Transcript for 2.07 The Idiot’s Lantern (S02E07)

Lucia Kelly: Hello and welcome to the Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey Podcast!

Talia Franks: I’m Talia Franks media critic, fanfic enthusiast, and my mom dated a sailor once.

Lucia Kelly: And I’m Lucia Kelly, expert at applied analysis and the King of Belgium.

Talia Franks: And we’re here today to talk about The Idiots Lantern, the seventh episode of series two of Doctor Who.

Lucia Kelly: The Idiot’s Lantern aired on the 10th of November, 2006. It was written by Mark Gatiss and directed by Euros Lynn.

Talia Franks: Reminder, that time isn’t a straight line. It can twist into any shape, and as such, this is a fully spoiled podcast. We might bring things in from later in the show, the comics, the books, audio dramas, or even fan theories and articles.

Lucia Kelly: With that out of the way, those union flags are upside down. So let’s get in the TARDIS!

(Transition wobbles)

Talia Franks: Content warning for this episode for discussions of spousal and parental abuse, ableism and brief mention of sexual assault.

Lucia Kelly: As the coronation of Elizabeth II nears, the streets of London live in fear. Faceless people are stolen from their homes in the night, and something evil is lurking in the television.

Talia Franks: This is the one where Rose encourages a teenager to reconcile with his emotionally abusive father, even though he spent the whole goddamn episode focusing on his own growth as a person outside of that toxic relationship.

Lucia Kelly: Oh my God! I hate this episode. (Lucia laughs)

Talia Franks: I hate this episode so fucking much.

Talia Franks: It suuuuuuuuucks!

Lucia Kelly: Well – Here’s the thing. It’s a romp for like, a good 40 minutes. I’m enjoying myself for a good 40 minutes, and then the last five minutes is like, fuck all that! We’re just going to undo everything we just did. We’re going to undo everything we talked about and set up in terms of healthy boundary setting and addressing toxic masculinity in the fifties and just, “It’s a happy holiday!” (Lucia claps enthusiastically in her distress) No it’s fucking not!! (Lucia laughs) I’m so mad!

Talia Franks: You’re so mad that your audio cut out and I’m not sure that the listeners are going to be able to hear you.

Lucia Kelly: And it makes me angry more because it is fun, up until that point, and then it pushes all my buttons and it feels like a betrayal. Like we could have had a good time, we could have, and we did not.

Talia Franks: I’m literally sipping tea right now.

Talia Franks: I mean like, Rose’s outfit, the Doctor’s hair, like – it was all ready for us.

Lucia Kelly: We were so ready. We were so ready to have a good fun time in the fifties.

Talia Franks: Also, I got to say, I really liked the moment where the Doctor turns it on Detective Inspector Bishop, and is just like, “Start from the beginning. Tell me everything you know,”

Lucia Kelly: I love that moment. It’s so good.

Talia Franks: It’s just so great. And the lighting and everything about it is just fantastic.

(Transition wobbles)

Talia Franks: Okay. So I will say that up until Rose did The Terrible Thing I was really loving Rose. I was thinking, “Oh man, Rose is great. Rose is doing so many great things here.”

Talia Franks: And then – No.

Lucia Kelly: No.

Talia Franks: Also I will say, going by yourself to see Magpie, Rose?

Lucia Kelly: I know, right?

Talia Franks: Really? Really? That was not smart.

Lucia Kelly: It’s damselling Rose again. She makes a dumb decision just so she can be victimized and then the Doctor can be like, “Oh, I’m angry!” I’m angry! Even though this – (Lucia sighs)

Talia Franks: “There’s nothing on this earth that can stop me now,” like, “You made this personal!”

Lucia Kelly: (Lucia laughs) Nevermind that he was fully invested before.

Talia Franks: The Doctor was already fully invested.

Lucia Kelly: He was already fully invested. He was already fully motivated. There’s nothing noble – There’s nothing attractive – This is not a good trait to have. It’s weird that it’s presented as such.

Talia Franks: Yeah. And it’s also just like, Rose is too interesting of a character to have her shuttled off to the side like this.

Talia Franks: Like I liked her investigating, going after Magpie, figuring out what’s going on. But it didn’t really matter? (Lucia hmmms in agreement) Because all it did was get her face sucked out.

Lucia Kelly: Right? Like, can you imagine if Rose never goes to Magpies, she doesn’t get her face sucked off, so we have all this extra time.

Lucia Kelly: And then we – instead of having it – that time devoted to that, we can have a little fun Tommy Rose adventure, as they try to stop people from walking into the video room. Like that could have been really fun. (Talia groans in frustration)

Talia Franks: Yeah. And Rose gets like also like the time jump confused me because it was nighttime. And then all of a sudden it was the morning. (Lucia hmmms) So there was definitely time for like Rose and Doctor to have met up again and Rose to have told him about Magpies and the Doctor to have gone and investigated Magpie himself.

Talia Franks: And that all could have been avoided if the Doctor had known to go after Magpie sooner. (Talia sighs)

Talia Franks: But this just goes back to the fact that Rose is, a teenager. I dunno, maybe at this point she’s 20, 21, I was actually just talking to cause I was ranting about how much I hate maybe it’s lantern and Nicole who is on our last episode was like, was saying that because Rose is like 19 20, 21.

Talia Franks: It’s just expected that she would make dumb ass decisions, which I wholeheartedly agree with.

(Transition wobbles)

Lucia Kelly: All right. I want to talk about this because if I don’t talk about this, then I’ll just be wanting to talk about this whole time. Let’s just talk about Eddie Connolly, and get that out of the way, because it makes me so angry. It also feels really bizarre. Because the entire episode sets up, like we’re constantly calling Connolly out we’re supporting Rita and Tommy. We are making it very clear the entire episode. No, Mr. Connolly’s in the wrong. (Talia mhmms) He is the bad guy, (Talia mhmms again) right? There is no redeeming moment ever in this entire episode for Mr. Connolly he is the bad guy.

Talia Franks: Mhmm

Lucia Kelly: And then for some bizarre, and also like very clearly, like he has a bad relationship with Rita and Tommy separately, he has bad relationships with both of them, (Talia mhmms) but particularly with Tommy, the entire time, he is pushing him down, trying to squash him into a very particular box that he clearly doesn’t fit in.

Lucia Kelly: Like he’s trying to make Tommy into a copy of himself or to be more traditionally 1950s masculine when he clearly isn’t and doesn’t want to be, and has all has like dreams of going to college has good relationships with his mother and Nan. And then clearly has some kind of ambition to do something with his life.

Talia Franks: Mhmm.

Lucia Kelly: And then at the end, Rose, who I can onl— (Lucia groans) the only way I can make this make sense in my head. Is that Rose, as we’ve seen has quite complicated, has a quite complicated relationship with the idea of fatherhood and like

Talia Franks: Mhmm

Lucia Kelly: child and father and what that means.

Talia Franks: Mhmm

Lucia Kelly: But not everyone is Pete Tyler. Okay. (Lucia laughs and Talia says mhmm again) Rose lucked out, Rose lucked out.

Lucia Kelly: Rose had a great dad. Tommy’s relationship with his dad is not the same. And just because (Crosstalk: Talia says “Absolutely”) Ugh! And esp— I hate that ending in particular because very clearly Tommy, Tommy is in this very vulnerable space. (Talia mhmms) Where he’s just very recently, like literally an hour ago, maybe, fully like, realized and recognized what his relationship with his dad means.

Lucia Kelly: And has made the decision to separate from him and to get out of his space

Talia Franks: Mhmm

Lucia Kelly: And to like, and to like he’s recognized that was bad for him. (Talia mhmms) That there was an abusive relationship very clearly both emotionally and physical, because there’s that awful moment in the living room where Eddie Connolly is completely comfortable, openly admitting to beating Tommy.

Talia Franks: Mhmmm. And it’s just it’s so upsetting because Rose is encouraging him to go back into that incredibly toxic relationship

Lucia Kelly: To the point where, to the point where Tommy is literally carrying Eddie’s baggage!

Talia Franks: It’s ridiculous.

Lucia Kelly: No Tommy, get out of there!

Talia Franks: Like it’s so upsetting

Lucia Kelly: You can’t sandwich Rita throwing Eddie out of the house and having that be a triumphant moment and a good moment.

Lucia Kelly: And a very clearly like “Good for her! Yes!” Moment. And then sandwich that literally right next to Tommy, deciding to stay with him and having that also be a triumphant moment.

Lucia Kelly: Like it doesn’t make sense.

Talia Franks: It doesn’t make sense at all. It feels so awkward and uncomfortable and I hate it.

Lucia Kelly: Fuck the Doctor and Rose, smiling off into the distance, drinking orange pop, like fuck you. No. Get him out of there.

Talia Franks: No, I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.

Lucia Kelly: Let Tommy and Rita be companions on the TARDIS for a little bit. That would have been adorable.

Talia Franks: That would have been adorable.

Talia Franks: All right. That’s all I had to say about the episode. I guess we’re done. (Lucia laughs)

Lucia Kelly: Oh, I hate that. That almost doesn’t feel like a joke.

Lucia Kelly: Okay, what, (Talia laughs) What else can we talk? What else can we? Okay, so (Talia continues laughing)

Lucia Kelly: The wire. Pretty weak villain. I’m going to say,

Talia Franks: Oh my goodness, such a weak villain.

Talia Franks: Cause Eddie Connolly was the real villain the whole time.

Lucia Kelly: Right? Like we, we put all this energy into Eddie Connolly. So that, it’s.

Lucia Kelly: It’s such a weirdly constructed episode. It’s so strange.

(Transition wobbles)

Talia Franks: Looking at all of the episodes that he’s written together? (Lucia hmms) The thing that is like clicking in my brain, especially noting that he also wrote Victory of the Daleks and Empress of Mars, is reminding me that this episode has a very… interesting view of what it means to be British. And an interesting view of empire. (Talia lets out a short laugh) I’m particularly thinking of the line. This is Churchill’s England, not Stalin’s Russia.

Lucia Kelly: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Talia Franks: I know I’m an American. I’m not like, I think my closest British ancestor was my great grandfather emigrated from Britain in 1920-something.

Talia Franks: But yeah, (Talia groans)

Lucia Kelly: Also, also the line “we may be losing the empire, but we can still stand proud” I’m like, that’s an interesting, that’s an interesting take Mr. Magpie. That’s interesting thing to say right there.

Talia Franks: I did notice two Black people, right at the end of the episode, at that big party, they didn’t say anything, but they were there.

Lucia Kelly: Wow! What a mark for progress. (Lucia and Talia laugh)

 (Transition wobbles)

Lucia Kelly: Production wise. Everything’s very pretty. Everything looks right. Everything looks good.

Talia Franks: Yeah. I was saying, I love like the lighting in that whole conversation. I love David Tennant’s hair, all slicked back. I love Rose’s outfit. The thing I was going to say when all the people got their faces back. I just got to wonder, all these people, the last thing they remember is getting sucked into a TV and then they wake up and they’re all trapped in a cage together. (Talia laughs)

Lucia Kelly: Yeah.

Talia Franks: And I just gotta wonder.

Lucia Kelly: So how does that work? Like I’m so confused.

Talia Franks: I’m very confused.

Lucia Kelly: Your face gets sucked off.

Talia Franks: The science does not make sense,

Lucia Kelly: It doesn’t make sense at all.

Talia Franks: Especially because if you think about, and I know that comparing things vastly across seasons, vastly across show runners, doesn’t make sense, but also there’s another, like way in the future. Clara’s first episode, with Eleven, people get sucked into the internet and their bodies collapse, and their souls basically get sucked into the internet. And they get uploaded. And once they’ve been in the cloud for too long, their bodies die. And at the end of the episode, everyone gets released from the cloud and the people who still have bodies to go back to get, go back to their bodies.

Talia Franks: But everyone else just vamooses, (Lucia wheezes laughter) and properly dies.

Lucia Kelly: Yeah. So, but the, here’s what I’m struggling with. All the language surrounding the Wire, in terms of how it feeds. Like it feeds, right? It’s all of the it’s termed in eating in hunger, in consumption, which could’ve been a fun little play on. Like, let’s talk about the idea of television consumption. We don’t go there. That could have been a fun place.

Lucia Kelly: if you’re talking about consumption, they eat the face and get smashed up and distributed into energy. Presumably? So how—

Talia Franks: No the way that the doctor, the way that the doctor explains it is that basically the Wire eats the electronic brain waves and it’s like the face has gone, but really what the Wire is doing is wiping people’s brains and like stealing all of their electromagnetic energy from their brains. but that doesn’t make sense to me because if the wire’s stealing their brain energy, what does that have to do with their face?

Talia Franks: Like why are their eyes and nose and mouth disappear?

Lucia Kelly: Why does their face disappear? And also this is what really concerns me. (Lucia laughs) This is what makes me, this is what just like the, like it’s eaten, it’s consumed. It’s used. So first of all, how does it like just raw data, like baseline, how does it get back?

Talia Franks: Mhmm

Lucia Kelly: And then two, how does it get back to the right person?

Talia Franks: Mhmm

Lucia Kelly: It’s gone! It’s been eaten!

Talia Franks: Also, how were, how were all the faces showing on all those random TVs?

Talia Franks: None of it makes sense. It’s all bad.

Lucia Kelly: None of it makes any kind of sense. It’s just confusion top to bottom.

Lucia Kelly: And like what bothers me is that it’s almost something

Talia Franks: It’s almost good, but it just, it doesn’t quite stick the landing.

Lucia Kelly: It’s almost something

Ad Break

Lucia Kelly: Oh, alright.

Lucia Kelly: Because we disliked this episode so much, I’ve got an idea for something we could do.

Talia Franks: OK. What’s your idea. I want to hear it.

Lucia Kelly: If we could rewrite The Idiot’s Lantern to make sense, what would we do?

Talia Franks: Strike it from the season lineup. (Lucia laughs)

Talia Franks: No. Have everyone die at the end?

Lucia Kelly: Honestly. Yeah.

Talia Franks: Yeah. I would have Rose not get eaten in the first place. She wouldn’t go to Magpie’s by herself. She would go and track down the Doctor, tell her about Magpie. The Doctor would go to Magpie, confront him before the Wire even gets to the transmitter. And then the Doctor would do something with his Sonic screwdriver to get, cause the Sonic Screwdriver’s a magic wand, to get the Wire to submit and basically take them down that way.

Talia Franks: And then everyone would die because that’s what would make sense.

Lucia Kelly: Or alternatively, you reverse you, you somehow like, cause the other way, cause there is a way that the Wire can be linked to eating and consumption and everyone would be full formed. And that is if we take the Doctor’s line about “it gorges itself, like an overfed pig”, which I’m not crazy about that metaphor, but if we extend that to like Kronos eating his children whole (Talia laughs) and then Zeus, like coming out fully formed and angry…

Talia Franks: So basically you just make the Wire throw up?

Lucia Kelly: Like if it was framed in that way, I can, except that everyone is whole because they were consumed whole, like if we actually made that part of the text, but the way that it is and the way that it’s visualized, it’s very much like in pieces (Talia mhmms) and therefore everyone’s dispersed.

Talia Franks: And also the way that I would do it would be more like how it’s done in the future episode. Where people get eaten by the internet where instead of their faces disappearing and them still being able to walk around, they would just collapse and not be able to do anything

Lucia Kelly: Yeah.

Talia Franks: As the faces disappearing and them being able to walk around don’t make any sense.

Lucia Kelly: I also hated the, um, the creepy, like, and when I say creepy, I mean, not in terms of like, it is filmed to be creepy the way the hands move and crack like that is very deliberately just in there to create a sense of fear and to create a sense of anxiety and to like make us feel nervous around

Talia Franks: Threatened to buy them.

Lucia Kelly: Yeah. To make us feel threatened.

Talia Franks: But they’re not threatening. They’re not able to do anything.

Lucia Kelly: Exactly. It’s it’s and it, it smells of, villainizing the other, and particularly people who are either neurodivergent or in like the way that the, the faceless people are coded as like, the way that this whole episode just stinks of eugenics In a way that is… ugh.

Lucia Kelly: But unexamined and it’s so,

Talia Franks: It’s so uncomfortable.

Lucia Kelly: There are so many things in this episode that are just there and all of them under-baked and unexamined. And then like, choose one, and do it properly.

Talia Franks: The only thing that I do really, like in the episode that I will say I appreciated is the speech that Tommy gives his father about how he fought in the war against fascism and he fought the war so that “little twerps, like him” could do what they wanted, because that feels so true to me. And it feels like in, it makes me think of this whole like intergenerational war that people talk about how like between boomers and millennials and gen Z and gen X, that everyone forgets about silent generation.

Talia Franks: The point is like some older generations, like to talk about how like millennials and gen Z are like how we’re lazy or don’t work as hard or are overly reliant or whatever.

Talia Franks: That’s a critique that I’ve seen, not everyone who’s an older generation says that, but a lot of people do. And people will sometimes say stuff like, oh, if your ancestors could see how, like you’re not working as hard or whatever, then they wouldn’t want any, but like, no, like people in like older generations, like they worked that hard so that we wouldn’t have to work this hard.

Talia Franks: Like people worked harder in other generations to make lives easier for their children and their children’s children. I don’t understand this impulse that life should be suffering and that we should just accept the bad things that we’re given. And it’s like, I don’t know. And maybe also. It also makes me think of how we were talking about about how it does make me think about Rose more, and about how she wants to go off with the Doctor and see the universe, like rather than, stay at home and get like a job in a shop. And honestly, I get it, like I wouldn’t want to go off and travel the universe with the Doctor because that’s fucking dangerous.

Talia Franks: But like I do get the idea of wanting to see more and do more than just work a miserable job that makes like minimum or below minimum wage that isn’t high enough. And that isn’t as high as it should be.

Lucia Kelly: Yeah, no, this is a complicated conversation that gets into sort of intergenerational conflict and how a lot of it’s misplaced and how exactly

Talia Franks: So much of it’s misplaced.

Lucia Kelly: And like the,

Talia Franks: ‘Cause there’s so many people who don’t fundamentally disagree, but they’re so busy, shouting at each other. They don’t realize that they’re shouting about the same thing.

Lucia Kelly: Yeah. And like the interlocking restrictions that are placed on us and how like living in a post-capitalist world and all those kinds of compensation that we don’t really have time or resources to get into. (Lucia laughs) But yeah, no, absolutely, it, and also, as you were saying, this idea of “I was miserable, so now you have to be miserable.”

Lucia Kelly: Like it comes from a very specific place of pain. (Talia mhmms)

Lucia Kelly: Like Eddie Connolly is a pretty… like the way that Eddie Connolly is written is pretty over the top and pretty

Talia Franks: Yep

Lucia Kelly: uh, it’s very deliberately a caricature of the idea of the abusive husband and father, and putting all of those abusive red flags up to 11 so that you can see them and that we can critique them.

Lucia Kelly: And because of that, he’s not given a lot of nuance. We’re just meant to hate him, which is why the ending makes no fucking sense.

Talia Franks: It really doesn’t.

Lucia Kelly: But that mindset, the mindset that Eddie Connolly is working from is very much what happens when people, usually people with privilege who are also in positions of power where people do not feel in the position to contradict or question their views, like how that sort,

Lucia Kelly: Like what I wouldn’t give for,

Lucia Kelly: Oh my gosh, this episode has so much potential to talk about, like the idea of propaganda and the idea of the idea of empire and what that means, and like what this coronation symbolizes for all of these different people.

Lucia Kelly: And what it means that all of these people have just lived through two world wars, right? And some of them haven’t lived through them and some of them were born in the middle of them. (Talia mhmms) Some of them, some people have died. Some people, like Tommy, were born, presumably about 16 years ago, which would have been mid-war, right? (Talia mhmms) Like

Lucia Kelly: What, there are so many elements that are unexamined here. And if we could just like,

Lucia Kelly: Because the point I’m trying to make is that Eddie Connolly is actually coming from a place that makes sense for him. That makes sense for him, the way he’s acting makes sense for him. But the only reason it makes sense for him, it was because no one has been able to have a conversation and get through to him to give him an alternative way of thinking.

Talia Franks: Mhmm.

Lucia Kelly: And that’s what’s so much of this conflict is about, is that when people are in relationships that are unequal, where they can’t talk to each other properly or communicate properly abuses of power happen.

Lucia Kelly: Like if you were going to have, if you were going to have such a prominent storyline that is explicitly about abuse, do it properly.

Lucia Kelly:

Lucia Kelly: Let’s just close this up.

Talia Franks: This is going to be a short episode, but it deserves it. Cause it sucks.

Lucia Kelly: Mhmmm. Alright. Do you know what it’s giving me? It’s giving me? This episode is a energy sibling to the Buffy episode Go Fish. (Talia snorts)

Talia Franks: I don’t remember. Buffy episode titles.

Lucia Kelly: It’s the one with the, um, it’s the one with the swim team, that turn into fish men, and

Talia Franks: Oh yes I remember that one

Lucia Kelly: there’s this whole sub and there’s this whole subplot about how Buffy legitimately, like on-screen absolutely get sexually abused and then it’s not dealt with properly at all. Or talked about properly at all. And it’s just like, why did you introduce this thing if you’re not going to talk about it? (Lucia laughs)

Talia Franks: Oh my goodness. Wait, there was a thing I wanted to talk about before I forget. one thing, I was gonna say is, did he take Tommy in the TARDIS and there was no reaction shot? We didn’t get to see Tommy’s reaction to the TARDIS?

Lucia Kelly: Tommy was outside the TARDIS.

Talia Franks: But how did they get to Alexandra palace that fast when it was so far away if they didn’t take the TARDIS?

Lucia Kelly: Oh my God! (Talia laughs and Lucia groans in frustration) I’m so angry!

Lucia Kelly: This is the point. This is the point in the podcast where I’m going to ask the listeners. Please. If it’s not already written, write it for us, that fanfic. Fix The Idiot’s Lantern. (Lucia laughs)

Talia Franks: I would write it except I don’t want to spend this much time on The Idiot’s Lantern.

Lucia Kelly: Give me the Tommy Adventures. Give me Tommy and Rita in, make it, although I love the bit where she’s like “this was never your house. It’s in my mother’s name.” Love that. But also how like it’s a good moment. I don’t understand how that would happen, logistically, but we’re gonna keep moving forward.

Lucia Kelly: Yeah.

Lucia Kelly: Have Rita and Tommy leave Eddie alone in the house. Fuck him. And then Rita and Tommy go off and have adventures in the TARDIS.

Talia Franks: But what about Tommy’s Nan? They can’t just—

Lucia Kelly: And Tommy’s Nan. That’s true. And tell me the man. Can you imagine.

Lucia Kelly: A Nan in the TARDIS that would be great.

Talia Franks: I mean,

Lucia Kelly: Nan gives Rose a good talking to.

Talia Franks: Yeah

Lucia Kelly: Tommy’s never going to see his mum or his Nan again.

Lucia Kelly: Think about that. He’s never going to say his mum or his Nan again.

Talia Franks: I mean, not never, maybe he might, he’ll probably go back for his stuff.

Lucia Kelly: It’s so stupid. I hate it.

Talia Franks: That Eddie literally forces Rita to smile.

Talia Franks: I was triggered not going to lie. I was pissed. I was so upset. I was, I had to pause the episode to scream

Lucia Kelly: and the way that I’m like, they’re having a party, everyone in that house, is this just an open secret? The way that their family is, because the way, the whole dynamic.

Talia Franks: Yeah, I was going to say my least favorite moment is how Eddie was like taunting Rita and Tommy and aunt Betty.

Talia Franks: I think it was, the name was like egging him on

Lucia Kelly: Right? Shut up, aunt Betty. What? Ugh!

Talia Franks: Like, and also like her whole like outfit and aesthetic was really giving me “that racist aunt that you never want to talk about.”

Lucia Kelly: I have a feeling Aunt Betty is Eddie’s sister. Like we’ve got Nan, we’ve got Nan and Rita, and we’ve got Betty and Eddie.

Talia Franks: I hate it.

Lucia Kelly: Ugh.

Talia Franks: All right. What’s your least favorite moment?

Lucia Kelly: My least favorite moment is when Rose messes with the dynamic, don’t mess with that. That’s not your place. Don’t do it.

Talia Franks: Yeah.

Lucia Kelly: Tommy is making a very healthy decision.

Talia Franks: Yeah, actually, no, that is my least favorite moment. Nevermind. I, it was so terrible, I’d for one brief glorious moment, blocked it out of my brain.

Lucia Kelly: And then that the Doctor endorses it fuck all of that. Ugh!

Talia Franks: Doctor, you know, better.

Lucia Kelly: You know, better Rose doesn’t. She’s 19, and she’s got father issues. You know, better.

Talia Franks: Yeah.

Lucia Kelly: Ugh!

Talia Franks: But the Doctor gives Rose whatever she wants.

(Transition wobbles)

Lucia Kelly: My favorite moment is when Ten and Rose give Connolly what for in the living room. It’s great.

Talia Franks: Yep. Yep. That’s my favorite moment

Lucia Kelly: It’s a good time.

Talia Franks: That’s also my favorite moment, like when Rose is like “Union Jack, that’s a Union Flag. Shame on you!”

Lucia Kelly: Who is the Hero and who is the Adam?

Talia Franks: Connelly’s the Adam Eddie Connelly,

Lucia Kelly: Yeah.

Talia Franks: Since there’s three of them with the last name Connolly, Eddie Connolly is the Adam

Lucia Kelly: Eddie Connolly is the Adam.

Lucia Kelly: I want to give Tommy the Hero.

Talia Franks: I was going to say, I think, I think the hero is Tommy. Not just because of his like self-growth and actualization that gets undone by Rose. But also because he’s literally the hero because the Doctor shit out of luck on the top of the tower (Lucia snorts) and then Tommy innovates and figures out that the battery was out and figures out how to fix the machine that this time traveler from like, I don’t know how he did that.

Talia Franks: I don’t know how he figured that out boy from the 1950s, but he somehow intuited what the Doctor had done and figured out how to fix it when it broke.

Lucia Kelly: Sorry, that just made me mad all over again, because what Rose specifically says, what Rose specifically says is, saved the world. Hang on, let me find it.

Lucia Kelly: “Clever enough to save the world. So don’t stop there.” Yeah,

Lucia Kelly: It is not the victim’s responsibility to quote unquote, save or fix the abuser. Fuck that shit. Fuck that shit.

Talia Franks: Fuck it. Fuck it all.

Lucia Kelly: Also he’s brave enough and clever enough to save the world. So he should be off doing his own thing and celebrating that and being his own person.

Lucia Kelly: I hate it. I hate it so much.

Talia Franks: I hate it so much. I hate it so much.

(Transition wobbles)

Lucia Kelly: We’re going to, we’re going to fight to be objective here. (Lucia laughs)

Talia Franks: Okay. Objectively, I will say the production was a five.

Lucia Kelly: Objectively the production was a five. It was very pretty. Everything was very 1950s, probably because the BBC closet that has a lot of 1950s stuff in it.

Talia Franks: Probably yeah.

Lucia Kelly: So it’s a very easy period for them to do.

Lucia Kelly: But everything looked gorgeous.

Talia Franks: Everything looked really gorgeous, yeah.

Lucia Kelly: Writing.

Talia Franks: If we give it higher than a two, I’m going to riot.

Lucia Kelly: Yeah, no, I’m literally like a one, maybe?

Talia Franks: Honestly, I wanted to give it a zero from jump, but you said that was too mean before we started recording.

Lucia Kelly: No. What I said was that like we’ve got to have a conversation.

Lucia Kelly: We’ve got to actually talk about it because that’s coming from a point of emotion. So we’re trying to be objective,

Talia Franks: let’s give it a one because it wasn’t all terrible.

Lucia Kelly: It wasn’t all terrible, like here’s like, cause it’s a good time up until the point where it’s not, and then it’s a terrible time.

Talia Franks: So writing is of one acting I would say is a five acting is really good.

Lucia Kelly: Mhmm. Science is a zero. None of it makes sense

Talia Franks: Science is a zero. It was all terrible. Rewatchability is a zero. I hate this episode.

Talia Franks: I would not have rewatched this episode if it wasn’t that you’re forcing me to watch all of them.

Talia Franks: I hate it.

Lucia Kelly: I want to give it a one. Only because as I keep saying, it’s a good time until it isn’t. (Talia chortles) So there have been times where I’ve rewatched, like I’ve been watching through the whole season, whatever, and I’ve watched this episode and I always forget how it ends because I scrub it from my memory. And it’s a good time up until that point.

Lucia Kelly: So it is rewatchable, but then it’s retroactively not rewatchable.

Talia Franks: Yeah. That’s because you have a personal problem where you can’t remember how terrible it is.

Lucia Kelly: All right.

Talia Franks: All right.

Lucia Kelly: All together,

Talia Franks: So 12 times four is 48, which is definitely an F.

Lucia Kelly: Wait what? 12 times, where did you get? 12 times four? Five plus one plus five plus zero, plus one,

Talia Franks: is 12

Lucia Kelly: Divide, divided by 25, which is 48.

Talia Franks: Yeah, it’s 48.

Lucia Kelly: Cool.

Talia Franks: That’s what I said. It’s 48, which is definitely an F!

Lucia Kelly: Yes, it is.

Talia Franks: That’s what I said. Isn’t that what I said?

Lucia Kelly: It is now that I think back on it, but the way that you phrased it, as opposed to how I think about math in my brain was very different, (Talia and Lucia laugh) but yes, it gets a 48%, which is like negative F. Very bad.

Talia and Lucia together: It’s a very bad episode.

Lucia Kelly: Wow. It did almost as badly as Christmas Invasion.

Talia Franks: It did worse than Christmas Invasion.

Lucia Kelly: No, it did better.

Talia Franks: Oh, it did better?

Lucia Kelly: Christmas Invasion got 42.

Talia Franks: Oh yeah, it did. Christmas Invasion did really bad.

Lucia Kelly: (Lucia starts clapping) Next is Impossible Planet and Satans Pit though and they are good ones!

Talia Franks: They are good ones.

Lucia Kelly: I remember them being good. I hope that’s not. I had remembered this one being good too! (Lucia laughs)

Talia Franks: I watched them. I watched some fairly recently and they’re pretty good. Okay. I will say, I know that you say there’s good things about season two, but there’s no episode in season one that did quite as badly as these two episodes from season two, like there were episodes in season one that didn’t do great. There was even an episode in season one that got an F, but none of them did as terribly as Christmas Invasion and Idiot’s Lantern.

Lucia Kelly: I’m going to scrub this episode from my mind?

(Transition wobbles)

Talia Franks: We’re approaching our one year anniversary, make sure you fill out our questionnaire at wibblywobblytimeywimey.net/survey and ask us questions for our Q & A and give us feedback on how we’re doing. Thanks!

Lucia Kelly: Thank you for listening to The Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey Podcast.

Talia Franks: We hope you enjoyed this adventure with us through space and time.

Lucia Kelly: You can find us elsewhere on the internet on Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram @WibblyPod. Follow us for more Wibbly Wobbly content.

Talia Franks: You can find out more information about us and our content on wibblywobblytimeywimey.net, and full transcripts for episodes at wibblywobblytimeywimey.net/transcripts.

Lucia Kelly: If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can also send us an email at wibblywobblytimeywimeypod@gmail.com.

Talia Franks: Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and other platforms as it helps other people find us and our content.

Lucia Kelly: If you’d like to support us, you can send us a donation at paypal.me/wibblypod

Talia Franks: Special thanks to our editor, Dee who has been a vital member of the Wibbly Wobbly Team.

Lucia Kelly: That’s all for now. Catch you in the time vortex!