Demons of the Punjab

[00:00]

Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Jody Inter Terror, the only Doctor Who flash cast surprised to find ourselves watching a remake of the massacre this week.

So we're all here, and we're all in the same room having a big pyjama party today.

Um, and we're joined for the 1st time on Jodie into Terra by Peter.

I'm in my birthday suit.

Oh, my eyes, my yeah, look away, James.

Look away, James.

Yeah, so a few of our regulars aren't joining us this week, but we have had some feedback to convey from them.

And I have to credit Brendan and friend of the podcast, Johnny Spandrel, for the observation that this is a remake of the massacre, in that the doctor walks away from an imminent giant, into kind of sectarian kind of conflict. that they can do nothing to stop and ends up finding in the TARDIS, the descendant of one of the people that they were unable to save from that conflict.

[01:12]

Yeah, it's also not a remake of the massacre in there. pretty good.

That's right.

Oh, dear.

Yeah.

Sore point.

And Brendan was, you know, he was he was very positive.

I spoke to Todd during the week and he really enjoyed the episode as well.

I haven't yet heard Richard's take on it, James, have you?

No, no. sure he loved it.

But let's, well, you know, let's hear what our guest Peter has to say.

Well, I liked it quite a lot.

This and Rosa are my favourite episodes of the series.

And charitably, you could say that's because I just like historical backdrop.

Um, you know, give me a king's demons over a terminus any day.

It's a bit of a devil's choice.

There's no winners in that choice.

Less charitably.

Do I like this episode more than others because I'm just not a fan of Chris Chipnall's writing.

The jury's out on that one.

[02:13]

I think.

We haven't yet had an episode that hasn't had a Chris Gibnall credit on it, and he obviously shared the credit for Rosa.

And I think, you know, it's telling that for me, both of those episodes, those historical episodes are sort of really strong, which is not to say that there aren't other episodes that I like.

I've liked, like I had fun during episodes 4 and five, which some people will be surprised to hear.

Todd, are you there?

But I think, you know, in terms of proper just riding quality, that sort of definitely are kind above.

We, you know, I didn't get the chance to say last week that I thought the big problem with the Taranga conundrum is that it doesn't seem to be about anything.

You know, and we watched classic Doctor Who for 26 years without expecting it to be about anything.

[03:14]

Frequently wasn't.

Yeah, yeah.

And sometimes it was about being racist.

But, uh, so, you know, that's not an absolute killer, but I think we are kind of used to it. you know, being about something or having some kind of thematic cohesion.

I think this week, it absolutely did do that.

Absolutely.

I mean, the partition of India is just a fascinating moment in history. and you wonder what it took doctor so long to get there.

It's not a sexy period of history.

But for what it represented and the trauma, it kind of caused 1000000s of people and the ramifications for the region and the world, you know, sort of even 70 years later, it's huge.

And like the episode with Rosa Parks, it felt like we were visiting a part of history, which, you know, you really want to look at and talk about, but it's just not an obvious place to go to.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What do you think?

Well, I, look, I, yes, as fans, the classic series, I would tend to agree with you that it's not obvious to us.

[04:17]

I think it's very obvious.

That we need to look at these. events in history, especially in the present political climate that we find ourselves in.

Um, There was a meme going around the internet recently, uh, about, uh, uh, you know, a classic series fan who someone uncharitably described as a, as a bigot.

Because he was.

Really?

I'm saying, yeah, with a picture of the Tom Baker title sequence saying...

This is my Doctor Who.

He fights Daleks and cybermen, not social injustices.

And I went, no, screw you.

This is my, this is my Doctor Who.

She bites social injustice.

Are you telling me that Rosa Park's not worthy of the diamond leg?

How dare you?

But it's like, no, no, this is the doctor who that I want to see right now.

[05:18]

This, I, I, I've loved Doctor Who my entire life because it does occasionally deal with, you know, with quite serious issues, usually through allegory.

Happiness patrol.

Genesis of the Daleks.

Yeah, like it's usually space Nazis. or Space Thatcher.

But I love the fact that this series, when it has dealt with with that sort of material, it's tackled it head on and I think you need to now.

I don't think you can, I mean, you probably, you can, you can still do space, you know, space injustice.

Yeah.

But I think it's really important that it is actually dealing with things like racism in America and, um, the partition of India.

Yeah.

[06:19]

I think I think that there is a problem from a narrative viewpoint about these, these historical stories, and there always kind of has been.

And I think that this did a pretty good job of dealing with it.

So the problem with a story like this is that the doctor isn't going to stop the partition of India and stop 1000000s of people from being massacred.

And why?

Yeah, and why not?

You know, like, why can't she do that?

And it's really just a sort of choice of narrative aesthetic.

Like the people writing Doctor Who story set in the past don't want to change the past.

And having the doctor come in and solve those problems would obviously have all sorts of, you know, horrific kind of implications.

You know, like a white woman comes in and single-handedly. solves an absolutely intractable problem on behalf of, you know, a lot of Indians and that would have been really just sort of quite terrible.

So I can understand why they don't want to do that, but it does leave the doctor with very little to do.

[07:20]

And that was the massacre, wasn't it?

Remember, there's that big argument that Stephen has with the doctor at the end of the massacre and says, well, why aren't you doing anything about this?

And then he kind of storms off.

And here, though, they do it successfully by having Yaz Yaz's existence at stake.

I'm not sure that completely solves the moral problem, but at least makes it, you know, better than David Tennant gnashing his teeth and going on about a fixed point in time, which is a concept of no moral significance whatsoever.

That's true, and they do make that a plot point, but they don't labour it.

The whole episode is not about what will happen if Yaz doesn't exist anymore.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

In fact, they backpedal the science fiction thing, which seems to me to be a chibnal thing.

Chibnal doesn't want to have his Doctor Who in a world full of Daleks and Sidemen and drashics and things.

He wants to have a sort of sparser world with less fantastical elements, I think.

[08:24]

I like these historical stories, which are not celebrity.

It would have been a much worse episode if we'd met Mount Batten.

I like it when they...

Exactly.

I like when they play out through sort of the little people and the guest characters and they're just trying to like get on with their lives or get married or whatever and sort of overcome by history or history kind of swarms over them.

I don't know if they're a writer, Vinay Patel, had a family connection to anything that happened during the partition, but it felt like a personal episode.

It felt like he sort of viscerally got what people who live through the partition suffered through.

Well, I mean, if you think about how recent it is, you know, anyone who has moved to Britain from India or whose family has moved there in the last few generations would have stories around it, given how huge it was.

It's probably one of the most, um, real history historical stories we've ever had.

[09:25]

We've had more recent stories.

So I mean, remember, it's the Daleks, 7th the 60s.

But it doesn't really deal with anything real.

Why is it said in the 60s?

60s.

This is dealing with, you know, real historical events.

I don't think we've had anything later, have we?

I think...

Oh, no.

I mean, like we've had stories said in the 80s.

Yeah.

But again, you know, that, I mean, the story that leaps to mind is Father's Day in that set in the 80s simply because of who Rose is.

There's nothing happens in the 80s. 80s.

It's just set then.

But there's a real unity to it.

You know, you've got the marriage between a Muslim man.

Sorry, a Hindu man and a Muslim woman at the time when Hindus and Muslims are being separated by this line at the time when it's being torn apart and the wedding itself happens over that line.

It's so, I mean, that's so terrifically poetic. isn't it Yeah.

And then and then you've got these aliens and the aliens job is to remember deaths that people have forgotten.

[10:34]

And I think by having the aliens do that.

I mean, that's this episode's job as well, isn't it?

Like, I think Patel wants us.

I think, look, I don't know how well people in England know about the partition of India.

You know, there are many more Indian people.

There are plenty of Indian people living in Australia, but nowhere near as many as there are in Britain.

And so I don't know how aware, you know, white Britons who don't have that particular ethnic background.

I don't know how aware they are of that.

Um, but it seems likely to me that, that, um, you know, people of Indian background do know. know about it.

And, you know, it's placed very squarely at the foot of, you know, Mount Batten and the government and Whitehall and these sort of weird decisions made about borders in offices that are, you know, 1000s of miles away.

Um, And I think that Patel wants to remind us of that, you know, to make that clear to us.

[11:39]

And I think that the aliens really resonate for that reason.

Yeah, I mean, there's been a bit of attention are paid to that part of history recently with films like Viceroy's House.

But that was very much told from Mount Batten's point of view and sort of redeemed him as a character in that.

And I don't know what the truth for it was, whether he was, you know, part of the decision making or wasn't as the film purported, but to see it on the ground is a different matter.

Yeah.

I like to, I liked what you were saying earlier about how we're just dealing with real people. you know, sorry, not real people, but normal people.

Yeah.

The average person.

Not with famous figures in history and seeing how that affects the average person and tears those families apart.

And, you know, a brother turning S, another brother and then him being shot by his friends, his comrades.

[12:40]

That's the thing about the partition, wasn't it?

as much a humanitarian crisis as anything else.

I think to, there's a modern resonance to Manisha's radicalisation, which is that he's like young men on the internet.

Now, he's fond of pamphlets and listening to angry people on the radio.

And increasingly, the world is full of young men radicalised by, you know, reading crazy nonsense on the internet.

And so I thought that that was sort of particularly well done.

Um, uh, you know, and something that needed to be said in 2018.

And I have to think too, like, you know, breaks, it's not likely to be quiet the humanitarian disaster that the partition was, but having...

Well, having, oh, James, having a, having...

I know.

Have you met me?

I don't think anyone has thought of Brexit sexually ever.

But you've got to think that, you know, like this huge dumb decision being made in a Whitehall office by people who don't particularly care and causing sort of misery and havoc on, obviously, a much greater scale than Brexit, is being told in 2018, partly because of Brexit as well.

[13:58]

Yeah, that's right.

This episode, I really liked this episode.

I don't think it was hugely subtle in places.

Sometimes spirit history lesson.

So there's nothing as egregious as the last scene in Rosa.

With her giant space rock.

Maybe they can name a moon after prem and fix that.

I love as well.

Speaking of subtlety, the fact that they turn up at Umbreen's place at the very moment that the partition is announced by Mount Batten over the radio.

I mean, what a coincidence.

Well, the 1st person they made is prem, like the 1st person that comes along is, guess what?

About to marry, yes, grandmother.

Do you know, I really thought they were going to do a joke when they say, oh, you know, we're here to see Umbreen, that he was going to make a joke of, of course I know Umbreen.

There's only 2 people in all of India.

It turns out that, in fact, yes, he was going to marry Umbrine.

Well, I'm head canoning that because, oh, just give me a second.

I'm head canoning that because the watch brought the TARDIS to the point near where it broke.

[15:01]

That's some a beautiful sound, James.

Do you want to tell us what that is?

That's 15 minutes, is it?

Yes.

Okay.

Okay.

Go on, Peter.

Well, I don't really have anything more to say on that.

I mean, yeah what a coincidence.

But also the doctor's very slow on the uptake in that scene.

By the time she's going, 0 my god, it's the partition.

You're like, well, well done, love.

Keep up.

I thought that it was really good this week.

You know, there's the thing where the doctor sort of waltzes in and just knows everything.

Oh, it's the Vegarians and I know all about them and stuff and then she's wrong.

And I think that they've really hit the reset on the doctor's character and she's much more like the Hartnell doctor who has to work it out as she goes along and she theorises and gets it wrong 1st normally and then gets it right. kind of love that.

Yeah, I do too.

It's, and we...

We lost that fetishising of the doctor as well, where the doctor gets up and flares his nostrils and gnashes his teeth and says, I am the doctor from the planet Gallifre.

Where is he from again?

in the constellation of Custurbus.

Yes, we know you are.

[16:01]

I'm glad that's over. and it was pretty much announced in the woman that fell to earth that we weren't going to get that sort of doctor anymore.

Yeah, it's good.

I do kind of like that.

Look, I thought it was, I think that the chibnal approach, which is really straightforward stories without lots of science fiction where everything's sort of explained and the dialogue is very exposition heavy, kind of works better in historical. think you're right.

And that's why those have been good.

I'm still not totally on board with this approach. yet.

I'm not sure that, that, you know, I think I said before on Jody and Tetera, that I like the saturated colours of the sort of cartoonish RTD era and the sort of crazy highs and lows and the fabulously witty dialogue, and I miss that, I think.

You've been missing that for a decade.

Well, I mean, Moffat's reinvention of the show wasn't as radical as Gibnals, though, I think.

Yes, I think it was more gradual.

[17:04]

It took place over a couple of years.

Yeah.

Look, I'm willing, I'm willing to give it a go because I, I mean, I, look, I loved most of the last... 13 years of Doctor Who, but...

They had kind of been mining that that seem for a long time and I'm, I'm just finding this so refreshing.

Yes, it's simple.

Yes, the dialogue can be clunky.

But the lead casts are really charming, it looks beautiful.

Yeah.

It sounds beautiful.

I love the music.

It's such a departure from what we've been getting since 2005.

I, overall, I'm enjoying it.

It's different.

I'm willing to give that difference a go.

Can I point out a couple of scenes that I really liked?

Yep.

The one where Graham and Ryan are with Prem before the wedding.

Oh, Prem, by the way, played by Shane Zaza from Happy Valley.

Really good performance.

Very handsome too.

[18:04]

Very handsome.

That scene with Graham and Ryan and them knowing that he was going to die.

And Graham nearly loses it.

That's beautifully acted. gut wrenching.

I was almost in tears watching the scene.

The anguish is kind of written all over his face.

That's a brilliant scene.

It's in the performance as well.

And I really like the Mandy scene as well before the wedding, with the hand drawing.

It's nice to have an all-female scene in Doctor Who, even if it did fail the Bechdel test.

Well, it was the day before heterosexual wedding.

What else are they going to take about?

I did love that line.

When I used to be a man.

Oh, my joke, my, my, my, uh, jokes about, uh, what was it?

Gender and bodily regeneration. generation.

Just a joke.

I am such a comedian.

Very good.

Sorry, there are many, there are moments of building.

No, we're not editing any of that out, James.

All right.

James's translation circuit, whatever.

All right, we are going to wind it up, I think.

[19:06]

Each episode of this series has been longer than the last.

So let's end it here. join us next week for an episode that I'm not going to spoil the title of by a writer that I'm not going to spoil the identity of.

And you can also catch us, obviously, on our main podcast, Flight through Entirety, where we are in the middle of the series one finale.

And you can find that on flight through entirety.com at FDE podcast on Twitter and flight through entirety on Apple Podcasts.

Until then, we'll see you next week.

Thanks for having me along.

Ta-ta.