The Highlanders episode 4 discussion:
Sp: Arrrr…
E: God, I loved the finale. That was awesome.
H: I’m just going to have to say, it was a fantastic final episode to the story. A total payoff.
P: To our reader, we had a week off since the last episode. But the story still clung in between, so I was pleased at the quality of this story in regard.
H: Regarrrrrd?
P: Regarrrrrrd!
R: Belay that ye scurvy swabs or I’ll throw you down the bilge, arrrrr.
H: I do not have scurvy. I drink my orange juice.
P: I’m not a swab, I clean my ears.
R: grab, toss, splash!
Sp: Speaking of grab, toss, splash, I liked the recon’s fight scene by way of Ken Burn’s documentary on overdrive. Great panning, scanning, zooming and subtle effects. Great job on the recon, they clearly had lots of fun with that.
M: There was lots of fight scene rhubarb.
P: You know what was missing from the fight scene? Not one musket made a sound.
R: I heard a couple of pistol pops. The sound was muted for a lot of it, but I heard a couple of pops.
H: Going back to grab, toss, splash, was Ben not fantastic in this episode. Secret Agent Ben!
R: Hell yeah!
<attempts at singing>
P: Okay, so I was disappointed to see the captain get injured in the sword fight.
H: Trask?
P: No, the other guy.
H: Willie?
P: Yeah. But apparently he’s okay to set sail, but I would think most injuries are grievous.
M: They’re just going to France. It’s not that far.
H: It’s not clear how bad his injury was. He might have just gotten knocked down and briefly out. It’s not clear without actually seeing it, which I would like to do, darn it.
Sp: And The Doctor appeared to be full on trickster mode.
K: I love his disguises!
R: Ah huh!
Sp: And his accents.
P: Yes!
H: Yes, this Doctor clearly loves dressing up and being silly. And I think we’ve finally gotten to the point where I can look at it and not say “it’s the new Doctor” I can say “It’s the Doctor.” This is finally the point.
Sp: And it seems that way for the companions too. The newness of the experience has rubbed off, and now they are just a merry team. Having fun, going on capers, solving mysteries. Yoinks!
H: I loved the line “You old fraud.”
P: After he had lifted the contracts.
H: It just goes to show they’re comfortable with each other.
R: Speaking of awesome, Polly’s little bit about “No, no no no, we’re not going to just sit here and wait while you guys do all the adventuring stuff.”
H: And Kirsty backed her up finally, after the rest of the story saying “oh, we women can’t do that.”
M: Meddling time travelers bringing feminism to 18th century UK.
SG: I don’t really think the Doctor cares about the Butterfly effect, Mr. Mother.
<laughter>
Sp: There was also a good sense of in media res with how all the secondary characters sub plots and relationships resolved and were going to continue after the Doctor. These guys weren’t just props for the Doctor’s story after the story is done. Some of them are going to go on further adventures.
R: Some of them in prison. Yeah, it had a feeling a little bit like a Shakespearean romance. “You’re with her and you’re with him, and you’re going to go off and do your think, and everyone will have some kind of a life.”
M: And Polly took in a stray puppy.
H: Who will teach the Doctor how to play the bagpipes, god help us.
SG: Maybe there will be a jail cell he needs to open them with.
R: Maybe the TARDIS will just make two horrible shrieking noises when going off into space.
K: HEY! I happen to like bagpipes.
H: As do I, but I fully admit they were played in battle to SCARE people.
P: I do too. Far away.
R: I love bagpipes. But I’ve heard the Doctor play the recorder.
K: He would like a hat like that.
H: Yes, and that was completely ad libbed by Troughton. It was snuck in. He was trying to make it a catch phrases. I think this is one of, if not the last time it’s said, because it didn’t work as a catch phrase. He was trying to give his Doctor kind of mannerisms to distinguish himself from Hartnell.
M: So, how about Algy?
P: Who?
H: Algernon Fa-Finch.
M: I was feeling he was going to come up good by the end of this.
H: Yeah, I really liked the way the whole story arc went for him. It was comedic, and in the end he actually turned out kind of noble. It was for Polly.
M: It was consistent with the way he acted earlier too. His honor was important to him.
R: And he wasn’t the only one either. The secretary… I felt that he got short shrift from the Doctor, the whole changing with the wind comment, when it was fairly obvious that nobody liked Mr. Grey at all.
H: While I agree that no one liked Grey, no the Secretary was changing with the wind and being entirely self serving. If he had gone back to shore he would have been arrested no doubt.
R: I agree, no doubt. But the fact that it was in his interest not be arrested doesn’t diminish the fact that he obviously had a lot of contempt for Grey, and wanted to work for someone with better motives.
M: I think his contempt for Grey was because of the way Grey treated him, not because of Grey’s general evilness.
P: Here here!
H: I read Perkins’ response as opportunism. It’s not that Grey was a bad man that Perkins hated, but because Grey treated him horribly. I don’t think he would have cared who he went off with. He made himself useful to the person who was in power.
P: But it says a lot about Grey as a character by the way he treats his subordinate. I think a lot of why we hate Grey as an audience is the way he unnecessarily abuses those without power.
H: Absolutely.
P: So I think that although we hate Grey for it, it is essential to the character’s role in the story to become the villain for that.
Sp: So nothing to say about Stabby the Pirate there?
MS: When did Doctor Who get the pirate’s clothing?
H: He dressed as a Red Coat soldier. We didn’t see him get the clothes Mini-Spoo. We just have to assume that he got the clothes earlier.
P: It’s possible he got them from the same place he got the weapons.
K: Stabby?
H: I assume you mean Trask?
Sp: Trask, yes.
M: I think Trask had but one role left in this episode, which was to go into the water.
Sp: Yarrr!
R: Yar, tis my destiny!
P: It’s interesting that the water plays both a near and far role, in that Ben could swim it to shore very easily, but going into the water was treated like a death sentence for almost everyone else. And I think that’s because the skill of swimming is not widely spread.
K: Ben is Navy.
H: That is a good point. A lot of sailors at the time, in fact, could not swim. A surprising number of sailors in history could not swim.
P: It’s a good example of how the skills of a modern person are so different from those of the past, that we don’t even consider the limitation of it.
H: And vice-versa as well.
Sp: It’s also a bit of a metaphor for Trask’s corruption. If he’s risen through the ranks as a pirate, arrr, he stole the ship and has been doing none of the real work. Not being able to swim is a metaphor for how he’s reaping the benefits of others without knowing the basics of how to be on a boat.
P: I also thought it was interesting that the prisoners were kept near the gunwales, which makes me wonder where were the guns. That’s not something that can easily be taken on and off a ship.
K: They probably sold them.
Sp: The BBC has only got one cannon. And a completely different show needed it!
H: Softly, Softly, the Naval edition.
P: I’m not sailor, but you wouldn’t want an exposed hole so close that you could pass weapons from a rowboat so close to the water, because it would be very easy to sink the ship. They should have climbed up the ship from the rowboat to get the holes.
Sp: Perhaps it was high tide.
K: <stares at Spoo in WTF?>
Sp: They were very long muskets.
H: Okay, so I think we’re at final thoughts.
SG: It sounded good. There wasn’t much movement on the screen.
M: We’re crazy, we stare at pictures.
P: I disagree. The pipe effect was worth that moment!
SG: The pipe effect was cool, I agree.
M: The “Ben in the water” effect however. It was like “Wow, the water is haunted by the ghost of Ben.” But points for trying.
P: I think we have an advantage of a huge screen that would never have been around back then.
M: It was clearly a composite shot.
SG: And back then they had moving pictures too.
<more singing>
P: I wish I had seen the original moving pictures. I think the sword fight would have been a marvel to see and a serious annoyance to the Australian censors.
H: Apparently not, or we would have seen some of it.
M: We seem to miss all of the melees. It’s always a recon.
K: I remind you of The Aztecs. Which was not a good melee.
H: What about 100,000 BC? It was really well choreographed, which I believe we remarked on at the time.
K: I do not recall.
P: I also thought the story wrapped up really nicely. A lot of that I didn’t see coming. I think this Doctor really pulls off the disguises well. I think the inclusion of Jamie, even though we knew about it in advance, did not seem to fit in with the rest of the story to me.
H: Originally he wasn’t going with them, and as the story developed they decided that he would be a companion character. In fact, they had to refilm the last few scenes.
M: Someone in a focus group thought he was dreamy.
H: There’s Doctor Who myths about what actually happened. The myth is that they changed their minds after the first episode when out , but they refilmed the final scenes well before the first episode went out, so it was entirely a myth. So you’re absolutely right in that it did not exactly fit.
M: They were like “Hey the Doctor hasn’t abducted a young person out of time and space for a while, let’s grab this one!”
Sp: He’s young, he’s interesting, he’s wearing a skirt, he makes strange noises. Take him!
<some discussion of Scottish history>
E: I really like that. Are there more finales that awesome?
Sp: No, it’s all downhill from here.
H: It’s definitely a matter of some debate.
P: We’ll have to find out one week at a time.
M: It will have been becoming a topic of discussion.
H: I hate time travel. The syntax makes my head hurt!
E: If I was stuck time traveling I would just throw my hands up and go with it.
A: Yeah, I enjoyed the story. I always like Jamie, what little I’ve seen of him, so it will be fun to see more of him.
M: I will always have liked Jamie.
A: That’s it.
M: I never have final thoughts, because I don’t shut up. It was great. I still love Patrick Troughton and I wish there were more moving pictures.
Sp: I was going to have already have going to have had future yet to ow ow stop the Historian, ow!
<laughter>
Sp: That’s it.
R: How many people, when the Doctor said “Don’t worry Ben, I have another plan for you.” expected Ben to show up again dressed as an old woman.
<applause>
H: I didn’t, but I wish I had.
K: Wow, a historical I actually liked! Sweet.
H: And it’s the last one of the project too.
K: Jamie wasn’t in it enough, at least didn’t seem to be to merit companion status. But I guess making him the disguised prince, knocking the pirate off the ship, escorting them back to the moors… okay he did quite a bit. Did he hide when they were in the cottage and Grey showed up? Why wouldn’t the soldiers have taken him? I don’t remember him having a line in the scene until after everyone left.
H: Honestly, I think we’d have to see it to know. I hadn’t thought about it until you brought it up.
Sp: That scene actually moved pretty fast. And the Doctor went into full on slight of hand trickster mode.
K: Instead of coot mode?
Sp: Yes, wrong Doctor! “Now see here my boy. We won’t have any of that, or I shall thump you!”
So, it went fast enough that they didn’t need to bother explaining what needed to be done with Jamie because the soldiers were gone by that point.
P: I really like the interaction between Jamie and Polly. It was almost flirty in the way that she was described as pulling into the TARDIS.
H: I’m trying to think of something to say other than “that was a really great story.” It’s our last historical, as I mentioned, as the project Historically has really had a soft spot for the historicals. I’m going to be sad to see them go. I understand that why the said they got rid of them, but I really think…
M: I thought the Pyramids of Mars was an accurate Historical.
<The Historian pummels Mr. Mother with a pillow. For Reals.>
P: It might actually be a historical, we just can’t prove it.
Sp: It hasn’t happened yet, shush!
H: …but I really think that the series lost something by getting rid of the “no science fiction” pure historical. Not that I don’t like what we’re going to get next, because I’m really looking forward to it. But I really wish that we’d gotten more than Black Orchid. Come on Steven, Moff Moff Moff, you can do it! Give us a historical!
M: I think a Steven Moffat would be very entertaining.
K: And everyone would expect a sci-fi or horror thing to happen, which he could have fun using for tension. Like “is that a monster.”
H: Exactly. There were some past Doctor Who novels that use that very concept.
K: And the Doctor could be second guessing himself the entire story. Like “Is it the Cybermen, is it the Daleks?”
Sp: No, it’s steam engine. No, that’s Mad Harry, he’s wearing a pot. “Silurians!” No, he’s got gout.
M: A gag Doctor Who episode would be the Doctor showing up at a Halloween Party.
K: Remember “The Chase.” That sort of already happen.
M: But a costume party where people are dressed as Silurians, Cybermen, etc.
H: Now this is just getting silly.
—
