the fourth doctor

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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, 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.

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, 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.

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, 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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’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!