Flight Through Entirety: A Doctor Who Podcast

To celebrate 2017’s impending dumpster fire, all four members of the Flight Through Entirety crew take an ill-advised trip to the blowholes of Androzani Minor. Things don’t go well. For anyone.

As 2016 draws to a close and as major festivals approach for several of the world’s great religions, we’re taking refuge in the crude religious analogies that abound on the planet Sarn. And the Master and Peri are here! It’s Planet of Fire.

After the whimsy and quality of last week’s story, 1980s Doctor Who is back on form with a grim 90-minute slog, bristling with guns and clunky macho dialogue. And a bigger body count than the last three seasons combined! Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Resurrection of the Daleks.

Patron of the podcast, Christopher Hamilton Bidmead, returns for a victory lap in what might be the best story of Pete’s final season. Raid at the ready, chums, it’s time to defend the last of humanity against an onslaught of fibreglass woodlice, in Frontios.

We’re broadcasting live this week from Little Hodcombe, where there’s an ongoing battle between Eric Pringle and some long-time Doctor Who podcasters desperately trying to find anything at all to say about this story. It’s Roundheads versus Cavaliers, and somehow the Doctor finds himself caught in the middle. Welcome to The Awakening.

This week, Brendan, Nathan and Richard build a giant Seabase underwater. It’s going to be the best, most beautiful Seabase ever. And we’ll get the Silurians to pay for it!

This week, we’re taking a break from our relentless flight through the entirety of Doctor Who to go back and visit an old favourite. Fire up your VHS player and get ready to listen to all four of us slurring drunkenly throughout the incredible six-episode run of that 1964 Terry Nation classic The Keys of Marinus.

We’ve now been recording Flight Through Entirety for exactly twenty years, and to celebrate this milestone, all four of us are back for our second ever commentary podcast. So grab your iPhone, fire up your Blu-ray player and settle down to a relaxing pineapple daquiri. It’s The Five Doctors!

As is now well known, Season 20 trails off with a whimper, and so Brendan, Nathan and Todd take a week off to allow our discussion of The King’s Demons to be conducted by shapeshifting robot replicas. And they do a great job!

This week, we discuss the final story of Season 20’s Black Guardian Trilogy. Todd wants to know all the details, Nathan is busy admiring Captain Wrack’s décolletage, while Brendan waxes philosophical on the nature of Enlightenment.

Brendan, Nathan and Todd are all suffering from Lazar’s disease, or possibly withdrawing from hydromel, which might explain our somewhat listless approach to that critically acclaimed Doctor Who classic, Terminus.

Our 20th anniversary season of Flight Through Entirety continues with a discussion of Mawdryn Undead — yet another story including delightful elements from the show’s past, such as the Brigadier, the Black Guardian and a crappy word peril cliffhanger for Episode Three.

This week, the Mara are back, threatening the ancient BBC Television studio Manussa in Snakedance. Roll your eyes at Nathan’s usual jejune insults, marvel at Brendan’s theories about good Science Fiction, and become increasingly concerned at Todd’s vociferous complaints that no one gets horribly murdered in Doctor Who any more.

Doctor Who squelches back onto our screens with the first story of Season 20 — Arc of Infinity. It’s a rollicking tale of quad magnetism, pulse loops, transduction barriers and impulse lasers, tastefully decorated with shiny plastic sofas.

It’s the end of another season of Flight Through Entirety, we’ve run out of money and no one really gives a crap anymore. So join us as we listlessly discuss the worst story of the 1980s: it’s Time-Flight.

All you hippy losers who thought Doctor Who was whimsical family entertainment can leave now: Eric Saward is back, and he’s brought enough guns with him to make Charlton Heston feel insecure about his masculinity. Only Beryl Reid can save us! It’s Earthshock.

In this convention-busting episode of Flight Through Entirety, Brendan (Jamie Lee Curtis) really hates this week’s Doctor Who story, while Nathan (Lindsay Lohan) quite enjoys it. And Richard (Mark Harmon) splits the difference by being witty and charming as always. Welcome to Cranleigh Hall: it’s Black Orchid.

A lot going on this week: Brendan wanders from the manor house to the mill and then back to the TARDIS, oh, and then back to the manor house again; Nathan is moving test tubes from one box to another; and Richard is, oh, I don’t know, assembling a vibrating meccano set or something. Hold onto your hats: It’s The Visitation.

As usual, this week, Brendan, Nathan and Richard are condemned to an unending cycle of suffering and futility, relieved only temporarily by ruminations on the existence of Nerys Hughes. So, hold off on the fire and acid for just forty minutes or so: enough time to hear us discussing Kinda.

The world will be destroyed in four days, apparently, and to prepare for this, Brendan is wearing a stylish green velour suit, Richard has gathered his hair in a delightful side ponytail, and Nathan has just really let himself go. It’s Four to Doomsday.

We said goodbye to Tom last week, and so this week all four of us are here to discuss Pete’s first story, set on a delightfully bucolic planet in the Phylox series. Time to dress up like a cricketer and lock yourself in a small cupboard — it’s Castrovalva.

This week Bondfinger meets Flight Through Entirety, as we attempt our first ever Doctor Who-related commentary podcast. DVD remotes on standby: it’s the lump of coal in all of our 1981 Christmas stockings — the first and worst Doctor Who spinoff: K9 and Company: A Girl’s Best Friend. (Other Doctor Who spinoffs are also available.)

Tom’s gone, so it’s time for another retrospective episode, ably compered by Sir Todd Beilby. Who will we snog, marry and avoid this time?

This episode, we say farewell to the star of Doctor Who’s last seven years and a huge part of our childhoods: the Great Curator himself, Tom Baker. On the way, we discuss gravity, orphans, Auntie Vanessa’s outfit, agnosticism and the untimely destruction of the entire universe. It’s Logopolis.

This week, Brendan, Nathan and Todd perform the entire podcast in iambic pentameters and wearing stick-on BBC beards. The script is great, the sets are great, the actors are great, and the Master is here too. It’s The Keeper of Traken.