By Roy Mathur, on 2024-06-09, at 22:59:13 to 23:58:34 BST, for Captain Roy's Rusty Rocket Radio Show
Life stress and tiredness and sickness have struck House Mathur. I caught whatever hellish cold-like non-COVID germ Mum succumbed to recently. Fortunately, she is made of hardier stuff. Unfortunately, I am not. I have been literally snorting and coughing up buckets of goo.
These troublesome events have led to delays in continuing the Hammer House of Horror Revisit, and instead covering three Ncuti stories and the considerable amount of content that has accumulated in the large gap between episodes. You know I said this is not a Doctor Who Podcast? Well, it technically isn't, but sonic screwdrivers on standby, there is a lot of Whoish content tonight. For a non-New Who and an occasionally Classic Who podcast, I seem to be talking more about Doctor Who than most full-time Whovian podcasters.
2024 Australian science fiction film in which disgraced journalist's mystery podcast becomes embroiled in alien conspiracy concerning "the brick".
It's a great idea, but the entitled, corrupt protagonist, snail's pace, and illogical ending made it a hard watch.
In 541, I started, but gave up on this low budget, slightly dull, 2016 creature feature "about a sociopathic teen, who discovers that his neighbour (Christopher Lloyd) is a monster."
I have since finished it and found in its favour a Martin-like quality, a horrific live embalming, and a monster whose final words are William Blake's "Tyger! Tyger! burning bright".
2022 espionage thriller about the build-up to WW2, based on Robert Harris's novel, starring Jeremy Irons as Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, with a minor role for Anjli Mohindra, who will crop up later.
A pair of highly placed Oxford chums, one British and the other German, try to convince Chamberlain that Hitler can't be trusted.
It's hard to believe the historical revisionism of a wily Chamberlain in on the game and playing for time, though I don't believe it for a moment. However, it's a tense, dry, spy drama, with a lot of talking and I loved it.
This is a 2022 film based on A. S. Byatt's 1994 short story The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye. It is directed by George Miller. George Miller (Mad Max, Babe, etc.) doing a fantasy film? I'm in. I waited quite a while to see it, but I grabbed the opportunity when it recently popped up on 4OD.
Narratologist---a field I did not know existed---starts seeing beings that aren't visible to others in Turkey, where she also buys an odd little bottle as a souvenir and releases a jinn while cleaning it. He relates his adventures over the last few thousand years, including his time as the Queen of Sheba's lover, until Solomon imprisoned him in a bottle. She wishes they become lovers and they begin their life together in England. Unfortunately, the electromagnetic emanations of the modern world make him sicken and so they part, only to meet infrequently over the years.
Why extremely posh Londoner with Scots background, Tilda Swinton, attempted a Yorkshire accent for the role is beyond me. That aside, I enjoyed this sweet and very colourful, sumptuous, and fantastical romance, torn straight from The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night with the jinn playing Scheherazade and the gender roles reversed. Idris Elba is excellent as the immortal, tragic, but perfectly romantic jinn.
Neil Gaiman and Matt Wagner's comic series adapted to a Netflix 2024 series about the titular chaps solving occult cases for their fellow ghosts and set within the Ghaiman universe (Death from The Sandman features).
Camp, comedic, Buffy Scooby gang-style quirk, "Boy" is a stretch for Edwin and Charles, and I don't like the setting transferred to America.
Other than that, I like the occult-lite stories and the characters. The ex-walrus is great. Jenn Lyon is deliciously dottily demented as evil witch Esther Finch and Brianna Cuoco (Kaley's sister) is great as Jenny the gothy rocky cynical landlady. It inspired me to buy something magicky that will eventually make it into the pod.
In 541, I said that, "Paramount's 2024 Season 5 is a classic Doctor Who's Key to Time space travelogue...MacGuffin hunt...tackling Star Trek's Preservers/Progenitor panspermia lore" featuring an, "amazing space library", but was too "touchy feely".
The final season of the show steals the Genesis Device of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Moll's commitment to be reunited with her paramour, even if the galaxy burns, is like Kirk's in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. One has to admire that level of commitment.
The secondary plot was the run-up to Mr Saru's marriage to a nice Vulcan, which was concluded in the series finale. Congratulations, Mr Saru, I'm happy for you. We also see a happy-ever-after future for Michael and wave our final goodbye to the USS Discovery.
2024 folk horror series on Alibi (non-free premium subsidiary of the BBC's subsidiary UKTV). The Wicker Man transferred to Wales, starring Anjli Mohindra as the puritanical and naive cop. Enjoyable mainly because Anjli Mohindra really sells the premise.
If Anjli Mohindra seems familiar, it's because she is a New Who regular. She was Rani Chandra in the The Sarah Jane Adventures, Queen Skithra in Doctor Who: Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror, the Mechanoid Queen in Daleks!, played various roles in Big Finish dramas, audiobooks, and video games, and is Sacha Diwan's partner. It's rare, so always nice to see a British Asian in a leading role.
2024 Netflix fantastical thriller starring Benedict Cumberbatch.
Vincent is a selfish, self-involved puppeteer of hit children's TV show, who manifests a monstrous puppet called Eric designed by his autistic son who goes missing, presumed abducted, after witnessing a row with his parents. Set in a corrupt, grimy New York and the racist, homophobic NYPD of the late 80s.
Compelling drama blatantly based on aspects of driven Muppets creator Jim Henson. Sesame Street, The Fisher King, and Monsters Inc. are clearly influences. I enjoyed it, but felt it criminally underused the fantasy elements of Eric, so much so that it could have worked as straight drama.
The first two episodes of Disney+'s 2024 science fiction series set in the High Republic period one hundred years before Star Wars have been released.
Osha an ex-Padawawn helps her old master track down her evil twin Mae.
I liked it a lot. Star Warsy spaceships, combat, and droids all present. Not quite the grit grey areas of Andor's Imperial oppression, but explores uncomfortable aspects of the Jedi order. Remember Mace saying, "He's too dangerous to be left alive." Nothing's ever simple, is it? "Only shades of gray"---The Monkees, Shades of Gray.
Episode four of New who series 14, sees Roger Ap William as a nuclear trigger-happy Trumpian Welshman, while Ruby is the doomed assassin/prophetess in this neat variant on Stephen King's The Dead Zone, after she breaks a fairy circle and wanders into the worse pub in Wales.
As usual RTD is right on the money (or the big red button of zeitgeist). More so because as with Abigail (pod 541), I had a weird, possibly coincidental, premonition. I was thinking about how reliant Britain is on NATO, probably brought on by a Beeb article about BBC cult nuclear shock-drama Threads recently. There was also Keir Starmer's sabre-rattling prattle to defend Britain with its nuclear arsenal, ludicrous because we are entirely dependent on the Americans.
Tangent aside, I think this is the best episode of the new season so far. As with The Girl Who Waited, it's a nightmarish reminder of that time-related hell can await you as a companion of the Doctor. Poor Ruby.
In episode five of New who series 14, the Doctor and Ruby help a planet of young social media obsessed humans from aliens, who are consuming them one at a time.
The aspect of being coddled and simultaneously enslaved by parasitic technology is similar to E.M. Forster's The Machine Stops, George Lucas's THX-1138, and The Matrix. Similar to other Doctor Who stories, like Bad Wolf's parody of The Weakest Link and Big Brother, Smile's take on gamification and emoticons, Kerblam!'s attack on Amazon, etc., it's a preachy attempt at taking down a contemporary trend. However, the mild satire about social media must have been at least slightly effective because I paused at the beginning and immediately deleted a tweet about recent personal events. Though I did add those events to these shownotes and my journal and I'm talking about them now, so potato. But writing and podcasting isn't social media, it's creative, trying doing it yourself, and also, everyone can just go straight to hell.
While it fits Doctor Who's children's science fiction horror, it's late to the game, isn't timeless, and will probably age badly. On the other hand, Ncuti's strong emotive acting really sells the Doctor's raging despair, as his offer to save the population is scornfully spurned, and the closing scene is complimented by Murray Gold's swelling epic orchestral score.
In episode six of New who series 14, sees the Doctor and Ruby in Regency Bath battling birdlike intergalactic cosplayers fatally replacing humans for fun. The Doctor has his heart broken by a space bounty hunter, who saves Ruby, at the cost transporting himself and the criminals into infinity.
It's mildly amusing pantomime, though the Jane Austen/Bridgerton/Sanditon setting has been overused in comedy. It also features a gay kiss, following a teasing near miss. Not the first, of course, but it would have been strange to have Russell T. Davies and Ncuti Gatwa without going there. I loved the line, "I have to be like this 'cos this is what I'm like. Onwards. Upwards. New horizons. Moving on. It's fine." We know it's not fine, but I can't help but admire that. It's something my mum would say. Rogue the bounty hunter is a more intense version of Captain Jack. With him in the picture, I can't see Jack returning, which should please Disney+.
I said in 541 that there was a, "mixed response to the recent 2023 specials". There may very well have been generally, but personally, in 514 I commented on my enjoyment of Wild Blue Yonder in which I liked the timeline spaghetti, the Doctor's generally slapdash behaviour, "the grown-up hard science-fiction horror" and it's, "massive cliffhanger".
Sometimes, this contradiction it isn't an error and I've simply changed my mind, but in this case I forgot. As I have said frequently, this is a solo podcast, so there's no one but me to catch errors. I also record so many pods that it's hard to keep up with what I'm saying, even for me.
The only way to enjoy New Who in the UK without risk of spoiler-ridden reviews is to watch it at midnight. While that suits my bizarre body clock, most normal humans are not nocturnal.
It's unacceptable that a cult British BBC show gives priority to America over the best release time thanks to a big Disney wedge. Doctor Who has always been mostly paid for by the UK public through not-insubstantial television licence fees, as well as sales and syndication. Even with zero nation-based patriotism, I'm not happy.
Two things I learned recently from a casual rewatch about flatulent invaders from 2005.
One: when questioned at the time about Rose's line "You're so gay", RTD said it reflected realistic dialogue and was deliberately included to spark debate. That reminds me of Christopher Nolan's ridiculous assertion that incoherent sound was a choice on Tenet. I have my doubts despite RTD being a gay man himself. It reminds me about the debate on the reclaiming ownership of racial slurs by the groups they are used against or how racism is alright, as long as it's ironic. We have seen what a nonsense the latter has proved to be.
Two: RTD fixed UNIT's acronym to again mean United Nations Intelligence Taskforce and not Unified Intelligence Taskforce after the UN objected. I'm not sure what it is later in New Who or in 2024 because it's hard to keep track. Feel free to let me know.
A year ago The Guardian's senior fashion writer Lauren Cochrane wrote a feature ranking the Doctors' costumes.
My only problem is placing 13's awful outfit, that I feel undermined Jodie Whittaker, at number four. From three to one are Christopher Eccleston, Tom Baker, and Sylvester McCoy. I can't argue with that as a I like Eccleston's leather peacoat, Baker's hat and scarf influenced by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's lithograph Ambassadeurs-Aristide Bruant, and McCoy's dapper style.
As a child, Jon Pertwee's sophistication appealed to me, though adult me is drawn not to the Doctor, but the Roger Delgado Master clad in an elegant Nehru jacket.
Since last time, I've randomly ruminated like a lonely wild goat, avoided "if it bleeds, it leads" news from the Metro, tried to keep up with visualisation and Fact Feel Want CBT techniques in the month-plus since therapy ended, been wracked by sickness, despaired of spiralling electricity bills, bought a car, been inordinately pleased that a small child liked my Bauhaus t-shirt with an image from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari that slightly irrelevantly, though still gothicky, is included with Bela Lugosi's Dead, met a friend after a significant gap, Flaneured about my kingdom of London, and felt utterly frail.
Here are the results of my best shot at connecting with other Whovian podcasts: Mastodon = 0% response, Twitter almost 100% response; thank you. The response was much better overall than the resounding silence from the Doctor Who Podcast Alliance's forum years ago.
I gave out contact details and said the usual let's do something sometime, but I'm not really sure what else to do. I don't want to be too pushy in case it backfires. In the past, I made the mistake of getting onto a show where only one of the hosts wanted me on and the other two really let me know of their displeasure. If those two are listening, I'm giving them the Agincourt salute. Now that I've done my bit, I'll step back and hope that someone gets in touch.
If you're listening, fellow podders, a couple of you followed me, then unfollowed when I didn't follow you back on Twitter. Please don't get your nose out of joint. As I Tweeted, to save my sanity I don't follow anyone on Twitter, whereas I mutually follow just about everyone on Mastodon.
I no longer do obituaries because they are too depressing. But since I have been amateurishly bumbling through a revisit of classic Doctor Who since 2014, starting with An Unearthly Child, I thought I'd give brief mention to the passing of William Russell.
He played one of my favourite male companions, one of a pair of Coal Hill School teachers, Ian Chesterton, along with Jacqueline Hill, who played Barbara Wright. His first line, somewhat poignantly given the context, was "Oh? Not gone yet?" William Hartnell would famously muff Ian's surname, so in the same spirit, goodbye, Chatterton.