Can You Hear Me?

[0:00]

Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Jody Into Terror, the only Doctor Who flash cast that's absolutely here for you if you ever want to talk about something.

And we got chips.

I'm Nathan.

I'm James.

I'm Brendan.

I'm pizza.

And I'm Heather Locklear, as the fabulous Adam Richard.

Brilliant.

All right.

So we are very, very near the end of the season and we have just earlier this week watched, I can't remember what it's called.

Can you hear me?

And so let's talk about what we thought.

So we'll go round the horn as usual and let's start with Adam.

Oh, I loved it.

I loved it so hard, like really hard.

I love dismembered fingers being popped in the ear. like an upside down wet willy.

He was really into how creepy it was.

I love a little cartoon during an info dump.

That is one of the best things I've I've seen in a long time.

[01:00]

I was like, oh, how do we how do we colour up this bit where we give all the information?

And I love the fact like it was on a mental health awareness day in the UK and there's a lot of mental health awareness in this episode.

I feel like it was a planned thing that they were going to talk a lot about how to deal with people when they're going through terrible, terrible, terrible times.

It was, yeah, I thought it was really, yeah, it was a very current, very now episode, which, uh, you know, some of these, the episodes this series have been like, oh, remember the old days?

Let's be like that.

There was a little bit of that here.

Peter, you hated it.

I didn't hate it.

I enjoyed it for what it was, which was utterly crazy.

Um, but it was an episode of 1st for me.

It was the 1st episode in quite a while, I think, to tell its story visually, and with some innovation.

So people talk about the animation sequence, and I think, in a story about dreams and gods, it was perfectly out and perfectly good to do that.

[02:06]

Um, it was also the 1st episode to show a bit of interiority for the regulars.

Um, that includes the doctor because this doctor is all surface.

There's, there's never anything going on that's not written all over a big gaping face, especially on a garden.

But another thirst and the reason why I just wasn't sure about this episode was that there was an identifiable character for the 13th doctor, but what was it?

Um, this doctor doesn't have hidden debts or, you know, she doesn't conspicuously emote or relate to people in a meaningful way.

And so that act that the doctor used to put on of being kind of a clown or unable to stand your understand your human emotions, that is 13.

It's not an act.

And so in that last scene with Graham.

Where he talks about his fears over his cancer returning and the doctor turns into, oh, that's mean girlfriend from that episode of The Simpsons.

I have to go see the music.

In that scene, the episode had the audacity to take this doctor's bland superficiality. and kind of lampshade it and say that that isn't a lack of character, that is the character.

[03:12]

And I don't know if it was genius or, you know, just admitting defeat.

See, that's not how I read it at all.

And we may get back to that either tonight or in 2025.

Um, Brendan?

you hear me?

Yep.

Yes.

That's the name of the episode.

Peter, as often, I think you're being unnecessarily, but very eruditely cruel.

Look, I'm with Adam on this.

I loved, loved, loved, loved this episode.

It was an episode where when I went online afterwards, people pointed out things to me that I hadn't realised about the episode, which made me love it even more.

And when I brought one up to my brother last night on the phone to him, he said, what do you mean you didn't pick that up?

You're meant to be the smart one.

You know, it's an episode that managed to surprise me in that way.

Um, as for that last scene, because that has been a huge point of consternation on mine.

[04:16]

Huge, huge, huge, huge.

The way I see that scene is the doctor says, look, I don't have anything comforting to say to you right now and I'm going to be honest about that.

It's, you know, it's it's an updated version of Chandler Bing saying, I'm not so good on the advice.

Would you like a sarcastic comment?

So I'm going to go over here now and you can cry to yourself.

Well, the thing is, though, Graham is not incredibly distraught by what he's feeling, but it's a matter of, I've been feeling this for a long time and it's this low level thing that I have and I need to get it out and tell you.

And the other half of that scene is Graham's reaction to what the doctor says, which is kind of, oh yeah, well, all right, yeah, good chat.

And I think, I think also, how the doctor acts there is kind of neuroatypical.

It's how it's how a neurotypical person might respond to an emotional concern and fear that another person has.

[05:21]

They might be able to say, look, I acknowledge this is important to you, but I don't know how to react to this.

The other thing is, there's no right or wrong way to behave in that instance in that moment.

No, the fact that people are getting crabby about it. makes me go, there is, you know, there's no correct way to behave when someone unloads that on you and you can't, you can't get angry at someone's reaction.

Well, that is true.

I mean, there is no correct way of reacting to that, but there's an interesting and watchable way and then there's a way...

All right, James.

You're all wrong.

I, this episode, look, I really, I enjoyed a lot of it, but I, I struggled again.

Yeah, we've, I think, look, I found the most recent episodes a little sort of disappointing.

[06:23]

I wasn't on last week, but I had the same reaction to last week.

The pacing is a bit off the structure is a bit off.

I loved the fact that they actually kind of tackled um the mental health issues quite quite strongly and sensitively apart from the doctor at the end of the episode.

Um, but I, It was, it was kind of refreshing to see that.

Uh, In this show, especially in this version of the show, which has kind of showed away from, Having that depth and that interiority like you were saying, Nathan.

Was it you, Nathan?

No, it was Peter.

I am not saying anything.

No, no, I'm just...

I'm just so used to Nathan saying this about interiority.

I assumed it was him.

Should I retake that?

No, no, no.

It's all staying in.

No, that sounds filthy.

But no, like, yeah, I, I, overall, I enjoyed it apart from the pacing issues.

[07:27]

Uh, and the way it kind of dealt with, you know, let's make references to continuity, was kind of cute as well.

Um, so, yeah, overall, 7 out of 10?

No.

So I'm going to, I'm going to stand in for Todd while we're on the subject of assigning things numbers out of 10.

Todd really liked it.

He's on a plane on the way to Gallifrey one right now, so he can't join us, but he thought it was really great.

But he did admit that he did fall asleep for 10 minutes of it during the 1st watch.

So maybe he missed all the bad bits.

I don't know.

It does have a dreamlike quality.

Maybe he thought he fell asleep and he dreamed all those dream sequence.

Actually, that could well be the case.

I have to say that I really liked it.

I thought it was really good.

And the thing that I liked about it the most.

And, you know, when this version of Doctor Who tries to do soap opera, it's not, it's not always that interesting, but it's a thing that I like Doctor Who to do.

[08:36]

And so having that, and particularly the absolute sort of outstanding thing is Tebo and Ryan and their sort of interaction with each other, I thought that was really, really good.

That's the sort of thing that I like to see from Doctor Who, and that really worked for me.

And I like the other stuff as well.

So I'm totally on board with this one.

On that.

I wasn't too sold on the relationship between Ryan and Tebo.

But Yaz.

Yazza's plot line.

I kind of, you know, I liked what they were trying to do, again, issues with the way it was structured.

But, um, you know, where, where's this whole thing come from?

The foreshadowing at the beginning of the episode with, um, the whole.

Oh, it was 3 years ago thing.

It's like, you know, would you be talking about it like that?

People childishly run away all the time.

[09:38]

I, I kind of got this sort of foreshadowing, like, maybe her nana has died or something, like, and it was dealing with her dealing with that, but I found that a bit wrong footing, but I kind of thought, you know, that was sweet, but...

I don't think it was about running away at all.

I think that it, there was her depression.

Yeah, but it was more than running away.

It was, for me, it felt like it was, you know, running into the ocean or running into the countryside never to come back.

Like when you run away, you run to somewhere, like you go to a city, you go to a, you know, you get on a big, big bust or a train to somewhere.

Like she was in the middle of nowhere.

That was, for me, suicidal ideation writ large and it's just, you can't say that in a show for kids, but I felt like that was what they were getting at.

Like you don't you don't celebrate every year of dinner for going to the shops.

I think too.

What's what's interesting about that is that Yaz actually says at one point, it's a bit weird to have a yearly celebration of this and it kind of is.

[10:46]

Like, it doesn't quite work.

But, you know, like, the mystery of it doesn't sort of quite work.

James, were you getting massive going back to Jasper Street vibes from that plot line?

Oh, God, yes, I was.

No, that's, oh my God, that's what that...

Oh, you just, yes.

I didn't realise until you just said that.

Yes, totally.

When are we doing the press gang podcast?

Yeah, we're doing it now, darling.

Yeah, I'm really, totally, totally.

Yaz as well.

Um, and I wonder, James, do you remember when we were talking at the start of the season about how we thought that Yaz might end up as the master's companion because there was something a bit off about her?

There was something in the way that she was reacting and her slight sort of disgruntled quality and unhappiness at things, and that's cropped up again in episodes, like when she said to the doctor in Praxius, I'm going to go back and, you know, you can come and get me.

[11:47]

So she went off by herself.

There's something up with Yaz, and maybe there is an underappreciated character arc happening here.

I actually think that there is a very definite explicit character arc, and I am going to talk about the Graham thing, because there are 3 scenes at the end of the episode, and it's like the scene with where Ryan learns to help someone by talking to them, and then the scene where Yaz learns to accept help in a similar situation.

And then there's a ridiculous comedy scene.

And I think that that's how that's to be played and that's why the doctor reacts the way she does.

The scene with Graham and the doctor.

We've had 2 heavy proper serious scenes.

And now we have a silly comedy scene.

And in a way, it doesn't quite work because the comedy scene is about I had cancer, you know.

But, um, it leads into a scene where Yaz and Ryan are sitting there and they're thinking that maybe the doctor isn't a real enough person for them to have a relationship with long term.

[12:58]

You know, they've both experienced, you know, they've had, you know, um, Yaz has spoken to Sonya.

Ryan has spoken to Tebow.

Those relationships are real proper relationships and there's a sense in which when they're questioning why are we travelling with a doctor?

Is this what our life is like now?

That's because they've been presented with a real alternative where there's real human relationships.

And, you know, they kind of miss that.

So I wonder, like, there is a very real kind of feeling, and maybe they'll throw it all away at the end of the season, where maybe we'll leave.

So are you saying that travelling with the doctor is like, you know, when you're in a conversation with someone who's amazingly attractive and you don't realise for about 40 minutes that they're an idiot.

Maybe that's it.

Maybe that's it.

And maybe there is some kind of parallel between running away.

[14:01]

Yaz running away 3 years ago and Yaz running away with a doctor.

You know, that it's her inability to kind of engage with the people around her that upset her when she was 15 or whatever, that that's, you know, happening now as she sort of troubles with a doctor.

Like, maybe that's reading too much into, you know, what Chibnall's doing here.

But I did at least think that there was some interesting character stuff with those people for the 1st time in a long while.

And it's worth mentioning that Tebow does appear in Spy 4 part one.

So it is kind of set up.

Yeah.

I feel like my 3rd appearance will be the last of Ryan.

Yeah.

I kind of hope that they were together, actually.

For a little while, they were kind of, there was all this sort of, you know, shall we touch one another?

Are we going to talk, you know?

But it is, it's also that straight guy inability to ask for help sort of thing that's being kind of illustrated there too, I think.

[15:03]

All right.

On the topic of Yaz, and I'll be on, I'll be very brief.

I think this stuff has been in her character background the whole time because if you look back on Arachnids in the UK.

Her family are astonished that she has friends coming around.

Yeah.

And Naja is desperate for her to have a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a significant other whatever.

This is a family who don't know how to deal with what almost happened to you as.

So they do things like let's have a dinner commemorating it, which is a bit weird, but it's like, okay, well, what else do we do?

You know, where a family who communicates through gatherings and food.

So let's chuck that in there.

But also, 0 my god, Yazm's got friends.

We must, you know, we must celebrate this as well.

Yeah, it's a bit all good, but it's a family trying. just trying really hard to show their daughter that she's loved.

I read that.

I read that in hindsight, like at the end of the episode.

[16:03]

That interaction over the dinner table as they had this dinner to celebrate her coming home.

Not that she'd she'd run away because...

No, no, obviously. all of that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But, and that was a, oh, you know, like she didn't kill herself with celebrating the fact that we love her and that she came home.

Like that, but again, it's not it's not particularly clear.

Yeah, but the thing is to Yaz.

That's what the celebration is about.

And to Sonya, it's like, no, the celebration is that you're still here, not that you left.

All right, let's move on because we're running out of time and we don't want to exceed in length, our actual episode, our 2025 episode on this.

Tahira.

What did we think about the Aleppo stuff?

Peter.

It was a really nice setting.

Um, all of those, all those um, CGI shots looked amazing.

[17:04]

I wasn't quite sure why we were there though.

I wasn't quite sure why being in Aleppo in the 14th century was intrinsic to the plot.

Get the doctor away from the others.

I also think too, that we might not have been asking that question, if it had been, you know, somewhere else, somewhere, I don't know, like if it had been, you know, she'd travel back in time to England or something like that.

Like it becomes weirder because it is, it is like, why are we doing Aleppo?

And what the show is trying to do at this point is to broaden where it goes and to include like non-European cultures a little bit more.

And for me, I thought that, you know, given that Syria is somewhere where refugees are coming from, you know, it's a place that's in the news and to have this sort of presentation of the fact that Islam was the religion, the culture that produced the 1st hospitals.

I think that's actually a really good thing to do.

Um, and like I wondered why she, what link this had to the rest of the plot.

[18:10]

But the cool thing about it for me was that, well, you know, that she's, that Tahir's, um, crucial to the resolution of the plot because she created the whatever the hell that monster was called.

Um, you know, It's a Tom Woodbeast.

Nathan, don't you feel a little bit short-changed because we did go to what was potentially a very interesting place and then very little was done with it.

It just formed the backdrop to something that could be anywhere else.

Sure.

Yeah, it felt like it was a thematic choice as opposed to a plot choice.

It was, you know, oh, well, we're doing a theme of mental health.

So let's look at the way mental health was treated in a positive way back in, you know, way back when, as opposed to going to bedlam and having people thrown in the whole out.

Yeah, and I'm kind of on board with that.

I also think that it is in a way a structural device to tell us that the villain is not bound by time.

[19:12]

They're not so much a time traveller as they can just turn up at any time and place in the universe.

They can simultaneously be in Aleppo in 1380 and in London, not London, Sheffield, in 2020.

Um, I do wonder if like the initial pitch just had hospital and then I, someone in the writer's room because they do all work communally just said, does it have to be Sheffield Hospital in 2020?

And it's like, well, no, where should we go?

Um, get the Atlas.

Finger points to Aleppo.

Actually, fingers.

There's an interesting idea.

I'm glad my fingers tickled you.

Yeah, we will get we'll get to that in a second.

I also think too, that it is that sort of Bob Holmes thing of we have to have a monster.

Where are we gonna get a monster?

You know, the main villains are both, you know, people in wigs or without wigs.

And we need a sort of scary monster.

How are we going to do that?

[20:12]

And so this is how we get a monster to happen, I think.

And the fact that that opening scene was a cold open, which hooray.

Hooray.

Yeah.

Yeah. a really good one.

You know, that's our monster.

That's the, uh, that's the magma beast, the magna creature.

Yes, that's a wood.

That episode could only have been improved if the if the monster had been as well produced as Kroll or something like that.

It's pretty good.

Everyone's dissing the monster.

I like the monster.

But I think, I think it is like the Aleppo thing was like that shorthand for, okay, we're going to, we're going to tap into the toy maker and the Eternals and and the black and white Guardians and it's like, well, yeah, they can just turn up there.

And back there, it's quick shorthand to go more powerful than the doctor.

End of story.

Well, let's let's move on to that.

So what did we think of lovely old Zelen and Rakiya?

[21:17]

Oh great.

Very good.

Yep.

Very happy with them Oh, James.

No, I loved them.

But Chipnall really doesn't know how to name weird alien characters.

They have zeds in their names, James.

That's sad.

You might as well have been called the terrible Zoden.

James, they come from that planet in the Blake 7 episode.

You know, Zukan and Ziona from Zongor.

Oh dear.

Yeah, I would have preferred they were called the night eaters or something ridiculous.

Like give them a a ridiculous name from a long ago culture instead of, here's a science fiction name.

Yeah.

Well, I think I've observed before that when it comes to the creation of alien names.

Chris Chipnell is not Robert Holmes.

Or Russell T. Davis.

[22:18]

And Dave Martin.

Or Stephen Moffatt.

Um, I was, I was, Mary Carrots, dicks.

Yeah.

With the whole speech, he gives of, you know, unlike the Eternals, but I'm not the Eternals.

Unlike the Guardians, but I'm not the Guardians.

I'm not even the toy maker.

It's both a nice bit of fan service and both, I think.

Chris Chipnell just going, for God's sake, I do not want him reconned in a novel by Gary Russell in 15 years time.

Thank you.

In fact, I thought it was the opposite.

I thought it was actually trying to create a theology of Doctor Who, where all of these stupid alien eternals that are kind of pulled out of someone's butt at some point, you know, are all just kind of, you know, um, classified and there's a list of them and they have a club, maybe they have meetings, you know, um, they hang out with the ones from Star Trek.

The omnipotent.

[23:18]

Yeah, yeah, Q, Nagilum.

They're all there.

Nathan, I believe that's literally divided loyalties by Gary Russell.

Oh, God.

Or the Dark Path by David McKinty.

It's one of the two.

I just hope Gary's not listening to this.

No, we's not.

And if he is, you know I love you, Gary.

Any, what about the fingers?

Are we happy with the fingers?

I'm super happy with the fingers.

I'm wearing. them now.

What do you call that?

Mind finger banging?

Thanks, James.

No, I wouldn't.

You know what they need to do.

They've missed a trick here.

Like, they should really be releasing a set of Bluetooth headphones in the shape of fingers.

I would wear the crap out of those, I could tell you.

And made out of some sort of like, you know, mood, like, like mood dye so that they kind of sort of mottled and changed colour as they sucked out your thoughts.

[24:24]

You know what, big finish comes out with their range of selen's fingers meeting the hand of Eldrad and, you know, and Hickson's Hugh.

Say it 3 times, Peter.

All right, well, look, unless anyone has an important closing statement, we may actually wind up.

I think we've sort of covered all of the main bits.

Anyone?

It was fun.

I liked it.

Stop raining on my parade.

Yeah, with you, Adam.

I loved it.

I think structurally flawed.

But yeah, that's the thing.

It may it may have been overstuffed, but I will always take overstuffed and imaginative to boring or just not having enough to fill 50 minutes.

The Battle of Ramsker of Colos.

We're looking at you.

Actually, I actually did like it in a lot of ways, but yeah, that last scene very problematic for me.

Nathan, I appreciate what you're saying earlier.

[25:25]

I think that was a really good reading of that scene.

Um, but, you know, to then make the comedy punchline at the expense of, I think, the character who's been the most wounded amongst the regulars, I don't know about.

Yeah, yeah.

I think it might have been a bit careless.

I found that difficult too.

Um, it, it kind of, It actually made her feel sort of cold and unthinking and like she didn't care about these characters, they were just, you know, travelling with her because she was bored and I, yeah, like that just didn't land for me.

I thought the line, I'm going to think of the right thing to say is of something company to say, is the line that you go, oh man, I wish I could just say out loud sometimes when someone is crying at me.

I want to say the right thing, but I don't know what it is, so I'm just going to say, oh, dittums.

Yeah.

I think, look, I think that's what they were aiming for, but yeah, I'm going to walk over here now.

[26:27]

All right.

So we will be back next week for Mary Shelley, who is being drawn into this sort of giant mess of ours.

So that will be very exciting.

Um, and uh, I'd like to thank Adam for joining us uh, this week.

Oh, hi.

Yes, thank you dear.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you.

So, until next time, please try to remember that a Chagascar is a completely different monster from a crafeus, and it's actually a bit racist, the way you keep accidentally mixing them up.

Thank you very much for listening and good night.

Good night.

Personally I can't see it.

Good night.