A Perfect Crucible

Flight Through Entirety: A Doctor Who Podcast

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.