Flight Through Entirety: A Doctor Who Podcast

This week, we’re manic, reactive and endogenous, as we contemplate fondant, marshmallow, and the practical problem with leaving someone alive. Make sure you’ve paid your poll tax — it’s time for an outing with The Happiness Patrol.

Flight Through Entirety roars back into the feed with one of its best episodes ever, in which we go back to the very beginning of the history of the show and subtly reference tons of things we’ve done before. Except for Shirley Bassey as Davros. We’ve never done that, I think. It’s Remembrance of the Daleks, of course.

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

After acquiring a mysterious treasure map from a German Expressionist filmmaker, Richard goes off to discover a fabulous treasure hidden deep in the bowels of a space mall, while Brendan and Nathan stay behind pouring milkshakes on each other. It’s Dragonfire.

It’s 1950s night at Flight Through Entirety, which means putting on bobby socks, combing Brylcreem through our remaining hair (if any), and leaving our copies of The Doctor Who Monster Book at home. It’s Delta and the Bannermen.

This week, Richard’s admiring the architecture, Brendan wants to say how-you-do, and Nathan has had a disappointingly small meal and is still feeling a little peckish. We’re all trapped in an excitingly hopeful modernist dystopia, so what else could it be but Paradise Towers?

Richard makes a triumphant return to the podcast just in time for the start of the Sylvester McCoy era. And the Rani’s back too, cosplaying as Brendan for some reason. It’s Time and the Rani.

Another commentary podcast: this week, it’s Jon Pertwee in Death to the Daleks! When their holiday to Florana is unexpectedly cancelled, Brendan, Nathan, Todd and Richard all find themselves stranded in a freezing alien quarry wearing nothing but skimpy bikinis and water wings. And none of their iPhones are working, for some reason.

We’ve reached the end of Doctor Who’s longest era: an era in which every single story was a 14-episode epic about cannibalism and Gallifreyan jurisprudence. But, despite Eric Saward, there are still nice things to say.

This week, we look at a medium where Colin’s reputation as the Doctor is second to none. To that end, Nathan is only pretending to be evil, Brendan has two peglegs, Todd is having a hard time assembling some shelving, and Richard is just a shadow of his former self. It’s Colin Baker, in the Big Finish audio adventures!

Transported to a nightmarish world of the Valeyard’s creation, the Doctor finds himself unable to escape, because Eric Saward has stormed off, taking his script for Episode 14 with him.

And now it’s time for the Trial storyline to implode completely. Nathan turns out to be a distillation of all that is evil in Todd, and Brendan has just stormed out with the only copy of this episode’s script. It’s the last two episodes of The Trial of a Time Lord — The Ultimate Foe.

After the stressful events of last week, we’ve decided to treat ourselves to a luxury cruise. Brendan’s working out in a pink tracksuit, Todd’s playing Galaxian and terrorising the waitress, and Nathan’s hanging around the communications room with an axe. And, in order to protect a secret hidden on the space liner, one of us will become a murderer. And there are Vervoids, of course.

It’s been a few years now, so it’s time to cynically murder another one of the Doctor’s companions. Which is why we spend a lot of time talking about what’s great about this story. It’s episodes 5 to 8 of The Trial of a Time Lord — Mindwarp.

This week, Brendan, Nathan and Todd go for a lovely walk in a rain-drenched forest, only to find themselves dragged halfway across the galaxy by the Time Lords and placed on trial to answer for their crimes. It’s Parts 1 to 4 of the longest Doctor Who story ever — The Trial of a Time Lord: The Mysterious Planet.

The walls between realities were fairly porous back in 1986, which is why we find ourselves this week in a terrifying parallel universe where the Hiatus never happened, and the original plans for Season 23 actually came to fruition. Beware.

In an eventful podcast recording, interrupted by bomb explosion, affected by earthquakes, and ruined by interference in the kitchen, all four of us talk all over the recently-discovered Troughton classic, The Enemy of the World.

It’s the end of the season, so we decide to head over to Necros for a delicious meal of synthetic protein, which is at least more palatable than the rather pungent protein for sale on Delta Magna. Everyone on this planet seems to be getting on so well, and the direction is lovely, so this can only be Revelation of the Daleks.

Our vast Flight Through Entirety budget for this season has now run out completely, so this week we’re just hanging out in some dingy corridors listlessly rebelling against things for no reason. It’s here, it’s lame — it’s Timelash.

This week, most of us are delighted to be served a delicious meal of lobsters, clams, and squid, brains in white sauce, two whole suckling pigs, a ham with figs, eight steaks, and Robert Holmes at his most cynical. Welcome back, Pat, for The Two Doctors.

None of us have slept for weeks, and our exposure to Twitter has taught us that technological progress must be resisted at all costs. So join in with us as we smash the machines and discuss The Mark of the Rani.

Trapped in a futuristic dystopia run by crazed B-grade reality television stars, Brendan, Nathan and Todd attempt to take their mind off things by watching the remarkably vengeance-free Vengeance of Varos.

This week, Brendan, Nathan and Todd are back to review the Cybermen’s 1985 compilation album Attack of the Cybermen, in which the band revisit all their classic hits from the 1960s, including Another Planet (1966), Clever Clever Clever (1967), You Belong to Us (1967), Initiate Plan Three (1968) and perennial fan favourite It Has Been Agreed (1968). Not all of us appreciate the nostalgia.

This week’s episode is mostly a series of increasingly angry rants. But The Twin Dilemma may just be the worst story in fifty years of Doctor Who.

Another era reaches its end, and somewhere, someone’s favourite television show is cancelled again. Perhaps Peter Davison’s years on the programme weren’t its heyday, but all four of us have found a new appreciation of his portrayal of the Doctor. Thanks, Peter. Time to say goodbye.