House of R - The 'Doctor Who' Rewatch (Part 4): The Eleventh Doctor

Episode Date: September 6, 2023

The Time Lord has come in the form of Matt Smith, so Joanna and Mal are here to dive deep into the era of the eleventh Doctor. They cover Seasons 5 through 7 of the beloved BBC series in Part 4 of their 'Doctor Who' Viewing Guide (08:12). Hosts: Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson Senior Producer: Steve Ahlman Additional Production: Arjuna Ramgopal Social: Jomi Adeniran Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Derek Thompson, the host of the Ringer podcast, plain English. Look, a lot of news these days is kind of nonsense. I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel here. I'm just trying to ask the questions that matter from people who know more than I do about about everything I'm curious about. And that's most things. Recession fears, AI hyperbole, psychology, productivity, China, war, streaming, movies, sports, you name it. The world without jargon.

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You don't need weather tech floor liners in the summer unless you hit the beach or go camping. Then you'd want a cargo liner or a road trip goes sideways, ketchup goes rogue, ice cream drips. Yeah, you'd be pretty happy about those weather tech seat protectors. So just to be clear as the mud, you're inevitably going to step into the same. summer. You don't need weather tech unless you plan on doing summer. Visit weathertech.com today. Can I have an apple? All I can think about. Apples. I love apples. Maybe I'm having a craving. That's new. Never had cravings before. Into House of Our permanent title? Wow. I don't even know what to say anymore. We're not saying

your Nexus podcast feed for all things fandom. So what do we even say here? I'm Joanna Robinson joining me today in my house, which is shaped like a blue police box. It is my eternal companion, partner. What should I call you? Mallory Rubin. Hello, Mallory. Joanna, podcasts are cool, and the runtime's bigger on the inside. Um, hello. If you, if you cannot tell by our poppy, peppy catchphrases. We are here to talk about the Matt Smith era of Doctor Who. This is our fourth Doctor Who episode. And guess what? We have two more to go before the new specials are even here. Thrilling, exciting, genuinely, time of our lives. Just glued to the couch watching nothing about Doctor Who. Before we get into everything 11.

which is a lot. I want to hit you with some quick programming reminders because even though we are no longer officially on the Ringiverse feed, the Ringiverse and all of our pals over there are still very much part of our traveling through time and relative dimensions and space family.

So I just want to let you know all you anime heads out there that Charles, Jess, and Justin Charity over on the Ringarverse feed are going to be covering One Piece, the Netflix live action adaptation of the beloved anime. And I've heard it's actually quite good. I haven't watched it myself, but people are loving it.

And are, I guess, really attracted to a clown. I don't know. I have questions. And hopefully Charles and Jess and Charity will have answers. So here we go. That's today, Tuesday, on the Ring of Rear's Feed. Tomorrow, the Midnight Boys, Poo, Poo! Poo!

Will be back with their Asoka, Episode 4, Instant Reactions. We will, of course, be here on Friday with our Asoka, Episode 4, Deep dive. And if that is not enough for you, all you gamer pals, buttonmatch will be here with a special Friday episode covering Balders Gate and Starfield. So Ben and Jessica will be covering Baldersgate, which I may not know much, but I know people love that game. So there we go. That is what is happening in the Ring universe over in that dimension. next week. Also with we've got some fun ideas that have to do with droids. We'll tell you more

a little later on. We got some droid ideas cooking here on the House of Our Feed. All right. Gosh, that's a lot. How can folks keep track of all of that? So glad you asked, Joe. My first recommendation would be follow the pod. Follow the pod on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. Follow the new house of our feed. We're twice a week. now, that's when you can get the episodes if you follow. And then you know when there's a new episode to listen to it. There it is in your podcast feed. Follow the ringerverse. Follow it all. We're also all over your social media feeds. The ringerverse is on Twitter or X, whatever you're calling it these days, whichever regeneration it's in. The ringerverse is on Instagram.

The ringerverse is on TikTok. And of course, you can always send us your house. of our emails at hobbits and dragons at gmail.com. No matter what we're covering, send the emails. The inbox is always open. Explain. Your friendly intergalactic spoiler warning today. Everything up through the end of Matt Smith's run on Doctor Who. There will be a teeny tiny Capaldi tease at the very end of the episode, much like his

famous, you know, eyebrows showing up in the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special. Sure. We will just have like a tiny little moment just to prep everyone if you've never seen Capaldi before to like what to expect. But for the most part, like if you're me, you're co-host on this podcast and have no idea what the wait. You get a little primer today. Can't wait.

It's going to be helpful. Mostly we're just here to talk about our gangly pal, Matt Smith, starting with the 11th hour ending with a time of the doctor. This is the Matt Smith era. This is such a huge, huge time in Doctor Who history. Will we talk about that? Somewhere the beginning of October is our plan to take on all the, all things Capaldi. So that's the plan.

We shall see if we hit it. We're doing our best. And then in early November, we're going to knock out the Whitaker era. I'm really excited because I actually, there are some episodes of that era that I haven't seen myself, so we're going to be watching those together for the first time. And then we'll be ready. No one will be possibly more prepared than the two of us and our listeners. And everyone will pat themselves on the back for this year-long project and be quite smug and pleased. That is the plan. I'm so excited to talk to you about all of this today,

Mallory Rubin. I just, I, we're going to dive right in with like a sort of overlook of the Moffat era and some of the bigger questions that will run through some of our discussion today. I was just remembering I just wanted to share with you, Mallory, where I was when I watched, because this is my first memory of, like, watching things live, like a lot of people, because the Moffat era is when BBC America got the rights to Doctor Who in 2009, this 11th hour first two years in 2010. So, like, it's not like the first thing that they show. but BBC America just like really started pushing Doctor Who to American audiences.

I was already in, but I was watching on like janky, you know, sites that I should not have been frequenting is how I was getting my Doctor Who and now I could get it in a much easier way. And I was actually living in Hawaii. So I was in the strangest time zone I possibly could have been in to try to, you know, keep track of all of this. But I remember. Did you ever click a suspicious looking Wi-Fi and get uploaded into the cloud by a spoonhead?

Is that what you mean when you're describing your viewing circumstances? I, you know, I did my best. I did my best state culturally irrelevant when I lived in Hawaii in the middle of nowhere. But, yeah, I just, I have such a strong memory of being on, like, a very old laptop on probably some very dodgy Wi-Fi watching the beginning of Matt Smith's run on Doctor Who. We're going to start by talking about Moth. because a lot of people love Matt Smith's doctor. This is also the beginning of Stephen Moffitt's run as showrunner. He ran the Smith era and the Capaldi era.

So we have, you know, six season plus a bunch of specials with Stephen Moffat. And I thought this email from our listener, Caleb, really boiled down sort of the great Moffitt debate. Thank you, Steve. Caleb wrote, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone else in whose 60-year long history who is as equally lionized and vilified as Stephen Moffitt. In some ways, that was inevitable, as Moffat has written more who than anyone by a pretty large margin. I was kind of a nerd in college. She spent way too much time looking at stats, so I was able to dig up an old spreadsheet I made where I calculated that Moffat had written over

2,500 minutes of who by the end of his era, which is first by a wide margin over both the most prolific scribe of the classic era, Robert Holmes, at 1,800 minutes. and Russell T. Davies at 1,500 minutes, though RTD's number didn't include the spinoffs, and of course are going to grow over the next few years. Even with all that considers, it's impressed at the extent Moffat polarizes people. On the one hand, he celebrated as writing some of the best stories in the show's illustrious run. And on the other hand, I still distinctly remember seeing a YouTube video back in the day, probably around 2016, 2017, in which the essayist amazingly proclaimed in the thumbnail, Stephen Moffitt is my arch enemy.

If I were to place myself on the scale of Arch Enemy to the greatest of all time, I'd probably be somewhere in the middle, but leaning positive. He's definitely written some of my favorite episodes, The Empty Child, the Doctor dances, blink, the 11th hour, heaven's scent, but he is not without his flaws. At his worst, he can be a bit too clever for his own good, and especially during the 11th Doctor era, those early plot threads he set up never reached a satisfying conclusion. Time of the Doctor screams of a writer desperately trying to hastily glue all those disparate pieces together into something vaguely coherent. and his writing of female characters is definitely spotty. So that's Caleb's take on Moffett. We have another interesting email from Shane, but before I get to that,

I just want to get your input, Mallory, and how you're feeling about how Caleb is describing this, your own reaction to Moffat versus Davies, etc. Yeah, so obviously, you know, I'm on the journey in real time watching all of this for the first time. And also watching it in a concentrated burst and span of time. And so I think like already with the Matt Smith Moffitt seasons, I'm like, I need to rewatch these again to be able to like track and follow and retain the twists and turns of the lore,

which is like maybe emblematic of some of what Caleb is describing. I mean, I'll just say right off the bat that I love. Matt Smith as the doctor. I loved 11. I had a blast watching these seasons. They hit me in a very different way than the tenant seasons did, which I'm excited to talk about and parse as we go. And some of what Moffitt is doing in these seasons in terms of the mythology as like a sci-fi fan, as a fan of time travel stories, as someone who's intrigued by paradoxes and establishing the rules of the universe, I find it really like titillating what he is eager to play with and put into play inside of his TARDIS. And then I find that the success like varies in terms of when we are

returning to something, adapting it, when is like a chapter ever actually closed. I think one of the emotional beats of these seasons that I loved so much was this idea of 11 ripping out the last page of a book because he hates endings. He doesn't, you don't have. to confront that something is ending if you literally don't allow yourself to see it. And very Mallory. In terms of the incredibly, I was like, it's the it me meme. It's me. Yeah. I felt that so keenly and I think emotionally that's like a really rich text. And then in terms of the plot mechanics when you extended to that of like nothing ever really ending and never really

closing and always being open to like reconsideration and reexamination, it's a risky. proposition. So I had a blast with the seasons. I'm like so again, I'm in it in real time. Like I'm, I'm in the TARDIS still. So I don't think I have the full perspective and clarity to even like address what what Caleb is suggesting. But I am intrigued by that framing and like eager, really eager to see where the story goes from here and how this era feels when I look back on it. What about you? What do you make of this? Yeah, it's interesting. Like when Stephen Moffitt took over, I was really excited because I loved his various episodes during the Davies series, which we talked about as we went through it. They were often the ones that we focused on because they are so sensational.

He's so good at these brilliant concepts. And those brilliant one episode or two episode concepts like Blink, like The Girl in the Fireplace, like, you know, the introduction of a very episode. the two-parter and tradition of every song, it's, it's a part, you can just absolutely see how he's so good at those concepts. And then when you have to stretch that over the course of a season or multiple season, it becomes a little shakier. You know what I mean?

These like great, he has these great bursts of ideas. And then to make that into a long, overarching storyline, sometimes gets a little shaky. The thing that I'm really trying to do in this rewatch is not, fall into a trap that I think I fell into when I initially, because I also love Smith, that I initially fell into was a like, you're not my real dad sort of like, you know, like this is different.

It's not what I, what I was familiar with with who. And what I'm really trying to focus on this time is the way in which I think Moffett, like, improves over his six seasons in terms of like shoring up some of the weaker spots. And, like, I think actually responding to some feedback, especially as it pertained to some of the, like, female characters of the Smith run, I think when thinking about the Capaldi run, I think that there's a lot of course correction with even some of the characters that we meet in this run. So I'm excited to see how it all plays out. As you said, we're in the middle of it here. But I think it's an interesting thing to think about. And then Shane, our listener Shane had a really interesting observation that I had never considered before.

Shame run, I think the fundamental difference between Moffat and Davies goes back to their childhoods. Davies is the rare fan who, as a child, didn't grow up wanting to be the doctor. He wanted to be the companion. This in part explains why his show had the companions so front-facing and why they often seem to swoon in the doctor's presence. Moffat, however, always wanted to be the doctor, and as such, doesn't always position the doctor as fallible as Davies would. He also had less interest in the doctor's suffering and wanted a more fun, fantastical feel to them, of the grounded soap opera-infused writing of Davies. P.S., there's a fun school of thought

that Captain Jack and River and Riversong, Davies, Captain Jack and Moffitt River, both wrote characters that they basically wanted to fuck. And I just, like, love that for them. Great taste. Captain Jack Harkness and River Song. I love this.

And I think, I think, having watched these first three episodes, we're going to talk about an episode that I think... does this really well, and significantly, it's not by Stephen Moffitt, but I do agree that I think, and it's worth pointing out that Moffat is running Doctor Who and Sherlock at the same time at the BBC. And I think something that I eventually came to feel about both of those shows and his run of those shows, is that, yes, I did not think there was enough interrogation of these, like, brilliant. Like, I love The Doctor, and I love Sherlock to a certain extent.

but there are like toxic and monstrous behaviors in both of these men. And I feel like Davies did a much better job of calling that out in the doctor. And Moffitt, I feel like sometimes had the idea of like, well, it's worth it because they're so brilliant. And I don't know. I really need to think about that more as we watch the Capaldi episodes. But I just think that like with a few. very glaring exceptions, that lack of interrogation of the doctor is something that I think about. Or what is also possible, and we see this here and there with 11 with Matt Smith, where his doctor,

like, for all his like childlike wonder and phase, as of like that, he also has this like deep strain of self-loathing. And maybe Moffat is like, that's enough. If he hates himself, that's enough. and I don't really need other people knocking at him. I don't know. What do you think, Mallory? Yeah. Oh, this is interesting.

So I think that 11 is challenged on his behavior. I think Rory does it maybe most effectively. But I think like the key distinction there, I remember back in our very first pod when we first stepped into the TARDIS together, and you took me on as your companion, and you asked me if I wanted to see the universe, we talked about how part of, like, yes, you're watching the doctor's journey

and you're learning about the doctor and these horrors from the past and these moments that shaped who the doctor is. And also considering that idea and the question that you posed of this, how do you think about a character when it's also a mantle? And so the next point that you made

that we discussed at the time was not a diminishment of the doctor at all, but that it was like so much about being on the journey with the companion, right? And like, Rose is the one who answers the call to adventure. Martha is the one who answers the call to adventure. Donna rejects it and then decides, et cetera, Wilf, right? And obviously there are a number of companions in the season. The balance of that did feel like it had flipped. Like this was more of a Levin's journey.

And the companions are there on that journey. And they have journeys of their own that are sometimes directly linked. And sometimes they're not. And we have to, we and they have to confront, like, where the paths diverge. But the earlier seasons, and it's part of why when you get those moments with, like, 10 and Wilf up on the ship, you're just walloped into a state of like a barely recognized life form. You just, like, are so overcome is because there's something so subtle about, everything that you've learned and absorbed about who the doctor is by that point.

Yeah. And you've been almost more actively, consciously focused on the evolutions of the companions. And this feels like just completely flipped. And I don't know that one is better or worse, but there I think you're effutably different and they feel different and they maybe hit you. And that's part of what I was like alluding to earlier in terms of how they like maybe the seasons hit me in different ways. I was like unable on our first few pods together.

You talk about Rose without just breaking down and sobbing. I'm very fond of Amy and Rory. I like them a lot. I'm interested. I'm excited to talk about them today. But they didn't impact me the way that like Rose and Donna did because like just definitionally I don't know as much about them. So that's a, that's a twist.

And I'm curious to see if that's again like a continuation. as we move into the Capaldi era and beyond, does it remain more? I'm going to find out so soon. I can't believe it. I'm like weeks away from knowing the answer to this. What a thrill. But does that continue to be the calibration?

I can't wait to find out. Yeah, and we'll talk about this a bit more in depth when we get to like sort of the individual companions, but there is a way in which Moffat, you know, and really if you look at it side by side with Sherlock, you can see the connective tissue, but there's a way in which he creates this, Dr. Matt Smith's doctor as a sort of star at the center of a galaxy. And there are characters

who are literally created around him. You know, Clara is created for the doctor. River is created in a way for the doctor. Amy, like he meets her as a child. So she's just so foundationally formed by him that, and I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad thing. It's just a different thing, as you said. So a few more things before we get into Smith himself. As we already alluded to, I think Moffat is much more concept-driven than character-driven, and I would flip those for Davies. I would recommend, I didn't know this because I'm not steeped in Classic Who. I didn't realize that Russell T. Davies had invented the psychic paper, but I stumbled on TikTok the other day. I was like Davies and Moffat talking about the psychic paper and how it was essentially created to skip the part of every

classic Who episode where the doctor would be like arrested and put in jail and have to talk his way out of jail. And it was like 20 minutes of like every new adventure was the doctor like establishing why he was allowed to be wherever he was. And Davis is like, Bing Bang, Psychic Paper. We're in and we're off on the adventure. And I just thought that was like such a brilliant addition to the lore that I didn't realize belong to the new who era.

Any psychic paper thoughts or feelings, Mallory? You know, it's emblematic, I would say, of like, some of the stuff that we talk about another story sometimes where I get, and I'm self-aware about this, I think. I tend to get very, like, hung up on, okay, what are the rules of the universe? They could be anything, but you have to establish them and then stick to them so that, like, I understand what is possible. so that everything that happens doesn't feel like a deus ex machina. And I think that who from afar, before I had the, it was steeped in it and I'm still steeping, you know?

It's like 11 says, like leave the tea bag in. Still steeping. It was one of the things that I was so curious to get a feel for, like is there always some new explanation and some late solve? And I think sometimes that can be the case. But I have, I think one of the things that I'm, I was actually thinking about this a lot during these three seasons with 11. One of the things that I'm like grateful for after watching Doctor Who is opening my mind a bit about how that can function in a story. And the psychic paper is not actually like a great lens through it to make this point because that is actually a classic. We learn right away how it works and then it is consistently deployed throughout.

but I think there's maybe a younger Mallory somewhere on the timeline, a timeline I can't cross who's like, well, that's just a way to get out of any complication and people questioning or wondering or trying to block him. And like, isn't that just a little too convenient and a little too easy? But because it is this consistent presence, it's like part of the thrum and and wush of the Tartis, it's like how I think about the rhythm of this universe. It's hard to think about a doctor who episode without it. So it's interesting to learn because I have no feel for the prior, the OG era of Who. And actually that was one of like the really fun things about the 50th anniversary special was

like glimpsing the incorporation of the old footage and like learning a little bit more about some of those, some of those doctors in those moments and time. So yeah, this is great. This is like a great little thing to incorporate into your who and you build off the past and you make the present yours. I love it. I think it's really worth thinking about. Psychic paper is like a very small drop in the bucket.

But I think it's really worth thinking about. especially in the Moffat era, of like, when you become the custodian of something as big as who, like, what are your responsibilities in terms of, like, shaping new lore, how much can you monkey with the lore that came before you? And I think that's an interesting sort of push pull. It reminds me a lot of conversations we have around the Star Wars sequel trilogy when it's like J.J. Abrams hands up to Brian Johnson, who hands it back to J.J. Abrams. And then it's sort of like, what kind of push and pull on the narrative are there of two different people, have like kind of different ideas of who, you know, a Jedi should be or who the doctor should be. Totally.

I like the, again, in the sort of like representative of that idea in the 50th anniversary special, the conversation among the three doctors about their sonic screwdrivers and like this idea that it's the same software, but the casing, it evolves over time. And so it's this different thing in this inheritance that changes and grows with you, much like inheriting Doctor Who. and then it changes and grows with whoever is shaping it at the time. But like at the core, it has to remain the same. But also if it didn't change at all, then like we would be bound forever by this one moment in time. And that wouldn't. Who would that be fun for? No one.

We got to get the last Jedi eventually, you know? That we love. Wonderful movie that we love. This is, as I mentioned, this is like a really interesting time in Dr. Kou Phantom. Since it's like a soft reboot, we've got a new doctor, new companions, new theme song, new intro, new tart. all this other stuff. It is a great entry point for people. Sorry, what did you want to say? Sorry, I have to ask about the intro.

Yeah. The shock of my life to get to this Amelia intro. I was like, bold over and astonished. And I didn't know if it was just like there once to like acclimate people. But no, then it continued for quite some time there in the middle of the stretch. Two seasons. Was that a, was that because there was a recognition that there was this whole new viewership coming in who needed that little quick. I think so. And I think also because we are still not yet in the era of like quite binging and stuff like that, it's like you might come in, yeah, in the middle of a season and just need like that quick orientation of like, yeah, I'm not a fan of it personally.

especially like how long it lingers. So harring. Yeah. But this is the, this is, this hits BBC America during the rise of Tumblr fandom. So there's this concept. I'm sure most people listening to this podcast know this because you guys are in the fandoms in general. But like super who lock is this like very fascinating time in fandom. And that has to do with Dr.

Who, Supernatural and Sherlock, and the way in which they had this, like, chokehold on Tumblr, and it was just, like, gift sets galore and fan fiction and fan art and all of that sort of stuff. And it was just, like, a new era of the way in which we interact with television. And this is just, like, spread. We talked about this a bit with, like, good omens and stuff like that. This is just sort of spread ever since. But this is, like, a really foundational time in all of that. And there's something about the way that Moffitt, there's a few, like, there's the, I can

of the doctor, the fess, the bow tie, the everything. And like, all the doctors have their iconography. We get a great bit about Tom Baker's scarf in the 50th anniversary episode. So, like, all the doctors have their iconography, but like somehow more with Matt Smith's doctor. And I think also just all the catchphrases, Moffitt sometimes writes in catchphrases rather than sentences sometimes it feels like. And so I think just the like, repeat. heatability and sort of like, not commodification in a cynical way, but just sort of like, it's just a thing that you can grasp onto a bit more than perhaps what the unwieldy 50 years of content before it. This is just such, like, so much more tangible, I think, for people to latch onto, which is a positive because, like, what I will say for this era, this is not my favorite era, but what I will say for it is that it got so many people into Doctor Who. And by that I mean mostly, I'm talking in a very American-centric way.

But like that's so exciting. Obviously, this is like an institution in the UK. But it becomes this like fandom institution in America because of the friendliness of what Smith and Gillen and Darville and Moffat are able to sort of bake into it. Do you what I mean? I love this. Yeah, I love it. I like. I like when worlds open themselves up to new people and make them feel welcome at any moment in time.

Like I think that, you know, we, again, we chatted about this at the beginning of the journey because I think one thing with doctor, this is, this is going to be true of a lot of different fandoms or fictional universes, but it can feel sometimes like, okay, it's too late. I missed it. It's gone. All these other people have been thinking about this and talking about this forever. And so, like, would I ever feel like I had, like, caught up to where they are, but also, yeah, they're just the heft of it, the volume of it. And I love that, like, you know, it is truly never too late to discover a story and, like, fall into a world for the first time. And, like, to the iconography point, like, the, you know, it's funny because bow ties are cool, even though I had not seen sincerely a second of Matt Smith as the doctor before watching these seasons. that was like embedded in my mind. And some of it is from like, you know,

playing the clip and having it in arctoxic stuff. But it's just like that's out there in the world. And I had seen these like gifts of him. And I could visualize so clearly the bow tie and the hair and the grin. So these things make their way into your consciousness almost like via osmosis. You just absorb them out there in the world. And then when you want to like engage with them a little bit more actively, it's nice to feel like, okay, well, there it is.

and there's a hand, like, there's a hand waiting to pull me along. A lot of stuff about hand holding in these seasons. So it's nice. It's nice when there's a hand there for you to grab. I'm going to zip through the rest of this Moffitt stuff just because we have so much more we want to get to. But I just want to say that, like, Moffat is coming up in an era or is at least more influenced by the era of, like, seasonal arcs on television much more than Davies was. And so he's trying to, like, thread, you know, we would get, like, bad wolf things. sprinkled and stuff like that throughout Davies season.

But Moffat is much more interested in trying to give us like a full arc. He has said that he kind of Trojan horse this in because the first season is not like that. Season five is a little more. And then he's like, once I made sure that they weren't scared, that it would be so different from the who that they recognize. That's when I sort of started to make it a little bit more my own. And what I will say is I think a lot of people think season five is the best season of the Smith and Moffat era. and that season six, season seven. Yeah.

People love season five, the first, the first one. I think, I think. Not the, is that true, is not to, not to indicate surprise that people are fond of five, but I, I'm surprised. I was curious if six was like a really cherished season. I like six a lot. I think the mythological stuff, which is just like, you know, Stephen Moffitt in his, like, puzzle box universe starts to like,

weigh people down a bit. And I think season five is much more liberated for that. Even though we do from the jump get, the pinda orca will open and the crack in the wall and all that sort of stuff is there. The hair and the skin of the universe is there's a through line from the beginning. But certainly, yeah, the framing of season six with the death of the doctor. This clear season long mystery is a level up in that respect. That's interesting.

Yeah. I love a season long arc, as you know. So I enjoyed that part of it. I mean, again, we'll talk more. about the specific execution of some of the mythology. But I like, because part of what is so fun about Doctor Who is that these episodes really, like, in many respects, stand on their own or could be consumed on their own. And, like, you could pop in and out at any point in time and revisit a given episode without

maybe necessarily needing to feel the compulsion to watch everything from start to finish. But I like, even like with Bad Wolf at the very beginning, like that was a much smaller scale execution of that, but, you know, we talked about this at the time. I did like that there were these breadcrumbs that we were tracking and paying attention to and keeping our eye on, you know, as we would go. And like, I liked season six and in the split season kind of amplified this further because you have that like mid-season finale that almost feels like a culmination, only though you quickly realize that it is certainly not that, right? I like that.

I like the thread that is there, even as we then weave in and out of completely different planets and character sets and moments and time. So I enjoy that and I like the ambition of that, but I could see how it would feel like maybe jarring after many real-time years of a different thing, whereas for me,

this is, you know, a few months. I feel like it has definite advantages and it has some disadvantages. And something that I do appreciate about Stephen Moffat, a lot is that he will often sort of ruminate on the things that he wish he had done differently, which I think is a sign of a really engaged creative mind. If you can just sort of like look back and assess and maybe change course in the future.

And something that he's talked about a lot is the plot line in season six where Rory and Amy quite dramatically lose their baby. And then he just sort of fast forward through the fallout of that because he didn't know how to handle it in his like fun sci-fi show. And he says, in this one quote I pulled out in an interview, he says, so I cut forward several months and rather duck the issue. They process that not quite loss off screen, which I wasn't crazy about. And I'm just so it's like, this is the fallout of trying to like take big ambitious swings and make season long arcs. And then, you know, and I'm like, how does, how does, how did Davies deal with it? You know, usually

The most traumatic thing that happens is at the end of the companion's, like, story. And then Rose is just sort of like shunt it off into a parallel universe or we haven't seen Donna for the last however many years, so we don't know, like, sort of what's going on. So I don't know. It's an interesting thing to talk about. But to your point about, like, loving paradoxes and time travel, I will say for Moffitt, I think he, more than anyone else who has ever been a custodian of Dr. Hu is so interested in what time can do to a story. And maybe even more specifically what time and love can do to a story. And this is something that we loved in Blink and Girl in the Fireplace and all of that. But it really comes through.

He's big and ambitious swings that he's taking. Sometimes I'm always hanging together. But he's like, what if, what can I play with? How can I break through into another level of storytelling? Because it's a time travel show. And I'm like, that's, I admire that, you know. Yeah. Yeah.

It makes me think a little bit about. the scene where Clark can only use one word to try to break through, to try to convince ultimately the doctor, right? And that what's like the first word on that journey to like get to the point where you can have a second prompt and a second word is curiosity.

And I found that a pretty honest and satisfying thing to see on screen because like why are we drawn to these stories as readers or viewers, and why would you be drawn to crafting worlds like this? There's like a curiosity about how people behave, but also about like the laws of nature and the laws of the universe and what is fixed and what is always in motion. And if we had the ability to glimpse and try to understand that in a different way than we do right now in 2003 as people walking around on the street or sitting at home on Zoom recording podcasts, how would that change the way we behaved? Like I feel that curiosity keenly in Moffat's work. And I really love that part of it. Like you said, you know,

the ultimate execution, there's like variance in its success. But the desire and the ambition of it, I admire. I agree. We're going to do this thing we've done each of our other episodes is just like consider how Dr. Who fits into our larger understanding of like mythology and like specifically hidden worlds. We're kind of like doing a mini tropes course throughout all of this talking and thinking about hidden worlds and whether it's a very distinctly British thing or whether it's American thing. We talked about fairies at the bottom of the garden and all this sort of stuff like that. And I love that Matt Smith crashes lands like literally at the bottom of Amy Pond's garden. We're going to talk about like all that fairy tale aspect that comes with him.

But on the American front, we got a really interesting email from Nicole that I thought tied in really well with this Americanized storytelling, specifically in season six, where we get aliens of the Area 51 variety, like in the science and Nixon is here and, you know, we're in Monument Valley, etc., all that stuff. Nicole wrote, American stories where the fantastical is hiding in plain sight, Men in Black. This popular American franchise posits the existence of both aliens and a quintessentially American shadowy government agency that inhabit a fantastical world, which, much like Fairyland, exist alongside and underneath our own. Much like Doctor Who, Men in Black, offers a glimpse of a broader universe filled with wonders,

people's, creatures, and technologies beyond the grasp of regular old humans. They even incorporate well-known landmarks into the story like the World's Fair towers, the twin towers, so this was changed after 9-11 and the Eiffel Tower. This is very similar to the use of the London Eye and Doctor Who. There are other examples of aliens and agencies like the FBI-centered X-Files and its shadowy amoral bureaucracy. And more recently, Project Shepard in the reboot series, Roswell, New Mexico, I think Men in Black is the most clear-cut comparison.

So perhaps the earthier, more mythos-laden fantasy worlds of the folk with their various fairies, elves, dwarves, etc., or the ancient pseudo-religious world of the old gods, be they Greek, Norse, or Celtic, doesn't feel authentic to the colonial settler American experience. While in contrast, a faceless, nefarious, and or interfering government group feels right at home in America, as does the potential cover-up of a secret alien invasion. And I just want to say Nicole stated in her email, she is Canadian. She's like, I'm not taking a British versus American side on this. I am Canadian. I am a commonwealth. I am neutral. What do you think of this email from, Nicole?

Yeah, this is a good observation. The alien obsession, while not uniquely American, is certainly a present and consistently present thing in our pop culture text. and examination. And then you think of even something like, you know, who's like one of the greatest figures and heroes and American stories.

It's like Indiana Jones, who is often off elsewhere in the world exploring, digging, parsing, but is an American archaeologist who is interested in, Indies kind of actually interesting to think about as a figure

who kind of bridges that divide because, like, frankly, when you get into the alien of it all, it's a less successful and beloved version of the franchise. I don't remember that. Did he ever interrupt the aliens? That crystal skull exists and is a thing that happened. And obviously, it is more often engaging with the religious or the mythological.

So he's a little bit more of a bridge figure than somebody who fits perfectly into Nicole's email. But that's kind of fun to think about too. And then like with aliens, like not only that idea of. an oppressive government force or secrets or like what you can't know or can't see. I'm excited to talk today about like the role that memory played across these three seasons in general. It's just sort of a fascinating thing. But also not just what was here before and maybe shaped us or shaped the stories that we tell,

but what is out there? Like what are we seeking? Where do we want to go? You know, the old, the old Luke, Anakin, Ray, like, I want to get up into the ship and explore. Like that impulse to go out and seek and wonder is inextricable, I think, from the obsession with aliens, as is, you know, Reddit conspiracy culture.

So it really, it's got everything. It's got it all. This episode is brought to you by Spectrum Business. Fast, reliable Internet means everything for your business. And even this podcast, that's why I trust Spectrum Business. It keep companies of all sizes connected with Internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, mobile services, plus 24-7 U.S.-based support, millions of business owners already trust Spectrum Business.

So visit Spectrum.com slash business to learn more. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. I could not possibly, in my entire life, ask for a better transition into our first sound clip of the episode proper as we go in to talk about Matt Smith. Steve, will you hit us with this clip, please? I thought, well, I started to think that maybe you were just like a madman with a box. Maybe Pond, there's something you better understand about me because it's important.

And one day, your life may depend on it. I am definitely a madman with a box. Ha ha, yeah. Goodbye, Edward. Hello. Everything. Um, the madman with a box. 11.

Matt Smith. Doctor Who. Um, I am. I will say this. When I started these seasons, I didn't realize how much of like a grip the Murray Gold scores had on me. But that 11th doctor's theme, Amy's theme and Clara's theme, actually all three of them get me quite emotional. And I just get like you and I both started like bopping her heads because like when the doctor's like adventure theme kicks in, you're just sort of like, here we go. All right. Something that we talked about with

10 a lot is this concept of like, did he somehow create himself to match Rose Tyler, the first face that his face ever met, which is the line we stole from the 11th doctor. So the first person that this new doctor meets, and we get a taste of him at the end of 10's run, right, Geronimo talking about his hair and all of that sort of stuff. But he meets a little girl. he meets Amelia Pond in her garden. And what we get with Matt Smith is the most childish. And I say that for all the good and all the bad, I think doctor that we get.

He's fun. He's funny. He's young because he was literally 26 and this was a big deal when he was cast. People were really stressed out that he was so young. But what I love about him, what I love about Matt Smith, what Matt Smith did is I was I was like looking at some behind the scenes documentaries, and I didn't know this, but I saw a bunch of costume tests that they had done with him where they put him in like really cool coats and really like cool, like hip young stuff, which is like how Matt Smith dresses generally. He's like very

fashion forward. And he was like, I don't want any of that. He's like, I brought in a tweet jacket and some suspenders. Can I try that on? And they're like, I guess. And he puts it on there like, okay and he's like and this bow tie Stephen Moffitt's like no bow tie and he's like please let me try the bow tie and then they put the bow tie and they're like okay it works and I think what I love about this is like tenet with the conference

I love that the performers are shaping the doctor that they're inhabiting that's wonderful but what I love is that he put this like these like sort of I mean they're well tailored so it looks hipster but he puts on these like fusty old clothing to sort of give you this

one of our listeners described to him as an asexual grandpa, which I love, but it's just this very, like, old and young at the same time situation. So it's not like, ooh, the young, cool doctor. He's, like, boyish and childlike, but also very old and, like, fusty and out of touch at the same time. And Matt Smith, it should be said, is just incredibly good with children. Like, Tannen is fine with kids, but Matt Smith just, like, sings when he gets to work opposite kids. So, like, Millia Pond, great stuff in the Chris's Carol episode, which we're going to talk about a little bit later, great stuff. The closing time episode where he's acting opposite a baby half the time,

incredible stuff. Just really good stuff. So, yeah, what do you make of our guy's intro here? We're going to talk to the 11th hour. But like, yeah. Yeah, I loved the introduction. I loved Matt Smith as the doctor. I feel You know, I really liked nine. I liked Eccleston, too. And I, you know, I remember we were talking at the time. Like, I was so fascinated about maybe trying to grasp all this time later, like, where he stood in the kind of collective consciousness and on the rankings and, like, why.

And I think that this is one of the things that's, like, fun and cool about who, at least for me, but I assume this is a more widely held feeling is that having your doctor is this almost. like sacred thing, but that doesn't mean you can't learn to love another doctor too. And so, like, 10 is my doctor, right? But I loved 11. And I grew, there's that kind of initial acclamation of like, I mean, he just bulls you over right away. And it's like such a charming and charismatic introduction of performance that it's hard not to be like riveted watching him. And then when you start to get a feel for like, what is different? What is the same? You're building ultimately in this particular stretch of the story, obviously, toward them actually sharing the story and sharing the screen together along with the War Doctor and the 50th anniversary and like actually saying some

of these things to each other about who they are and the choices they've made and how they behave and why and having to face that, which I thought was like absolutely just incredible. Like, what an amazing thing to watch. But with 11, Matt Smith is like capturing when you're just describing him, it made me think of actually what he's saying in the beautiful speech to a sleeping Amelia in the Big Bang in the season five finale. And I'll, you know, I have no doubt we'll circle back to spoiler. I have other parts of the speech coming in a later part of the pod

and some of my superlatives picks. But when he's saying like you'll dream about that box, it'll never leave you big and little at the same time brand new and ancient. Like he's also describing himself. right, and that like duality and that sometimes dissonance and these things that can feel like contradictions. But ultimately like that's the draw. That's the like very specific and particular magic of the doctors, the figures that these things that like shouldn't make sense together are ultimately inextricable. And so he's like this kind of goofball goober who's constantly

making mistakes and he's having the time of his life and he's talking about snogging mermaids. and it's like it's a laugh and it's a joy and people are constantly smitten when they come across him like the football team and the lounger like people kind of can't help but fall in love with him and be drawn to him and it's not that he like hasn't suffered the same things the 10 has of course he has and that like the positioning of them as like regrets and forgets i thought was just perfection because like part of the reason that 11 feels more childlike to us is because he has actually made a decision to live that way. Like he is processing his own trauma by like not staring it in the face the way that 10 did. And so that's like a great, I think, example of how we can think of them as these distinct figures and these distinct renderings and also as a continuation of the same character who is grappling with in many respects the same thing, but over astonishing long periods

of time. And so like how would you be the same when you're meeting all these different people and doing all these different things? Of course you would change. And yet like the heart of you would be what it was. Again, we're going to circle back to this, but I think perhaps that the man who regrets and the man who forgets line that Billy Piper's character the moment has in the 50th anniversary that you just cited is, I think, one of the most important lines in this entire run, because it was fascinating. Part of why Russell T. Davies, I believe, part of why he created the concept of the time war and the doctor, having wiped out his own people, was to sort of, don't worry about the decades of Doctor Who that came before this.

This is a fresh start. We're literally going to blow up Galifrey so you don't have to worry about it. Like I think that was part, he was trying to like sort of clear the decks a little bit. But he's also quite fascinated with the doctor as someone who's haunted. And Stephen Moffitt's like, that's actually not who my doctor's going to be. He's not someone who's haunted in that same way. And so eventually, right towards the end, we will get a better explanation for why. But right here at the beginning, it's just sort of like he's just decided to be this childlike,

buoyant, more buoyant kind of figure. And I can understand why that is so appealing to people, especially people who came to Doctor Who when they were younger. This is something I mentioned last time, especially, like if you met Matt Smith, he was your first doctor and you were younger when you started. Absolutely. He wouldn't print on him. He wouldn't print on you.

We got this email from Miller that I really liked our listener, who said he started watching in the fifth grade. And Miller wrote of Matt Smith, his green and gold screwdriver, bow tie and fess, were immediately iconic for me, all of which I received as Christmas gifts in one form or another for years to come. Eleven's boundless energy, quirky personality and gimmicky iconography really spoke to the young nerdy boy watching those episodes. His first hardest always was and still is my favorite, because he was.

it had a large than life and fun design just like Eleven's persona. The playful and childlike nature of Smith was always a selling point for me. And his masterful execution of these character choices are still what sets him apart from the pantheon of other doctors to this day. Tenet and even Eccleston were playing doctors in turmoil. They were constantly battling their darker impulses and desires. Tenet particularly focused a lot of his time balancing his energetic and adventurous personality with that of the oncoming storm. The older me now adores this duality, but the younger me just wanted to have fun and Smith provided. Smith could go heart-wrenching and dramatic when necessary, but it always seemed to me as balance lead heavier towards joy than the more

nuanced balance of Tenance performance. And the Miller later says that on this rewatch 10 is his favorite, which like, you know, one of us, welcome to the club. But I get why for some people 11 will, and you don't have to have met him as a kid. I'm not saying that. But like, I can really understand the appeal, especially if you were younger when you started watching Dr. Who, you know? I think, like, one of the things I, it's interesting to, you know, again, I, I'll probably say this 50 times on the pod, mostly out of anxiety about getting something wrong that I haven't fully absorbed or revisited because I watched 44 episodes of television in one week, which was a complete treat, but also totally fucking crazy thing to do.

Who takes big swings? Stephen Moffin and Mallory Rubin. In the last weekend. And Gunner. It's Gunner, Moffat, and Rubin. There you go. You made a three-run home run last night against the Angels, just number 23 on this young rookie of the year season.

Great stuff. So this is my first time through these seasons. And so I'm not in any way disputing the point. I think it's definitely true and right. But I maybe in part because I'm coming so quick off the 10 run that I'm like looking for moments like this or lines like this. And they're like, they're part of it. of what I'm drawn to almost like magnetically.

So they like stand out to me a little bit more, even though they are definitely fewer and further between in this run. But I, I, in terms of that question of like, is he haunted or how, I think that he is. He's just, he's like repressing it, right? And that's also a human thing. It's like I'm not, I'm not ready to like stare that in the face

or confront that or think about that. But there are these little moments still where it seeps through. And sometimes maybe that's about something huge, like Galefrey, or a look on his face when somebody asks him or Amy asks him, did you have kids? Like, asked him about his family, et cetera. But I think the moments that some of the ones that are more impactful maybe are really like kind of wallop you are the ones that come from him because it's a breaking of that. It's a chipping of that wall he's built up around himself and his own like internal consciousness. this like an example that's coming to mind is in the, with the dream lord,

which we learn, of course, is a version of the doctor. So this is something that he is saying to himself in episode seven of season five, series five, the stretch where they're like driving in the van and the dream lord pops up and 11's looking at him in the rear view mirror. They're talking about friends. And the dream lord says,

friends, is that the right word for the people you acquire? friends are people you stay in touch with. Your friends never see you once. You see you again once they've grown up. The old man prefers the company of the young, does he not? And this is like 11 ultimately like sitting himself down in this drastic dire circumstance and saying like you've put yourself in Neverland, right?

Like that's a choice you've made and that's a thing you're doing. But it is real. And you have to like think about it and think about what it means. I love that. So those pop through. No, definitely. It's not all one thing or another, and I think you make such a good point because I think, first of all, Toby Jones is the Dream Lord is like one of my favorite guest stars and Doctor Whoever,

and I really wish that, like, even though he's supposed to actually be the doctor, like, I really wish he had come back because I just thought he was delightful. But the... Did you feel the same way about Rory's bony tale? Or no, were you? Were you ready to say goodbye? No, ready to sniff, snip that away. Amy's choice is clear.

No, I think that the other side of his childishness is childishness, which is this avoidant behavior that he has. In the Let's Kill Hitler episode when he's asking for like a hologram and first he sees himself and he's like, no, give me someone I like. So there's this self-loathing, right? And then we get Rose and then we get Don and he's like guilt, more guilt, you know, but I don't, I don't even want to look at it. Like don't give me the stuff that is that is reminding me of the bad times. I'm not, I'm choosing not to look at it, new face, new whatever. He's got this avoided behavior. He is the doctor who leaves.

And I think it's really important to think about all the times in which he is the doctor who leaves. Because, of course, at the end, he's the doctor who stays. He stays on trends of lore. And I think that's a really important evolution of his character. On this child-like- He stays in a town called Christmas in an increasingly astonishing progression of wig, so that I cannot wait to hear you talk about later. I mean, what a time to be alive.

He's also a doctor, a doctor with a family, which like, no other doctor really has quite that. I mean, you know, like the Tyler's kind of adopted, like, he's been sort of adopted, but like the pawns, the way that the pawns, like, set a table for him at Christmas dinner. The way that he's like, literally their son-in-law, like, he's got this family. And that's something that doctor, no doctor before or since, to my knowledge, has quit had. But he's like their child in a way. You know, it's a very interesting feedback loop. Did you know about one in three people with plaques psoriasis may also develop psoriotic arthritis, which causes joint pain, stiffness, and swelling?

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Let's talk about the companions. Yeah, well, we'll have more 11 thoughts as we go, I suspect. Steve, take us into Companion Town. But I think you look ever so sweet. You and your partner and the baby. Partner, yes, I like it. Is it better than companion? Companion.

Sounds old-fashioned. There's no need to be coy these days. Here we are to talk about Amy Pond, or if you prefer Amelia Pond, or if you prefer the girl who waited, or perhaps even Amy Williams. Up until this point, up through the end of Smith's run here, She is one of the longest running companions Doctor Who has ever had

compared to like Rose Tyler's 27 episodes. Amy is 33. Just edges her out a little bit. She is a fixture, a staple in the way that like sort of people coming in and out of the doctor's lives. And it's always interesting to me, like almost every single actor who has played the doctor and then Karen Gillen has talked about this. Arthur Darville has talked about this as Amy and Rory is that they're like,

oh yeah, I was supposed to leave this season, but I just like, you know, and you get that, you get that sense really heavily here, that they sort of stick around for another half season in a way that you're kind of like, was their story over at the end of season six? I kind of feel like it was. Anyway, Amy, short skirts, scarves, fun nails, iconography, very, very, like, very interesting duality of like sex appeal and, like, childlike wonder because we meet her as Amelia Pond, but then she's also a kissagram within the span of the same episode. And she says stuff like, hey, look at this.

I got my spaceship. I got my boys. My work here is done. Things I love about Amy that she's very confident in general, that she is confident sexually. I love that about her. Cons, and I think the show eventually becomes aware of this in a way that I really like, her obsession with the doctor. And the difficulty in that is there from the beginning because she was,

brought up with people thinking she was mentally unwell because the doctor was her imaginary friend. But I think the show only really, really gets around to interrogating it a little later on. And for a long stretch of the run, Amelia holds the doctor up as like a hero and she doesn't take him to task for like the difficulties that he has inflicted on her life. She loves him so much. She believes in him no matter how many times he let her down. And I don't know, I think coming off of Donna, who's just like constantly calling the doctor out, is just like a little bit of a of a whiplash for me. What are your, what are your first thoughts and feelings about, Amy Pondt? It was fun to meet Amelia as a young child.

And again, like, I had, I just had no, I knew obviously that Karen Gillen was the companion. And like, is this going to be, oh, wow, is this going to be the companion? How interesting. How fun. And I felt really glad that we got to see those early moments because that what ends up being this through line, like you noted just a few moments ago, that 11 in many ways is like the doctor who runs. And so you have this companionship, this partnership, whatever word you choose. But this real contrast between them and Amy and Rory have a shared trait. which is the girl who waited and the last centurion.

Like they wait, they stay no matter how long it takes. And it is this defining thing that shapes them and shapes their relationships. And so like there's something about that and that feels like, again, really like true to me that if you're a person who runs, the thing you seek is a person who waits no matter how long it takes for you to come back. And if you're a person who waits, like you do that because you're willing to even if somebody left.

Like you have to hold on to the idea that maybe they would come back. And so as an origin, like as the initial seed from which there many episodes bloomed, I thought that was like a pretty intriguing and compelling premise. It's so, it's so different to have Rory, it'd be like so essential. It's almost difficult for me to talk about Amy and Rory separately because like, we, we should and they deserve to be discussed separately to be clear. but like it is such a distinction because like with rose yeah we have Mickey along for some adventures Jackie the icon miss Miss Jackie every moment that we're not with Jackie I miss Jackie

I'll just have said it every pot I'll say it again they pop they pop in you know and then they pop out but it's the doctor and the companion and so like when this other person who is so central in Amy's life is there basically the whole time it's like a different calculus from the jump. And in some ways, that's just like a kind of different thing to to wrap your mind around as if you were. And in other ways, I thought it was like kind of helpful and interesting because then Amy has someone in her life other than the doctor, which is like an important thing. And like, again, the other characters do too, right? But it's not necessarily the only relationship that she's like living for. But then the flip side with Amy is, you know, I briefly mentioned this

earlier, I don't feel like we know nearly as much about her as we know about some of the other companions. Like, what do they, what do they want? And some of that is because, like, in the morphing mythology of what is fixed in time and what can change, her life is literally updating around her and in front of us, like, okay, well, part of your core identifying characteristic early is that your parents are gone and then here they are, they're back just in time for your wedding. So, like, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the actual like base code of her life is changing in a way that is distinct from, from some of the other companions.

But I wish we, I really, I really liked Amy and I really like Rory. And I liked them together. And I liked them with 11. I did find myself missing some of the, some of what we had with like Donna or Martha or Rose, where I felt like I knew more about what they wanted outside of their relationship with the doctor and the adventures with the doctor. because that's ultimately like, that's the context you need.

That's the perspective that tells you, like, when Rose is sitting down at the cafe table with Jackie and Mickey and basically saying to the people who are in theory closest to her life, like, you're not enough for me anymore. I can't go back to this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It hits you like a hammer because you know what every day was for them. So it's just a little bit different. And I kind of like the variance.

I like getting different flavors. I like seeing the distinction between somebody who met the doctor and ran away with him right away. Someone who met the doctor and said this isn't for me and then decided later it was. And someone who had spent that entire childhood in those formative years, like longing and waiting and wondering and then questioning and doubting. And then like building up a little bit of rage that maybe should have lingered longer, but like is there for a bit. I think it's good and important that the dynamic and the origin story for the companion and the doctor not always be the same. So it was cool to see a totally different variety. And just I will say that Amelia Pond is just an absolutely fantastic fairy tale name.

The doctor was right. Delightful. And I'm wondering how, like, is it interesting to you? Because I think when Karen Gill, I don't know this for certain. But I have to imagine there is an appeal to Karen Gillen when, and we'll talk about like one of her, I would argue, inarguably her best episode a little bit later on. But when I think of her as Nebula in the MCU, I just think of, like, what a conscious choice that is to do something so different from Amy Pond, where she's just like, you know, she literally shaved off her iconic, like, beautiful red hair to play Nebula. Like, very famously did that. And, like, you know, it's like her, like, she was so often sort of put in this box of, like, hotness or, you know, or just like sweet, soft girlishness or whatever.

of the fact that she then is nebula. I just like, I love that sort of mover because it's great to be both. It's great to be both. And we got this interesting email from Cass, who's highlighting some of the like, some of the like positives of the origin story of this doctor and this companion where she says, what I think really hooked me when watching season five for the first time was the idea of Amelia Pond, the girl who waited. I feel like Amy is such a compelling companion because of that dream and wish. for your imaginary friend, your idol, your hero to actually be real, to come back for you and take you on adventures that feel similar to that longing for your Hogwarts letter that you know will never

come. The story of the girl who waited is so resonant with an audience who loves sci-fi and fantasy. I'm still waiting for the Tartis to appear in my backyard and break my shed, whomst among us, isn't. And I love that from Cass. I absolutely love that. Absolutely. But as with all things, like, good and who, what I really love is that when they show us

the dark underbelly as well, because, like, that's the. doctor he contains all of those things. So one of my favorite episodes, and I told you that I've been thinking about it for years when I was on my rewatch, I texted you, I was just watched an episode. I've been thinking about for years is the episode the God Complex. It's not one of the ones that we're going to do like a little mini dive on in the back half of the episode, but I just wanted to sort of jam it in here because it has this exchange between the doctor and Amy that I think addresses the danger of that idolatry, perfectly beautifully. I love this episode. Steve, will you please play this clip.

I took you with me because I was vain. Because I wanted to be adored. Girl who waited for me. My hero. I'm just a madman in a box. We saw each other as we really are. I like got tears of my eyes just tearing that. I just think it's so beautiful. And what you can't, First of all, if you haven't rewatched that episode and you're just listening to this, just a reminder there's like a minotaur on this episode. So that's like the grunting and the stomping that you're in the background. And then also...

Hilarious. Also, what you can't see is that she flashes from Karen Gillen to the young Amelia Pond, like while he's talking to her. And then back. And when he calls her Amy Williams, I just... I just like... I think this is so beautiful. This episode's written by...

Toby Whithouse, so not a Stephen Moffat episode. And I think that's kind of crucial, because I really do think that, like, some of our better episodes here, contrary to Moffat and the Davies runs are the ones of, like, people coming in and interrogating the dynamic that's been created here from sort of like a little bit of the outset coming in. And I just, I, you know, the doctor's actively trying to break Amy's faith in him because that's a whole sort of premise of the episode. But I think there's so much truth. I stole your childhood and now I've led you by the hand to your death. But the worst thing is I knew, I knew this would happen. This is. This is what always happens. What do you think of this sort of companion piece to the fantasy fulfillment of your imaginary friend coming real, which I think is also important and beautiful at the same time, you know? Yeah, I think it's a perfect, it's a perfect rendering of what we often talk about, which is like, it's not just the two things can be true at once, it's that they kind of have to be. Like, you actually can't have one without the other because that's, that's a good. what growth is. And like, this is a moment for 11 where, yes, there's like the practical,

urgent need of the moment, right, needing to shake and shatter that faith so that Amy can get out, get away from the Minotaur and her room doesn't claim her in this hotel of people's faith and fear. But he couldn't say these things out loud if he didn't know on some level that they were true. If he didn't fear that they were true, if he didn't believe that they were true, if he didn't wonder what it said about him that they might be true. And so that has to them be true for Amy, too. Like, I love it's time we saw each other as we really are. Like the power of that moment is that even though this is one of his many great soliloquies,

11 has some incredible speeches across these three seasons, it's a moment that is so shared completely between them that is interrogating this pedestal that they've propped each other on because she has done that with her raggedy man, but he has done that with her too. That she is that the Amelia Pond that when she pops back in and we see little Amelia in her little outfit waiting for him in the garden, like she's that embodiment of that arrested development that he can allow himself to live inside of so he doesn't have to confront all of the other horrors in his life and in his past. Like the Amy Williams, the choice, I really loved that too because, you know, and then, of course, that becomes much more, like, in the foreground.

It's the name, her author name, and it's on the gravestone, et cetera. But, like, when he meets Rory's dad, he calls him Pond. Everyone and everything is an extension of Amy, because Amy is his tether. And so while there was a part of me that loved the idea of, like, Rory Pond, I actually thought that this was an important acknowledgement from 11 to Acknowledge. Amy of like you don't have to be the only only the person that I want you to be. You are your own person too and I have to love that part of you. That's actually what companionship is. I love it. It's so, it's so special. Just a couple more Amy stuff things before we go. I will say this is the beginning of a different way for me thinking critically actually about how women are

represented in storytelling. Honestly, this is like a turning point for me. I was working with a in a bookstore. This woman I worked with named Emma, I was talking about how much I love Dr. Who, and I was like, blah, blah. And she's like, yeah, Amy Pond's not really for me. And I was like, oh, why? She sent me this essay, something about, like,

because of season six, something, I think the title of the essay is something called, like, uterus in a box or something like that because Amy Pond is just, like, literally in a box, like, cooking a baby. And I was just sort of like, oh. I just hadn't thought about it that way. I, like, that's not entirely where I land

with Amy Pond, but they're like, you know, and even Moffett himself, he regrets having Amy, like, sexually accost the doctor the way that she does in season five. Though, you know, again, Homsd Among Us might not have tried to shoot our shot with Matt Smith. Yeah. On the eve of our wedding. Yeah, Homsd among us. Sure. Womst among us. But also.

Take the doctor for a tumble before tie in the knot. It's a talk about a universal experience and a shared ambition. Yeah. Oh, yes. I do love that she becomes an author. And I will say, I don't know if this makes me a bad feminist because women can do anything include becoming a fashion model. But there was something like really jarring to me of like Amy Lisa Tartis to become a fashion model was like such a weird story turn. I don't know if you have any thoughts or feelings about that.

Yes. But like, and to be clear, for me, that was not like, absolutely nothing wrong with being a model. That's wonderful. No, exactly. But that was an example to me of like, I was like, was this a thing Amy wanted? I had never once gotten the idea

that this was something that was interesting to her or that she like had as a goal or an ambition. And that was the strange thing. And then, of course, it becomes something that Rory sort of like weaponizes,

you know, I'm busy, I'm working. Like, I thought you were just like pouting at the camera all day. And I'm like, who are these people

that are supposed to be these deeply recognizable like cherished pals of our. So now, I just found that. It was almost like an out-of-of-bodied. experiencing. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. All right, let's talk about Rory. We already mentioned a couple times, like, his ability to call the doctor out, but I just look to hear it again. Steve Lee plays for me. You know what's dangerous about you? It's not that you make people take risks,

is that you make them want to impress you. You make it so they don't want to let you down. You have no idea how dangerous you make people to themselves when you're around. Rory, Rory. I love Rory Williams, aka Mr. Amy Pond, aka the Last Centurion. He does start very Mickey-Coded, right? He's jealous of the doctor. But like this is the first adventure he takes from them.

And unlike Mickey, he would like whine or be afraid to go. And so like, hey, don't tell Rose I was afraid to go. So like that, Rory is like in Venice. He's like, he's a little Mickey whiny, but like he calls. the doctor out, like, right away here. And he's also just, like, very involved in the adventure. And then he just sort of, like, grows and grows and grows on me, and I'm just, like, a big, big fan of Rory. He does die an awful lot.

There's a lot of fake-out deaths for Rory Williams. And I, Arthur Darnell recently gave an interview where he was talking about all the times that his character died. Now it became, like, a meme at a certain point. And he and Amy both are dams of a lot. I would say Rory is actually maybe more often damseled than Amy is. Yes. Which was refreshing, actually.

Yeah. Rory's many deaths, an interesting example of the evolving mythology. And like the, as you know, though not everybody who's listening to this podcast may know this, but across our many hundreds of hours of podcast together at this point, I sometimes go out of my way to say that like a character dying is not the only. stake that a story can have, I get, as you know, I get sometimes so, like, frustrated when that's, when that's a critique, and sometimes it is valid critique, but when it, like, becomes almost a default critique and some of the things we watch, and, like, we talk about, you know, Infinity Wars, uh, uh, maybe a good, like, counterweight to that. Yeah, you know, the characters are

going to come back. It doesn't mean it's not, like, anguish to watch the impact of their absence on other people. Rory constantly dying. I was like, wait, at some point, we have to feel like something permanent might happen to a character in the story or it does take you out of it a little bit. That said, at the end of the day, I loved Rory. I loved him more when he didn't have the ponytail, though I enjoyed the time in the dream world with the ponytail. I thought that was a riot. Let us never forget that at one point Rory became a robot whose hand opened up into a gun. this has been quite a journey

for our guy Rory very early on like maybe a handful of episodes into season five you texted me to ask what I thought about Rory because I was sending you updates on Adam's opinion

of 11 so you asked what we were thinking about some other characters and I can't remember exactly how I put it but I told you basically that I felt and this was again

in the very early days that Rory was like almost like slightly pathetic in his love for Amy. But that if I was being honest with myself,

it was in the exact way that I would want someone to love me. And I think that's actually brilliant where there's a part of you watching Rory in the early days and you're like, my guy, like if she's not in it the way you're in it, like go find someone who is.

But then it is so unbelievably win. to watch the ferocity of his devotion. It really is. There's like something incredibly romantic about it. And one of the moments that I really loved, it's actually shortly on the heels of the weird,

like, let's sign these divorce papers and then you get back to your photo shoot stretch that we're not as fond of. But when they're trying not to turn into dogs And Rory's like, we both know. Like, we both know the truth of this relationship, which is that I love you more than you love me. And Amy's like, how dare you?

And like, you can't have that land if you haven't had those moments earlier where you're like, Rory, my guy. Like, come on. So I actually really like that. And like to watch the respect that they have for each other come to the four a little bit more and be more active was like something that felt necessary and that I enjoyed seeing come to the surface

a little bit more over time. And, uh, Rory was just, yeah, you'd want him on your team. You'd want him on your team. I will say in season six, when Amy is missing and he's like listening to her over the record, there's just like some extremely tired like love,

you know, miscommunication love triangle stuff where Rory's like, oh, she's talking on how she really lives, the doctor, not me, blah, blah. And that's just like, I think that's a little like, played out, but there are moments and often Rory isn't there to see them

because it's often when he has died in one way or another, that we do get to see the extent that Amy cares about him. Like in Amy's choice, more I talk about it, the more I think that's a really great episode. And when he dies and the doctor can't fix it and she turns the doctor with like rage, and he goes, then what are you for

to the doctor, her like idol, her God? What are you for if you can't bring back Rory? like, you know, and then like she doesn't hesitate. She doesn't, has Rory gets taken by the angels and she's just like, oh, well, then that's what I'm doing too, you know, so. Speaking of people who maybe care more about their spouse than their spouse kiss for them, should we talk about Dr. Riversong, aka Melody Pod, aka the impossible astronaut,

aka the doctor's wife. Boy. Seans from a marriage indeed. Steve, play this clip. I live for the days when I see him. I know that every time I do, he one step further away. The days coming when I'll look into that man's eyes.

My doctor, just I do who I am. We should just do an entire episode at the end of the rewatch that is like out of context sound clips. And we have to try to remember what the very sci-fi, time-my-wimey sound effect is that is like a big. of this incredibly emotional speech. I think in the future, we should just add these sounds like a minotaur huffing or whatever to the background of like the dragon clips or like the last of us clips.

Yeah. So, our river song, we're going to talk about it a little bit more when we get into our like little mini dives. This is just going to be a mini, mini dive in River Song who obviously like gets a major, major arc and a half after her initial appearance in the Davies era. But to me, this is the perfect example. Encapsulation of Stephen Moffitt in that River Song is a brilliant single or double episode concept. Works to perfection in her debut.

Then becomes burdened with the weight of her mythology, her inherent, timely whyminess, harder to hand wave away, like away all of the, wait, what if she's there, what is. happening when it's woven into so much of the story. And something that I hadn't noticed, I was like, I was just reading various people's takes on River Song. Something I never noticed is that when she shows up in the Davies era, in two episodes that Stephen Moffitt wrote, she grabs his hand and like pulls him along with her. Like she, like, he is the companion to her adventure in the library. She called him there. It's like, again, like much of Davies run, Like, it's very her-centric.

In this new story, every single thing about her from the time she was an infant is bred around the doctor circles around the doctor. She goes to jail forever for not even actually having killed him. It's his whole thing. So, like, I don't know. Like, I love Alex King's in. Because he doesn't exist anymore. I'm a doctor. The other thing I think is weird is like Alex Kingston is so fun.

And when she's just like got her flirt on to 100%, like it is like she is just so fun and funny when she's just like shooting her gun and like really just laying on thick. And then Matt Smith is like playing this like weird elderly baby that like just doesn't seem to be able to match her like sexual energy so that it just can't help but feel like. so mismatched her obsession with him and his like lack of obsession with her. Mal, what do you want to say over for song? So to the, so much. So to that last point, I'll start with the sex as always. Oh, yes. So I actually really enjoyed the flirtation between River and the doctor.

you're definitely not wrong. I don't disagree, but I feel like it was just such a riot to see the doctor have to behave that way and interact with another person in that way. And obviously a lot of it is like high comedy, either because they are actively flirting

and then someone like Amy will be like, hi, can you please like get me out of this like imminent peril and maybe. Essential flirting. Flirt later. Yeah. You know, and like later with Clara during like the.

the boyfriend summons for the holiday dinner. It's like, you know, I had a little rusty, but I could like brush up on the manual. Like I often found those moments very amusing. And then when there would be like an actual bit of crackling energy between River and the doctor, you're like, oh, I like believe that these, I believe that these characters have had sex with each other.

I believe that these people have fucked. And that was kind of like a fun little journey to be on. As you know, I'm here for Doctor Who after Dark now and always. So unsurprisingly, I mean, last, last pod, I was like, here's 10 minutes of evidence that this was a horny season. And then you're like, this is the least horny season of doctor whoever. So of course, I'm always on the prowl for it. In terms of River overall, I, I agree with you completely. Like, I, as you know, I loved the library episodes and Rivers introduction and just could not wait to see where this went.

And that moment on the brink of her death and her telling 10, which is now incredibly fascinating to think back on, like obviously I understood at the time, because she's like, you know, talking about how is it a different face and everything, that it wasn't her doctor. But like, if you die here, it'll mean I've never met you.

And he says, time can be rewritten. and she said, not those times, not one line, don't you dare? And you're like, we're about to watch like one of the great love stories that's ever been told. You know? And there were moments with them together that I loved. I think conceptually, this is like absolutely brilliant. The idea of not just river as a figure, but their relationship, you know, literal star-cross lovers. Like this idea of lovers moving in opposite directions across time and whose future is whose past and needing to compare notes in their journals to make sure they're, you know, spoilers, not getting ahead on anything.

And like having to mix the like magnetic pull that you feel and that draw toward another person with like the logic and the laws of what is possible and when. and knowing that something that is like ahead of the other person is fading for you, I think that is just like unbelievable. Like thinking of that is incredible to me. I'm like, how are human brains capable of this? And then, yeah, like, you know, the idea of Rivers and archaeologist and Dr. Riversong. And again, like, I'm like, oh, is this like Doctor Who's Indiana Jones and this character is going to be making these great discoveries and like, I want to know all about Rivers' adventures.

And then the bulk of what we get in these. seasons like the okay I need to pop out of the prison cell for this like one new bit of story. So it felt like it had to be really carefully dispersed to us in these little like I almost think of it as like a like a drop out of like a little dropper because if you put if too much comes out at once and you've lost it, you can't get the ink blot back. And I felt especially because of the. stretch leading up to the melody is River reveal. Like there were so many moments where River kept saying, like, he's just about to find out who I am. He's going to find out who I am.

This will be when he learns who I am. This is the day where he finds out who I am. So I'm like, I guess River's the kid. I guess River's going to be their kid. And like, that's where this is going. And it's just like, you know, it's the mythology of it ate the potential emotion of it. It just consumed it at some point. And it's not like the mythology of it wasn't interesting.

Again, I think it had like an incredible, um, an incredible kind of like intellectual, uh, appeal. But yeah, I was hoping. I still liked a lot of their seats together to be clear. Like I genuinely really did. But yeah, I wanted more of like who River is outside of her relationship with the doctor and her longing

for the doctor or initially desire to kill the doctor that turns into longing for him. Because like, just like we were talking about with Amy and the doctor and some of these other relationships, like you kind of have to have that context for who someone is on their own to understand who they are with another person. So I longed for that a little bit more. I'll tell you one thing that I don't know. I do not know is if River is done. So like, this is one of the things about watching this with no awareness of what's to come. I felt a lot of, and this might end up being a totally moot concern, actually like a lot of anxiety in the in season seven when she's like

barely in it and then comes back at the end and I'm like, I do not feel like I have what I need on the river songfront. Like, I really hope we get more later. So that's what I'm holding out for that, though. I have no idea if she's back and if so for how long. We are going to zoom. I'm just dodging that. We're going to zoom through the rest of our companions here.

We're not going to spend a lot of time on Clara because I already spoiled for you that Clara is, I mean, you know, she's, she's there through the Capaldi reveal. She's in the Capaldi season. So we're going to talk about Clara a bit more when we talk about Capald, I think. But again, in these episodes, she's a bit more of a mystery box and she is a person for now, you know. We'll see how that goes. But yeah, Claire Oswald, Oswald, Claire Oswald, Claire Oswald, the Impossible Girls. To play a girl.

Can you have both the Impossible Girl and the Impossible Astronaut? Steve Moffat, I beg you to do one more roll of the dice on your adjectives when you're putting these titles on people. Craig Owens, aka James Corden, gets two whole entire Doctor Who episodes, which your beloved husband loved. Anything you want to say about James Corden as Craig O. Yeah, I sent you a voice memo from Adam talking about the lodger and why he loved it because the doctor was focused on, quote, human problems, which I found to be a very very. charming take. I actually also kind of liked the Lodger episode. It wasn't certainly like one of my favorites, but I just found it to be such comedic gold to see the doctor like playing a game of footy with the lads. Lads being blokes, blokes being lads. You know, I just like thought that was

such a riot. I quite liked closing time. When you and I were talking about the Lodger and I was a little like, oh, the James Corden episode. I kind of forgot that I really like the second James Corden episode closing time. I'm a fan of it, mostly because of the baby. But Cordon is stormy. It's stormy. During the Lodge, or when, you know, these people are being lured upstairs to this upper level that doesn't actually exist.

And it turns out it's a ship. There was a great moment watching where Adam paused. And I thought he was going to say something about like why he loves 11, which was generally the experience of watching these three seasons. And then he's like, is no one going to be? say anything about the creepy clown painting on the wall? And I was like, yeah, that's a good note. Like, forget the alien. Someone should have commented on the wall hangings. What a journey. I would really like to hear when Adam thinks of the allegedly sexy clown on

one piece. Please report back if you guys end up watching that. Okay, I'm definitely going to watch it. He's very excited to watch. Vince Van Gogh. Yes. Some of our listeners will be devastated to hear. this is not an episode that we're going to do one of our little like mini dives on. But this is an extreme, the Vincent and the Doctor's extremely popular episode of Doctor Who. People love this episode. I will say, I did have a poster of the Van Gogh Tartis Exploding painting that they did. Like, you know that I'm not like a huge person, but I am a huge poster person. And I did have that poster on my wall.

I loved it. Something I do love in that episode and throughout C-Sysburg. in five, because we meet so many aliens who have lost their homes running from the silence, all of this, like the vampires in Venice, the lonely space whale, blah, blah, the doctors compared to the lonely abandoned alien, the space chicken that we mean if it's in the doctor. And I just like that idea of, like, that thread of, like, a lonely alien without their home and how the doctor fits into that. He's being compared to pergles and space chicken.

And I just kind of love that for him in season five. Boy. Anything you want to say about Van Gogh? Since you mentioned Pergels, just learning that the Pergels traced back to the space well. And the Matt Smith run was, boy, that was really something. I really liked the Vincent and the Doctor episode. I had known that this was a thing that was coming because I posted pictures on Instagram for my trip to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam after Spotify intro days the spring. And a number of the comments were about how this episode of Dr.

who was coming. And if only I'd seen it before I'd gone to the museum, which like, yeah, that would have been great. I, yeah, I thought this was really lovely and, like, it had on the time travel front, it probed that question of what is fixed and what can change and what is in our control and what is not in our control in a way that I thought was, like, really compelling.

And then just, you know, on the emotional front and the relationship front, like, that examination of loneliness, like you're saying, was really poignant and, like, how different can people's lives be if they find people who, like, see the beauty that they see? I thought that was a, that was an interesting question to post and to examine. And, you know, who doesn't love Van Gogh? Or we're not actually pronouncing that correctly after watching this episode. So.

And golf? Yeah. Yeah. Shout out to Tony Curran, who was in the really good Marvel TV series, Secret Invasion. Just incredible use of Tony Curran in that TV series. 45 seconds of screen time. Good stuff. Jenny, Madame Vastra, and Strax. I think I just want to shout out, like, our non-humanoid companions.

They're a little rare, and I just like, I like that we get these three. I think they're fun. I like that they like popped up occasionally but also recurred. They're obviously there more toward the end of 11's run. Strax is just absolute comedy gold to me. Like, I find Strax genuinely hysterical. Just like trying really hard to adapt to a different way of life and then just cannot help but ask if like you would like to borrow a grenade or if he can like saw somebody's

legs off for you. I just can't help it. Let me get to one of my favorite companions all the time. The companion one might argue. This is Neil Gaiman's episode, the doctor's wife, the TARDIS herself. Steve Lee plays this clip. I'm the TARDIS. No, you're not.

You're a bitey mad lady. The TARDIS is up and downy stuff in a big blue box. Yes, that's me. I type 40 TARDIS. I was already a museum piece when you were young. And the first time you touched my console, you said. I said you were the most beautiful thing I'd ever know. Then you stole me.

And I stole you. I borrowed you. Borrowing implies the eventual intention to return the thing that was taken. What makes you think I would ever give you back? I love this episode of television. Saran Jones, Gentleman Jack, herself as the Tartis. I love this concept. From the mind of Neil Gaiman, lifelong Doctor Who fan, this is an iconic episode.

This is in a really interesting way. We talk about ways in which to sort of... of mix in with old lore in ways in which maybe to not. And this is such like a really fun way to mix in with established old lore. These seasons in general, Stephen Moffitt is so interested in exploring the Tartis. There's like journey to the center of the Tartis episode, one of the Clara episodes. Like we see more of the Tartis than we ever have. And the relationship between the Tartis and the doctor, even before we get this episode, he's like calling her dear. Oh, that's what I was. Okay, I was like, what does this note say in my notes about Phoebe Waller Bridge?

It is like knowing that Phoebe Waller Bridge is the Millennian Falcon. That's the end of that note. I just didn't know what the first half of the sentence meant. I forgot to finish the sentence in my notes. Okay, yeah, it's like learning that Phoebe Waller Bridge is the Millennium Pelham. It's like, okay, now we can forever think about the Tartis and how he doesn't want her to go. They're like tearful goodbye. Amy mocking him of being like, did you wish really, really hard?

Like, all this sort of stuff is just like, it's a delightful episode. Our guy Michael Sheen is sort of wasted as the voice of the house because I think we could do so much more with Michael Sheen and Doctor Who. But like, you can come back. Yeah, we never saw his face, so he could definitely come back. The first time you touched my console

and you don't think this doctor fucks? Come on. Oh, yes. I believe this doctor fucked his TARDIS. I'm not sure he fucked Riversong. But that kind of just like epitomized, like to me who the doctor is. I definitely believe he would fuck the Tartis if given the chance. But I'm not sure he has river.

Is there some midi-chlorian risk with like telling us more about the Tartis and going into the heart of the Tartis? Sure. But I, this is another example of like a Moffitt lore area of interest that I really loved, like learning more about the TARDIS and how it works and what is a mystery and what is knowable, but then also as an extension, what we can understand about the relationship and the connection between the doctor and the TARDIS was really great. I liked that like the Tartis wasn't welcoming of Clara initially and this idea of the TARDIS as like protective and choosy because

like, yeah, the TARDIS is a character. Like we talk about like how places can be characters and stories in cities and, you know, magical castles and stuff like that. And, like, the TARDIS is the constant companion of the doctor's life. Like, the one friend who is not discarded, right, who's always there. And then, of course, Joe, I mean, for us, what more could we want than a comparison to a cat? You know, and the doctor says in season seven, episode nine and hide, the Tartis is like a cat. A bit slow to trust.

But it'll get there in the end. I mean, what more do we need to know? Discerning. I mean, also just, like, mad bitey lady is just something that I just, I've thought about for years to come. I just absolutely love this episode of television. Great stuff. Also, the fact that Riversong can, like, fly the TARDIS perfectly, and the doctor cannot.

The sound that the TARDIS makes, the wheezy sound is, like, because the parking break is so funny. It's so funny. It's great stuff. Absolutely. Out of companion world into just, like, a few more points before we come. go into our little mini dives, you know, an hour and 45 minutes of this podcast. I was thinking a lot of that Station 11 quote that we love to talk about to the monsters where the monsters because so many of the big season long menacing figures and arcs and

whatever are because the doctor himself is the threat. What is the Pandoraica? It's a prison for the doctor. The silence, Madame Cavarion, like the great intelligence. They're all after the doctor and they all have speeches, sort of similar to that great Toby Jones dreamlord exchange that you already raised, where I guess the heroes aren't calling the doctors out a lot, but the villains are all the time. And they're talking about how he is this, you know, feared figure in the galaxy and everyone is banding together to stop him because he has done so much damage, inflicted so much carnage across multiple galaxies. So, um, What do you think of that to the monsters where the monsters framing of Doctor Who in these Moffat seasons?

Loved it. I always love it, always love that we create our own demons, you know, Tony Stark idea and like how, especially for a time travel and a character who's, you know, 12-some years old when we say goodbye to this version of him and who has been this version of himself for four centuries and like the rage, the, the rage, the, absolute venom that oozes out of him when he confronts a Dalek, say. And like they feel that way about him too. And, you know, to that point about like the villains, the foes are saying these things to him that maybe the allies aren't always. I think that's another reason why it was so powerful to see the three doctors together and feeling this about like themselves and versions of themselves.

because, like, you know, that moment where the war doctor is like, the way that you two look at me, it's like, holy shit. Like, wow. A little John Hurt impression from you. A little gravel in your voice for that. I loved it. That might not even be the line going off the dome. But, like, that was, that was the most damning indictment that you could have more so than from any foe is like, what do you, what do you see in yourself? what do you know that you're capable of.

Love it. Two more things before we go. The Moffat Christmas specials, we agree, are like real level up. Very charming. Very charming. We loved the Christmas Carol episode. We got a nice email from Ben. I'm not going to read it right now, but Ben, thank you so much for, like, his impassioned argument that maybe Christmas Carol is like one of the best episodes, Doctor Whoever.

I find it enchanting. Tell me about how you felt confronting your arch nemesis, Michael Gammon. The Christmas Carol episode. I did tell you that like, I really liked this episode. I thought this was like incredibly sweet and moving. I have, anybody who has listened to Vigmo and Harry Potter will know my thoughts on the matter well. But I had like, my Michael Gambon is a bad Dumbledore P.T. Kicked in the second I saw him.

I was like trying to listen to the episode and process it, but I was just actually shouting out loud from my couch to the screen. Did you put your name until the... screaming for no reason, just like Michael Gamb on Stumble Door. But then I got over it and I thought the episode was great. Thanks for asking. You're welcome. And last but not least, speaking of guest stars,

we would like to take a moment because Amalia and I are nothing, if not true to our own brands, which is Game of Thrones and talk about the astonishing number of Game of Thrones actors in these seasons of Doctor Who. Are there any, in particular, any from Bear Island that you want to shout out as being especially delightful as you saw them show up here? I had no idea.

Despite studying his filmography closely over the years that Ian Glenn was in the stretch of Doctor Who and it was one of the absolute thrills of my life to see our best. beloved, our beloved Jora Ian Glenn in Doctor Who, that was just a genuine treat. And it was a two episode arc. So he was, he was, he was with us for, for a minute there. And he gets a great debt. It was really wonderful. He does. Yeah. He really does. That was quite stirring, as always. It's difficult to top Liam Cunningham and Tobias Menzies being in the same episode, though.

Like, but it's not a great episode. Unbelievable. No, but like, it's just, uh, it's just, uh, it's just, uh, it's just, um, it's just, just so wonderful. And Joshua Conner's also there. Joshua got her. Yeah, for like a whole two and a half seconds there early in his career before he went to Wales and blew us all away in the crown. I'm going to

I got a shout out our guy Bees. Bill Patterson is here. He's not a human, but he loves to. The fungus loves to and so does a non-human Lyme and Beesbury. Tell me.

There he is. Yeah. God's be good. Bees wants to fuck, even though he's a robot. Great stuff. Absolutely phenomenal. And then Tom, I love the stuff with Tom Hopper and the 11th hour, which is what we're going to talk about.

So funny. I hope he deleted his internet history. Browser history. Per the doctor's orders. Doctor being like, oh my goodness. Pearl clutching. All right. Usually in this section of the doctor who we watch, we do like, little many deep dives into

four episodes. It's complicated with Moffat. It's really hard. So they're a little bit more thematically clustered here. We're going to start with, it's really, I just want to, mostly to talk about the 11th hour, but I also just sort of slapped the Pandoraica opens and the Big Bang, which are the two episodes of closed season five. So this is a season five premiere and the season five last two episodes, two-parter, just to give us an encapsulation of that season of television. but I want to start with this exchange, which is, despite all my love for David Tennant, one of my favorite exchanges in all of Doctor Who history, it belongs to Matt Smith. Steve Lee play this clip.

I'm not scared. Of course you're not. You're not scared of anything. Box falls out of the sky. Man falls out of a box. Man eats fish custard. Look at you. Just sitting there.

So you know what I think. What? must be out of a scary crack in your wall. Must be a very scary crack in your wall. I just like, I love the way he says that. We've just gotten all this, like, zaniness in the kitchen with, like, the cooking montage like that. We get fish fingers and custard, which along with, like, the fess and the bowtie and the sonic screwdriver and everything is, like, part of the Doctor Who iconography. And I just sort of, like, he's been doing all of that.

And you just think he's being, like, zainty and regenerating and, like, all. this or stuff like that. And it turns out that he was also like assessing at the same time. And I love that like turn on a dime he has. I think this is the best introduction episode for a new doctor with apologies to the rest. This is like one of the best Moffitt Smith episodes. It's just phenomenal. It was a tough run for a second on the apple front for us. But, you know, red apples did get their redemption, Joe. Red Apple redemption in the God complex when he, is chowing down on one without any notes. So that was a win.

Fish fingers and custard. I love that this kind of like gut milk and only murders in the building just is there for us the whole time. Like I loved the moment where the doctor and Rory and Amy are just sitting on the couch eating the fish fingers and custard later. And he's like, if I had a restaurant, that's the only thing I served. Like, because it's so much about him trying to figure out how to be comfortable and this new body after he regenerates and like some of it changes. And in this in the 11th hour, there are a lot of moments where he's like, I don't really like know who I am yet. But then this thing becomes like permanent, much as like his affection for Amy becomes permanent. So I liked

like what is fixed and what is moving. And it's just, yeah, it's just a fantastic introduction, everything about it. And like, it's a spooky episode because there's like what is just outside, you know, the corner of your eye. The corner of your eye. Yeah. Turning. If you just like turn your a little faster and like what do we all kind of feel on the back of our necks all the time? And could there be another room in your house and you'd never know? And I thought it was another not only great introduction in terms of how forceful he is and the exuberance of his personality, but that blend of like the plot and the mystery, like, and how he'll talk about how she was just in this house that was too big for her.

And there's like the plot aspect of that with this like extra dimension and the crack in the wall what might bleed through and the thing that might bleed through will change over the course of these three seasons until it is the time more. But it's also about being lonely in that big house and like not having, you know, the people to fill it and the relationships to fill it. So it was a very effective opening note in a lot of different respects. We've been promising sort of to talk about this fairy tale aspect that that Moffat weaves in right from the beginning that is a little different from the, I don't know, mythological aspect

that I suppose I would distinguish from Davies. I don't know if that's quite the distinction I want to make. We got this email from Henrik. Who says, I just want to make a quick point on the whole fairy tale aspect of early Matt Smith. Apart from him saying that Amelia Pond sounds like a character in a fairy tale, the entire fish fingers

and custard scene is a riff on a classic children's book. It's when Winnie the Pooh first meets Tigger in the middle of the night. Yes, Matt Smith is Tigger in this analogy, and not for the last time, have you seen him dance in the story? Pooh keeps offering different meals to Tigger, who embraces the concept. Thistles is what Tigger's like best and rejects in practice. It's beautifully done in Who and endears Matt Smith to us right from the start. We already mentioned this, like, I think right from the start, we get Amy's score is what we first

hear, not his score, but her score. And it is so fairy tale-like. And the way that regeneration looks in this versus in the day. these are as much more fairy dust coated than it is the blasts of light that we got from nine and ten. The Pandorica, that's a fairy tale, aren't we all? Right? Like that, which makes us think of Asoka probably. But anyway, I just, I, I think that this episode sets the tone so perfectly for what follows after. Also, I've mentioned Mary Gold's name a couple of time, But our listener, Luke wrote in just to remind us all that he's like, Murray Gold is a composer. Is this essential to Nuhoo as Michael G. Kino is to loss or Barry McCreary is the Battlestar Galactica.

And with him returning for the 60th anniversary, I'd say Russell G. Davies probably thinks so too. So Murray Gold scores, I think, through the end of Capaldi. And then they just got someone different for the Whitaker era. So he'll be back. But it's true. I was watching someone has been posting these Dr. Husseans with the gold score stripped out. And I will say, and it's the same for lost where like the sound cues, the score cues really are instrumental into pushing our emotions in one direction or other. That's just true always of a score, but I think especially true with the work that Murray Gold and Chiquino and the like have done.

How did you feel about Oscar winner Olivia Coleman showing up? I'm saying. It's astonishing stuff. So many mouths. Boy, I'm not the only one who needs to go to the dentist, you know? My goodness, those were some fangs on these horrors who manifest right here at the beginning of 11's journey. It's a thrill of a life to see Olivia Coleman, as it always is. It's always just a pleasure, no matter how many minutes we get with her.

It's a joy the best. It's just hilarious. I think this is like, anyway, where she was in her, like, fame journey, she had done, like, Mitchell Webb and stuff like that, a peep show. had not yet, like, gotten her, like, back-to-back BFTAs that she got when she did, like, T-Rex and then Broadchurch, et cetera. So she wasn't like, it was her pre-expulsion. And so it's just sort of like, oh, here's Olivia Coleman. But I'm like, I feel this is part of the, with the number of people who just pop up. Like, you know, Ian McKellen is extraordinarily exceedingly famous when he voices like five lines of the great intelligence. So. But I mean,

that's also true. Yeah. I think that people are just sort of like, oh, I get to be a doctor who for five lines. I'll do it. I'll do it. Great stuff. Um, um, you know, on the, on the fairy tale front, like I, I, I love the, obviously the TARDIS always lands in the vicinity. That's how it works. It's there outside of Rose's apartment building. It's somewhere. It's by the shop. There's a shop. But the disruption of the garden was like such a perfect. opening note for these characters in this season. It made me think of our guy Wilf, who, you know, we see Donna like walking up,

marching up that hill where Wilf like waits with his telescope. And he's, that's a garden. You know, it's a garden too. It's this like another kind of messy, chaotic, domestic space. And Wolf is always looking up and like thinking about what might be out there and what adventure might await. And so for the TARDIS to like come in and smash and disrupt that like ordinary thing, like what could be more common than the garden in your yard and just like throw the magic right into your life.

It was just like such a perfect, a perfect way to there's a crack in the wall. But that's the way to crack open the story in this adventure for Amelia. I love it. Love it. In terms of like where the Tartis is, I love this exchange for the doctor's wife, right? when he says to the Tartis, you didn't always take me where I wanted to go, and she says, no, but I always took you where you needed to go.

And I just, I love, again, that just sort of gets to reframe everything that we thought we understood about. The Tartis, the 11th hour ends with the first of many epic speeches from 11. You mentioned his soliloquies earlier. He has many. I'm not going to play the 11th hour speech, though. I'm going to play the Pandora Open speech.

And just a part of it, just because I think this is like, peak Matt Smith speechifying. Steve Lee plays clip. Just remember who's standing in your way. Remember every black day I ever stopped you. And then do the smart thing. Let somebody else try first.

It's great stuff. Woo! Fun fact about the Pandoraica opens in that speech is that the director of that episode, Toby Haynes, went on to. to direct many great episodes of Andor, including No Way Out, which contains multiple incredible speeches. And so when I interviewed him, I was like, sir, I know you know your way around a speech. You direct the Pandoraica Opens. Like, that was just like really fun to put those pieces together. I dropped it in here. I don't know if you had a chance to look, but there was this like mega viral

clip back in the day of this small child doing this Panorica Open speech. Did you watch any of it? It's like so incredible. He did it for his talent show. He's so tiny. He's so cute. He's in his little like tweed jacket. He's got it memorized. Every intonation memorized.

And I'm just sort of like, this is pre-Tic-Tac. This is just like a perfect piece of viral content. And the last thing I want to say about Padorca opens and the Big Bang and Rory's horn involvement there is I was watching those episodes while we were doing our Asoka prep. And so Roy was just giving me strong wrecks during Order 66, like handshaking, doesn't want to turn on Amy fighting his programming. And then Amy, like Asoka, she won't leave him. And love conquers all memory, what you love, what you remember, what you hold on to, something old, something new, someone borrow something blue. Could not possibly more the moral of the story in season five. And oftentimes I roll my eyes at that, but sometimes it lands perfectly.

and I really love the way that it works with our guy, Rory. Me too. Me too. Our next stop, season six, episode seven and episode 18, we're hauling this, the River Song duology. A Good Man Goes to War and the wedding of River Song, of massive amounts of mythological download, both written by Stephen Moffett. Will you, Steve, our lovely producer, play this clip from A Good Man? goes to war. And when people come to you and ask you trying to get to me through the people I love.

Is in any way a good idea? Look, I'm angry that's new. I'm really not sure what's going to happen now. The anger of a good man is not a problem. Good men. Have too many rules? Good men don't need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many.

Great lines. Great lines. Mallory, you were sort of interested in putting a good man goes to war in the mix here. Tell me why. Yeah, you know, we can keep as quick as I think many of the reasons were the expansion of the mythology and what we learn about River being melody and their marriage and how this plays into the overarching plot of the death of the doctor. I think we've talked about all of that, but this aspect of what's present in the clip here,

what the doctor is capable of and what it means to be a good man or tell yourself you're a good man and like to need to believe that that's true and then to reach a moment where you need to believe that it isn't. Like I thought was really fascinating and like all of the different figures, you know, because in good man's, good man goes to war, this demons run stretch. is this like mid-season finale because of the split season, it has this kind of grand and operatic scale and there are big set pieces,

big reveals and endless monks, it has everything. And it has such a massive download on the lore front and we get the cradle and the piece of cloth with the name

that transforms in front of our eyes and like some of the stuff that we have been expecting and feeling and anticipating just all kind of crystallizes together. It's a kind of fascinating double episode in the Moffat run of like an episode that is interested

in assessing something elemental about who the characters are and there is like so much lore buttressing that and the balance is a very, a very, very delicate one to need to maintain. I thought that I really liked a good man goes to war. I thought these were both really interesting episodes, maybe almost more like fascinating case studies to like examine in terms of how these seasons are structured of what Moffitt is interested in than

even just like, oh, I'll be thinking about this for 10 years the way that you might be thinking about the one we talk about next actually, or God Complex or Vincent and the Doctor or some of those other ones. It's like a very different kind of thing, but pretty, pretty fascinating. What did you think of these two? Yeah, I mean, the Wedding of River Song is tough for me because I think it feeds, it's like,

I like the fun, like, funky breakdown of the walls of history and you get, you even get like guest stars from the Davies era, right? Like, Simon Callow was there as Charles Dickens. Like, we're all sort of bleeding together in a really fun way. I don't, I don't like how

grudgingly the Dr. Mary's her song. Like, it bothers me that, like, you know, that he's like, you embarrass me. Like, I hate that line so much. And I know that, like, they then give her that line to him in the following season, but I just, I hate that line with all of my heart. And I just wish that, like, it weren't, this man gets sort of, you know, it's like a shotgun wedding, essentially. Like, I just don't want that for a river. I want something much more joyous for her in all of this. So, definitely. Yeah. It's, again, like, almost more of like a case study inclusion here than like a Hall of Fame or anything. But I think, no, I mean, I think a good man ghost war is a really important and like important as emblematic of what Moffitt is like really excited to do, which is just like blow your mind with a reveal.

If you're dealing with Mallory Rubin, she's seen too many things and you can't surprise her, but plenty of people like were surprised and they're like, what? Her song is Melanie Pond. Oh, my God. And that, of course, is what every mystery box showrunner could possibly ever dream of in their life. And so I then think it just, like, creates a lot of complications on the aftermath, but as an episode. And I also, like, I put in the notes that Christina Chong, who's like one of my favorite actresses, who's on Star Trek Strange New Worlds, has little guest in A Good Man Goes to War. I wasn't just excited to see her there.

I think she's actually tremendously good in that episode as a sort of like Amy Pond-esque figure who saw the doctor when he was young, but like in the forest, the word doctor means a warrior. And so like, and this is going to feed back into like some of the stuff that Clarissa says in the 50th anniversary episode is like, what does it mean to be the doctor? Are you a good man goes to war? Are you a warrior? Are you a good man? Are you a doctor? What does a doctor do? All of that. And also a character who thinks about like the idea of running, right? Like fleeing as is inextricable from like who the doctor is. I think the wedding of reverse song is also. The other reason I wanted to just talk about it and mention it for a second is because, like, I was struck by not only memory and

the idea of memory is a recurring through line of these three seasons, but like doubles and duplicates. So like you have John Smith and the flesh stretch as like a second doctor. And then you have. the big reveal here of like the doctor hiding in the eye of the Tesla, like, Android ship. And once again, sort of emblematic because I think I would have been so fascinated to watch this in real time and see what the response was. I'm curious to like go back and catch up on a little bit of it because I could see like some people thinking this was just a stroke of genius and some people being like, wait. Like is so this is, we are just always going to be able to invent our way out of anything, right?

And, like, it's not like you're watching this season thinking the doctor, Matt Smith's Dr. 11, is going to die and that's a wrap forever. But, like, that particular way out and then the questions that it opens from there are, like, we, you know, joked earlier about River and, like, we have this, okay, well, what would it mean to kill the man you love. And then it's like, just kidding. And I think it's actually, there's value in highlighting one of these episodes that maybe like actually introduces some stuff into the story that doesn't work quite as well.

And like creates a lot of, you can have too many openings, I think, into, into other pathways. And like, you know, when they later on are in the tomb, the doctor's tomb and we see that, I thought kind of, you know, really neat visual rendering of like, what did you think was going to be in here? A body note. It's like all of the strange. and streams of time. Yeah. And that was really cool and wonderful.

But then like what happens when you go into it when the great intelligence goes into it and then when Clara goes into it? It's like can you always just immediately undo the thing that you just did or spent time building toward like I think there's a that's a perilous place to be? So I liked these episodes for like the boldness of the pursuit on the mythology front with River. but like some of the oh actually this thing that you thought was true isn't which i think is is you know becoming a bit of a recurrence is uh it's shaky ground it's shaky ground to stand on so i'm curious to see how stable it how stable it it ultimately proves to be you know that i absolutely despise a fake out death i really really despise it i find it very manipulative storytelling and i was just reminded when i was like doing my research for this episode i was reminded that like in all the

interviews, Stephen Moffin and Matt Smith and all of them were like, this is not a fake out death. And I'm like, I guess technically it isn't, but actually emotionally it is. So I don't know. I was just sort of like, just don't say, don't lie to me, man. I don't love it. But, you know, so I'm glad the doctor's not dead. If the doctor had been as hell bent as maybe River had been, and like, we need to find a way to avoid this outcome. And that's the third. rest of the plot is like, I'm not ready for this to be true. Then I wouldn't, then I don't think we could say maybe it was a fake out death as much. But like, because his contention for the bulk of it is this is actually the way this has to be because here are all the things that will happen otherwise.

And it's like, well, actually, we figured it out. We figured out a way. That's, uh, yeah, trickier. I mean, I mean, honestly, that is a thread through, you were talking about in the psychic paper realm earlier. I was thinking about the sonic screwdriver and the sonic screwdriver and the psychic paper both work every time until they don't until he finds something that's like wooden, you know? Or like a vampire in Venice

who's actually a fish person and she's like, you thought psychic paperwork on me? Come on. Incredible. The 50th anniversary when they're just like, did anyone think to open? Just try to see if the door was locked. That was so funny. Great moment for Clara, our girl. Are genuinely great.

Season 6, episode 10. I love this. What you and I consider possibly the best. It might be number two for me, but it is right at the top. The Girl Who Waited, written by Tom McRae, directed by Nick Kieran. And again, this is a, since it's a non-Steven Moffat written episode, I think it does some really interesting things with the narratives that Moffat is the larger tapestry that he's weaving here. Steve, do we play this clip for me, please?

Do it for him. You're asking me to defy destiny, causality, the nexus of time itself for a boy. You're Amy. He's Rory. Oh, yes, I am. I adore this episode, not just like stylistically. It's like a beautiful episode, a really cool concept, a cool world. This is, in case people haven't rewatched it, an episode where Amy gets trapped in a different time stream than the doctor and Rory when they come to this.

this quarantine planet. And when they go to rescue her, she has aged by several decades. And so it becomes this quandary of like, do you save the woman who has been waiting for several decades? Or do you erase that it happened in the first place and save the younger version of her? And in doing so, essentially kill the older version. So really fun, like, time travel, time paradox story, right? great shit for Karen Gillen to play, playing both older Amy and young Amy and the like bitterness, the like, the hardened sort of life that she has had to form for herself, the lack of faith, as we talked about in the god.

Like, how she's lost faith in the doctor and Rory and them coming to find her. But like how she defrost has to defrost in the face of not only her younger self, but in the face of Rory as well. and then peak the doctor as a bastard mode in this episode. And I think some of the best stuff we ever get from Matt Smith is this look. He gives over his shoulder as he walks out. And he makes Rory do it. And Amy lets Rory off the hook, but, like, it is so unpapeful. The only note I have is I wish we had spent a little bit more time

with young Amy waking up and being like, where is she? And some fallout from young Amy about them leaving older Amy behind. Yeah. Outside of this episode. But as a self-contained storyline episode, I just think it's extraordinary. Tell me, Molly Rubin, your thoughts and feelings about this episode television. I loved this. This was my favorite of the run.

And, you know, the moment that we talked about in the God complex, earlier, this is the episode that immediately precedes the God complex. And I don't think you can have that speech about faith without what 11 does here. It certainly can't be received that way. And so these are like, even though the settings are completely different and they're not in direct conversation with each other the way that like actual, you know, multi-episode arcs are, they feel so deeply entwined to me as a like a real reckoning with what the doctor is capable of doing and what the people around him tell themselves about that every day and about what that's what that's doing to them. Like the choice that the doctor gives to Rory is a false choice. Like it's a complete manipulation to say to him like it's basically like you take the blame for this.

It's up to you. And then I will resolve myself because you're the one who has to decide if you open that lock and open the TARDIS door, which is just like hideous. But I thought it was amazing. I loved that they did that. And that line when 11 says there can only be one Amy and the Tartis, which one do you want? It's your choice. What Rory says in response, that was one of the lines of the run to me. This isn't fair.

You're turning me into you. Like, there are so many moments where the person who is next to you. to the doctor would want to be turned into you, would want to be the doctor, would want this to be their life. And for that to be like the most damning thing that you could say, you're turning me into you because of the context of the moment

was like, I thought so important as that like counterweight to constantly remind us of the, the atrocities that are here at the heart of this often like very fun, jubilant story about adventure and possibility. And I thought it was an amazing, Amy episode. I thought like you said, like another great example of just the concept and the character melding in harmony here. This is like, this is how high the ceiling is in these seasons. Because it's brilliant to say, well, what if the doctor and Rory pressed the green anchor and

Amy pressed their red waterfall? Like, what an amazing idea. And then Roy goes out and presses it can't get in there. And the time streams moving at different speeds and how a minute for you could be 36 years of a person's life. And then like for Amy, for the Amy who had waited, again, the girl who waited, like this is, and this is a different kind of waiting, but it's also deeply painful. And like that feeling of betrayal and anger and hatred, the, like, once again, yeah, you came back eventually, but like, once again, you made me wait for you. It was just so devastating. And then, like, I think ultimately, though, the real, like, real key to the alchemy of this episode is that it's not just that Amy is, like, saying those things about

the doctor or worry is saying those things to the doctor or the doctor is capable of making that decision at the end, that calculus, weighing those scales. Amy, the things that Amy thinks about herself, like, old Amy is like, I'm not going to save young Amy at first, right? And obviously that changes over the course of the episode. But that was like, I just thought, harrowing. And like for the episode that quickly to get you to think, like, well, what would I do in that circumstance? What would I do if I were Rory? What would I do if I were Amy? I thought it was amazing. Like, I just, I loved it. I thought it was, I thought this was sensational. I think the way that it interacts with some of the qualities of Amy that we've been talking about

is so interesting because, like, she has this, like, she's so, her youth and her beauty are so often remarked upon and so often part of her like part of her confidence or part of her ability to charm wherever they go or you know like all you know it is it is her like it is her key that opens a lot of doors for her and so for her several decades later to be like I don't have that power anymore and she is like so incredibly competent and cool and creative and has like created her own like sonic and stuff like that but she's like but what are you going to value you're going to value my youth and beauty over this. And I just think, I mean, like, actually, older Amy

looks great. And I don't know where she got her red hair and eye, but it looks incredible. But like, she probably invented it herself. But like that, having to confront the limits of her youthful power, I just, I think it has so much on its mind. I think it's so brilliant.

All right. Speaking brilliant. Brilliant. 50th anniversary special, the day of the doctor. It's our last little many deep dive. This is not just like has so much on his mind about the doctor and his legacy, but also it's just like incredibly fun. Steve, will you play us the clip of 10 and 11 meeting each other for the first time. Compensating?

For what? Regeneration. It's a lottery. Oh, he's cool. Isn't he cool? I'm the doctor and I'm all cool. Oops, I'm wearing sand shoes. What are you doing here?

I'm busy. Oh, busy. I see. Is that what we're calling it, eh? Hey? Hello. A lady's start. Listen, what you could up to in the privacy of your own regeneration is your business.

One of them is a Zygon. I'm not judging you. Incredible. Oy, matchstick man. So good. That is proper skinny. 1011 are here. They're delightful.

The original plan, or I think the original hope, was that we would have an episode with 9, 1011. And Christopher Eccleston would come in and play the doctor who had to wipe out Galaferay. But Chris Rackleton was still very much in his Fuck You, Dr. Huera. So instead, this is a major retcon. We just shove a whole different doctor in between Paul McGahn and Chris Rackleston, the war doctor.

And he can't have a number because the numbers are set. 8.5, I suppose, is what we're going to call him. As John Hurt, an absolute abomination of a retcon that I don't mind at all because John Hurt is so good and delightful in this episode. So, like, there are things that happen this episode. Like, what if Galefrey was never destroyed that I have questions about?

What is your feeling on that? I was, I'm so curious to, I mean, I think I know, but. To be honest, I kind of hate it. I love this episode, and I kind of hate that. To me, to go back to our Star Wars sequel analogy, it feels very much like Ryan Johnson pulled the thing in one direction. And JJ Abrams like, no. the Jedi would never do that or whatever or she has to be a Palpatine

you know it's Stephen Maffa being like I don't think the doctor would ever do that I don't think the doctor would you know and Clara being like I just never imagined that you could possibly do that and I'm just like but I firmly

believe that nine did that and the story that I watched with 9 and 10 was very important in the shadow of that so like I choose not to think about that when I rewatch 9 and 10 I choose to like I'm the one who forgets and regrets that this ever happened, especially, especially since it doesn't, I mean, I guess we'll see how it plays out in the future, but like in the short term here,

it's sort of like, does it, does it matter that much undoing all of that mythology in order to have this little trick, we saved it sort of thing, feels again like Moffat trying to be more clever than emotionally honest, though, that being said, the emotional honesty that comes from 10 and 11 showing up to, you know, that they hated that they had done this in the past, but for them to show up and say, you were the doctor on the day, it wasn't possible to get it right, and you don't have to do this alone, we'll do it together. I actually, I wish that had been the episode, and they still do it, but they do it together. Like, that is emotionally just, gripping to me. And there's a lot

in this episode, including fucking Billy Piper as the moment, which just fills me with light and joy and possibility and everything that I love. Okay. Now I've had my little rant. How do you feel about the Galifery being saved? We're completely on the same page.

I... Okay. And, you know, it's a... The... Well, we won't remember this because time streams is, I think, ultimately, like the allowance for us to then rewatch the seasons and kind of like forget that this change is coming because the characters don't remember it. And so neither do we. And there's that, there's that question of memory again. But I thought, so many things about this, Gallow Frey and Time War retcon aside, were just like unbelievable. I mean, the absolute magnetism

and like electricity and joy of seeing David Tennant and Matt Smith going Sonic to Sonic together was just like pleasure at like a Titanic scale. It was absolutely wonderful. You throw in my beloved Rose Tyler as the moment here. You get the more doctor and this was just incredible. And I thought like, you know, I mentioned that like the way, ooh, the way you guys look at me. but there were counterweights of like the depth of this, you know, the war doctor says it. Like,

it's hard for me to think of a word other than dread, right? There's this heavy dread across the episode. But then this kind of incredible levity, like with the way that the war doctor's like, why do you to speak like children? And why are you like so reluctant to behave like a grownup? I thought that it was, it's the kind of assessing and poking and prodding that you can really only do

with yourself. It's like a lot of. what we love about seeing like Loki and Sylvie together in Loki, right? And that question of variance and another version of yourself and what can it, what can they teach you about who you are? Watching before I realized, you know, about the 3D art retcon that was coming, watching the episode and realizing that the word doctor, that these two characters, 10 and 11, who we have now, by this point spent six seasons with,

were going to be, and they are ultimately, because the word doctor does go to push the big red button, that they, this thing that fills them with dread and shame and regret and horror and trauma, that they're the ones who convinced him that he had to do the thing that they deplore was, like, I was just incredible. Like, just an absolute, like, this is like,

to be able to come up with a scenario in your story where that can happen is just like remarkable. And it's one of the opportunities that a time travel, many variant story, like, affords you. And, you know, we already talked about that line when Rose is the moment says to the war doctor, they're you, they're what you become if you destroy a Galefrey, the man who regrets and the man who forgets. Just such a beautiful and perfect encapsulation. We talk about how the doctor contains multitudes and that's true. But what a, what a fitting and agonizing way to sum up. the casing, the armor that they have each put themselves in,

like this defining thing for that regeneration and that rendering of the characters. I just thought it was like amazing. I just loved it. To your point about doubles all season and all series and as you said, Loki and Sylvie, your favorite thing to confront yourself in a story like this.

Steve, let's hear this confrontation. What would be the point? 2.47 billion. You did count. You forgot? Four hundred years, is that all it takes? I moved on. Where? Where can you be now that you can forget something like that?

Spoilers. No. No, no, no, no. For once, I would like to know where I'm going. No, you really wouldn't. I don't know who you are. Either of you. I haven't got the faintest idea. They're you.

They'll want you become if you destroy, Galefrey. The man who regrets. And the man who forgets. so good great this is a phenomenal episode in terms of like the member berries well first of all Matt Smith dangling from the TARDIS

being like lowered over Trafalgar Square via crane which you know that they filmed like they filmed and everyone like that is just like such a fun like we're doing it guys we're doing the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who if you walked by Trafalgar Square that day you saw that happen there's a bunch of like connections to the past

member Barry stuff in here we've got Kate Lethbridge Stewart who's connection, like the daughter of a classic Doctor Who character in here. You've got Oswald, not to be confused with all the other Oswald, is this like sort of Doctor Who fan girl stand in wearing Tom Baker's iconic scarf. And I love that. I love that stuff. And then you have Tom Baker himself, one of the iconic doctors, shows up at the end of the episode,

as the curator in a way that we don't fully understand yet, will we? ever who knows. Though watching it and him saying, you know, you may find yourself revisiting some of the old faces, like only, only your favorite ones or whatever. I'm like, oh, did they just explain why David Tennis showing back up again? And I just like hadn't rewatched the anniversary special in a while because like there's a big question of like, how is he back? So all of us in here, a lot of it is fun.

Some of it I think is pretty like actively bad. like, ten saying again, I don't want to go. And 11 saying he always says that. I'm like, don't do that. Don't take a great line and make it a joke. I don't like it. And then that idea of like avoidant running versus staying. I just do want to, like, we're not going to dive into the finale,

but Matt Smith's final story, this avoidant attachment kind of attitude that he's had all throughout, Amy waited, Rory waited. Finally, the doctor stays in Christmas to turn into Bilbo Baggins. Doesn't avoid, doesn't forget, chooses to remember. That running,

you know, like River Song, when she first shows up in the Divis era, one of her last lines to David Tennis doctor is, you watch us run. And Clarus says, run, you clever boy,

and remember, right? But run. Like, this idea of the avoided doctor, the doctor who runs, the doctor who leaves, the doctor who rejects because the doctor who pushes the pawns out, you know, Amy is like, you can't just drop us off at our home, like, a taxi. And he's like, what's the option? You stay with me and I stand over your dead body? Like, I can't handle that.

You know, I can't do it. So, you know, willfully forgetting, willfully avoiding. But this is the doctor who stays who remembers. And that's sort of the completion of his arc is like that run away, run away from the pain is like not possible in the end for him, which I think is quite beautiful. Especially in a town called Christmas where you have to tell yourself. You have to tell other people the truth, but that means you have to tell yourself the truth, too. You know?

Woo. Love it. Great. I think we did it. Rapid fire superlatives? To wrap. Let's do it. Quick, quick, quick.

Starting with favorite line. Yeah. Molly Rubin. What do you got? Okay. I do have two, but I'll keep them both quick. One is The Doctor to Little Amelia in season five, episode 13, The Big Bang. And it's one you had played for me on a prior pod, but it was so out of context for me.

And I was like, whoa, ooh, sounds great. Then I got to see it. And I was just like in tears on my couch. I'll be a story in your head. But that's okay. We're all stories in the end. Just make it a good one. It's a beautiful.

The whole speech is beautiful. That whole scene is beautiful. and like the way that that idea interacts with something like the Angels take Manhattan when the doctor rips the final page out and says like then it doesn't have to end. I hate endings. Like how he thinks about stories and endings

and when you are a part of that for yourself and another person is I just thought was like really wonderful. And then my other pick is a Rory line. Ooh, from your favorite episode, The God Complex. He's talking about Howie and, his stammer and everything that had happened in Howie's life before they got to this hellscape. And he says, what an achievement. I mean, can you imagine?

I'd forgotten not all victories are about saving the universe. I just loved that. Like, what a perfect. And Rory's the perfect character to, like, give voice to that idea. But, like, that's something when we watch Doctor Who that we like have to remember, right? It's that what we always talk about, the Shire, you know? And then what's worth it? You did get to hear 11 in the little like glimmer of daylight say when he took

Clara up there to look out in a town called Christmas. Like, I have to look out and see and remember what I'm predicting. So that idea ended up feeling like very central. And Rory was, I mean, that is literally about the universe at the end. But still, I really loved that. I thought that was beautiful. Just like a person changing something about their life. That's just as big and meaning.

full as the time war. The other thing I first say about the God Complex, again, an episode that I loved, is what it lands that I thought a lot of the Davies episodes land so effortlessly is to get me to care so much about these characters who are so one and done. So, like, Howie and Rita are, like, characters I'm so, I love, you love Rita. And so then you are devastated when she starts to go, you know? And then David Williams, who I think is great as the fearful. But like, but when the doctor's like, it's sly, like you're sly.

I love that. I love that word sly. Okay. Favorite line. I have a funny one and then a whatever one. I'm the doctor. I'm worse than everybody's aunt. You're worse than my aunt.

I'm the doctor worse than everyone's aunt. That's a great one. But from the. doctor's wife when she's going and she says, I'll always be here, but this is when we talked, is just like, you know, she talks about being alive and not wanting to say bye, but say hello, hello, doctor. And it's just sort of like this beautiful thing. And like, I never want the Tartist to come back in a human form again. I want, I want those stories to be finite and to feel the loss of something. That's a loss that stays and that you feel. And it's just like,

really good. All right, best villain. The silence. This is an easy one for me. Of course. Of course it's the silence. Cool concept. Really great design. So great. The fear of the Sharpie marks, like when they just like show up on these characters. This is so scary. Yeah. So good. Like the instant flash down to the arm and suddenly there are 35 more tally marks than there were a second before. Like the idea of a, a threat you can't recall was just like,

what an incredible idea and concept and like the hand recorder chips and looking down and seeing it blinking and no, oh my God, that was just all like amazing. And then, of course, again, what they represent about that larger through line of like memory is this recurring theme. You literally can't remember the silence if you're not looking at them.

Rory, the way that he remembers even after his human again, his waiting in those 2,000 years. everything with Kazarin and a Christmas carol. And like the doctor erasing himself from time, the snow, the great intelligence, the memory snow. Like, of course, the man who forgets, like memory was just so central. So for the mean, the most interesting threat across these seasons to connect to that idea was perfect. And Amy having to in the first season remember him back into existence.

I already mentioned the something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. But like, that's their way. There are times when David Moffat does things like, Doctor Who? The question hiding in plain sight where I'm like, okay. And then there's times when he does that, I'm like, it's the fucking Tartis. Like it's always been the Tartis, something old, something new, something borrowed something blue. That's just incredible, you know, so. Stephen Moffat, there are two wolves inside your head.

Okay. Best fit. I'm going with the war doctor here. The leather, the tattered, leather. jacket that's peeling with the heat of interminable war, the little scarf, the red sonic, like the coating of dust, just all of it. I thought that was great. But I do want to say for the record that I agree with 11. I think bowtides are cool. And I loved his fit. I loved it. I like the way that it like subtly morphed over time. You've got the season five is like the,

you have the red version and the blue version. And then, you know, the shirt. is changing and sees like little kind of oh i've got a stetson now the fez and by the end you're in these like rich plums frock his frock coat yeah but it i every it's felt like such a a subtle and organic journey to that point uh it's wonderful what about you um i have to give it out up out too i'm gonna i'm gonna use a riverism here and say what in the name of sanity have you got on your head. It has to be the FES. The Fess is like such a fun, long-running gag.

So fun that they put it in the latest season of Good Omen's. Like it has become inextricably linked with the doctor. Not even David Tennant linked. And I love when it comes out of the time vortex in the 50th anniversary. And 10 like puts it on his head and

11 like smacks it off his head. That's wonderful. It's my gag. Stick to your 3D glasses, man. All right. Best guest star. I am going with Papa Rory here. Brian Williams. Mark Williams is Brian Williams. Arthur Weasley himself.

I love like the, it's just wonderful. I mean, who could be like a more perfect embodiment of a character who is like going to support the questing that his children are on and he like doesn't see the world a lot, doesn't travel out, and that all of these postcards,

all of the trips and journeys that he took. He's going to sit there with his camcorder on and record every single thing that the. cubes don't do until finally they do something. Like, who better than our favorite wizard who, like, collected plugs and was so interested in everything that Muggles did. Like, the inversion of that is just so perfect to me. I just loved it.

I agree. Perfect. I already mentioned him earlier, but I think Toby Jones is the dream lord. It's just, like, just such a fun performance. If you put what he's doing and Andrew Scott's doing in Sherlock, like, side by side, it's just, like, delight. Delight to me. All right. Horneous moment. Malar Rubin. Okay. I will say, I just want to mourn the absence of Jack Harkness in these seasons for a moment.

There's like a very quick like Jack Staggs mentioned, but when we got to this cat, I was thinking about him and just, you know, in general, there's like, obviously unit is here, but we don't like all the Torchwood stuff. We don't know Jack, etc. It doesn't feel right to tackle this category with. about him. So it's like now the Jack, Captain Jack

Memorial here. I am going with, just I did, you know, as mentioned earlier, I enjoyed the flirting between River and the doctor,

and I will go with a moment where the doctor flirts back. So I'm going with from the impossible astronaut at the top of season six, 11 saying, and Dr. Song,

you've got that face on again. And River says, what face? and the doctor says that he's hot when he's clever face and she says this is my normal face and he says yes it is iconic

yeah I still think I agree with that I like smile when those things happen I don't feel the heat so with regret I am leaving 11 out of this hornyest moment category

and I'm going to give it to the brief appearance of David Tennant and the Zygon and or Queen Elizabeth and or there's a moment at the end when he kisses Clara's hand and then like looks at 11 and like waggles his eyebrow like I've got it you don't it it's me I'm the 10th Doctor so Venom in the tongue sacks it's tough I'm not judging I'm not judging there on uh what they'd be willing to explore together oh yes oh I didn't say this really but I guess David Tennant had always want the Zygons as you could tell by their dorky rubber suits and like weird vomiting are an old school doctor who villain and tenant had always wanted to play opposite the zygons so it's a fun moment for him all right cringious low budget moment as always ample fodder this was an easy one for me it is the discarded mound of flesh in the almost people like the piled remnants of melted flesh of

melted fleshy faces in the corner of an acid-strewn crumbling ruin. You're like, where's Cassandra when you need her? Exactly. It is so reminiscent when you zoom in on the first face of Cassandra. It's just like stretched skin with a face vaguely in the middle. Great stuff. All those people living flesh is so interesting because we spend all of that, all of those episodes, arguing that the flesh are the people, that that is very important, that like there's no difference between the doctor and the other doctor and he fooled Amy into like thinking blah blah. And then he just zaps flesh Amy into goo.

Like I was like, didn't you just spend two episodes arguing that the goo people are people? Then you're just sort of like, oops, got to go, goo, Amy. You're not the real Amy. Okay, my cringiest low budget moment has to go to the fucking space chicken in the Van Gogh episode. Like, luckily you don't see it a lot, but when you see it, it is tough stuff. All right. Funniest moment. Minest one we've already heard today.

It is from the day of the doctor, the 50th anniversary special, and it is compensating for what? Regeneration and cell lottery. That was my easy pick. That was iconic. It's wonderful not just to hear it, but to watch it because of their respective facial expressions.

But because we already heard that today, I will just note as a backup, as a runner-up, the recurring, disdainful mention of Twitter killed me. Really frequent. I got such a kick out of that. Compensating. All right.

I have to give it to this line that just like absolutely killed me. So when the doctor says, oh, another oud I failed to save. That was amazing. It's amazing. It's so fucked up and dismissive and like so good. Just like another oud I failed to save. Incredible. I love that.

All right. most emotional moment. Okay. So I had three contenders. We've talked about two of them already today. We talked already about the man who regrets and the man who forgets, which was in the running. I thought that was just very heavy.

And then we talked about, I really like, at the end of the doctor, the widow in the wardrobe when he shows up on Amy and Rory Stoop and they invite him in for dinner and say that there's a place set. And he's like, you didn't know I was coming. Why would you set me a place? And Amy says, oh, because we always do. do and then he like wipes away a tear i was just like really touched by that and especially because she opens the door talking about how it had been two years and like there's that there's that the

girl who waited again and the last centurion who waited like no matter what they've been through they still have that place set waiting for him to come home i thought that was lovely um but because we we did briefly already talk about that i will i will go with just like the end the farewell the doctor's final speech thankfully we got to see young matt smith for a hot second again at the end in the time of the doctor before he regenerates. And I thought that this was like the perfect final note for this character. And, you know, for the pod, we've talked so much today about what is he willing to admit about himself?

What is he willing to see clearly about himself? And when he's saying here to Clara, times change and so must die. And then he sees like little Amelia and then obviously later grown Amy will wander down to him in his mind. But he says we all change. when you think about it. We're all different people all through our lives, and that's okay. That's good. You got to keep moving so long as you remember all the people that you used to be. Like, that's his great lesson. And to hear him voice it at the end, I thought was important. And as usual, when we're saying goodbye to a doctor, it's just very sad. Just always, like, very sad to say goodbye and move on to the next phase of the journey. So, yeah, what about you? I love that. I, however, I'm stuck in the past and don't like to move on. And so I will just say that like Billy Piper in general just being there was really important to me. But this one moment in particular, I rewatched like six separate times.

She says as the moment, not as Rose Tyler, but as the wolf girl, the moment. She says, you know the sound the TARDIS makes, that wheezing, groaning. That sound brings hope wherever it goes. And you start to hear it. And the war doctor says, yes, yes, I like to think it does. And she says to anyone who hears a doctor, anyone, however lost. She's out of focus over his shoulder and the camera's focused on his ear so that you know that he can hear 10 and 11 are showing up for him. And then the focus then goes back on her face.

She smiles, that massive Billy Piper smile and she says, even you. And it's just this, like, beautiful moment of just grace and compassion for this man who has to do this horrible thing. This gets at the center of what we, you know, to go back to like the good parts of. little Amelia Pond waiting in her garden, that like childish hope and call to adventure, the sound of the parking breaks still on the TARDIS, how important it is that we've like learned that the TARDIS herself is part of this decision of these men to like show up here,

how it all comes back to someone who is wearing the face of Rose Tyler. I just, just lost it. I just think it's so beautiful. I love to. And how like for, as all of you. often as he's the guy who runs, he's also, he's also the guy who comes back and who shows up. And as often he's the guy who saves, he is the guy who needs to be saved in this moment. And all right.

Capaldi prep, I'm going to keep it really quickly and just say this. There's three seasons of Capaldi. There's three seasons of Compaldi. I will say, I don't think they really like snap into what Capaldi is like truly capable of doing until his second season. And so if you're watching the first season, you're like, this feels like a little, like a little bit of an odd fit. I'm not sure.

I think they really get into it into season two and then season three is the, his third season is the pinnacle to me. So, and that's where like what is widely considered the best Capaldi episode is in his final season there. And one of the best episodes of Dr. Who of all time, which I would agree with. So just if you're like, I don't know, does this get better? I'm not feeling it. It does.

And if you're feeling it from the start, that's great too. So that does it for us. We're going to leave with a clip, and it's going to be similar to most emotional moment, but very conveniently for us. She read out the parts that are not in the clip, so you're going to hear the other parts of that clip of 11's goodbye. We did not plan that, but it is some gizmet.

We'll be back with our Asoka Deep Dive. As I wipe the tears out of my eyes. I'm really excited to talk to you about the next episode of Asoka. Hop on over to the Ringarverse for coverage of One Piece for coverage of Baldur's Gate and Starfield for coverage of Asoka over there. They're just like doing it over there. Join us next week for something, something droids.

And we're going to say goodbye along with Amelia Pond and her raggedy man. Amelia. Who's Amelia? The first face this face saw. I will not forget one line of this. Not one day, I swear. I will always remember when the doctor was me. It goes here while our listeners dissolve into peals of laughter,

because we started with an apoclip.