the fourth doctor

This week, we give Sylvester McCoy a brief holiday while we revisit a Doctor Who story with some actual women in it. Which seems like the right thing to do nowadays. Sausage sandwiches at the ready, everyone: it’s our commentary on 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

You can find a much more concise and sensible discussion of this story in our regular episode about The Stones of Blood — Episode 58: The Fool Idwal Morgan, recorded in December 2015. Makes you think.

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, and the logo was designed by Anthony Wells. You can follow the podcast on Twitter at @FTEpodcast. And more surprising and completely reliable information about the show can be found at @FTEwhofacts.

Brendan recounts his experiences reading his way through the Doctor Who novels on his blog, The Doctor Who Reader.

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 write a monograph about something and make you look a fool.

Bondfinger

Next week on Bondfinger, we’re planning to record our commentary on Pierce Brosnan’s good Bond film, The World is Not Enough (1999), which was released just months after The Phantom Menace. While you’re waiting for that, you can listen to our two previous Brosnan commentaries, as well as our commentaries on the Timothy Dalton films.

We also have plenty of Rodgecasts online, and there are other Bonds available, as well.

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.

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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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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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.

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.

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.

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.