 Hello. Hello. I did the stereotypical leaving the microphone switched off. Classic. It's a cut. To be fair, I nearly forgot to plug mine in. So folks off to a good start. All right, let me just get this all sorted here. Does the sound okay for you? Sound is perfection. I've got a very good quality microphone on your end. First of all, loving the background. Very good choice. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I made this. I don't know what it was now, about two years ago, nearly, I think now. I started trying to make a CGI version of the original console room. I'm currently redoing it now in Blender to make it a little bit more photorealistic. It's going to be for a video at some point, but I thought I'd set it as my background just to make it because behind me is actually quite boring. It's just all in a good case. I'll just move that fan, actually. Because I know I feel I feel I need to get one through. Let me just scour my computer for an image. I'm sure I have something on here. Okay, hold on a second. There we go. Perfect. Lovely. Now I can have that there. It's just a big eye, two eyes on the side of your head now. I feel like I'm being watched. Now I can just never address that and just have it be there. Right. Let me have my other little camera going. Just so I have, it's a bit easier to edit. There we go. Right. I do this every time. I never have an intro for these. So I go to be like, all right, let's start the interview, but then I'm like, oh wait, I have nothing to start with. So I'll just say, hello. Hello. Hello. Thank you for having me on. It's a great honour. No, it's a pleasure to have you here, my man. It's, I mean, much like everyone I bring on, I'm a big fan. I've loved your content since the first Hartnell review came out. It's absolutely terrific what you do. Thank you very much. Thank you. So we'll jump into it. We'll jump in. First of all, I mean, the main and obvious thing I have to praise about you is the sheer research and the flow as well of all of the sort of main doctoral views. It just, they all seem to go very well and go through the history. It's always very interesting. Even to the fact of you planning your Q&A, based in separating it into sections, like everyone else when they do Q&A, they just kind of do it rapid fire, but it's like, no, no, it needs to be, needs to be sorted here. Yes. I'm a bit slow and ponderous in that way sometimes. I think it's the teacher in me. I have to structure things. Well, that really came out of the fact that once I, once I looked at all the questions and started recording for the Q&A, I realised that that was going to be a really long video. So I thought I really need to split this up into parts. So yeah, I thought I'd theme them onto things. So people that had no interest in my personal life would be able to skip over that and get to the important stuff. They're missing out. I watched all three. I took some time to put them because, you know, I'm what you'd call a casual fan. I've watched all the reviews, but that's where I stopped. So I've watched the Q&As. There are a lot of interesting stuff, but obviously I had to cut a lot of my questions because I'm like, oh wait, he's already answered most of them. So I can always put new spins on things. That's true. That's true. What is your name? With all of... Well, it's not Dick. I'll tell you that much. A lot of people like to call me. I picked clip originally when I was back in November of 2016 when I decided I was going to give YouTube a go. I thought I need a name for my channel and it's need to be something kind of catchy. And I didn't necessarily want to make it specific to Doctor Who because I do at some point want to do some other things and didn't want to completely brand my channel in that way. And I thought, I don't need something kind of maybe a bit self-deprecating. Yes, that's true. I mean, it is my obsession. But still, I don't want to close off different avenues in the future. But yeah, I thought Clever Rick and it was Clever Rick for about 10 minutes. And I thought that's awful because the one thing I hate more than being called Dick is being called Rick. So yeah, I thought, well, it's got to be Clever Dick, isn't it? Because of Clever Dick, but I've actually been quite surprised. A lot of people, maybe it's an international thing, but even some of the students that I teach who have stumbled across my channel have thought that it might be something slightly deviant at first because people don't seem to realise that Dick is actually short for Richard. Yeah, I mean, it is one of those things because funnily enough, there was something I was going to ask whether your name was either a really odd penis joke or just extremely vain. Because like it's either you're like, oh, I'm Clever Richard. How are you? I'm G. It's a mixture of vanity. Yes. I think, well, I thought, I mean, the term Clever Dick, I mean, historically is described to someone who is annoyingly kind of pedantic and likes to point things out, excuse me. And I thought, well, in a kind of self deprecating way, that's kind of what my videos are about. It's about going into the minutiae. So I thought, I think I suppose it was a way of kind of heading off any criticism, perhaps, before it got to me by saying, yes, I know I'm annoying. Getting out of the way, I think. Well, whatever, would you say that works? Or do you still see comments like, oh, this guy's disappearing up his over up backside? Rarely. But you know, I mean, it's YouTube, isn't it? So you're going to get some people that get very, very cross from time to time. But generally, people are very, very nice and complimentary. And I have to have to take everything in the same way that I would with any criticism, I have to take it with a pinch of salt, you know, because I'm, every time I do a video, it's a wonderful support mechanism, I suppose, for the appreciation that people show and the gratitude that people show, which really makes it kind of really all worth it, you know, I know that sounds a bit cliche, but you know, it's true, you know, because that's what I kind of set out to do, to do something that was entertaining and informative and maybe a little bit different from what else was available. I mean, I've always been quite conscious of the fact that being a fan for, you know, going on 30 years now, and having the privilege of being able to amass all the DVDs and the magazines and the books and having the time and money to be able to do that puts me in quite a privileged position. And whilst the kind of things that that I like, you can get on the DVDs and fantastic work, I'm conscious of the fact that a lot of people, either because of where they live or how much money they have, haven't really got access to that kind of information other than written on Wikipedia. So, you know, I'm quite pleased that for a lot of people like that, it acts as a way to very easily, you know, delve into what's so great about the show and why I love it so much, you know. Oh, totally. I absolutely get it. Also, before we get back to the questions, I know you mentioned it in one of your Q&As, but it's fun to see it in person as it were. Your obsession with, you know, it's truly present. I only say that because I've got the same thing with the word um. I've been bullying myself about it to the point where I'm trying to stop it, especially because I've got the live show coming up, but it's always that little thing that comes up. Yeah, and you become even more conscious of it, don't you, when you're making videos and they're going online. But we're our own worst critics. We really notice these things and pick holes in it ourselves. Yeah, I think that all goes back to the fact that despite the fact that I'm a very verbose and wordy person, when I was younger, I think I struggled in some way to express myself. And I think that was partly what drove me to reading lots and enlarging my vocabulary so much. So I got into that habit, I think, when I was younger of just always going, do you know what I mean? Do you understand me, you know, you know? Yeah. Just seeking that clarification that I was making sense and wasn't just waffling nonsense. So yeah, it's a habit that yeah, I'd like to break. Yeah, the amount of I'm sure editing, you agree with me of the both the same thing, it's just like, oh, I said it again. It's just so you cut that little bit out. It just keeps coming. It's yeah, I can relate to that completely. So going back to the reviews. There's there's my arms. There we go. Where does let's say the first Hartnell one or the first companion ones you did, where does the process start? Is it just the research side of things? Is it going back to the DVDs or the books? Where does it all start? Well, the whole thing started partly out of having the opportunity and the inclination to go and do something on YouTube. And that kind of coincided with the fact that I had managed to it got to the point in the DVD releases where pretty much all of them had been released and I had been getting them and higgledy-piggledy order that they were originally released in. I had the opportunity then to actually sit down and watch all of Doctor Who from the beginning, listening to the missing stories and watching tele-snaps for those ones that were missing and buying the odd one that I hadn't yet got a hold of to fill in the gaps as I went. And so I'd started watching all of those and I found it really interesting because although I'd seen them all before it gave me some interesting new perspectives, considering how things that I'd seen kind of taken out of context and seen in isolation, how they played a bit differently and I appreciated them slightly differently when put into the context of the whole show. So I was reading things and looking stuff up as I always do, just to help enrich that enjoyment really. And I thought, you know, this is where there's an opportunity for me to make something, to kind of condense all this in perhaps a more accessible way for people. So the original video, the very first one I did, which I actually had to take down and re-upload at a later date, because I used the orbital cover of the Doctor Who theme for the opening theme and the music company about a year or so afterwards said, no, you're not allowed to do this. And I said, but it's not monetized. And they went, no, you can't use it. And I said, I'm talking over it. So I had to re-upload it. So that's the last time I try and be cool and use something that isn't a BBC copyright, because at least I know where I stand with them. But anyway, I did the first video, which was just a kind of a statement of intent. And it kind of grew out of that. I thought, I didn't know how it would go down, whether I'd be allowed to put it online because it had so much footage from the show in albeit transformed, and for the purposes of review and all that. I didn't know. And without going to the nitty gritty of all that, it kind of went through. And then I thought, right, now I plan to do a video on each era. And the thing was, I didn't quite know what I was going to say in it. It kind of, I thought, you know, is this a review? Is this a guide? Is it a retrospective? Is it an introduction for new viewers or viewers of new who who hadn't seen the classic era or found it intimidating? Is it a creative thing? I didn't quite know. And I just kind of sat down. Funnily enough, I was working as a supply teacher at the time. And I don't work for the supply company anymore. So I think it's okay for me to say that one day I just went, I was out of school and in between lessons when I probably should have been doing something to earn my money. I just sat on one of the computers and wrote half of the William Hartnell episode. And I just thought, what are the key information that people are going to need? So for that, I drew a lot just out of my brain. And then I then as I refined it, I looked online and correlated a few things and then put that together. But that first episode was very much a kind of a very much an overview. It's not as comprehensive as perhaps I would do it now or the other videos that I do now. Because I wasn't quite sure, I think, of what people would stick around for. And I didn't necessarily want to go into real nitty gritty. Would you say that's changed all these episodes later? Yeah, definitely. I think once I did the, I think it was really once I did, well, first of all, the Tom Baker video, which was obviously a bit longer because it's a longer era. But also that then being Tom Baker is almost like a lightning rod for Fandom, I suppose. A lot of people started watching that video. So pretty much overnight, I was getting thousands of views, whereas I'd been sort of cruising along quite nicely for a year or so and having very nice supportive comments. And, you know, I'd gained a few hundred subscribers. But then I uploaded that Tom Baker video and that really gained some traction. And then when I realized that people were appreciating as I slowly started adding a bit more detail, certainly to the pre-production part of it, I thought that it would be too challenging for me perhaps to get to spend too much time on like the casting and the producers and the development of things. So you'll see in those in those early ones, I very much skip straight to like the casting of the doctor. And that's it. And then I go on and start talking about the stories. I do hope at some point to return to those earlier ones and just sort of update them. I've got better equipment now as well. So I, you know, they could be an HD and I could do some more interesting things about some of the minutiae because I felt I gave a bit short shrift to some of the key people who inputted certainly in that Hartnell episode, you know, people like Delia Darbyshire and the music and those kinds of things that I kind of glossed over a little bit. I'd like to go in a bit more detail, but sorry, it's a bit of an elaborate way of answering your question. I suppose the thing is, is that they'll do in a few years, you know, they'll, they'll re-release it. It'll be a nice HD cover by Leadbinding or someone, and you can go like all five hours on the Hartnell area. It's going to be class. Yeah, perhaps. But I think, like you say, though, I've always been quite conscious of keeping it, although I know the vast majority of people watching are going to be fans of Doctor Who or at least enthusiastic about Doctor Who. Some of the nicest comments that I've received have actually been from people bizarrely who say, I don't really like Doctor Who, but I love watching your videos. And I find that, you know, the height of flattery really, because it shows that aside from the subject matter, people are enjoying, like you say, the structure and the pacing of it. So I've always been sort of conscious of, of how to, to sort of make it flow in that way. And so now, when I, when I now add in more detail, I would say I agonise far more now about the writing side of it. So the first thing that I do, I have a kind of a, I have a, the Word document that has the whole script on has, for each section, for each Doctor's era and companion, it has like bullet points that I've solely added to randomly about talking points. So I must remember to talk about that. And then that kind of evolves further when I then, I then look back at a variety of different materials. So I'll look at Doctor Who magazines, if it's from the time period itself, which obviously with New Who, I can do that more easily now, I can look at that. But I also look at like the, the, the series companions. And I look at, there's a great series of books called About Time, which is by Tapwood, which is kind of chronicling, far more comprehensively, even than me, although I do find them a bit overly cynical at times. But they, they look at, they break down every story, every era, what was going on behind the scenes. And one of the things that has really influenced my approach is the, the fact that they look at the social historical context of what was going on in the world at the time, what informed the stories in that way. And yeah, and so then I just sit down, it does, it's probably the longest period of time I spend as the writing of it. And then once I've finally got that done, it feels like I've climbed a mountain, but I finally get it. And I think, yes, I finally finished this now. And it just kind of grows and grows and grows. I have a rough idea of, you know, what the length is probably going to be just because of the topics I'm talking about. Like when I was doing the recent Brigadier video, I thought, you know, this is going to be a big one. And then about halfway through, I'd got up writing to about the John Pertwee era, so the main Brigadier. And I thought, right, I'm now going to bullet point every single thing I need to talk about just so I know how long this is going to take. And the bullet points lasted like another page of A4. So I thought, yeah, there's quite a lot here. So, and I do find with the newer stuff as well, I do have to go away and do a little bit of research, like buying DVDs and watching like Sarah Jane Adventures, which I hadn't really watched properly when it was on TV originally. I know, well, you do have to bear in mind that I think I was at university at the time that Sarah Jane Adventures was on. Yeah, so in fact, I do remember I worked in, I was working in Waterstones and this gentleman came in and bought like the first novelizations of Sarah Jane Adventures. I remember thinking to myself, this is completely sort of passed me by, I need to tune in and watch this. And I don't think there was iPlayer in those days either. So it was harder to, I have since gone back, I don't need to do anymore. I have got the complete Sarah Jane Adventures here, which was purchased specifically to, yeah, back into the Tardis behind me. That was purchased specifically for my video on the Brigadier and of course will come in handy when I eventually do one on Sarah Jane. So sometimes it takes a little bit of time because I have to go and invest a bit of time in looking at that, you know. But yeah, it just sort of grows out of that really. So where it all begins is just the kind of the weird combination of what's in my brain and what I read and sort of write and then go away and do something else and watch something and then come back and finish it off. And yeah, I'm not perhaps as disciplined as people would like me to be with it. No, I'm getting quite the opposite vibe, to be fair. I mean, there's clearly a lot of thought that goes into each of these videos and it's impressive for how much does indeed go into it. Oh, well, thank you. Yeah, I think, yeah, I'm certainly not a perfectionist and certainly what I produce is not perfection. Of course, a perfectionist would say that, but I think the thing about perfectionists is they never get anything done and I do get things done. But I am someone who I try and set high standards for myself. Because each time I do things I like to kind of push myself a little bit as to what I can achieve or get away with, you know, whether that be something to do with the editing or some special effect or some sound aspect. I keep sort of moving it on kind of thing. And I'm conscious of the fact that people enjoy the standard of stuff that I've produced. And I think it's fair to say I'm quite proud of the videos that I've done so far. And I look back about and sometimes I'm a little bit surprised that I think, oh, that's not too bad actually, that part there. And I think, right, well, next time I've got to make sure that I do at least as good as that. So I don't really, it doesn't stop me from doing things. Probably the thing that stops me from doing things is my job. But seeing as that's teaching young children, that's sometimes going to always be a higher priority. But one of the benefits of my job is that I do have periods of time where I can dedicate myself wholly to doing a video or something. So it's just finding that balance. Absolutely. I mean, I work in a nursery, so much like yourself, when you're looking after children, that does obviously take priority. I see you there. Although teaching older children, what age group do you teach out of curiosity? Well, high school, so 11 to 16. That's tricky at age. They're very rewarding as well. Oh, I'm sure, yeah. I'm lucky enough to be in a kind of a unique position now. I used to be a full-time English teacher, traditional English teacher in the classroom with 30 students. The role that I have now means that I work with smaller groups and I have a room in the main corridor, which is kind of open to help with literacy. And English is my main focus. So I support literacy and I'm the librarian as well. So I have a kind of open door policy. So I've had quite a few students over the years who've come in and perhaps have been a little bit like I was at school, kind of not really fitting in, not really having a place. Although I was quite fortunate. I had a kind of very small but dedicated sort of friendship group and we were all equally kind of nerdy, especially about Dr. Who. But there's been students through our doors from time to time, of course, don't have that support group. So I've been quite fortunate to be able to be that person who can talk to them about Dr. Who or Star Wars or Marvel or something like that. No, that's terrific. I'm sure. I know if I was at school, I'd get a right kick out of that. Going back, would you, I'm curious, because there's obviously, when you delve into the sort of nitty gritty of the show and the like you say, the minutiae of it, you'll learn a lot of sort of fun little tidbits that you might not have known otherwise. Would you say there's some favorites that you've picked up over the past, whether it be about a specific actor or just the show being made? I think some of the some of the most interesting things that I've learned doing these videos is going back and looking at the kind of the biographies of the lead actors and learning about their past and what brought them to the place that they were. Obviously, Christopher Alquiston's autobiography that came out coincided with me doing my video or writing my video on Christopher Alquiston. So that was quite a fortunate thing where research was very pleasurable in that sense. I did the same with Peter Davison, read his autobiography. I want to get a hold of the biography that William Hartnell's actual granddaughter, Jessica Carney, wrote, but I don't have a copy of it at the minute, because I'd like to do a bit more on his background because I find that quite fascinating, the idea that he was he was kind of ashamed of his past and the fact that his father, he never met his father, he never knew his father and he kind of constructed a bit of a false history for himself that he would tell to people so that people wouldn't learn. Obviously, when he grew up, it would have been perhaps a far more judgmental time. And I do know that he was fired, I think by Noel Coward, he was in a play and he showed up one day to a performance late for the rehearsal. Sorry, it wasn't the performance of the rehearsal period. And Noel Coward just tore a strip of him in front of the whole cast and fired him on the spot. And I just think of William Hartnell, who we think of as this very cantankerous lead being kind of torn a strip off by, I think it was Noel Coward, it might have been someone like Lawrence Olivier, it was someone big like that. So yeah, and again, see, this is why I'd like to go back to the videos and just put in a little snippet of how they got there a little bit more. One of the most interesting stories is one that I haven't actually done as part of a video yet, but I do and I eventually, I do intend to, perhaps when I eventually talk about the TARDIS, because I do have a sort of TARDIS appendix video planned. And that was about Peter Brachatsky, which a lot of people don't really know anything about him. You know, he was the designer of the original TARDIS console room and the exterior, the interior of the TARDIS on an earthly child. And people don't really know about him because he died before fandom really started going. He's all died in 1980. So Doctor Who magazine had just sort of started and people had just started kind of, you know, the Doctor Who Appreciation Society had kind of been founded, but there wasn't lots. And the only kind of anecdote for a long time that anyone knew about him, there's that he was quite grumpy. And so, because Verity Lambert and Maurice Hussein said, you know, he just didn't really seem to care. And that's how he ends up in an adventure in space and time. I was going to say, I was wondering if he didn't seem to care. But there's quite a more to it than that because a few years back in Doctor Who magazine, Graham Kibble White did a kind of a little bit of investigative journalism to sort of get in touch with his family and find out who he was. And he was quite ill at the time, which was one of the reasons probably why he was a bit cantankerous. But he had come from Poland and had been a young man during the the Second World War, so he'd experienced the occupation of Poland by the Nazis. He had been in the Polish resistance. He ended up at one point randomly in Germany from where he sent a postcard to someone in his family. And he'd sent it from Berkshire Garden, which was the kind of the heart of Nazism, really. That was where Hitler had his eagles nest and gearing had a house and all this kind of thing. And you think, why is this Polish resistance member in the heart of Nazism? And coincidentally, about the same time, there was a planned special operation by the sort of forerunner of MI6 to parachute two SAS members into Berkshire Garden to assassinate Hitler. And they were supposed to make contact with two resistance members who were going to guide them and help them, which in the end, it was called off. But Rahatski was there at that time. And then he fled from there. And then the Nazis were after him specifically. And they caught him in Liechtenstein and sent him to Dachau concentration camp where he was for about four months before the war ended, essentially. So, you know, all this fascinating, I think that's the thing that I find really interesting is that Doctor Who is always like a springboard for me to find out other things. I was saying the other day about how it's been sound slightly pretentious, but it's almost like a foundation for me, but also like a prison through which I've seen the world. I've learned so much about and been inspired to go and learn about other historical periods and other programs and the nature of television making and all those kinds of things just through my interest in this silly science fiction show, you know? I suppose because of the show being so big, you're always going to fight. I mean, it's been going on for so long that even World War Two and Hitler can be just brought up in the tidbits. Well, absolutely. I await the TARDIS video whenever that would. I guess I'm not quite sure I'm going to get that story in. I guess. Well, unless that's a separate thing where you do like the Sonic, I don't know. I thought, yeah, I thought, well, currently I have a plan for because eagle eyed viewers of my channel may have noticed if you look at the playlists that the companion series is Appendix C. Don't ask me why I made it Appendix C and not Appendix A, but I did. Appendix A is the TARDIS and I'm not quite sure how I'm going to do it yet, whether I'm going to do each iteration of the TARDIS or whether I'm going to do one big video. I suppose it depends on how much you can find on each TARDIS. Well, that's true. I imagine like one TARDIS appears in one story and you're like, okay, I've got to do this one then. Well, as I said, I mean, I've been trying to, I want it to be kind of like a blend between the kind of the factual real world things and the fictional universe. So I want to have like a tour that I create a CGI reconstruction of the TARDIS console room and then you can go around and see it. So I've been studying for several years now. We talk about the minutiae. The other night, I was finding the exact depth of the screwdriver, I don't know what you call it, but you know, in a screw, when you put the screwdriver into the screw, there's like a notch. I was trying to find what the depth was to make sure that the screw on one of the controls on my TARDIS console that I'm building is the correct depth. Well, that's, yeah, minutiae, I'd say is the word there. Insane, probably. Well, it's a testament to how much work goes in, I suppose. It's not something I would personally think of, but there we go. That's why I'm not making the reviews. Well, I thought, you know, I've got to make this screw and I thought, well, I've got to make the notch in it. So how deep should it be? So I looked up what the screw was. Fortunately, there's been so, I mean, like you're saying about the work that I've done, but truly all the stuff that I've created has all been standing on the shoulders of giants, really, of things like Doctor Who magazine and Andrew Pixley and all these Richard Bignol, you know, all these people that have done all this research and really like created a kind of a scholarly history of Doctor Who in so many ways. And that's something that's inspired me. I mean, when I grew up, Doctor Who wasn't on the television. So my continued kind of exposure of Doctor Who was through that kind of almost academic study of television. I mean, Doctor Who magazine has always been now, of course, it has to be promotional as well, because the show's on the air and all that, but it's always been a kind of a separate work from any other kind of TV tie in magazine. It's a fantastic, you know, resource. And I very much kind of built on their work, really, or stole it, if you want to put it that way. As long as it's not word for word. Again, you being a teacher, you just got to change a little bit. Just change the odd word. Yeah, there we go. No, I can't be even wiser. So, I suppose building off the TARDIS video concept, how much of the future is planned? Because obviously you're doing every Doctor, but you're also doing what seems to be a companion from each era at the moment. Well, that's kind of coincidental, really. So, yeah, a lot of people think that I'm choosing the companions and I'm doing it in some sort of pattern. But actually, the companion videos were something that kind of came out of the fact that I wanted to do some shorter videos. Ironically, the previous one was very long. But I wanted to do something that I would be able to get out a bit quicker. I'd created a Patreon page because a lot of people had said, you know, you should do that, because I can't monetize my videos and I wouldn't anyway, because I don't really like adverts interrupting things on YouTube. So, people said, you know, we'd like to give you some money and I thought, well, I can't really say no, if lots of people are saying they should do that or not. So, I thought, you know, I'd create that and I didn't make tears and things like that, partly because I didn't know what I could offer as value for money other than what I was already doing. But I always said that, you know, if people wanted to give me some money, it should be something that they wouldn't miss if it fell out of their wallet or something like that kind of thing. But I thought, I need to give them a little bit more input into things because to recognize. So, I do a, from time to time, I do a poll on which companion I should look at and then the one that wins the poll is the one that I eventually do as a video. So, the Brigadier won one last time. In fact, the first poll I did didn't include the Brigadier. And as soon as I popped him in in the second one, he ran away with it before that was Ace was the forerunner. And I know there were a few people that were disappointed that it wasn't Ace. So, the idea was rather, well, we'll see next time, I'll put a new poll on soon so people can vote for that. But it was, it was, the idea behind that was that I wanted to do thing I didn't necessarily want to do from the very beginning in order. I wanted people to say, well, if I, you know, what to learn about Ace, for example, they wouldn't have to wait years before I necessarily got there, you know, they could, they could choose and they could vote for it. It's just coincidental. Maybe this is just the, the kind of neat tidy ordered fan that, that are my patrons that they voted first of, well, I did Susan, I did choose Susan to do first because I thought, well, that's a nice one to start with. And then they voted for Jamie, which caused the second, and then they vote for Brigadier who's mainly associated with the third. So, next time, I don't know. I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I have to keep reminding people like they're saying like, who are you going to do next? I said, I don't know. It depends on what people vote for because they assume I'm going to do Sarah Jane or someone, you know, but it could be, it could be Martha, it could be, it could be, it could be, it could be any of them. But anyone who doesn't know that just sort of jumps to like, I don't know, Yazz. It's just like, what? Hold on. Well, saying that I did, I did, when I started it, I did leave any new who companions off the list only because at that point I hadn't done the Christopher Eccleston or no, I hadn't done the David Tennant video. And so I didn't want to do anyone that I hadn't already covered in the main series. I think the next one only just to make it kind of fair for people who perhaps wanted someone from the classic era, I might still leave off the new who companions and just do that and then add them all after I do the Matt Smith video for the new ones. Very patiently awaiting that next one. The Matt Smith era hit that sweet spot for my age where I was just sort of getting into understanding the show because I liked David Tennant's era, but I was still young, so I was just kind of watching it and not fully taking it in. So the Smith era will be a fun one to watch. How goes that one? Well, it's one of my favorite eras as well. It's going well. I mean, one of the things about the new series is that I've kind of lived and breathed Doctor Who for so many years, but the newer stuff from a production point of view and the kind of not the gossip, but the kind of nitty gritty behind the scenes, you kind of have to delve in a little bit more and cut through some of the rumor online. There's less, you know, Doctor Who magazines have done lots of interviews with classic production stuff where you can kind of get to the bottom of things, you know, and obviously, even with the first few years of the new era, you've got a bit more of an insight perhaps from what Russell T. Davis has written in The Writer's Tale and things like that. But I do find I have to do a lot more, it's less in here. I have to do a lot more actual research to really find out because I would say that I have, the way I've enjoyed New Who is much more just as a viewer rather than as an active kind of other than what I've read in Doctor Who magazine, which usually, as I say, promotional. So it's kind of trying to think away, not saying it harshly, but it's kind of there's a lot of PR there, there's not, there's a lot of hype, but it doesn't always say very much, if you know what I mean, like people say, like, I really love working on this, I love working on this person, but you don't always get the nitty gritty like behind the scenes. And of course, with the classic era, you've got so many people reflecting on it, you've got so many fantastic documentaries that are really detailed that you can get down and really drill down to some of the fine details where the new era takes a little bit more work to access that information. So when you get to the witty era, you're going to be in trouble then, because it's been defined by spoilers and then down the hatches. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know about that. Yeah, we'll see. But yeah, it's, it, I mean, it's, again, as always, I feel that sense of, you know, how am I going to, I always kind of worry a little bit. I think, you know, how am I going to do this? How am I going to maintain that, that standard, but I somehow kind of pull it off with, with the Matt Smith era, of course, is you've got so much to cover arguably perhaps more so than the David Tennant era in that, you know, I've got, I've got the new, the new production team coming in. I want to focus a little bit more on the music, which I haven't looked at so much so far in the, in the new era, because for me, Murray Gold's music, I felt really developed in a way that I enjoyed in the Matt Smith era. I've got to talk about the, the emergent popularity of it in America again, because in that second Matt Smith season, that was where they really kind of launched it in America again, didn't they? And they feel it. Oh yeah, especially with like series six. In America and all that. Yeah. Yeah. And, and then of course, I got the 50th anniversary. Oh God. Yeah. For some reason, I didn't even clock. I was like, Oh yeah, so, oh yeah. So it's kind of trying to think how am I going to weave all these things kind of together? Because I don't want it to be like little snippets of information and zooming on. You kind of got to find a bit of a, a through line for it. I mean, the foot, you asked me earlier about, you know, where does it start? And I'll, it's just occurred to me actually is the first thing I usually come up with, funny enough, is how am I going to start this video? Because I quite like doing my little cold opens on things. My favorite one of those is probably in the tenant video, where you have little David MacDonald watching his telly. And I'm like, Oh, I'm glad you like that. Because that was what, yeah, that, that came out pretty much how I hoped it would. I was a bit worried because the only photograph of David MacDonald at that age is, is not the highest quality. But I think I kind of pulled it off and had him watching, you know, City of Death on the television. That was based on an anecdote that he told about it. Originally, I'd hoped to have like, somehow have children running around in the back garden with a Tom Baker scarf, because I only had that one photo of him looking very kind of amazed. Because actually, I think it was because he'd received some fantastic present for Christmas. But I thought that that works, watching the telly in his pajamas. But yeah, I thought, well, that's the through line into it, isn't it? Because it's the dream of tenant and becoming the doctor and then having to relinquish the role of the doctor, you know, his I don't want to go is pure David Tennant saying that line, you know, I don't think of the doctor saying that line. It that's a bit of a fourth wall breaking. Well, it's is tenant and Davis saying I don't want to go. And they haven't, have they? But tenant already came back. And it's still in that new game. And Davis will be, yeah, that didn't work in hindsight. You can't escape. And that'll be a funny one to come back to though. So he says, I don't want to go. And so he didn't. And here he is again. Yeah. Yeah. So I had that through line. And with the with the Sylvester McCoy video, I felt very much this is about, instead of rounding off in a way, the Colin Baker era, when it did, I thought it would be more appropriate to say how it was cut off in a way. So that was why I have that opening with the phone call, where I kind of reimagined how it would be, how it would have gone. That's actually the actual dialogue from that phone call is from an interview with Colin Baker. So I didn't just make it up. So it might not be a hundred percent true, but certainly from his perspective. No, that was another terrific cold. And yeah. And then with the, you know, I just think about how am I going to draw, draw the viewer in kind of thing? That's how I kind of begin. I must submit the one, the one thing that I, that I, I mean, it's different from the kind of videos that I make. But the one thing that kind of I find a bit not just on YouTube is a YouTuber popping up and going, what's up guys? How's it going? And kind of smash that like, yeah, that all that. That was the thing that was the thing that I leave the, you know, like and subscribe if you want more videos right until the end. And maybe that's just me being too, I don't know, not, not enthusiastic enough about getting people. But I always felt that if it was good, people got to the end that they're going to like and subscribe as a result of it. So I've never thought about how to make my videos to appeal to a particular algorithm. I do have an audience in mind. I have myself in mind. If I was watching this, would I, what would I like kind of thing? I'd say the only, the only kind of concession I do make in my videos to kind of the YouTube format is that sometimes they go a little bit faster than I would want to make if I was making, say a proper, proper documentary. I was going to start again, that comes back to the pacing thing. It's such Yeah, different because I personally cut quite quickly. I'm sort of known from the fast pace and maybe that's just because I don't like the sound of my own voice as much as I can. I can. Well, also, you're doing it far more naturally than me as well, aren't you? So, you know, mine is still very, mine are very contrived, you know, I write it down and then I, you know, I stand here and do my voice and then I listen through the whole thing. I make so many mistakes when I record and I listen through the whole thing and I cut out every single breath in the latest ones because it annoys me to hear me go, especially with my sentences as well. Because I've been, I've been criticised for how long. It's, yeah. And you kind of do that, don't you? Because at the end of the sentence as well, I can't help it. I just breathe out whenever I say a joke. I'm like, and I'm like, Oh, great. I have to find where I can cut that off. Yeah, yeah, you notice all these little foibles that you do that you're not aware of. So, yeah, so I do do all that, but it's much more contrived, as I say, than it seems. But yeah, I've tried to slow down a little bit more. I think it's a little bit like feeling like on the radio, apparently, there's a, I don't know if this is a bit of an urban myth, but on, on like BBC radio, apparently, there's some system which kicks in that if no one speaks like a DJ speaks for like 10 seconds or five seconds, if it's like dead air, it automatically starts playing something. And I don't know if that's a bit of an urban myth, but it is, it is like you hear where, you know, everyone's trained or the DJs, they're trained to just never stop speaking, never take a breath kind of between the thing and then move straight onto the song. And there's no silence because it gives people an opportunity to switch over. And I think, I don't know if it's, it's certainly not necessarily a conscious thing, but in my videos on YouTube, I think I've been aware of not leaving similar dead spaces within, whether that be with the visuals or with the audio in some way. I've tried to kind of slow down a little bit, leave a little bit more breaks and bring the music in, but then have, I think if I was doing it professionally, I'd probably slow it down a bit more than the video had probably got two hours long. Well, I mean, to be fair, I found oddly some of the longer episodes to be some of my favorites because they go so in depth. I mean, again, like the Tom Baker one, for example, and I think that is one of the longest ones, and that is still the highest viewed one. Now granted, that's probably because it's Tom Baker that helps. There's more to talk about and I find it very other. I'll be honest. Now I'm just trying to think of how you're going to start the Smith one, like, because you said about the cold open, so now I'm trying to just guess in my own head, like, is it going to be making fun of the adventure games? Is it going to be a phone call with Stephen Woffat? I'm not sure how I'm going to present it, but I think, to give you a bit of a, I think how it's going to go, because all these things are up in the air until I do the final draft, you know, I have things written down, but how it's going to go, it's not set in stone yet, but I think the in for this will be about Stephen Woffat's entrance as a way of becoming the showrunner, whereas the last episode was very much about Tenant, because I'd looked at Russell G. Davis more in the Chris Elkestone episode. I think this one will be more about how Woffat becomes the writer, you know, the head writer. Oddly, that does make a lot of sense, because with Tenant, obviously his story was so ingrained with Doctor Who, even as a child. But like with Matt Smith, for example, it's more of just another job. At least that's how it looks from the outside looking in. So focusing in on Woffat. Well, yeah, I mean, he wasn't a fan necessarily, was he? No, I think so. Certainly embraced it, Paul Hart. If you need a Woffat, I'll, you know, I'm available. I'll do it. I'll bear that in mind. I'll hop in. I think I'll bear that in mind, because I'm terrible at the voices. Like, when I did, I think when I did the very first, the very first, I did the William Hartnell video and I had Sidney Newman quoted talking about how Verity Lambert was from a piss and vinegar. Well, no, with that time, I just did it in my voice. And then when I did the Patrick Troutin one, and I started to feel a little bit more, because I thought, I've got to do the voice where he's like, what's she guys doing, you know? And I made him sound like some sort of New Yorkers, probably nothing like how he sounded at all. You know, but I felt there needs to be a little bit, I've got a little bit more confident with doing some of the different voices. But yeah, I'm not an impressionist. So well, I'm pretty much all voices. I cut, I slip in and out all the time. So if you want a voice, if you do, if you need a little Schmidt, I'll hop in and do a little Schmidt. If you want a moffat, or I'll do a moffat. If you need an Amy Pond, get someone else. Well, I'd say the Scottish accent is one that I cannot, I cannot manage. I can do the odd one. I've done like, like, as a teacher, like with lockdown and stuff, we did, I tend to teach groups of students who struggle a little bit with reading independently. So during lockdown, as part of that, they were going to have to read novels. And I thought this is going to be quite a challenge for them. So I said to my head of department, I said, well, do you want me to record? Can I just record it? And she said, yeah, that'd be really good. In fact, record all the books. And we'll just do it for the all year group. So yeah, it was during lockdown. Yeah, I did. But I kind of enjoyed it. I did like the woman in black. I did Sherlock Holmes and I had to do all cockney accent. I thought, well, I've got to do the accent. Oh, I'd take good money for that. Well, you can actually get the sign of four on my Patreon. I gave it away. And this year, for Christmas, I'm thinking about maybe the woman in black, I might upload on to there, which I did a few spooky sound effects as well to make it a bit more immersive. So totally. Yeah, I'd listen to that. It's a terrible northern accent that I used in the woman in black, because it's not specific about exactly where they go in that story. But it's somewhere up north. Where was that in the Eccleston episode? I would have loved that. Oh, that would have been a proper tickle for me. Well, thank you very much for coming on, Mr. Dick Films, if that is your only name. Or should I call you Rick? Definitely not. I'd rather be called Dick. Yeah, thank you so much for coming on. Oh, thank you for having me. Oh, it's an honor. Thank you very much. I was very, very, very gratified when you said, can I promote your sort of Brigadier video, and then seeing it in the roundup of your different things last week was incredibly gratifying. So thank you for that. So yeah, and when you said, well, I must have him on the show at some point, I thought, well, yeah, absolutely, I'm more than happy to be. No, and then, no, I've been, you know, yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, I've been, I've been on a few things these last few months. Yeah, I listened to your Hoonoo appearance. Yeah. Well, that was that that was interesting, because it turns out that Josh lives just down the road from me coincidentally. He told me about that, because we were planning an in-person interview anyway. I was going to come down to him. But then whilst we were doing it, he said, Oh, by the way, if you ever needed Cleverdick Films as well, and I'm like, I'm already interviewing it. God damn it, I could have gone both of you. Well, maybe for, maybe for the future at some point. The series two of the Community Show. I'm coming down there. I was about to say. Well, I was, I was, I was rather disappointed actually, because as I'm saying, is being on these, it's really made me feel a sense of, I mean, like the name of your show, The Community, which sounds a little bit pathetic, but I've never really been a part of a community before. My, my fandom when I was growing up was very much, it wasn't quite solitary. I, you know, I had a good friend, Simon, who we both enjoy Doctor Who, but I didn't really go to conventions. I didn't really, I wasn't really part of these aspects and stuff. So they want to, one of the great benefits of doing my channel has been, you know, meeting fantastic people like yourself who are really, I've been really amazed at all the kinds of things that you're doing and Josh is doing, Adam Martin, all these people making these podcasts and videos. And, you know, it's, it's really inspiring. And I wish in a way, I'm kind of envious because I'm a little bit older than you guys, I think. And I kind of, we didn't have, yeah, a little bit, we didn't really have those same opportunities when I, when I was younger. So it's great to see, and I don't mean that in a kind of, I mean, in the sense of, it's great to see that you, you know, you're people are using these things to do a lot of good and spread a lot of positivity, you know. So, so thank you for that. Because even when I started doing my channel, there wasn't as much around. So it's lovely to see you for letting me be a part of it, even if only in a small way. Oh, it's an absolute pleasure. And I'll be, I'll be adding you to my little piece of art I've got of all my guests. Oh, I'm still needing to figure out where I'm going to plonk you because it's surprisingly already quite busy. But I'm sure I'll show you that when I've figured it out. Yes. Thank you for coming on. Yeah. I think this might be one of the longer interviews. So you might hold a record there. I do that. I do that. Sorry. I have a tendency to waffle. I always say it's better to have a long, a long drawn out answer than just a, yeah, that'd be it. So I don't think I've given a year answer for a few years now. Right. I'll click the little robot lady.