Three Do Who S3E8-UNIT Part 1

Episode Description

The episode covers rumors about upcoming Doctor Who specials and the show's relationship with the media. The hosts explore the history and evolution of UNIT, a fictional military organization in Doctor Who, and discuss its portrayal in various media. They conclude with a discussion on the whimsical nature of the Doctor's pockets and the creative storytelling in Doctor Who's extended universe.

Links 

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2268129/episodes/19421161 Bonus Content for Season 3 Episode 8

Chapters

Who News 04:08

Main Topic 26:33

Who Knows Trivia 51:33

This podcast contains adult language and adult subject matter and is rated M for mature. Listener discretion is advised. 

Closing audio

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:48

So before we get started, guys, I really want to show this, I really want to show this shirt to you that my husband bought for me. Okay. And um it's it's it says Scooby-Goo. Right? No. Now here's what he says to me. He says, yeah, it's really kind of cute. You've got uh you've got the Steve, uh you've got the Matt Smith doctor, and then a little tiny Dalek. And I said, No, that's not a Dalek. And nor is it Matt Smith, nor is it Matt Smith. Yes. And I said, Oh, I'm definitely gonna wear that I'm recording this Sunday and uh show it off to all of our 20 fans.

SPEAKER_03 1:26

Yes. Al his Alex has a has a pen shot for telling jokes and describing things. All his own. Yeah. Yes. Uh-huh. Uh anyways. Welcome to 32 Who, the monthly Doctor Who podcast where we talk about all things. Doctor Who, I'm Eric, and traveling through time with me are two of my favorite time lords, James and Mike. How are you two doing? Well, I'm doing okay. Yeah, we've been below z we've been below zero a couple of days uh this week. Uh like the other day, it didn't get up to zero until almost noon.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

The only time I've been below zero is if you've been measuring my energy levels.

SPEAKER_03 2:13

Yeah. I'm on the other side of the of the globe. Uh it's winter. Or close to winter there. On the underside. The underside, yes. The dark side.

SPEAKER_04 2:24

The dark side. I have to ask you, is it is it hard getting used to the the change of seasons? You know, you're going into June, July, and it's winter.

SPEAKER_03 2:36

I mean, it's I I keep looking at the date and thinking, uh, when is it gonna warm? Oh wait, it's just only gonna get colder.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

Uh I'm just worried by the fact that we hit 35 degrees in England the other week in May. Yeah. I mean, we didn't just slightly break our May hottest ever. It was over two degrees hotter than the previous record. It's like, oh god. Um so nice knowing you.

SPEAKER_04 3:02

Uh the the weather, the weather guessers say that by the year 2040, that Southern California will be inhospitable for people.

SPEAKER_03 3:16

Uh most of the most of the northern hemisphere is supposedly going to be inhospitable because that that uh Atlantic um oh it's a it's a current that runs through the through the ocean from South America all the way up to Europe. Uh once that collapses, it's going to drastically change the temperatures in the area. Absolutely. Yeah. Good luck for you. It'll be colder, James. Yeah. I mean, very much colder.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Like very politically cold. But I can put clothes on and warm up. At the moment, if I take clothes off, we'll be on a different category of podcast.

SPEAKER_04 3:56

Yes. Well. Yes, you can only take off so many clothes. It's true. That's very true.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

In fact, in England, by the way, it is currently 10 past seven at night, and I am still boiling.

unknown 4:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_03 4:10

Anyway, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:11

Anyways.

SPEAKER_03 4:12

All right. So what do we what do you say we roll into some Who News?

SPEAKER_01 4:16

We'll start with the um the tragic one first.

SPEAKER_03 4:19

Yes, we're starting with the tragic one first. So Doctor Who and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, veteran Anthony Head, has passed away at the age of 72. Um, and this being Pride Month, I kind of wanted to share a story that a trans fan has shared about how kind Anthony was to them after their transition, uh, followed by some kind words from his castmates uh on Buffy. Uh so a trans fan once had a stack of convention photos with Anthony Head, all signed to a name that was no longer theirs. So Head invited them out to his farm, took new ones, and had them printed and signed the same day uh to the right name. Uh the fan, Jay, says that Anthony picked them up from the station, spent five hours just talking, got every pronoun pronoun right without being asked, and then hugged them, said goodbye, and made them promise to message when they got when they got home safe. Um yeah. Anthony Head is probably best known as Rupert Giles on Buffy, the vampire slayer. Uh, head spent seven seasons being the steady one, and his castmates remembered him exactly that way. James Marsters, who played Spike and also uh Captain Jack's uh one-time love interest on Torchwood, uh, wrote that there is now a hole in the world and called him the best of them. Charisma Carpenter said that he brought life to the father figure so many fans needed but never had at home. And Sarah Michelle Gellers was the one that landed the hardest. She told him she had figured it out and was okay, then admitted she had not and was not, but that she was the lucky one because she got to know him, which is what his character said to her uh when she had to go off and die uh to save everybody. Uh in the Wooniverse, uh Anthony was known for voicing Balthazar in the infinite quest on Doctor Who uh as Mr. Spinch in the episode School Reunion and in three big finish audios. He vote, he was one of the rare few that got to voice Alfred in Batman Gotham by Gaslight. He was the narrator in Rocky Horror Show Live. He played Percelsius in Warehouse 13, played Uther Pendragon in Merlin, and the list goes on. He has over 140 roles on IMDB. Rest in peace, Anthony. And I'm not crying, you guys are.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

No, no, uh, definitely not. Uh I should mention more about his big thing is Doctor Who, because I'm going to change my playlist because of Anthony Stuart Head. Um without saying too much, one of the authors who got to write for him uh didn't write for him, he written the script and was then told that Anthony Stuart Head would be playing one of the characters. And apparently this guy just like, oh wow, you know, just was over the moon. Yeah. I mean that he got Anthony Stuart Head. Um and yeah, as I say, there's there's an awful lot of who related with Anthony Stuart Head.

SPEAKER_03 7:11

Oh yes. Uh there was actually more, but uh I I didn't feel like going through 130 and and uh and like 40.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

I'm gonna mention a few bits.

SPEAKER_03 7:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

Mostly Anthony Stuart Head later, but yeah, some other related stuff as well.

SPEAKER_03 7:27

Yeah, he I mean, he he was uh like Charisma said, he was a father figure to a lot of people who needed one.

SPEAKER_01 7:33

And one of the very few that you know social media hasn't said a bad word about.

SPEAKER_03 7:40

No, apparently he was just uh a very sweet, uh kind, loving person. Uh I I looked and couldn't find a single person who had anything bad to say about him. That's great. So rest in peace, Anthony. Rest in peace. What's next in the news? So let's talk about some rumors. The rumor mill has been a churn in uh with RTD uh mentioning some little things that uh still have not happened after two weeks. Uh he said uh BBC would soon be uh announcing what was going on with the upcoming season of Doctor Who and when it would happen. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:18

And nothing's happened yet. Right. Okay. Um it's confusing, it's conflicting. Um and so it's because I have been so ill for the last few weeks, I've lost track of time as well. So uh, but my ability to keep track of actual dates has wavered a bit. Um but yeah, we've it's seemingly kind of got a bit out of control, and there is the feeling that there is a little bit of damage limitation going on at long last. Right. Yeah. So um it started with a story in the tabloids. Now, before uh I get into the the kind of the modern stuff, Doctor Who's relationship with the tabloids is very strange. Okay. Um I'm currently in the middle of scanning in like a plastic crate that's that deep, full of newspaper cuttings. And an awful lot of them are from the RTD1 era and from the Ellie Matt Smith era. And yeah, you get the impression that when uh RTD was announced, the tabloids might have had a little bit of an issue with a certain part of RTD's lifestyle choices. Uh yeah. Um however, once Doctor Who became a success, they could not get enough of it. And it is really telling. I was like, I'm going through cutting, scanning them in. If you message me via Blue Sky, I'll send you a link to where they're being stored at the moment. Um and it's very clear that not only is RTD officially giving loads of stuff to the tabloids to promote the show, kind of every single episode is getting a feature in the papers. Um that certain bits are also being now. If you want to be charitable, you could say that they are being leaked. If you want to be slightly more realistic, you could say that they are being leaked. Yes. Um okay, they don't get everything right. There's some I've in in the folder I've done so far, there's some fantastic you what? You know, such as the story that says that there's gonna be a Doctor Free episode where Billy Piper is taking the lead role. Which they published in 2008, but that's neither here nor there. Um course they did.

SPEAKER_04 10:55

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 10:55

How do they know? They they they they announced that David Walliams was gonna be in Doctor Who, but they said that in 2006, so they were slightly. Um but yeah, there is a feeling that in the early days the tabloids got a lot of um insider info. Let's leave it at that.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 11:15

Um I wonder who's from. Well, when Tribnel took over, um everything went deathly quiet. You know, he was real, you know, there'll be no leaks, there'll be no spoilers, and it was you know, and then RCT came back, and basically we knew everything about six, seven months in advance of yeah, yeah. Um right. So The Sun and I think it was the Mirror, which are two of the less reputable um papers, yes, yes, ran stories that said the Christmas special is not happening because the BBC cannot find anyone to take on the role. Now this is an awkward thing because, of course, last year they said Doctor Who is coming back for Christmas 2026. Right. Yeah. Um so everyone leapt on that. Uh there was an awful lot of we told you so kind of stuff going on. Um, various people that I've done other podcasts with, um off-camera, yeah, as we occasionally do on here, we chat about other things. Yes, and various people have said, yeah, no one's gonna want to touch Doctor Who. So a lot of people were saying, Oh, we told you so because of this cancellation. Right. It then progressed to the Radio Times.

SPEAKER_03 12:44

Okay, yeah, Radio Times where I picked up uh what was going on recently.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

Yeah. Now the Radio Times, again, uh for non-UK listeners, it is literally the longest-running TV magazine. I mean, it's been going over a hundred years. Yes. That's why it's called the Radio Times, because it's a movie television. Makes sense. Makes sense. Um now, Radio Times used to be highly respected, used to be highly regarded. Um, then there was deregulation of the market, all kinds of issues. It is not the magazine that it once was. They routinely used Doctor Who news sorry news stories as clickbait. And they then picked up the story and said, Oh no, it's not been cancelled, it's been postponed. Right. And that then said, Oh, well, that's a bit kind of I suppose more realistic because oh, they might have found someone, but they weren't able to shoot it in time. You know, and and then yeah. Um RTD, because he's got another big series on at the moment called Tiptoe, um, he went I've not watched it, and I'll wait till we're off camera before I tell you why I'm not watching it. Um actually, there's there's two reasons, um which yeah, I'm not gonna confess to on camera. Um so yeah, he was on uh the Steve uh can't remember which radio show it was, but basically on one of the BBC radio stations being interviewed, and the interviewer did actually press him on the Doctor Who thing. And RTD said, Oh, I'm you know, it's following me around, everything like that. And basically he said, I'm not filming anything else this year.

SPEAKER_03 14:46

Yes, and I haven't filmed any Doctor Who this year.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

No, did he did he actually say that?

SPEAKER_03 14:51

I I believe he said that. I that's what I what I read into it.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

Yeah, no, no. You must not read into Russell T. Davis. That's true, yeah. That's very true. This is the guy that said the master would not be coming back.

SPEAKER_03 15:05

Well, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

Yeah. Um that turned out. But how many times have we heard that? Yeah. Um now, this is where the rumor mill gets interesting. Okay. And right. We are June the 7th. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 15:25

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

I cannot remember when the actual radio interview was, okay? Because I've been I've actually been really unwell last three weeks. Was I think about two or three weeks back? No, I no, no, no. The first I know that the first tabloid stuff was two or three weeks ago. Then maybe I've got the feeling that the interview was only about a week and a bit ago. Okay. It's possible. Yeah, because because I vaguely remember that I nearly messaged and said, do we postpone recording until after?

SPEAKER_02 16:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

Anyway, I think now, the interesting outcome of RTD's announcement is that there are not one but two rumors doing the rounds. Okay. Um both kind of start at the same point, but are then going to diverge. Okay. Please remember this is pure rumour, this is pure speculation. By the time this goes out, theoretically, there will have been the announcement, and either a lot of people are going to be very smug, going, I told you so, or a lot of people are going to be deleting YouTube videos, blue sky posts, Twitter posts. Yeah. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:53

Well, and a lot of people are probably going to be butthurt if it is that he's. I mean, well, I know I'm going to be pissed off if it is true that there won't be a Christmas special.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

No, because both rumors start from the same interpretation of RTD's comments. The reason he's not filming anything else this year is because it's already been filmed. Well, that that would make sense. And this is why I started off by talking about the tabloids and leaks and everything. Because apparently he wanted to get everything done under an absolute veil of secrecy. Okay. So that unlike him. Yeah, no, no, genuinely, yeah. People Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:33

Um I wonder if the BBC has cracked down on him hard for for the leaks.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

And it's only because apparently there has been a leak, which I shall get to in a moment, um, that they're gonna make this announcement. That's why it's having to go, because in the interview he also said he didn't know when the announcement was gonna be, because the BBC is a lumbering dinosaur, which it is, by the way, and they take a huge amount of time towards Ryze press releases and stuff. Which I thought was a little bit snarky of him. Uh no, um I I also saw it as covering his own back so that he didn't have to give a deliberate date, and therefore the BBC would take the fall if um yeah. But anyway, rumour number one is that yeah, the Christmas special, Christmas special, has been filmed, it is in the can. It has been done using leftover sets from the Disney productions. It is dialogue and character heavy, lots of longer takes so that they can get it done quite quickly, that the new Doctor has been cast, and that that's why he said he wasn't gonna be filming anything else this year because he's already filmed it, the new Doctor is in place, and that he's the what they're gonna do is they're gonna go down this route of when eventually there is publicity for it, the publicity will focus on guest characters, sets, effects, and stuff like that, and the doctor will not be in any of the trailers. And that means that theoretically, if they were to try and go through with this, they wouldn't be able to do any location filming until the start of next year because otherwise people would see the new doctor out on the streets and everything would be right. And then there is rumour number two. Um Mike, I think you might want to kind of check your blood pressure in a minute. Okay. Right. The rumour is, and right, I'm not even gonna say if I think this is good, bad, whatever. The one thing I will certainly say it is not, is not original, is that it's a gimmicky type Christmas special. Four doctors are in it.

SPEAKER_03 20:06

Not another one of those.

SPEAKER_01 20:07

And no, no, and not like Curse of Fatal Death, where it's zump, zump, zump, zump. Right. It's where basically allegedly brief bit with Billy at the start, goes into the TARDIS, big explosion, blackout type thing, and there are four doctors on the doc the console room floor. Quad generation? Quad generation, yeah. Nice. Um, so basically, Star Trek want the plot of the enemy within back, Big Fingers want the plot of Ker Droyer back, um, Farsgate wants the plot of My Three's Critons back. Um and allegedly, each of the four people involved is playing like a different aspect of the Doctor's character personality or whatever, which is why I said Big Fingers want Kare Droyer back, because that's what happens in Kare Droyer. Um so yeah, it's a big one pick one one group of fans are saying it has been filmed, new Doctor Singular has been cast, everything is in the can, and the other line is saying it's being filmed with four different doctors, and therefore they can get away with shooting stuff around the country because there's gonna be four different production teams, as it were, with four different doctors. And so no one is gonna be able to know what's gonna be going on. Yeah. Yeah. Um, right, as I said, this is all rumour. Um there is though allegedly this official BBC announcement coming out. Um Allegedly. Uh well, I think if nothing comes out within, say, a couple of weeks of us recording today, there will be bloodhounds sent out with bits of RTD's clothing, fetch, kill, you know, mutilate, yeah. Um basically Rumor Mill is in Absolute kind of churning mode at the moment. And I think that the trouble is, whatever the announcement is, it is gonna be the wrong announcement. First numbuddy, always, yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 22:27

We could start our own rumors that Eccleston's coming back, you know.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

Uh no, because if RTD is involved, Eccleston will turn up with a machete. Yeah. Yeah. Eccle Eccleston and RTD. Which might be good. Well, yeah, I mean, ignoring all that aspect, uh, you you don't only if they film it. Yes. You don't mention RTD in Eccleston's proximity. Yeah, he gets very um agitated.

SPEAKER_03 22:52

Uh yeah, agitated. When I saw him at one of the cons, it was yeah, it was very it was made very clear that he is not the biggest fan of the fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 23:01

Going back to the scanning that I've been doing, when um the leak came out that Eccleston was leaving, um all the tabloids ran with the official reasons for why he was leaving and everything. And then I've got some cuttings from about 2010 where Eccleston goes, Do you know what? I'm gonna tell you why I really left. By the way, there's some really fun stuff the tabloids covered. Uh, do you know why Catherine Tate suffered during the filming of series four?

SPEAKER_03 23:32

No.

SPEAKER_01 23:33

Why? The reason she found all the Doctor Who really painful to film was because there was so much running and it was causing her breasts to bounce so much. Oh no. I hated the breast bounce. Under the headline Pain in the Bradis. Oh there is some brilliant, say, um, it's mostly cuttings I've been doing since about 2003, and there is some brilliant stuff in there. Um what I'll do is when we've got kind of like a non-news gossip heavy one, I'll dig out some that I'm saying that I haven't scanned yet that I'm saving for this podcast. Um because they are, yeah.

unknown 24:20

God.

SPEAKER_01 24:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:24

Right. Oh my god. Um, explain something else. Maybe that's why Shootie actually left. That it was too much for his bodacious booty to handle. No, no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

He was suffering from cockney. Oh, Jesus. It's like tennis elbow, but only worse. Eric, you might want to adjust your colour balance. You've gotten a little bit swayed in color.

SPEAKER_03 24:56

I can't adjust that.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

Eric, back to earth. Back to Earth. Okay, yeah, sorry. Right. Um, is that all the news? Uh that's all I have. Yeah. I mean, at the moment, big things are really quiet because they've got um no new big Doctor Who releases coming out. There's no new books on the horizon.

SPEAKER_03 25:21

I mean, it is really, you know Oh, actually, though, supposedly there is a new um uh Rory and um Oh, yeah, Rory River coming.

SPEAKER_01 25:32

Rory and River box set. What I was gonna say is I'm gonna test your memory.

SPEAKER_03 25:38

That's a dangerous thing. Yes, no. Thanks.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

Um, because the other thing that we haven't mentioned, because there has been literally no mention of can you remember what the new series of Doctor Who coming out allegedly this year was gonna be? No. I do not.

SPEAKER_00 25:59

No, and we covered it in the blooming news bit of the uh Oh, the cartoon. The preschool based Doctor Who comes.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

That's right, yes. Nothing has you know just you would have thought that this lull leading up to the Christmas would be the ideal time to launch a cartoon for the preschool. Or or at least do the publicity for it, or stir up some publicity or stuff some interests. Nope, that's gone completely quite as well. I wonder if they've scuttled it. Well could also be that that's what the announcement's gonna be. Could be. Who knows? Right. Um, you wanted to do units, didn't you?

SPEAKER_03 26:41

Yes, that was such a big mistake.

unknown 26:43

Good.

SPEAKER_03 26:45

I thought Osgood was bad, and then I started delving into units past oh cool. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 26:51

An authentic unit badge from the 70s. Yes. With the old logo. The old logo. Yeah. Oh god. Okay, I'll let you two go first, and then we'll see how much we get through. Because yeah.

unknown 27:06

All right.

SPEAKER_03 27:07

I I I abbreviate the heavy heavily. Yes, I abbreviate it heavily because uh like my eyes just started crossing when I started reading, reading, reading. Oh my god, really? How how can there be this much? But there is. I mean, it's Doctor Who. So uh, what is UNIT? Uh it's a fictional organization that appeared in the 1968 episode, The Invasion. Its purpose is to investigate and combat paranormal and extraterrestrial threats to Earth. Uh, and like the TARDIS, the acronym has changed over the years. UNIT was originally referred to as the United Nations Intelligence Task Force. However, in 2005, the real UN was no longer happy about being associated with the fictional organization, and thus the acronym could no longer be used. The organization was renamed in 2008 to the Unified Intelligence Task Force, making it no longer really a cool An UNIT. Yeah. UNIT, not that unit anymore. So unfortunately. So uh that we had to had to pivot. Yeah. Yeah. So we get into some of the uh show lore. Uh unit was formed, according to some accounts, when Alistair Gordon Lethbridge Stewart, aka the Brigadier, was unable to get the British government to form a permanent special ops force to combat alien threats. And so he went over their heads uh to the UN Security Council, and they proved a bit more agreeable. UN established unit to monitor, investigate, and combat alien and paranormal threats. This contingent was organizationally known as Department C19 within the British government. Uh as a UN group, unit was often tasked with security at peace conferences. Unit often faced hostility towards this operation when investigating uh research facilities, which, yeah, that was a lot of the stories where they where they go, oh, they send the doctor to go research some lab or you know research some company. Um and a common tactic against them was for the aggrieved company or research facility to appeal to contacts in the Westminster government. Uh, this forced Leftbridge Stewart to either back down or go over the government's heads in Geneva. So when the third doctor had been exiled to Earth, by the time Lords he agreed to join Unit as a scientific advisor just in time to help defeat the Nestine consciousness. Uh, invasion of Earth using its autons. The doctor helped Unit to solve many mysteries and conflicts, including the Armidians, the Silurians, the Unzal. I don't remember that one for some reason. But uh the Cybermen and many others. Um right. Interruption. Interruption.

SPEAKER_01 29:41

Unzal is a big fingers one. It is the Unzal incursion.

SPEAKER_03 29:45

Ah, okay. That's why I I have not heard of them. I was like, I don't remember these guys, but you know, there's a lot that I don't remember. They're 60 years worth of television. Yes. So I barely remember the last 60 minutes at the moment. Yeah, some days, yeah. I barely remember the last 60 seconds. Yeah. Why am I here? Right. Uh so after the doctor's exiles was ended, he's his associate with unit became more sporadic, though he did admit to frequently coming back to unit having to come, having come to enjoy their company. The doctor did make use of unit's resources while researching ESP, and this research resulted in him being embroiled in the machinations of the eight legs, which resulted in him sacrificing his life to stop them. Uh, fatally poisoned doctor returned to Unit HQ, where he regenerated in front of the Brigadier and Sarah Jane Smith, into, of course, the fourth doctor. The fourth doctor worked with unit on a much fewer occasions, although he did answer the brigadier's call to help with the zygons and even arrived in time to help with the crawl invasion and several other mysteries and invasions. Um, after events in the Seeds of Dune, the doctors associated with Unit appeared to come to an end, although he never officially left Unit. Uh later incarnations of the doctor would help Unit whenever needed. In time, the Brigadier's daughter, Kate Stewart, became head of scientific research and steered unit into a force run by science. Later, Kate took control of the entire organization. And under Kate's unit, under Kate's leadership, Unit repelled yet another attempted invasion by the Nestine Consciousness. Many of the doctor's former companions have gone to work for Unit, and uh that's a very high-level overview of Unit as it stands today, with with a lot of detail left out, because we'd be here for five episodes if we really delved deeper.

SPEAKER_01 31:34

I was actually gonna say, I think realistically, because Unit started in 1968 and is literally still having audio releases and all kinds of things. Um, this might be one that's wisest to be done over two.

SPEAKER_03 31:50

Um even then, uh, after I read all of the the thing, I was just like, no, this is this is gonna be more than two episodes even worth could handle. Sure. Yeah. Mike, what's your feelings about unit?

SPEAKER_04 32:05

Well, I mean, Eric said that we could fill in. I was like, fill in. There's there's well, okay. Um I'm gonna speak a little bit of some of the things that I find interesting about unit. The first being the contrast between Brigadier Stewart and Kate Stewart. Now, we all know Kate quite well from her recent work with Unit in the war between the land and the sea. She is aggressive, knows a lot of really, really potent secrets about things, and is not afraid to pull them out of her bag of tricks when necessary. I have to say she's made some mistakes along the way. If talking to an entity makes them run away, why send one of your team to talk to them? I mean, come on. If why send an entire team to apprehend people in costume? And why does everyone who appears on screen from unit have to have something to say? I mean, really? Equity.

SPEAKER_01 32:55

It's part of the contract for the actors. Right, probably.

SPEAKER_04 32:58

I mean, Kate takes a very serious. I'm in charge, and you better listen to me approach, even with her secret love affair with an underling. Shame, shame, shame, shame, shame. Conversely, her father, the brigadier, as he was so often referred to, was the epitome of the comical media version of the British officer class. Observational, sipping tea while the world burdens around you, unflappable, and just kind of making considered judgments that even could be concluded by a monkey. Of course, I base this on only on the things that I've seen on television and in movies where the officer class is portrayed. Well, got this one in one boot too many. Next, let's talk about their Avengers Tower that was. Let's talk about their Avengers Tower that was built for them. Uh we often see the control room and of course the helipad where the doctor bigenerated for the very first time ever. What goes on in the rest of that skyscraper? I mean, we've seen the the print.

SPEAKER_01 34:05

At least one whole floor of this Kate's love path.

SPEAKER_04 34:08

Right.

SPEAKER_03 34:09

And but it's like the Costanera tower here in Chile. It's uh it's mostly empty from the ground floor up. Uh and you got the top floor where there's the restaurant, but in unit tower, it's the you know, the control room, and the bottom floor where it's shopping malls.

SPEAKER_04 34:26

Right, right. And why would you put the helipad open to the control room? That makes no sense whatsoever from an aeronautical or operational standpoint.

SPEAKER_03 34:35

Yeah, security-wise, that's a horrible, it's a horrible way to do that.

SPEAKER_04 34:38

Horrible, horrible things to do there. Of course, there's the security area where they keep uh, you know, the aliens and the alien technology. There's a prison there, and there's a big huge box that they can keep things in, obviously, that they're there. There's a few labs and a small, few dank uh offices for characters that should probably have way better accommodations. Osgood should probably have much better than you know, pipes behind her and uh and boxes stacked around her, right? And there has to be a sizable power source to power those weapons that are on there because that's what's in the first 67 floor, right?

SPEAKER_01 35:15

The batteries roll it, right?

SPEAKER_03 35:17

That's the double A's, the triple A's, and the nine volts. That's why that's why Osgood's office is in the pipe.

SPEAKER_04 35:24

It's so small because uh and based on how often they switch uniforms, there must be several floors of dedicated tailors and garment factories because every time they show them they've got a new uniform. And we know that the doctor is technically still on the payroll, but unit has come to operate without the doctor for years and even sometimes decades. Quite frankly, I think the BBC is missing the mark for a dedicated spin-off for unit that could really open up the storytelling of the universe, much like they did in the war between the land and the sea. There can be an entire series of the same thing. I would say more like Torchwood. Yeah, Torchwood, I think. Yeah. Yeah, there could be an entire series devoted to the acquisition of the Vlinks. Friendly Alien or Ultimate AI. But hey, I might be wrong.

SPEAKER_01 36:10

I actually I I think the war between land and sea was a massive missed opportunity. Yeah. Um there has been for the longest time rumors of a unit spin-off. Okay. I think the rumors started in the 70s. I mean, it makes sense.

SPEAKER_03 36:29

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Torchwood did fantastic for the first couple of seasons.

SPEAKER_04 36:34

Although they were in conflict with unit. Yeah. Always. Always try to beat them to whatever alien was showing up on Earth. And I have to ask a question. Do you think there would be so many alien interests in Earth if the Doctor just stayed away?

SPEAKER_01 36:52

Um One Wonders. One wonders, yes. You're you're opening up a massive can of worms there. Um I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_04 37:00

Let me close that up.

SPEAKER_01 37:01

No, no, no, because it actually raises a really valid point about the nature of Doctor and Unit. Because, of course, yeah, the Time Lords deliberately exiled him there. So, does that mean they exiled him there because they knew he had to be there to defend the earth from the Ortons, the Silurians, the ambassadors, yeah? Or was he only sent there to protect it from the Ortons, and because he then somehow changed time by saving the Earth, all of the other invasions opened up.

SPEAKER_04 37:39

Correct, yeah?

SPEAKER_01 37:40

Yeah. It's a a a very strange Doctor in the Web of Time kind of thing is a very strange one. Um that's probably one for like a uh a winter-based episode when when I just get put in front of the microphone and three hours later you stop record. Right. We'll be back later, James. What else you got, Mike? Anything that was it? That was it.

SPEAKER_02 38:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:09

Um so yeah, what I was gonna suggest before I do my bit for today, is that yeah, um, there is way too much for one episode. Definitely um because along with the fact that it was a mainstay of late 60s through the 70s, mentioned on and off in the 80s, you know, it was a huge part of Classic Who. Its impact on the extended universe is absolutely immense.

SPEAKER_03 38:39

Oh, yes. It's there's way more unit extended universe. I mean, just like with with The Doctor, there's way more in the extended universe than there was uh ever on TV.

SPEAKER_01 38:50

I I put a I put a uh uh a thread on Blue Sky a couple of days ago because I was feeling malicious. And someone was saying, you know, oh this isn't, you know, everyone's comparing this to the wilderness years. You know, we're barely up to December 1990 of the wilderness years.

SPEAKER_03 39:07

The wilderness years yet.

SPEAKER_01 39:08

No, no, no. And I then detailed the 1990 month by month and pointed out exactly how we are mirroring the wilderness to the extent where even in the comic strips, regularly a random companion from the past from a past doctor pops up to try and boost the and presenting exhibit A. This is a graphic novel. Uh this is not one of the mainline graphic novels, okay? This was actually done in the 90s. This is one of the earlier graphic novels, and it's uh mostly a story called The Mark of Mandragora. If you are uh Doctor Who fan, you may remember that there was a Tom Baker story called The Mask of Mandragara. Yes. And basically, that seems familiar. At the end of The Mask of Mandragora, the Doctor casually remarks to Sarah Jane, Oh, don't worry, the Mandra the Mandragora has been banished from Earth, it won't be back for four or five hundred years. Sarah counts on her fingers and says, Oh god, that's my time, isn't it? Um hence we finally got um the The Mark of Mandragora. Um, by the way, if you don't think I was telling the truth about companions randomly turning up, as with all the graphic novels, there's multiple stories in this, including the one where Sarah Jane Smith randomly turns up with the Seventh Doctor. Um, told you, past the documents.

SPEAKER_04 40:33

They also have a train that flies through the air, much like the they've done recently.

SPEAKER_01 40:38

Oh, no, I mean I I wasn't going to draw any highlights or attention to that because quite frankly, it's far more fun to point out that it's traveling by a big red interdimensional bus. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 40:49

Where have we seen that before before? Yes. Go back to last you last month's episode of uh Osgood where we talked about her missing the bus.

SPEAKER_01 40:59

Now, unusually for the Doctor Who comic strip, there was a couple of mini strips done in Doctor Who magazine that led up to the Mark of Mandragora. And look who just happens to pop up in Ah, yes, Bringadier. And basically Unit get involved, and the biz in a really bizarre thing. Okay. Essentially, at the end of Um Mark of Mandragora, Unit gets a brand new name. Okay. Uh United Nations Foreign Hazard Duty. No. And the reason they did that was because a few stories previously. No, no, there's no acronym or anything. Don't try to. Yeah, no, I was just trying to think. I was like, unfUD? Yeah. It's because a few stories back, in terms of the comic strip, the doctor had encountered the foreign hazard duty team in the future who knew all about him from their past records of him. Oh. So basically, yeah. Um what I was gonna suggest for for next month is that we've done this kind of thing in the past. Um we did it with the Christmas specials, basically picking your favourite two or three stories. Um but yeah, uh Unit is a nightmare. Um and the one person that you really didn't want writing for unit was Russell T. Davies. Yes. Now, I'm I'm gonna justify this though. I'm, you know, this is not actually just a random random thing. Because what you'll notice with the vast majority of the classic stories featuring Unit, is they're really small scale. The Demons, one of the all-time uh you know, one of the all-time fan favourites of the classic era, takes place in one village, has no effect on the outside world. The sea devils, okay, that doesn't feature unit, it features a unit clone battling the sea devils in the war between the um yeah. Basically, that takes place on a military fort and in a military base. Robot, just little area. Little area. And you go through there's own right, there's only really one unit story that has a global kind of thing, and it's not one I like at all because the end the ending is for me, with my neurodivergent brain, the ending is catastrophically awful. Because it involves a big world event that A should have killed literally billions of people. Um and the no one ever talks about it again. Although it is then actually picked up on in one of the Virgin New Adventures. Um again makes it even worse because it just gets so complicated. But yeah. The vast majority of the original unit stories were really small scale. Um and RTD cannot do small scale. No. You look at his unit stories. He has Sontaran Strategim, Poison Sky, he burns the whole atmosphere.

SPEAKER_03 44:26

Yeah. I I think that I think that's a big problem with RTD in general. His ideas are far too grandiose for a you know a series.

SPEAKER_01 44:36

Yeah, Mike, you put it exactly right. That was a Marvel Tower. He is trying to write Marvel style movies, and then suddenly realizing he has to throw a reset switch at the end of them because Marvel Tower, where the fuck does that appear from? End of power of the Doctor, Unit HQ is demolished into a small neat pile of bricks. Yes. And then suddenly Kate has got the the money to do a brand new tower. And a very tall tower on the skyline, not a small one. Which it's really bad though, because uh in things like 11th hour, uh the 11th hour, all kinds of ones, where you see the London skyline, the tower isn't there. Nowhere to be seen, yes. And actually, some people, myself included, are wondering if things hadn't gone so chaotically being polite, that actually there was going to be a reveal about why the world seems so different. Um, because yeah, the other thing to realize is okay, the Colonel, Colonel Lethbridge Stewart, appears in The Web of Fear. That is the story where behind the scenes the idea of Unit comes from. Unit is then formally established in The Invasion, and then you've got the kind of you know, all of the the the the John Pertley stuff and everything. Yeah. Um and yeah, it's just kind of like the the nature of it is very strange because you watch that first season Spearhead from Space, Silurians, I'm sorry, Spearhead from Space, Silurians, Ambassador's Death, Inferno. You watch those four, and it's actually quite a consistent world it paints. It's not our world, very definitely. It's a slightly more technologically advanced world. Um, but it's pretty damn gritty. It's not nice and ho ho ho, jolly aliens and everything. It is really, you know, it's political.

SPEAKER_03 46:55

It's you know, it's well, I think that comes down to the time period too when it was done. No, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 47:00

No, no, no, no, no, because then the next season, unit seems to be completely rebooted. And it's suddenly this kind of big family type organization. Um, you know, lots of oh, backslapping and kind of you know, jolly happiness, and they even refer to it officially as the unit family. Um on the DVDs, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 47:23

Oh, they do, yeah. Well, they did uh they did with Osgood too, that she came from a unit family.

SPEAKER_01 47:28

No, but literally on two of the DVDs, there are too many documentaries called the Unit Family Part One and Unit Family Part Two. Um and there is, again, accompanied by a very sudden uniform change, a big change in the atmosphere of Unit.

SPEAKER_03 47:45

I wonder if uh I wonder if the uh if they thought that it was getting a little bit too gritty for children.

SPEAKER_01 47:51

That's one of the many things. Although, and it's very telling as well, that in season eight, there is still one story where unit is really gritty, gun battles, fights. Unit through series eight and nine, again, okay, it's not the same consistent unit as series seven. Series eight and nine, they've reset the whole world, and actually, if you watch the unit stories in order, there is a gradual increase in panic about upcoming political warfare. And then to the extent where basically season nine, uh, Day of the Daleks, you essentially have the Doctor trying to salvage peace negotiations because if they go wrong, the planet will be destroyed. And the reason we know that is because people come back from the future to the past to try and sabotage the peace negotiations to make sure it goes a different way, and it's very time related and everything. And yeah, so you've got the season 7 unit, you've got the season eight and nine unit, um season 10 unit is clearly where the brigadier has a nervous breakdown. He gets transported to an alien planet, opens the door, looks at this rocky barren desert, and says, I swear that's croma out there. No, no, no, it's a whole other universe. You're a little bit off on your geography.

SPEAKER_04 49:23

As he sipped his tea and his monkey.

SPEAKER_01 49:27

As as his eyes just were getting kind of more and more amazed, because that was unfortunately the one where both Pat Trouton and William Hartnell came back, and he saw the inside of the TARDIS for the first time.

SPEAKER_04 49:39

Um here's much bigger on the inside.

SPEAKER_01 49:42

Yeah. Yeah. Um something about that.

unknown 49:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:45

Smaller on the outside. That's right. And then, of course, Tom comes along, they ditch the unit thing. Um and yeah, it kind of disappears, and then you look in the wilderness years, and seriously, it's just like, oh, units popped up, oh units popped up, oh units. Um there is one of the Virgin New Adventures called The Pit. Okay. And it's a I mean, it's oh god. I did it as an audiobook, and quite frankly, by the by halfway through, I was thinking, what the f am I actually reading? I'm doing this as a hobby. Why am I reading this shit? Um Do I like punishing myself? And you've got big blue naked Valkyries riding down in hellscapes. Um you've got drugs, you've got police corruption on different planets. The doctor jumps through a porthole and then suddenly he's in Stonehenge surrounded by unit troops. What? I mean, so you see, they would just turn up. Um there's some really good uh ultimate unit stuff. Um, there is a book called Blood Heat, um, which is and isn't a sequel to Doctor Who and the Silurians because it's not really a spoiler. Basically, it takes place in an ultimate timeline where the outcome of Doctor Who and the Silurians was very different to the outcome in our timeline. Um so yeah, through the wilderness years, um, it crops up an awful lot. Um and yeah, it's just kind of like this is what I wanted to show you. This then gets really complicated, and we're now gonna get into playlist territory. Okay. Okay. Because welcome to the 90s. Okay, this is the DVD re-release of the VHS. Uh spot the guy in the middle. Oh yeah. Right. In this, uh a story called Downtime, um, along with the Brigadier, there's the 1960s companion uh Victoria Waterfield, uh, there's the 1970s companion Sarah Jane Smith, um, there's the Great Intelligence, that's why you can see a shadow of a Yeti and the the Yeti's balls are there and everything.

SPEAKER_00 52:20

Um They have so many.

SPEAKER_01 52:22

Yeah. Many, many. And there is one very slight um interesting aspect to this, which the New Who claim not to have realized when they brought Kate Lethbridge Stewart into it. Kate Lethbridge Stewart is in downtime.

SPEAKER_00 52:44

Hmm.

SPEAKER_01 52:46

They claim, New Who have claimed that, yeah, um, it's a complete coincidence that we chose the same name. Um and yeah, uh, but the thing is, the Kate in that one is a very different Kate Lethbridge Stewart to the one in New Who. Um downtime. It's worth watching for a it's a really good attempt to make a a kind of a not even a fan video, you know, a semi-professional or professional video, you know. They've got really impressive location filming, they've got some damn good CGI in there, um, they've got other guest names from Doctor Who, they have got a plot that is totally incomprehensible. At least they're consistent. Yeah, it is it's glorious seeing the brigadier, it's glorious seeing Debbie Watling, Liz Sladen. Um yeah, you get to meet Kate Lethbridge Stewart. She is a vital part of the plot, she's not just a minor character or whatever. Um and so yeah, it's like that's awkward. So, next up, um I'm actually gonna recommend a novelization, okay? Okay. Uh so I I'm I have mixed feelings about the modern novelizations. Okay. So when um Doctor Who was on in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, okay, younger viewers, that was in the last millennium. Middle-aged viewers, worryingly, that was in the last millennium. Um yeah. And what a lot of people, I mean, I've told this to so many of my students over the years, they cannot get their head around the fact that if you didn't see something when it was broadcast at a specific time, yeah, the chances of you seeing it again were virtually zero because the BBC did not do large-scale repeats of stuff. Okay. Um, it was only really in about 1991-1992 that one of the satellite channels in England picked up repeats. And the only way you could experience some of the classic stories, because again, not all of them existed, you know, the VHS rate, the VHS range had only just started. Okay, there had there weren't even loads of VHSs around. Basically, if you wanted to reread to learn about the old stories, you read the novelizations.

SPEAKER_03 55:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:31

Which, again, given that we've got iPlayer, DVDs, Blu-rays, streaming, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, it does kind of leave me a bit weird about the the new novelizations. Some of them are really very basic novelizations. Others, um, so in the most recent batch, for example, Aliens of London and World War III was done as one book. There's some great extra material in there, um, which kind of pads it out, fills in different details and stuff like that. The one that I'm gonna I'm gonna actually recommend is The Giggle. Oh! Okay. Because they realize that the giggle is a bit of a weird story. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 56:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:17

Um, and you think, well, how the hell do they transfer it into a novel? Well, it's like doing things like this. In the middle of it, you have big captions saying musical number, musical number. Um, you have diversions where you've got to find the maze of the and get into the Priston's brain. So if you want a book that does not take itself seriously, that is actually kind of, you know, features Cake Desbridge Stuart. And if you get bored of the story, there's some puzzles to solve. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I'm not joking. This is a really, you know. Oh, again. Word search. It takes it takes something for everyone. It takes the Toy Maker aspect of it and runs with it. It makes it a really good book. Okay. Nice. Now, um, we do then have the compulsory TV, uh, extended universe, huge gulf between them issue. Um, because Big Fingers got the rights to do unit. Right. The problem is they had already had the rights to do unit. And before they had the rights to do unit, they did unit.

SPEAKER_02 57:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 57:44

Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I'm gonna save the new Who unit till next time. Because it it is, I mean there's like 15 boxes of it. You know, yeah. Um, and that even just that alone to find my recommendations would you know. But there's two things, two like mini sets of unit that they did before they had the rights to do the Kate Lethbridge Stewart era. So, the first one is a really bizarre story, okay. It was when they started experimenting with box sets. So rather than do a two-part story on two discs, they would put five discs into the box, four hour-long episodes, and then a fifth bonus disc with all the interviews and everything like that. And an early one that they did was called Unit Dominion. Now, I think I've mentioned this in the past, but I'm gonna mention this. Yeah, so just because they uh you know different things need to be mentioned more than once because they tick so many different boxes. Um it is a unit story, but imagine that you had written a unit story after you'd taken some LSD, you were high on caffeine, and so you were trying to bring yourself down with a mix of speed and coke. Wow. There's a that there's an image. The fact that at one point the doctor is having a fight on top of a big giant floating head. Okay. Yeah. Um it's a very complicated story in relation to continuity as well. That's a massive other issue, okay? But it works as a four-disc story, okay. Um the continuity issues really kind of arise after Dominion. Um, and although there is a character in it who has been in big fingers audios before, everything you need to know about her is within Dominion. Okay. So then, yeah. Um that was it's lovely. I'd say there were two box sets that came out at the same time. One called Dark Eyes and one called Dominion. Everyone was raving about Dark Eyes. I loved Dominion. Yeah. Right. And then the other problem the other unit thing, Jesus Christ, at totally the other end. It was done as four discs, released over four months, and there was a free 25-minute episode given away with Doctor Who magazine. Um, and basically, Unit in this version is not a happy thing. It is not a nice, cheery world. It is a really dark, paranoid, conspiracy-led world. Um, and yeah, I mean, again, you've got the same problems you had with the RTD stuff, that they do things in this which you think, yeah, why is this never mentioned again? Kind of thing, you know. Um, but yeah, there are only four main, and you don't even need the free Doctor Who magazine version episode to understand it, you know. Um, but you can get the free version from Big Fingish's website. Yes, it stars Alistair Gordon, Lethbridge Stewart. Um, and yeah. If you want uh a more kind of not even X-Farce like, but genuine shit, who can you actually trust in this world, then these four unit stories are definitely worth listening to. I remember listening to them for the first time and thinking, I told myself I was gonna ration these. I'm gonna put the last one on because I need to know how to end. It's like, yeah. Um yeah, um, the last bit of Kate stuff, yeah, she's in big fingers in her own kind of one-off releases, so she will crop up in all kinds of things, but again, she's such a strong female character. She's in a you know, she's got like the March 8th stories, which are the International Women's Days ones. Um, and so yeah, Kate difficult origins in downtime, but then again, it's you know, she's gonna be brilliant in the new who uh audios that they do, and yeah, I will be singing her praises next month because there's no way I can do it all in one go. Right, who's my mother? Um Mom. That now that's a whole catching. She just calls her mom. Which, if you watch The Demons, you see Alice there in bed with a woman. Hmm. Now, whether or not that is the same woman he is married to in Battlefield, that has been long since been um a debate. So Mike, you wanted the doctor's capacious pockets. Yes. Right. I'm gonna rename this the Doctor Who Dick Measuring Competition. No no, but I've I have got genuine reason for doing this, sorry, apart from wanting to give Mike uh give um Eric heart problems. Right. It doesn't bother me. No, no. Um no you because actually you you raised when when you said this, I was trying to think, well, how am I gonna do this? And I realized actually it's uh symptomatic of a lot of wilderness years who. Okay. Um because yeah. In a lot of the Virgin Era stuff, especially, the doctor seems to have everything he needs in his pocket, whereas in reality Sylvester McCoy kept his script in his pocket. You know, that's what you can see how how far they are through filming. Pages that they filmed are on that side, pages he's desperately on that side. Um but yeah, it's this very strange thing that happened in the wilderness years. Because in the classic Who, okay, because I was trying to work out where this came from, first, second, and third doctors on television never really pulled much out of their pockets. Okay. The most notable one is almost done as a joke in a second doctor story called The Space Pirates, where he has a box of drawing pins in his pocket. And he has learnt after the Space Pirates not to keep it in his back pocket because when he's thrown to the ground, he he then says, I used to like drawing pins, and you can there are rumors say Space Pirates is one of the ones that doesn't exist in video anymore. Uh it hasn't yet been announced as an animation, but then again, nothing has been announced as an animation yet for the rest of this year. It is actually a strong contender for all kinds of reasons. Um you then get to the fourth doctor, and suddenly Yeah, Capacious Pockets galore. But they're not, though. It's hardly in any stories. Uh well, I mean, he's always pulling out weird shit, though. Yeah, no, no. But it's usually one thing. Okay. Yeah, the yo-yo is the main thing. Yeah. It's only in a couple of the very early stories where he's asked to empty his pockets and it's a lot. And apart from the fact it raises really strange questions about how long the stuff has been in there, because he's only just regenerated, got the coat from the TARDIS wardrobe. And it's like, how old are those jelly babies? Yeah. But I said, it's done as a joke a couple of times in three of his first season stories, but it's not really done after. To that. Fifth, sixth, and seventh doctor don't really pull much out of their pockets. You know, it is usually a one-off thing that the doctor needs for that story. And then you hit the new adventures. Okay. And the reason I'm referring to this as the Dick Measuring Cest is because there seems to be a battle going on as the new adventures progress as to what the weirdest and wackiest things he can pull out of his pockets is to outdo the previous books. I mean, it gets to the point where in one of them he is offered a cup of tea, he puts it into his pocket, and about 30 pages later, he pulls it out of his pocket and starts drinking it again. Still seeming hot, I mean. Still seeming hot, even though he's just been running across a battlefield. And I was thinking, you know, okay, there's not really gonna be one story that could be recommended because it's just like little scenes here and there. Um but then I thought, actually, this is what's reminding me of. And bizarrely, the first Doctor, not on TV, but in the comic strips, had almost like a Gladstone bag type thing, which he could pull out everything he needed from. It was almost the equivalent of his bat utility belt. Right. Okay. I mean, he pulled out miniaturization rays, he pulled out this, that, and the other. You know, conveniently for the story where he had to go snorkeling, he was able to pull out flippers and snorkel and scuba gear and everything. So actually, what I'm gonna do, say, rather than recommend plowing through the new adventures, first my first recommendation, it's just if you can there's loads of torrents of them laying around on the net. I'm not gonna deny it. They're bloody 60-year-old comic strips. So yeah. Um there's loads of them where, yeah, he pulls weird and wonderful stuff out of this Gladstone bag. It's brilliant. Um, and then I was thinking, well, kind of, yeah, you then it then seems to have spilled into the new series one because you get this kind of tenant in um The Runaway Bride pulls out all the everything it's like what the and you work through the new adventures and you think, yeah, they are have they are clearly having a really subtle who can outdo who on what kind of front with the what I mean in I think in one of them he pulls like an umbrella out of his pocket or something. I can't it's just like he's yeah. Um and I'm thinking, okay, because in the new adventures, they do at least have a running joke as well that Benny, the doctor's companion, is convinced that he has sewn extra dimensions into his pockets. Yeah. So that he can yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:07

Um Well, I mean, if you could if you could make the interior of a TARDIS you know nearly infinite. Uh it yeah it stands to reason you could make pockets conceivably a lot bigger inside than than they are on the outside.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:21

So, I'd say first off, yeah, dip in and out of the Virgin New Adventures anyway. Um the one I'm reading for my YouTube channel at the moment is brilliant. Um, it should be up there by the time um we've uploaded this episode. Right. Um, it's a Doctor Light episode. Never had those before since on TV. Uh with the companions definitely taking the lead. And yeah, it's brilliant. There's time, there's actual time travel issues involved in it. Um there's uh there's prostitutes in it, there's drugs in it. Um again. Yeah. Um there's a Russian spy type character in it. Um there's a seven-foot-tall cockroach in it. But anyway, I think they're worth both the first Doctor ones and the seventh Doctor stuff is worth dipping in and out of. On the flip side, I'm gonna criticize your choice. Okay. Um, no, no. But again, because of the kind of the convenience thing. Okay. And so, Doctor Who, it there was this kind of like, okay, first of all, it was the Doctor's Pockets. Then it seemed to be, okay, who can come up with the most weird and wonderful rooms that the TARDIS has got? Because there was only one story on TV in Classic Who where the TARDIS had weird rooms because there was a filming strike and they had to film it elsewhere. But again, in the books, they go out of their way to have weird and bizarre rooms and everything.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:58

The swimming pool. The swimming pool.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:00

Well, no, to be honest, the swimming pool was in the classic series.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:04

Um, in this, especially in this one that they had to film elsewhere because there was a location in. Um and then you get to Big Finish. Okay. There's a great big thingish, by the way, called uh the beer moth. Which has a great visual joke in it.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:24

Wait, is this an audio?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:26

This is an audio with a brilliant bit with a brilliant visual joke in it. Okay. Because the beer moth is basically like this big mammoth type thing. Which is at several times taken in and out of the TARDIS.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:43

But of course, it's always done the equivalent of just off-screen. So you never really know how the and that's you know. Like how we get that motorcycle in the But um there is a run of eight Doctor Adventures um in the Big Fingers range where yeah, basically, there's way too much convenience in the in the kind of like what he happens to have in his pockets, given that as technically the TARDIS has been destroyed, he's in a totally different universe, has no way to stock his pockets up, yet in all of the stories, he just conveniently still happens to have everything that he needs. And even though in one of the stories he ends up swimming in a pool of basically fake blood, which would, of course, trashed all his pockets and everything. And it's like, yeah, it does go a little bit out of hand. Um, so say in the Virgin books and to some extent the Ace Doctor novels, it's like a running joke that got out of hand. Big Fingish do it too much as a convenience thing. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:56

Well, I mean, this was a this was a problem also with other series like MacGyver. Yeah. They were constantly like, it's how who carries duct tape, paper clips, rubber bands, you know, uh, sorry, you're talking to someone's wire.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:10

You're talking to someone who's really kinky. That's like my backpack. All right. Okay. The one I remember was the A-T one where they actually improvise the gun using Rubik's cubes and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:25

Yeah, yeah, the A-Team was was the worst at at stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:30

Okay. Um so before I take your request for next month, as a I'm gonna knock my board games one to next month. Um because yeah, Anthony Stuarthead, when you realize which important Doctor Who things he was in. Okay. I don't know if kind of it was intended that he would be important for all these things, but he is in a whole load of really special Doctor Who stuff. Right. So there's school reunion, let's get the TV one done first. He is over overlooked because of Sarah Jane Smith.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:16

I think it's really unfortunate that he ended up in that story because otherwise he would have been the in focus. Yeah. Um but he has done other Doctor Who's and all of them have been very important in different ways. Right. He was a guest actor in the first attempt to bring Doctor Who back uh by the BBC in the wilderness years. He's only in one episode or so out of the five that were done. And let's just say that I do not really recommend bothering with episodes one, three, four, or five. Um he is uh a guest actor in an episode of something called Death Comes for Time. Now, Death Comes for Time is a revolutionary idea, okay? Because we are talking 2000, 2001. Okay, so before Russell C. Davis and everything like that. And Eric, are you still there? Yes. Oh, so you were just very, very still. I was about to put a mirror. I was listening intently. All right. Death Comes for Time. Right. To say that Doctor Who has always tried to be on the forefront of technology. I don't know, they don't always get it right, you know, see green screen and everything. Right. But Death Comes for Time was an attempt to bring Doctor Who back as an internet television program. Okay. It's the first of the back then it was called BBC I, before the BBC website and everything was created. Right. But basically, it they did a 25-ish minute pilot episode to see how it went down, which ended on a cliffhanger type thing. And then, yeah, they eventually made the remaining four episodes. Whole story is called Death Comes the Time. Its heart is very much in the right place, in that it is an attempt. How can you do Doctor Who without having to spend loads of money? Basically, it is an audio with like specially commissioned artwork. Yeah. And bearing in mind, in 2000, 2001, the internet was not this kind of like broadband superhighway kind of thing. Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:47

You're on 40%. Yeah, you were lucky if you could could download an audio file, much less accompanying pictures or any kind of video.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:59

It is primitive. Yes, the plot sucks more than any other Doctor Who story I can think of prior to the RTD2 era. Um Tony Head puts in a fantastic guest performance. The fact there are vampires in the story is neither here nor there. But yeah. And he's actually in the art of type. Let's say, yeah, yeah, type O or type A B or anyway. But yeah, I mean they even use his likeness and everything, you know. He is an integral part of it. Right. So we then come forward to Big Finish. And yeah. Um, so my friend Craig Hinton, who's now long uh hasn't been with us for many years, he was overjoyed when he found out that Anthony Head was going to be in uh his story. And the story itself is a truly genuinely, oh, okay, you're doing a really different kind of thing with Doctor Who that they could not do on television. It was their first time that they did a trilogy of stories. But one story was the fifth doctor, one story was the sixth doctor, one story was the seventh doctor, and it wasn't like a multi-doctor story or anything like that. The linking thing was Tony Head in each of them as the baddie. Okay. Oh. Nice. Um, it's called the Excelsius trilogy. There is also a fourth part to it. Um, so yes, it is a trilogy of four, but the fourth part is very much um a kind of a separate thing at the end. The main story is complete in these three things. Right. Big Fingish re-released it a couple of years ago as a as a kind of like a download box set kind of thing. And yeah, it's uh it's the first time, I mean they do it all the time now, but it's the first time that Big Fingish did right, rather than tell a multi-doctor story, we're gonna tell the story of a planet that the doctor visits multiple times in different three generations. And yeah, it is say, and again, Anthony Head is absolutely magnificent in it. Oh, yeah. Um, I'm not gonna say that I think it's the best set of three or four stories I've ever heard. Um I'm biased about one of the. Oh yeah. Oh, and for the yeah, and and also it's a very good attempt at showing a world other than the earth. Because it's not even that it all takes place in the same year for that planet, kind of thing. No, no. There is there, you know, um the re the the full titles of the three are Excel Excelsius Dawns, Excelis rises, Excelis Decays.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:11

And it's a huge and then yeah, playing the baddie again. Does this guy ever get a good role? Um deliciously evil bad guy in the animated Doctor Who episode, The Infinite Quest. Yes. And yeah. Um again, I don't want to be bitchy or whatever, but when when there was the issue with tenant leaving and them only being able to do a couple of you know, certain number of episodes of tenant, you know, or they were trying to kind of do the big universe, basically they made an effort to make sure there was still Doctor Who going on. And so during series three, the Martha series, they were they had a a children's thing called Totally Doctor Who. And in it, each week, there was like a three or four-minute mini episode, which could then be edited together into the full hour-long infinite quest. Oh wow. And yeah, Tony Head is the baddie in it. You can tell he is having a blast. Yeah. Um it's a fun one. And this is let's say this is why kind of I think it's really bizarre that you've got this comes to time. The BBC trying to do something really different with Doctor Who and push it so that it can still be made, but without tying up actors for months at a time. You've got Big Finish doing something that the BBC couldn't do because they're doing Fifth Doctor one month, sixth Doctor next, seventh Doctor the month after. But it's one big story. You couldn't do that on television, you know. And Anthony Head is at the heart of that. Oh, we we're gonna do an animated episode of Doctor Who? Because again, you know, we can get the voice work done and then we can animate it afterwards. And again, it's Tony Head at the heart of it. And it's like it is just brilliant. That three glorious revelations about how you can do Doctor Who in a different way, and he is there every time. And whereas I definitely don't recommend Death Comes to Time, Excelis is fun. Watch the infinite quest.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:56

It is it's it's a blast, it's really good. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:01

The animation is fun, it's it's really nice. So next month, yeah, it'll be board games. Tony Head isn't in the board games, sadly. Um and yeah, I'm gonna be really cruel and give you a quiz on certain things next month as well. Oh, joy. Right. Look forward to that. Eric. Right, so we're gonna do unit part two as the main bit. And I said, I think kind of picking interesting stories to talk about rather than the overview. Our favorite unit story.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:33

I've already got mine. Yeah, but what is your playlist request? So I want for my playlist request, I'll I'll make it unit heavy again. Good. Uh I would like the the best companion, ex-doctors companion stories uh of those that have gone on to work at unit. Ooh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:54

That's gonna be um interesting because yeah. Oh, and I'd I'll I'll leave you at the end of this, at the end of next month, rather, I'll give you the single most depressing fact about companions that work at unit.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:10

Well, is it is it that they don't get healthcare? No pension?

SPEAKER_01 1:24:15

Um it's a little bit worse than that. Oh no. Right, Mike. Please don't go for pockets. Please don't go for pockets.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:22

No, I had I had two that I was thinking about. The first one was the named Daleks. Daleks that had a name.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:31

Okay, I can play with that one nicely, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:34

Or the progression of the Sonic screwdriver.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:38

Oh, no, I will definitely do Sonic. Okay. We'll save this name Daleks for another time. Okay.

unknown 1:24:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:44

But Sonic actually is a brilliant one, yeah. Um because again, that's become a that was in the uh running joke as well, a little bit in the wilderness years. Yeah. Um, including a book that a lot of people really love, but I have no time for. But I will definitely give my justification for that next month. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:09

And I will say that if you go to the unit black archive right now, uh, that the Sonic from Lux is on auction right now. So if uh anybody was looking to pick up the 15th Doctor's um Lux version of his Sonic Screwdriver, it is available and up for auction on the Black Archive.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:31

So, Sonic Screwdriver, companions at Unit, um, do not expect joyous wonderfulness, by the way.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:40

Um, I I you've already set the stage for that to be very disappointing.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:45

And yeah, uh, board games with an added quiz for the two of you as a head-to-head thing. Yeah. Okay, all right. Oh no, trust me, because again, I'm I'm I was trying to work out how to kind of do board games, along with, of course, sending Eric pictures of the boars and everything. And yeah, there is a um I realized that there was a really obvious something that we could do. Okay. Okay, okay. Right. All right. And yeah, um hopefully next month we will have had a press release. Something. Something because yeah, it's been quiet.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:25

But yeah, it is very quiet on too many fronts. All right. Well, thanks for joining us on another journey through time and space with the doctor. Remember, you can support the show by liking and subscribing on YouTube or subscribing on Buzzsprout for as little as $3 a month. You can send us an email at thredo at gmail.com or a text or voice message from thredoo.buzzsprout.com. The link is at the top of every episode show notes. Please follow us on blue sky three do.bsky.social, or join us on our telegram group chat at three dooh. See y'all next month.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:00

Bye, everybody.