This Christmas, we travel from a snowy wasteland in the recent past, to an alien battlefield on a distant planet, to a historical battlefield that has faded from human memory — only to discover that the real battlefield was the friends we made along the way. Or something. Time to say goodbye to Peter Capaldi in Twice upon a Time.

Notes and links

For the kids: Morecambe and Wise were an incredibly successful and famous British comedy duo throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s, and their Christmas specials were insanely popular — running from 1969 to 1977 on the BBC, and then on ITV from 1978 to 1983. Their 1977 show was watched by 28 million people in the UK.

Inevitably, Richard mentions some antecedents to this story. A Christmas Carol (1843), in which Charles Dickens calls out his era’s brutal social inequalities and essentially creates Christmas as we know it. All Quiet on the Western Front (1928), a vivid story of some young German soldiers fighting in France during the Great War. And, closer to home, A B Facey’s A Fortunate Life (1981), the autobiography of a Australian man who experienced extraordinary suffering and loss — growing up in Western Australia, surviving the Gallipoli campaign, losing his son in World War II — before the publication of the book when he was 87 years old. (“I have lived a very good life, it has been very rich and full. I have been very fortunate and I am thrilled by it when I look back.”)

If you want to know what Susan was up to instead of appearing in this episode, the adventures of the War Susan now encompass three Big Finish box sets, one of which is due for release some time next year.

Simon identifies a nod in Murray’s soundtrack to Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel (1978). You can hear it performed here.

Follow us

Nathan is on Bluesky at @nathanbottomley.com, James is at @ohjamessellwood.bsky.social and Simon is at @simonmoore.bsky.social. Richard is on X at @RichardLStone. The Flight Through Entirety theme was arranged by Cameron Lam.

You can follow Flight Through Entirety on Bluesky, as well as on Mastodon, X and Facebook. Our website is at flightthroughentirety.com. Please consider rating or reviewing us on Apple Podcasts, or we’ll arrive uninvited at your place for Christmas dinner, sit at the table being miserable to everyone for an hour, and only cheer up when it’s finally time for us to leave.

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 will back in a couple of days’ time with our hot take on Ncuti Gatwa’s second Christmas Special (and Steven Moffat’s ninth), Joy to the World. And we’ll be back again in 2025 to talk about Season 2.

Today, The Three-Handed Game is back for their first Christmas Special, discussing the 1966 Avengers episode Too Many Christmas Trees, in which Steed’s weird Christmas nightmares start to become reality. The boys will be back in 2025 for the third episode in their triptych The Pop Explosion.

Maximum Power is back at last with its long-awaited coverage of the 1981 series of Blakes 7, starting with the season première Rescue. We’ll be back again on this Sunday to talk about the second episode, Power.

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 celebrated Christmas by catching up with friend-of-the-podcast Frazer Gregory to watch what might be the best of all the Star Trek films, Star Trek: First Contact.