The Woman Who Fell to Earth

[0:00]

Hello, dear listener, and welcome to Jody Interterterra, the only Doctor Who podcast that couldn't wait till late 2023 to discuss series 11 of Doctor Who.

So we've all watched it on the weekend, and we're here to just give our 1st impressions.

Obviously, as we said in the last episode of FTE, you'll get to hear our definitive FTE take in about what?

right.

But in the meantime, we didn't want to hold back.

So I'm really keen to hear what Brendan had to say.

Hello, dear listeners.

It is Brendan here.

We've been out in back on the podcast.

And back on the podcast.

I've been let out of my box.

Um, yes, so on um, on Monday morning, got up really early and watched it uh, with Rod on IView.

And uh, then at the cinema, um, went along with uh, James, Nathan, uh, Richard and uh, various other people.

[01:05]

Todd couldn't make it because he had a prior commitment.

And so, yeah, I watched it twice in 24 hours, which is the 1st time I've done that for an episode, I think, since day of the doctor.

Um, and I have to say, I thought it was a steady, if not spectacular start in the same vein as, say, robot.

And I think they've done that because there are better episodes to come, but in this episode they had to set up 4 main characters, a supporting character who we thought might have been a main character, as well as have a plot, as well as a lay concerns that a woman could not play the doctor.

And I think it succeeds well.

It does give us a compelling villain.

And I found myself thinking there's some imagery in this episode that makes me think of very good classic episodes.

So, for instance, when Tim Shaw, who, of course, got a big laugh in Australia.

And I've decided, it's some, it's Pete McTyre's, uh, influence in the script group that has been a bit of led to that.

[02:14]

But I found his method of killing people very similar to the emissary of Soutec, bringing Soutec's gift of death to all humankind.

And of course, climbing the crane at the end, I thought, at first, oh, my 1st viewing, I thought, oh, this is a crib to logopolis, but this time she's not gonna, you know, the doctor's not going to die from this.

But it's also a little bit terror of the autons, but without the whole, but don't you realise these aliens are going to kill you as well?

Oh, you're right.

How silly of me.

Um, so yeah, I just thought it was a really compelling episode all around.

Really likeable, um, characters in Ryan Yaz and Graham, and of course the doctor.

And what I liked is a lot of the smugness that has been part of some of the more recent companions.

None of these characters seem smug.

They're all really sort of likeable, but also a bit prickly with each other is not too nice.

[03:17]

Yeah, so when I say 7 out of 10, it's not so much that there was anything missing from the episode, it's just the episode had to understandably be light on some parts.

And I think we're well on the way to getting some 10 out of 10s this season.

Todd, you gave it 7 out of 10 as well, didn't you?

Yes, but I was rounding up.

From a fire.

Like I always do, like, from a 6.5 , to a 7 and that's where I think it does sit.

I too got up and watched it early and then I watched it on the ABC later on, was really interesting, I thought, to see a newly regenerated blonde headed 5th doctor in the series.

Try and work out if she was actually was looking for the doctor, like for the whole episode.

And then one of her companions tried to ride a bike but really couldn't and then pushed buttons that he shouldn't have pushed to set off a chain of events.

[04:18]

So, I mean, I mean, sorry, Ryan, who I thought was really likeable and lovely, set off this chain of events so that then Nissa could start.

I mean, Yaz could start to investigate, like she always does, but then, of course, she gets pushed into the background once her investigations, you know, sort of a finish, so she sort of just becomes, well, where is she?

She's just there, one of the team.

Meanwhile, of course.

Tegan, I mean, Graham, is like the, is the ones like the voice of reason saying, no, don't go in there.

Don't do that.

Things are going to go bad, um, but still chimes in with very good advice and you can't help but really, really like her sort of, you know, um, ying to their yang, really.

And then, of course, my favourite character who's near, gun her, loving it all, Auntie Vanessa meets and, you know, she was doomed.

I mean, great.

So, yeah, so that was some of my thoughts about some of the characters in this.

That's amazing. great take on it.

[05:21]

But look, I say this.

I liked all of the characters and I thought they all had a lot of wonderful potential and I liked all the different beats that they had.

Um, In terms of some of the stuff that Brendan was talking about, you know, the whole crane thing, I thought that was beautifully shot, sort of reminded me a bit of, um, the end of, uh, Buffy the Vampires, I guess, season time, really.

Oh, yeah. the whole crane thing.

And then we had, of course, I like the fact that you sort of were let out the garden path with the villains thinking that it was going to be like a war, but it wasn't.

I thought that was quite a clever little, you know, take.

And also too, when the doctor had removed those bombs, um, out of everybody, um, which was another little little twist.

The one thing I didn't really like was that was the fact that that poor doomed guy who was looking for his sister.

How the hell did he get that big Hershey's bathing out of the forest?

Oh, he had his mate.

He had his bond mate.

[06:22]

He offered him a beer.

Yeah, that was that was probably the one plot point that I kind of went, you know what I'm like with these sort of things?

They had a mini crane in the back.

You know, um, the villain looked like a cross between, um, uh, the Gem Hadar from Deep Space 9 and Skip from Angel.

So I wasn't necessarily that impressed with that aspect of it, but it was very accessible for people.

Like, I've been speaking to some some friends who no longer watched the show and they actually tuned in and they actually said they liked the fact that it wasn't complicated and they liked her.

She was really likeable and so they're going to tune in again.

So I thought that was really interesting.

Um, Jody was okay.

I think she got better as the episode went along.

I thought she had some great moments.

You know, the thing with the mobile phone and, um, and also when she was talking to him about being a cheating double cheater or whatever it was, there were some nice little quips in there and, um, but she also got some clunky dialogue, I thought as well off Chris and I thought it was a bit laboured at times, especially after she said, I am the doctor.

[07:35]

There was a line about, I mean, to fair, what was it, fair play?

across the universe.

The way that was, it wasn't necessarily the way it was delivered, but it was just I just found, I just cringed.

And I guess that's my biggest concern is that part, for me as a fan.

I just felt that, and I've always thought that, that Russell T. Davies writing and, um, Stephen Moffatt's writing, in terms of the actual dialogue has a flair to it, whereas I find have found in the past with Chris Chibnall, not so much, and here, there are some really nice things, and there are other things that I kind of just went, oh, that's sort of like a children's television presenter summing up what's going on.

So, You know, it sounds like I'm bagging things out, but I'm not, like, I mean, I enjoyed it, but, There were little things like that.

And the other thing that I struggled with was the, um, Incidental music, which I thought was really haunting and beautiful at times, but it was such a different take.

I thought it was much more old school Doctor Who.

I'm used to Murray Gold telling us how to feel every 5 seconds and crescendos of, you know, emotion and that really wasn't there at certain big speeches from the doctor and I struggled with that.

[08:46]

I don't know.

But I'll get used to that, you know, it's a different, you know, it's a different field.

Cinematically, it looked wonderful.

So look, I was pleased with it.

I just wasn't emotionally that invested in it, you know, until perhaps Grace's death and, and that was really well played by um, Graham. sitting there the entire time.

For the moment, she is introduced.

I'm like, oh, she's fantastic.

And then in the train and she's the 1st person to walk towards the danger and and she does the big Daniel Craig run.

She's fantastic.

Yeah, and she, and she's, she's, just so, I think you said the other day, Nathan Gung-ho, about, you know, running into the adventure.

She is the companion that you want, really.

And then from that moment, I went, oh.

Oh, sorry, I thought you were talking about the doctor before, you mean Grace.

Grace is spectacularly brave and just absolutely marvellous.

[09:47]

I think, just incredible.

You know, I think the internet's been full all week of people just lamenting the fact that she was killed.

But, you know, that death had to land.

We had to care about it. he did a really good job of drawing that character.

Yeah, very quickly.

I think.

Look, I didn't have the same reaction, Todd, as you to the writing.

I thought, you know, it was it was straightforward.

It was it was clean.

It wasn't sort of florid in the way a lot of, you know, the dialogue could be, um, when the doctor was making big speeches in previous seasons.

But the acting was amazing.

They're brilliant actors.

I thought I was just sitting there entranced by all of them.

I couldn't really fault.

And the weakest of them was probably, um, was probably, uh, Toyson.

Yeah, I don't, I, that's, yeah.

[10:49]

Yeah, I mean, I actually have to defend Chidmull's writing because I thought it was really spectacularly good.

And the reason that I thought it was good was that the heart of the story was Grace and Ryan dealing with his disability.

And I remember leaving the cinema after watching it for the 2nd time.

And I had assumed that he learned to ride that bike, that there was a scene where he successfully rode the bike at some point that I'd just forgotten all my attention or wanted or something, but he doesn't or he doesn't magically overcome his disability.

He just learns to persevere.

And I thought that that sort of characterisation, if that could be foregrounded for the rest of the series.

I am going to be really happy.

The, the, um, there was a kind of level of groundedness, not just to the way it looked, but to the way it was written, whereas we used to a sort of hyper reality in Doctor Who with lots of saturated colours and lots of orchestral music and stuff.

And here I thought, um, the music was incredibly good.

[11:52]

It was, I think other people have said it's a sort of Dudley Simpson approach to just scoring the atmosphere and not the emotion.

Well, I was thinking I was thinking it was kind of Dudley Simpson meets Fangelis.

Oh yeah.

It has those sedans.

And jealous annoys the hell out of me.

Look, look, look, Nathan, I agree with you, and I think on that, oh, it's buzzing a lot.

On that, on that level, it was really good.

But I just felt the actual. you hear me?

Yep, yep, yep.

Keep going.

We're not editing.

I just thought the, sorry.

I thought the, I just thought the dialogue itself, like the intent was all there, but I just thought some of the words used were clumsy at times.

That's what I was saying.

No, and then the other thing that I really want to celebrate is the end of the era of man pain, where, you know, the doctor is constantly agonising over who he is and his place in the world and whether he's evil and all of that sort of thing, and it all became very, very heavy, and I think it became particular.

[12:57]

It's a Moffat thing, I think, because Moffat is constantly sort of, you know, questioning, you know, his like role as a straight wide heterosexual man.

Like he's acutely conscious of that and, and, you know, he writes about men and women partly because of that.

And Russell had burdened the doctor with what we thought.

Oh, and that's our time, but we're going to keep going for a bit, had burdened the doctor with, you know, a terrible backstory.

And all of that's gone.

She's just someone who travels, she's someone who helps out.

She's empathetic.

She's not a weirdo like Matt Smith or a kind of bastard like Peter Capoldi.

Like she cares about other people.

I really, really like this conception of the doctor.

And that was a real strength, I think, of the episode, how empathetic that she was.

And I liked all those things too.

Yeah, those positives.

Do you remember the moment where Ryan's waiting for his father to turn up to the funeral?

And she goes to say, oh, I'm sure he'll turn up or something like that.

[14:01]

And he says no, and then she just shuts up, you know, like she doesn't try to reassure him or anything like that.

Like she, she can read the room.

I think, you know, I think this is a great, you know, she's going to be really, really good, I think.

Yeah, I think I think she's got that potential there.

But also the other things that I loved was I love the fact that we had no opening titles and the ending was just spectacular.

Yeah, it wasn't that fun.

I've got I mean, again, it got people back watching with those massive viewing figures, and at the end of the episode, it said, you are really going to want to watch this next week to see what happens, and that was exactly the right decision to make.

Before we go, as Richard can't be with us tonight, I'd just like to bring up something, he said to me, as soon as the credits were over in the cinema, he just leaned over to me, and he said, this has so much heart that's been missing in the last few years, you know, because we have this investment in the family and a family of characters, which we mostly didn't have in the Moffat era, you know, immediately we have this connection, and with, and with the death of Grace, and having to have that for death, for Grace' not just to have meaning in narrative terms, but meaning to the characters.

[15:18]

And then Richard and I started discussing the music and we both kind of said it's radiophonic.

It's Tristram Carey, you know, it's textural.

And it comes back to what I think you were saying earlier about, you know, Murray Gold's music, which was fantastic.

Sometimes it's telling us how to feel.

Whereas I can't think of a particular moment in this episode where the music was a particular emotion.

It was more about, it made me physically feel things within my body, like tension or relief rather than happiness and sadness.

Yes, yes, very different from where it's been in the last 10 years.

So for me, that's a massive readjustment and I guess I struggled with that the 1st time I watched it.

So...

I had, look, I had a similar reaction to that.

I looked at it and...

Sorry, listened to it and...

Throughout the episode watching it in the cinema, I did not get up in the morning and watch it like everybody else.

I was sitting there and I should just feel this tightness in my chest as the tension built and built and built and it's not...

[16:24]

I mean, I've enjoyed most of Doctor Who for the last years.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

But I have not felt that tension.

And so drawn into the actual story for a long time.

And the fact that, you know, like, although maybe some of the dialogue was a bit clunky in places, I felt like those characters were real, and that's, I think, one of Jimmal's strengths, is he writes real, believable, emotionally, believable characters in a way, which we probably haven't had for a long time, and that, What was the refreshing cinema?

Oh, there were laugh lines and things like that.

It did get a laugh.

It seemed funnier in the cinema than it did on my solo viewing.

Yeah, I think that's it.

Look, actually, that's actually all we have time for today.

We are going to keep these short.

[17:25]

We'll try and get this up as soon as we can, and we'll publicise it, but you'll know that because you'll be listening to it if you hear this, and we'll try and get it up at a regular time every week during the series.

So thank you very much for joining us, or as I really should say.

Thank you very much for listening and good night.

Good night.

See you soon.

The last time someone got something up and then publicised it, they got a radio show on 2GB, good night.