Talia Franks: Hello and welcome to the Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey Podcast!

Lucia Kelly: I’m Lucia Kelly, expert at applied analysis, and your wish is my command, but be careful what you wish for.

Talia Franks: And I’m Talia Franks media critic, fanfic enthusiast, and I shall rise from the pit to make war against God!

Lucia Kelly: (Lucia laughs) And we’re here today for a Wibbly Wobbly minisode!

Talia Franks: Today we’ll be talking about our Top 10 episodes that we’ve covered so far, because we can!

Lucia Kelly: (Lucia laughs) Reminder that time. Isn’t a straight line. It can just 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, the audio dramas, or even fan theories and articles.

Talia Franks: With that out of the way. I guess we are gonna talk about Rose again. (Lucia laughs) so let’s get in the TARDIS!

(Transition wobbles)

Talia Franks: So, hi everyone! It’s been a while, not a super long while, but a little while. We hope you enjoyed Season Two.

Lucia Kelly: Yeah, we certainly enjoyed making it. It was very — I’m very hype for everything ahead of time. It was actually incredibly, very rude that I was not allowed to put as part of this Top 10, the episodes that we have recorded, but have not released yet. Cause there is some of them that I would 100% put on there. (Talia laughs)

Talia Franks: No, we’re gonna do another Top 10 later, as another bonus episode, probably sometime after Season Four.

Talia Franks: But we are going to be talking about the episodes we’ve recorded so far, which basically includes Season One, Season Two, all the Flux episodes, and the Jodie Whittaker specials that have come out so far.

Talia Franks: We’re not gonna be talking about the other bonus episodes that we’ve recorded.

Talia Franks: We’re just talking about episodes of the show. So we’re talking about which episodes of the show did we like the most and enjoy talking about the most? All that considered, Lucia, which is your Number 10 episode?

Lucia Kelly: Okay. So I wanna caveat this by saying the reason that this episode is on here is primarily sentimental value.

Talia Franks: Oh no.

Lucia Kelly: This is in no way a recommendation to listen to it. (Lucia laughs)

Talia Franks: Oh no.

Lucia Kelly: And it’s Episode One! It’s the very first one we made. It’s “Rose”.

Talia Franks: Aww.

Lucia Kelly: Because that’s the thing that started this whole thing.

Talia Franks: Okay. That’s cute.

Lucia Kelly: It’s crazy to think about — Yeah! Yeah! It’s crazy to think about how far we’ve come from there. We had no idea what we were doing. (Lucia laughs)

Talia Franks: We really had no idea what we were doing. We like, barely knew each other.

Lucia Kelly: Yeah. And that’s the other thing as well, is when we first started, it was literally —

Talia Franks: Like, we’d been in the same Slack, and we like, knew of each other, but that was only like, probably the second, maybe third time that we’d been on the video call together.

Lucia Kelly: Yeah, it was literally, I guested on Into the Archives with you, and then afterwards we were like — well, I was like, “I had this idea a while ago of having this Doctor Who podcast. We seem to have a really good vibe with each other. Do you wanna be my cohost?” (Lucia laughs)

Talia Franks: Well — No, that’s actually not how it happened.

Talia Franks: What happened was — and I can’t prove that this is how it happened because Slack eats chats and also the Slack has since been destroyed ’cause Niq nuked it — but the point is, I’m pretty sure the way the conversation happened is that I was telling you about Into the Archives, (Lucia hmms) and I was telling you that “I’m starting this fanfiction podcast, but I’d also love to start a Doctor Who podcast at some point.”

Talia Franks: And then you said that you used to have a Doctor Who podcast, and I said, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we could have a Doctor Who podcast together?” And then you said that you didn’t know what our chemistry would be like, and then I said “Why don’t you guess on Into the Archives, and we can test it out?”

Lucia Kelly: It was all a marketing ploy! (Lucia and Talia laugh)

Talia Franks: What was really funny was that after we finished the recording of the Into the Archives episode was that then we stayed on after recording that episode for like, another hour, just chatting.

Lucia Kelly: Yep. Which is how it’s been ever since, literally every episode, like literally every time we get on call with each other, there’s at least an hour of pre-recording chat, and then maybe another hour of post-recording chat.

Talia Franks: Pretty much. Sometimes, sometimes — I think this time there was only like, 45 minutes of pre-recording chat, so we did good this time.

Lucia Kelly: Yeah.

Talia Franks: We did good.

Lucia Kelly: Yeah, but because I specifically nuked it because I knew what was happening. (Lucia and Talia laugh)

Talia Franks: Pretty much.

Lucia Kelly: But yeah, Episode One. It’s Number 10.

Talia Franks: Very nice. Yeah. I did not include Episode One on this list. Mostly because, while I do love it for nostalgia reasons, I was being cutthroat and also thinking about — Not even which episodes do I think that’ll have the highest quality production wise because I never re-listen to our episodes because I can’t stand listening to something that I can’t later change.

Talia Franks: Cause listeners, let me tell you if I re-listened to our episodes, you can bet that they’d be getting re-edited and you’d be getting new versions all the time. Let me tell you if I actually had re-listened to Rose, then there would be a new version of Rose out there … which maybe isn’t such a bad thing.

Lucia Kelly: It’s not a bad — I, I was literally thinking —

Talia Franks: We might rerelease a new cut of Rose at some point.

Lucia Kelly: We might wanna remaster that one.

Talia Franks: We honestly might release a Director’s Cut of Rose. Anyway, wow. We literally need to speed this up because —

Lucia Kelly: Yep.

Talia Franks: — We only have two minutes left on the timer and we’ve only talked about your 10.

Talia Franks: Anyway, my number 10, because I loved recording this episode, I loved talking about this episode, and I just really enjoyed these episodes are Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel, that two part episode.

Talia Franks: We recorded with Niq, Nicole Hill I often think of them in my head as Niq Fury, because that’s their twitter handle, (Lucia laughs) Anyway, Niq is great.

Lucia Kelly: Niq also embodies Nick Fury in many ways. (Lucia laughs)

Talia Franks: Yeah. They’re very chaotic and very fun, and that was just a great episode to record, and a great episode, I really enjoyed it. Did that episode appear anywhere on your Top 10 or did you just not include it?

Lucia Kelly: It didn’t, but it was very close. It almost got on there.

Talia Franks: Okay.

Lucia Kelly: Cause it’s one of the episodes that we’ve done that I’m more proud of, and one of the biggest qualifiers in my Top 10 is, did we have an interesting discussion? So a lot of mine are like, “Yes, I really enjoyed when we talked about this or that,” and some of them are more like, “This was a really important milestone for us as creators.”

Talia Franks: Because I don’t re-listen to a lot of the episodes, most of mine are on here — not even I enjoyed the discussion, not even because I enjoyed the production value — a lot of these are on here, because of the fact that I enjoyed that episode of Doctor Who and thus I enjoyed talking about it. That is why these are on here. So there are some episodes where we had a really good discussion like, I loved the discussion that we had about Love & Monsters with Priya. I would never in a million years put it on this list.

 (Transition wobbles)

Talia Franks: What was your number 9?

Lucia Kelly: My number 9 is Dalek and the reason that I chose Dalek is —

Talia Franks: It’s only number 9!?

Lucia Kelly: Yeah.

Talia Franks: Damn. Okay.

Lucia Kelly: Again, a lot of this was — Well, first of all, I was not told ahead of time that I was meant to put them in like — I thought we were just doing a collective group Top 10, and then I, in a very short amount of time was told to put them in order. So most of these are still chronological ’cause that’s how I thought about it.

Lucia Kelly: Technically these are Top 10 in order of the most-est but actually in my heart, they’re all equally Number 10. Number 1. They’re all equally a group together. It’s a joint, very large, podium. Okay? (Lucia laughs)

Talia Franks: So you’re saying that all of these episodes are getting a participation trophy.

Lucia Kelly: They’re all getting a Number 1 trophy, excuse me!

Talia Franks: You’re such a millennial.

Talia Franks: (Lucia laughs) You want everyone to win.

Lucia Kelly: (sounding hurt and willful) I do!

Talia Franks: Sorry. I’m — I’m joking for the record. I do not believe that life is a zero-sum game. I appreciate the fact that you’re putting them on a level playing field. However, I decided to make it a hierarchy. (Talia laughs and Lucia snorts)

Lucia Kelly: So, the reason that Dalek is on here is because Dalek, I felt, was the first episode that we did together where it really clicked.

Lucia Kelly: Dalek comes straight after a lot of jokey episodes, and it’s one of the first in the series that really — like, it’s dealing with the Daleks, right? It’s dealing with one of The Doctor’s primary traumas, and we actually like, get a really good, juicy episode, also the production value on that episode was really gorgeous as well, so we got to dive into that. But it was also the first episode, I felt, that we really had a handle on what we were doing, and things were actually moving, and we’d really gotten into a rhythm with each other, and we knew what each other’s strengths were.

Lucia Kelly: So, it was just an episode where a lot of things came together in really beautiful ways.

Talia Franks: Yeah, I also really love Dalek for all of those reasons, and all of those reasons are why it’s higher up on my list, (Lucia laughs) so when we get to where it’s on my list, just pretend I said all that. Anyway, my number 9 —

Lucia Kelly: Oh no, you’re going to have to do your own blurb for Dalek!

Talia Franks: Fine. My number 9 was Flux, Chapter Three: Once, Upon Time.

Lucia Kelly: Ooh.

Talia Franks: Cause I just really enjoyed that episode. It’s probably one of my favorite episodes of Flux. I really enjoyed talking about it.

Talia Franks: I thought we had a good discussion about it. I just had a lot of feelings about that episode. And I felt very strongly about that epi — I don’t know if it came across in the recording, how strongly I enjoyed that episode, but definitely upon rewatching Flux, that episode stands out to me as one I really enjoyed.

Talia Franks: And also I feel like a lot of people in the fandom did not enjoy it. So I’m very defensive of that episode because I love it so much.

Lucia Kelly: I was just about to say Once, Upon Time is also on my list and that is also one of the reasons that I love it.

Talia Franks: Yeah.

Lucia Kelly: Is because I remember listening to a lot of other criticism and analysis and recapping of that episode, and I felt like we were kind of, one of the only voices that really gave it joy, (Talia mhmms) and I’m proud of that. Also! People aren’t giving Bel her time. It pisses me off. Bel is not as beloved as she needs to be. And our episode stands up against that.

Talia Franks: Yeah. (Lucia laughs)

(Transition wobbles)

Talia Franks: Okay. What’s your number 8?

Lucia Kelly: Number 8 is Empty Child/ Doctor Dances, and…

Talia Franks: Oh, that’s also my list, but it’s not Number 8.

Lucia Kelly: Oooo. I just have a really positive memory of editing this episode, actually. Like, I can remember it in my head and it was the first time I really got my head around — Uh, this just a personal milestone for me in terms of editing — but it was the first time I feel like I really started to understand pacing and how to make an episode — Like, t here’s the raw recording that we do, and then there’s the editing that we do to it — (Talia mhmmms) and sort of, pacing and sort of how much breath to allow things and all that sort of stuff. And I also really, like — it— they’re beautiful episodes. I think it was the first episodes we gave 100% A+’s to.

Talia Franks: Not true.

Lucia Kelly: Not true?

Talia Franks: We gave a hundred percent to Dalek.

Lucia Kelly: (Lucia laughs) It’s the one that sticks in my mind — I feel like Dalek’s in a class of its own, so I don’t count it.

Talia Franks: True.

Lucia Kelly: Um, Dalek is, Dalek is above A+. It’s beyond the rubric.

Talia Franks: Yeah. I’m gonna get to that when I get to why, why I put Dalek where I put it on my list. Cause I have another specific reason for that, that you did not say.

Lucia Kelly: Ooo. But yeah, I also felt like that was one of the first times as well we really — like, we are not shy about how we analyze stuff and the fact that we bring up a lot of things about representation, and diversity, and portrayals of feminism, and all this kind of stuff. And this was one of the first episodes where we really dove into that and held no bars.

Lucia Kelly: And it’s an episode that I enjoy listening back to, which is also, which is rare for me. (Lucia laughs)

Talia Franks: It’s non-existent for me. I never listen back to episodes, but I appreciate that for you. But we’ll get to what I like about The Doctor Dances when we get to it on my list. My Number 8 is Village of the Angels, cause that’s just a stunning, beautiful episode. Maxine Alderton. Man. She’s just… (Lucia makes a chef’s kiss noise) and like, it made the Weeping Angels something that I could love again. And I just really adored that episode. And also the ending to that episode when The Doctor turns into the Angel it just gives me chills. And I feel like that was also when we were really getting into our stride of talking about Flux episodes.

Talia Franks: One of the reasons I really love it is because it is the last minisode of ours that’s actually a minisode before we really dive into getting into our longer Flux episodes. And it really is the episode that sets the stage for the last two Flux episodes.

Talia Franks: It’s when like, we really started to fully understand the story, and sink our teeth into it, and get a fuller picture of what the story was like. And I just really appreciated the discussions that came from that.

Lucia Kelly: Same brain, because Village of the Angels was my next one as well. (Lucia laughs)

Talia Franks: That’s hilarious cause — So, so, Empty Child/ Doctor Dances is your 8 and Village of the Angels is my 8.

Lucia Kelly: Yep.

Talia Franks: But Empty Child/ Doctor Dances is my 7 (Lucia laughs) and Village of the Angels is your 7. So we just switched.

Lucia Kelly: Yeah.

Talia Franks: So we just flipped them. Oh man. That’s so funny.

Lucia Kelly: Amazing.

(Transition wobbles)

Talia Franks: Okay. So say your 6 because I know that we’re gonna have a different 6. Know for a fact.

Lucia Kelly: Yeah, no, we, we definitely are. (Lucia laughs while saying um)

Lucia Kelly: My favourite 6 —My favourite 6? — My number 6 is Father’s Day. (Lucia laughs)

Talia Franks: Absolutely not! Absolutely not!

Lucia Kelly: And the reason that it’s Father’s Day is that I really enjoy that episode. It was also the very first episode we did, where we had really different opinions on the episode. And I feel like it was a real mark in our development as podcasters and as co-hosts in terms of what do we do, like, what do we do in this situation? When one of us really hates the episode. (Lucia laughs)

Talia Franks: When one of us is really wrong about liking the episode. (Lucia laughs harder)

Lucia Kelly: Um. Hmm. Mm. Mm. Choice words. Choice words.

Talia Franks: Okay. I’m just doing this because I know you’re not gonna like my Number 6, I gotta get my shots in while I can. (Talia laughs)

Lucia Kelly: Okay. Interesting. All right. But yeah, no I think it was a really — First of all, I stand by it. I like both the actual episode of Doctor Who and our episode on it. I think both of them are really good —

Talia Franks: Mm-hmm.

Lucia Kelly: — and that we did a really good job talking about it. I feel like we addressed everything in it in a really in depth, mature way, and that we opened up the discussion, and also, this is one of the reasons that I was really adamant that we talk about every episode because so many podcasts that I listened to — like, recap podcasts, not just Doctor Who ones, but like, across the board — skip episodes.

Lucia Kelly: And I, as a listener, find it really annoying, and really upsetting, because there are so many episodes that people avoid because they tackle dark matter or because no one quote unquote “likes them” or … just a bunch of reasons why people avoid talking about episodes when I wanna know that! Like, I — Why do you find it uncomfortable? Why is this hard? And also it gives space for people who do wanna talk about this stuff for usually the exact same reasons.

Lucia Kelly: So, this was also a mark of, again not only the actual like, body of the content, but why we were making the content and I’m proud of it.

Lucia Kelly: Ha!

Talia Franks: Yeah. And I will say that there are some things that in the future particularly I will never, ever, talk about Torchwood with you. (Lucia laughs) And you need to get a different co-host. If we ever talk about Torchwood on the Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey Podcast, it’s gonna be with a co-host other than Talia. (Lucia laughs again)

Talia Franks: I’m just stating that right now. Because while it’s important for these discussions to happen, sometimes the reasons that people skip episodes is because they are too traumatic and too difficult for someone to talk about. Like, you can’t force someone to discuss something that triggers their trauma.

Lucia Kelly: Yeah, absolutely.

Talia Franks: So…

Lucia Kelly: I will, I will caveat that. I will caveat that just in case any of the audience is like, “Oh my gosh, Lucia’s holding Talia hostage!” (Talia giggles) Talia has a get out of free card anytime they want. If Talia came to me and was like, “Hey, I really can’t watch this episode.”

Lucia Kelly: I’m gonna go and — I, I’ll find a way around it. I’m gonna talk about every episode ’cause I have no problem diving into any kinda trauma. That is my happy place. I like it there.

Talia Franks: I can’t believe you just said trauma was your happy place.

Lucia Kelly: Talking about and analyzing trauma is my happy place. (Talia and Lucia laugh) Actually experiencing it is not so fun, but I genuinely find it really interesting and really invigorating to have those hard discussions.

Lucia Kelly: So just in case anyone’s worried. Talia is gonna be okay.

Talia Franks: Meanwhile, while Lucia really enjoys having conversations about this I have had to edit out a lot of my crying. (Talia and Lucia laugh)

Lucia Kelly: Don’t frame it like that!

Talia Franks: No, but it’s, it’s, it’s not, it’s not that bad. I’m speaking mostly in jest. Lucia has given me a get out of free card if I ever decide that I don’t wanna talk about something, and like I said, we have edited out a lot of me crying and saying that “I can’t talk about this right now. We’re shifting the topic.” So there’s a lot of times that listeners don’t know out where we have driven a little bit too deep and I haven’t been able to handle it, so we cut it out, cause we’re accommodating to each other.

Lucia Kelly: Yeah. And I will say there have also been times where like, there are some episodes that we have talked about that have gotten real close to home for me.

Lucia Kelly: Talia knows that and I know that. There are many discussions that we have had both on and off air that you will never see ⁠—

Talia Franks: Nope. ⁠

Lucia Kelly: — You will never hear, because a lot of this, and this is also kind of, um, I know we’re spending a bit of time on this, but there’s so much shame around being part of fandom and enjoying any kind of media that people find silly or ridiculous or childish. And the reason that I’m such a strong advocate (Lucia laughs) for fandom to like ⁠— for basically saying, fuck you to purity culture, cause that’s what it is at the end of the day, it’s a really, really awful, shame based, white Christian based, control mechanism about how people process and view the world.

Lucia Kelly: A lot of this is a pathway to deeper stuff. A lot of this is a place of connection. A lot of this is a way of reflecting and processing and figuring out your own life and figuring out how you see the world and that should never be shamed. (Talia mhmms in agreement)

Lucia Kelly: And that should always be walked into with both arms open and therefore watch Father’s Day. It’s good for you.

Talia Franks: Unless it’s too triggering, in which case you don’t have to.

Lucia Kelly: Do what works best for you!

(Transition wobbles)

Talia Franks: My Number 6, which I know you won’t have here, is Legend of the Sea Devils.

Lucia Kelly: You are right! I do not have Legend of the Sea Devils on there. (Lucia laughs)

Talia Franks: And the reason I really love this episode is because, again, it’s an episode that we disagreed on, and I feel like that’s important to have on here. And also it’s an episode that I really love. I really love Legend of the Sea Devils. I know that you don’t. I feel like it’s important to highlight on here because so many people hated Legend of the Sea Devils unabashedly.

Talia Franks: And I feel like I was one of the only people who’s had nice things to say about it that I heard. Like, I didn’t hear a lot of voices saying great things about it. Obviously, people were like, saying great things about the Thasmin stuff.

Talia Franks: But a lot of criticism was just like “The Thasmin was great. Everything else was awful.” I don’t think that’s true. I think that it’s a good episode overall.

Talia Franks: Important things were cut out of the episode. The episode was adjusted after the fact. If you look at the notes about the production of the episode, of what was going on behind the scenes, the episode was a better episode and was then edited to be a worse episode.

Talia Franks: I still think that it was a good episode overall, even though it was perhaps not as good as it could have been, if certain scenes hadn’t been edited out. It was obvious watching it, that certain scenes were edited out because of needing it to fit a certain run time and despite reasons for the episode being edited the way it was, I think it was still a good episode. And it worked well for what it was given. I just think it’s really unfair to judge the episode the way it’s been judged when there are so many other episodes that are just as campy, just as rushed, and I feel like they were not given the same level of criticism. And I feel like a lot of the blame for this episode being the way it was is based on, I don’t know, we don’t need to get into like our disagreements about Legend of the Sea Devils again.

Lucia Kelly: We know why people were really harsh on Legend of the Sea Devils.

Talia Franks: Yeah. People were really harsh on Legend of the Sea Devils because people hate Chris Chibnall’s era and they hate having a woman Doctor and they hate having a woman person of color directing and they hate having Asians highlighted. And we all know people are racist and sexist and they won’t admit it. And even when they aren’t explicitly buying into racism and sexism it’s an inherent bias and even if people are giving good faith interpretations for why they didn’t like an episode, it will be co-opted by racist and sexist people who will take the words of anyone who doesn’t like something and use it for their own purposes.

Talia Franks: Because they will say, “Look! This woman doesn’t like this thing, it must be awful, and I am not sexist for disliking it because this woman doesn’t like it.” “Oh! This person of color doesn’t like this thing, I must not be racist for not liking it.” Sexist and racist and bigoted people who are like, homophobic and transphobic and have all these horrible views and opinions hide behind legitimate criticism and piggyback off of it with their own bigoted views.

Talia Franks: And so then people with legitimate criticisms have to either withhold their criticism or go to extreme lengths to prove the ways in which they are not buying into that bigotry.

Talia Franks: I feel like a lot of the times the people who are making those legitimate criticisms are not always explicit enough with the fact that their criticisms are not based in that bigoted viewpoint such that people who are bigoted are able to co-op their arguments and do such things as misquote them and misuse their words.

Talia Franks: So, anyway.

Lucia Kelly: I love that even in a minisode, we managed to get into these discussions. (Lucia and Talia laugh)

Talia Franks: Anyway, sorry ⁠— and it’s not, we haven’t even gotten to our top five yet!

Lucia Kelly: Well, we’re about too.

Talia Franks: But we’re about to.

Ad Break

Talia Franks: All right. What is your Number 5 episode?

Lucia Kelly: My Number 5 episode is New Earth.

Talia Franks: Aww.

Lucia Kelly: Because I love it. (Lucia laughs)

Talia Franks: That’s very cute. It’s not on my list at all, though. (Lucia laughs again)

Lucia Kelly: New Earth’s good. New Earth’s dumb, but it’s good.

Talia Franks: I know why New Earth is on your list. I know why.

Lucia Kelly: it’s ’cause of Cassandra. (Lucia laughs)

Talia Franks: It’s ’cause of Cassandra. Yeah.

Lucia Kelly: That is how you reintroduce a villain and give them depth! Masterclass in that area specifically! The rest of New Earth, little bit dodgy. There are ups and downs, but that part in particular? (Lucia makes a chef’s kiss noise) Choice. And we did a good job on our episode of it as well.

Talia Franks: Yeah, I think it definitely is a very good episode. I liked how we did that episode. My Number 5 is The Vanquishers.

Lucia Kelly: Ooo!

Talia Franks: The last episode of Flux. It wasn’t our Flux wrap up episode. That was how we actually wrapped up Flux, but I liked how we talked about the completion of Flux and its narrative and the series as a whole. And again, it was one of our not-so-mini-minisodes, which, like I said, I don’t think we’ve made a proper minisode since Village of the Angels. This is definitely not a minisode that we’re recording right now.

Lucia Kelly: Nope.

Talia Franks: It might be as bad as our “minisode” with Ella, which was over an hour. (Talia laughs while saying “um”)

Talia Franks: But anyway, The Vanquishers was just such a fun episode to record, and I just feel like it was a really great conclusion to Flux. And I know a lot of people disliked it and ⁠— (Talia sighs)

Lucia Kelly: Including me from memory. (Lucia laughs)

Talia Franks: Um, yeah, I know you didn’t like it. But I really enjoyed it. I feel like it had a lot of The Doctor really… Doctoring, if that makes sense.

Talia Franks: It was a point at which I could see so much of the other Doctors in Thirteen. And I just really enjoyed the conversation that we had about it. We had different opinions on that episode. I remember that was the episode where we decided to just agree to disagree about whether or not it was funky or fabulous, which I thought was a good way to go. And it allowed me to use a lightning bolt graphic, which I always appreciate.

Talia Franks: But like I said, it was The Doctor really Doctoring. It was The Doctor really embodying everything that I love about them. And I also am just very defensive again of The Doctor’s decision to use the Sontarans against themselves and wipe out the Daleks and Cybermen because that is exactly something The Doctor would do.

Talia Franks: At that point, The Doctor has been driven to the absolute brink and it’s something I could easily imagine Ten or Eleven or Twelve doing. I couldn’t imagine Nine doing it. Nine explicitly did not do it, but I could easily imagine Ten, Eleven, or Twelve doing it.

Lucia Kelly: This is why Nine is the best doctor, by the way, Nine doesn’t commit genocide. He very explicitly never commits genocide.

(Transition wobbles)

Lucia Kelly: Number 4, for me, was Girl in the Fireplace, which is not what I was expecting to choose when I was looking through my episodes. It was very interesting listening back, ’cause in the wrap-up episode I must have just straight up forgot, cause I was like, “I wanna put special mention on Girl in the Fireplace ’cause Fireplace is That Girl.” I had fully forgot how much we hated that episode. The collective memory. (Lucia laughs)

Talia Franks: Yeah, no, I was very surprised when you said that. I was like “Does Lucia have the same remembrance of that episode as I do because… what?”

Lucia Kelly: Clearly I did not, but I think part of it was that I really loved making this episode with you.

Lucia Kelly: I also really apologize ⁠— this is another one where it’s like, don’t actually listen back to it, please don’t listen back to it because my audio is fucked for that episode. And I’m so sorry.

Talia Franks: I will say there is good reason for the audio being bad for that episode.

Talia Franks: One is because there was something wrong with your end recording. Two is because I messed up the method of recording. What we usually do when we record is we record a mono file where we’re on top of each other, and then we record separate files where we’re individualized, and then when we’re talking on top of each other in the mono file, we cut out and then splice back in our individual tracks. Girl in the Fireplace, we accidentally didn’t save the singular files. So all you had was the mono file and the singular files that we use as backups, because they didn’t save, and those are usually better quality, we weren’t able to use them. I just realized we’re not recording backup files for this episode. Fuck.

Lucia Kelly: Yike! Fingers crossed.

Talia Franks: Anyway. Fingers crossed.

Lucia Kelly: Um, I recommend listening to the transcript for that episode because we have a really good ⁠—

Talia Franks: You mean reading the transcript?

Lucia Kelly: Yep. Or putting it through a text to speak. I’m not the boss of you. (Lucia laughs) You can listen to our transcripts. It’s possible. It would be better than listening to our original audio. Don’t do that.

Talia Franks: Yeah. I highly recommend just reading the transcript or putting the transcript through a text to speech because oof. Okay. Yeah, it’s a rough one.

Lucia Kelly: Yeah, but the reason I put it, this on there is again, I like the fact that we are a bit of a dissenting voice.

Lucia Kelly: We’re a small dissenting voice. We’re quite little still, but Girl in the Fireplace, excellent concept, poor execution, and not enough people talk about that. They get carried away, as I did, by the awesomeness of the concept, and they forget the content, and we talk about that and I’m proud of us. So that’s why ⁠—

Talia Franks: I’m not even sure the concept is that awesome, but okay.

Lucia Kelly: The concept of Madam de Pompadour is very good by herself.

Talia Franks: Oh okay.

Lucia Kelly: The fact that she was written by Steven Moffatt and everything that followed after… meh.

Talia Franks: Okay.

(Transition wobbles)

Talia Franks: Okay. So my Number 4 is Survivors of the Flux. For the reasoning —

Lucia Kelly: You have a lot of Flux in your —

Talia Franks: I do.

Lucia Kelly: You have a lot of Flux.

Talia Franks: This is the last Flux episode I have on here. But the reason I have Survivors on the Flux on here is, again, as I mentioned before, it is the first minisode that was not a minisode. It was the first time that we’re like, “Okay, this is so good ⁠— and it wasn’t even good. We gave it a funky ⁠— but this is so worth discussion that we can’t keep it to 20 minutes.” Like, “We have to keep talking.” And so I’ve really just appreciated that about the episode. And even though we didn’t love the episode, I feel like we had a good conversation about it.

Talia Franks: And that’s I’m gonna say, cause we gotta keep moving.

Lucia Kelly: Gotta keep trucking. Alright. My Number 3 is Once, Upon Time for basically all the reasons you said we’re running low on time. I don’t feel a need to go into it. Once, Upon Time is good. (Talia giggles) And we do a good episode on it.

Talia Franks: Um, Great. My Number 3 is Eve of the Daleks because that was our breakout episode, where more people started listening to us.

Talia Franks: That was also when Thasmin became Canon. So I really loved it for that. Eve of the Daleks is just a stunning episode and it gets a lot of love, and it is well deserved love.

(Transition wobbles)

Lucia Kelly: Okay. So my Number 2 is gonna surprise you, and I think it’s gonna surprise a lot of people, my Number 2 is Idiot’s Lantern and I’ll tell you—

Talia Franks: What the fuck? (Lucia laughs) You hate that episode.

Lucia Kelly: But I love the episode we do on it. Idiot’s Lantern, I think was the first episode which we both hated, that I think ⁠— I think we do a really good job of speaking in a positive and enjoyable way about something that we both hate.

Lucia Kelly: Like, one of the criticisms that we got when we asked for feedback at our wrap up, was like, “It’s uncomfortable listening to you guys hate on something” and that’s, yeah, that’s legitimate criticism. I also don’t like listening to people hate on something. And I think we both did a really good job of talking about something that we both hate. (Lucia laughs)

Talia Franks: Mm-hmm.

Lucia Kelly: And that it’s a good episode to listen to. Not only because we do a good job but also because it’s an important discussion to have.

Lucia Kelly: And (Talia mhmms) I also really liked the way that we dealt with it was being like, “Okay, well, how do we fix this?” (Talia mhmms) It was a positive, proactive approach to when you come across stuff like ⁠— Again, I’m always gonna find ways to talk about how we digest and how we think about the media that we consume and how do we do that in positive, affirming ways.

Lucia Kelly: And I think we did it and I’m proud of us.

Talia Franks: Okay. Now that I know you’re Number 2, if you don’t have the same Number 1 we’re gonna have to fight. (Lucia laughs) My Number 2 is Dalek, for all the reasons you said, but also because it was the first episode that we watched together and that was really fun. After we finished recording ⁠— What’s the episode before Dalek?

Lucia Kelly: It’s Aliens of London and World War Three.

Talia Franks: Yeah. Basically what happened is after we’ve finished recording Aliens of London and World War Three, we were like, “Okay. We didn’t really ⁠— like, those episodes were like. Weird and uncomfortable, whatever, but Dalek is a great episode. It’s a shame that we hadn’t already watched Dalek and we couldn’t just go ahead and record Dalek next, because also the other thing was before we recorded Aliens of London and World War Three, we had originally been planning to record two-part episodes as separate episodes, but as we started discussing it, we realized they were blending into each other. So we decided mid-episode to combine them, and then we had more time left in our recording than we expected, but we hadn’t watched Dalek yet. So then I was like, “Hey, why don’t we just watch Dalek together?” So I like, hooked up my DVD to my computer ⁠— and this was one of our night time recordings, so like you had the whole day, it was a Sunday morning for you. I was just staying up for all hours of the night because I don’t sleep. (Lucia snorts) ⁠— and we just watched Dalek together and texted each other on messenger, like our reactions, and so I just have a lot of really fond memories of that. So yeah. So that’s why Dalek is my Number 2. All right now we better have the same number one, or we’re gonna have to fight. I’m gonna come to Australia. (Lucia laughs)

Lucia Kelly: Alright. So I wanna preface this. Don’t worry. Don’t get ⁠— Don’t look at me like that. This is a good “I wanna preface this.” I originally misunderstood the assignment and I thought we could include bonus episodes. So my original first was our Chat with Ella because I genuinely think that’s the best episode we’ve ever done. It’s really good. I loved talking with Ella. It was such a brilliant, fantastic opportunity and it was really fun and really exciting to be able to do that.

Talia Franks: Mm-hmm

Lucia Kelly: And I think the, the stars aligned and it worked out really well and I’m really fucking proud of it and you should go listen to it.

Lucia Kelly: Um, so that was originally gonna be my Number 1. Again, I think it’s become increasingly clear over the last ⁠— however long, I did not understand a lot of things about this assignment. (Talia and Lucia laugh)

Talia Franks: Yeah. You did not understand the assignment at all.

Lucia Kelly: Nope. So, I had to very quickly rejig my entire system and come up with what I actually thought was ⁠— of the episodes that we’ve done that are about episodes of Doctor Who ⁠— what was Number 1? And to that, I have a different answer, obviously, but for that one, it’s gotta be, it has to be Impossible Planet and Satan Pit.

Talia Franks: Yes! Okay, I was gonna say, if that wasn’t your Number 1 I was gonna fight you.

Lucia Kelly: And! Did you notice? I said it correctly this time, just for you.

Talia Franks: Yes, you did. I’m very proud of you.

Lucia Kelly: Yeah, it’s, it’s the best one we did. We talk about a lot of really fun stuff ⁠— um, again, I’m using the term “fun” ⁠— (Talia laughs) It was really fun to talk about and really important to talk about, and I enjoy the conversations that I have with you. And I feel like it was really good. Some of the recordings that we’ve done have felt ⁠— I’m not gonna lie ⁠— some of them have felt like a slog. (Talia mhmms in agreement) Like, some of them, the chemistry isn’t working, sometimes ⁠—

Talia Franks: We have to rerecord?

Lucia Kelly: ⁠— sometimes we have to re-rec ⁠— there are rerecorded episodes! (Lucia laughs)

Talia Franks: There are. We’re about to rerecord another one.

Lucia Kelly: Yeah, because ⁠—

Talia Franks: Or I wanna rerecord it.

Lucia Kelly: Yeah, no, sometimes uh, one of us stays up late. Sometimes one of us has like ⁠— like we were saying before, sometimes one of us has trauma that’s tied up with the content of the episode and we have to deal with that and we have to work with that.

Lucia Kelly: There are a bunch of different reasons why an episode might not work out and why it might never see the light of day. There are also episodes that surpass everything (Talia mhmms) and are just a golden time and (Talia mhmms) I’ve thoroughly enjoyed, like even the editing of Satan’s Pit was less hellish.

Talia Franks: Satan Pit.

Lucia Kelly: Ironically. Satan pit! (Talia laughs)

Talia Franks: Also another reason I love Impossible Planet and Satan Pit is because I like teasing you about saying it wrong.

Lucia Kelly: (Talia laughs) But yeah. Just go listen to it.

Talia Franks: Yeah. Go listen to it. It’s a really fun episode. It’s a really great episode.

Talia Franks: I really wanna go on our website and do a search, to see how many times the terms, “religion,” “trauma,” and “Empire,” (Lucia laughs) show up on our website, cause ⁠—

Lucia Kelly: Many.

Talia Franks: Many I’m sure. Cause that’s basically like ⁠— we talk about it so much. They’re recurring themes in Doctor Who.

Lucia Kelly: It’s almost like it was made by the English or something.

Talia Franks: Well, (Talia and Lucia laugh) we have been fully talking for over an hour in this minisode.

Lucia Kelly: We’re never gonna make another minisode.

Talia Franks: We’re never gonna make another minisode.

Lucia Kelly: We just have to accept it.

Talia Franks: Actually our Centenary Special Trailer episode, was just 17 minutes. That was a minisode.

Lucia Kelly: Amazing.

Talia Franks: And I think our Legend of the Sea Devils episode was like, almost a minisode. It was 30 minutes.

Lucia Kelly: I also just wanted to say, cause I looked it up ’cause I was like, “Hang on …” And I just wanna remind everyone the Centenary Special Trailer is 45 seconds. (Talia laughs) And we managed to talk about it for 17 minutes.

Talia Franks: Yeah. It’s 45 seconds.

Lucia Kelly: You will never be starved for content with us. That is our promise to you. (Lucia laughs)

Talia Franks: Yeah, no, even though we’re not ⁠— So, this is a tentative, very tentative because you know us in our release dates, but we are aiming to release Season Three on November 3rd.

Lucia Kelly: Aiming ⁠—

Talia Franks: However ⁠—

Lucia Kelly: ⁠— being the operative word. (Lucia laughs)

Talia Franks: Aiming is the operative word. We might end up pushing it back and just doing more bonus episodes. We’ll see. We’ll see.

Lucia Kelly: We’ll see.

Lucia Kelly: In the meantime, watch all the episodes we just talked about. They’re all really good with creators approval.

Talia Franks: Yeah.

Lucia Kelly: With certain caveats.

Talia Franks: Yeah. Alright, with that out of the way, now we’re done talking about Rose!

Talia Franks: (Lucia laughs) Probably.

Lucia Kelly: For now.

Talia Franks: Mostly. Maybe. We’ll see. Bye!

Lucia Kelly: Bye!

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!