Orphan 55

[0:00]

Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Jody and to Terra, the only Doctor Who flash cast that remembers to call its loved ones from time to time.

Just so they don't turn up at our workplace with a whole bunch of explosives.

I'm Nathan.

I'm James I'm Brendan.

I'm Todd, and we are, we've just finished watching mere days ago, Orphan 55, and so we are here to give you our hot take on that.

And I thought we would start because this seems to have been an episode that has landed in quite different ways with different people over the last few days.

So why don't we just sort of go around the table and talk about what each of us thought, Todd?

I thought when it was good, it was spectacular, and when it was utterly crap, it was also spectacular.

That's going on the DVD set.

[01:03]

Who are you and what have you done with Todd?

I was on this roller coaster ride.

It was just, it was just fabulous, fun moment I was going, oh, yes, the next moment I was going.

Yes, that's great.

I want to steal that.

I'm going to record myself saying it and edit it back into the conversation.

That's exactly it.

Brilliant.

What about you, Brandon?

Um, look, it's kind of weird because from any critical standpoint.

I'm like, what the hell have I just watched?

But I found it incredibly enjoyable.

I thought this is a tribute to zombie movies.

I said in my walk to work with Whittaker.

There are a couple of shots, which I felt were directly cribbed from the original dawn of the dead.

Look, I...

Objectively speaking.

I think it was pretty awful, but I can't help but enjoy myself.

So if you imagine like a thumbs up being 90 degrees and a thumbs down being -90 degrees.

[02:07]

It's a 10% thumbs up from me.

As I said to Fred, as I said to a friend of the podcast, Anson, who kind of agree with me, I said, it's not as good as Rosa, but it's not as bad as the Battle of Ranscor Avcolos.

That's most things, actually.

All right, you're here to we in our breakfast cereal, James.

Orphan 55 horse.

I've always did it, ravelocks.

I, I, I said this to Nathan earlier today.

I really wasn't sure about coming on the podcast today because I was underwhelmed when I watched it and I was even more underwhelmed when I watched it again yesterday.

I don't know.

It was oh, it was a mess.

It was an enjoyable mess.

It was just a mess.

I, I, I kind of, yeah.

Take a breath, James, because I think you're about to go into notes only dogs can hear.

[03:10]

That was something...

Yes, I'm I'm sitting sitting here.

I'm sitting here with the cat next to me and she was wincing.

So, look, I...

Yeah, I just, I don't know.

I don't know.

And there were bits that I loved.

There were bits that I hated.

Yeah.

I, I'm almost on the verge of a, of a Todd Rant.

I think you all expected to meet me to do a De Sango conundrum, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I'm not going to.

I can do that for you.

Well, let's let's leave it until we let's talk about the individual bits of the episode that annoyed you.

But just let me say.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, sorry.

You go 1st because I've got Richard's comments here as well, which, okay, all right.

So I'm doing the full Tod, as I said, before we started recording.

Todd normally hates an episode when it 1st comes out and then 12 years later, it's wonderful.

[04:12]

And I went through that process in a matter of 2 days.

So I didn't like it the 1st time I saw it.

The floors in the script were like hugely apparent and I wasn't sort of massively keen on the sort of monster movie thing.

But I watched it again today.

And I mean, that's kind of a ridiculous thing.

It was a Doctor Who monster movie.

That's exactly what Doctor Who should be doing.

And I thought it was like terrifically enjoyable.

And all of the things that, like, are frankly, are frankly ridiculous in the script, um, are just terribly funny and and weird and fabulous.

So I'm totally on board.

What did what did Richard have to say?

So Richard had to say, and I might do this as Julian Andor Sandy in honour of Richard.

My only thoughts are that a 3 act light operetta from 1977 probably shouldn't have received Brandy's Soutec time spasm and been shunted to 2020.

It's a nice manually driven piece with shunting Robert Hyndein gears.

[05:16]

But we all saw this before Lyka let out her last bark.

Even the dregs are from our Ariausen sketch from the 70s, but it was nice enough desert emoji.

Yeah, so that's Richard's thoughts.

Okay.

We'll get back to them again in 2025, I think.

So let's talk regulars.

How do we feel the regulars were served this time?

I was I was deeply concerned coming into this because last week was such a tour tour for Sasha and Jody lifted her game and and last week was the 1st time Jody Whittaker did not annoy me. in an episode of Doctor Who, and so I at all, at all.

So in her 13th episode as the 13th doctor, she finally arrived and so coming into this, I thought, don't let her do anything silly or stupid, and I thought she was, she held the whole thing together.

[06:22]

She had some awful dialogue and an horrible, overexplanation things to deal with and I thought she just did spectacularly.

And all the silly humour stuff went to Ryan and to Graham and they do that so well.

And I thought, yes, yes, yes.

And then, well, Paul Yaz is one Lamington away from losing it completely.

I mean, she's either going to, you know, I can't see her getting to the end of the season without exploding at the doctor or joining team master.

There you go.

Yeah, that's a popular theory at the moment that Yaz is getting disillusioned with the doctor and you know what?

I can kind of see this here because.

Oh, okay, we'll talk about the guest cars later, but there's a certain emotional reaction.

Yaz has to a certain death in this story and look, the emotional reaction for the audience entirely comes from Mandip's reaction and mine.

We may as well say it's when Vilma gets killed, isn't it?

It's when Vilma gets killed.

Or it's the death of the planet Earth.

Um, The fact that the fact that she has such a huge problem.

[07:27]

And actually, I, that was one of the things I liked about this episode was the, was the horror from her was really believable when, when, and then, then the, how long have you known?

She's the one who works it out too.

She doesn't work out that they're on earth, but she does work out who the dregs are.

Like that's her shit.

And I think the script throws that away a little bit too much, but it is definitely her doing it.

I thought all of them were great.

Maybe Graham gets a little bit less to do this time, but you know, I did like the scene of the doctor sort of sitting between Ryan and Bella and kind of putting a stop to, you know, the flirting that was going on in a sort of lovely, oblivious way.

I thought there was six.

Yes, please, we're British.

No hanky-panky in the space bus.

The armoured space bus.

Yeah, well, yeah, yeah, tinfoil.

Tin foil armour.

Yeah, sure.

[08:31]

Do we have anything more on that or should we move on to the guests?

Oh, please, let's move on to the guest.

Yeah, all right, please.

I think this is where the script falls down a little bit.

What do you think, Todd?

Well, well, yes, I'm just going to talk about, I just need to talk about Benny, Benny, my, Benny, what have you done with Benny?

She was so crap and the crap air, she got the more I was there in anticipation going, when is she going to die?

How was she going to die?

And then when she died, I just couldn't stop laughing and laughing and laughed.

It was just spectacular.

And I just couldn't believe that like in the classic series, we had to wait. for one story before the season 12 opener to get the Jenny Laird Award.

And now in the new series, one story after the series 12 opener.

We've now got our new queen of, of awards for, for, for knew who.

Oh my god, she was...

It was wonderful.

[09:32]

And that's the character.

Sorry.

She did hammer films and all sorts of things.

She's had a sort of massive career.

And I just wonder whether she was sort of pitching it just completely wrong.

It was super weird.

Think about the way Foon reacts to Morvin dying in Voyager the Damned, which is absolutely, you know, an analogous situation.

She doesn't change kind of approach to acting at all before he's dead after he's dead.

It's all sort of more or less roughly the same.

It is an odd performance.

Oh, and what the hell with the whole Benny not dying just for the sake of the plot for a good half an hour after he's been taken by these these creatures who have killed every single other person.

Why?

It seems like there's something missing there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like, I couldn't even work out what was going on, and it's not entirely clear what Kane says.

Like Kane says, you know, I killed him.

He was having too much, he asked me to, and it was like he was having too much fun.

[10:36]

And it's not clear whether the he there is a, is Benny or the, or a drag.

And some people have said, oh, is he mutating into a drag?

Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

Well, I mean, maybe that's how evolution works in Doctor Who.

I don't know.

But like he just didn't seem to be sort of particularly like if the if the drag was chewing his limbs off or something, do you know what I mean?

He needed to be put out of his misery.

He certainly isn't showing that in his vocal performance, speaking over the theme.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, I think that maybe there's, and you know what, my biggest problem with, I, I, like, I, I generally have a positive response to the last season and a half.

But it still feels like there may be most of these episodes are maybe a couple of drafts off a final.

Yeah, they just need a bit more work and and that is something that's like really struck me with this episode.

[11:39]

It was like, either Benny should have been mutating and there should have been a plot point that are going, well, you know, the earth has changed so much that these people are mutating because of something in the atmosphere.

Um, or, or he should have been an immense horrific trauma and pain.

Yeah, certainly.

Yeah.

They don't do it so that that joke, will you marry me kind of, they're supposed to be, you know, a written, not a joke.

It's supposed to be a sort of huge plot beat, you know, will you marry me?

Now will someone come out and kill me?

But that doesn't land anyway.

We could have done without it.

See, to be honest with you, I love that line.

I found it so darkly comic and I think it's more...

I think it's one of the few jokes that is, that lands exactly as it's meant to.

But I agree that, yeah, we don't know what is happening to Benny Kane does have a line of they're playing with him.

Yeah.

You know, but it's, it's still kind of like, as you say, either have him in immense pain or see, or see him outside the van, the, as a, yeah, space space van, and, you know, see that half his body's changed already.

[12:49]

Even when they get out of the van.

It's like hyphen with the 3 is very unceremoniously dispatched.

And I love hyphen with a 3.

She's a crap furry from the future.

I really loved her in spaceballs.

My theory is, my theory is that furries are now just, they're fine.

They're all widely accepted.

You know, they're not down the bottom of the nerd pecking order or whatever that thing is.

And they do it via body mods?

Well, no, I think she's just got a hat and, you know, like her tail sticking out.

You know, how about Kane and Bella?

Bella, yes, Kane, no.

See, I, I, Kane, Kane is actually, um, but David Tennant's love interest in Casanova, she was actually the kind of female lead, and I was wondering where I'd seen her before, and she's sort of very striking looking and stuff, and she sort of does the sort of standard Ripley thing.

But it's just another plot where I thought that people were just behaving massively weirdly.

[13:50]

Like, you know, why doesn't she send the kid a birthday card every year?

Why does the kid?

Like, like, Bella literally says she didn't come to any of my birthdays.

So I've brought a whole heap of films around. blow up her workplace.

I don't know.

It doesn't seem like a proportionate reaction to me.

Does she create that whole place anyway?

and then with all those things, you know, and and and and then she knows there's a nest and they're just hibernating like when they walk through.

Oh, I don't know all that stuff.

I was just they're going, well, you know.

Yeah, whatever the plot on the page.

Yeah, it's service a plot.

It doesn't make any sense.

It's just in service of getting from part, from point A to point B to point C.

Yeah, that's what I found frustrating, I think.

It's so linear.

I mean, it's from the moment you meet uh, Velma.

Um, and Benny and Yaz interrupts him trying to propose, like he's going to die.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, so obvious.

[14:52]

There was no twist.

Like, even the whole, you know, what are these creatures thing?

Like, the only twist in the entire story, really, is that it's planet Earth and that really, it's kind of obvious.

The other twist was when Kane suddenly came back from the dead at the end, when she seemed to herself sacrificed herself.

And where did her, where did her offsider go, all the way through seemed to be there and then he wasn't there and then, you know, he was...

He gets killed on the 1st attack on the.

Yeah, yeah.

He's very beautiful.

I posted a picture of him in a t-shirt on Twitter with which got some attention.

Then I found him semi-naked and...

Yeah, no, he gets killed very, very quickly.

Um, and I guess there's there's Silas and Nevy.

[15:52]

Is that what he's called?

Yeah.

Superfluous.

Arterly superfluous.

Do you think?

I think, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, the thing that annoyed me was just the thing where he goes out into the corridor.

He has that the kid has a little tantrum and sort of runs off into the corridor where he knows there are, you know, drags, but within like 2 or 3 minutes he's reunited with his father anyway.

And it just seemed to be like a really kind of thin arc, you know, like it's, it's Silas is finally recognised for the great, you know, mechanic he is, blah, blah, blah. and it's actually just not very interesting.

No, I was, I was sitting there going, could we just...

I had to endure that chipmunk based child back, tweaks during his dark materials.

He had a few weeks off.

Well, it felt like every single week he was there and I just wanted him to die so much.

[16:52]

I just wanted, I just wanted Tim Shaw to turn off and do a truth extraction one by one.

I would have just been, oh, that have been fantastic.

He's actually quite a good actor, but the whole thing with all of them.

And the guy from in between us, I just thought he was wasted a bit, really.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I, you know, sorry, go on.

I was just, I was just going to say, it seems to me the director, Lee Haven Jones. who I thought did a good job with Spifle part 2 has not told anyone how they're meant to act.

So everyone, except, I think, for Bella and hyphen, give a middle of the road performance because they're waiting for some direction.

And we've, I, we've seen that style of acting in the Star Wars prequels.

And that really seems to be what it is.

You know, it's kind of, oh, generic old person acting, generic base commander acting, generic, slightly useless dad acting, you know, and it's just like, it's, it's, no one feels like they've been told what to do.

It was true, Doctor Who.

[17:54]

For me, I think, for me, I think the problem is that there's he's trying to do too much in 47 minutes or whatever.

And so you've got these 3 family groups, all of which has have an arc, none of which really work and some of which are sort of spectacularly dumb.

And you just think this was so much better done in midnight or in Horror of Fang Rock, or even in Voyage of the Damned, you know, where everyone has a character moment, we know who everyone is.

We care a bit about people.

Like, you don't have to have this sort of thing.

And I just thought that the, the, the, Bella Kane thing was like super weird.

And those are the things.

I think those are the things that are kind of silliest in the script.

But watching it again.

They do.

Oh, here we go.

It's our timer.

Watching them again.

It all seemed a bit less important to me than the actual kind of main monster thing.

Can we talk about the monsters and maybe the message.

[18:56]

How did we think the dregs worked?

I think they looked good.

Yeah, brilliant design and, you know, practical design.

It would have been really tempting to do that with CG, but no, that's a, you know, that's a few suits.

And they look quite a few.

You know what that reminds me of?

primeval.

Yes, yeah.

Like the future predator.

With the future predator.

Yeah.

Not that that's a bad thing.

They were great.

They were great.

Monsters.

And they were done with CG, weren't they, for the most part?

Yeah, yeah.

I believe so what to do with practical effects, which have it be so successful.

No complaints there.

Should we move on to the the parable?

Well, yeah, I mean, does anyone have anything more to say about those particular monsters though, and then we'll move on and do that?

I still don't quite get how the doctor managed to talk that lead one to go into the cage and small places with her.

[19:58]

It was stupid.

I mean, like it was stupid.

And like, like, why did it, like, like, it agrees not to kill them because, um, you know, they're an ecosystem and the 2 of them depend, you know, the 2 groups depend on one another for atmosphere.

And so it goes and locks itself in the cage and lets them walk out the door.

I mean, it just seems extraordinary.

It doesn't make any sense at all.

I think what the doctor says, though, is that she can increase the oxygen content in the room, which would weaken the creature, but it's basically just if you go in here and give us a head start.

I won't do that to you.

I know you the impression I got was, I know you're going to chase me anyway, but we're both intelligent creatures.

Give me a head start.

Yeah.

And it's one of those things where it's intelligent when the plot needs it to be and it's their big shambling monsters otherwise.

Yeah.

Yeah, I don't, I'm not quite sure that landed.

It was obviously meant to be the doctor, you know, has a clever thing, but it just, I don't think it quite worked.

[20:59]

Yeah.

How do we feel about the message?

You're clearly very, very angry about it, James, and you want to have a big rant about some spots, perhaps, for a while?

Yes, so why, why is Doctor Who so political now?

I love the, you know, wake up, you know, sort yourself out message.

Like, I love it when Doctor Who does that.

Um, One of my favourite Doctor Who stories of all time is Invasion of the Dinosaurs.

Um, I do, I like that.

I think that whenever it does that, it's a good thing.

Sometimes it's a bit hand fisted.

But most of the time, it works well.

I think this kind of fell a bit flat, but I liked the fact that it was there and I can even forgive them ripping off.

Mysterious planet.

Wow, rip off from the best, I think.

[22:02]

And the worst.

But no, I really, I really enjoyed that.

I did think the editing that last shot, though, is a bit, that's a bit hand fisted.

The, you know, be the best of humanity, otherwise, you'll be attacked by dregs.

That's right We'll have a monster screaming at you. that's it.

If we don't meet our Paris accord levels, we'll be all attacked by dregs.

What did you think about it, Tom?

I think it hits home, especially with everything that's happened here in this country over the last month with the horrible prize and destruction of habitat habitats and so many animals, native animals, and of course, loss of life.

I mean, it really does touch you.

But at the same time, I kind of thought, well, do I need to be hit in the face with it, like, like so bluntly.

I mean, it's, I don't know, I like that it's there, but I think it could have been.

[23:05]

For me, perhaps not shoved in your face quite so bluntly, but I guess it's Jody's moment to talk to the audience like, you know, Merry Christmas to all of you at home.

And it's obviously like Rosa, that this sequence right at the end is written by Chris.

It seems to be what he likes to do to have his little bit of, you know, um, you know, telling us what we need to, what we need to take away from this.

So I'm okay with it, but I just thought, like, James, it just... hand fisted or I just kind of went, really, do I really need that?

I don't know.

I don't know.

I have to watch it again when I have my drinking game, you know, with Sammy Benny.

You'll be unconscious by then.

I'll probably go, cheers, yes, Merry Christmas to you too.

What did what did you think, Brandon?

Um, look, I actually wanted her to get really angry in that speech, and I've watched it again since, and there's a bit more nuance there than I thought on the 1st time round, but pretty much when the companions asked her, how did it happen?

[24:13]

I wanted her to explode.

What do you mean, how did that happen?

Have you seen your planet?

You know, I wanted her to have her stupid apes moment.

And particularly if we are going down the path, this series of the team becoming a bit fragmented and losing a bit of trust in the doctor.

Um, And it ties in, then with, oh, you're in a bit of a mardy mood.

Yeah, no, you know, earlier on.

Like when I said this to, um, my, uh, my friend answered, he said, yeah, and it ties in with that 1st scene.

I was like, yes, it does.

Well, but one thing I did actually really like that a lot of people seem not to is I liked cutting to that shot of the drag at the end because the speech.

The next natural line of the speech is be the best of humanity or be the dregs.

And I was waiting for those words and they didn't come and I was left with the image instead.

And as the credits kick in, I suddenly go, ah, that's where the name dregs comes from.

They're the leg of humanity.

[25:14]

It took me until I was watching it the 2nd time to realise that, Fred, didn't say he did better than me.

Well, you see, for me, the fact that they were called drags meant the moment that she mentioned the elite and that was a really good thing.

The fact that climate change doesn't happen because you don't unplug the microwave from the wall after you use it.

It happens because a very small number of rich people and corporations are just prepared to, you know, let the rest of us suffer rather than actually, you know, do anything about this problem or accept that it exists.

So the moment that, and I'm really happy the episode framed it that way.

The moment that she talked about elites, the dregs clearly had to be the people who were left behind.

I think, you know, I thought that was how it worked.

Look, I thought I thought it was really good.

And I love the way that we just kind of put to one side the kind of established way that time travellers meant to work in Doctor Who, which I think has become a problem for the show.

[26:17]

But I won't go on about that here.

I'm really pleased that we just put that to one side and said, this isn't the planet Zog that suffered an environmental catastrophe.

This isn't Fenrick has gone back in time and poisoned the oceans.

What we're seeing here is the result of what you are doing now, the the entire, you know, the climate catastrophe that we're currently suffering.

And, you know, like I thought it was, you know, it came out just a day before the Prime Minister of Australia said, we're not going to reduce emissions.

We're just going to do resilience and adaptation in order to cope with this crisis.

And so I thought it was a really super timely message.

So that's my speech to camera at the end of the episode.

We should have cut to Wilma going, Benny, where's my?

She's still out there.

Like, Katie, she survived.

No, she is that Drake.

There is a Twitter account called DW Poop, who do funny, short Doctor Who videos, and Todd, they've re-edited the ending where it's Wilma screaming Benny instead of the drink.

[27:24]

That's fantastic.

So check out at DW Poop.

I also saw them do I'm bringing Benny back.

Oh yes. that was pretty good.

All right, I think we're going to wind up there because we've gone well over time, but I think this was an episode that certainly, you know, even a couple of days after it 1st aired, there's certainly a lot to talk about, is there anything that anyone would like to say, any closing statements?

I think for me, this is going to be like a warriors of the deep or the or water doomsday.

I know that it's utterly rubbish in so many aspects, but I think I can probably sit down and just enjoy it and and revel in the great aspects and and just laugh at when it's really awful.

Brilliant.

Anyone else?

Um, I do, I do have one thing, and it occurred to me last night when I was doing the washing up.

Um, I think the... the families, right?

[28:25]

The families are the people who are ignoring climate change.

They're ignoring the disaster around them and it's like, I think it doesn't quite translate to screen because of the performances.

I think it was trying to be satirical, but not quite getting there.

So it makes the episode kind of a postmodern masterpiece in that it's an episode with a point and a message that the cast appear not to understand.

Brilliant.

All right.

And so we're all sitting around here arguing about the episode while the house is burning down.

All right.

Okay, so let's wind up.

Until next time, remember that there's no better way to reduce your carbon footprint than pushing a billionaire into the sea.

Thank you very much for listening and good night.

Good night.

See you soon, Benny.

Good night, Benny.