncomfortably of the EP Doctor Who: Variations on a Theme, which was released in 1989 and contained four different versions of the Doctor Who theme: the Mood Version and the Regeneration Mix by Mark Ayers, the Terror Version by Dominic Glynn and the Latin Version by Keff McCulloch.

The Series 9 episode Before the Flood features a version of this new theme with Peter Capaldi himself playing electric guitar. Todd likes this version much better.

The new title sequence was based closely on a concept created in 2013 by digital artist Billy Hanshaw, which quickly garnered hundreds of thousands of views and was spotted by Steven Moffat, who said it was the “only new title idea I’d seen since 1963”. You can read the story of its creation in Connor Johnston’s interview with Billy Hanshaw at Doctor Who TV.

So. Elizabeth Tower, which houses Big Ben, is 97.5 metres tall, while a Tyrannosaurus rex standing upright is, we think, only about 5 metres tall. But in November 2022, paleontologists Jordan Mallon and David Hone suggested that the largest T. rex could have been 70% larger than the largest specimen we have now, and it could have weighed about 15 tonnes. Which suggests that Madam Vastra knew what she was talking about.

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, Todd is @ToddBeilby, and Simon is @simonmoore72. The new Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll have to start insisting that you all wear name tags.

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. We’ll be back again for Series C later in the year, probably.

And finally, there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. We’ve been taking a break for the last few weeks, but in our most recent episode, Joe and Nathan got together in person for the first time ever to watch the notorious Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Justice.

Episode 253: A Peter Capaldi–Shaped Time Tunnel · Recorded on Sunday, 11 December 2022 · Duration 1:05:11 · Download · Open in new window

Series 8The Twelfth Doctor

Episode 252

Comedy to High Drama

From Amy’s imaginary friend to the Hero of Trenzalore, Matt Smith spent four years and more than a few centuries as the Doctor. So now that he’s gone, how do we think he did?

Thank you very much to the listeners who contributed their questions to this episode: DJ Alpha-T, Frazer Gregory and Nathan Bottomley.

Nathan claims to enjoy the idea that the Doctor is a somewhat problematic figure rather than just a traveller or a simple hero. Not everyone agrees, however. In this article in The Atlantic, Ted B Kissell complains that Matt Smith’s Doctor, is in many ways, a fairly terrible person.

As we said last week, Steven Moffat’s actual quote was that Matt Smith is like “Patrick Moore in the body of an underwear model”.

None of us seem to know anything about the ratings here, but The Day of the Doctor was apparently the highest rated drama for the year on the BBC, with 12.8 million viewers and an additional 3.2 million views on iPlayer. On BBC America, it had an audience of 2.8 million viewers, which was the highest rating ever received on the channel. (This, and more information about the special can be found on its TARDIS Fandom page.)

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, Todd is @ToddBeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. 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 you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll look ridiculously young and innocent while lying to you about keeping your most pressing personal information to ourselves.

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 2023.

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. In our most recent episode we watched a very silly film called Bullseye!, starring Roger Moore and Michael Cain.

We can also be heard on the Blakes 7 podcast Maximum Power, which is currently covering Series B of the show. In this week’s episode, Terry Nation makes a triumphant return to the show in Countdown.

And finally, there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. This week, we watched an episode of the Star Trek cartoon Lower Decks called Mugato, Gumato, in which the crew of the USS Cerritos rescue some rightly unloved space animals from the Original Series who have been captured by Ferengi criminals.

Episode 252: Comedy to High Drama · Recorded on Sunday, 11 December 2022 · Duration 1:25:24 · Download · Open in new window

RetrospectivesThe Eleventh Doctor

Episode 251

To Have a Better Ending

Doctor, listen to me. You can’t die, you’re too — you’re too nice, too brave, too kind and far, far too silly. You’re like Father Christmas, the Wizard of Oz, Scooby Doo. And I love you very much. And we all need you, and you simply cannot die.

While Clara undergoes a gruelling Christmas lunch with her family, on Trenzalore, in a town called Christmas, the Doctor is doing what he has always done — protecting, defending and being far, far too silly. Goodbye, Matt Smith — it’s The Time of the Doctor.

The Doctor’s longest running companion, faithful Cyberhead Handles, is voiced by Kayvan Novak, an English comedian who plays ancient vampire Nandor the Relentless in What We Do in the Shadows. Worth a watch.

Even before the fiftieth anniversary, it was widely reported that Matt Smith would be wearing a wig in his final episode as the Doctor. Here’s an article from September 2013 on Digital Spy.

Steven Moffat’s exact quote was that Matt Smith is like “Patrick Moore in the body of an underwear model”.

And finally, it’s Matt Smith’s Doctor who tells Clyde Langer that Time Lords can regenerate 507 times in the Sarah Jane Adventures story Death of the Doctor.

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, Todd is @ToddBeilby, and James is @ohjamessellwood. 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 you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll turn up naked at your next Christmas lunch and distract your grandma while she’s pouring the custard.

And more

You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on 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 2023.

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. In our most recent episode we watched a very silly film called Bullseye!, starring Roger Moore and Michael Cain.

We can also be heard on the Blakes 7 podcast Maximum Power, which is currently covering Series B of the show. In this week’s episode, we find ourselves staring lovingly into the eyes of our cousins in Hostage.

And finally, there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. This week, we tackle Star Trek’s only Christmas movie ever, Star Trek: Generations.

Episode 251: To Have a Better Ending · Recorded on Sunday, 11 September 2022 · Duration 1:01:21 · Download · Open in new window

ChristmasSpecialsThe Eleventh Doctor

Episode 250

Petering Out

After a whole week of anniversary celebrations on Flight Through Entirety, it’s time for us to acknowledge how ridiculous it all is, and who better to take charge of that than our very own Peter Davison, who lovingly chronicles his own utterly fictional attempts to shoehorn himself into the Anniversary Special in The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot.

Watch the episode!

The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot was a special feature on various DVD and Blu-ray releases of The Day of the Doctor, of course, but it’s still available to watch on the BBC website. So have at it!

Peter Davison’s first foray into Doctor Who-related sketch comedy formed part of BBC Two’s Doctor Who night in 1999: a sketch called The Kidnappers, in which he starred with Doctor Who’s very own Mark Gatiss and David Walliams. It’s a special feature on the DVD release of An Unearthly Child, and it’s still available to watch on YouTube.

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, Richard is @RichardLStone, and Simon is @simonmoore72. 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 you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll leave you hourly voicemail messages demanding dinner invitations and stuff.

And more

You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on 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 2023.

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 a few weeks ago started its coverage of Series B of the show. In this week’s episode, we find ourselves on the very esge of the Galaxy in Horizon.

And finally, there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. This week, Nathan isn’t angry so much as disappointed with perennial Deep Space Nine fan favourite The Siege of AR-558.

Episode 250: Petering Out · Recorded on Sunday, 2 October 2022 · Duration 0:37:59 · Download · Open in new window

SpecialsThe Fiftieth Anniversary

Episode 249

It’s No Arc of Infinity

The original FTE team has already spent an hour discussing The Day of the Doctor, but it wouldn’t be a fiftieth anniversary celebration without James, Peter and Simon on the couch toasting everyone’s health. There will be cocktails, as we convene just one more time to discuss The Day of the Doctor.

You’ve already had your fair share of notes and links today, so we’re just doing one this episode — the 1976 edition of Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke’s book The Making of Doctor Who, which was the source for Terrance’s famous description of the Doctor, a description that is quoted in this episode — “He is impulsive, idealistic, ready to risk his life for a worthy cause. He hates tyranny and oppression and anything that is anti-life. He never gives in and he never gives up, however overwhelming the odds against him. The Doctor believes in good and fights evil. Though often caught up in violent situations, he is a man of peace. He is never cruel or cowardly. In fact, to put it simply, the Doctor is a hero.” Happy birthday, Doctor!

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, James is @ohjamessellwood, and Simon is @simonmoore72. 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 you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll fail to mention you in our Very Special 250th Episode Celebration this Sunday.

And more

You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on 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 2023.

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 a few weeks ago started its coverage of Series B of the show. This week’s episode: Chris Boucher’s Weapon.

And finally, there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. We’ve been having a short break to give us the chance to rest on our laurels after our first year of podcasting. Today, we’re recommending our coverage of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Episode 249: It’s No Arc of Infinity · Recorded on Sunday, 24 July 2022 · Duration 1:08:18 · Download · Open in new window

SpecialsThe Eleventh DoctorThe Fiftieth AnniversaryThe Tenth Doctor

Episode 248

The Glue That Holds Everything Together

To celebrate Doctor Who’s fiftieth and fifty-ninth anniversaries, Brendan, Nathan, Richard and Todd are reunited at last for the first of two panels discussing The Day of the Doctor. We squealed, we laughed, we wept, we injured Brendan, and we spent quite a bit of time fangirling about Ingrid Oliver. Happy birthday, everyone!

First off, a special anniversary mention of El Sandifer, whose essay on The Day of the Doctor discusses its role on healing the breach between the Classic and New Series of Doctor Who.

Perhaps inevitably, John Hurt reprises his role as the War Doctor for Big Finish, recording four box sets of three stories each before his death in 2017.

Two Doctor Who novelisations alluded to this week: firstly, again, Steven Moffat’s novelisation of The Day of the Doctor (2018), and Russell T Davies’s novelistaion of Rose (also 2018), which depicts the Last Great Time War in weird and unfilmable ways.

As a man dedicated to recycling, Moffat has used the resolution of The Day of the Doctor in a Children in Need special in 2007 called Time Crash. We discussed it (of course) in Episode 178, Remember Who We Were.

Nathan’s vague memory of a French ambassador visiting a 65-year-old Queen Elizabeth I and remarking on the poor state of her teeth is largely correct. You can read about this meeting here.

This is Ingrid Oliver’s first appearance on the show as Dr Petronella Osgood, and so we spend a lot of time talking about how great she is. Richard mentions her role as Penthesilea in ElvenQuest, a Radio 4 comedy series starring Stephen Mangan, as well as her roles in another Radio 4 comedy series, The Penny Dreadfuls Present…. Brendan mentions her appearance as Osgood in The Lonely Assassins, a videogame featuring the Weeping Angels, first released in 2021 and available on just about every platform imaginable. And, for our viewers who are in the UK or who know how to operate a VPN, you can see a brief excerpt from the episode of Watson & Oliver where Ingrid learns that she’s been shortlisted to play the next James Bond.

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 you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll spend the next fifty years making fun of your dreadfully unconvincing London accent.

And more

You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on 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 2023.

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. In our most recent episode, we watched in awe as Roger Moore and Tony Curtis solved the mystery of The Long Goodbye.

We can also be heard on the Blakes 7 podcast Maximum Power, which a few weeks ago started its coverage of Series B of the show. This week’s episode: Chris Boucher’s Weapon, starring The Talons of Weng-Chiang’s John Bennett in a largely non-racist role.

And finally, there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. We’ve been having a short break to give us the chance to rest on our laurels after our first year of podcasting. Today, we’re recommending our coverage of Star Trek: Discovery.

Episode 248: The Glue That Holds Everything Together · Recorded on Sunday, 24 July 2022 · Duration 1:11:11 · Download · Open in new window

SpecialsThe Eleventh DoctorThe Fiftieth AnniversaryThe Tenth Doctor

Episode 247

Not Like These Two

A wise man once said, “You can do loads in twelve minutes. Suck a mint, buy a sledge, have a fast bath.” Tonight, Brendan, Nathan, James and canonical friend-of-the-podcast Conrad Westmaas find out just what Paul McGann can do in just seven minutes and nine seconds. Turns out, quite a lot. It’s The Night of the Doctor.

Watch the story!

The Night of the Doctor was originally released on BBC iPlayer on 14 November 2013. It is included as a special feature on the DVD and Blu-ray releases of The Day of the Doctor, which means you probably have it on a shelf somewhere. Failing that, it is also available on YouTube.

The second, completely unmemorable prequel to The Day of the Doctor is called The Last Day, and can also be found on YouTube. It’s included here merely for the sake of completeness: you don’t have to go and watch it or anything.

There will be a lot of talk this week about Steven Moffat’s novelisation of The Day of the Doctor (2018), so let’s start by admitting that Nathan gives the wrong chronological order here. From our point of view, it goes Tennant, Smith, Hurt, but from the Doctor’s point of view it goes Hurt, Tennant, Smith. Which is just the sort of nonsense that you either love/hate about Moffat.

For Conrad — and for the rest of us too, really — this episode is the sequel to The Brain of Morbius, which we discussed way back in Episode 41: Philip Madoc in Fishnets.

For fans of a certain age, Paul McGann will always be I in Withnail & I (1987), alongside titular Doctor Who villain Richard E Grant. Every weekend was very much like that film in the late 80s and early 90s, apparently.

River Song snogs Colin Baker’s Doctor (spoilers!) in a Big Finish story called World Enough and Time, part of The Diary of River Song, Series 2. Brendan says that it’s proper romantic.

And finally, Conrad sent us this photo of Ohila’s costume alongside the Eighth Doctor’s costume for this episode. The hat that forms part of Ohila’s costume is just the sort of magnificent nonsense an accomplished actress might refuse to wear on set.

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, Brendan is @brandybongos, James is @ohjamessellwood and Conrad is @HairoftheHound_. 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 you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll subject you to a proper legitimate actor tantrum when you tell us we have to wear that gorgeous hat that you spent so much time creating.

And more

You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on 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 2023.

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. In our most recent episode, we watched in awe as Roger Moore and Tony Curtis solved the mystery of The Long Goodbye.

We can also be heard on the Blakes 7 podcast Maximum Power, which a few weeks ago started its coverage of Series B of the show. This week’s episode: Chris Boucher’s Weapon, starring The Talons of Weng-Chiang’s John Bennett in a largely non-racist role.

And finally, there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. We’ve been having a short break to give us the chance to rest on our laurels after our first year of podcasting. Today, we’re recommending our coverage of Star Trek: Discovery.

Episode 247: Not Like These Two · Recorded on Saturday, 23 July 2022 · Duration 0:45:57 · Download · Open in new window

SpecialsThe Eighth DoctorThe Fiftieth Anniversary

Episode 246

On the Set of The Reign of Terror

When a spatio-temporal hyperlink connects 1963, 2013 and 2022, we find ourselves joined by Greg Miller for a conversation about our little fanboy hearts, the anniversary special An Adventure in Space and Time, and the brave, clever and difficult people who created the show that brought us all together.

Coronation Street got here first, with its dramatisation of the creation of the show — The Road to Coronation Street (2010), featuring our very own Celia Imrie and Shaun Dooley, as well as real-life Doctor Who villain Steven Berkoff.

As is now well known, the first Doctor Who novelisation Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks (1965) invents a different meet-cute for the Doctor and its narrator Ian Chesterton: Ian meets the Doctor, Barbara and Susan after being involved in a car crash on Barnes Common, which is the location of the first scene of An Adventure in Space and Time.

The TV interview we mention with Bill Hartnell in 1967 can be found on YouTube, and as a special feature on the DVD release of The Tenth Planet. The story of the rediscovery of this interview can be found in this article in The Guardian from 2013.

Australian journalist Annabel Crabb created a four-part documentary called Ms Represented (2021) about the ugly truth of how female politicians have been treated in the Australian Parliament.

Here is the incredible story of Underground (1958), a live television drama in which the main actor died during broadcast, and which was partly saved by the intervention of Verity Lambert.

And finally, William Russell played an RAF pilot in The Man Who Never Was (1956), and was the lead in the television series The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (1956–1957) alongside Ronald Leigh-Hunt from The Seeds of Death and Revenge of the Cybermen.

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, Richard is @RichardLStone, and Simon is @simonmoore72. 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 you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll elide your character with Jackie Lane in upcoming Flight Through Entirety biopic.

And more

You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on 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 2023.

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. In our most recent episode, we watched in awe as Roger Moore and Tony Curtis solved the mystery of The Long Goodbye.

We can also be heard on the Blakes 7 podcast Maximum Power, which a few weeks ago started its coverage of Series B of the show. In today’s episode we will be discussing Series B, Episode 3, Weapon, by Doctor Who’s very own Chris Boucher.

And finally, there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. We’ve been having a short break to give us the chance to rest on our laurels after our first year of podcasting. Today, we’re recommending our coverage of Star Trek: The Original Series.

Episode 246: On the Set of The Reign of Terror · Recorded on Sunday, 10 July 2022 · Duration 1:07:23 · Download · Open in new window

SpecialsThe Fiftieth Anniversary

Episode 245

Everyone’s So Damn Special

Matt Smith’s last full season as the Doctor is a game of two halves — two costumes, two console rooms, two title sequences (or six, whatever) and two sets of companions over two consecutive years. And we’re in two minds about it. Welcome to the Series 7 retrospective.

Thank you to all the lovely people who sent us questions, particularly Rod Who (@who_rod), Frazer Gregory (@FelixFrazer), Joe Ford (@docoho) Steven Alexander (@stealalexanderuk), Bob Gilbey (@bobgilbey), Erik Stadnik (@sjcAustenite), Nathan Bottomley (@nathanbottomley) and Richard Stone (@RichardLStone).

Downtime (1995) was an officially licensed Doctor Who fan film written by Marc Platt (Ghost Light) and featuring Nick Courtney, Lis Sladen, Deborah Watling and various other Doctor Who guest stars. Plus some Yeti.

Here’s Brendan standing alongside a portrait of what seems to be his Spanish monk great-great-great-great-great-great-(etc.)-grandfather in the National Art Museum of Catalonia.

John and Gillian were child companions of the First and Second Doctors in many, many Doctor Who comics. They don’t get space syphilis, but evil fictional versions of them do turn up in the Virgin New Adventure Conundrum.

Alex Kingston has continued to play River Song for Big Finish opposite a range of different Doctors and at least one Master in The Diary of River Song.

And last of all, in 2012, the BBC released a sort of animated version of an unfilmed scene written by Chris Chibnall, which would have seen the Doctor tell Brian Williams about the fate of his son and daughter-in-law. It’s called PS.

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, Brendan is @brandybongos, 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 you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll never stop dropping unnecessary jokes at your expense into our conversations.

And more

You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on the Whittaker Era of Doctor Who, at jodieintoterror.com, at @JodieIntoTerror on Twitter, on Apple Podcasts, and wherever podcasts can be found. We releasesed our final episode this week — a long conversation over champagne about The Power of the Doctor.

We’ll be back with a new flashcast on the second Russell T Davies era in November 2023.

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: this week it continues its interview with Michael E Briant, who directed five episodes of Blakes 7 Season A, as well as Colony in Space, The Sea Devils, The Green Death, Death to the Daleks, Revenge of the Cybermen and The Robots of Death. Our Season B coverage will start next week.

And finally, there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. This week, we watched an episode of Series 4 of Star Trek: Discovery called The Examples.

Episode 245: Everyone’s So Damn Special · Recorded on Sunday, 17 July 2022 · Duration 1:26:38 · Download · Open in new window

RetrospectivesSeries 7The Eleventh Doctor

Episode 244

Full of the Doctor

This week, we’re spending a relaxing afternoon on sunny Trenzalore, chatting with friends, visiting people we’ve lost, solving a mystery, bringing up an age-old question, and generally getting everything neatly squared away before the fireworks start this November. It’s The Name of the Doctor.

Nathan’s rant about giving the Doctor unnecessary backstory in The War Games Part 10 can be heard on the Jodie into Terror episode on The Timeless Children.

Earlier this year, Nathan appeared on a podcast called Pull to Open, with Pete Pachal and Chris Taylor, and in every episode they theorise about where you might find Clara in this Doctor Who story. You can hear Nathan’s theory about Clara’s role in The Claws of Axos here.

Here’s El Sandifer’s essay on The Name of the Doctor, and this is how she describes Richard E Grant as the Great Intelligence: “But Grant is putting no effort into the part, playing him as a cliched bit of leering smugness. Which is, of course, exactly what the part calls for – a big name actor basically phoning it in.”

And finally: Nathan has a habit of making fun of Chris Chibnall’s minimalist approach to publicising Doctor Who by repeatedly posting a screencap of Art Malik from the exciting trailer at the end of The Woman Who Fell to Earth. You can see him in action here.

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, Brendan is @brandybongos, Todd is @toddbeilby and Simon is @simonmoore72. 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 you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll leap into your timeline and keep bombarding you with a lot of gratuitous advice.

And more

You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on 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 releasing our final episode on The Power of the Doctor this week.

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 is back to kick off its Season B coverage today with the first part of a two-part interview with Michael E Briant, who directed five episodes of Blakes 7 Season A, as well as Colony in Space, The Sea Devils, The Green Death, Death to the Daleks, Revenge of the Cybermen and The Robots of Death.

And finally, there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. This week, we watched Darmok, which is one of the best episodes in Star Trek’s absurdly long history.

Episode 244: Full of the Doctor · Recorded on Sunday, 26 June 2022 · Duration 1:03:46 · Download · Open in new window

Series 7The Eleventh Doctor

Episode 243

Shot in a Hurry

In a far-off galaxy in a distant future, a band of misfit soldiers in a comical castle await the arrival of an enemy long thought dead — thousands upon thousands of killer Cybermen. Angie and Archie don’t seem particularly impressed, though, and neither do Nathan, Richard, James and Peter. It’s Nightmare in Silver.

Richard is reminded of the Hammer film Vampire Circus (1972), which features Lalla Ward, Adrienne Corri and Laurence Payne, which means that we can now regard The Leisure Hive as its canonical sequel. He also mentions the 1988 film Waxwork, which features genre stalwarts David Warner and John Rhys-Davies.

Neil Gaiman handles childhood fears so beautifully in The Graveyard Book (2008) that Nathan and Richard recommend that you go and read it at once. It’s the story of Nobody Owens, who lives in a graveyard and is raised by ghosts after his family is murdered. Beautiful, funny and haunting.

And some film trivia that you can use to surprise and delight your remaining friends: as Richard says, Mel Brooks was one of the producers (uncredited) of Star Trek’s David Cronenberg’s 1986 film, The Fly.

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, Richard is @RichardLStone and James is @ohjamessellwood. 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 you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll do a film adaptation of all your most terrifying childhood fears on a tight budget and a very short time frame.

And more

You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on 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 releasing our final episode on The Power of the Doctor on 25 October, we hope.

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, whose Series B social media campaign has begun in earnest. Expect something very special very soon.

And finally, there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. This week, we watched the worst Star Trek: Enterprise episode ever, apparently, and Nathan really quite enjoyed it.

Episode 243: Shot in a Hurry · Recorded on Sunday, 26 June 2022 · Duration 0:45:19 · Download · Open in new window

Series 7The Eleventh Doctor

Episode 242

Strax is Tara King

This week we’re joined by Steven from New to Who to discuss one of the great loves of our lives — Dame Diana Rigg, whose astonishing performance makes The Crimson Horror one of the best episodes of the era.

So, Diana Rigg. As we all know, her breakout role was as Mrs Peel in The Avengers from 1966 to 1968. And so this is not her first appearance on Flight Through Entirety. Before discussing The Seeds of Doom, Brendan, Nathan and Richard discussed the Avengers episode that undoubtedly inspired it: The Man Eater of Surrey Green (see Episode 43: Sexiest Exposition Trope). Since then, on Bondfinger, we’ve discussed several more episodes of The Avengers that she starred in, as well as the 1969 Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), which also starred the recently-cancelled George Lazenby as Bond.

Richard’s Pick of the Week: the “almost unwatchable” German Super 8 films starring Diana Rigg — Der goldene Schlüssel (1966), minikillers (1969) and Diadem (1969). They’re all available on YouTube, but we would completely understand if you decided not to follow the links.

Mark Gatiss named Mr Sweet after his friend Matthew Sweet, the author of Inventing the Victorians (2001), which attempts to demythologise the culture of the Victorian era: turns out, they were just as much fun as we are, apparently. Sweet is also known for his probing interviews of Doctor Who actors which can be found as extras on many DVD and Blu-ray releases.

We occasionally mention or allude to The League of Gentlemen, a sketch comedy series set in the fictional northern town of Royston Vasey, which ran for three seasons, a movie and a return season 15 years later. It doesn’t totally hold up now, for many reasons, but it’s certainly a useful text when it comes to understanding Mark Gatiss’s interests as a writer.

Richard points out that the opening scene of the episode echoes the famous Hovis Bread commercial from 1973, directed by Ridley Scott, which the people at Hovis (credibly) claim is “Britain’s most iconic and heart-warming advert”. More about the ad here.

Mrs Gillyflower’s revival meeting reminds Nathan of Mrs Melrose Ape, the lady preacher from Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies, which we know that Mark Gatiss is aware of, because he plays a small role in Stephen Fry’s film adaptation of the novel, Bright Young Things (2003).

And finally, as a well-known Sherlockian, Gatiss ties this episode into the Holmes canon: in The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez, Watson briefly refers to his notes on “the repulsive story of the red leech”.

Follow us

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

Steven B is one of the hosts of the New to Who podcast, which discusses Classic Doctor Who stories and introduces the Classic series to new fans. You can follow New to Who on Twitter at @NewToWhoPodcast and check out the episodes wherever podcasts can be found.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll sprinkle pepper down the front of our blouse instead of salt so we can laugh at the sound of your sneezing.

And more

You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on 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 releasing our final episode on The Power of the Doctor a couple of days after 23 October, turns out.

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 will be returning to your podcatcher with a second series (a Series B, if you will) even more action-packed and breathtaking than the first.

And finally, there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. This week, we welcomed the USS Voyager’s long-awaited return home in Endgame.

Episode 242: Strax is Tara King · Recorded on Sunday, 25 September 2022 · Duration 0:57:42 · Download · Open in new window

Series 7The Eleventh Doctor

Episode 241

The Law of Conservation of Detail

This week, Nathan, Simon, Peter and their new friend Mathew find ourselves wandering some space corridors in search of some kind of button that will bust us out of this time loop. Are we on board the USS Voyager during one of its less successful high-concept episodes? Or do we find out — to our horror — that we’re on a Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS?

We don’t mention him by name, but the writer of this episode is Steve Thompson, who also wrote The Curse of the Black Spot (about which, more here) and Time Heist (co-written by Steven Moffat).

The eponymous Law of Conservation of Detail can be found explained on the TV Tropes wiki. In short, only detail relevant to the story will be included in an episode, particularly a constrained 42-minute television episode. Its corollary is that any detail included in an episode should be expected to be relevant to the story.

Simon alludes to the film 127 Hours (2010), in which a young American man’s arm is trapped under a boulder in a canyoneering accident and so he decides after five days to break the bones and then cut it off in order to free himself. Somewhat surprisingly, Simon significantly underestimates the number of hours it would take someone to make that decision.

Follow us

Nathan is on Twitter as @nathanbottomley, Simon is @simonmoore72, and Mathew is @MathewHounsell. 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 you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll somehow convince you that that space accident turned you into a dot-matrix printer or something.

And more

You can find Jodie into Terror, our flashcast on 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 releasing our final episode on The Power of the Doctor some time later this month.

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, whose coverage of Series B will be starting soon, with a Very Special Episode That I Absolutely Can’t Tell You About.

And finally, there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. No new episode this week, but we recommend the episodes in our back catalogue where we talk about Enterprise. There’s usually some good ranting to be had.

Episode 241: The Law of Conservation of Detail · Recorded on Sunday, 19 June 2022 · Duration 0:50:40 · Download · Open in new window

Series 7The Eleventh Doctor