You're listening to the Secrets of Doctor Who, where we discuss everything about the
hit BBC series, Doctor Who.
Today we're discussing the 11th Doctor Big Finish audio story, The Calendar Man.
I'm Don Bentinelli, and joining me today on the panel are Father Cory Sticha.
Hey, Father Cory.
How's it going?
And Jimmy Akin.
Hey, Jimmy.
Howdy, Don.
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So today we're discussing The Calendar Man.
This is a Big Finish story featuring the 11th Doctor from, what's it, The 11th Doctor Chronicles
as the series in Big Finish. And Jimmy, can you give us a recap of what happens in this story?
This week, the 11th Doctor and Amy Pond get a distress call from a woman named Olivia.
She's from an Earth colony world in the future where people are dying, and then everyone forgets
that they even existed, kind of like the Mandela Effect. Only Olivia remembers them and writes down
their stories. Upon investigating, the Doctor, Amy, and Olivia discover that the deaths are being
caused by the Calendar Man, and this is not the Calendar Man who is the Batman villain.
Instead, it's a figure from Time Lord folklore who judges whether people have lived well or ill.
And if he determines that they've lived ill, he deletes them from history,
timey-wimey, and writes them into his own book of forgotten truths, where they sign their names.
He's been killing guilty people from the Earth colony, but their lives are insubstantial and
don't really satisfy him. The doctor, who has a time lord life, would satisfy him, and
he offers to stop killing the colonists if the doctor will submit to his judgment. The
doctor goes along with this to save the colonists, but when the time comes, he refuses to sign
his real name and announces that Olivia has signed his name in the calendar man's book
in his place. This is a problem for the calendar man, because Olivia is an innocent woman,
if he kills an innocent woman, he will die.
The calendar man thus chooses to spare her, writes his own history in his book, and passes
out of existence, and all the colonists get their memories back of the people they have
lost.
Afterwards, the doctor places the calendar man's book in the Tardis library.
The end.
All right.
So, this is a May 2018 story, this came out somewhere around then, or recorded then I
think is what I saw.
And this is audiobook style, single narrator, and who does some variations of voices and
does a pretty decent Matt Smith.
Yeah, so Jacob Dudman is the narrator and he voices the doctor and most of the other
characters.
Olivia is played by a woman named Eleanor Crooks, but everybody else is played by Jacob
Dudman.
And he does Matt Smith very well, but his Amelia Pond Scottish accent is not cutting it.
- No. - He's got the wrong Scottish accent.
The accent that Jacob Dudman is using is much more towards the back of his mouth,
and Amelia Pond's Scottish accent is much more towards the front of her mouth.
And so it just sounds wrong and I keep having this "Who is this Scotsman idea?"
And then "Oh, it's supposed to be Amy."
Yeah, yeah, it was weird to, yeah, it didn't fit, right.
I mean, like you said, there were variations on Scottish accents and he got the wrong one.
Apparently he does other doctors as well, I think he's done 10th doctor ones and some others.
did the 11th doctor in that one, last 11th
doctor story we did, Regeneration Impossible.
That's right.
11th and 12th both, yeah.
Yep.
So I should ask you what your overall
impressions are, Father Cory, what was
your overall impression of this one?
Yeah, in general, I've liked the Big
Finish we've listened to.
This one was just kind of meh for me.
And maybe part of it was just because of
the voice acting and it was just kind of
an okay story, I really wasn't the biggest
fan of it, it just was okay.
I mean, I think that's about the only
I can say about it.
Okay.
And Jimmy, for you?
Yeah, I'd say it's a kind of middle of the
road story.
Sometimes Big Finish is absolutely brilliant.
Like, Live 34 is amazing.
Mm-hmm.
The Chimes at Midnight is amazing.
But then you have, none of them are really
terrible.
Well, except for that one Doctor Who Unbound
where the doctor was a woman who was a
refugee from Absolutely Fabulous.
(laughing)
But almost always they're they're at least okay, and I would say this is an okay story
I like that the calendar man is
Has this timey-wimey aspect? He's a bogeyman who will remove you from history and that's time Lordy
but
A lot of what happens especially at the end of the plot, even though I summarized it. It seems unmotivated to me
Like why does the calendar man not just kill Olivia? Why does he decide to spare her if he's a villain?
Yeah, he's gonna die. Anyway, he may as well take someone with him. Yeah, right, right
There was a couple yeah a couple holes in the characterization there for me
It was interesting actually because I was listening at the same time
I was reading this new Star Trek novel Star Trek strange new worlds the high country which deals with
Sort of colonists under under difficult circumstances. So it was kind of interesting to compare them
But this one I agree with you both of you. It was it was okay. The premise was interesting the execution not as good
But I think it's kind of interesting that it deals with these themes of confession and guilt
because so many of the people that are killed in this colony are people who have
committed
offenses, sins.
Mm-hmm.
Serious ones.
Yes.
Yeah.
And what the calendar man is doing is eliciting from them their
confession, their profession of their guilt and their remorse in many cases.
And I thought that was an interesting aspect to deal with was
this idea of confession and guilt.
Um, you know, it's kind of funny.
The calendar man knows what's written on our hearts and he's sort of a
twisted version of the Holy Spirit in that sense.
Yeah. Oh, I was gonna say Santa Claus.
(Laughter)
Yeah.
Twisted Santa too, yeah.
One thing, another hole I thought was his name, the Calendar Man, because apparently he's not
following a time lord calendar, he's following whatever the local calendar is and this earth
colony, even though it's on another planet, is using the 365-day calendar from earth.
Right.
Which is okay, that's not a problem, but
He
He's the thing that gives the doctor the clue is there have been 30 people killed
And there are 335 colonists left
And the doctor puts those numbers together and goes 365. This must be the calendar man
And it's like okay. Wait a minute. How did you know there were going to be 365 total colonists?
Why would they send exactly that number and not
400 or 300 or 378? I mean, they didn't establish
any rule that the colony has to have one
colonist per day of the earth calendar.
Yeah, that was kind of odd. Father Cory?
Well, one thing that kind of struck me too is
this kind of felt like a redressing of the
Weeping Angels, the original idea of the
Weeping Angels where they would send, the
Weaving angels would feed by sending you back
in time and basically feed on your time energy
that you would have had going forward the
rest of your life.
You'd still live the rest of your life,
just back in time.
And it kind of felt like this was a
redressing of that where instead of taking
you back in time, he would eat the rest of
your time.
He would kill you and that's what he would
eat off of.
Not just your sins, but also the time that
you would have had if he hadn't intervened.
And so it just, it kind of felt like a
redressing of that.
And then again, it was just kind of different.
Yeah, that was, yeah, I mean, there was some interesting aspects of it because having a
Time Lord boogeyman is an interesting idea.
The guy, you know, that, what would, what would Time Lord culture, what we know of it,
what kind of boogeyman would you create?
What kind of mythological creature would there be?
And one that has to do with judging your actions over time, especially over regenerations.
That would, that would be an interesting aspect of Time Lord culture.
It's interesting in keeping with the Stephen Moffat
science fairy tale version of Doctor Who,
we got a lot of Time Lord folklore and children's stories
during the Matt Smith run, like the Pandorica.
And in the next to last episode of Amy and Rory,
The Power of Three, we got that other Time Lord
mythology bogeyman.
So the authors at Big Finish seem to be picking up
on something Stephen Moffat was doing during
this era of the program.
That's.
That even kind of went to Russell T Davies
where he had, you know, the, we had the
giant spider thing in the middle of the earth
that came from the dark times, you know, way
back before Time Lord civilization and stuff
like that, the Ragnos.
Yeah, the Ragnos, yeah.
There were quite a few of those too as
well, those things that, oh yeah, this goes
way back to before, you know, recorded
history type stories.
Hmm.
And that goes back to the fourth doctor
with the vampires and so forth.
Exactly.
Yeah, yeah.
That Adric will totally betray you to.
(Laughter)
Adric would betray you to a piece of toast, I mean.
(Laughter)
Especially if there's avocado on it.
So I don't know why I said that, but the,
so then we have this other character Olivia
that we get introduced to and for some reason,
she's the only one who remembers and that's
because she sits with these people as they're dying and records their story,
records their sins, their confessions, and so I wasn't quite sure why
doesn't the calendar man's affect her? They explain this but it goes
by kind of subtly. 30 days ago a fog descended on this colony and they
established that there are two people who are immune to the effects of the fog who do remember everybody who has been deleted. One of them is Captain Martina?
Medina.
Medina, yeah. Anyway, she was the captain,
Captain Medina, and she was the captain of the
colony ship who has been put in prison because
there was a coup against her. And so she is
out of the fog, and that's why she remembers it.
The doctor says there's probably a memory
affecting agent in the fog. And Olivia
remembers them because she's writing down
down their stories.
So that reinforces her memories, but it
doesn't seem to, this is another thing that
I think is a flaw in the writing.
Um, it's, it is not at all clear that the
calendar man is really deleting people from
history, which is what you would expect from
a time Lord boogeyman.
They all trace of the person should vanish
and it doesn't.
They still have houses and other people
scratch the names off of the houses of the
people who have disappeared.
And so it's more of a memory, he's removing
memories of the person.
He's not really removing them from history.
Right.
Yeah, they go through the different houses
and get the journals from each person who was
deleted, who was killed by this calendar man
and are able to read their stories of what they did.
Right.
So yeah, they're not being erased from history,
but they are being killed and then people are
forgetting about them.
And they show that where after the one guy
one guy dies in the hospital and then all of
a sudden, you know, the person forgets, you
know, within a few minutes of that this
person even existed, his wife, I think it
was.
His sister.
Forgets that he, sister, okay, there we go.
Yeah.
Yeah, in fact, on some level, they do seem
to remember them even after they forget, like
the people will be emotional even though they
don't know why they're being emotional and so
there's at some subconscious levels, even
still, that they remember the people.
So it's not even a complete wipe of the
memory either.
So yeah, kind of an inconsistent, not
complete sort of thing.
Yeah.
This is a very atmospheric story rather than a
very tightly plotted story to my mind.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
It was an interesting detail that all of the
colonists were keeping journals for historical
purposes.
I thought that was an interesting, you know,
when you're going to found a colony, you want
a history.
And so the first people there will be required to keep
journals of what's going on.
So that for historical purposes of this new civilization
that you've created.
I thought that was a nice little detail.
Yep.
Um, also that all of the, uh, the buildings, the first
buildings are constructed from the colony ship itself.
When the ship arrives, it's dismantled and it's designed to be like Lego
blocks or something dismantled and rebuilt as
the first buildings of the new city.
That's also a, I kind of like that, it's a
nice little detail as well.
That was kind of interesting.
I like the jail where they have Captain
Medina is, they say it's just a big,
like rectangle mirror.
Hmm.
So it's like a shoe box, giant shoe box
with mirrors on the outside.
Right, right.
Yeah.
I was going to say with the, how they set up
the colony, that's, of course, that's,
kind of the prevailing theory of how to do that.
That when you get to the planet, you land the ship
on the planet and then you just strip it for
parts, you strip it for equipment, you strip it
for the rooms and that ship, it's one way travel.
Right.
So you're not going back.
So.
Right.
May as well use everything you've got, every
resource you have at your disposal.
And it's even designed to unfold and become
these other buildings.
So it's like folded in on itself for travel and
then it's unfolded to become an outpost.
Yes.
So, and then, yeah, even like the cabins of
the officers are all like become their cat
literal cabins or cottages.
Yeah.
So, most of the people who disappeared are
officers and I think because they were all
the ones involved in the mutiny against
Medina.
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
And so, and so the first officer led the
mutiny.
I don't remember if they actually told us
why they mutinied against Medina?
Yeah, I was listening for that and I think
they may have, but it went by really fast if
they did.
Cause I don't remember a clear reason why.
Yeah, they didn't, I don't think they really
said, they did, and it made the impression,
just looking at the TARDIS wiki that she was,
the captain was completely innocent in the
whole thing, but the first officer is the one
who kind of stirred everyone up against her
for whatever reason.
And it turns out that first officer Alan Seagraph is Olivia's father, right?
Yep.
Which is why I think she's so on the case.
But she says she didn't get his testimony before his death.
So then how does she remember him?
If her writing it down was how she remembered people.
I thought that it might've been a little plot hole.
I don't know, but it's kind of interesting.
Yeah, well, and why is she the one who
hears the ticking when no one else does?
Right.
The ticking, that's the evidence of the calendar
man at work or, you know, about to take a life.
Cause she says that she could hear the
ticking and can follow it so that she's
there at the moment the person dies.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's kind of interesting.
Something about her makes her the key
figure in all of this.
Maybe because she's the innocent one.
She's the only one who wasn't involved.
That which, that's kind of implausible that
she was the only one who didn't mutiny.
Right, she's the only innocent one, the only sinless one, she's Mary.
Yeah.
So, we have this, they go on this search for Siggrath's diary, his journal, and they find
his secret diary and that's where they see his confession before his death and they also find,
what do I forget what the other guy who died that they met when he died.
Marcus Haddon.
Marcus, alright, they find his journal, his diary where he confesses to have stolen his
sister Martina's money from her safe, and that was his sin that he was guilty of.
So they go around, they find these journals where everyone's sins are confessed.
So at one point, I think it's the doctor who says, whatever this is, the calendar man,
it kills not just the body, but what keeps us alive after death, others' memories of
us.
And that's supposed to be, I guess, the horror of this is, you know, when we die, we want
to be remembered and to be forgotten after your death is, in this story, the worst possible
fate I guess, you know, to be forgotten?
Oh, it's standard secular immortality nonsense.
Right.
It's like, look dude, no one's gonna remember
you in a thousand years anyway.
Heck, you're lucky if anyone remembers you in
two generations.
Yeah, I wanna be conscious in the afterlife,
that's what I want.
Right.
Well, it's like the most recent episode, or
season of Star Trek Picard, we talked about that
where Data was, he's the sum of his memories.
That's who Data is. That's how he can be human,
you know, or be conscious, how you want to put it.
Right, right. And that is clearly not, you know,
there is something about us that lives beyond
death that is permanent and immortal. I think it's interesting how Olivia,
the doctor is guilty, you know, he's judged and judged to be guilty. This is a theme we
saw multiple times, you know, the doctor or…
He's got the time war behind him and everything now.
Right. And so, he's judged guilty but refuses to write his true name in the Calorians book.
And so, Olivia becomes a sort of substitute of sacrifice in a sense. I mean, there's that
interesting, you're guilty, I'm innocent, and I will substitute for you in the sacrifice and
thereby save you. So, it's an interesting selfific or soteriology going on here. I don't want to go
go too deep on that obviously, but I thought that was an interesting aspect of it anyway,
that it hits on a truth of reality.
It also is unmotivated because they try to set it up when the doctor tells her to pick
a pen name that fits and keep writing.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
And in hindsight, she interprets that as an instruction to sign the book using a pen name
in the doctor's place and it's like, no, no, no, no, no.
That's not what that means.
Yeah.
That means pick a pen name that suits you and keep writing.
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
So, and so as you mentioned, Jimmy, in the recap,
the calendar man ends up writing his own story into the book,
and at the end, as the doctor puts the calendar man's book
in his own library in the TARDIS, he hears the ticking.
So, is the calendar man dead?
Yeah, no, yeah.
Calendar man's still in there, but he's written into his own book instead of history, supposedly.
Okay. So, we can see him again, apparently. No one ever dies, and so every villain can come back.
Any other things I might've missed or anything, last things to say about this
episode, Father Cory?
Nothing here.
Jimmy?
Oh, the doctor gives Olivia a companion offer and she turns him down at the end of the story.
She turns him down for now, but hints that she may be back in the future, although thus far,
it's been five years and she hasn't. Right, right. That's true. All right. So,
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We'll be back next time when we'll be discussing the Three Doctors episode from the Third Doctor's time.
Until then, Jimmy Akin, thank you for joining me in sharing the secrets of Darkview.
Thanks Dom.
Father Cory Sticha, thank you as well.
Thank you Dom.
And once again, I'm Dom Mifimelli.
Thank you for listening to the Secrets of Darkview OnStar Quest, and remember,
we're gonna help her.
It's what we do.
(dramatic music)
(door slams)