Implausipod E0022 - Wild Blue Yonder

While I can't say I'm a sci-fi fan who hasn't scene Doctor Who any longer, my experience is still on the lower end of the scale, so we'll bring back our friend and guest Dr Aiden Buckland an academic and Dr Who fan to help guide us through some of the intricacies of the "Wild Blue Yonder", the second of the 2023 Dr Who Specials.

 You can contact our guest at doctoraidenwho@gmail.com 

Transcript

DRI: Are Doctor Who episodes like Pokemon? Once you've seen one, you got to catch them all, or watch the rest of them? I'm not sure. I don't think so, at least not yet. But I'm still curious, and we're gonna check out more of it as we go off into the wild blue yonder in the second of the Christmas specials.

Stay tuned on this episode of the Implausipod.

And we're back, and for those jumping in here: welcome, and you may want to go listen to episode 19 first. I'm a lifelong sci-fi fan who's never really seen Doctor Who, so the previous episode captures my initial impressions of watching a full episode as we checked out the Starbeast. I had a friend come in and help me with some of the analysis and I really enjoyed that format so we're going to try that again but first off I'm going to give you my initial impressions of the show.

As I watched it, I just jotted down some notes and kind of saw if I could see any references or any questions that might have come to me during the course of the show. So without much further ado, let's get into the Wild Blue Yonder, the second Christmas special for Doctor Who in 2023.

And we start off the cold open in England, 1666, which He's under a tree, I'm assuming this is Newton, and then the Tardis lands in the tree. I thought this was a cute little bit when they called him Sir Isaac Newton and then they talked about, they made a pun, a big play up of the gravity of the situation.

I thought there was a cute bit there and that will come back into play later. This Wild Blue Yonder was entirely done by Russell T Davies. It's the sole source, so I guess we're not looking at a comic book like we did last time. But we'll see if there's any other associations. If there's something that's referential within Who, I'll probably miss it, but we'll do our best.

Now, I'm trying to read my notes a couple days later, and that isn't always the best. After a few years of grad school, you develop the same handwriting that all doctors have, so actually, they don't let you graduate until that happens, until it's illegible. So in any event, we find we're now in a standard, generic, grungy sci fi corridor. I thought that was neat. 

The brand new Tardis is kind of cooked, and they come up with both a sonic screwdriver and a non-sonic screwdriver, and I thought that was cute, too. One of the characters asked if they were going mad, but I found the rest was almost inaudible, so I turned on closed captioning for this and the rest of the episode, just so I could follow along.

It turns out they asked, "did the Tardis play Wild Blue Yonder?", so I guess we're getting the theme of our show early on. They go through a vent where they set up things, and then they end up in this spaceship corridor, which from a reference point, it feels to me a whole lot like the old 70s sci fi show, The Star Lost, where they're in this massive, semi derelict, deserted ship.

I don't know if that's what Russell T. Davies is drawing on, but the distinctions are really quite clear, at least in my mind. And you have this idea where they're both being watched with viewers from the wall. And then there was another little take that this doctor isn't necessarily the doctor we remember, where they're both playing on how hot they found Isaac Newton.

And David Tennant's doctor, who remarks, "is that who I am now?" "Well," Donna replies, "it was never far from the surface." So they're continuing on with that theme from the first episode, where they're acknowledging that there's diversity in gender and just kind of playing right along with it and moving along.

So they're having a bit of an argument over the missing Tardis, and they talk about this HADS, or Hostile Something Detection System, and I guess there is more watching from the pipes that they're seeing on. And they're also arguing over Wild Blue Yonder, whether it was a Warsong or Jolly, and there's some recollection there.

I think that'll tie into how we see it at the end of it, but I'm not quite sure yet, so maybe they're just foreshadowing. There was a discussion here about a language the doctor doesn't know, and I thought that was really interesting that, like, there's this scope of knowledge, but they're still able to kind of work through it.

So there's like a communication problem that they're dealing with, but it allows for some exploration that there are limits or bounds on what the Doctor's capable of. And for me, as someone who isn't really aware of what those boundaries might be, it seemed interesting. They grab a cart and they roll down this corridor to kind of speed things along and they run into a robot with a lot of like minimal interaction.

The robot's just stepping forward, but we're not really seeing anything else happen with that right now. So it's probably Chekhov's robot. It'll come back into play later. In the control room, there's a door to it, I guess, and they say a chair is a good sign because it indicates there's something there that has a butt and they can at least sit down and so that might be something recognizable and he works on translating the numbers and once he has the ten of them down, he's able to launch a drone and as they're doing it, they have that cute bit which plays back to the cold open where they talked about a mavity well.

I guess Isaac Newton had misheard them at the beginning when they're discussing. He has a discovery there and he comes up with mavity rather than gravity. I have no idea if that's actually the case, if there's a latin root for gravity or something. I'm not going to bother checking, don't, don't spoil it for me, don't at me, it's all good.

I just thought it was cute. And then they come into the control room and they also notice that there's no stars, they're at the edge of the universe. Again, I don't know if this is a explicit ode to Douglas Adams and the restaurant at the end of the universe, but, you know, again, I thought it was cute that we might have all these associations that we can bring in.

The idea of that until we learn Kamboulian flat mathematics, that we just don't know anything, that we're just naifs out in the universe, and we're trying to make our way and figure it out with inadequate tools is also really telling, and In light of, you know, recent developments that we're having within our own world that we're now having assisted tools that can help us explore the design space in astronomy.

 () I'll link to an article that I found about that, how astronomers are able to use like machine learning to help advance their knowledge of the universe around them.) So this idea that we may be on the cusp of some amazing discoveries is something I want to get to, but probably not in the context of the Doctor Who episodes.

We'll look at that more fully in the regular episodes of the Implausipod. Now back to the show, there's some odd words that started getting repeated, like fenster and cause, and I was trying to figure out if there was any significance to them, if there was a name or something. They're working, when he tasted the computer circuit board, I chuckled, that was cute.

And then they have this moment where As busy as the first episode was, was there's a lot of people coming in, a lot of references, and I wanted Things I didn't know with this episode being focused on just the two of them of the doctor and Donna I thought they were able to really You know have that discussion, but they mentioned it that even things happening here We're going too fast and they didn't have time to kind of just sit down and chat But the question Donna had about how long will they wait?

And then we start getting some weird kind of sequences where it looks like I couldn't tell if it was a flashback or not, where they're bopping back and forth between the two rooms, and we get this, like, discussion about the exterior life of the TARDIS, about what it does if it was, like, wading by the sea, and again I'll check in with Aiden here if that had any particular significance, but one of them starts saying, "my arms are too long", and then they both do.

And then "shape is strange". So we get this, I don't know, AI generated being or something like it, it felt to me like a whole lot how AI doesn't know how to draw fingers. So when you use that like a generative art tool, you'll really get this thing. But then they described as "non-things" or not nothing. They were weird kind of things between time and space.

And it was this, the discussion of like, Where these things are coming from. Obviously, they're alien of some form. The side discussion about Venom and where the extra mass came from was nice. I don't know, I guess, if Disney has rights to some of the Spider Verse or something, and then there's a tie in. I don't know why they'd mention that other ones, but these no things from the other side of the universe start.

There's a discussion about the flux. We'll see if that comes into place later, and also a slowdown. There's real echoes during this whole period of We're not sure who is who of like the movie The Thing, John Carpenter's The Thing, and the other versions of that that have appeared. And as these the one creature is struggling with like object permanence, and then it starts walking upside down and backwards, like, the no things are there, they're after the doctor for specific reasons, and I guess we'll find out what that is.

We get another odd word that we're not quite sure of, Gilvane. And then they do the bit with the salt, and he'd use that as if they were demons. He can place the salt down and they have to cross it and I thought that was a brilliant way of approaching it. We get one more word, the stoned, and then They're asking why Provocus.

So that whole idea of they had to stop thinking because they're trying to be replaced. So there's this sense of like doppelgangers. Now the slow thinking, stop thinking thing ties a little bit into Verner Vinge's "Deep Time" in A Fire Upon the Deep. There's different zones like Within the galaxy, depending on how close you are to the core, things move faster or slower, and closer to the core if I remember correctly, things move very slow indeed, but then further out, they move fast, so space travel, communication, the thought, all these things take place at different speeds in different places around the galaxy.

And here we are at the end of the universe, where the way to deal with this is to stop thinking, to slow down. And this whole idea that they're learning that They have to deal with these creatures, like it's all been set up for it to be to take place very slowly was very striking to me. Now, there's a comment as they finally see the pilot of the ship who set all this into place, this slow countdown being enacted by the robot over the course of, you know, three years in this case for nobody to Come through and robot.

I'm going to pilot. I'm going to call Star Fox because it looked like they had a dog head or some sort of canine head and the idea that we have this furry species that was piloting a ship at the edge of the universe just strikes me as Star Fox. But again, we don't know if there's previous links that But the creatures trying to replace the doctor and Donna to wreak vengeance across the universe as like, what could they get up to if they had their face and form?

And then we think about all those associations that we learned of in that first episode, how they'd be able to use that as kind of a replacement. So we're getting this whole sense. Like they said, there was a brief bit earlier where they mentioned they had like 99 percent complete fidelity of the replacement that they were able to copy the doctor and Donna and their memories with a certain degree of fidelity.

And that seems so much like W estworld season two to me that it struck me this idea of replacement. I think we'll discuss again shortly in another episode that I'm working on, but not here specifically. So we'll get to it. But with that I found it was a fascinating episode as a non viewer. I thought there was a lot of associations as be able to bring it to it and having a more central focus on just the two characters and their, you know, communication and their.

Puzzle solving and his invoking superstition at the edge of the universe and what problems that might have as well as the ties throughout the Episode to things like Mavity showing up again and again Yeah, I thought it was really good I didn't again longtime fans might have different opinions of it But as a newcomer to who with some science fiction background, I enjoyed it and I hope you did too This has been the recap first impressions portion, and I'm going to reach out to my friend and we'll have a further discussion on it.

So stay tuned with us. We'll be right back.

And welcome back. And once again, we're joined by my colleague, Dr. Aiden Buckland, who's going to help fill me in on some of the details of the second of the Christmas episodes here in 2023 with the 14th doctor. So looking forward to it. I like I said earlier, I kind of enjoyed the episode. There was a lot of associations and we're going to break down some of those linkages, not only to like all of who, but to sci fi as well.

So Dr. Aiden, welcome. Yeah. What do you, what do we got? Where would you like to start? 

AB: Yeah, thanks for having me. I guess with this one, we might as well start right at the beginning. How did you like our little one liner joke? 

DRI: I liked when they they called him Sir Isaac Isaac Newton and they said spoiler, you know I thought I came across well gravity of the situation.

Yeah, I was a cute cold open It reminded me a little bit of some other time traveler shows. What was the one with like Jan Michael Vincent and was that just a Rick and Morty one? Oh, that's a Rick and Morty. Interdimensional cable. Interdimensional. Okay. No, no. There's a TV show called Travelers or, oh, I'm going to have to Google that now.

It'll be, I'll be frantically Googling on the background while we're chatting here. But. Yeah. Okay. We'll, we'll, we'll get back to that later. Yeah, I enjoyed it. I thought it was cute and , it was a nice way to bring it in so we now have a different word. Our, our lexicon has changed for science. I guess all of science has changed because of the encounters.

AB: So yes, it seems we're stuck with mavity now, which I thought was interesting for I think the seasoned who fans they might have noticed in that first reference. So this. This is a pretty typical thing with Doctor who he is frequently involved in, in famous incidents in history Volcano Day and Vesuvius would be one that comes to mind, but in particular in that first callback when they're in the hallway and Don is listing all the things that they still have access to after the Tardis has flown away.

And she says the word Maverty you might have noticed that David Tennant pulls a very strange face and then, you know, starts with the upward inflection as though he's kind of realizing something. And much, much later in the episode he actually mistakenly goes back to using the G word gravity well, at which point Donna says, what?

And he says, Oh yeah, sorry, Maver, Maverty well, because it's he doesn't see time and space the way we do. Even though she has history changed for her, for her, it's Maverdy now because they crashed in the apple tree for him. He actually sees both, I suppose. 

DRI: Yeah, so he has to be context aware of who he's talking to, I guess.

So, yeah, that was, that was pretty cool. And then we get right into this and just for, for note, it was Voyagers, which ran from 82 to 83 on NBC with. John Eric Hexham. Anyways our early eighties tiger beat kind of heartthrobs. We're, we're, we're a little bit behind the times on, but for any of our older viewers, that one, you might have to go look up though.

Anywho where are we? So we, we get into the ship and I thought, yeah, we had this kind of standard grungy sci fi quarter. And what was with the whole flame, flamethrower coming through the TARDIS? Is that like just it having a bad reaction or like what was coming through there? 

AB: Yeah, generally the TARDIS can be a bit of a cranky vehicle, so it frequently has these kinds of spasms.

Flames, smoke, these sorts of things. 

DRI: Okay. And about here, I also, I did end up turning on the closed captioning and I don't know if that's a function of my age, but it did, I was able to follow the dialogue from there. I don't know if that was like spoilery throughout, but it did, you know, I noticed certain things like the countdown, which we'll get into here in a little bit.

It's interesting to me that the theme of like the title of the show, they have the brief discussion, but I don't. I didn't notice any like clear linkage to it later. So maybe we can loop back around to that, but this idea that they're working through a massive spaceship corridor and we learn later where it is.

I had mentioned this show called The Star Lost and I don't know if you'd ever heard of that before. 

AB: I haven't had a chance actually listening earlier and It intrigued me because it does sound again. This is a very classic sci fi rope, right? Abandoned hulk of a ship long hallways and all of these sorts of things.

So it's also something the doctor has encountered quite frequently. usually lands in a place like this. 

DRI: So is this like the doctor who version of like a bottle episode then where they just kind of they have one big set or maybe a few and there's like a green it's most of it's green screen and they just kind of deal with it from there or is that like how common is this kind of episode in a given season would they do it a couple times or no?

AB: That's an excellent question. The earlier bits of, This revival run in a lot of cases, they would build most of a set at least. So usually these things will take place in a cramped quarters. So it's some science fiction factory on the edge of some moon somewhere, or, you know, they're in the belly of a ship and.

You only really ever see four or five rooms, so they don't have to dress up too much. 

DRI: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, they're working the way they're exploring their way through it. And I thought, you know, we have a bunch of little set pieces. There's the watchers from the walls. There's you know, they find the cart, they under, under, sorry, end up they have that little banter about whether they found Isaac Newton hot and the doctor, I guess, is still figuring.

This particular incarnation out, or is it, it's regeneration, right? Not incarnation, but I guess the word is similar enough. 

AB: So this came up in the first regeneration of the revival era. And then of course, being the 10th doctor. So he's the first person we've seen regenerate into the doctor before. And kind of, I think it's one of, it's not his first comment.

It's in his first few lines where he comments on the fact that he has new teeth. Because every time he changes, he doesn't know what he's going to get and, you know, that's evidenced by the fact that there's a whole couple of seasons where he is a she. I believe they are still, or the doctor is still looking to be a ginger.

That was another thing that I think both Matt Smith and David Tennant have remarked about at some point during the regeneration cycle. 

DRI: Okay. So, so we get a little bit of that. So that question of is this who I am now? And you know, it was never far from the surface. Is that a play to kind of like the larger meta narrative of, of like the doctor and the regeneration?

They're kind of just tying back to that. Yeah. 

AB: I mean, each new actor, and this is the kind of the glaring exceptions. This is the first time we've had an old actor be regenerated into. They all have a period in the beginning where they're trying to figure out. there as the doctor. So I think, you know, there's, you know, that Period of time where the actor, the doctor is trying to figure out who they are now that they're this new body.

DRI: Is the way they're doing that in this one, just because it is like a couple specials, so it's like a very abridged kind of Season with this doctor, I'm assuming so they're just kind of, like we mentioned last episode, doing a lot of speed run stuff. So they don't have the room or the latitude to kind of explore that.

And they're just going, Nope, he's got to know where is he's got to know how to use the screwdriver. He's got to use all the apparel and just go from it just because they don't have that time. 

AB: Yeah. I think that might be, to be honest, why we're in this. This period with the anniversary specials, essentially having an intermediary where Russell T Davies can read.

position the show, you know, each new show runner also puts kind of their stamp on it. Like there's so when Moffat becomes the showrunner after Davies in the first place, the show started to have more classic structural elements that you find in serialized television. So there would be Season long plot lines that were more defined and more regularly positioned in episodes as compared to the previous four, five seasons with Davies.

And then Chibnall did something, you know, different again when he takes over for Moffat afterwards. So, I think that's part of what's happening now is this is. The Davies putting the new stamp on it for themselves. And I've noticed some comments in kind of the fan reactions, you know, getting that feeling back in some cases which, you know, old companion, old doctor, pretty big bite of the nostalgia apple.

DRI: Yeah, for sure. I want to get to our, you know, the guest site. We have, I guess, some other classic sci fi elements throughout this with like the Watchers and It's just, like, even the robot that they're encountering in the middle of the corridor was just on some un, un, unidentifiable mission. So we get, we kind of, they move through these little set pieces and then they get to this control room, and I thought, It was interesting how they were able to kind of just shift into translating the numbers, figuring out the codes, doing these events.

Some of it, like when I liked when, you know, he tried out a computer, a computer board there by tasting it. But it felt like some of it was a set up to have him doing these actions just so they had some time to, to discuss it, like moving the boards from one. Trade to the other. I mean, it's not necessarily thrilling television, but gives them the opportunity to have a discussion where they hadn't really had one.

And then we start getting these flashbacks is what I thought they were. But we find that out in a little bit. So they're having these discussions, but they're not necessarily having it with. other, right? They're finally getting the time to, to talk, but they don't, but they're talking to what we find out are these no nothings from the edge of the universe.

And, and this idea that these doppelgangers are in the process of assimilating, like they're 99 percent done of all the, all the information that they need to become the doctor and the companion was, was like really. The striking to me. So, so we've got these themes of like the thing and Westworld and a host of other areas where we're talking about, like, I guess, even the invasion of the body snatchers.

You have like some classic sci fi elements. They're really coming through like, what was your impression of the swaps that were taking place there in the control room? 

AB: I have to say, this is very emblematic of who is well, it's the tonal shift from, you know, light. Brimble is joking about Maverty, seeing the cute robot that reminded me a lot of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie voiced by Alan Rickman.

Very similar to that build, the round features. And then we get into the horror elements where we have doppelgangers and there seems to be sinister motives. It was just a fluke of technology I had to jump back on that sequence. Initially, I thought it was the breaking up of the stream that made it seem like The doctor made it back from wherever he was awfully quickly, but you know upon rewatching is like, oh, okay They they've snuck in the villain.

This is something that they like to do in Doctor Who so first this idea of you know, Doctor Who in sci fi is really the Chance for a writer to press the everything button if you want to write an episode of television, that's you know, funny sad Heartbreaking, terrifying. You can fit that all into just one episode of Doctor Who in a lot of cases.

And it's a show that has kind of acclimatized and taught the audience over the years to be looking for these tonal shifts. So, you know, in the first episode we hid the star beast as the villain, right? Like, we get the cute E. T. speed run in the beginning before she's, let's get on with this. And then.

You know, the 2nd episode, we sneak it in through conversations that again seem to advance character. So this is again something for doctor who, which is is very prevalent. It's always the doctor or the companion having a conversation with the people who are in the context of that particular episodes drama.

About, you know, what they're facing or how they're feeling or these kinds of things. It's, you know, how they move character both on the side of the static characters that we get from episode to episode and these one off characters that will show up for just one adventure and disappear. 

DRI: Yeah. During this back and forth, there's a couple of lines that came up to me and I just wanted to kind of run them past you real quick, I guess.

How often does Who veer into this body horror, like the, you know, the shape changing and stuff that we've seen there. And, you know, we had the giant size and all the various other things, but definitely when he was doing the upside down walk, like, you know, it was like right out of the thing or something.

Is that a, again, is that a common thing or is that not something that Who normally goes down? 

AB: Yeah. I think that was one of my favorite scenes in this and, you know there's no accounting for something, but it is one of those things, again, that attracted me to this show in the first place is that shows up quite a bit.

The episode that strikes me in particular is another David Tennant episode called Waters of Mars, where after ingesting marsh waters. You know, basically people are transformed, changed basically physiologically by the experience. So this is, you know, something that pops up. Horror elements, I think, as well, are pretty common, you know, usually light because, you know, for most of its existence, Doctor Who has been a family friendly show, so they keep it light.

But there's often times where, you know, again, it gets tense and kind of frightening. 

DRI: Yeah, for sure. I mean, when they had, like, the Tense chases a a couple times there back and forth is definitely frightening. And they had fangs when they're behind the window and they kind of like sealed themselves away after they did the trick with the salt, which is I guess another classic vampire remedy.

So they, they used that to kind of escape briefly and then they, they're behind the glass and these things are just kinda waiting. We have that idea of, it was the slowness and then we're introduced to our pilot. I don't know if that's, was there like a musical cue at that point? I didn't catch the pilot's name.

If that was, it was a her, I think that came up but it was like a. Wolf form or a canid kind of skull on the astronaut suit there. So I call them Star Fox, but I have no idea. 

AB: Yeah, definitely an elongated face. And I liked that again, Dr. Who will usually give you most of the pieces of the puzzle earlier than you expect.

So when they land, the doctor says something about, you know, if only I could translate one to 10 and then he sits down at the panel and starts to. Identify the numbers and of course, you know, the distinction and distinction between the written word and being able to understand that and the spoken version.

So, you know, we have, and he has been armed with the information he needed from the beginning of the episode. It's just we don't figure that out until the very end when we see the captain of the very slow three year long plan. 

DRI: Yeah. Okay. So speaking of long plans, I got two questions for you then. What, I guess the last one is one that was hinted at.

What is the implication of invoking superstition at the edge of the universe? Like, where do you think that's going to go? Is that going to lead us into the next doctor, or is that just going to be. Something that'll come up, like how, how far in advance do they plant these seeds or are they kind of like the Warhammer writers or whoever, or they'll plant enough seeds like I do with Dungeons and Dragons and then, you know, a year down the line we go, Oh, well, we need, we need a bit.

Well, we mentioned this here and they just kind of pull it out. There's. value in both, but I don't know how much they're just laying a lot of seeds out there and then seeing what they need to harvest or how intentional they are in some of these actions. So, or maybe it's a little bit of both. 

AB: It's going to be interesting to see, cause I think again, it's hard after being through all the errors of new who now to really put my finger on whether or not.

That's going to amount to something. I was also taken by that night. I noticed as well on top of the, you know, the salt to stop the vampires, you know, their breath. You could see their breath anytime these things would appear, which is, of course, also very much part of the paranormal and that kind of ghosts are here.

So now, all of a sudden, it's cold thing, which I thought was neat, but I don't know if that's part of just kind of a tonal thing that they were reaching for on the episode to add to that element or if There is something concerning about invoking superstition at the edge of nothing. 

DRI: Okay. And then what would be the risk then of these creatures getting back as the doctor and Donna, like, I thought that they could, you know, they slide into those associations that were firmly established in the previous episode, but like, what could a doctor who's possessed, so to speak, or a doctor who's replaced, what?

What could they get up to? What kind of, what kind of damage could they cause? 

AB: That usually is left to the vagaries of, you know, I'm gonna run amok, kind of thing. Because this is, again, a pretty common not this particular villain, the, the not things, but the idea that there's something outside of our universe that if only it could get into our universe.

It would be able to run amok. So, we've seen this in an episode written by Sandman creator. Neil Gaiman? Neil Gaiman, yeah. One of his, I think, most triumphant episodes where we get to see so many things that we hadn't seen before. And again, it's all taking place in a bubble universe just outside of our own.

The antagonist is just trying to get into our universe. So sometimes they just want to get in to get in. These ones seem to want to get in to cause trouble. So it's a bit up in the air. 

DRI: Yeah. Okay. Well, with that, I think we'll see what happens in the third one. If you're willing to come on back, I think we only got a few days to wait.

So we should find out soon. I'll, do the same thing and I can reach out to you in another few days. Once again, your email address is? 

AB: Oh, draidenwho at gmail dot com. 

DRI: Okay. We will let the listeners know. And for anybody who's stuck with us this long, thank you so much. We're, I've been enjoying the Dr. Who anniversary specials.

Sorry. And we will watch a little bit more of what's coming through. So thanks again, Dr. Aiden for joining us and we'll talk to y'all again soon. Thanks for having me. Hey, you're welcome.

All right. That wraps up our coverage of the second of the Dr. Who specials for 2023. Our thanks again to Dr. Aidan Buckland for joining us. You can reach him at draidenwho at gmail dot com. And that information is available in the show notes. And I'm your host, Dr. Implausible. You can reach me at. Drimplausible at implausipod dot com or wherever I might be on any of the socials, mostly Mastodon. But in the meantime we have a few other episodes that have been coming out. I think within the next week or so, we should be able to cover the third and final of the 2023 specials before the Christmas special comes out.

And then we'll back to some of our regular stuff that'll be continuing on the threads that have spun off of our visit to the sphere. Please join us once again. Feel free to follow us and subscribe wherever podcasts can be found, except for Spotify for obvious reasons. Show is licensed under a Creative Commons 4.0 share alike license. And again, we've been happy to have you with us. We'll talk to you again soon.