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Our old chum Suky Khakh joins us to take a look at the Third Doctor debut story “Spearhead from Space”. Along the way, Mark reports on a visit to Leadworth and we examine the blatant flirting between the Brig and Liz.

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SHOW NOTES

(00:00:00) Our guest is Suky Khakh of the “Around the Console” podcast, the “Trek This Out” podcast and the “Take Your Seats” podcast.

(00:00:00) The intro here is of course a tribute to “The Navy Lark”, a BBC radio comedy sitcom about life aboard a British Royal Navy frigate broadcast between 1959 and 1977. For most of its run, the show starred Leslie Phillips, Jon Pertwee and Stephen Murray.

(00:05:59) St Fagans National Museum of History commonly referred to as St Fagans after the village where it is located, is an open-air museum in Cardiff chronicling the historical lifestyle, culture, and architecture of the Welsh people. The museum is part of the wider network of Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales. It consists of more than forty re-erected buildings from various locations in Wales, and is set in the grounds of St Fagans Castle, a Grade I listed Elizabethan manor house. In 2011 Which? magazine named the museum the United Kingdom’s favourite visitor attraction. A six-year, £30-million revamp was completed in 2018 and the museum was named the Art Fund Museum of the Year in 2019.

(00:07:12) This is an except from Stewart Lee’s “Content Provider” comedy tour.

(00:12:55) This is the 1985 TV commerical for the 5-4-3-2-1 chocolate bar. As the name of the bar suggests, it consisted of five different parts; wafer, crispy rice, caramel, fondant, and milk chocolate. It was made by Crawford’s (who also made Bandit) at their Binns Road factory in Liverpool. The brand was sold to United Biscuits in 1960. Sadly, it was discontinued in 1989 due to poor sales.

(00:39:16) Rosa Lewis (1867–1952) was an English cook and owner of The Cavendish Hotel in London, located at the intersection of Jermyn Street and Duke Street, St. James. Known as the “Queen of Cooks”, her culinary skills were highly prized by Edward VII, with whom she was rumoured to have had an affair in the 1890s. She was also called “The Duchess of Jermyn Street.” She left school at 12 to go into domestic service, working her way up to cook. She claimed that the great chef Auguste Escoffier taught her about cooking. It was he who named her the “Queen of Cooks”. One of her employers was Lady Randolph Churchill. One day, Rosa chased Lady Randolph’s then ten-year-old, red-haired son Winston out of her kitchen, shouting “Hop it, copper knob.” The 1976-77 BBC television series, “The Duchess of Duke Street”, starring Gemma Jones, was loosely based on her life. It is said that some of the scenes in “Vile Bodies” by Evelyn Waugh, in which she appears as her fictional counterpart Lottie Crump, were also inspired by the Cavendish Hotel under Lewis’ management.

(00:53:36) “P.R.O.B.E.” is a series of direct-to-video science-fiction films mostly written by Mark Gatiss and produced by BBV Productions. It was the first live-action Doctor Who spin-off series. The series features Caroline John as Liz Shaw, working for the Preternatural Research Bureau. Many former Doctor Who actors, including former Doctors Jon Pertwee, Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy, appear in the series playing different roles. (Due to licensing restrictions, no overt reference to The Doctor is permitted.) Doctor Who alumna Louise Jameson co-stars with Caroline John in the original four films, as Patricia Haggard.

(01:05:21) This rallying call for the BBC bolshies comes from the end of the opening credits music of “Citizen Smith”, a British television sitcom written by John Sullivan, first broadcast from 1977 to 1980. It starred Robert Lindsay as Walter Henry “Wolfie” Smith, a young Marxist “urban guerrilla” in Tooting, south London, who is attempting to emulate his hero Che Guevara. Wolfie is a reference to the Irish revolutionary Wolfe Tone, who used the pseudonym “Citizen Smith” in order to evade capture by the Dublin Castle administration. Wolfie is the self-proclaimed leader of the revolutionary Tooting Popular Front (the TPF, merely a small bunch of his friends), the goals of which are “Power to the People” and “Freedom for Tooting”.

(01:13:38) “Unman, Wittering and Zigo” is a 1958 radio play by the Anglo-Irish playwright Giles Cooper. A feature film version was released in 1971. The play is part of the curriculum for GCSE and Standard Grade English coursework in the United Kingdom and is frequently performed in public schools.

(01:17:38) The famous Hand of Sutekh makes its debut in episode 2 of “Spearhead from Space” as can be seen on our Youtube channel here.

The Diddly Dum Podcast acknowledges the copyright of anyone we’ve pinched anything from.

Remember, Doctor Who Literature's primary social media presence is now on BlueSky.

Welcoming to the show this week Geoff Wessel, comic book writer (I may have misstated this in the intro) and radio DJ. Geoff's been an online friend for nearly 30 years but we'd never spoken face to face before this recording. It's a wild one!

Those curious about "The Uncle Floyd Show" can find his limited online presence here.

If you enjoyed this episode, please follow, subscribe, and rate us!

Find Doctor Who Literature at https://linktr.ee/DrWhoNovels.

Watch this episode and all previous episodes on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@drwhonovels.

Doctor Who – The Edge of Destruction" features cover art by Alister Pearson.

Doctor Who Literature is a member of the Direction Point Doctor Who podcast network.

Please e-mail the pod at DrWhoLiterature@gmail.com.

You can catch all past episodes at https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/doctorwholit.

This month we combine a couple of suggestions from listeners and examine Doctor Who adventures that would have made a good yarn to set a regeneration in, versus what we actually got at the end of a Doctor's era. Can you think of any stories that fit this category?

You can follow us on X @theDWshow and write to us about anything you like at: hello@theDWshow.net

This week, John Dorney joins us in northern Scotland to investigate the disappearance of the Ninth Legion — only to discover that there are things here even more terrible than the Roman army, things that can only be fought with trust and empathy and music. It’s The Eaters of Light.

Notes and links

Crash (2004) starts with a voiceover by Don Cheadle, laying out the terms of the metaphorical link between car crashes and human interactions generally. It’s not a very popular movie, not only because of its superficial approach to issues of race, but also because it won the 2005 Academy Award for Best Picture instead of Brokeback Mountain.

Richard mentions American YA fiction writer Scott Westerfield, particularly the Uglies series with its teenage protagonist. He also mentions William Golding’s 1954 novel Lord of the Flies, where a group of schoolchildren stranded without adults on a deserted island, quickly revert to savagery.

Brian Vernel was born in 1990, so he was 26 or 27 when he played Lucius in this episode, and 32 when he played far-right extremist Curly in the first season of Slow Horses in 2022.

Kar’s speech about the depredations of the Roman Army is taken from the Agricola by Tacitus, a short biography of his father-in-law, chronicling, among other things his campaigns in northern Britain. Tacitus depicts the Caledonian leader Calgacus making the speech just before the Battle of Mount Graupius, in which his forces were defeated by the Romans. You can read the speech in translation here.

This week’s monster is based on very common depictions found in Pictish carvings of an animal called the Pictish Beast. Some depictions are found among the carvings seen in this episode.

Tania Bell is a companion to the Eighth Doctor, first appearing in Big Finish’s Stranded in 2020 — the first transgender companion to appear in Doctor Who. She is played by Rebecca Root. John has written five stories for Tania: her second story Wild Animals, as well as The Long Way Round, What Just Happened?, Best Year Ever and Flatpack (in which she meets Christopher Ecclston’s Ninth Doctor).

John writes for Michelle Gomez as Missy in Divorced, Beheaded, Regenerated and in Too Many Masters.

Follow us

Nathan is on Bluesky at @nathanbottomley.com and Brendan is at @retrobrendo.bsky.social; Richard is on X as @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam.

You can follow Flight Through Entirety on Mastodon and Bluesky, as well as on X and Facebook. Our website is at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll unleash the scary puppy the next time you come over for a coffee.

And more

You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s a summary of where we’re up to right now.

500 Year Diary is our latest new Doctor Who podcast, going back through the history of the show and examining new themes and ideas. Its first season came out early this year, under the title New Beginnings. Check it out. It will be back for a second season early in 2025.

The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire has broadcast our hot takes on every new episode of Doctor Who since November last year, and it will be back again in 2025 for Season 2.

In the most recent episode of Maximum Power, Pete and Si interviewed two of the people involved in the creation of the new Blakes 7 Series 1 blu-ray box set — filmmakers Chris Chapman and Chris Thompson. We’ll be back to cover Series D next month.

And finally there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. This week, we marvelled at a clever and enjoyable episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in which a new Emissary turns up and Miles welcomes Keiko back to the station — Accession.

After three boxsets and several guest appearances in other ranges, we thought it was high time we did a review of Stephen Noonan's First Doctor Adventures.

To help us do that, we are joined once again by the lovely Sarah from Type 40.

Theme music by Joe Kraemer.

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Join Michele and James, live and in-person at Mammoth Cave, Kentucky! Yes, it’s another of our rare, rare, rare episodes where a UK and US host record in the same room! So join us for numerous references to Doctor Who stories that feature caves, a chat about the recent interview Steven Moffat gave the BBC where he teased the smallest of teases about Joy To the World, this year’s Christmas Special, Season 25 on blu-ray and many other tangents.

Fear not however, you can rejoin sane discussion with Drew and Brent as they talk about the recent Lost Story release from Big Finish, Deathworld.

As always, get in touch with us by sending the Campervan an email to feedback@thedoctorwhopodcast.com, a Tweet at @thedrwhopodcast or jump into our highly exclusive (ie open to everyone) Facebook Group!

Enjoy the show.

One the brand new Trap One Podcast Hannah (@MrsSimonTemplar) and Mark (@QuarkMcMalus) discuss fifteenth Doctor audio adventures On Ghost Beach and Sting of the Sasquatch.

You can order the stories here.

This week the new series re-watch returns with Doctor Who: Knock, Knock, as Bill and her friends try to avoid being eaten by wood!

 

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Something is afoot in the lonely Cornish village of Merrymaid Bay. Rumours of dead men working in the tin mines have sent a chill through the community, and it's up to the Doctor and Charley to get to the bottom of the mystery. Can the legends of the Bucca that haunts the mines be true? And just what awesome power do the Doctor's greatest enemies - the Daleks! - threaten to unleash upon the universe?