Village of the Angels

[0:00]

Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Jody into Terra.

The only Doctor Who, Flashcast that's kind of disappointed that Tarpoc turned out to be such a terrible parent.

I'm Nathan.

James.

I'm Todd.

I'm Johnny.

So we are just a couple of days away from our 1st watching of Village of the Angels.

Is that it's called?

Angels of the Damn?

Angels of the Damned.

Chapter 4, Village of the Angels.

Flux.

Seriously, Doctor Who Flux.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's got quite a long title.

By Chris Chibnall and Maxine Alderton, who we met last season, didn't we?

doing the haunting of Villa Diodati.

And this is directed by one of the 2 directors this season.

So it's Jamie Magnus Stone, who's done a bunch, everything except last week's episode, I think.

Yes.

Yeah.

All right.

[01:00]

So let's start in the traditional fashion by going around the panel and just getting our hot takes on how well we thought this episode went.

And Johnny, would you mind starting us off?

I'd love to.

I thought this was terrific.

I really enjoyed it.

It was spooky and surprising and I thought the script just zipped along.

I thought it was directed really stylishly.

You know, I don't think there's a few bits and pieces I'm not 100% on, but I just felt this was this was the sort of episode that you could fit into any year of the program.

It would work really well and um, my favourite thus far, I think, for this little clutch of of fluxy episodes.

Hmm.

Okay.

What about you, Todd?

I totally agree.

It's not going to be a lot of fighting on this episode, I think. got nothing more.

[02:08]

That's solid 9.8 from Tom.

It's definitely a 9 out of 10.

Yeah. was there anything more that struck you?

We're happy to see, you know, Tarpoc back and Hugo Lang.

They're still getting work.

It was great.

Yeah, it was really great.

It was really good. with Barbara Felden from Max Smart, you know?

were great.

That was so funny because when they 1st saw Claire in episode one, you know, even though their time travellers, they thought she was a weirdo for saying that she'd met them.

Do you know what I mean?

It's kind of like, okay, that has happened to you before, but whatever.

And she did seem a little bit pathetic.

And here she sort of turns up and she's fab, you know, she's got the earrings and she has the Barbara Felden hair and she's loving being in the 60s.

[03:08]

She's been there for 2 years and she's gone completely native, I reckon.

I'm a huge fan.

I think she's awesome How did you feel about the episode, James?

Oh, I thought it was terrible.

Yeah, that's right.

This gibnal rubbish.

I loved it.

I think it's possibly the best story of the entire Whitaker era.

Like, I just, yeah, I found myself just thoroughly engrossed and the cast were fantastic.

The script was fantastic.

95%.

Wow, yes, yeah, no. someone else was writing the dialogue.

And I actually found it all.

I also kind of liked it.

A lot of it wasn't science-y.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, she's a psychic.

She's like, it wasn't that, you know, it was some weird, timey, whimey thing.

She had a premonition because she's psychic.

[04:10]

Yeah.

Um, the sort of lack of explanation of a lot of it was nice as well.

Yeah.

Not something you usually get in the era.

There's probably room for a 20 minute speech in episode, you know, 6 about how...

Don't tempt fate.

But I have to say I'm the same.

Yeah, well, I think that the 2 big episodes so far.

This could be like Star Trek movies, right?

Like the odd numbered ones are a bit crap.

And then the even numbered ones are really good, except that episode 6 is the last one and we have the sort of...

It does fill you with foreboding that episode 6 is coming, doesn't it?

Like, does a little bit.

You really, you really want him to stick the landing, but just on previous, on previous form you're worried.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, we'll talk a little bit more about this later because I think it is an interesting thing now that we have 5 episodes into this sort of 6 part story.

[05:13]

I think, you know, we have an idea, I think, of how it's, how it's working.

But let's talk about the eponymous or possibly titular angels.

How do we think they came off in this particular episode?

What do you think, Todd?

I loved him.

I love seeing different things, you know?

The one coming out of her drawing being like on fire when the doctor sent, the picture on fire, and, um, what was I going to say?

Yeah, no, I just thought they were tremendously used and it's nice to see different things and actually written by somebody else rather than Stephen Moffatt too.

You know, I think that's just to bring the same stuff, but a different take.

I did think it was hilarious that whenever, like, only somebody had to look at them while the doctor or somebody else moved around them.

[06:15]

It was a bit of, I found it a little bit like, um, Sarah and the 3rd doctor with the, the rust and very robot in the 5 doctors where he tells her to stand still while he moves like, you know, at speed.

So I thought that was quite funny, but no, I thought they were they were utilised really well.

What about you, Johnny?

You know, I think the angels are, they're predictably good in the way that the way of shooting them has been established so well by now, like ever since Blink, you know, you've got the the jump cuts and the, you know, the staggered moves forward that they're almost story proof, in a way, because like no other monster.

Somebody comes to this knowing how you've got to shoot an angel story, I think.

And so, you know, you turn down the lights.

You put them in the rain, you put them in a spooky house, you, you should, and it was, so they're in a way where the show is most reliable asset that it's got.

[07:19]

And it's a bit surprising they haven't been back sooner, I think.

But also, but also like having having a voice to them too.

Like the way in which they could talk through other people.

Yeah.

And it made me think how smart Stephen Moffat was to introduce the idea of of the image being able to reproduce the angel because that has really opened up the stories you can tell with it.

And you can see in this episode they found lots of different ways to play with it.

See, like, I think that the angels are set up by Moffat to feed into the particular story he wants them to go in, and so they have the features that they need for that throw to work.

So sending you back in time, well, it does that because it's a story about how brief life is and mortality, you know, blink in your life is over.

And so that's why they send people back in time so that they're suddenly dead or old or whatever.

And then in the next story, you've got the idea that, you know, if an angels on your television screen, you know, it's not just the, it's not just the statues that you see as you walk around the city that are a threat.

[08:28]

It's now you watching this.

So not watching them is threatening, but watching them is also threatening.

And, you know.

So that sort of constellation of features don't make sense.

They do, they are designed for those 2 particular stories, but now they're Doctor Who monsters with sort of entry in the monster manual and, you know, special attacks and all of that sort of thing.

And it turns out that even under those circumstances, they work really well.

Well, they also managed to do some interesting new twists on not just the, you know, the fire and the, the, um, the, the printing, the printing out of the angel on the, um...

I realise...

I don't know, but I realised that was going to happen.

I just thought, this is going to be good.

This is going to be really good.

And then as Hugo, what's his name?

Eustacius Jericho.

[09:30]

Jericho.

And even that, like, silly name. is a great silly name.

It's not a stupid...

Space name.

It's it's a believable sort of, you know, model class, sort of comedy professor name. name.

Yeah we are.

Yes, yeah.

But as he, uh, runs past the angel and and looks up and then the sand falls in his eye and you see the angel and then he blinks and he suddenly in 1901 and all in all in one sort of movement that like it was really um, impressively edited.

It was very smart.

I think it's, it is good to give them a voice to occasionally vocalise what they're thinking, but it's great that they use it sparingly because because the angels are silent, they're also mysterious and we don't necessarily know what they're planning.

So as long as they use that trick carefully.

[10:30]

The, they, they have managed over the years to, to infuse the angels with a sort of cruelty.

Like they mention it today too, but and that's really interesting for characters that can't speak, but they've somehow managed to feed this idea that actually they like playing with their victims.

Yeah.

Um, so I think they've, um, you know, thankfully, they got the balance right again.

I think.

I do like how they're always women.

They always have men's voice.

Oh, no, well, except that one that has Claire's voice.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That scene, which I thought was amazing, the sort of dreamscape on the beach.

She's a terrific actress.

Like she gave a great performance because I felt through a, we'd met her once, right?

A couple of episodes ago.

And this time, well, she was putting us on edge all the time about whether she was in on the deal in some way or whether she was genuinely an innocent who'd been dragged into this.

[11:31]

Was she benign or was she sinister?

I felt she played that line really well.

And actually, I think the whole episode works so well because of her and Jericho.

They're such good performers and the, when they, when they're paired up with the doctor.

Actually, those are the most successful parts of the episodes, I think, where that trio is together in the house, because they're all such, you know, they're such skilled performers, I think.

I think Brendan said it weeks ago that, you know, giving Jody, separating her from her companions and getting her other people to work off, which is a very doctorish thing, and I think it again worked really well here, and I really did enjoy her performance this week, like I've never enjoyed it before.

I think, you know, she was good in the Santara episode as well.

I think that they've given her many more opportunities to do more interesting things.

And I think that's right.

Like having her face these new people and interact in particular with Jericho, I think, worked really well for her, you know, playing off someone different.

[12:35]

I'm looking forward to the moment where she actually has a conversation with Dan. you know what I mean?

He's been in it for like 4 episodes now and there's no sign that she really even knows who he is.

He's dad. you know.

There's the sense that there's the sense that she hasn't had time to have that conversation yet.

And, you know, maybe there'll be some, that would be interesting if it becomes a critical point in the story somewhere, but she needs to connect with him or know something about him that actually she hasn't, she's been too, too busy running around terrible cold, wet locations to actually meet the person she's travelling with.

Um, so we shunt, uh, we shunt poor old Yaz and Dan off into a sort of side plot in 1910, 1901.

It was an anagram.

I got it pretty close.

How did we feel that?

That's probably the one of the less successful parts of it for me.

[13:38]

And I'm always slightly itchy when we give more than one companion the job of one companion.

So, and this happened quite a lot in the previous 2 seasons where you might have 3 companions in a scene, but only one point of view.

And so we send Yaz and Dan back to 1901, but actually they're not both needed to make that work.

There's really only, you only only need one of them, preferably Yaz, I would have thought.

And, and so it's, it's not, and then it's not quite as incident filled and as pacy as the rest of the show.

And I think partly, partly, it's a bit hard to blame this series for that when it mixes these threads together in a story, because it's a serialised story, it's not meant to be a one episode story. things should move at different paces and they should be different things.

So it's a little bit hard to criticise it.

But it, there is a real gear shift between the 1967 stories on a 67, isn't it?

[14:40]

And the 1901 story.

And then there's another gear shift between that and the alien planet story.

So I think the 1901 is not quite as successful.

We might leave the alien planet one to the end, um, and let's talk about the, um, the quantum extraction.

So we discover at some point during the uh, during the episode, in both time streams, the village has been extracted out of time.

How well do you think that worked, Todd?

Um...

Sorry, I'm just thinking about it.

Um, it was, you know, it was good to see, like, as a shock, but then to actually have the sort of day night thing convenient, let's talk over the barrier type thing, so we're all there at the end.

I don't know about that bit.

I mean, that's, you know, was there for the plot?

Yeah, yeah.

I have to say that Gerald, is it Gerald?

[15:40]

It didn't seem all that fast by it.

You know, he was still going to storm off home despite the fact, do you know what I mean?

Like he just didn't seem sort of, well, yes, we are.

I just realised you're talking about tarpok.

Yes, that's tough.

It would be much better if we could just call him tarp, especially.

I've got this idea that he might have, he might have talked to Kevin McNally on set, you know, and might have said, you know, oh, God, back in the day, back in the 1980s, I was in the worst Doctor Who story at all of all time.

Kevin McNally just goes, hold my beer.

It's 2 season 21 guests in the one story.

It's pretty great.

That moment, the moment where Peggy?

Um, where, where her... um, what a great uncle and um, an aunt died and she just says he was never nice to me.

Yeah, she seemed like a bit of a psycho.

[16:42]

Kind of good.

I did kind of spot that she was Mrs. Watt's a face.

Mrs. Olive Hawthorne's non-union, Mexican equivalent from the kind of beginnings, the beginning scene.

You worked that out?

Yeah, just moments before it sort of became clear, like it, because Claire had said the thing about the long way around in, in, in part one, in chapter one, and so I was kind of thinking about that.

So, you know, clearly someone has to live through, you know, all the way.

Um, yeah.

I love that her great plan is to write notes and leave them around every house in the village and just leave.

That's it.

Like, I can't think of a better way of communicating the threat to you all.

Just going to write mysterious messages and push them into your mailbox and then you don't ask me any more questions about it.

I have to say, Claire says, oh, and by the way, everyone in the village disappears tonight. and it's just, why are you still here then, darling?

[17:43]

What you thought you'd stay here and do some experiments with Professor Jericho and just wait for that to happen, you know?

Haven't you got a car?

Or seek to avoid it or, yeah.

That you own a town, maybe.

I don't know Why does she say she's going home the long way around if she hasn't experienced?

Yeah. past, yeah.

I don't know.

I don't know.

It's very weird It's mysterious.

It is mysterious.

And one of the things is, like, some people on the panel last week were reluctant to judge episode 3 because they didn't know how this ends, but this is a story where we don't have a resolution and what we have instead is a cliffhanger.

How did you find the cliffhanger, Todd?

What a wonderful cliffhanger.

But now, of course, Chris has to resolve it.

Yeah, which leaves me with a little bit of angst.

Yeah, we'll see how it goes, but it was astounding visually.

What do you think, Johnny?

Oh, it was great.

[18:44]

And it's going to sell a 1000000 action figures, isn't it?

You know, the new Jody Whittaker, Angel, um, edition is going to be, going to be good.

It's, yeah, it was a, it was terrific and it was genuinely, well, I was genuinely surprised that at the series of events that lay, lay up to that.

Um, and I think it's a script that genuinely surprises in regular intervals throughout the throughout the 50 minutes or whatever it is.

So it's, it's a really good, a really good trick to play.

I'm not. a bit worried about all the stuff about the division that actually I'm not really going to care about that when it's finally revealed in its big in its glory.

Like, it's, it's, yeah. she's some sketchy thing from the past.

Big deal, you know.

Yeah, also, do you think next week is a Dr. Light episode?

Oh.

Well, she doesn't appear in the next week trailer, but then she's not going to because we don't want to spoil it.

She's okay after that incredible gloofhanger.

[19:45]

It's possible, but I wonder why they would do that in a 6 episode series.

Well, no, well, exactly, but they could.

She'll be fine by it. 10 minutes in, I reckon.

So we don't end on the cliffhanger, though.

We break into the closing credits to conclude the B plot, which has been running through the episode.

And I can't remember what happens in that scene.

Oh, Vinder meets...

What's his face from the Inbetweeners?

The guy from the, it's, it's ross from the Inbetweeners.

Now I recognise it.

Okay.

So he meets Ross from the inbetweeners.

He's so sweet.

I wondered why I liked him and it's obviously just residual goodwill from that.

How did we feel that plot went?

Todd.

You keep coming to me.

I know.

It was okay.

I just, you know, this whole love thing across the galaxy searching for everybody.

I mean, it slowed it down, I guess, you know, in these 50, 50, 60 minute episodes.

[20:46]

It was there.

It was like going to Utopia Planet, you know, the next door planet to Utopia.

You know, it was okay.

I mean, it's advancing that a bit.

I wasn't, I didn't dislike it, but, you know, I, I was more enthralled with what was going on with the angels.

It did it did suffer from space dialogue.

Yeah, I think there's a gymnal is very much responsible for writing what everyone says in the scene.

I've heard of passenger forms.

Me and my, yes, unborn child.

That was an odd contribution, wasn't it?

Yeah.

I was a little bit...

Go on, Johnny.

Well, you know, I did love the bit where everyone has to stand it with a one. 5 metre distress from each other.

That's so...

I wanted I wanted hand sanitiser being given out and everyone checking their vaccination passports.

[21:48]

But actually, I felt that bit about Bell recognising the passenger suggested to me that that might have originally been written for Vinder, who actually was in the episode last week and saw the passenger and saw...

Ah, yeah.

So, and so it's, it is interesting about why we're following Bell's journey rather than Vinder's journey.

Yeah.

Because Vindor's the character we know a little bit about.

I'm not, um, but I think Bell's a really interesting character.

She's really, um, played with real vigour and I'm interested in learning more about her, but, um, the whole point of that that strand seemed to be so that we could discover that, um, azure is harvesting all these people.

And it didn't feel like enough for that plython, but that whole strand just to find out that piece of information.

And it did feel like Planet of Chibnell, didn't it?

It did have that.

It doesn't like that might have been.

Maxine Alderson might have said, you leave me out of this park.

[22:52]

I kind of hate that sort of horrible post-apocalyptic.

Everything is miserable chibnal thing that we get all the time, you know, liking ascension of the side men and stuff.

Like, I just find that sort of super miserable and tedious.

And so I am a little bit worried about next week's episode given the title that we already have that we're not going to say.

So, yeah, yeah.

And, you know, clearly it had to break in at the end because we wanted to end on that, but we didn't want to wreck the cliffhanger, like we couldn't go out.

You know, we needed the sting on Jody on, you know, Jody's transformation and then we still needed to tie up that thing.

Interestingly spare version of the Doctor Who theme without...

Yeah, yeah.

The angels have broken it.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's true.

And you can watch them in 1967 on your big, big cathode ray ETV, so, you know, smash it.

All right.

So I think we're done.

Does anyone have any final statements?

No one ever does.

I don't know why I asked, really.

[23:54]

Okay.

And cut it there.

Look, it's probably the best episode since Peter Capaldi's finale, in my opinion, so or not quite the finale, but...

Yeah, that's right.

So let's just hope that we get a great conclusion.

Hmm.

Yeah, let's hope.

All right.

I was being sincere.

Everyone is just leaning on.

All right.

So, you're my only hope.

So, meanwhile, uh, flight through entirety continues unabated and next Sunday will be doing the God complex with friends of the podcast, Conrad Westmas and Sihart, who uh, is making his FTE debut, which is kind of fun.

We have Brandon's YouTube channel where he has recorded an extra long walk to work and then walk around the block again with Whittaker because he had a lot to say.

[25:04]

And, of course, you can catch us on maximum power, where we are continuing to cover series A. I'm told it's called of Blake 7.

And then this Friday untitled Star Trek Project is doing its 1st Star Trek Discovery episode.

Is that true?

Yeah.

Okay.

So you will want to tune in to that.

All right.

So in that case, until next time, remember to pour one out for Kevin McNally, who finally got to appear in a good Doctor Who story and may my owns rot for saying it.

Thank you very much for listening and good night.

Good night.

See you soon.

Good night.