Flight Through Entirety: A Doctor Who Podcast (Flight Through Entirety)

The boys kick off the podcast by discussing the untransmitted pilot episode of Doctor Who.

The Doctor Who: The Beginning DVD box set contains the first three stories of Season 1, as well as the untransmitted pilot episode, and the Origins documentary Nathan mentions. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

An Adventure in Space and Time, Mark Gatiss’s docudrama about the origins of Doctor Who. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

An Unearthly Series: The Origins of a TV Legend, a 30-part series about the origins of the show, published on doctorwhonews.net in the lead-up to the 50th anniversary in 2013.

TARDIS Eruditorum, Dr Elizabeth Sandifer’s superb blog, tracking the history of the world, Great Britain and Doctor Who.

Picks of the week

Nathan: The Randomiser, a website dedicated to picking your next Doctor Who episode for you. On Twitter at @dwrandomiser.

Richard: Okay, also The Randomiser.

Brendan: The Big Finish Companion Chronicles set before An Unearthly Child, including The Beginning, Quinnis, and The Alchemists.

Brendan, Richard and Nathan discuss the first half of the show’s first season: An Unearthly Child, The Daleks, The Edge of Destruction, and Marco Polo. With hilarious results. (We hope.)

The Doctor Who: The Beginning DVD box set contains the first three stories of Season 1 — An Unearthly Child, The Daleks and The Edge of Destruction. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Loose Cannon Reconstruction of Marco Polo. (YouTube)

Rod’s pecan slice recipe.

Cornell, Day and Topping’s Discontinuity Guide: The Daleks.

Zienia Merton’s Space: 1999 clip. (YouTube)

Catch up with the latest news on the Flight Through Entirety Facebook page, or by following @FTEpodcast on Twitter. You can also follow Brendan at @brandybongos, and Nathan at @dwrandomiser. And you can follow Richard around the streets of Sydney. He won’t mind. He’s very sociable.

Nathan’s ringtone. (YouTube)

It’s 1964, and Brendan, Richard and Nathan take on the back half of Season 1: The Keys of Marinus, The Aztecs, The Sensorites and The Reign of Terror. More Barbara! More Billy-fluffs! More German Expressionism!

Buy the stories!

The Keys of Marinus (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

The Aztecs (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

The Sensorites (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

The Reign of Terror (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

The all-important topics of Architecture and German Expressionism.

Brendan’s happy censorship music is The Girl From Ipanema.

Cathy Gale from The Avengers!

Witness for the Prosecution, directed by Billy Wilder, and starring Marlene Dietrich.

Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Cornell, Day and Topping’s Discontinuity Guide: The Aztecs.

RIP Maya Angelou.

Planet Skaro Audios.

The online Doctor Who horoscope that Brendan mentions is at tardisday.com.

BroadDWCast, a comprehensive online guide to worldwide transmissions of Doctor Who. And if you want to know even more about Australian broadcast dates (and why wouldn’t you?), you can go to this page on Gallifrey Base.

Paul McGann’s Susan audios, including An Earthly Child, Relative Dimensions, Lucie Miller and To The Death. (These last two are McGann’s Season 4 finale, so: spoiler alert!)

The Manchurian Candidate, directed by John Frankenheimer.

Carole Ann Ford stars (oh, okay, appears) in The Day of the Triffids, and in The Great St. Trinian’s Train Robbery.

Picks of the week

Nathan: Tat Wood and Lawrence Miles’s seven-book series, About Time: The Unauthorized Guide to Doctor Who (Amazon US) (Amazon UK).

Brendan: The Wonderful Book of Doctor Who 1965 (Not 1964. Sorry.)

Richard: David Whitaker’s Doctor Who novelisations: Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks (Amazon US) (Amazon UK), Doctor Who and the Crusaders (Amazon US) (Amazon UK).

Brendan, Richard and Nathan take on the first three stories of Doctor Who’s difficult second season: Planet of Giants, The Dalek Invasion of Earth and The Rescue. Spoiler alert: we think that almost all of them are fantastic!

Buy the stories!

Planet of Giants (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

The Dalek Invasion of Earth (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

The Rescue/The Romans (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Take a look at the recipes for all of our delicious baked goods at the Food Machine.

And, of course, the ever-quotable Dr Elizabeth Sandifer.

Rachael Carson’s Silent Spring (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Robert Erlich’s The Population Bomb (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

The World’s Fair 1939, Futurama Exhibit

Mary Norton’s The Borrowers (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Carl Jung’s Animus and Anima

Chekhov’s Gun

John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (And don’t forget that Carole Ann Ford was in the 1963 film adaptation, for some reason.)

Airstrip One was Orwell’s name for England in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

The Increasingly Horrifying Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis.

John Wyndham’s Chocky (it’s really great: read it!) (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

The Works of Robert Aickman (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

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This episode, Brendan, Richard and Nathan tackle the difficult subjects of ants and fraternity as they discuss three ant-astic stories from the middle of Doctor Who’s second season: The Romans, The Web Planet and The Crusade. So tune up your lyres, pull up a dormouse, and listen along. There’s a bit of that cold peacock left in the fridge, I think.

Buy the stories!

The Rescue/The Romans (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

The Web Planet (Amazon US, but it’s insanely expensive, for some reason) (Amazon UK, ah, that’s better)

The Crusade soundtrack on Audible (Amazon US) (Amazon UK). The two extant episodes can be found on the Lost in Time box set. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

The Romans

The comprehensive and definitive Wikipedia articles on Nero and The Great Fire of Rome

Who on earth is Dot Cotton? And why does she look so much like that narrow-hipped vixen Lady Eleanor?

The incomparably brilliant I, Claudius can be watched in full on YouTube.

The Big Finish audio The One Doctor, starring Colin Baker, Bonnie Langford and TV’s Nero Christopher Biggins

Carry on Cleo (1964)

Pompeii (2014)

Spartacus (1960). The hilariously homoerotic scene Richard mentions can be found on YouTube, as an extract from the film The Celluloid Closet (1995).

The Web Planet

An excellent article on The Web Planet’s ratings and audience appreciation figures

A free book version of Paul Ernst’s Raid on the Termites on Project Gutenberg

Domingo Gonzales’s The Man in the Moone on Wikipedia

The incomparable Georges Méliès, inventor of special effects on film. His most famous film is La voyage dans la lune.

William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence (“God appears & God is light”)

New Age writer Eckhart Tolle

Carl Jung’s Animus and Anima

The Gaia Hypothesis, which was just beginning to be developed by James Lovelock at about the time that The Web Planet was first broadcast

The Big Finish audio Return to the Web Planet, starring Peter Davison, Sarah Sutton and Sam Kelly

The lovely Barbara Joss, who played Nemini. Her book My Left Breast: How Breast Cancer Transformed My Life is out of print, but you can see its Goodreads page here.

The Crusade

Doctor Who and the Crusaders by David Whitaker (Amazon US) (Amazon UK).

More Wikipedia goodness: this time about Pope (Keith) Urban II, The Third Crusade, and Scheherazade.

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Brendan, Richard and Nathan bring Season 2 to a triumphant close with The Space Museum, The Chase and The Time Meddler. And we like them all. No, really.

“I shall miss them. Yes, I shall miss them, silly old fusspots. Come along, my dear, it’s time we were off.”

Buy the stories!

The Space Museum/The Chase (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

The Time Meddler (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

The Space Museum

More weird timey-wimey stuff in Stephen King’s The Langoliers. Published as a short story in a collection called Four Past Midnight (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

The trippy Beatles film A Hard Day’s Night

Prime Minister of Rhodesia Ian Smith, famous for moonlighting as Ian Smith in Prisoner and Neighbours

The giant eyebrows of Gerry Anderson’s Supermarionation classics Stingray and Thunderbirds

Jeremy Bulloch as Boba Fett in The Empire Strikes Back, before George Lucas started digitally wrecking it

The Chase

Dr Elizabeth Sandifer’s redemptive reading of The Chase

Absolutely Fabulous, which remains great to the end, but does it cannibalise itself after the start of Series 2?

Morton Dill, as a refugee from The Beverly Hillbillies

No German Expressionism (sigh), but here’s the architect Gaudí, who clearly inspired the Mechonoids in the building of the city.

A Mechonoid and a d20? Can you tell them apart?

The Time Meddler

Peter Butterworth’s storied career in the Carry On films

The strong female characters of Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy, Angel, Firefly, Dr Horrible, and some superhero films or something apparently. Watch them all!

Turns out, it was Lyle Lanley who sold the monorail to Springfield. (How could I forget?)

No, sorry, NASA didn’t invent Tang or Space Food Sticks.

Joachim Phoenix falls in love with Siri in Spike Jonze’s film Her, not to be confused with Alethea Charlton’s fabulous Hur.

Picks of the week

Nathan: Running Through Corridors (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (Amazon AU

Richard: The Daleks comic strips in TV Century 21. Later reprinted as The Dalek Tapes in 1980s DWM, and as The Dalek Chronicles as a DWM Special in 1994. Adapted as an animation by Altered Vistas.

Brendan: Daleks vs Mechons

Follow us!

Pick your next Doctor Who story with Nathan’s therandomiser.net.

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Hold your breath, everyone! Brendan, Richard and Nathan besiege, invade and finally burn down the first three stories of Doctor Who’s highly controversial third season: Galaxy Four, Mission to the Unknown and The Myth Makers. Dusty Springfield wigs at the ready, girls!

Buy the stories!

Well, of the nine episodes we discuss this week, only one is known to exist. You can see episode 2 of Galaxy Four, Air Lock, as part of a reconstructed version of the entire story on The Aztecs: Special Edition DVD. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Galaxy Four audio, narrated by Peter Purvis. (Audible US) (Audible UK)

The Daleks’ Master Plan audio, narrated by Peter Purvis (Audible US) (Audible UK)

The Myth Makers audio, narrated by who else but Peter Purvis? (Audible US) (Audible UK). You can also buy Stephen Thorne’s reading of Donald Cotton’s excellent novelisation (Audible US) (Audible UK).

Galaxy Four

Richard recommends Susan Sontag’s Notes on Camp (1964), and he’s right to do so. Don’t miss it.

Buy your Sindy dolls here. (No, don’t.)

Mission to the Unknown (Dalek Cutaway, anyone?)

Ian Levine’s animated version of Mission to the Unknown can be found on YouTube, for the time being at least. (Part 1) (Part 2)

Here’s the interview by Loose Cannon with the cast of Mission to the Unknown — Edward de Souza (Marc Cory), Barry Jackson (Jeff Garvey) and Jeremy Young (Gordon Lowery).

The Myth Makers

Increase your classical cred, and your appreciation of this brilliant story, by reading Robert Fagles’s beautiful translations of the Iliad (Amazon US) (Amazon UK), and the Aeneid (Amazon US) (Amazon UK).

Follow Vicki’s mysterious further adventures in the Big Finish Audio, Frostfire.

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Our flight through Season 3 continues with an indefensibly shouty episode devoted to Doctor Who’s longest (oh, okay second longest) story ever: The Daleks’ Master Plan.

Is Katarina a companion? Which is the delegate with black balls all over his head? Is Bret Vyon a companion? Has anyone ever been more fabulous than Sara Kingdom? And should Doctor Who be doing this sort of story at all?

(A bit of overtalking at the start of this episode, I’m afraid. This is what the combination of Terry Nation and John Wiles does to your brain. It will never be allowed to happen again.)

Buy the story!

Only three of the twelve episodes are known to exist: episodes 2, 5 and 10. These can be found on the Lost in Time box set. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

The BBC audio version, narrated by Peter Purves, can be found here: (Audible US) (Audible UK).

The Daleks’ Master Plan

Here’s Elizabeth Sandifer’s review of the story. It’s terribly, terribly clever.

Screen Online’s summary of Dennis Spooner’s superhero drama series The Champions. Sounds intriguing, and bears out Richard’s theory that Spooner is responsible for all the fun dialogue in this story.

For those of you who love Blake’s 7 as much as we do, check out Adventures With The Wife and Blake, Volume 1: The Blake Years, and Volume 2: The Avon Years.

Rosemary Howe’s lovely fan novelisation of this story is available here for subscribers to AustLit.

Z-Cars and Dixon of Dock Green are two seminal British police shows from the 1960s. Here’s El Sandifer’s take on the two shows, and their relationship to Doctor Who.

Here’s an animated version of episode 7, The Feast of Steven.

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Our endless flight through Doctor Who’s third season chokes, stalls and crashes into The Massacre, The Ark and The Celestial Toymaker. And Nathan’s not at all happy. (Let’s put a cork on that, Nathan!)

These are three controversial stories, and we’d like to know what you think. Do you hate The Massacre, or do you love it as much as all right-thinking Doctor Who commentators? Is The Ark racist? Is The Celestial Toymaker appalling or merely terrible?

Please let us know what you think by leaving a comment on our website or on our Facebook page.

Buy the stories!

None of The Massacre exists (sigh), so it’s just not possible for Nathan to see how great it actually is. But here’s the BBC audio version, narrated by the indefatigable Peter Purves. (Audible US) (Audible UK)

The Ark exists, in all of its (possibly) racist glory. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Only the final episode of The Celestial Toymaker still exists, and it can be found on the Lost in Time box set. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

You can also get the full BBC Audio version of The Celestial Toymaker, narrated by who else but Peter Purves? (Audible US) (Audible UK)

The Massacre (of St Bartholomew’s Eve)

Cornell, Day and Topping’s Discontinuity Guide: “Not only the best historical, but the best Hartnell, and, in its serious handling of dramatic material in a truly dramatic style, arguably the best ever Doctor Who story.”

Fact Fans! Here’s the Wikipedia entry on the St Bartholomew Day’s Massacre. Enjoy!

The Ark

Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men, a novel about the history of humanity in the far, far future, can be found in its entirety on the Gutenberg Australia website.

Here’s Whoopi Goldberg explaining how we should regard the racism in Looney Tunes cartoons.

The Celestial Toymaker

Peter Haining’s seminal book on Classic Doctor Who, Doctor Who: A Celebration is out of print, of course. But you can still find copies on Amazon. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Here’s a review of a production of George and Margaret, co-directed by Gerald Savory and performed in Boston in 1948.

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We’ve finally reached the end of our flight through Doctor Who’s third season. It’s been a long and controversial journey, but happily it ends with The Gunfighters, The Savages and The War Machines. So have one on the house. It isn’t every day we get the over–twenties in this place. (Oh wait, it is.)

Buy the stories!

The Gunfighters exists in its entirety, and it’s unmissable. If you haven’t seen it yet, you must buy it at once. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (In the UK and Australia, it was inexplicably released along with the Peter Davison story The Awakening in a box set called Earth Story.)

The Savages is completely missing, but the soundtrack still exists, narrated for the last time by the ubiquitous Peter Purves. (Audible US) (Audible UK)

The War Machines also exists in full. Which is nice. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

The Gunfighters

Ugh. Peter Haining’s book on Classic Doctor Who again, Doctor Who: A Celebration. Really, don’t bother. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Go on, buy The Ballad of the Last Chance Saloon on iTunes at once. You know you want to.

And if you’ve enjoyed this story, try these classic westerns: The Searchers, starring John Wayne, High Noon, starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly, and True Grit, also starring John Wayne, who seems to be the Peter Purves of film Westerns.

All six episodes of Rex Tucker’s The Three Musketeers, starring Laurence Payne, Roger Delgado, Paul Whitsun-Jones and Adrienne Corri, have been lost. Sigh.

The Savages

Want to read more about The Savages? Here’s Elizabeth Sandifer’s review. The Wife in Space enjoyed watching it as well.

The War Machines

Like the Doctor, Steven Hawking is terrified by Artificial Intelligence.

Take a look at this article from Den of Geek about Adam Adamant Lives!

Here’s the weirdly incorrect IMDb page which lists our very own Jackie Lane as a guest star on an episode of Get Smart. Gosh, I love Get Smart.

Picks of the Week

Brendan: A trilogy of Big Finish audios starring Peter Purves (again) as Steven: The Perpetual Bond, The Cold Equations, and The First Wave.

Nathan: Watch this 6-minute video of Jackie Lane in Paris in November 2010, created by her friend Julian Davies, and set to the music of Edith Piaf. (Oh, Jackie. If they find The Savages, would you come back and do the DVD commentary? Please say yes.)

Richard: Donald Cotton’s novelisations of The Gunfighters and The Myth Makers are sadly out of print. (Why aren’t they releasing all the Target novelisations as e-books, at least? What’s going on here?)

Still, all is not lost: Audible has an spoken-word version of The Gunfighters, read by a fantastically rough-sounding Shane Rimmer. (Audible US) (Audible UK). The Myth Makers is read by Mr Shouty himself, Stephen Thorne. (Audible US) (Audible UK)

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And we’re back, now on the big screen in glorious Technicolor! This week, Brendan Who, Nathan Who and Richard Who discuss the two 1960s Peter Cushing films, Dr. Who and the Daleks and Daleks Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. Come with us into that strange new world. We cannot guarantee your safety. But I can promise you unimagined cakes!

Buy the films!

You can get lovely remastered Blu-ray versions of both films. Dr. Who and the Daleks (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) and Daleks Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK).

Dr. Who and the Daleks

George Pal produced lots of iconic science fiction films in the 50s and 60s, including When Worlds Collide, The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine, whose Eloi clearly share a stylist with this film’s Thals.

Daleks Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.

The episode of Danger Man that Richard mentions, “The Paperchase”, is available on YouTube in its entirety.

Here’s the Wikipedia article about Trümmerfilm, also mentioned by Richard, a genre of film that deals with the aftermath of the destruction visited on Germany in World War II, including films directed by Wolfgang Staudte, as well as Germany Year Zero.

Luis Buñuel was a crazy surrealist filmmaker, who worked with Salvador Dalí on the film Un Chien Andalou.

Chuck Jones directed many of the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies Cartoons for Warner Bros.

Sir Bernard Cribbins stars in Carry On Jack. (Is he Sir Bernard yet? If not, can you get on that, Your Maj?)

Ray Brooks, who plays David, stars in the fabulous British comedy The Knack…And How to Get It.

Here’s a fabulous trailer from the alternative universe in which there was a third film based on The Chase: Daleks vs Mechons.

Here’s the entry on the TARDIS Wikia about Journey Into Time, the unbroadcast pilot for an unmade 52-episode radio series starring Peter Cushing as Dr. Who. Sadly, we couldn’t find any details about the proposed fan recording of the script, which was re-discovered a couple of years ago.

Brendan’s pick of the week

The Peter Cushing Dr. Who Fannual is now available. What would a 60s–style Doctor Who Annual have looked like if it was based on the world of the Peter Cushing Dr. Who films?

(The U.N.I.T. fannual that Brendan mentions is still under development.)

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It’s the end of an era. In this episode, Brendan, Richard and Nathan say goodbye to the Doctor and hello to his suspicious new replacement, as we discuss The Smugglers, The Tenth Planet and The Power of the Daleks.

Thank you. It’s good. Keep warm.

Buy the Stories!

The Smugglers is completely missing, but an audio version is available, narrated by the delightful Anneke Wills. (Audible US) (Audible UK)

The Tenth Planet has been released on DVD, with an animated version of the missing Episode 4. One of the special features is a rare interview with William Hartnell. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

And, heartbreakingly, The Power of the Daleks is also completely missing. As usual, an audio version is available, narrated by the beautiful Anneke Wills. (Audible US) (Audible UK)

The Smugglers

Did you know that The Smugglers has no music at all? (Awkward silence…)

Imagine two hip young people teaching the older generation about their fab mod ways: it’s not Richard’s longed-for alt-universe Season 4 with Billy, Ben and Polly: it’s It’s Trad, Dad!. To appreciate the full horror of this film, take a look at this. I dare you.

Dr Syn was a retired pirate posing as a clergyman while working as a smuggler in a series of novels by Russell Thorndike, written in the early 20th century.

And no episode’s shownotes would be complete without our obligatory reference to a Carry On film. This week: Carry On Jack (1963), which chronicles the adventures of midshipman Alfred Poop-Decker. Sigh.

The Tenth Planet

Dr Elizabeth Sandifer’s essay on this story is very strange and interesting. Read it.

The Big Finish audio adventure Spare Parts tells the story of the Genesis of the Cybermen. It’s unmissably good.

The late Majel Barrett-Roddenberry played the Enterprise computer in both Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Aleister Crowley and H. P. Lovecraft are possible influences on the Cybermen’s dark mirror of Enlightenment.

And Brigadier-General Jack D. Ripper from Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) is a possible influence on the crazy Z-bomb antics of General Cutler in Episode 3.

The Power of the Daleks

We’re too impressed by the story itself to spend much time on obscure cultural references. So no strange links for you here. Why not read what the Wife in Space thought about it?

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Our flight through Season 4 continues, plunging underwater and crash landing on the moon with The Highlanders, The Underwater Menace and The Moonbase. Nothing in ze vorld can stop us now!

Buy the stories!

Yet again, no episodes of The Highlanders exist. However, the audio survives, of course, and has been released by the BBC with a linking narration by Frazer Hines. (Audible US) (Audible UK)

Things get even more complicated with The Underwater Menace. Episode 3 was included in the Lost in Time box set. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK). Episode 2 was rediscovered in 2011, and is the only extant episode of the entire show not yet released on DVD [citation needed]. An audio version exists, narrated by the charming Anneke Wills. (Audible US) (Audible UK)

The Moonbase has been released on DVD, with passable animated versions of the missing episodes 1 and 3. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

The Highlanders

Oh my God. Here’s Hannah Gordon singing The Windmills of Your Mind on Morecambe & Wise in 1973.

The Underwater Menace

Thunderball, the fourth Bond film, released just before this story screened, spends a massive 20.8% of its running time underwater. Yawn.

Other thrilling underwater frolics are also available here: Gerry Anderson’s Stingray and Irwin Allen’s Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, starring Barbara Eden.

Here is a lovely picture of some Fish People.

And here, from the BBC website, is the scene between Troughton and Professor Zaroff from episode 2.

Geoffrey Orme wrote some screenplays for the increasingly mental Old Mother Riley film series in the 30s, 40s and 50s, but, sadly, not the one where she meets Bela Lugosi as a vampire.

The Moonbase

David Banks wrote an exhausting history of the Cybermen which was published in the 1990s. (Amazon UK). So there’s that then.

The first episode of The Avengers featuring the Cybernauts is availiable in full, probably illegally, on Dailymotion. (Sadly no longer.)

The delightful Damian Shanahan is responsible for finding many surviving clips from otherwise lost episodes, clips that were cut from the program by the ABC’s censors because they were too violent. You can read about this on Steve Phillips’s Doctor Who Clips List website, where the surviving clips are exhaustively catalogued.

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In this week’s episode of Flight out of Gatwick, we discuss Season 4’s last three stories, The Macra Terror, The Faceless Ones and The Evil of the Daleks. Farewell, Ben and Polly. Hello, Victoria. Work hard and happily! (We know you will.)

Buy the stories!

Another season 4 podcast, another three incomplete stories. Sigh.

The surviving three episodes, The Faceless Ones 1 and 3 and The Evil of the Daleks 2, are all available in the Lost of Time box set. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

However all three stories exist as BBC audios, and can be bought on Audible.

The Macra Terror is, bizarrely, narrated by TV’s Colin Baker. (Audible US) (Audible UK). Even more bizarrely, a second version exists, narrated by the delightfully elfin Anneke Wills. (Audible US) (Audible UK)

The Faceless Ones is narrated by Frazer Hines. (Audible US) (Audible UK). And so is The Evil of the Daleks. (Audible US) (Audible UK).

The Macra Terror

The Goodies episode “Radio Goodies”, to which we all so hilariously refer, has its own Wikipedia entry. Amazing!

More weird 60s mind-control concerns arise in The Ipcress File (1965) (which is amazingly good).

The Faceless Ones

Benedict Cumberbatch stars in the BBC Radio sitcom Cabin Pressure, in which he plays the only pilot of the single-plane airline MJN Air.

So, it was the Refusians from The Ark who lost their identities in a galaxy accident. According to Meadows, the Chameleons lost their identities in “a gigantic explosion”. Which is much stupider, really.

The Evil of the Daleks

Before there was Upstairs, Downstairs, before there was Downton Abbey, we had The Forsyte Saga (1967). Does that account for Victoria Waterfield?

Deborah Watling had starred opposite George Baker (Full Circle) in Dennis Potter’s TV film Alice (1965), which looked at the strange and weirdly suspicious life of Alice in Wonderland’s author Charles Lutwitge Dodson.

Altered Vistas is a website which chronicles the history of Doctor Who in comic strips. They have created CG animated versions of all the TV Century 21 comic strips. Take a look at them here.

Picks of the Week

Brendan

Anneke Wills’s two autobiographies, Naked and Self-portrait, are currently out of print. New and second-hand copies are available from Amazon, however. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK).

Anneke’s In Focus can be preordered for its re-release early in 2015. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Richard

The Orton Diaries are playwright Joe Orton’s hilarious account of the last eight months of his life — candid, funny and outrageous. And he mentions Doctor Who! We own him! (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Nathan

Volume 5 of El Sandifer’s TARDIS Eruditorum contains essays covering Tom Baker’s last four seasons on Doctor Who. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

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This week, we’re looking at the first three stories of Season 5: The Tomb of the Cybermen, The Abominable Snowmen and The Ice Warriors. And to celebrate, each of us is wearing a different outfit — vinyl, fur or fibreglass scales. Monster Season, we’re ready for ya!

Buy the stories!

Thanks to those lovely Mormons (or not, actually), The Tomb of the Cybermen exists in its entirety, and is available to purchase on DVD. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK). In Australia and the UK, the Special Edition DVD was released as part of the Revisitations 3 box set.

The Abominable Snowmen is not so lucky. The surviving Episode 2 is available in the Lost in Time box set. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK). An audio version, narrated by Frazer Hines, is also available. (Audible US) (Audible UK)

Two episodes of The Ice Warriors are missing, but they have been skilfully animated by Qurios Entertainment, which means that we have a DVD release of the entire story. Hooray! (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

The Tomb of the Cybermen

Oops. Turns out that GarageBand for the iPad is only capable of recording podcasts that are ten minutes long. And so we suddenly had to switch to Brendan’s iMac. Can you spot the difference in sound quality? (If so, sorry. I blame George Pastell.)

Well, we spent ages discussing Victoria’s wardrobe, and said hardly anything about the story itself. But, frankly, we regret nothing!

The Abominable Snowmen

Ooh, Nathan’s Randomiser gets a mention. If you want a computer to choose your next Doctor Who story, then that’s the place to go.

That Tibetan story that everyone is secretly thinking of is James Hilton’s The Lost Horizon. The Goon Show episode is called Shangri-La Again.

The 1957 film The Abominable Snowman might be an, er, inspiration for this story?

Of course, Buddhism and Psychedelia were inseparable in the 1960s, thanks to Timothy Leary.

The Ice Warriors

Richard’s mention of Zardoz (1974) can’t go without comment. If you’re keen to see Sean Connery in tiny, tiny pants, then just look here. Yeesh.

We have a competition!

If you would like to win a 1970s Target novelisation from our collection, here’s what to do. Like us on Facebook, share the post announcing this episode, and then comment on our website. Or if you prefer Twitter, follow us, retweet the tweet announcing the episode, and then comment on our website. Easy.

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Follow us on Twitter, or on Facebook. Check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes. We’d really appreciate it.

Recently unearthed in a Nigerian television station by a former oil company employee, Episode 15 of Flight Through Entirety covers the middle stories of Patrick Troughton’s middle season: The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear. Crank up the foam machine, boys (as usual)!

Buy the stories!

And, for once (I Love You Philip Morris), eleven out of the twelve episodes we discuss this episode are still in existence. And you can buy them all on DVD.

The Enemy of the World is one of seven Patrick Troughton stories that exist in their entirety. Praise Amdo! (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

The Web of Fear is missing episode 3, but the DVD contains a brilliant reconstruction which actually works pretty well. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

The Enemy of the World

For those of you who are hanging out for us to abandon this silly children’s science fiction programme so that we can discuss the Bond films, can I whet your appetite with an incredible trip through the Bond oeuvre by a brilliant film critic? Here’s BlogalongaBond by The Incredible Suit. Read it all.

It wouldn’t be an episode of Flight Through Entirety without numerous references to The Avengers. Fans should check out The Avengers TV website. The episode The Living Dead is available online, probably illegally, here. (Sadly but predictably, this video is no longer available.)

In The Great Dictator (1940), Charlie Chaplin plays the hero, a character only known as A Jewish Barber, as well as the villain, a weird over-the-top version of Adolf Hitler called Adenoid Hynkel. I’ve never seen it, but it sounds incredible.

The Web of Fear

Some rare and wonderful photos of the Yeti, from both The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear were published in The Mirror in 2012. Check them out here.

In this story, Jon Rollason played David Frost analogue Harold Chorley. He was also Dr Martin King in three episodes of season 2 of The Avengers.

Elizabeth Sandifer explains her views on the UNIT Dating Controversy in a strange psychogeographic review of The Invasion. She agrees with Nathan. Which is why Nathan has put her in these show notes.

We have a competition!

If you would like to win one of three 1970s Target novelisations from our personal collection, just post a comment on our website underneath the post for this episode. And, as Missy says, say something nice.

Follow us!

Follow us on Twitter, or on Facebook. Check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes. We’d really appreciate it.

We’ve reached the end of Season 5, so pull up a bernalium rod, switch on the sexual air supply, and get ready to discuss the last two stories of the season, Fury from the Deep and The Wheel in Space. And just you watch your lip or I’ll put you across my knee and larrup you.

Buy the stories!

No full episodes of Fury from the Deep survive. Which is terribly sad, obviously. Still, you can get the soundtrack, narrated, as always, by Frazer Hines. (Audible US) (Audible UK)

The two surviving episodes of The Wheel in Space, Episodes 3 and 6, are available on the Lost in Time box set. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK). An audio version is also available, beautifully narrated by the delightfully pert Wendy Padbury. (Audible US) (Audible UK)

Fury from the Deep

Richard mentions Adult Swim’s Too Many Cooks. I can’t tell you anything about it. Just watch it.

Richard and Brendan both use Godzilla vs Hedorah (1971) to illustrate what TV Tropes calls the Muck Monster trope.

Fury from the Deep is based on ideas from Victor Pemberton’s own 1966 radio drama, The Slide, starring future Time Lords Maurice Denham and Roger Delgado, as well as Pemberton’s long–time partner and one–time Buddhist monk David Spenser. You can read a review of it here. And you can even buy it! (Audible US) (Audible UK)

Fans of murderous gay couples should check out Diamonds are Forever (1971), Rope (1948), and Truman Capote’s 1966 novel In Cold Blood.

H. P. Lovecraft is a twentieth-century racist and horror writer, who is a huge influence on Doctor Who, particularly in the Hinchcliffe Era. His most famous short story is The Call of Cthulhu.

Fans of people walking out in to the sea should check out the last episode of Series 1 of The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, and the second episode of the TV series of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Victor Pemberton also wrote The Pescatons, an audio drama starring Tom Baker and Lis Sladen, which was released as an LP in 1976. Here’s Elizabeth Sandifer’s review.

The Wheel in Space

Iz Skinner (aka TardisTimegirl) created some beautiful animations which were used in the Loose Cannon reconstructions of these episodes. Here is her Ridley Scott–style trailer for The Wheel in Space. It’s beautiful. She also animated a version of a special trailer broadcast the week before The Web of Fear starring Patrick Troughton.

Brendan theorises that Star Trek was a possible influence on Wheel. But, fascinatingly, Richard mentions two possible influences on Star Trek itself. The first is Raumpatrouille Orion, a German science-fiction precursor to Trek from the 1960s. You can watch the entire first episode online. It’s in German. It’s fabulously modernist and spectacular. The second is Conquest of Space (1955).

Victoria Waterfield meets the Doctor again in the crazy multicoloured form of Colin Baker in the Big Finish audio Power Play.

Picks of the week

Brendan

Iz Skinner’s wonderful series of Doctor Who–related animations.

Nathan

FACT FANS! If there’s anything at all you need to know about Doctor Who in any of its incarnations, consult the TARDIS Data Core. There’s even an app for it on the iOS App Store, and an Android app on Google Play. (Sadly, these apps no longer exist.)

Richard

Victor Pemberton’s novelisation of Fury from the Deep is out of print, and mysteriously unavailable as an e-book on Amazon. However, there is an audio version, read by David Troughton, who does a lovely impression of his father’s Doctor Who. (Audible US) (Audible UK)

Nathan again

An audiobook of Carnival of Monsters has recently been released, read by television’s Katy Manning. (Audible US) (Audible UK)

We have a competition!

If you would like to win one of three 1970s Target novelisations from our personal collection, just post a comment on our website underneath the post for this episode.

Follow us!

Follow us on Twitter, or on Facebook. Check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes. We’d really appreciate it.

All set, Jimmy? It’s time for Flight Through Entirety to enter the final season of the 1960s, as we discuss a rapidly-improving and largely foam-free trio of stories: The Dominators, The Mind Robber and The Invasion.

Buy the episodes!

For once, all three of the stories we discuss in this episode have been released on DVD. So you can actually watch them. (Although, in some cases, you might not want to.)

The Dominators episode 3 was returned to the archives in 1978, so we have all of it. Sigh. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

The Mind Robber has always existed. It was repeated on ABC-TV in Australia in 1986. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

The Invasion is still missing episodes 1 and 4, but they were expertly animated by Cosgrove Hall for the story’s DVD release in 2006. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

The Dominators

Fans of Joan and Jackie Collins won’t want to miss their fabulous biopic by French & Saunders.

Oh, God, what else? Elizabeth Sandifer’s review is a good place to go for a discussion of the horrible politics in this story. (“Not only is it an attack on the entire ethos that underlies the Doctor as a character, it’s an attempt to twist and pervert the show away from what it is and towards something ugly, cruel, and just plain unpleasant.” Yeesh.)

The Mind Robber

George Orwell’s essay on Boys’ Weeklies discusses the politics of the kind of stories written by the Master of Fiction before he was kidnapped by, er, whatever.

According to The Living Handbook of Narratology, metalepsis is “any intrusion by the extradiegetic narrator or narratee into the diegetic universe (or by diegetic characters into a metadiegetic universe, etc.), or the inverse”. And this story has metalepsis in spades. Don’t tell me we’re not educational.

Edith Nesbit’s Five Children and It, which sounds like a terrifying premise for a Stephen King sequel, is actually a famous English children’s book, published in 1902. It’s a part of the tradition of children’s fantasy fiction which will eventually give rise to Doctor Who.

You should also ignore Nathan and read Gulliver’s Travels. It’s really clever and funny and entertaining, particularly the bit where Gulliver puts out a fire in the Lilliputian palace by weeing on it. No really.

The Invasion

Richard identifies the inspiration for the incidental music as The Ipcress File (1965), a brilliant kind of anti-Bond spy film starring Michael Cain. Just watch it.

Fans of Isobel Watkins and her modelling aspirations might enjoy Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up (1996), a groovy film in which a very now young photographer, creeping on a mysterious woman in a park, accidentally photographs a murder.

We have a competition!

If you would like to win one of three 1970s Target novelisations from our personal collection, just post a comment on our website underneath the post for this episode.

Follow us!

Follow us on Twitter, or on Facebook. Check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes. We’d really appreciate it.

In this week’s trippy episode, we say hello to Robert Holmes and goodbye to the BBC foam machine, as we discuss two stories from Patrick Troughton’s final season: The Krotons and The Seeds of Death. Smell that hydrogen telluride. Very bracing.

Buy the stories!

For the first time in a very long while, both of the stories we cover this episode exist in their entirety. And they’re both (kind of) worth watching! So off you go:

The Krotons (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

The Seeds of Death (Amazon US)

In the UK and Australia, The Seeds of Death: Special Edition was released on DVD as part of the Revisitations 2 box set, along with Carnival of Monsters and Resurrection of the Daleks. (Amazon UK)

The Krotons

Prison in Space by Dick Sharples was a truly horrifying script, mercifully dropped by the production team in favour of The Krotons. It was revived, unwisely, as a Big Finish audio drama, and released as part of the Second Doctor Box Set in 2010.

More horrific sexism can be seen in The Worm that Turned, a series of “comedy” sketches from the 1980 season of The Two Ronnies. (Which is otherwise pretty great.)

The Seeds of Death

Let’s get all literary for a moment. Brendan mentions The Machine Stops (1909) by E. M. Forster, an English writer perhaps best known for A Room with a View. In this short story, Forster imagines a future where humanity is completely dependent on technology, and the terrible consequences when that technology fails.

H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds (1898) tells the story of a Martian invasion of Southern England. It was famously adapted into a radio play by Orson Welles in 1938, a film by George Pal in 1953, a film by Steven Spielberg in 2005 (starring Tom Cruise) and a prog rock album by Jeff Wayne in 1978.

Lords of the Red Planet was Brian Hayles’s original script for this part of Season 6. It was dropped by the production team, only to be revived as a Big Finish audio drama in 2013.

We have a competition!

If you would like to win a Target novelisation from our personal collection, just post a comment on our website underneath the post for this episode. We’ll be giving away three books every time we reach the end of a season.

Follow us!

As always, you can follow us on Twitter or Facebook, check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com and rate or review us on iTunes. We can’t wait to hear from you!

Well, it’s literally the end of an era. In our last episode for 2014, we discuss the last two stories of the 1960s, and the last two stories of the Patrick Troughton era, The Space Pirates and The War Games. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!

Buy the stories!

The Space Pirates is the last story with missing episodes. Which is quite a relief. Episode 2 is the only one that remains: you can see it on the Lost in Time box set. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK). An audio version exists, with linking narration by Frazer Hines. (Audible US) (Audible UK)

And Patrick Troughton’s final story, and the last story of the 1960s, The War Games, has been released on DVD in its gloriously restored entirety. It costs nearly $400 on Amazon US for some reason; it’s also available from Amazon UK at a much more sensible price.

The Space Pirates

Fans of slow-moving model spaceships will enjoy Stanley Kubrick’s science fiction masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

Fans of Dudley Foster, who plays Pirate Captain Maurice Caven, will enjoy his appearance as Mr Goat in the Avengers episode “Something Nasty in the Nursery” (1967).

Fans of dull James Bond films involving Kevin McClory will enjoy Thunderball (1965) and Never Say Never Again (1983).

Fans of putting cowboys in space operas will enjoy the brilliant and tragically short-lived TV series Firefly. A lot.

Fans of not wasting hours of their lives watching The Space Pirates will enjoy the the cut-down fifty-minute Whoflix version.

The War Games

Oh! What a Lovely War (1969) is Sir Richard Attenborough’s musical take on World War I, based on a 1963 stage musical.

Journey into Space by Charles Chilton, who also wrote Oh! What a Lovely War, was a science fiction radio series first broadcast on BBC radio between 1953 and 1958. (Philip Hincliffe mentions it in the DVD commentary for The Robots of Death.) It regularly out-rated TV programmes that were on at the same time. Some public-spirited individual has uploaded much of the series to YouTube.

Astrophysicist Fred Hoyle’s novel October the First Is Too Late was first published in 1966. Its world is splintered into different time zones by the effects of radiation or something, much like the battlefields of The War Games.

As usal, fans of The Avengers should check out The Avengers TV website.

Picks of the week

Brendan

Zoë Heriot’s adventures continue after the Time Lords return her to the Wheel, in the Big Finish Companion Chronicles, particularly Echoes of Grey, The Memory Cheats and The Uncertainty Principle.

Nathan

Matthew Waterhouse’s entertaining autobiography Blue Box Boy. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Richard

Shockingly, Richard’s been watching things other than Doctor Who, including Catweazle, starring the planet Chloris’s very own Geoffrey Bayldon (Amazon US) (Amazon UK), and The Champions, co-created by Dennis Spooner. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

We have a competition!

If you would like to win a Target novelisation from our personal collection, just post a comment on our website underneath the post for this episode. We’ll be giving away three books every time we reach the end of a season.

Follow us!

As always, you can follow us on Twitter or Facebook, check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com and rate or review us on iTunes. We can’t wait to hear from you!

In this Very Special Episode, Brendan, Richard and Nathan are interviewed by Doctor Who convention impresario Todd Beilby about their experience of podcasting their way through Doctor Who in the sixties. Hartnell, Troughton or Cushing? Barbara, Polly or Zoë? (Barbara, obviously.) What’s our favourite story? Our favourite moment? Our favourite villain? Our favourite pratfall? And, most importantly, what have we learned from our flight through entirety?

Special thanks to friend-of-the-podcast Peter Griffiths for his help with the questions.

Links

• Anita Sarkeesian’s series Tropes vs Women in Video Games can be found at the Feminist Frequency Website.
• Anneke Wills’s autobiographies can all be found and ordered from her website.
• The Voord return in the recently-released Big Finish audio The Domain of the Voord. And the Nimon are back in Paul Cornell and Caroline Symcox’s Seasons of Fear.
• Annie Proulx regrets writing Brokeback Mountain.

Follow us!

As always, you can follow us on Twitter or Facebook, check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com and rate or review us on iTunes. We can’t wait to hear from you!

We’ve jumped a time track only to find ourselves in the 1970s, watching a strange parallel-universe version of our favourite show. Where’s the TARDIS gone? What’s with all these different colours? And, most importantly, what’s happened to the Doctor’s nose? Join us, my dear fellow, as we try to find the answers to some of these questions by watching the first two stories of Jon Pertwee’s first season, Spearhead from Space and Doctor Who and the Silurians.

Buy the stories!

From now on, not only do all the stories exist, but they’ve all been released on DVD. So this bit’s easy.

• Spearhead from Space (Amazon US). In the UK, it can be bought as part of the Mannequin Mania box set, which includes Terror of the Autons. A must-have. (Amazon UK)

• Spearhead from Space on Blu-ray, in stunning HD (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

• Doctor Who and the Silurians is published as part of the Beneath the Surface box set, which includes The Sea Devils and Warriors of the Deep (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Spearhead from Space

Kim Catrall, from Sex and the City and, of course, Star Trek VI (1991), played a slightly less lethal and slightly more creepy mannequin in the film, er, Mannequin (1987).

The Avengers and Peter Wyngarde’s Jason King both have a history of strong, fabulous women, but none more strong and fabulous than Caroline John’s Liz Shaw. (Oh, okay, Emma Peel.)

Even in the early 70s, millions of deprived Britons would tune into radio comedies like Round the Horne and The Navy Lark, starring Jon Pertwee.

If you’re thrillingly open-minded, you might enjoy the idea of agalmatophilia, which is a fetish involving sexual attraction to a statue or mannequin. If not, I’m sorry I brought it up.

Terrance Dicks’s novelisation of this story, The Auton Invasion, has been recently re-released as a paperback. It’s also available on the Kindle. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Fans of the moments of gritty realism in 1970s Who might enjoy Steve McQueen in Bullitt (1968), Michael Caine in Get Carter (1971) or Dennis Waterman in The Sweeney. Fans of Pertwee hurtling down the hill in a wheelchair might enjoy the Ealing Comedies of the 1950s.

Captain Kremmen was an important part of Richard and Nathan’s childhood. You can get a taste of it here. Watch it on YouTube. You won’t regret it. (Oh, okay, you might.)

Moonboots and Dinner Suits is Jon Pertwee’s autobiography, first published in 1985. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Doctor Who and the Silurians

Derrick Sherwin and Peter Bryant had an escape plan in the form of Special Project Air. It didn’t really work out though.

Watch Jennifer Saunders as Jane Seymour in Doctor Quinn: Mad Woman.

Malcolm Hulke’s novelisation of this story, Doctor Who and the Cave-Monsters, was also recently re-released, both in paperback and for the Kindle. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK). Caroline John reads the audiobook, and does a superb impersonations of both Jon Pertwee and Fulton Mackay. (Audible US) (Audible UK)

The New Series Silurians are based very closely on the Voth from the Star Trek: Voyager episode Distant Origin, who were in turn based loosely on the Silurians from this story.

Gerry Anderson’s The Secret Service stars a marionette vicar who solves crimes. Aren’t you glad to live in a world where such things exist?

“I’m a Silurian. And I’m going for my tea break.”

We have a competition

If you would like to win a Target novelisation from our personal collection, just write a comment on our website underneath the post for this episode. We’ll be giving away three books every time we reach the end of a season.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, and Nathan is, unimaginatively enough, @nathanbottomley.You can follow the podcast on Twitter as @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our groovily–revamped website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes: we’re desperate to reach new heights of internet fame.

As our flight through the first season of post–Doctor Who Doctor Who comes to a close, Brendan, Richard and Nathan discuss The Ambassadors of Death and fan-favourite Inferno. Hold on tight: there’s never been a bore like this one!

Buy the stories!

The Ambassadors of Death was released on DVD in 2012. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Inferno has had two DVD releases: the original in 2006, and a Special Edition in 2013. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

The Ambassadors…of DEATH!

We’ve mentioned The Ipcress File (1965) before as an inspiration for Doctor Who during this period. Gosh, it’s great. Have you watched it yet?

ITC Entertainment was an English production company founded by Lew Grade in 1954, famous for producing high-quality, high-budget genre television for the international market. Its most famous shows include The Champions, The Prisoner, The Persuaders!, UFO and Space: 1999.

The Scooby Doo/Doctor Who comic that Brendan mentions can be found here.

Here’s Peter Capaldi and Katy Manning larking around on the TARDIS set. And here’s Peter and Janet Fielding from Janet’s Twitter feed.

Much to Nathan’s horror, the adventures of Dr Liz Shaw continue in the BBV series P.R.O.B.E., which also stars Louise Jameson, Jon Pertwee, Peter Davison, Sylvester McCoy, Terry Molloy, Mark Gatiss and Reece Shearsmith (TV’s Patrick Troughton).

Fans of kissing Peter Davison will enjoy David Walliams and Mark Gatiss in The Kidnappers, which can be found on Disc 1 of The Beginning DVD box set.

Counter–Measures is a Big Finish spin-off series chronicling the further adventures of Group Captain Gilmore, Professor Rachel Jensen and Allison Williams from Remembrance of the Daleks.

And while we’re on the subjects of Mark Gatiss and Big Finish, Richard loves Invaders from Mars, starring Paul McGann and India Fisher.

Inferno

WTF is a Turducken?

Fans of digging crazy deep holes into the Earth’s mantle will enjoy this account of the real-world Project Mohole.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s story When the World Screamed (1928), featuring another doomed attempt to drill into the Earth’s mantle, can be read here.

And yet another Big Finish spin-off, starring Christopher Benjamin as Henry Gordon Jago: Jago and Litefoot, soon to enter its tenth season. Great Jumping Jehoshaphat!

Picks of the Week

Brendan

Caroline John reads the Target novelisation of Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters, by Malcolm Hulke. (Audible US) (Audible UK)

Nathan

The recently reissued Target novelisation of Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

And Mark Gatiss’s radio documentary From the Outside it Looked Like an Old-Fashioned Police Box, which chronicles the history and legacy of the Target novelisations.

Richard

As mentioned above, the ITC Entertainment production UFO — essential for your understanding of genre television of the early 1970s.

Brendan again

The inexplicably fabulous Japanese versions of some early Target novelisations. You can see the covers and the wacky Japanese titles on this site here.

We have a competition!

If you would like to win a Target novelisation from our personal collection, just write a comment on our website underneath the post for this episode. We’ll be giving away three books every time we reach the end of a season.

Follow us

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, and Nathan is @nathanbottomley.You can follow the podcast on Twitter as @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes: we would be very grateful for your feedback. Five-star reviews always welcome.

It’s our second reboot in two years, and to celebrate Richard’s sabbatical in Cambridge, we’re joined by everyone’s favourite ham-fisted bun vendor, Todd “Josephine” Beilby. And we’re discussing the first three stories of Season 8: Terror of the Autons, The Mind of Evil and The Claws of Axos.

Buy the stories!

In England and Australia, Terror of the Autons was released on DVD as part of the Mannequin Mania box set. (Amazon UK). It was released separately in the US. (Amazon US)

Check out Jo’s facial expression on the Mind of Evil DVD cover. And Pertwee looks like he’s just realised he left the gas on. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

The Claws of Axos has had a Special Edition DVD release. So there’s that. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Terror of the Autons

Paul Cornell’s brutal 1993 review of Terror of the Autons from DWB can be found here.

Here’s Brendan dressed as Jo Grant from Day of the Daleks at Lords of Time 3 in December 2014.

The Mind of Evil

Sorry, Nathan, but Kate Orman doesn’t give Corporal Bell brain cancer, but she does damage her brain in a terrible car accident in the otherwise brilliant The Left-Handed Hummingbird.

David McIntee’s novel Face of the Enemy has the Master working with UNIT while the Doctor and Jo are off mucking around on Peladon. Oh, and Corporal Bell gets sacked. Here’s El Sandifer’s review.

Richard Franklin wrote a post-UNIT Mike Yates novel called The Killing Stone. You can even hear him reading it aloud, if that’s your thing. (Audible US) (Audible UK). Paul Cornell definitively outed Mike Yates in the 50th Virgin New Adventures Novel Happy Endings.

A work of fiction passes the Bechdel test if it contains a scene where two women talk to each other about something other than a man.

Fans of caseless Dalek mutants as major story villains will enjoy the Big Finish audio The Elite.

The Claws of Axos

Bill Filer looks like he’s wandered into The Claws of Axos on his way to appearing in The Champions or The Persuaders!.

Brendan mentions the episode of Black Books where Bernard and Manny drunkenly write a children’s book called The Elephant and the Balloon. You can find the entire episode on YouTube.

We have a competition!

If you would like to win a Target novelisation from our personal collection, just write a comment on our website underneath the post for this episode. We’ll be giving away three books every time we reach the end of a season.

Follow us

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Todd is @toddbeilby and Nathan is @nathanbottomley.You can follow the podcast on Twitter as @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes: your feedback will help other people to find the podcast. So off you go.

Brendan, Nathan and Todd return to space after a two-year absence in our last episode on Jon Pertwee’s second season. It’s time to don a hippie frock and visit Colony in Space, and then take a relaxing two-week holiday on location at a sleepy country village beset by The Dæmons!

Buy the stories!

Colony in Space was released on DVD in 2011. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

The Dæmons was released on DVD in 2012. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

(That was dull. Sorry.)

Colony in Space

The Good Life stars The Chief Caretaker and Lady Clemency Eddison as lovable middle-class eccentrics who decide, much like this story’s colonists, to opt out of the capitalist rat-race and live self-sufficiently. You can find Vyvyan’s take on the programme here.

Hornets’ Nest is a five-story audio drama series starring Tom Baker, Richard Franklin as Mike Yates and Captain Dent’s almost-henchwoman Susan Jameson as Mrs Wibbsey. You can watch the official trailer for the series here.

The Dæmons

Fans of weirdly incorrectly used Latin pronouns will enjoy this dictionary entry for the word qui quae quod. Doctor Which?

Fans of sleepy English villages with a dark secret will enjoy the 1967 novel Ritual and its film adaptation The Wicker Man (1973), as well as the 1967 novel The Owl Service and its 1969 ITV adaptation. Fans of things that are fabulous will enjoy watching the entire Avengers episode for free online somehow.

Fans of crackpot theories about human mythology being inspired by aliens will enjoy Erich Von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods?

Picks of the week

Brendan

The story of Liz Shaw and the Doctor continues in the Big Finish Companion Chronicle The Sentinels of the New Dawn.

Nathan

The Randomiser, again, obviously.

Check out this excellent new Doctor Who blog Crater of Needles, and follow it on Twitter at @CraterOfNeedles. It’s edited by Stephen Wood, who can be found on Twitter at @StephenWood_UK.

Todd

The Sixth Doctor and Evelyn Smythe return to Axos in the Big Finish audio The Feast of Axos.

We have a competition!

If you would like to win a Target novelisation from our personal collection, just write a comment on our website underneath the post for this episode. We’ll be giving away three books every time we reach the end of a season.

Follow us

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Todd is @toddbeilby and Nathan is @nathanbottomley.You can follow the podcast on Twitter as @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes: we would really appreciate your help with publicising the show!

It’s the start of Season 9, and so it’s time for Brendan, Richard and Nathan to grow a terrorist moustache or stick on a military-issue UNIT one and settle back with a sardonic wine and a runny brie to watch Day of the Daleks, The Curse of Peladon and The Sea Devils. Oh, Centauri, stop it!

Buy the stories!

Day of the Daleks was released in 2011 as a Special Edition DVD, with an excitingly remastered version which we discuss in the episode. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

In the UK and Australia, The Curse of Peladon was released in 2010 as part of the decreasingly impressive Peladon Tales Boxset (Amazon UK). It was released separately in the US. (Amazon US)

Again, in the UK and Australia, The Sea Devils was released in 2008 as part of the Beneath the Surface Boxset (Amazon UK). It was released separately in the US. (Amazon US)

Day of the Daleks

Once again, here is a photo of Brendan dressed as Katy Manning from Day of the Daleks.

And there’s that old Vulcan saying: Only Nixon could go to China.

Earlier this month, Australian activist group Beyond Green responded to Attorney-General George Brandis’s plan to save details about every Australian’s online activity, by suggesting that we should CC him into every email conversation we have.

(Not that) Louis Marx was responsible for a range of toy Daleks in the 1960s, some of which later found their way into the programme to represent armies of Daleks that the production could actually afford. (See, among others, Planet of the Daleks.)

Here’s Clayton Hickman’s tweet about the poor condition of the Dalek props in Day of the Daleks.

You won’t want to miss Aubrey Woods singing The Candyman Can from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971).

Brendan mentions Flight of the Darned, by farmageddon71, the person behind the 1990s special edition of The Five Doctors. No spoilers, but stop whatever you’re doing right now and watch it immediately.

Here’s Sean Pertwee dressed up as his father dressed up as the Doctor for Halloween 2014.

The Curse of Peladon

The Radio Times review of The Curse of Peladon has a lovely publicity shot of Katy Manning complete with a stray hair roller. (Katy claims that these were actually shots from rehearsals rather than specially-staged publicity shots.)

Arcturus, apparently, went on to have a prolific television career, starring as Bernard, part of Queen Asphyxia’s triple husbandoid, in Blackadder’s Christmas Carol.

I am proud to announce that I have been unable to find all of Alpha Centauri’s appearance on The Black and White Minstrel Show, although a brief clip can be seen here, as part of BabelColour’s brilliant Every Doctor Who Story video.

The Sea Devils

Here are some lovely episodes of The Clangers for you to enjoy.

We have a competition!

If you would like to win a Target novelisation from our personal collection, just write a comment on our website underneath the post for this episode. We’ll be giving away three books every time we reach the end of a season.

Follow us

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Todd is @toddbeilby and Nathan is @nathanbottomley.You can follow the podcast on Twitter as @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes. Go on.

And it’s time for the end of Season 9 of Doctor Who, and so Brendan, Richard and Nathan explore the weighty themes of colonialism and utter nonsense, as we discuss The Mutants and The Time Monster. Simmer down, Stu!

Buy the stories!

The Mutants was released on DVD in 2011. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

The Time Monster was relesed in the US in 2010 (Amazon US). In the UK and Australia, it was only released as part of the Myths and Legends Box Set, which also includes the rightfully unloved Underworld and The Horns of Nimon, which I secretly quite like. Shut up. (Amazon UK)

The Mutants

The Marshal of Solos is eerily reminiscent of everyone’s favourite wartime reactionary cartoon character, Colonel Blimp.

We haven’t mentioned this for a while, so I guess it’s time for About Time by Tat Wood. His Pertwee volume is in its second edition, with heaps more information, and, sadly, heaps less Lawrence Miles. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Fans of the glowy rainbow cave on Solos will also enjoy William Blake’s watercolours. Fans of William Blake’s watercolours will also enjoy Elizabeth Sandifer’s crazy Blakean review of The Three Doctors.

The Time Lords’ box is eerily reminiscent of Nathan and Richard’s beloved childhood toy, the wonderfully-named Tupperware Shape-O-Ball.

And, of course, the question on everyone’s lips: Why didn’t the Eagles just drop the One Ring into Mount Doom?

The Time Monster

In his conversation with Jo in episode 6, Pertwee shamelessly plagiarises the Buddha’s Flower Sermon.

Princess Peach becomes the hero in Super Princess Peach, overcoming her enemies with the power of her womanly emotions. Her tiresome habit of being kidnapped so that she can be rescued by Mario is deconstructed in Tropes vs Women in Video Games, Damsel in Distress (Part 1).

Cat People (1942) is an early horror film directed by Jacques Tourneur. You can watch the scary stalking scene mentioned by Brendan here. You can watch the entire film here, and its sequel, The Curse of the Cat People (1944), here.

Fans of the new TARDIS console room will enjoy redirecorating their houses with furtinure designs by Cappellini and Luigi Colani.

Picks of the Week!

Nathan

Sandifer’s final TARDIS Eruditorum entry on Silence in the Library takes the form of a 100,000 word history of Doctor Who. Brilliant.

Richard

The Curse of Peladon novelisation is out of print, and it’s not available as an ebook either. (And why on Earth not?) However, the audiobook is available, narrated by David Troughton. (Audible US) (Audible UK)

Brendan

Reeltime Pictures has rebranded, and it is now selling its video back catalogue as Time Travel TV. Mythmakers #73, which is a 45-minute interview with Robert Sloman can be found here.

We have a competition!

If you would like to win a Target novelisation from our personal collection, just write a comment on our website underneath the post for this episode. We’ll be giving away three books every time we reach the end of a season.

Follow us

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Todd is @toddbeilby and Nathan is @nathanbottomley. Richard is only available in real life. You can follow the podcast on Twitter as @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes. We’ve got a couple of lovely reviews already, but more reviews will help people to find our podcast and will help us to achieve our ambitions of internet fame. So off you go!

It’s the Doctor’s tenth birthday, but we get the presents, as we discuss non-existent Time Lord heroes, the inestimable Cheryl Hall, and large and savage reptiles in The Three Doctors, Carnival of Monsters and Frontier in Space. Thank you Miss Grant, we’ll let you know!

Buy the stories!

The Three Doctors was released as a Special Edition in 2012 — by itself in the US (Amazon US), and as part of the Revisitations 3 box set in the UK and Australia (Amazon UK).

Similarly, Carnival of Monsters was released in 2012 — by itself in the US (Amazon US), and as part of the Revisitations 2 box set in the UK and Australia (Amazon UK).

Frontier in Space was released in 2009/2010 as part of the Dalek War box set. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

The Three Doctors

Guy Crayford, from The Android Invasion, is famous for never looking under his eyepatch to discover that his eye isn’t actually missing. Is he as careless about his personal appearance as Omega is?

The Gell Guards look like a slightly more cuddly version of Sigmund the Sea Monster, a horrifying Saturday morning TV show from the 70s by the equally horrifying Sid and Marty Krofft.

Fans of Chris Achilleos will be appalled by the similarities between his cover for the Three Doctors novelisation and the cover of Fantastic Four issue 49.

The Fifth and the Tenth Doctor team up for the 2007 Children in Need special, Time Crash.

Carnival of Monsters

I think we’ve mentioned the Bechdel test before, as a back-of-the-envelope way of assessing the sexism of a film or TV show. Here’s an analysis of how Doctor Who has stood up to the Bechdel test over the last 50 years or so.

Fans of inexplicable time paradoxes that drive Todd crazy will enjoy the first Big Finish Paul McGann audio Storm Warning, which features the real-life doomed airship R101, and its only survivor, India Fisher’s Charley Pollard.

Frontier in Space

Fans of the Hammond Organ will enjoy the Doctor Who theme: Delaware version.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Todd is @toddbeilby and Nathan is @nathanbottomley. You can follow the podcast on Twitter as @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes. We’d really appreciate your (gushingly positive) feedback!

In a heartbreaking series finale, Brendan, Todd and Nathan say goodbye to Katy Manning, as we discuss naked aliens, two-syllable names, dog-headed maggots and patronising the Welsh. That’s right: it’s Planet of the Daleks and The Green Death. Goodbye, Jo. You were fantastic.

Buy the stories!

Planet of the Daleks was released in 2009/2010 as part of the Dalek War box set. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

The Green Death: Special Edition was released on DVD in (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Planet of the Daleks

Mark Gatiss gets to read his very favourite Target novelisation, Terrance Dicks’s Doctor Who and the Planet of the Daleks. Which is nice. (Audible US) (Audible UK)

David Graham was once of the original Daleks way back in 1964. In 2015, at the age of 88, he reprises his role as Lady Penelope’s chauffer Parker in Thunderbirds Are Go. You can see the trailer for it here.

The Seventh Doctor returns to deal with the frozen Dalek army in the Big Finish audio Return of the Daleks.

Brendan mentions a very rude re-edit of Jon Pertwee reading the Planet of the Daleks novelisation. It’s by the Doctor Who Breastoration Team, so you’ve been warned.

And here’s a comparison of the 1976 cover of Terrance Dicks’s novelisation and Clayton Hickman’s loving tribute to it for the 2009 DVD release.

The Green Death

Rachael Carson’s 1962 novel Silent Spring talks about the damage caused to the environment by the use of pesticides. We talked about it when we discussed Planet of the Giants, oh, so long ago. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

The giant flying bird feet on Metebelis 3 reminds Brendan of the worst monster fight ever in a Godzilla movie. Watch it: it makes Planet of the Dinosaurs look like Jurassic Park III.

Harry Mudd and Captain Kirk explode an android’s brain using the Liar’s Paradox in the 1967 Star Trek episode I, Mudd.

And, of course, here’s Peter Cushing Lives in Whitstable by the Jellybottys.

Picks of the Week

Todd

Todd picked the Sarah Jane Adventures season 4 serial The Death of the Doctor. It’s a DVD extra on The Green Death: Special Edition, so you might already have a copy without even realising it!

Brendan

The Big Finish Companion Chronicle Find and Replace, features Katy Manning playing both a future Jo Grant and the inimitable Iris Wildthyme.

Nathan

In 2015, Russell T Davies had three linked shows on Channel 4 in the UK: Cucumber, Banana and Tofu. Cucumber follows the story of Henry Best, a 46-year-old gay man living in Manchester, Banana is an anthology show, mostly featuring younger queer characters from Cucumber, and Tofu consists of actors from the other two shows and ordinary people discussing issues of sex and sexuality.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Todd is @toddbeilby and Nathan is @nathanbottomley. You can follow the podcast on Twitter as @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes. We just love it when you say lovely things about us.

So, we’ve changed the desktop theme, and we’re ready to start on the delightful Jon Pertwee’s final year on Doctor Who, as we discuss the first three stories of Season 11: The Time Warrior, Invasion of the Dinosaurs and Death to the Daleks. Oh, beshrew me, but I grow fond of this fellow!

Buy the stories!

The Time Warrior was released on DVD in 2007/2008, including an option to watch a version of the story with acceptable special effects. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Invasion of the Dinosaurs, sadly, has no such option. It was released as part of the UNIT Files box set in 2012. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

And finally, Death to the Daleks was released on DVD in 2012. So there’s that. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

The Time Warrior

Mark Gatiss and Katy Manning are among the contributors to the BBC Radio 4 documentary Black Aquarius, which discusses the wave of interest in the occult which washed over British popular culture in the 1970s. Or if that’s no longer available, fans of the 1970s might enjoy Cilla Black singing Aquarius instead.

I searched and searched for the interview with Peter Cushing posted on our Facebook page by friend-of-the-podcast John Edwards Davies. But I couldn’t find it. In the meantime, here’s Peter Cushing being interviewed about the Hammer Horror films by Terry Wogan in 1988.

Brendan mentions John Dorney’s audio drama Special Features, which is a single-episode story released by Big Finish as part of The Demons of Red Lodge and Other Stories.

Moonbase 3 was a BBC science-fiction series designed to be Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts’s escape route from Doctor Who. Dr Elizabeth Sandifer is less than impressed with it.

Like Linx, Eddie Izzard is aware of the importance of having a flag when conquering new territories.

Invasion of the Dinosaurs

Here’s Barry Letts hating on the dinosaurs from Invasion of the Dinosaurs.

I wish I could find John Molyneux’s video of dinosaurs snogging to the tune of Je t’aime, but just I can’t. I remember seeing it in the 90s, and it was superb. Anyone who knows where it is, please, please, let me know the URL and I promise I’ll post it.

Here’s a hilarious (and somewhat racist) taste of the Disney classic One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing (1975), starring, oh, okay, featuring television’s Jon Pertwee.

Fans of truly terrible things will enjoy this clip from Blue Peter in 1974, featuring the Whomobile, Jon Pertwee and Peter Purvis.

The novelisation of this story is called The Dinosaur Invasion, and it’s brilliant. It was originally released in 1976 with a fab pop-art cover by Chris Achilleos, and then it was re-released in 1978 with a more conventional cover by Jeff Cummins. You can compare the two here. The audiobook is read by Martin Jarvis, and it’s great as well. (Audible US) (Audible UK)

Death to the Daleks

We discussed Erich Von Däniken’s crazy Chariots of the Gods? a few episodes back. This story, with its tales of Exxilon astronauts building pyramids in Peru, is not the last time that this book will be relevant.

Fans of romping adventure romps will enjoy She, by H. Rider Haggard, first published in 1886. Fans of Ursula Andress will enjoy the film version starring Ursula Andress, first released in 1965.

Nathan was right. Famously terrible British novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton was responsible for the opening line “It was a dark and stormy night”. Fans of terrible opening lines will enjoy the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. Fans of somewhat shorter opening lines will enjoy Adam Cadre’s Little Lytton Contest.

And here’s some more exuberant crossplay from Brendan. SEE Bonnie Langford seeing Brendan dressed as Bonnie Langford!

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, and Richard is angry about Twitter and just wishes you kids would get off his lawn. You can follow the podcast on Twitter as @FTEpodcast, while The Trust Your Doctor podcast is on Twitter as @TYDpocast. Bless them.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes. Or Linx will come around to your house and criticise the construction of your thorax.

In an alternately languid and lachrymose episode of Flight Through Entirety, Brendan, Richard and Nathan spend a hilarious 30 minutes moaning about The Monster of Peladon, before farewelling Jon Pertwee’s Doctor in Planet of the Spiders. Tears, Sarah Jane? Of course they are!

Buy the stories!

If, after everything we’ve just said, you want to revisit The Monster of Peladon, you’ll be delighted to learn that it was released as part of the box set Peladon Tales in the UK and Australia, and on its own in the US. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Planet of the Spiders was released on DVD in 2011. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

The Monster of Peladon

Well, we were too busy trashing the story to make any references to anything very much. Richard brings up ITC Entertainment, which was actually making good television at the time, but we’ve talked about it before. So why not enjoy Sue Perryman’s take on the story from the Wife in Space blog? She gives it 2 out of 10, which is sweet of her.

Oh, okay, and here’s a lovely picture of Vega Nexos. Check out that back hair!

Planet of the Spiders

Fans of the way Jon Pertwee shamelessly plagiarises things will enjoy the Buddha’s Flower Sermon again.

Here’s Jenny Laird’s obituary in the Guardian, from November 2001. A huge loss to the acting profession, apparently.

Gareth Hunt played Mike Gambit in The New Avengers in 1976–1977, while the role of Steed was played by Patrick Macnee in a corset.

Jon Pertwee’s final memoir I am the Doctor! was published postumously in 1996. It’s out of print, but still available for fabulous amounts of money. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Whodunnit? was a 1970s panel game show thing, which ran on for six seasons on ITV. A murder mystery was acted out, and the celebrity panellists would have to work the identity of the murderer. Jon Pertwee took over from Edward Woodward as compere at the start of the second season. You can get a taste of it from this clip on YouTube. The first five seasons have also been released on DVD.

Picks of the Week

Nathan

In the Trust Your Doctor podcast, Dylan and Kiyan work their way through every episode of Doctor Who, which sounds like an excellent idea for a podcast. Here’s Brendan and Nathan’s recent guest appearance, in which all four of us discuss Last of the Gaderene by Mark Gatiss.

Brendan

In the 1990s, BBC Radio released two new audio stories, written by Barry Letts and starring Jon Pertwee, Elisabeth Sladen and Nick Courtney. There were The Paradise of Death and The Ghosts of N-Space, both of which are available on iTunes.

Richard

In 1971, ITC released Jason King, starring Planet of Fire’s Peter Wyngarde as the dashing and indescribably ugly Jason. Buy it on DVD! (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, and Richard is currently still a meatspace exclusive. You can follow the podcast on Twitter as @FTEpodcast, while The Trust Your Doctor podcast is on Twitter as @TYDpocast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or I’ll come round to your house and draw a picture of a little girl on one of the pages of your favourite Ladybird book.

In yet another Very Special Episode, Todd joins Brendan, Richard and Nathan for a retrospective of the Pertwee Era. Liz, Jo or Sarah? Peladon, Spiridon or Exxilon? And, the most important question of all, which 70s sitcom would have been most improved if they’d only had the foresight to cast our very own Richard Stone?

Linx

We mention, with frank admiration, two novels by David McIntee: a Virgin Missing Adventure, The Dark Path, featuring the Second Doctor, Jamie, Victoria and the Master, as well as a BBC Past Doctor Adventure, The Face of the Enemy, in which, while the Doctor and Jo are visiting Peladon, the UNIT team join up with Barbara and Ian to fight the Master.

Mark Gatiss reads the novelisation of Planet of the Daleks. (Audible US) (Audible UK)

Birds of Prey (2002) was a short-lived American TV series in which three female superheroes join with Batman’s butler to fight metahuman crime in New Gotham City. Which sounds fantastic, but isn’t, apparently.

There’s no need for you to watch Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal in Love Story (1970) now that Richard has given away the ending.

The Queen Spider pays a pivotal role in the appalling 2002 South Park episode Red Hot Catholic Love. She sounds like Eric Cartman doing an impression of the Great One: take a look.

Meanwhile, on the French and Saunders Shopping Channel, delightful demi-precious diamonique jewellery is selling like hot cakes!

Lis Sladen reads the novelisation of Planet of the Spiders. (Audible US) (Audible UK)

The sweet but awkward Lt Barclay makes the members of the Star Trek: The Next Generation crew look like horrible, horrible people in the Season 3 episode Hollow Pursuits

Geoffrey Beevers reads the novelisation of Colony in Space, Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon. (Audible US) (Audible UK)

Fans of the very worst things imaginable will enjoy the robot dog from Battlestar Galactica (1978), which is, alarmingly, played by a chimp in a suit. You can read the appalling history of this character here.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is simply nowhere to be found. You can follow the podcast on Twitter as @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or a long-shanked rascal with a mighty nose will come round to your house and eat every last one of your sandwiches.

We have a new Doctor, and a new release schedule. In the first weekly episode of Flight Through Entirety, Brendan, Nathan, Richard and Todd, the sort of girls who give motorcars pet names, discuss Tom Baker’s first ever Doctor Who story, Robot. Please do not resist. We do not wish to cause you unnecessary pain.

Buy the story!

Robot was released on DVD in 2007. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Terrance Dicks’s novelisation, Doctor Who and the Giant Robot, is available as an audiobook, read by Tom Baker. (Audible US) (Audible UK)

Links and notes

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) has an emotional artificial person with a complex relationship with his creator. Coincidence?

Pearl White played the eponymous heroine in the 1914 film serial The Perils of Pauline. Apparently she never got tied to the railway tracks though.

Fans of terribly judgemental robots will enjoy Gort from George Pal’s The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951).

Anyone appalled by Richard’s gingerphobia will perhaps be mollified by this video depicting Catherine Tate’s admission to the Ginger Hair Safe House.

If, like me, you’re disappointed that Miss Bassey won’t be singing the theme to the next Bond film, SPECTRE, you can console yourself by remembering the valiant It’s Got To Be Bassey campaign. Bless you, boys.

Some moments in this story are reminiscent of Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke’s second-season Avengers episode The Mauritius Penny, which exists on YouTube in its, er, entirety.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is just someone who loves life. You can follow the podcast on Twitter as @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll just keep nagging you about it every episode for the next few weeks.

Todd has given that helmic regulator quite a twist, I’m afraid, and we’ve found ourselves in the year 16,087, on a space station being menaced by bubble wrap and fibreglass ants. And still it’s one of the best Doctor Who stories to date. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you The Ark in Space.

Buy the story!

The Ark in Space Special Edition was released on DVD in 2013. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

The novelisation, Doctor Who and the Ark in Space, written by Ian Marter himself, was re-released to celebrate Doctor Who’s 50th anniversary in 2013. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Links and notes

Fans of this story and of Revelation of the Daleks will enjoy a delicious serving of Soylent Green (1973). (Spoilers: It’s people.)

Sorry, dear listeners, we don’t have any pictures of Ian Marter being giantly muscular. And don’t think I didn’t spend time looking.

This article from the Darwin’s God blog discusses the life cycle of the ichneumon wasp and its impact on 19th-century theology.

J. V. McConnell, (1962) “Memory transfer through cannibalism in planarians”, Journal of Neuropsychiatry 3 suppl 1 542-548. (See, we can be academically rigorous if we put our minds to it.)

This article from the website of the American Psychological Association discusses the history of James McConnell’s article.

I’m not sure that Ridley Scott has ever actually admitted to ripping off this story in his film Alien (1979), but that hasn’t stopped people from speculating about the possibility.

We haven’t yet managed to upload Todd’s interview with Lis Sladen, but we promise we’re working on it. Keep an eye out for an announcement in the shownotes over the next few episodes. In the meantime, you can enjoy Lis Sladen’s second appearance in this 1972 episode of Z Cars, directed by The Underwater Menace’s Julia Smith.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard adores all of you and can’t wait to chat to each and every one of you in person. You can follow the podcast on Twitter as @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll install an intruder defence mechanism in your wardrobe and blow up all your shoes.

This week, Flight Through Entirety is on location in Dartmoor, testing our resistance to fear, burning, pressure, fluid deprivation and immersion in liquids, as we discuss the third story of Tom Baker’s first season, The Sontaran Experiment.

Buy the story!

The Sontaran Experiment was released on DVD in 2006/2007. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Links and notes

Fans of posh white people living in orbital space stations will enjoy The Ark in Space, of course, and also Elysium (2013), which makes reasonably good use of Jodie Foster, whatever Brendan says.

Fans of dead teenagers will enjoy The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974).

Dr Josef Mengele worked as an SS Officer in Auschwitz and performed brutal and sadistic experiments on some of the prisoners, as well as assigning many to the gas chambers.

Fans of the Sontaran insectoid robot will enjoy this photograph of the Canada Water Library in Southwark, which looks remarkably like it.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is here too. You can follow the podcast on Twitter as @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll hide an inflatable snake somewhere where you least expect to find it.

Our weekly flight through Tom Baker’s first season continues with an episode made entirely of thirty foot thick reinforced concrete. That’s right, it’s time for that 1975 classic, Genesis of the Daleks!

Buy the story!

Genesis of the Daleks was released on DVD way back in 2006. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Links and notes

Commedia dell’arte is a genre of theatrical comedy featuring an array of various stock characters. It dates from 16th century Italy, but is based on a tradition that goes all the way back to Greek New Comedy from the end of the fourth century BC. So does that make Davros just the latest iteration of Pantalone?

Severin is the hero of Venus in Furs (1870), a novella written by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, who gave his name to something called masochism. Probably best not to look that word up on Google.

The Time Lord is dressed as Death from Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957). Here is a version by French and Saunders. And this version comes from the first season of The Micallef Programme.

Fans of having no idea of what is going on will enjoy this article on Jacques Lacan from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Sadly, I’m unable to locate the Parliamentary speech made by a Conservative MP in the 1990s, in which he quoted Davros’s virus speech from Part 5 of this story. Fact fans will be able to corroborate its historicity, however, by referring to Miles and Wood’s About Time volume 4. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is simply enjoying the view. You can follow the podcast on Twitter as @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll sneak into your house and steal all your etheric beam locators.

And coming on 1 August…

Check out our new project: Bondfinger. You can keep up with all the news on Twitter and Facebook. We’re very excited about it!

As our flight through Tom Baker’s first season comes to an end, we pull on a latex mask, strap on some bombs, fill our pockets with gold dust and drop down into Wookey Hole to discuss Revenge of the Cybermen.

Buy the stories!

Revenge of the Cybermen was released on DVD in 2010. It can be bought by itself in the US (Amazon US), but in the UK and Australia it was released in a box set along with Silver Nemesis (Amazon UK).

Links and notes

In Unnatural Selection, a Season 2 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Dr Pulaski (Diana Muldaur) is cured of some terrible aging makeup by a quick trip through the matter transporters. Coincidence? Probably.

The 1970s Japanese TV Series Saiyūki was dubbed into English by the BBC and broadcast under the title Monkey in the UK and Australia, with David Collings (Vorus) as the eponymous Monkey God. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation often ran it in the traditional 6.30 PM weekday timeslot that rightfully belonged to Doctor Who.

Brendan’s mysterious claim that Kellman was a collector of James Bond memorabilia will become clear if you just check out this page here.

Cottage Under Siege was a brilliant Doctor Who fanzine from the wilderness years, edited by Neil Corry and Gareth Roberts. There were three issues, published in 1993 and 1994. I’d love to see it again. Anyone?

Fans of using orographically enhanced toilet rolls to simulate asteroids will also enjoy the Blakes 7 Season 4 title sequence.

And for all of you who are mystified by Sarah’s hat in Robot, perhaps this picture of Mia Farrow in The Great Gatsby (1974) will clear things up.

Picks of the week

Todd and Nathan

The 60 minutes LP version of Genesis of the Daleks was released in 1978. It is still available on Audible. (Audible US) (Audible UK)

Todd

The Big Finish audio The Relics of Jegg-Sau sees the delightful Bernice Summerfield facing the K1 robot from, er, Robot.

Richard

The Doctor Who Monster Book, by Terrance Dicks, was published by Target Books in 1975. It was Nathan’s first introduction to Doctor Who, so we have that to thank it for. It is, sadly, currently out of print.

Harry Sullivan’s War, by Ian Marter, was a spy thriller published by Target Books in 1986, in the same month as Marter’s death. It’s out of print too, but if you’re keen you can almost certainly get hold of a second-hand copy through Amazon.

Brendan

I, Davros is a series of four Big Finish audios chronicling Davros’s life from his teens up until the events of Genesis of the Daleks.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard did have a Twitter account once, but he spoke to it in ALGOL that one time and it exploded. You can follow the podcast on Twitter as @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or Roger Murray-Leach will come over to your house and strew mannequins in all your hallways.

And coming on 1 August…

Check out our new project: Bondfinger. You can keep up with all the news on Twitter and Facebook. It’s getting closer every day!

This week, we’re high in the misty Highlands, out by the purple islands, being attacked by Zygons, Scotland the Brave!

Buy the stories!

Terror of the Zygons was finally released on DVD in 2013. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Terrance Dicks’s novelisation, Doctor Who and the Loch Ness Monster, was re-released to celebrate the 50th anniversary, and so it’s still actually in print. Hooray! (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Links and notes

A picture of Nessie’s flipper was taken in 1972, and so Peter Scott called it Nessiteras rhombopteryx. Bless him.

Fans of staggering up the beach will enjoy the the Avengers episode The Town of No Return.

SEE! the Skarasen being milked on BBC America’s TARDIS Index File.

The argonauts are a genus of Octopus (Argonauta sp.) whose males only ever mate once, for the most surprising reason.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard’s just happy to see you. You can follow the podcast on Twitter as @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll send Angus Ferguson McRanald round to your house to play the bagpipes and drastically lower your property prices.

And coming on 1 August…

Check out our new project: Bondfinger. You can keep up with all the news on Twitter and Facebook. One week to go!

In a strange universe, in the distant future, the President, Vice-President and Treasurer of the Prentis Hancock Appreciation Society, Brendan, Richard and Nathan, meet to discuss shower curtains, detergent bottles and undeserved survival in Planet of Evil.

Buy the stories!

Planet of Evil was released on DVD in 2007/2008. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

Richard and Brendan are quick to identify this story’s main sources: Howard Hawks’ The Thing From Another World (1951), Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) and Forbidden Planet (1956).

In Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris (1961), the members of a scientific expedition are studied and psychologically traumatised by the sentient ocean of an alien planet.

Ponti is played by Louis Mahoney, who also appears in Frontier in Space and Blink, but perhaps he is most famous as a doctor in the Fawlty Towers episode, The Germans.

The Haunting of BBC Television Centre: can anyone explain the mysterious face that appears on the ship’s screen in Part 3 after the Doctor has fallen into the pond?

Fans of the way Brendan’s mind works will enjoy this picture of a giant frog from Alex Kidd in Miracle World (1986), which looks eerily familiar. To him.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard’s Twitter account has fallen into a black pond full of antimatter. You can follow the podcast on Twitter as @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll sneak into your lunchbox and fill your thermos full of dry ice.

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the internet…

We’ve launched our new project, Bondfinger, with our first commentary on Dr. No (1962). You can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.

This week we discuss Pyramids of Mars, a classic Hinchcliffe story that comes in the top ten in every reputable fan poll. Naturally enough, Nathan doesn’t like it.

Buy the story!

Pyramids of Mars was released on DVD way back in 2004. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Links and notes

Well, it’s a Hinchcliffe/Holmes story, so let’s get the sources out of the way: The Riddle of the Sands (1903) by Erskine Childers is a rollicking adventure about an impeding German invasion, and The Secret Garden (1911) by Frances Hodgson Burnett is a beloved children’s book about why doctors cannot be trusted.

But that’s not all. Not only do we famously have Hammer’s Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb (1971) as a major source, but Brendan also identifies Dr Phibes Rises Again! (1972).

Michael Bilton’s Collins the manservant impobably survives the conflagration in Part 4, and goes on many years later to do for Audrey fforbes-Hamilton in To The Manor Born (1979).

Fans of both friction and lubrication will enjoy, among other things, the Journal of Tribology.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard’s Twitter account has been locked in a pyramid for millenia with only robots, forcefields and deadly missiles for company. You can follow the podcast on Twitter as @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll put on one of Victoria’s old dresses and mock you gently behind your back.

Of our own accord

We’ve all been off to Jamaica with our good friend James: you can hear the results in the first episode of Bondfinger, a commentary track on Dr. No (1962). And you can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.

Harry and Benton are back, but no one cares, as robot replicas of Brendan, Nathan and Richard trudge through Terry Nation’s penultimate Doctor Who story, The Android Invasion.

Buy the story!

The Android Invasion was released on DVD in 2012. In the UK and Australia, it was released as part of the UNIT Files box set, along with Invasion of the Dinosaurs (Amazon UK). It was released on its own in the US (Amazon US).

Notes and links

We’re going to put you through a whole lot of terrible vintage televsion in this episode’s shownotes, so are you sitting comfortably? Then let’s begin.

Here’s Patrick Macnee’s John Steed standing in front of the Cock Inn from The New Avengers title sequence. Ooh-er!

Nathan’s phrase “robot replica” was shamelessly lifted from an episode of Steven Moffat’s Press Gang called UnXpected, in which the eponymous gang encounter the fictional hero of a terrible, terrible 70s science fiction TV series. Which is probably just a coincidence.

Fans of actual robot replicas will enjoy The Stepford Wives (1976) and Westworld (1973).

Such fans will also enjoy The Avengers episode The Hour that Never Was, not because of robot replicas, because there aren’t any, but because it’s just superb.

And such fans will be completely overwhelmed by these Six Million Dollar Man episodes: Steve Austin fights a robot replica of someone else in Day of the Robot, and there’s a robot woman with a Sarah-from-the-Part-2-cliffhanger face in the Bionic Woman crossover Kill Oscar.

Milton Johns talks about Guy Crayford’s eyepatch in this BBC interview.

Fans of robot replicas of English villages will enjoy the Danger Man episode Colony Three.

No one at all will enjoy Terry Nation’s first Avengers episode Invasion of the Earthmen, which was described by the Avengers Forever website as “one of the worst classics Avengers episodes of all time”.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and you can now welcome Richard to Twitter as @RichardLStone. You can follow the podcast on Twitter as @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll, I don’t know, force you to watch The Android Invasion again?

Meanwhile, at Universal Exports…

Fans of Flight Through Entirety will enjoy our new project Bondfinger, which launched earlier this month with a commentary track on Dr. No (1962). You can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.

This week, we’re off to the planet Karn for wine, cheese and cyanide with Dr Mehendri Solon and his pet brain-in-a-jar Morbius. And Sarah Jane Smith has never had so much fun!

Buy the story!

The Brain of Morbius was released on DVD in 2008. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

As usual, the first thing we do with a Hinchcliffe story is to work out which classic horror films it’s, er, paying homage to. This time, it’s the films of James Whale — Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935). James Whale’s own story is told in Gods and Monsters (1998), where he is played by Doctor Who’s very own Sir Ian McKellen. (He did a voiceover in The Snowmen. That totally counts.)

Pieter Bruegel painted three pictures of the Tower of Babel, all of which look very much like Solon’s castle.

Fans of the hilarious way Nathan continually mixes up the names of Doctor Who stories will enjoy how, in his incisive analysis of this season’s terrible flaws, he manages to refer to The Android Invasion as Invasion of the Dinosaurs. And Brendan will try and muscle in on the action later on by calling The Seeds of Doom The Seeds of Death. Aren’t we silly?

For once, Elizabeth Sandifer is not actually responsible for the rule Nathan quotes about canon: it’s part of this brilliant anti-canon rant on the sadly defunct Teatime Brutality blog.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. You can follow the podcast on Twitter as @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll come round to your house and challenge you to a mind-bending contest. We have all the apparatus here, after all.

The Death of Dr. No

If you’ve been affected by issues raised in this podcast, please contact our new project Bondfinger, which currently just consists of a single a commentary track on Dr. No (1962), with more to come early in September. You can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.

It’s time to put down those bonsai pruners and catch the first helicopter to Antarctica, as we discuss the final story of Season 13, that florid, fecund, flexuous and frutescent classic, The Seeds of Doom.

Buy the story!

The Seeds of Doom was released on DVD in 2010 and 2011. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

The Seeds of Doom came 20th out of 241 stories in Doctor Who Magazine’s The First Fifty Years Poll in 2013. You can see the full list of results here.

However, the story isn’t universally loved. In About Time Volume 4, Tat Wood names it as his least favourite story of Tom’s first six seasons (Amazon US) (Amazon UK). You can read Elizabeth Sandifer’s fairly negative review of the story here.

Fans of people slowly being taken over by plants will enjoy the film Creepshow (1982), in which Stephen King himself is taken over by some lush, aggressive vegetation.

The Italian Job (1969) stars Michael Caine, Noël Coward and Benny Hill. It looks amazing. And our very own Harrison Chase, Tony Beckley, shows his extensive range by playing a character called Camp Freddie.

Here’s our usual list of films plundered in the making of this story: Ice Station Zebra (1968), an espionage thriller set on a base in the Arctic, Day of the Triffids (1963), in which giant plant monsters take over the world after most of humanity is blinded, and the brilliant Howard Hawks film The Thing from Another World (1963) in which a plant Frankenstein’s monster thing attacks yet another base in the Arctic.

And of course, there’s the Season 4 Avengers episode, The Man-Eater of Surrey Green (1965). More of which later.

Nathan explains his personal experience with the idea of Guns and Frocks in Doctor Who in the only post on his blog of the same name.

Can we possibly have failed to mention H P Lovecraft before? The Hinchcliffe Era is massively indebted to his SF/Horror stories, in which the universe is haunted by ancient evil gods from beyond the dawn of time. You can get a free ebook of all of his fiction here.

Picks of the week

Brendan

Brendan’s pick is Refuge (2015), a short film set on an alien planet, shot entirely in moonlight. You can watch it here, but be careful: it’s a bit scary.

Nathan

The Doctor Who Magazine app for the iPad (and iPhone). Issue 443 of the magazine contains an interview with The Seeds of Doom author Robert Banks Stewart.

Richard

Gods and Monsters (1998), which we mentioned last week: a film about James Whale, who directed  Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935). It stars Brendan Fraser, Ian McKellen and our very own Pamela Salem.

Next week

Next week, we’re taking a break from our usual schedule to watch one of the inspirations for The Seeds of Doom: the Avengers episode The Man-Eater of Surrey Green. Your homework is to watch it in preparation. You can find the entire episode here. (Actually, you can’t: it was taken down due to a copyright claim.)

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. You can follow the podcast on Twitter as @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll forget to pay you for your lovely painting of the Fritillaria meleagris that we’re storing in the boot of our Daimler.

Next weekend: Istanbul

Keep an eye our for the next episode of Bondfinger, which will be released next weekend, and which features Brendan, Richard and James talking about From Russia With Love (1963). You can hear our first episode here. And you can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.

Brendan, Richard and Nathan enjoy the rare treat of watching a really great episode of 60s television: it’s one of Robert Banks Stewart’s sources for The Seeds of Doom: a 1966 episode of The Avengers called Man-Eater of Surrey Green.

Watch the show

You can watch Man-Eater of Surrey Green in its entirety here. (But is has since been taken down due to a copyright claim.)

Notes and links

If you want to find out all there is to know about The Avengers, take a look here at Avengers Forever.

Future Steed sidekick Linda Thorson appears as a Cardassian in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode The Chase, which is otherwise pretty terrible, to be honest.

Joanna Lumley (eventually) played the Doctor in Steven Moffat’s The Curse of Fatal Death, a Comic Relief special broadcast in 1999.

In the Thin Man films, including Thin Man (1934) and its five sequels, a detective and his wife, played by William Powell and Myrna Loy, have a lovely time solving mysteries together. It’s terribly good, apparently.

We’ll be back next week with The Masque of Mandragora.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. You can follow the podcast on Twitter as @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll take a break from podcasting about your favourite TV show to discuss something you’ve never actually heard of.

From Russia With Love

In the latest episode of Bondfinger, Brendan, Richard and James discuss the second official Bond film: From Russia With Love (1963). You can still hear our first episode here. And you can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.

Well, Todd’s enthusiastic, Brendan’s cheerful and Nathan just wishes there was a Sontaran involved. We’re off to the Duchy of San Martino in Wales, where clichéd but gorgeously-designed things are afoot in The Masque of Mandragora.

Watch the show

The Masque of Mandragora was released on DVD in 2010. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

Famously, the location work for this story was done in Portmeirion in Wales, which is a tourist thing built last century in the style of an Italian village. It’s probably most famous as the location of Patrick McGoohan’s cult classic The Prisoner (1967). Which is really, really worth watching. You can book your stay in one of Portmeirion’s self-catering villas here, but watch out for bouncing weather ballons.

The BBC Television Shakespeare ran from 1978 to 1984 and included adaptations of all of Shakespeare’s plays. Yes, even Pericles, Prince of Tyre. It was almost completely studio-bound, with sets much like those created by Barry Newbery for Masque. The Wikipedia article is exhaustingly detailed.

Quentin Crisp was a famous twentieth-century English homosexualist and author, made famous by (among other things) his portrayal by Doctor Who’s very own John Hurt in The Naked Civil Servant (1975), a TV movie adaptation of his biography, produced by Verity Lambert. Fancy!

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. You can follow the podcast on Twitter as @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll give you a blank look.

Bondfinger

If you’re enjoying your flight, why not check out Bondfinger, our commentary podcast on the James Bond films? There are two commentaries so far: From Russia With Love (1963), and Dr. No (1962), with more on the way. You can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.

It’s time to bid a fond farewell to Lis Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith, and what better way to do that than blowing her up, hypnotising her, sticking her in an exploding nuclear reactor and dangling her over the edge of a precipice in The Hand of Fear? Till we meet again, Sarah.

Buy the story!

The Hand of Fear was released on DVD way back in 2006. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

Fans of Bob Baker and Dave Martin’s tendency to run out of ideas will enjoy K9 and the Time Trap, one of four K9 adventure books written by Dave Martin and published in 1980.

Here’s a picture of Judith Paris playing Elizabeth Siddal in Ken Russell’s Dante’s Inferno (1967).

Florana is the beautiful planet that Pertwee persuaded Sarah to visit on holiday at the end of Invasion of the Dinosaurs.

Outland (2012) is a six-part ABC comedy series written by John Richards and Adam Richard, about a group of gay SF fans, full to the brim of hilarious Doctor Who references. John Richards is also one of the hosts of the Splendid Chaps podcast, which reflected on the history of Doctor Who in the lead-up to the 50th anniversary.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. You can follow the podcast on Twitter as @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll drop you off in a street somewhere in Aberdeen with nothing but a stuffed owl and a labrador for company.

Bondfinger

The Flight Through Entirety vanity James Bond project continues with Bondfinger, our commentary podcast on the James Bond films. We have already done two commentaries: From Russia With Love (1963), and Dr. No (1962), with more on the way. You can keep up with all the Bondfinger news — including an upcoming commentary on Goldfinger early next month — on Twitter and Facebook.

Where has the magic of Doctor Who gone? It’s the first time we’ve been back to Gallifrey since the last time, Todd is cross, and Mary Whitehouse is furious. It’s time for The Deadly Assassin!

Buy the story!

The Deadly Assassin was released on DVD in 2009. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

It’s impossible to understand the negative fanboy reception of this story without reading Jan Vincent-Rudski’s review of this story. There’s a video version of this review on YouTube.

You can find Jan Vincent-Rudski’s review in License Denied, edited by Paul Cornell, which is well worth a look. It includes Gareth Roberts’s defence of the Graham Williams Era, which Nathan thinks is utterly brilliant, of course.

The Manchurian Candidate (1962) tells the story of someone brainwashed into committing a terrible political assassination. Which really has nothing to do with The Deadly Assassin.

Fans of things much less relevant to this story will enjoy Geordie LaForge trying to assassinate some Romulan guy in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode The Mind’s Eye.

Nathan is hugely embarrassed about not recognising Runcible the fatuous as Shakespeare in The Chase.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. You can follow the podcast on Twitter as @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll stick you in a Doctor Who story with no companion apart from a talking cabbage perched on your shoulder. Which would just serve you right.

Bondfinger

We recorded our commentary podcast episode for Goldfinger mere moments ago, so keep an eye out for its release in the next week or so on Bondfinger. We have already done two commentaries: From Russia With Love (1963), and Dr. No (1962). You can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.

This week, Flight Through Entirety is conducting a weird experiment in eugenics to create the perfect race of Doctor Who podcasters. And so Brendan’s fake tan is orange, Nathan is wearing turquoise nappies and Todd’s face has been carved into the side of a mountain. That’s right, it’s time for The Face of Evil.

Buy the story!

The Face of Evil was released on DVD in 2012. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

Sharon Davies from Blackcastle was a companion of the Doctor in a series of comic strips from Doctor Who Magazine.

If you want to hear more about James Bond and Honey Ryder, you should listen to the Bondfinger commentary on Dr. No. It’s, you know, hilarious.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll tinker with your laptop until Microsoft Excel starts to believe that it’s Pamela Salem.

Bondfinger

Check out our commentaries on the first three Bond films, Goldfinger (1964), From Russia With Love (1963), and Dr. No (1962). You can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on our website, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.

Pamela Salem is a goddess and The Robots of Death is just brilliant. Is there anything more to say here?

Buy the story!

The Robots of Death was the first proper Doctor Who DVD release way back in 2000/2001. Does that make you feel old? The Special Edition was released in 2012 as part of the Revisitations 3 box set in Australia and the UK, and individually in the US. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

Sapphire and Steel was an amazingly weird and almost unwatchably slow ITV series starring time agents Joanna Lumley and David McCallum as Sapphire and Steel respectively. David Collings, who played Poul in this story, occasionally guested as Silver.

Well, these are Doctor Who’s Blake’s 7 years, so here goes. Chris Boucher, who wrote this story, was the script editor of Blake’s 7, and went on to write lots of fabulously bitchy dialog over Blake’s 7’s four seasons. Borg is played by Brian Croucher, who played Travis in Blake’s 7 Season 2, and Miles Fothergill, who played camp newsreader robot SV7, played some guy in the Blake’s 7 episode The Web.

Fans of doing your hair and makeup in preparation for your big villain moment will enjoy Cancer in the Blake’s 7 Season 4 episode Assassin.

Fans of the worst atrocities in human history will enjoy this amazing video of Wonder Woman riding a skateboard.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll make snide remarks about the inverse ratio between the size of your mouth and the size of your brain.

Bondfinger

Check out our commentaries on the first three Bond films, Goldfinger (1964), From Russia With Love (1963), and Dr. No (1962). You can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on our website, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.

This week, we risk the goodwill of our entire audience by spending the first 18 minutes of the episode discussing the appalling racism of fan favourite The Talons of Weng-Chiang. After that, Brendan and Todd talk about how great the story is, while Nathan just says Do you know what I mean? over and over again.

Buy the story!

The Talons of Weng-Chiang was released on DVD as a Special Edition in 2010/2011. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

You can buy The Doctor Who Discontinuity Guide as an ebook on Amazon (Amazon US) (Amazon UK). You can find most of the content for free (you cheapskate) by following the links from the Fourth Doctor page on the archived BBC Doctor Who website. We diss it this episode, but it’s actually really great.

Less great is Doctor Who: The Television Companion, by Howe and Walker. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Fans of completely ruining the Sontarans, who are totally a credible and interesting threat, will enjoy the upcoming Big Finish series Jago and Litefoot and Strax. The first episode will be out in November.

Henry Higgins and Colonel Pickering go off to buy a dress for Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady (1964).

The simple analogy from Star Trek is fabulously referenced in the Futurama episode Where No Fan Has Gone Before.

Fans of Joanna Lumley and ludicrous giant rats will enjoy the New Avengers episode Gnaws.

Picks of the week

Todd

This week, Todd recommends the Big Finish Jago & Litefoot series, which has been going on for, like, 9 years. The delightful Pamela Salem returns in _Counter-Measures_, but, frankly, she’s more glamorous than they deserve.

Brendan

Those of you who think we’re being oversensitive won’t enjoy this video from Buzzfeed, East Asians React to Yellowface.

Foe from the Future is a Big Finish audio that, in a nearby parallel universe, might have replaced The Talons of Weng-Chiang.

Nathan

Well, Nathan got nearly everthing wrong about his pick. You can find the Blakes 7 podcast Down and Safe here. They release a new episode every fortnight, or every two weeks if you come from the United States.

The boys from the Doctor Who Trust Your Doctor podcast join forces with the boys from The Krynoid Podcast to discuss Revenge of the Cybermen. And we’re totally not jealous.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll lurk sympathetically around your front door, and creepily refer to you as the budding lotus of the dawn.

Bondfinger

Our James Bond commentary podcast continues: we already have tracks for Goldfinger (1964), From Russia With Love (1963), and Dr. No (1962), while Thunderball (1965) will be out mere weeks from now. You can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on our website, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.

Well, we should have listened to Mrs Nethercott, really. Yet another story that we all love: the Graham Williams era kicks off with a spectacular Edwardian Base Under Siege™ — it’s Horror of Fang Rock!

Buy the story!

Horror of Fang Rock was released on DVD way back in 2005. So, no, you can’t borrow my copy. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

Richard’s here this week, but despite that, we don’t make many fabulously obscure references to British television from the 1960s and 70s. (Apart from the obligatory references to The Prisoner and Are You Being Served?, of course.)

Here’s the BBC miniseries Count Dracula (1977), which put paid to Terrance Dicks’s original script, The Vampire Mutations, more of which later. It manages to be both tiresome and terrible, apparently. You can even buy it, if you feel you have to. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Fans of television programmes that make you long for a Rutan to join the cast and massacre all the regulars will enjoy When the Boat Comes In, a BBC television series that ran from 1976 to 1981.

Here’s The Ballad of Flannan Isle, which is the poem Tom quotes at the end of the final episode. It’s not great.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we shall find His Lordship and tell him just what a perfidious so-called friend you are.

Bondfinger

While the entire world goes crazy over what might be Daniel Craig’s final outing as Bond (sob!), why not re-visit a much worse Bond film — Thunderball (1965)? We’ll all be donning wetsuits and recording our first underwater commentary next week, and releasing it the following weekend. In the meantime, you can enjoy our existing commentary tracks, Goldfinger (1964), From Russia With Love (1963), and Dr. No (1962). You can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on our website, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.

This week, Brendan, Nathan and Richard enjoy the worst prawn cocktail of the entire 1970s: it’s The Invisible Enemy.

Buy the story!

The Invisible Enemy was released on DVD in 2008 as part of the K9 Tales box set, which also includes the execrable 1981 Christmas spin-off K9 and Company. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK).

Notes and links

We’re still in the middle of Doctor Who’s Blakes 7 years, and so the terrible cardboard corridor they fly down in Part 1 looks like an extremely low-rent version of the already fairly low-rent Xenon Base in Blakes 7 Season 4.

Roger Dean is an artist famous for his 70s prog-rock album covers, particularly for the band Yes. The picture Richard mentions is the cover of a Lighthouse album called One Fine Day. You can enjoy more of Dean’s work on his website, including images he used as evidence when he sued James Cameron for (allegedly) shamelessly ripping him off in Avatar.

Our new work of the week is arcology, which is an “ideal integrated city within a massive vertical structure”. Fans of arcologies will enjoy the work of architect Paolo Soleri, as well as the snazzy headquarters of the crew of Thunderbirds 2086.

As always, the world is ending, even in the 1970s, and so it’s time to mention Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb, as well that indispensible condiment Soylent Green (1973).

I can never stop posting this link to pictures of the chimp-in-a-robot-dog-suit Muffet from the 1970s series of Battlestar Galactica. And if you enjoyed that, you might also enjoy this video of the cute robots Huey, Dewey and Louis from Silent Running (1972).

Fans of having a shrunken Raquel Welch injected into their bloodstream should seek urgent medical attention.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll, I don’t know, make you watch The Invisible Enemy again.

Bondfinger

While you wait for our new commentary on Thunderball (1965) to be released next Saturday, why not revisit some of our old commentary tracks: Goldfinger (1964), From Russia With Love (1963), and Dr. No (1962). You can keep up with the Bondfinger news on our website, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.

Brendan, Richard and Nathan are menaced, drugged and tied up, which means it’s either a normal Saturday night or the rather spectacular Image of the Fendahl.

Buy the story!

Image of the Fendahl was released on DVD in 2009. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

Ma Tyler is played by Daphne Heard, who was Peter Bowles’s mother Mrs Polouvicka in 70s/80s sitcom To The Manor Born. Here’s the first episode.

We’ve mentioned him before, but H. P. Lovecraft was a twentieth-century racist and horror writer, who popularised the idea that the world is hideously haunted by nightmarish creatures from beyond the dawn of time. His most famous short story is The Call of Cthulhu.

Fans of nightmarish creatures from beyond the dawn of time will enjoy Quatermass and the Pit, a BBC television programme from 1959 featuring, um, nightmarish creatures from beyond the dawn of time.

The Stone Tape was a 1972 television play by the author of Quatermass, about, you know, totally scary things. It’s available on YouTube. You can also find a recent radio version, starring the lovely Jane Asher, here.

Sapphire and Steel was a crazily fascinating and boring ITV science fiction series from the 1970s and 80s, starring Joanna Lumley and David McCallum. And, of course, there’s a Big Finish version of the series, but it can’t be found anywhere on their website for rights reasons, probably.

Should we mock the 70s? Do let’s. Here’s a link to the website of Erich von Däniken, who believed that human culture was totally influenced by aliens.

And while we’re mocking the 70s, you might enjoy Desmond Morris’s The Naked Ape and Manwatching.

Survivors is a hilarious 1970s TV series, written by Terry Nation, in which a horrible plague wipes out everyone except Dennis Lill, his moustache, and a small number of other middle class people. But at least Patrick Troughton is in an episode.

The terribly handsome actor who plays Stael in this story also plays Carnell in the Blakes 7 episode Weapon. He goes on to reprise his role in a totally-not-Big-Finish series of audio dramas by Magic Bullet Productions.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll make you a fruit cake by throwing in the apple cores very hard, putting the lot in a shallow tin and baking in a high oven for two weeks.

Bondfinger

Yesterday we released our fourth James Bond commentary track, in which we pick apart Thunderball (1965). Other commentary tracks are also available: Goldfinger (1964), From Russia With Love (1963), and Dr. No (1962). You can keep up with the Bondfinger news on our website, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.

This week, we head off into the far future of the distant planet Pluto (yes, we know, shut up), to liberate humanity from the Company, in The Sun Makers. Hey Cordo, don’t bogart the pentocyleinicmethylhydrane, man.

Buy the story!

The Sun Makers was released on DVD in 2009. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

William Simons, who plays sub-Blakean rebel leader Mandrell in this story, is more famous for his role in ITV period police drama series Heartbeat, playing Alf Ventress.

The Company takes Marx’s phrase “opiate of the masses” quite literally, drugging its oppressed population to keep them compliant. The Federation will adopt a similar tactic in Season 4 of Blakes 7, using the drug Pylene 50.

Hooray! It’s the long-awaited return of German Expressionism.

Richard points out the similarities between this story and The Space Merchants, a 1952 novel by Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth. It’s still in print. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Richard also points out the story’s many visual references to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927).

How long since we last referenced Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay Notes on Camp? Far too long, if you ask me.

Henry Woolf, the Collector in this story, had already appeared in Eric Idle’s sketch comedy show Rutland Weekend Television. You can see him with Idle in this sketch, called Gibberish. He also appeared in BBC children’s programme Words and Pictures. Watch him here, he’s delightful.

After the credits, we chat briefly about the Big Finish Blakes 7 audio series, The Liberator Chronicles.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll feed an index-linked two percent growth tax into your computers and blow the economy.

Bondfinger

The Bondfinger team are off to watch SPECTRE this afternoon, in preparation for our commentary track on it, expected some time in late 2017. In the meantime, you can enjoy our previous commentaries: Thunderball (1965), Goldfinger (1964), From Russia With Love (1963), and Dr. No (1962). You can keep up with the Bondfinger news on our website, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.

Underworld just might be the worst Doctor Who story of the 1970s, which is why we spend this episode discussing Hellenistic epic, orgies in Diana Dors’s house, and the reason why you might choose to wear a bag on your head. Enjoy!

Buy the story!

Underworld was released on DVD in 2010. In the US, it was released on its own (Amazon US), while in the UK and Australia it was part of the rightfully unloved Myths and Legends box set. (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

Fans of things with real literary merit — unlike Underworld — will enjoy the Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes, which tells the story of the quest for the Golden Fleece and the romance between Jason and Medea.

Fans of things that are interesting — unlike Underworld — will enjoy this lurid account in the Daily Mail of the orgies that went on in the home of British film star Diana Dors, as told by her son Jason Dors-Lake.

Fans of things that are crap but enjoyable — unlike Underworld — will enjoy these high-concept traditional SF series: the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov, and the Lensman series by E. E. “Doc” Smith. (The Foundation series is discussed in a recent episode of the brilliant nerd-culture podcast The Incomparable.)

Fans of amusing and inventive science fiction — you know what I’m going to say next — will enjoy Bea Arthur as the fem-puter in the 2001 Futurama episode Amazon Women in the Mood.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll completely run out of money and ruin your favourite TV show for four weeks.

Bondfinger

We’ve recorded our commentary on You Only Live Twice (1967), and it will be released in two weeks’ time. In the meantime, you can listen to our commentaries on Thunderball (1965), Goldfinger (1964), From Russia With Love (1963), and Dr. No (1962). You can keep up with the Bondfinger news on our website, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.

As Season 15 limps towards its inevitable conclusion, we discover a new trope, reflect on the possibilities of Sevateem–Gallifreyan romance, and deplore the indefensible cruelty of horse racing: it’s The Invasion of Time!

Buy the story!

The Invasion of Time was released on DVD in 2008. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK). It was also released in Australia and the UK as part of the Bred for War box set, along with the other Classic Series Sontaran stories. (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

The Vardans appear to share a stylist with the Ultraman Science Patrol. No, I don’t know who they are either.

Gallifreyan hippy Presta is played by Gai Waterhouse, a famously wealthy Sydney horse trainer.

Fabulous posh air-traffic controller Rodan moonlights as a giant red pterodactyl thing who attacks Godzilla in various Japanese movies, while Castellan Spandrell moonlights as a supporting architectural feature in various Gothic cathedrals.

In the Sarah Jane Adventures story The Last Sontaran, Chrissie Jackson fabulously disables a Sontaran by hitting its probic vent with her high-heeled shoe.

Picks of the Week

Brendan

Tom Baker stars in a series of Big Finish adventures, featuring Louise Jameson and Mary Tamm (and Lalla Ward in early 2016). Brendan mentions Foe from the Future and Phillip Hinchcliffe’s Valley of Death from the Fourth Doctor Lost Stories box set.

Candy Bar Books is publishing a series of four novels by Andy Frankham, featuring Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, including The Beast of Fang Rock, featuring Ann Travers. The prequel short story is called Cult of the Grinning Man.

Richard

Gallifrey is a Big Finish audio series chronicling political intrigue on the Doctor’s home planet, featuring Mary Tamm, Lalla Ward and Louise Jameson, among others.

Green Wing was a Channel 4 comedy series set in a hospital, starring Doctor Who’s very own Tamsin Grieg and Michelle Gomez.

Here’s Michelle Gomez playing Margaret Thatcher in the Sky Arts TV series Psychobitches.

And here’s a photo of Michelle Gomez with two Missy action figures on her shoulders. God, she’s fantastic!

Nathan

Maureen O’Brien reads Ian Marter’s novelisation of her debut story, The Rescue. (Audible US) (Audible UK) (Audible AU)

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll come round to your house and make acidly snarky remarks about your pedestrian infrastructure.

Bondfinger

Next weekend, we’ll be releasing our commentary on You Only Live Twice (1967), but in the meantime, you can enjoy our commentaries on Thunderball (1965), Goldfinger (1964), From Russia With Love (1963), and Dr. No (1962). You can keep up with the Bondfinger news on our website, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.

It’s the start of a new season, and Brendan, Nathan and Todd are sent on a mission from God to find six hidden podcast episodes, that, when assembled, form hours and hours of tiresome commentary on Season 16 of Doctor Who. First stop: The Ribos Operation.

Buy the story!

Okay, this one’s complicated. In 2002, The Ribos Operation was released on DVD exclusively in the US both individually and as part of a Key to Time box set. In 2007, there was a limited edition box set released in the UK and Australia, which was then released more generally in 2009. You can read all about that on the Wikipedia page, if you’re interested. The upshot of all this is that in the US you can buy The Ribos Operation by itself (Amazon US) or as part of a box set (Amazon US). In the UK, it’s only available as part of a box set. (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

Ian Marter’s novelisation of this story is available as an audiobook read by John Leeson. (Audible US) (Audible UK) (Audible AU)

Here is a Season 16 publicity photo of Mary and Tom with a giant sticking plaster on his lip after Paul Seed’s dog bit his face.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or nothing at all will happen to you. Ever.

Bondfinger

We’ve just released our fifth James Bond commentary, on You Only Live Twice (1967). Our previous commentaries are still available: Thunderball (1965), Goldfinger (1964), From Russia With Love (1963), and Dr. No (1962). You can keep up with the Bondfinger news on our website, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.

By the left frontal lobe of the Sky Demon, it’s a new golden age, and we’re off to Calufrax to confront The Pirate Planet.

Buy the story!

In the US, you can buy The Pirate Planet by itself (Amazon US), or as part of a box set (Amazon US). In the UK, it’s only available as part of the Key to Time box set. (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

Those young people on Todd’s lawn who don’t know who Leo Sayer is should totally watch this video.

Daphne Zuniga, well known for her role in Melrose Place, gets terribly cross about some guy shooting her hair in Spaceballs (1987).

Rotating knives are an important element of any modern architectural design, as this Monty Python sketch demonstrates.

If you’ve never heard Douglas Adams’s Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy radio series, then you should have a word with yourself immediately. (Audible US) (Audible UK) (Audible AU)

Unlike Nathan and Todd, Brendan had a spectacular career as an extra on the Australian TV series, Rescue Special Ops in 2009.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll never be cruel to an electron in a particle accelerator again.

Bondfinger

We now have five James Bond commentary podcasts: You Only Live Twice (1967), Thunderball (1965), Goldfinger (1964), From Russia With Love (1963), and Dr. No (1962). You can keep up with the Bondfinger news on our website, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.

This week, we’re back on Earth, being menaced by giant glowing fibreglass rocks. Incidentally, we’re also discussing the third story in the Key to Time season, The Stones of Blood.

Buy the story!

In the US, you can buy The Stones of Blood by itself (Amazon US), or as part of the Key to Time box set (Amazon US). In the UK, it’s only available as part of the Key to Time box set. (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

For the first time ever, Brendan was wrong about something. When auditioning to replace the divine Miss Rigg in The Avengers, Susan Engel didn’t act against Moray Laing, the current editor of Doctor Who Adventures magazine. It was actually Moray Watson, who played Sir Robert Muir in Black Orchid.

Fortunately, Nathan was also wrong about Beatrix Lehmann — she went on to appear twice more on screen, in the film The Cat and the Canary (1978) and the miniseries Crime and Punishment (1979).

Evelyn Smythe was one of the Sixth Doctor’s companions in the main Big Finish series of Doctor Who audios.

And in other things that Nathan is wrong about, Gareth Roberts’s comic strip about sentient sand that attacks people was actually written by Paul Cornell and called Seaside Rendezvous, published in DWM’s 1991 Summer Special.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or, like typical males, we’ll strand you here in the middle of nowhere with two complete strangers while we go off somewhere enjoying ourselves.

Bondfinger

We now have five James Bond commentary podcasts: You Only Live Twice (1967), Thunderball (1965), Goldfinger (1964), From Russia With Love (1963), and Dr. No (1962). You can keep up with the Bondfinger news on our website, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.

If there was ever any doubt that Brendan is a young man of exceptional taste and discernment, this episode finally lays it to rest with the revelation that his favourite Doctor Who story ever is The Androids of Tara!

Buy the story!

You know the drill by now: In the US, you can buy The Androids of Tara by itself (Amazon US), or as part of the Key to Time box set (Amazon US). In the UK, it’s only available as part of the Key to Time box set. (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

Famously, The Androids of Tara is shamelessly ripped off a loving tribute to Anthony Hope’s popular 1894 novel The Prisoner of Zenda. You can read it here.

We’ve mentioned the fanzine Cottage Under Siege before: it was edited by Neil Corry and Gareth Roberts and published in 1993–1994. Again, please, please, please contact us if you know where we can get copies of it.

You can read the summery and charming discussion of The Androids of Tara from Cornell, Day and Topping’s The Discontinuity Guide at the old BBC Cult website.

Cousins to the Taran wood beast, the Links in the Blakes 7 episode Terminal held a terrible secret to the future of all of mankind. While looking amazingly silly.

Fans of Peter Jeffrey’s Count Grendel of Gracht will also enjoy his turn as a villain in the Avengers episode, Game.

Declan Mulholland, who plays Till in The Androids of Tara played a humanoid Jabba the Hutt in a deleted scene from the original Star Wars (1977).

The Bechdel Test was originally proposed in this comic strip in 1985. But how often does Doctor Who pass the Bechdel test?

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or, all together now, next time we shall not be so lenient!

Bondfinger

Bondfinger is taking a January holiday in the Bahamas, as usual, but we plan to be back in February with a new commentary track on Casino Royale (1967). In the meantime, please enjoy our first five commentary tracks: You Only Live Twice (1967), Thunderball (1965), Goldfinger (1964), From Russia With Love (1963), and Dr. No (1962). You can keep up with the Bondfinger news on our website, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.

In this fart-astic episode of Flight Through Entirety, our search for the fifth segment of the Key to Time takes us to the third moon of Delta Magna where we confront The Power of Kroll.

Buy the story!

Same as last time, really: In the US, you can buy The Power of Kroll by itself (Amazon US), or as part of the Key to Time box set (Amazon US). In the UK, it’s only available as part of the Key to Time box set. (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

Not many links this week. (There’s an appalling dearth of references to German Expressionism in our discussion.) So to pass the time while listening to this episode, why not read a review of The Power of Kroll from the AV Club website? And for once, there’s no need to avoid the comments thread.

This is Philip Madoc’s last performance in Doctor Who. He passed away in 2012. You can read his obituary in The Guardian.

Todd is puzzled by the idea of feeding Krollfarts to the hapless population of Delta Magna. What he didn’t know was that bacteria actually can be used to convert methane to proteins. Fact fans will enjoy this article on the topic.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll send you a hundred tons of compressed protein a day — a fifth of your protein requirements. And you know were we’ll be getting it from!

Bondfinger

Nathan is currently spending a few weeks in Tokyo, re-enacting key scenes from You Only Live Twice. As a result, Bondfinger is taking a break in January, so our commentary track on Casino Royale (1967) will be delayed until the start of February. In the meantime, please enjoy our first five commentary tracks: You Only Live Twice (1967), Thunderball (1965), Goldfinger (1964), From Russia With Love (1963), and Dr. No (1962). You can keep up with the Bondfinger news on our website, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.

It’s the final story of the Key to Time season, whose story wheezes and groans to a halt in The Armageddon Factor. Meanwhile, Brendan, Nathan and Todd have a lovely time praising Mary, dissing everything else, and answering that pressing question: what did we think of Doctor Who’s first ever season-long arc?

Buy the story!

And now, for the last time: In the US, you can buy The Armageddon Factor by itself (Amazon US), or as part of the Key to Time box set (Amazon US). In the UK, it’s only available as part of the Key to Time box set. (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

We’ve referred to Cornell, Day and Topping’s The Discontinuity Guide before. It’s out of print, buy you can still buy for your Kindle (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (Amazon AU). The text of the book is reproduced on the old BBC Cult Doctor Who website, which is pretty hard to get to these days, but I have at least managed to find their take on The Armageddon Factor (“the whole thing is very uninvolving”).

Charmingly, Brendan thinks that K9 sounds like Lambert the Sheepish Lion (1952).

Davyd Harries, who plays posh idiot sidekick Shapp, is also fairly horrifying as Vila’s hilarious bluebeard pal Doran in the horrifying Blakes 7 episode Moloch, written by Blakes 7’s resident horrifying misogynist Ben Steed.

Fans of the entire contents of the Bristol Boys’ kitchen drawers will enjoy Dave Martin’s entry in the Make Your Own Adventure series, Search for the Doctor, which features the Sixth Doctor, K9, Drax and Omega.

Picks of the Week

Brendan

This week, Brendan has decided not to pick the Big Finish The Key 2 Time series, which consists of The Judgement of Isskar, The Destroyer of Delights and The Chaos Pool, and stars Peter Davison as the Doctor. He has also decided not to pick Graceless, an entire Big Finish series which serves as a sequel to The Key 2 Time, and which has now run for three whole series.

Instead, he’s picked The Auntie Matter, a Big Finish full-cast audio drama starring Tom Baker and Mary Tamm.

Todd

Todd has picked one of the Big Finish Companion Chronicles, The Stealers from Saiph, which is read by Mary Tamm.

Nathan

Nathan has picked The AV Club, which is a sister site to satirical newspaper The Onion, and is the home of some of the best writing on pop culture on the internet. He particularly recommends the reviews of the Classic Series written by Christopher Bahn.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, because if you’re not rating or reviewing us on iTunes, we can make you rate or review us on iTunes, because we can do anything! As from this moment there’s no such thing as free will in the entire universe! For we possess the Key to Time!

Bondfinger

Bondfinger will return in Casino Royale (1967). Until then, you can enjoy our first five commentary tracks: You Only Live Twice (1967), Thunderball (1965), Goldfinger (1964), From Russia With Love (1963), and Dr. No (1962). You can keep up with the Bondfinger news on our website, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.

It’s the start of an exciting new season of Doctor Who. Terry Nation’s back and Mary Tamm isn’t, but we still manage to pull ourselves together long enough to discuss Destiny of the Daleks.

Buy the story!

Destiny of the Daleks was released on DVD in 2007/2008. That was simple. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

In 1980, Tom and Lalla recorded a series of Australian ads for minicomputer company Prime Computer. These are available as a DVD extra on the Destiny DVD, but you can also see them on YouTube.

In 1979, Tom recorded a series of three ads for conservation group Keep Australia Beautiful. You can see a terrible videotape copy of two of these on YouTube as well.

The nightmarish scenario of wars run by computer will later be taken up by Matthew Broderick in War Games (1983), which you are all too young to remember. Damn you.

Star Trek’s Wil Wheaton interviews Doctor Who’s Jenna Coleman and Peter Capaldi on the Series 9 DVD and Blu-ray releases. You can watch some short excerpts from that interview here and here.

Nowadays, the word meme tends to refer to photographs of cats with hilarious writing superimposed on them. However, it was originally coined by Lalla Ward’s husband Richard Dawkins to refer to a unit of culture which spreads through imitation.

Chaos on the Bridge is a 2014 documentary written and produced by William Shatner, chronicling the first few difficult years of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s available on Netflix. (Not any longer, apparently.)

Mark Michalowski’s short story The Lying Old Witch in the Wardrobe was published in 2003 as part of Big Finish’s anthology Short Trips: Companions. It explains — whimsically — why Romana regenerates at the start of this story, and suggests that the Romana we see here is not exactly who we expect her to be.

The impasse faced by two perfectly logical computer opponents is an outworking of game theory, used by mathematician John von Neumann to model, among other things, the interactions between the US and the USSR in the Cold War.

The same impasse is also the basis of the short story Fool’s Mate, first published in Astounding Science Fiction in March 1953. In this story, two computerised battle fleets are frozen, unable to attack one another, until one decides to put its attack strategy under the control of a complete madman. Which just goes to show, really.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll ineptly recast one of your favourite Doctor Who villains and completely ruin your childhood.

Bondfinger

It seems such a long time since there was a new episode of Bondfinger, but don’t worry, we’ll be releasing a commentary track on Casino Royale (1967) early in February. Until then, you can enjoy our first five commentary tracks: You Only Live Twice (1967), Thunderball (1965), Goldfinger (1964), From Russia With Love (1963), and Dr. No (1962). You can keep up with the Bondfinger news on our website, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.

This week, Brendan, Richard and Nathan tackle City of Death, by Douglas Adams and Graham Williams. How many superlatives can fit in a single 40-minute podcast episode?

Buy the story!

City of Death was released on DVD in 2005. Seriously, if you don’t have a copy, just buy it. At once. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

We’ve uploaded some photos from Brendan’s Facebook album Toys on Tour, which is the best place to go to see a plastic Tom Baker crawling up the gate to the Galerie Denise René in Paris.

After Hitch Hiker’s and Doctor Who, Douglas Adams wrote two novels featuring holistic detective Dirk Gently, which reused elements from City of Death and Shada. Those novels were Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (1987) and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988). They’re very good.

Ken Grieve, with whom Douglas Adams went to Paris for lunch that one time, was the director of Destiny of the Daleks.

We talked about Cornell, Day and Topping’s The Discontinuity Guide a couple of weeks ago. Here’s their take on City of Death.

Peter Cook and Dudley Moore’s weird spoof version of The Hound of the Baskervilles was released in 1978. It just sounds amazing!

When she wasn’t busy helping her husband to steal the Mona Lisa, Catherine Schell appeared in the second season of Space: 1999 as Maya, a shape-changing alien from the planet Psychon. It’s really much worse than you could possibly imagine.

Fans of erudite discussions of art, scarcity and authenticity will enjoy Elizabeth Sandifer’s take on this story from TARDIS Eruditorum.

For two years, from 1911 to 1913, the Mona Lisa was no longer in the Louvre: it was hidden in a trunk in Vincenzo Peruggia’s apartment after he entered the Louvre, hid it under his smock and made off with it. See, we’re educational as well as entertaining.

Captain Tancredi’s bodyguard is played by Peter Halliday, who won our hearts in his role as Packer in The Invasion.

Romana’s naughty schoolgirl outfit seems to be inspired by the St Trinian’s film series in the 50s and 60s. Another inspiration might be Madeline, the heroine of a series of children’s books written by Austrian author Ludwig Bemelmans in the 1950s and 60s.

Licence Denied was a collection of fan writing edited by Paul Cornell and first published in 1997. It is, sadly, out of print. Notable essays include Tom the Second, Gareth Roberts’s defence of the Williams Era, and Why the Nimon Should Be Our Friends, by Phillip J. Gray. And no, you can’t borrow my copy.

James Goss’s novelisation of City of Death was released by BBC Books in 2015. It’s good. Buy it. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Comic Book Guy kidnaps Lucy Lawless in The Simpsons Halloween episode Treehouse of Horror X. Hilariously, the Simpsons Wikia page warns that “this episode is considered non-canon and the events featured do not relate to the series and therefore may not have actually happened/existed”. Which is nice to know.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll cancel the wine and bring the vitamin pill. Continue with your work, professor. Enjoy it, or you will die.

Bondfinger

Our Casino Royale (1967) commentary will be released early in February. With hilarious results. Until then, you can enjoy our first five commentary tracks: You Only Live Twice (1967), Thunderball (1965), Goldfinger (1964), From Russia With Love (1963), and Dr. No (1962). You can keep up with the Bondfinger news on our website, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.

This week, Brendan, Richard and Nathan are just simply too mature to make fun of the ludicrously phallic monster in The Creature from the Pit. Aren’t we? Aren’t we?

Buy the story!

The Creature from the Pit was released on DVD in 2010. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

Orac is, of course, the computer in TV’s Blakes 7.

Fagin is the appalling Jewish stereotype from Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist. We own Charles Dickens! He’s in Doctor Who.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll tip you into a pit and throw astrologers at you. Obviously.

Bondfinger

Fans of people staring open-mouthed at psychedelic 60s films will enjoy our commentary track for Casino Royale (1967)

Fans of something much more sensible will enjoy our first five commentary tracks: You Only Live Twice (1967), Thunderball (1965), Goldfinger (1964), From Russia With Love (1963), and Dr. No (1962). You can keep up with the Bondfinger news on our website, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.

So, we’ve all taken several hits of vraxoin, which means that we really enjoyed this week’s story, in spite of the sets, the script, most of the performances and the ham-fisted anti-drugs message. It’s Nightmare of Eden!

Buy the story!

Nightmare of Eden was released on DVD as recently as 2012. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

In 1983, First Lady Nancy Reagan was in the throes of her Just Say No campaign, in which she made numerous television appearances warning the American people about the dangers of drugs. Horrifically, she guested on an episode of Diff’rent Strokes in order to patronise Gary Coleman’s entire class.

Fans of the fabulous model work in this story, along with everyone else, will enjoy the Blakes 7 episode Gold. (It’s worth mentioning at this point that Blakes 7 is now available on YouTube in its entirety. So why are you wasting your time on this podcast, for God’s sake?)

Amii Stewart’s 1979 music video for her hit single Knock On Wood has nearly many psychedelic video effects as this story’s Episode 3 cliffhanger.

In 1980, Lalla Ward played Ophelia in the BBC Season of Shakespeare’s version of Hamlet. Hamlet himself was played by Derek Jacobi, Doctor Who’s very own Professor Yana. (We love Lalla, but she’s really terrible in this.)

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll get horribly out of it for some reason and crash a spaceliner through your car.

Bondfinger

Bondfinger has just released its Casino Royale (1967) commentary, but, to be honest, you’ll need to take a lot of vraxoin in order to get through that film. Still, we also have more sensible commentaries on You Only Live Twice (1967), Thunderball (1965), Goldfinger (1964), From Russia With Love (1963), and Dr. No (1962). You can keep up with the Bondfinger news on our website, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.

Our flight finally reaches the end of the 1970s, only to run out of hymetusite and crash ignominiously into The Horns of Nimon.

Buy the story!

The Horns of Nimon was released on DVD in 2010. It was released by itself in the US (Amazon US), but in the UK it was released along with The Time Monster and Underworld in the rightfully unloved Myths and Legends box set (Amazon UK).

Notes and links

Here’s South Australian Senator Cory Bernardi drawing an irrefutable link between marriage equality and marrying your dog.

Fans of the Nimon (and who isn’t?) will enjoy the Big Finish Eighth Doctor audio Seasons of Fear by Paul Cornell.

Once again, we mention Licence Denied, which was a collection of fan writing edited by Paul Cornell first published in 1997. Notable essays include Tom the Second, Gareth Roberts’s defence of the Williams Era, and Why the Nimon Should Be Our Friends, by Phillip J. Gray.

And here’s is Shaun Micallef interviewing Jack Tiger Adams, for some reason.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll come round to your house and dig a black hole on your doorstep.

Bondfinger

Our Casino Royale (1967) commentary is now out, and it’s mental, but nowhere near as mental as the film itself. Once the acid flashbacks have subsided, you might enjoy our other Bond commentaries: You Only Live Twice (1967), Thunderball (1965), Goldfinger (1964), From Russia With Love (1963), and Dr. No (1962). You can keep up with the Bondfinger news on our website, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.

We’ve reached the end of the Graham Williams Era, and before we go off to have a relaxing one-month break in a nearby parallel universe, we have just enough time to discuss Shada, the sadly uncompleted keystone of the last three years of Doctor Who. Tea, anyone?

Buy the story!

Odd and unsatisfactory versions of this story were released on DVD in 2013. In the US, as usual, it was released on its own (Amazon US), whereas in the UK it was one of two discs in the Legacy Collection box set, along with the 1993 documentary More than Thirty Years in the TARDIS. (Amazon UK)

However, it doesn’t end there. In 2012, a novelisation of Shada was released, written by Doctor Who writer and Season 17 fan Gareth Roberts. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (Amazon AU). There’s also an audiobook, read by Lalla Ward. (Audible US) (Audible UK) (Audible AU)

Notes and links

Gödel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter was published in 1979, and was wildly loved by just the sort of people who might stumble upon an ancient book of Gallifreyan lore in the study of some old Cambridge professor. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

The Star Wars Holiday Special first screened around Christmas 1978, and is perhaps the most horrific thing ever to screen on television. Despite George Lucas’s relentless attempts to suppress it, it can be viewed in its entirety on YouTube. But, really, just don’t.

The Somebody Else’s Problem field is “a cheap, easy, and staggeringly useful way of safely protecting something from unwanted eyes”, by exploiting our natural tendency to ignore things that we just don’t want to think about.

And here’s a video of the destruction of a washing machine by putting a brick in it. Turn down your sound before watching this.

Fans of ruthlessly mocking pompous homophobic lackwits will enjoy these Amazon reviews of Cory Bernardi’s absurdly jejune magnum opus The Conservative Revolution.

Picks of the Week

Nathan

Nathan just picked a whole heap of stuff that we’ve mentioned in the last few episodes of the podcast. There are links to Gareth Roberts’s novelisation of Shada above; James Goss’s novelisation of City of Death was released by BBC Books in 2015. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Paul Cornell’s collection of fanzine articles, Licence Denied, is out of print.

Richard

The Mortdecai Trilogy by Kyril Bonfiglioli is a series of comic novels recounting the adventures of a dissolute art dealer.

Brendan

Douglas Adams’s novel Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency shamelessly recycles many of the ideas in both City of Death and Shada. It’s great. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll unexpectedly go on strike over lunch and cancel the pinnacle of your entire era.

Bondfinger

While you’re waiting for our upcoming commentary on On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1968), please enjoy our commentaries on (the other) Casino Royale (1967), You Only Live Twice (1967), Thunderball (1965), Goldfinger (1964), From Russia With Love (1963), and Dr. No (1962). You can keep up with the Bondfinger news on our website, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.

Exhausted by a two-hour tracking shot along Brighton Beach, Brendan, Nathan and Todd head off to the leisure planet Argolis, a beautifully-directed planet under attack from an army of David Haigs. Welcome to the 1980s, everyone!

Buy the story!

The Leisure Hive was released on DVD in 2004. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

Fans of obsessing over the minutiae of things that are completely unimportant, will enjoy, well, Flight Through Entirety, to be honest, but they will also enjoy the website broadwcast.org, which enumerates every single time a Classic Doctor Who episode has aired on terrestrial television in over 80 countries around the world. Nathan loves it.

Here’s an article from The Telegraph in which Christopher Hamilton Bidmead, starved for relevance, explains exactly what’s wrong with the new series.

And now, some really terrible TV science fiction for your enjoyment: eleven episodes of the 1979 series Buck Rogers in the Twenty-Fifth Century, and Chapter 1 of Jason of Star Command (1978), intriguingly titled Attack of the Dragonship.

Here is Elizabeth Sandifer’s video blog discussing this season’s new approach to visual storytelling.

And here’s Bablyon 5, which is apparently a television series of some kind, shamelessly ripping off the composition of one of the many beautiful shots in this story.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. You can find Cameron Lam, who so beautifully arranged our theme music, at cameronlam.com. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we will open the airlocks and together we will walk out onto the surface of our planet for the last time.

Bondfinger

This morning, we released our commentary on Connery’s last (?) Bond film, Diamonds Are Forever (1971). It’s the eighth in our series, which now includes commentaries on all of the 60s Bond films. You can keep up with the Bondfinger news on our website, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.

The Season 18 fun continues this week as we head off to the planet Tigella to confront megalomaniacal pot plant Meglos. On the way, we discuss another important trope, hating the Doctor’s old friends, and, of course, the awesome wonder of Jacqueline Hill.

Buy the story!

Meglos was released on DVD in 2011. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

The horrific helmet hair on the Savants has its roots (ha!) in the Gerry Anderson TV series UFO (1980). Check out the sexy purple version of the Savants’ wigs in this blog post on the first episode of the series.

Here is a list of all of the old friends of John Steed who are killed in episodes of The New Avengers.

Fans of The Avengers will have nodded sagely at Brendan’s mentions of the episodes Murdersville and The Man-Eater of Surrey Green. We discuss Man-Eater in one of our favourite episodes of this podcast, Episode 43: Sexiest Exposition Trope.

On the subject of tropes, Brendan mentions the delivery of exposition by having characters explain to each other things they clearly already know. According to TV Tropes, this trope is officially called As you know. Please take note.

According to Brendan, who is very young, you know, Tigella’s lush, aggressive vegetation looks very much like the Pokémon Victreebel. You can compare them yourself here.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or you’ll be caught in a fold of time and forced to listen to this episode round and round for all eternity. Not even you can escape a chronic hysteretic loop, as you well know.

Bondfinger

In our most recent commentary, we respectfully discuss the first James Bond film of the 1970s, Diamonds Are Forever (1971). Other commentaries are also available, covering all of the Bond films from the 1960s. You can keep up with the Bondfinger news on our website, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.

This week, our trip to Gallifrey is unexpectedly diverted when we fall headlong into Doctor Who’s first ever trilogy, set in a bubble universe weirdly intersecting with the Newtown Branch of The Sofa of Reasonable Comfort. While there, we discuss polar vs Cartesian coordinates, the laws governing space evolution and skimpy transparent underwear. Tell Dexeter we’ve come full circle!

Buy the story!

Full Circle was released on DVD in 2009. It’s available by itself in the US (Amazon US), and also as part of the E-Space Trilogy box set (Amazon US). In the UK and Australia, it is only available as part of the E-Space Trilogy box set. (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

If you’re planning a career as a Doctor Who villain, you will obviously need to familiarise yourself with the Internet’s Evil Overload Checklist.

Brendan’s Tom Baker and K9 action figures recreate key scenes from Full Circle on location in Black Park, Buckinghamshire in our occasional series Toys on Tour.

Perhaps we’re unnecessarily cruel about Matthew Waterhouse’s performance in this story. To hear his side of the story, you must read the excellent Blue Box Boy, Waterhouse’s own account of his childhood as a Doctor Who fan, his time on the show, and his subsequent life on the convention circuit. You won’t regret it. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (Amazon AU)

Although the Marshchild paid a terrible price for trusting the Doctor, we think you’ll enjoy listening to Trust Your Doctor, a podcast by our internet pals Dylan and Kiyan. They’ve only just overtaken us, so, you know, spoiler alert.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. And please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll violently trash your laboratory and then electrocute ourselves by punching a hole in your television.

Bondfinger

Before we start our flight through Rodge’s glorious series of Bond films, there’s still time to catch up on our commentaries on Sean and George’s entries, including Sean’s final film (for now), Diamonds Are Forever (1971). You can keep up with the Bondfinger news on our website, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.

Our flight through the vast green void of the E-Space Trilogy continues, as we land on an unnamed planet inhabited only by playing-card monarchs, unconvincing plastic bats and press-on BBC beards. But we still have a pretty good time. Welcome to State of Decay.

Buy the story!

State of Decay was released on DVD in 2009. Unlike last week’s Full Circle, I can’t find it on sale by itself on Amazon in the US, but it’s available as part of the E-Space Trilogy box set from either of the Amazons. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

As is now well known, State of Decay started life as the Season 15 opener The Vampire Mutations, which was nixed by the BBC so that it wouldn’t steal the thunder from BBC’s own version of Dracula scheduled for broadcast that same year. The Wikipedia article on this lavish production links to several fairly positive reviews, despite Nathan’s tiresome and predictable insistence that it would have been simply terrible.

Terrance Dicks will revisit this unnamed planet in his Virgin New Adventures book Blood Harvest, published in July 1994, which is before some of you young people were even born, for God’s sake.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or Nathan will come round to your house to explain the etymology of the word technocotheca at intolerably tedious length.

Doctor Who in 10 Seconds

These days, the Flight Through Entirety team can usually keep going on about a Doctor Who story for upwards of 40 minutes. But what if we only had 10 seconds?

In the latest (well, only) video project from Flight Through Entirety (well, just Brendan, really), Brendan summarises Doctor Who season by season, spending no more than 10 seconds on each story. Season 1 is up already; by the time you see these shownotes, Season 2 will probably be up too. You can see Brendan’s fabulous work here.

Bondfinger

Next week, we hope, we’ll be releasing our commentary podcast on Roger Moore’s Bond début, Live and Let Die, so you’ve got about a week to enjoy it one last time before we ruin it for you forever, probably. Our most recent commentary is on Diamonds Are Forever (1971). You can find our other commentaries on our website, and you can keep up with the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.

Our flight through E-Space crashes into a mysterious white void inhabited only by crazy alchemist Christopher Hamilton Bidmead and some hirsute slaves on the run from a Jean Cocteau film. It’s Warriors’ Gate.

Buy the story!

Warriors’ Gate was released on DVD in 2009 as part of the E-Space Trilogy box set. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

Fans of the weird magical way that time works in this story will enjoy the ITV series Sapphire and Steel, so long as they’re blessed with a lot of patience for glacial pacing. And Joanna Lumley, obviously.

This story reminds Brendan of two stories of Star Trek: The Next Generation: Contagion, in which the mysterious Iconians have constructed gateways that allow them to plunder planet after planet, and Remember Me, in which the fabulous Beverly Crusher discovers that the universe is “a spherical region 705 metres in diameter”.

Despite Nathan’s best attempt, The Practical Problem with Leaving Someone Alive is not the title of this episode. Instead, it’s the title of Episode 50 of Flight Through Entirety, in which we discuss the utterly superb Horror of Fang Rock.

Kenneth Cope, who played Packard in this story, was well known for his role in Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), where he played the eponymous Hopkirk, a fabulous crime-solving ghost. Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) was created by Dennis Spooner, the best Dennis to contribute to the creation of the William Hartnell era.

Richard’s not here this week, but we still have a list of films and things that influnced the visual style of this story: Jean Cocteau’s Orphée (1950), Roots (1977), Kiss Me Deadly (1955), and Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bête (1955).

Fans of people being horrible to Matthew Waterhouse will enjoy his superb autobiography, Blue Box Boy. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or, I don’t know, we’ll knock over a goblet of wine and confront you with a totally inexplicable (but utterly beautiful) cliffhanger.

Doctor Who in 10 Seconds

As usual, all three of us find ourselves able to drone on about a single Doctor Who story for more than half an hour. But what if we only had 10 seconds?

By the time you read this, the third episode of Doctor Who in Ten Seconds might even be up, covering the glorious car crash that is Doctor Who’s third season. You can see the entire series on YouTube. You might even get to see Brendan dancing. Shut up. He’ll be totally wearing clothes, you deviant.

Bondfinger

Over the weekend, we released our commentary podcast on Roger Moore’s first Bond film, the casually racist classic Live and Let Die. Our eight previous commentaries cover the Connery films, George Lazenby’s classic outing and the inexplicable Casino Royale (1967), starring David Niven. You can find all these commentaries on our website, and you can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.

With the Source out of control, nature, they say, reverts to destructive chaos.

This week, Brendan, Nathan and Todd perform the entire podcast in iambic pentameters and wearing stick-on BBC beards. The script is great, the sets are great, the actors are great, and the Master is here too. It’s The Keeper of Traken.

Buy the story!

The Keeper of Traken was released on DVD in 2007. In the US, it was available on its own (Amazon US), but in the UK and Australia, it was part of the New Beginnings box set, which also included Logopolis and Castrovalva (Amazon UK).

Notes and links

This might not make it to the final cut, but we bang on about the Doctor Who Cookbook at the beginning of the raw recording, so here’s a link. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Fans of giant exposition dumps will enjoy Space: 1999, which showcases Johnny Byrne’s talents at dumping exposition. Season 1 is worth a watch; Season 2 is a horrific trainwreck. Avoid.

We’ve mentioned this before, but in the late 70s and the early 80s, the BBC produced TV versions of all of Shakespeare’s plays, whose design and direction were terribly similar to the design and direction of this story.

Geoffrey Beevers goes on to have a great post-Doctor Who career as the Master. Fans of his version of the Master will enjoy all of his audiobooks, as well as Big Finish’s Dust Breeding, Master and The Two Masters.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or if all the stars were silver, and the sky a giant purse in my fist, I couldn’t be happier than I am tonight. That’s not really a threat, is it?

Doctor Who in 10 Seconds

The great unsung hero of Flight Through Entirety is, of course, Brendan, with his crazily brilliant editing skillz. But what don’t you get to see?

To celebrate 100 subscribers to Doctor Who in Ten Seconds, Brendan has chosen to release his blooper reel, and it’s just hilariously wonderful. Fans of Brendan dancing will definitely enjoy this, and so will everyone else. Take a look.

You can subscribe to the entire series on YouTube.

Bondfinger

So, we have nine Bond commentary podcasts available right now, starting from Dr. No and going all the way to Live and Let Die, and including the psychedelic nightmare that is Casino Royale (1967). You can find all these commentaries on our website, and you can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.

It’s the end, but the moment has been prepared for.

This episode, we say farewell to the star of Doctor Who’s last seven years and a huge part of our childhoods: the Great Curator himself, Tom Baker. On the way, we discuss gravity, orphans, Auntie Vanessa’s outfit, agnosticism and the untimely destruction of the entire universe. It’s Logopolis.

Buy the story!

Logopolis was released on DVD in 2007. In the US, it was available on its own (Amazon US), but, again, in the UK and Australia, it was part of the New Beginnings box set, which also included The Keeper of Traken and Castrovalva (Amazon UK).

Notes and links

In Australia, we were fortunate to have Doctor Who four or five nights a week at 6:30 PM just before the ABC News. But, between new seasons and endless repeats of Pertwee’s final year, we were treated to the Japanese television series Monkey, which was dubbed by fabulous English actors like Doctor Who’s very own David Collings, and newly-welcomed Australian citizen Miriam Margolyes.

Richard’s mention of frocks and guns gives us the perfect opportunity to link to Nathan’s blog post on the subject.

Before receding into the background on Doctor Who, Sarah Sutton starred in a spooky television programme called The Moon Stallion (1978), along with her fellow Who-alumni David Haig and John Abinieri.

Fans of the sombre mystical brilliance of Season 18 will enjoy following script editor Christopher Bidmead on Twitter at @chbid.

Feeling overwhelmed by the inevitability of death, the ephemerality of pleasure and the fundamental grinding pointlessness of human existence? Of course you are. Unfortunately, The Doctor Who Pattern Book will do very little to cheer you up. And anyway it’s out of print.

Fortunately, the universe won’t last forever. Fans of cabalistic ideas the link between words and reality will enjoy Arthur C. Clarke’s 1953 short story The Nine Billion Names of God.

Picks of the week

Brendan

Inveterate essayist and Avengers fan recommends Avengerworld: The Avengers in Our Lives, a charity anthology produced in aid of Champion Chanzige, a charity which exists to improve conditions for underprivileged children at a primary school in Tanzania.

Nathan

Nathan has been enjoying The Greatest Generation, a Star Trek podcast by two guys who are a bit embarrassed to have a Star Trek podcast. Check out their website at gagh.biz.

Richard

Charmingly, Richard has been reading books about Wonder Woman, including Jill Lepore’s The Secret History of Wonder Woman (Amazon US) (Amazon UK), and our very own El Sandifer’s A Golden Thread: An Unofficial Critical History of Wonder Woman (Amazon US ) (Amazon UK).

Todd

Equally charmingly, Todd has been enjoying Tegan and Sara’s 2012 album Heartthrob, and particularly the song “I Was a Fool”. Buy it on iTunes. (Other online music retailers are also available.)

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll be so cross and self-destructive that we’ll probably unravel the whole causal nexus, and then the unravelling will spread out until the whole universe is reduced to nothing. Would that be an overreaction?

Doctor Who in 10 Seconds

Doctor Who in 10 Seconds is FTE’s first flight into the world of online video, featuring FTE’s very own CBBC-style television presenter, Brendan Jones.

To see every story from Doctor Who’s first three seasons summarised in 10 seconds to a jaunty musical accompaniment, check out the playlist on YouTube.

Bondfinger

Bondfinger continues to be a thing. We’ve already done nine commentary tracks, starting from Dr. No and going all the way to Live and Let Die. You can find all these commentaries on our website, and you can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook, including an upcoming commentary track on The Man with the Golden Gun (1974).

Well… it’ll just go on and on and on and on, because it’s part of our television, isn’t it? Why should it stop, there’s no evidence… everyone’s been very successful in it.

Tom’s gone, so it’s time for another retrospective episode, ably compered by Sir Todd Beilby. Who will we snog, marry and avoid this time?

Notes and links

Fans of Tom Baker will enjoy his 1997 biography Who on Earth is Tom Baker? (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Pearl Mackie is introduced as Peter Capaldi’s new companion when she faces the Daleks in this introductory video.

The Robots of Death do return, in the Kaldor City audios and in Robophobia, a Big Finish audio starring Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor.

Tom’s Doctor makes his comic debut in 1975, in the TV Comic strip Death Flower.

Chris Boucher’s terrible (but highly absorbent) BBC Books include Last Man Running and Corpse Marker.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll become increasingly grumpy and difficult to work with until you’re forced to fire us. Then we’ll do a drunken interview on Nationwide.

Doctor Who in 10 Seconds

Doctor Who in 10 Seconds is FTE’s first flight into the world of online video, and Gareth Roberts has described it as a hoot.

To see every story from Doctor Who’s first three seasons summarised in 10 seconds by our very own Brendan Jones, check out the playlist on YouTube.

Bondfinger

While you wait for our slightly delayed commentary on The Man with the Golden Gun, why not listen to our other commenary tracks, starting with Dr. No and going all the way to Live and Let Die? You can find these commentaries on our website, and you can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.

This week Bondfinger meets Flight Through Entirety, as we attempt our first ever Doctor Who-related commentary podcast. DVD remotes on standby: it’s the lump of coal in all of our 1981 Christmas stockings — the first and worst Doctor Who spinoff: K9 and Company: A Girl’s Best Friend. (Other Doctor Who spinoffs are also available.)

Buy the story

K9 and Company was released on DVD in 2008 as part of the K9 Tales box set, which also includes the execrable Season 15 story The Invisible Enemy. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK).

Notes and links

As usual in the 70s, we reference a whole bunch of Avengers episodes, including Murdersville, The Winged Avenger and The Midas Touch from The New Avengers.

Colin Jeavons appears in some vastly better television programmes: he’s Stamper in the original BBC House of Cards, directed by Graff Vynda-K Paul Seed, and Max Quordlepleen in the somewhat terrible television adaptation of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Fans of children’s television who don’t hate themselves will enjoy these seminal programmes: Robin Redbreast, Children of the Stones, Sky and the Chocky trilogy, based on Chocky by John Wyndham.

The K9 and Company Annual is included in the K9 Tales box set, so if you’re as sad as we are, you probably own it already.

Acorn Antiques was a hilarious series of sketches on Victoria Wood as Seen on TV, which parodies the conventions of badly made television programmes. You can see it all here, and you really, really must.

Hilary Briss, played by Doctor Who’s very own Mark Gatiss, secretly sold special stuff to the inhabitants of Royston Vasey in the horrific and superlatively clever League of Gentlemen TV series.

The Travelling Salesman problem is a giant thing in computer science, which posits that it’s really, really hard to work out the shortest route to take to cover a whole bunch of known locations. So no wonder K9 was so incredibly unhelpful.

Here’s the Literal Video version of Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart. If you click one link in these shownotes, it must, must, must be this one.

And, of course, the best Doctor Who spinoff ever (apart from Wizards vs Aliens which totally doesn’t count), is The Sarah Jane Adventures. Take that, Terence Dudley.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll pick up this stupid pilot and create an entire series. Don’t think we won’t.

Doctor Who in 10 Seconds

Doctor Who in 10 Seconds is Brendan’s vanity video project, which is basically a lot better than this podcast. Fans of things that are just superb will enjoy Brendan summarising every Doctor Who story in less than 10 seconds.

To see Brendan’s summaries of the first three seasons, check out the playlist on YouTube.

Bondfinger

And it’s just up: our commentary podcast on the Rodgetastic Bond classic The Man with the Golden Gun. It’s our best episode yet, but other commentaries are also available, starting with Dr. No and even including the ludicrous 1967 film Casino Royale. You can find these commentaries on our website, and you can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.

We said goodbye to Tom last week, and so this week all four of us are here to discuss Pete’s first story, set on a delightfully bucolic planet in the Phylox series. Time to dress up like a cricketer and lock yourself in a small cupboard — it’s Castrovalva.

Buy the story!

Castrovalva was released on DVD in 2007. In the US, it was available on its own (Amazon US), but, again, in the UK and Australia, it was part of the New Beginnings box set, which also included The Keeper of Traken and Logopolis (Amazon UK).

Notes and links

Famously, Bidmead was inspired to write this story by M. C. Escher’s 1930 lithograph Castrovalva.

Arthur Rackham was an illustrator of children’s books in the early 20th century. Edith Nesbit, more of whom in a few weeks, wrote children’s books at about the same time, including The Railway Children and Five Children and It.

We first mentioned the Bechdel Test in Episode 27. Does this story feature a scene where two named women have a discussion that isn’t about a man?

We’ve mentioned it a couple of times before, and it’s just excellent, so we’ll mention it again: Blue Box Boy, in which Matthew Waterhouse tells the story of his childhood as a Doctor Who fan, his time on the show, and his subsequent life on the convention circuit. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (Amazon AU)

Like Todd, you can impress your friends with an encyclopedic knowledge of Doctor Who’s ratings throughout history by consulting this handy guide on the Doctor Who News website.

Famously, Bill Oddie from The Goodies invented string; while The Goons invented two pieces of string.

Richard compares Castrovalva to the short story The Circular Ruins, written by Argentine magic realist author Jorge Luis Borges and published in 1940.

Fans of Peter Davison’s superb Antony Ainley impression will enjoy his audiobook version of Castrovalva. (Audible US) (Audible UK) (Audible AU)

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at its new URL flightthroughentirety.sexy. (The older, slightly less silly URL still works too, thank goodness.) Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll try to destroy you using a series of increasingly complex and unwieldy traps until we completely lose all credibility as villains. And then where would you be?

Doctor Who in 10 Seconds

Fans of lightning-fast summaries of the stories of the William Hartnell Era will enjoy Doctor Who in 10 Seconds, in which the lovely Brendan summarises Doctor Who stories with considerable wit, verve and rhythm. And you even get to see him dance in the outtakes. Enjoy the spectacle by subscribing on YouTube.

Bondfinger

Our tenth commentary track on the Bond films is now up: it’s The Man with the Golden Gun. Okay, it’s not the best Bond film (be quiet, Nathan), but it’s quite a Rogertaining episode of Bondfinger. Other commentaries are also available, starting with Dr. No and even including the inexplicable 1967 film Casino Royale. You can find these commentaries on our website, and you can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.

The world will be destroyed in four days, apparently, and to prepare for this, Brendan is wearing a stylish green velour suit, Richard has gathered his hair in a delightful side ponytail, and Nathan has just really let himself go. It’s Four to Doomsday.

Buy the story!

Four to Doomsday was released on DVD in 2008 in the UK and Australia, and in 2009 in the US. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK).

Notes and links

Fans of Philip Locke, who plays Bigon in this story, will enjoy his performances in three episodes of The Avengers: From Venus with Love, Mandrake and The Frighteners, which also featured Stratford Johns, who plays Monarch in this story. Horrifyingly, Philip Locke also plays creepy sexless henchmen Vargas in Thunderball.

Fans of bisected farm animals will enjoy Damien Hirst’s 1993 artwork Mother and Child.

Much like the Urbankans, cane toads were introduced into Australia to control the grey-backed cane beetle. As usual, this didn’t go well.

This YouTube video includes every utterance of the words “some kind of”, “some sort of” or “some type of” in Star Trek: Voyager. There are 393, for God’s sake.

Monarch weirdly anticipates Baron Silas Greenback from Danger Mouse.

Annie Lambert, this story’s Minister of Enlightenment, plays Helen McKay in The New Avengers episode Three-Handed Game.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at its new URL flightthroughentirety.sexy. (The older, slightly less silly URL still works too.) Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll totally interfere with your monopticons. Don’t think we won’t.

Doctor Who in 10 Seconds

We’re tremendously proud of Brendan’s latest video project, Doctor Who in 10 seconds, in which he flies through entire seasons of Doctor Who, hilariously summarising each story in no more than 10 seconds. Enjoy the spectacle by checking out the playlist on YouTube.

Bondfinger

While you wait for next weekend’s commentary podcast on The Spy Who Loved Me, why not enjoy our previous commentary podcasts on all of the preceding Bond films, including The Man with the Golden Gun, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and Dr. No? You can find these commentaries on our website, and you can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.

As usual, this week, Brendan, Nathan and Richard are condemned to an unending cycle of suffering and futility, relieved only temporarily by ruminations on the existence of Nerys Hughes. So, hold off on the fire and acid for just forty minutes or so: enough time to hear us discussing Kinda.

Buy the story!

Kinda was released on DVD in 2001. It’s available by itself in the US, but in the UK and Australia it was released alongside next year’s Snakedance in a box set called Mara Tales. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

Almost immediately, Richard identifies some books which might have inspired this story, including Ursula LeGuin’s 1989 Novel The Word for World is Forest, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and, most importantly, Chinua Achebe’s 1994 novel Things Fall Apart.

If you are in any way sceptical of the claim that Tegan’s entire dream sequence is reminiscent of an 80s pop video, you might be convinced by the 1980 video of Visage’s “Fade to Grey”.

Mary Morris plays (another) Number Two in the eighth episode of The Prisoner episode Dance of the Dead. She’s dead posh in it. Take a look.

Blue Box Boy (yes, we’re linking to it again) tells the story of Matthew Waterhouse coaching Richard Todd. Matthew does claim that he was joking when he told him “Of course, the secret to TV acting is not to look at the camera!” (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (Amazon AU)

There’s a notable omission from Will Brooks’s photographic cover for one of Paul Cornell’s upcoming Titan comics featuring the Third Doctor. Remind me, why are we talking about Richard Franklin again?

Aris wrestling with the snake on the studio floor at the climax reminds Richard of Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders in Lucky Bitches. But even if that wasn’t true, I’d be tempted to link to it anyway.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at its new URL flightthroughentirety.sexy. (The older, slightly less silly URL still works too.) Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll dye our teeth red and stomp on your favourite scary Kinda artifact dolly thing.

Doctor Who in 10 Seconds

Doctor Who in 10 seconds continues to be a thing, and so while you wait for Brendan’s groundbreaking Season 4 episode, why not revisit the spectacle of Brendan hilariously summarising each Doctor Who story of the first three seasons in no more than 10 seconds? Just check out the playlist on YouTube.

Bondfinger

Well, we’ve recorded our latest commentary podcast on The Spy Who Loved Me for release next week. Exciting, what?

In the meantime, you can enjoy our commentaries on all of the preceding Bond films, including The Man with the Golden Gun, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and Dr. No. You can find these commentaries on our website, and you can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.

A lot going on this week: Brendan wanders from the manor house to the mill and then back to the TARDIS, oh, and then back to the manor house again; Nathan is moving test tubes from one box to another; and Richard is, oh, I don’t know, assembling a vibrating meccano set or something. Hold onto your hats: It’s The Visitation.

Buy the story!

The Visitation was first released on DVD in 2006. A special two-disc edition with extra things was released in 2013. (Amazon US) (Amazon K)

Notes and links

Brendan is very cross about Michael Bay’s horrible movie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (2016), the latest in an endless stream of mediocre movies starring the youthful chelonian martial artists. At least this one features the beautiful Stephen Amell from TV’s Arrow.

Fans of slightly terrible films in which Samuel L. Jackson is unexpectedly killed mid-speech by genetically-modified sharks will enjoy Deep Blue Sea (1999). Fans of Richard Chamberlain and Fred MacMurray being killed by a swarm of bees will enjoy The Swarm, a 1978 horror film directed by Irwin Allen.

Richard riffs on Alexei Sayle’s surreal 1982 hit “’Ullo John, Gotta New Motor”, which includes such immortal lyrics as “Your goat’s made a mess of the carpet”, and “He stuck his head in a dustbin, and then ran through the laundrette”.

On the Buses was an inexplicably successful British sitcom which ran on ITV from 1969 to 1973, and spawned a stage play, a board game and three horrifically forgettable films in three successive years. The first film was the second most popular movie at the British box office in 1971, beating out Diamonds Are Forever.

Clive Swift played Jobel in the massively overrated Revelation of the Daleks and Mr Copper in the rightfully beloved Voyage of the Damned. He is, of course, most famous for his role as Richard (“RICHARD!”) in Keeping Up Appearances. In 2008, he gave a hilariously dyspeptic interview to Benjamin Cook from DWM.

TARDIS Eruditorum’s Elizabeth Sandifer hasn’t appeared here in the show notes for a while. Here’s her take on this story.

Perhaps, despite its marginal relevance to this story, the Terileptil android inspired Siimon Reynolds to create this 1987 ad campaign warning the people of Australia to use condoms to protect themselves from HIV.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. (Or at flightthroughentirety.sexy, if you’re in that kind of mood.) Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll send you to your room with only Michael Robbins, Michael Melia and a vibrating box for company.

Doctor Who in 10 Seconds

Yesterday Brendan released the long-awaited Season 4 episode of Doctor Who in Ten Seconds. It’s sweet and hilarious, as always, and Brendan is wearing a particularly lovely shirt. You can see it here. To see all the previous episodes, as well as the blooper reel, just check out the playlist on YouTube.

Bondfinger

Our commentary podcast on The Spy Who Loved Me was released yesterday, probably. So, off you go! And once you’re done, you can also enjoy our commentaries on all of the preceding Bond films, from Dr. No to The Man with the Golden Gun. You can find these commentaries on our website, and you can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.

In this convention-busting episode of Flight Through Entirety, Brendan (Jamie Lee Curtis) really hates this week’s Doctor Who story, while Nathan (Lindsay Lohan) quite enjoys it. And Richard (Mark Harmon) splits the difference by being witty and charming as always. Welcome to Cranleigh Hall: it’s Black Orchid.

Buy the stories!

Black Orchid was released on DVD in 2008. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

We all love Moray Watson, who plays Sir Robert in this story. He’s still with us, after a career spanning 6 decades. Richard remembers him fondly from Catweazle, a children’s TV programme about an 11th-century wizard (The Creature from the Pit’s Geoffrey Bayldon), who finds himself trapped in the present day. The producers of The Avengers considered Watson as a possible replacement for Patrick Macnee had Macnee been unwilling to return for the show’s final season. Watson also played George Frobisher, Rumpole’s hapless old friend in George Frobisher in Rumpole of the Bailey.

The second worst lawn party in human history is depicted in the Monty Python sketch Sam Peckinpah’s Salad Days.

Terence Dudley produced Terry Nation’s Survivors, a post-apocalyptic story set in a world where a global pandemic has wiped out everyone except a small number of lovely middle-class white people.

Once again, here’s Bonnie Langford’s reaction to seeing Brendan dressed as Bonnie Langford from Time and the Rani.

Fans of things that are insanely entertaining will enjoy Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, a 1953 comedy starring Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll travel back in time and persuade Terence Dudley to put a Terileptil in this story.

Doctor Who in 10 Seconds

Brendan’s work on Doctor Who in 10 Seconds continues unabated. So far he’s summarised the first four seasons of Doctor Who and created a hilarious blooper reel for the first three episodes. You can watch all five videos by checking out the playlist on YouTube.

Bondfinger

Over at Bondfinger, Sean Connery is now a distant memory, and we’re heading into Rodge’s highly acclaimed Blue Period. Our most recent commentary covers The Spy Who Loved Me: previous commentaries include The Man with the Golden Gun and Live and Let Die. You can find all of our commentaries on our website, and you can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.

All you hippy losers who thought Doctor Who was whimsical family entertainment can leave now: Eric Saward is back, and he’s brought enough guns with him to make Charlton Heston feel insecure about his masculinity. Only Beryl Reid can save us! It’s Earthshock.

Buy the story!

Earthshock was released on DVD in 2004 in the US (Amazon US), and in 2003 in the UK and Australia (Amazon UK).

Notes and links

Arthur C. Clarke’s 1951 short story The Sentinel inspired Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

When we first see the crudely-realised dinosaur fossils in the cave wall in Part 1, Malcolm Clarke treats us to a little musical reference to the Fossils movement in The Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns.

Sometimes beloved Doctor Who cast members wrangle upsettingly on Twitter, and when that happens, it’s the duty of a Doctor Who podcaster to put on a velvet fairy costume and call them out. Which is what Nathan does here.

Whatever his qualities as a writer and script editor (and they are few), Eric Saward was amazingly able to draw inspiration for this story from films that hadn’t even been written yet, including Aliens (1986), and the prescient and criminally underrated Starship Troopers (1997).

Fans of Beryl Reid will enjoy her star turn as a murderous lesbian in The Killing of Sister George (1968). They will also enjoy her guest role on The Goodies, as thinly-veiled Mary Whitehouse analogue Mrs Desirée Carthorse, in the brilliantly hilarious episode Gender Education, which you should watch if you really want to know how to make babies by doing dirty things.

Fans of Beryl Reid will also enjoy knowing that Joe Orton was one of their number: it was for her that he wrote the part of Kathy in Entertaining Mr Sloane.

This story recklessly replaced a script called The Enemy Within by acclaimed English novelist Christopher Priest, who had previously had a script rejected for Season 17. Surprisingly, it has never been dramatised by Big Finish.

Eighties Cyberleader and Darth Vader impersonator David Banks wrote a horrific coffee table book called Cybermen (1989), in which he makes a futile and deeply inadvisable attempt to turn three decades of appalling Cybernonsense into a coherent narrative. Best avoided.

Spoiler alert: Adric snuffs it at the end of this story, so this is our last chance to plug Matthew Waterhouse’s elegiac and entertaining autobiography Blue Box Boy. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (Amazon AU)

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or you’ll never know if you were right. Sniff. Sorry, I think this room must be dusty or something.

Doctor Who in 10 Seconds

Today Brendan released the fifth (sixth?) video in his ongoing series Doctor Who in 10 Seconds, in which he dextrously summarises all that endless base-under-siege nonsense from Doctor Who Series 5. To watch all of videos in the series, check out the playlist on YouTube.

Bondfinger

We’re still in a holding pattern over at Bondfinger, steeling ourselves for our upcoming recording of the unjustly maligned Moonraker (1979). While you wait, you can listen to our previous commentaries, including The Spy Who Loved Me, The Man with the Golden Gun and Live and Let Die. You can find all of our commentaries on our website, and you can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.

It’s the end of another season of Flight Through Entirety, we’ve run out of money and no one really gives a crap anymore. So join us as we listlessly discuss the worst story of the 1980s: it’s Time-Flight.

Don’t buy the story!

Time-Flight was released on DVD in 2007. In the US, it was released on its own (Amazon US), but in the UK and Australia it was released along with Arc of Infinity in an unspeakably horrid box set (Amazon UK).

Notes and links

Brendan has written an essay on Time-Flight in the upcoming anthology Hating to Love: Re-evaluating the 52 worst Doctor Who Stories of All Time, edited by J R Southall of The Blue Box Podcast.

Cornell, Day and Topping are the authors of The Discontinuity Guide, a repository of hilarious facts about the classic series. Here’s their take on Time-Flight.

This French & Saunders sketch tells you everything you need to know about what went wrong with Doctor Who in the 1980s. Sorry about the crappy quality though.

Angela Clifford dragging the TARDIS around the Jurassic tundra, inevitably reminds Brendan of this scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Picks of the week

Brendan

Now that they’ve got rid of Tegan, the Doctor and Nyssa are free to go off on a series of Big Finish adventures. Brendan recommends Creatures of Beauty, but Circular Time and Spare Parts are also available.

Nathan

Two recommendations: @JohnnySpandrell’s brilliant Doctor Who blog, Random Whoness, and the elegiac non-Euclidean puzzler game Monument Valley, availabl on both iOS and Android.

Richard

The children’s books of E. Nesbit, an English children’s author whose books were published in the early twentieth century, including The Railway Children, Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet and The Woodbegoods.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll beset you with bipedal fibreglass turds and bubbles of Fairy Liquid until you agree to watch Time-Flight again. This side of madness or the other.

Doctor Who in 10 Seconds

While Brendan edits the next episode of Doctor Who in 10 Seconds, in which he speedily summarises the delightfully strange and groundbreaking Doctor Who Series 5, why not take the opportunity to watch all of the previous videos in the series by checking out the playlist on YouTube?

Bondfinger

Next weekend we’ll be recording our commentary on Moonraker (1979) for release the following weekend, so there’s that to look forward to, I guess. While you wait, you can listen to our previous commentaries, including The Spy Who Loved Me, The Man with the Golden Gun and Live and Let Die. You can find all of our commentaries on our website, and you can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.

Doctor Who squelches back onto our screens with the first story of Season 20 — Arc of Infinity. It’s a rollicking tale of quad magnetism, pulse loops, transduction barriers and impulse lasers, tastefully decorated with shiny plastic sofas.

Buy the story!

Arc of Infinity was released on DVD in 2007. In the US, it was released on its own (Amazon US), but in the UK and Australia it was released along with Time-Flight in a box set that would have been the worst Christmas present in human history (Amazon UK).

Notes and links

Johnny Byrne wrote 8 episodes of Season 1 of Space: 1999, and some of them were actually quite good. Sort of.

Leonard Sachs, this week’s President Borusa, wasn’t actually in The Pallisers (1974), but he had actually appeared in Doctor Who before as Admiral de Coligny in Nathan’s favourite story, The Massacre. The First and Fourth Borusas were in The Pallisers, along with other famous Doctor Who alumni, including Antony Ainley, Moray Watson, Donald Pickering, John Hallam, Derek Jacobi, Peter Sallis and June Whitfield.

The story about Ace encountering an Ergon while selling fried chicken was Anti-Matter with Fries by Gareth Roberts, which appeared in issue 199 of Doctor Who Magazine.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll accidentally knock your grocery shopping on the ground and won’t even stop to help you pick it up.

Doctor Who in 10 Seconds

Tomorrow sees the release of Doctor Who in 10 Seconds Series 6, which will be every bit as delightful as all of the previous episodes. You can watch the entirety of the series by checking out the playlist on YouTube.

Bondfinger

Next weekend we’ll be releasing our most ludicrous Bond commentary ever, on the unjustly maligned Moonraker (1979). While you wait, you can listen to our previous commentaries, including The Spy Who Loved Me, The Man with the Golden Gun and Live and Let Die. You can find all of our commentaries on our website, and you can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.

This week, the Mara are back, threatening the ancient BBC Television studio Manussa in Snakedance. Roll your eyes at Nathan’s usual jejune insults, marvel at Brendan’s theories about good Science Fiction, and become increasingly concerned at Todd’s vociferous complaints that no one gets horribly murdered in Doctor Who any more.

Buy the story!

Snakedance was released on DVD in 2011. In the US, it was released on its own (Amazon US), but in the UK and Australia it was released along with Kinda in the Mara Tales box set (Amazon UK).

Notes and links

Richard’s not here this week, so there’s almost no German Expressionism, and very little intertextuality. Nathan mentions Sandifer’s take on this story, as usual, so perhaps you’ll want to go and read that.

Todd refers to the Flight Through Entirety Kinda lovefest, which is the pun-tastic Episode 79: Kinda Lingers.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll sneer at you and make dismissive remarks about your shoddy little booth.

Doctor Who in 10 Seconds

With the release of Season 6 of Doctor Who in 10 Seconds Series 6, Brendan has now summarised every Doctor Who story of the 1960s. The 70s will only be more hilarious, so to prepare yourself, why not revisit the show in its entirety by checking out the playlist on YouTube?

Bondfinger

Well, our commentary on Moonraker has now been released, and some of our more deranged critics have described it as our best episode over. Other commentary tracks are also available, including The Spy Who Loved Me, The Man with the Golden Gun and Live and Let Die. Our website now hosts no less than 12 James Bond commentaries; you can also keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.

Our 20th anniversary season of Flight Through Entirety continues with a discussion of Mawdryn Undead — yet another story including delightful elements from the show’s past, such as the Brigadier, the Black Guardian and a crappy word peril cliffhanger for Episode Three.

Buy the story!

Mawdryn Undead was released on DVD in 2009. In the US, it was released on its own, as usual, (Amazon US), but also as part of a Black Guardian Trilogy box set (Amazon US). In the UK and Australia, it was only made available as part of the box set (Amazon UK).

Notes and links

A weirdly bleached version of Nyssa’s outfit from Snakedance features on the cover of Goth Opera by Paul Cornell, the first novel of the Virgin Missing Adventures series, published in 1994.

Ian Marter played the gorgeously sweet Harry Sullivan in Season 12 of Doctor Who, but also wrote 12 Doctor Who novels, including a Companions of Doctor Who novel called Harry Sullivan’s War.

You can find the Discontinuity Guide entry on Mawdryn Undead on its archived web page on the old BBC Cult website.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or it will be the end of you as a Time Lord.

Doctor Who in 10 Seconds

While we’ve been away, Brendan has roared into the 70s with a summary of Season 7 of Doctor Who, in which he confronts Autons, Silurians, John Abineri and a scary parallel universe version of himself. If you want to find his summaries of the 1960s seasons of Doctor Who, checkout the playlist on YouTube.

Brendan, Nathan and Todd are all suffering from Lazar’s disease, or possibly withdrawing from hydromel, which might explain our somewhat listless approach to that critically acclaimed Doctor Who classic, Terminus.

Buy the story!

Terminus was released on DVD in 1992/1993. In the US, it was released on its own, as usual, (Amazon US), but it will cost you 70 US dollars, which would be crazy. You could also buy it as part of the Black Guardian Trilogy box set (Amazon US), which is how it was released in the UK and Australia (Amazon UK).

Notes and links

Liza Goddard plays Kari in this story. To Australian viewers, she is better known as Clancy in Skippy (1967–1969); Nathan has almost completely forgotten her role in the British sitcom Yes, Honestly (1976–1977).

Before Mawdryn Undead came along, Turlough was originally going to make his début in Song of the Space Whale by Pat Mills and John Wagner. This was finally recorded (as usual) as part of Big Finish‘s Lost Stories range range, as The Song of Megaptera, starring Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant.

In his Big Finish story The Waters of Amsterdam, Jonathan Morris offers an explanation of why the Doctor has set up the scanner to check in on Tegan and Nyssa’s bedroom. (Bad Doctor!)

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll stick you in the TARDIS set for three years and then make you drop your skirt in your final story. Sorry, Nyssa.

Doctor Who in 10 Seconds

While we’ve been away, Brendan has roared into the 70s with a summary of Season 7 of Doctor Who, in which he confronts Autons, Silurians, John Abineri and a scary parallel version of himself. With hilarious results. If you want to find his summaries of the 1960s seasons of Doctor Who, check out the playlist on YouTube.

This week, we discuss the final story of Season 20’s Black Guardian Trilogy. Todd wants to know all the details, Nathan is busy admiring Captain Wrack’s décolletage, while Brendan waxes philosophical on the nature of Enlightenment.

Buy the story!

Enlightenment was released on DVD in 1992/1993. In the US, it was released on its own, I think, but it’s completely unavailable on Amazon. Still, you can just buy it as part of the Black Guardian Trilogy box set (Amazon US), which is how it was released in the UK and Australia (Amazon UK).

Notes and links

Barbara Clegg and Rona Munro (Survival) are the only women ever to write for the Classic Series, if we don’t count Lesley Scott’s co-credit on The Ark, and we don’t, apparently.

We’ve mentioned Sapphire and Steel before. It ran on ITV from 1979 to 1982 and starred Joanna Lumley and David McCallum, who played time-travelling agents (sort of), who tried to rectify strange and scary time things caused by anachronisms or paradoxes or something. It’s worth a look, even if it’s glacially slow by modern standards. You can read Den of Geek’s take on the story here; in this essay, Sandifer discusses the series, as well as just about every other genre thing from the same period.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll leave shards of glowing crystal on your best flokati rug.

Doctor Who in 10 Seconds

Brendan has now recorded 7 episodes of Doctor Who in Ten Seconds, summarising 54 Doctor Who stories in at most 10 seconds each. If you’d like to see him performing this feat with your own eyes, visit the webpage. To keep up with future summaries, subscribe to his channel on YouTube.

As is now well known, Season 20 trails off with a whimper, and so Brendan, Nathan and Todd take a week off to allow our discussion of The King’s Demons to be conducted by shapeshifting robot replicas. And they do a great job!

Buy the story!

The King’s Demons was released on DVD in 2010. As usual, it was released on its own In the US, (Amazon US). In the UK, it was released in yet another uninspiring DVD box set, called Kamelion Tales (Amazon UK).

Notes and links

Fans of obsessively flying through the entirety of Doctor Who will certainly enjoy subscribing to Doctor Who: The Complete History, which is a series of beautifully-produced books chronicling, in obsessive detail, every Doctor Who story in the programme’s fiftysomething year history. Seriously, check it out.

Kamelion (spoiler alert!) has a key role in Christopher Bulis’s BBC Past Doctor Adventure The Ultimate Treasure, first published in 1997.

Picks of the week

Brendan

Follow @WhoLabels on Twitter, for all your Doctor Who labels needs. He’s also on Facebook. And he’s brilliant. Unmissable.

Todd

Listen to Wang Chung’s fifth studio album The Warmer Side of Cool, and in particular, the tracks Praying to a New God and Snakedance (which, heartbreakingly, seems to have been removed from YouTube).

Nathan

Read The Writer’s Tale: The Final Chapter, a book which includes a years-long email exchange between Benjamin Cook and Russell T. Davies, in which they discuss the production of Series 4 and the 2009 Specials, as well as TV in general, RTD’s earlier (and later) TV series, and writing in general. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (Amazon AU)

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll put the known world to the sword.

Doctor Who in 10 Seconds

While Brendan tries to source a convincing stick-on goatee for his Season 8 episode of Doctor Who in Ten Seconds, you can enjoy his previous 7 episodes, in which he summarises the first 7 years of Doctor Who stories. So check out the playlist on YouTube.

Bondfinger

Yesterday, we released this month’s commentary podcast on the 1983 classic Octopussy, which is Brendan’s favourite Rodgefilm. So that’s lovely.

Fans of the Rodge will also enjoy our other Rodgecasts, from For Your Eyes Only to Live and Let Die. Other Bonds are also available, of course. You can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.

We’ve now been recording Flight Through Entirety for exactly twenty years, and to celebrate this milestone, all four of us are back for our second ever commentary podcast. So grab your iPhone, fire up your Blu-ray player and settle down to a relaxing pineapple daquiri. It’s The Five Doctors!

The Flight Through Entirety Troughton Commentary Poll

In two weeks’ time, we’ll be releasing our increasingly drunken commentary podcast on The Keys of Marinus. Until then, why not vote in our latest poll: which Troughton story should be the subject of our next commentary podcast?

Voting in the FTE Troughton commentary poll has now closed. In this poll, our listeners made a choice between The Power of the Daleks, The Enemy of the World, The Web of Fear and The Krotons. The result will be announced at the very end of Episode 91 of Flight Through Entirety.

Buy the story!

The Five Doctors: Special Edition was the first Doctor Who DVD released, even before the main line got underway. The 25th Anniversary edition was released (obviously) in 2008. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

In 1972, Doctor Who fans on Twitter were very cross about the rumours surrounding the upcoming Tenth Anniversary story. (Thanks to @themindrobber for this glorious piece of nonsense.)

Weird First-Doctor substitute Richard Hurndall played old man slave murder victim Neebrox in the ridiculously camp 1981 Blakes 7 episode Assassin, which also features a villain who changes into a special villain outfit when there’s some extra villainy to be done.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or, you know, the mind probe (no, not the mind probe).

Doctor Who in 10 Seconds

Brendan is currently working undercover in an undisclosed Pacific location, which probably means that we won’t get a new episode of Doctor Who in Ten Seconds for the next few weeks. While you’re waiting, you can watch the previous 7 episodes, in which Brendan summarises the first 7 years of Doctor Who stories. So check out the playlist on YouTube.

Bondfinger

In our latest Bondfinger commentary, Brendan, Nathan, Richard and James talk all over Octopussy, the best James Bond film to be released in 1983.

Our back catalogue covers all of the previous Rodgefilms, from For Your Eyes Only to Live and Let Die. You can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.

This week, we’re taking a break from our relentless flight through the entirety of Doctor Who to go back and visit an old favourite. Fire up your VHS player and get ready to listen to all four of us slurring drunkenly throughout the incredible six-episode run of that 1964 Terry Nation classic The Keys of Marinus.

The Flight Through Entirety Troughton Commentary Poll

Thank you to everyone who voted in the Flight Through Entirety Troughton commentary poll, in which our listeners were asked to choose between The Power of the Daleks, The Enemy of the World, The Web of Fear and The Krotons. So who won? Listen to this episode to find out. (The announcement is finally made some time into the third hour of this episode. So you’ll probably never hear it.)

Buy the story!

The Keys of Marinus was released on DVD in 2010. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

If you’re keen to hear a sober assessment of the literary qualities of The Keys of Marinus and its celebrated indebtedness to German expressionism, then you will undoubtedly enjoy the third ever episode of Flight Through Entirety, from way back in 2014: Episode 2: So Maudlin.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll all vote for the only six-part story in your podcast fan poll and force you to talk relentless nonsense about a largely forgotten 1960s Doctor Who story for more than two and a half hours.

Doctor Who in 10 Seconds

Doctor Who in 10 Seconds is Brendan’s brilliant video projet, in which he summarises every Doctor Who story in no more than ten seconds. You can see him take on the Keys of Marinus in his first ever episode. To see the rest of the series, which currently covers the first seven seasons of Doctor Who, just check out the playlist on YouTube.

Bondfinger

Our next James Bond commentary will be released next weekend, and in it we’re suprisingly positive about Connery’s weird return to the series in the ill-advised 1983 Thunderball remake Never Say Never Again.

Our back catalogue covers all of the previous James Bond films, from For Your Eyes Only to Dr. No. You can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.

This week, Brendan, Nathan and Richard build a giant Seabase underwater. It’s going to be the best, most beautiful Seabase ever. And we’ll get the Silurians to pay for it!

Buy the story!

Warriors of the Deep was released on DVD in 2008. In the US, it was released on its own (Amazon US), but in the UK, it was released along with Doctor Who and the Silurians and The Sea-Devils in the surprisingly good Beneath the Surface box set. (Amazon UK).

Notes and links

This story’s writer, Johnny Byrne, wrote more episodes of the first season of Space: 1999 than anyone else ever. And, my God, can’t you tell from this story?

Fans of all these corridors looking the same to me will enjoy Lenny Henry’s famous Doctor Who sketch from 1985.

Elizabeth Sandifer discusses the problem of bases under siege in her TARDIS Eruditorum entry on The Ice Warriors.

Tom Adams, Vorshak in this story, stars in the Terry Nation-penned episode of The Avengers called Takeover. And he’s also in The Far-Distant Dead and Death on the Slipway.

The real world counterpart to hexachromite gas is called Hexavalent Chromium. It’s brutally poisonous. In Australia, we’ve been using it to carelessly poison some of our remote communities.

Cornell, Day and Topping theorise that this story’s continuity problems could be solved by positing a third encounter between Pertwee and the Silurians in this entry in their The Discontinuity Guide.

Gary Russell desperately attempts to wallpaper over these horrific continuity problems, with some success, in his Virgin Missing Adventure, The Scales of Injustice. It was republished as part of The Monster Collection in 2014. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK) (Amazon AU)

Fans of Gary Gillatt’s reviews of Doctor Who DVD releases in Doctor Who Magazine will enjoy his blog Squabbling Rubber.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll throw a mattress on you, lock the door and then leave you at the mercy of a freshly-painted pantomime horse.

Doctor Who in 10 Seconds

Brendan has spent the last few weeks in Fiji, basically living on drinks with umbrellas in them and not doing any work. So there are no new episodes of Doctor Who in 10 seconds right now. But that won’t prevent you from enjoying the previous 7 episodes, in which Brendan summarises the first 7 seasons of Doctor Who. Check out the playlist on YouTube.

Bondfinger

The Rodgeathon is reaching its ultimate conclusion: in a couple of weeks, we’ll be recording our final Rodgumentary, on the 1985 classic A View to a Kill.

In the meantime, you can enjoy our other Rodgecasts, from For Your Eyes Only to Live and Let Die. Other Bonds are also available, of course. You can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.

We’re broadcasting live this week from Little Hodcombe, where there’s an ongoing battle between Eric Pringle and some long-time Doctor Who podcasters desperately trying to find anything at all to say about this story. It’s Roundheads versus Cavaliers, and somehow the Doctor finds himself caught in the middle. Welcome to The Awakening.

Buy the story!

The Awakening was released on DVD in 2011. In the US, it was released on its own, as usual (Amazon US), but in the UK, it was released as part of a completely inexplicable box set called Earth Story, which inadvisedly bundled this story along with the really rather wonderful The Gunfighters. (Amazon UK).

Notes and links

The ITV series Sapphire and Steel was essentially about weird anachronisms creating hugely upsetting time things. The Awakening owes a lot to this, but it’s vastly less slow-moving and intolerable. Watch it, or maybe don’t watch it.

James Goss is the author of a brilliant novelisation of City of Death. In 2017, he will be releasing a novelisation of The Pirate Planet.

Don’t click this link, or you’ll see lots of pictures of people who have inexplicably decided to tattoo their bodies with pictures of Angela Lansbury.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll buy a BBC Micro on eBay and use it to superimpose asterisks over literally everything you love.

Doctor Who in 10 Seconds

Brendan’s back from Fiji, and he’s wearing a lovely sulu, but he’s still yet to find time in his exhausting schedule to acquire a stick-on BBC beard and record a new Master-centric episode of Doctor Who in 10 Seconds. While you’re waiting for that, feel free to enjoy the previous seven episodes, in which Brendan summarises the first seven seasons of Doctor Who. Check out the playlist on YouTube. You won’t regret it.

Bondfinger

We’ve all been totally rogered by the nightmare before Christmas, which has prevented us from recording our Bondfinger commentary episode on A View to a Kill, the final entry in Bondfinger’s flight through every Rodgefilm in the James Bond œuvre. We’ll be back on board early in the new year.

In the meantime, you can enjoy our other Rodgecasts, from For Your Eyes Only to Live and Let Die. Other Bonds are also available, of course. You can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.

Patron of the podcast, Christopher Hamilton Bidmead, returns for a victory lap in what might be the best story of Pete’s final season. Raid at the ready, chums, it’s time to defend the last of humanity against an onslaught of fibreglass woodlice, in Frontios.

Buy the story!

Frontios was released on DVD in 2011. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

In this story, Jeff Rawle plays Plantagenet, the colony’s young and inexperienced leader. Rawle is mostly famous for his role as George in the terrifically clever Channel 4 comedy Drop the Dead Donkey. He would go on to play the Mona Lisa’s gay sidekick in a Sarah Jane Adventures story called Mona Lisa’s Revenge.

Before author and former script editor Christopher Hamilton Bidmead became the patron of Flight Through Entirety, we may have had a somewhat fractious relationship. Here’s his tweet objecting to our discussion of Castrovalva, and here’s his tweet allowing us to quote his previous tweet on our website.

Fans of things that prove the non-existence of a merciful and beneficent God will enjoy The Human Centipede, which is not a million miles away from CHB’s original vision of the Tractators’ unconvincing excavation devices. Fans of things slightly less gruesome might enjoy South Park’s take on that film, HUMANCENTiPAD. Best not to Google either of them.

Peter Arne was originally cast as Mr Range, before his tragic murder. He starred in two Cathy Gale episodes of The Avengers: Warlock and The Golden Eggs. He was also in an black and white Emma Peel episode called Room Without a View.

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s only full-length philosophical work was called Tractatus. Coincidence? We think not.

And now, insects. (Oh, and arachnids.) In the 1974 film Phase IV, colonies of ants develop intelligence and start to attack the human race. And these days, who can blame them? You might also enjoy Joan Collins being attacked by papier mâché ants in Empire of the Ants (1977), and spiders attacking William Shatner, probably, in Kingdom of the Spiders (1977).

Big Finish have recorded an improbably long series of Doctor Who audios set between Planet of Fire and The Caves of Androzani, starring Peter Davison as the Doctor and Nicola Bryant as Peri. These include Red Dawn and The Church and the Crown.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll take your carefully-installed electrical wires and insist that you jolly well rip them down again.

Doctor Who in 10 Seconds

These days, it takes Flight Through Entirety more than 45 minutes to discuss a Doctor Who story. Fans with better things to do with their time will enjoy Brendan’s ten-second summaries of Doctor Who’s earliest stories in Doctor Who in 10 Seconds. So far, he has managed to summarise the first seven seasons of Doctor Who, starring William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton and the first of five seasons of Jon Pertwee. To watch the show, check out the playlist on YouTube.

Bondfinger

Grace Jones has stolen all of our microphones and knocked us unconscious, and so we’ve actually been unable to finish our flight through the entirety of the Roger Moore canon in time for Christmas. We’ll be back in the new year for A View to a Kill.

In the meantime, you can enjoy our other Rodgecasts, from For Your Eyes Only to Live and Let Die. Other Bonds are also available, of course. You can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.

After the whimsy and quality of last week’s story, 1980s Doctor Who is back on form with a grim 90-minute slog, bristling with guns and clunky macho dialogue. And a bigger body count than the last three seasons combined! Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Resurrection of the Daleks.

Buy the story!

Resurrection of the Daleks has been released on DVD many times, for some reason. The Special Edition DVD was first released in the Revisitations 2 box set in 2011 (Amazon UK), which at least includes a new edition of Carnival of Monsters. As always, it was also released on its own in the US. (Amazon US)

Notes and links

Fans of classic British comedy racism may even enjoy Spike Milligan’s celebrated Pakistani Dalek sketch.

And if this story hasn’t slaked your thirst for ultraviolence in London (and Newcastle), you should watch the 1971 Michael Hodges masterpiece, Get Carter, which stars Michael Caine and largely deleted Avengers alumnus Ian Hendry.

And if even that’s not enough for you, The Long Good Friday (1980), launched the career of the late Bob Hoskins and featured the delightful and somewhat terrifying Helen Mirren. Like Resurrection of the Daleks, it heavily features the London Docklands and people shooting each other with guns.

And now it’s time for Flight Through Entirety Entertainment Tonight: Parker Posey will be playing Dr Smith in the new Netflix remake of Lost in Space. Meanwhile, Michelle Yeoh, who pillioned with Pierce Brosnan in the 1997 Bond classic Tomorrow Never Dies, has reportedly signed on to play the captain of the upcoming new Star Trek series Star Trek Discovery. Nathan’s partner Calvin continues to deny that she’s his long-lost cousin from Ipoh. But none of us are convinced by that.

And in Separated at Birth?, we encourage you to consider how uncannily similar Eric Saward looks to Baron Silas Greenback from our childhood favourite Danger Mouse. (No, not the 2015 reboot. Or the music producer.)

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll sellotape Nathan’s eyes open and force him to watch this story over and over again on a loop.

Doctor Who in 10 Seconds

Most of our listeners are longing for those other guys to shut the hell up, so that they can hear what Brendan has to say. And who can blame them?

Fans of the delightful Brendan can actually see him in person in his video series Doctor Who in Ten Seconds, in which he takes a leisurely 10 seconds to summarise individual stories of Doctor Who. Think how much time you’ll save watching the show by checking out the playlist on YouTube instead!

Bondfinger

Well, we’ve been overcome by a seasonal inability to be arsed enough to watch A View to a Kill, so our Rodg-a-thon will reach its final conclusion in the New Year, possibly under a Trump presidency.

In the meantime, you can enjoy our other Rodgecasts, from For Your Eyes Only to Live and Let Die. Other Bonds are also available, of course. You can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.

As 2016 draws to a close and as major festivals approach for several of the world’s great religions, we’re taking refuge in the crude religious analogies that abound on the planet Sarn. And the Master and Peri are here! It’s Planet of Fire.

Buy the story!

Planet of Fire was released on DVD in 2010. It’s the usual thing: in the US, you could buy it on its own (Amazon US), but in the UK, the hapless punters were forced to buy it as part of a box set called Kamelion Tales, which also contained the massively forgettable Season 20 finale The King’s Demons (Amazon UK).

Notes and links

Peter Wyngarde was once wildly famous, and he made a point of appearing regularly in Richard and Brendan’s favourite television programmes, including a crazily popular episode of The Avengers called A Touch of Brimstone, as well as The Champions and Department S. His breakout starring role was in a series spun off from Department S: Jason King, in which Wyngarde played the eponymous groovy womanising detective whose look is clearly the inspiration for Austin Powers.

Barbara Shelley, here playing Sorasta, the only woman on Sarn, also appeared in two episodes of The Avengers. She played Venus Browne in the first colour episode From Venus with Love. She had already appeared in a Season 1 episode called Dragonsfield.

As usual, Big Finish has filled in a much-needed gap in Doctor Who by casting the fabulous Claudia Christian as Peri’s mother in Joe Lister’s audio play The Reaping, starring Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant. You can follow Claudia on Twitter at @ClaudiaLives.

Fans of Steven Moffat’s favourite tropes will enjoy his first ever television series Press Gang. We love it, despite Dexter Fletcher’s terrible, terrible accent. If you haven’t seen it, you really should. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll ignore your distinguished career in television, ridicule your religious beliefs, and generally treat you like some kind of idiot.

Doctor Who in 10 Seconds

To distract yourself from the impending annual holiday horrors of gift-giving and being surrounded by your family and loved ones, why not escape into the fun fantasy world of Doctor Who in Ten Seconds?

FTE’s very own Brendan Jones deftly summarises the first seven seasons of Doctor Who, spending no more than ten seconds on each story. To see this feat unfolding in real time, check out the playlist on YouTube!

Bondfinger

Bondfinger has wrapped for the year, but the prevailing fan theory is that we just can’t bear to say goodbye to Sir Roger Moore. We’ll be back early in the new year for our farewell Rodgecast, a commentary on 1985’s A View to a Kill.

In the meantime, you can enjoy our other Rodgecasts, from For Your Eyes Only to Live and Let Die. Other Bonds are also available, of course. You can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.

To celebrate 2017’s impending dumpster fire, all four members of the Flight Through Entirety crew take an ill-advised trip to the blowholes of Androzani Minor. Things don’t go well. For anyone.

Spoiler warnings

Spoiler warning for Rogue One about 5 minutes into this episode. Spoiler warning for Passengers: it makes Robert Holmes look like a militant feminist.

Buy the story!

The Caves on Androzani was originally released on DVD in 2001/2002. The Special Edition, with extra gunfire and leg pustules, was released on its own in the US in 2012 (Amazon US). In the UK, it was released in 2010 as part of the Revisitations 1 box set, along with The Talons of Weng-Chiang and Grace: 1999 (Amazon UK).

Notes and links

Christopher Gable, who plays the once-comely Sharaz Jek, starred in The Boy Friend (1971), along with Twiggy, and Doctor Who’s very own King Priam, Max Adrian. Here’s some terrifying footage of Gable and Twiggy singing You Are My Lucky Star and A Room in Bloomsbury.

Graeme Harper claims that he wanted Alan Lake and Diana Dors to play Morgus and Timmin: you can learn more about their crazy swinging antics in our Underworld episode — Episode 54: Sophisticated Psychological Realism.

Much like the President of Androzani Major, LA Law’s Rosalind Shays fell to her death down an empty lift shaft. You can hear Diana Muldaur discussing her character’s demise in this interview.

Fans of evil authority figures monologuing directly to camera will enjoy this clip of Ian Richardson doing exactly that in his role as Francis Urquhart in the original British House of Cards, directed by Doctor Who’s very own Graff Vynda-K.

Fans of bearded Doctor Who villains in other roles will enjoy Scorby as Captain Peacock in the new 2016 episode of Are You Being Served?, as well as Stotz as a sympathetic Romulan commander in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode The Chase, which, despite starring Linda Thorson as a Romulan, was not as good as the Doctor Who story of the same name.

It seems that Time Out did not enjoy Matthew Waterhouse’s definitive Hamlet, according to this excerpt from their review.

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll betray you, patronise you and put our feet up on your desk.

Doctor Who in 10 Seconds

In this critically-acclaimed YouTube series, FTE’s very own Brendan Jones deftly summarises the first seven seasons of Doctor Who, spending no more than ten seconds on each story. To see this feat unfolding in real time, check out the playlist on YouTube!

Bondfinger

The Bondfinger team are yet to get together for our farewell Rodgecast, a commentary on 1985’s A View to a Kill. With a bit of luck, we should be releasing it next weekend.

In the meantime, you can enjoy our other Rodgecasts, from For Your Eyes Only to Live and Let Die. Other Bonds are also available, of course. You can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.

For some people, small, beautiful events are what life is all about!

Another era reaches its end, and somewhere, someone’s favourite television show is cancelled again. Perhaps Peter Davison’s years on the programme weren’t its heyday, but all four of us have found a new appreciation of his portrayal of the Doctor. Thanks, Peter. Time to say goodbye.

Notes and links

We have been unable to substantiate Brendan’s claim about Janet’s knickerlessness in Frontios Part 1, but brave souls wishing to assist us might try starting at timecode 23:10.

Big Finish has yet to capitalise on the Magma Creature, but at least Bernice Summerfield has confronted the Monoids in The Kingdom of the Blind.

For once, Richard is excited about his choices in Snog–Marry–Avoid. But will he pick Chancellor Flavia, played by Dinah Sheridan in the 1953 film Genevieve? Or will it be Chancellor Thalia, played by Elspet Gray, who was the mother in Season 2 of Catweazle? Or finally Joe Orton’s beloved Beryl Reid?

Follow us!

Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll blight the rest of your career claiming that your performance is bland and beige despite your undoubted proficiency as an actor.

Doctor Who in 10 Seconds

Fans of the podcast like to think that Brendan is a sober and responsible ringmaster, bringing much-needed gravity to every episode of Flight Through Entirety. But the truth is that he’s both crazy and remarkably attractive.

For direct visual evidence of this, check out his critically-acclaimed YouTube series, Doctor Who in Ten Seconds, in which he summarises the first seven seasons of Doctor Who, spending no more than ten seconds on each story. Check out the playlist on YouTube.

Bondfinger

You’ve been waiting patiently for a terribly long time, so we are happy to announce the release of our final Bondfinger Rodgecast, a commentary on A View to a Kill.

A full range of Rodgecasts are also available, from Live and Let Die to Octopussy. Other Bonds are also available, of course. You can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.

This week’s episode is mostly a series of increasingly angry rants. But The Twin Dilemma may just be the worst story in fifty years of Doctor Who.

Buy the story!

The Twin Dilemma was originally released on DVD in 2009/2010. It is the only Doctor Who DVD never to sell a single copy. Let’s see if we can keep that record intact. (Amazon US) (Amazon UK)

Notes and links

Less than a year ago, the code was finally cracked. You’ll be surprised to find out what Romulus and Remus were actually saying to each other during their game of equations.

This is Nathan. Nathan hasn’t seen The Shining (1980). Nathan is on a Doctor Who podcast. Nathan basically only has time to watch Doctor Who these days. Don’t be like Nathan.

Richard alludes to two novels by John Wyndham: Chocky, which involves a boy in psychic communication with a mysterious alien force, and The Midwich Cuckoos, which features an entire village of creepy alien twins.

Picks of the week

Brendan

In a totally free Big Finish audio, Fifth Doctor companions Peri and Erimem (don’t ask) encounter Seventh Doctor companions Ace and Hex (no idea). It’s The Veiled Leopard, written by Iain McLaughlin and Claire Bartlett, and directed by friend-of-the-podcast Gary Russell. Download it for free here.

Nathan

Nathan has just rewritten and relaunched an improved version of his website The Randomiser. The Randomiser allows you to choose a Doctor Who story completely at random, or to avoid particular Doctors, long stories, or stories with missing episodes. He is yet to implement a feature allowing you to avoid stories that are simply tiresome.

Todd

Todd picks two stories. A prequel to Warriors of the Deep called Doctor Who and the Silurians (which we discuss here), and a sequel called Bloodtide, a Big Finish audio in which Colin’s Doctor and Evelyn meet Charles Darwin and some Silurians on the Galápagos Islands.

Richard

Richard chooses no less than four stories. The first one is Cold Fusion. This is a recently-released Big Finish adaptation of a Virgin New Adventures novel by Lance Parkin, in which the Doctor, Tegan, Nyssa and Adric meet the Doctor, Roz and Chris on “an occupied ice planet” of some kind. Hoth, possibly. And the Doctor’s wife is there as well. No, not that one.

He also mentions three Big Finish audios. Two feature the Fifth Doctor, Peri and would-be Pharaoh Erimem: The Eye of the Scorpion and The Church and the Crown. The other features the Fifth Doctor and Peri encountering the Ice Warriors: Red Dawn.

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Brendan is on Twitter as @brandybongos, Nathan is @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, and Richard is @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast.

We’re also on Facebook, and you can check out our website at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on iTunes, or we’ll force you to wear an outfit so hideous that it nearly causes the cancellation of your favourite TV show.

Meanwhile, here’s something Brendan doesn’t like…

While you’re waiting for the latest episode of Doctor Who in Ten Seconds, why not listen to Brendan’s intemperate rant about the Big Finish story Nekromanteia, starring Peter Davison as the Doctor, with companions Peri and Erimem?

You can find the rant here. There may be swearing.

And don’t forget to subscribe to Doctor Who in Ten Seconds, so that you are informed immediately when the Season 8 episode becomes available.

Bondfinger

Bondfinger is back for the new year with our final Rodgecast, a commentary on A View to a Kill.

A full range of Rodgecasts are also available, from Live and Let Die to Octopussy. Other Bonds are also available, of course. You can keep up with all the Bondfinger news on Twitter and Facebook.