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Dec. 24, 2016 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
01:00:23
Edition 281 - Richard C Hoagland & Katy Manning

Richard C Hoagland plus a Christmas interview with Dr Who's Companion in space-time travelKaty Manning - aka Jo Grant...

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Across the UK, across continental North America and around the world, on the internet, by webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes and this is The Unexplained.
Wherever in this world you are, thank you for being my friend and for supporting me across this year of 2016.
I wish you a very happy Christmas and if the Christmas holiday's past when you hear this, I wish you everything that you would wish for yourself for 2017.
I can't believe that we're already at 2017.
I know I've said this before, but it seems like only yesterday that I was sitting here and talking about the arrival of 2007 after our first year on the podcast of 2006.
And here we are, 2017.
It's been a year of, well, triumph and disaster like any other, but, you know, we've had to say goodbye to an awful lot of people who've been part of our lives, like David Bowie and many, many others in entertainment.
It's been a hard year to bear in so many ways.
There have been tragedies and terrorist attacks.
This year has been a year of instability.
And it's also been a year of change, of course, with the election of Donald Trump, who will become president in a matter of weeks at the inauguration.
That was mired in controversy.
There were arguments on both sides, and they were powerful, and they were strong.
And now, I guess, the task of the new president is to bring together his nation.
And then over here, we had the vote that nobody expected for Brexit.
The pollsters, as they were wrong in the U.S., were wrong here about that too.
So Britain is going to have to get more deeply into the negotiations because the Europeans are expecting it for Brexit, for getting out of the European Union.
So two things that were surprising in this world among many.
So 2016 has certainly left its mark on the entire world in so many ways.
There were good things, too.
I got back on the radio with this show during the year.
I was invited to take a version of this show to talk radio on digital radio in the UK nationally, which was a good thing.
And this podcast has continued to grow, as it has in previous years.
This edition of the show, very different, I think, from other editions because it is Christmas.
It's a holiday.
So we're going to do two things.
From my radio show, we're going to catch up with Richard C. Hoagland talking about the life and legacy of astronaut John Glenn, a man who definitely had the right stuff.
We'll hear from him first.
He will also talk about his new book, Due Out, Early 2017.
In fact, I think it's available already about Mars and the truth thereof.
And then we'll talk to somebody the like of whom we haven't really talked to here before.
We spoke to Dean Haglin, didn't we, from the X-Files?
Well, this time we talked to Joe Grant.
I say Joe Grant.
Joe Grant is the character.
Katie Manning is the actress.
She was Doctor Who's companion.
Some people say the most famous companion that the sci-fi time and space traveler had.
British television series, it's been running for more than 50 years.
It's been seen around the world.
It's very big on PBS in America.
And it's my great delight to bring you an interview with Katie Manning about what it was like to make Doctor Who and what it was like to know the Doctor Who that she worked with, John Pertwee, a great British actor.
So that's something slightly different, the second part of this show.
Wherever you are, I can only say again, thank you very much for your support for the show, the nice things you've said.
If you've made a donation during this year, thank you so much for helping this work to continue.
And I wish you well, wherever you are and whatever you're doing.
If you get in touch with me, by the way, as I always say, please tell me who you are, where you are, and how you use this show.
All right, let's kick off this holidays edition of The Unexplained from London by hearing from space expert and friend of mine for nearly two decades, Richard C. Hoagland from Enterprisemission.com.
And first of all, we talk about the lifetimes and legacy of the astronaut John Glenn.
John was kind of like NASA personified.
He was the last square American, you know, to go into orbit, that kind of thing.
And the one thing that struck me about him, when I watched him give, I think it was the 50th anniversary of NASA speech, and I've seen 15 minutes of that.
It might have gone on for longer.
It was faintly critical of government funding.
It wasn't faintly.
It was overtly critical of the amount of money that the government was then putting into space.
Now, I got the feeling that he was allowed to stand up at a gig like that and say those things because he was such an in-the-bricks part of NASA.
Was it the amount of money spent on space or the amount of money spent on the wrong kind of space?
Because I can't see Glenn coming out against NASA.
Well, no, he wanted more money.
He said, he basically said it was a shame that a lot of stuff stopped with Apollo and the shuttle program wasn't being continued and America was getting it wrong because it was drawing lines in the wrong places.
Well, he was definitely against President Bush's decision to terminate the shuttle program.
And because, you know, we have B-52s that are still flying.
They're like three-quarters of a century old.
Well, not quite that much, but like 50 years, half a century.
And they just refurbished them.
The shuttles, you know, had exquisite airframes.
Their avionics could have been updated.
The tile system would have evolved into state-of-the-art tile as opposed to those originals.
So, yeah, it was an incredible national investment that Bush squandered, and Glenn was not timid about saying that in public.
And he was implying that politics, which it was, was being played with space.
It was being played with space again.
Absolutely.
Totally.
And, you know, that was the politician talking.
That's what you got when he was Senator John Glenn.
Well, he was, you know, telling truth to power.
I mean, that's an example of where he disagreed with the president and he was not, you know, shrinking about it about saying it.
But the whole idea of Glenn, I mean, you have to cast your mind back to the time when John flew.
Remember, he was a war hero, two wars, military, pilot, marine, through and through.
And he was from a time when the squares, remember that old column by, oh, I'm trying to remember the columnist who did an interesting book, not Tom Wolfe, not the right stuff.
But, oh, I had him on a cruise.
He basically said that NASA, when they put John into orbit and finally went to the moon, all that, they proved that the squares, you know, the people who believe in God, country, apple pie, a handshake, their word is their, that kind of thing, that the squares won.
And the other day when John died, the last of the major squares that I've seen in history died with him.
I mean, You know, he was very much of the era.
He had the first to have the right stuff.
And you've described very eloquently, as you always do, exactly what that is and how somebody like that had to be at the beginnings of the space program.
You know, if you were going to pick people, you had to pick them of that variety.
You know, that old expression, you only get one chance to make a first impression.
John made the first impression of the United States in confrontation with the Soviet Union.
Yuri Gagarin had already flown, so he was the second man in orbit.
But when you look back on, I mean, to tell you how much of a square he was, NASA's been running like 24-7 now, the John Glenn story, which is all on 16 millimeter color film.
That's how ancient this archive footage is.
And it's got the mayor of the town where he grew up and his high school principal.
And, you know, Annie, of course, was his childhood sweetheart.
They were toddlers next door.
And they spent 73 years.
He spent 73 years, Howard, married to one woman.
That in itself qualifies him to be an American hero.
So it's just, you know, his whole life was not, you know, there's a big push now to talk about authenticity during the election.
You know, Bernie was authentic, that kind of thing.
John Glenn was and is authenticity.
He was 100% American.
He was kind of like Gary Cooper in a flight suit.
He was impeccable, and it wasn't an act.
That's who he was.
He came from the Midwest.
He came from central, the heartland of this nation, and he personified the idea of the humble pioneer who one day is killing a bear and the next day is planting his fields.
I mean, John literally did housework because he loved Annie and he didn't want her in her, you know, older years to have to do much.
Like I say, a true downhome American hero.
Do you ever get any sense of what he made of Neil Armstrong, who he didn't actually go, he didn't become a recluse, but he went into academia.
John only went, I say only went into Earth orbit.
So he was free to talk about anything that he experienced, anything he saw, anything he worked through, the technical problems, the political cutting edge of matching the Soviets, freedom, triumphing over shadows and conspiracy and secretiveness.
Because when he gave his speech to the joint session of Congress when he got back from orbit, one of the things that I've been noting in the replays that NASA's done is how much good old red, white, and blue American patriotism was on everybody's sleeve around his flight.
It was kind of like, oh, at last, we got our licks in, you know, because we were being clobbered by the Soviets in space back then.
So he represented the guy on the white horse, the knight on the white horse, and yet he was so self-effacing and so humble.
And he stood up there at the lectern and he says, you know, I may seem to be standing here alone, but I represent the hundreds of thousands of people of NASA and the space effort.
And he said, I was not alone in Friendship 7 either.
They all were writing, you know, in other words, it was a group effort.
It was an American effort.
It was a patriotic effort.
And it was a triumph of democracy over tyranny.
And that's how it was sold.
And that's how it will be archived forever in history.
Richard Hoagland, remembering John Glenn.
And after that, we talked about his new project for 2017, a brand new book about Mars.
You were the face on Mars, man.
Tell me where we're at with that, if anyone.
Well, I think we're on the edge of a breakthrough.
Again, as I said earlier in the last segment, 2017 is going to be the year of disclosure.
Now, I don't know whether it's going to be Obama who does it, or it's Trump who does it or we who do it.
And what do I mean by we?
If you look at the web, Howard, if you look at all the stuff NASA's dumping, you'd have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to see that there's an incredible ruins of an ancient civilization on Mars.
Now, it's more complicated.
It turns out there's more than one.
But if NASA doesn't announce what it's giving us, if the White House doesn't announce in the waning twilight hours of the Obama administration, remember he got the Nobel Peace Prize.
It's possible he got the prize for what he's going to do, which is to basically reveal the real history of the human species before he leaves office.
In fact, I've even picked a time.
If it's going to conform to the other ritual stuff we've been working on for years, figuring out, kind of like an FBI profiler, I would say the most likely time for the president to make the announcement, if he's going to and not leave it to Trump, would be on New Year's Day, probably around noon, because that will be 19.5 days before he leaves office and the next administration takes over.
And of course, you're a big one for the symbolism of 19.5, as in 19.5 degrees.
All our politics are governed by this symbolism.
It's kind of like a whole hidden code between the elites and between the folks who are running and then the electorate that hasn't a clue what's really going on.
The other thing we should watch for coming up in this year is, and I'm going to make the announcement first on your show, Howard, we are about to publish another book.
Really?
It is called The Hidden History of Mars, A War in Heaven.
It will be out between Christmas and New Year's.
Remember, there are 12 days to Christmas.
It'll be available in a Kindle version, which we can update as things develop, which they're going to.
It also is going to be available in a hardcover, hard copy commemorative with tons of amazing color pictures, close-ups of these artifacts, close-ups of structures, close-ups of ancient rusting technology.
There's no doubt, Howard, we're not alone.
The meaning now is what the hell, who are we?
How did we get where we are?
Who were these folks?
How are they related To us.
All of this is going to come out in 2017, and a major part of the story is being spearheaded by us and the Enterprise Mission and my very valiant bridge crew, who all are helping me create this book in time for Christmas.
Well, you know, to quote a phrase, I love your work, but there are people who will say, well, Richard Hoagland sees what he wants to see.
You see regular geometry when it's not really there.
You use...
Stop Richard Hoagland.
This is a panoply of people.
These are thousands of people.
Do you understand there's a whole cottage industry on the internet, all these so-called anomalous who are finding all this stuff, and they send them to each other, and they send them to news magazines, and they send them on social media, and they publish them on Facebook, and nobody pays attention.
Well, they don't pay attention, though, because some of the stuff you see is arguably ridiculous.
For a few weeks ago here in the UK, you must have seen this.
There was the woman in the frock on Mars.
Yeah, but you see, the noise does not subtract from the signal.
The difference is the noise is being put up by the intelligence agencies to keep the signal from being heard.
Of course, there aren't chipmunks on Mars.
Of course, there's no woman in a dress on Mars.
Of course, there aren't dinosaurs on Mars.
That's the agencies trying to disinform and lead everybody in the wrong direction.
So when they see a claim of an anomaly, oh, I saw that last week.
That's, you know, that's nonsense.
Wrong.
As this book, as this document, as this group of people, all independent researchers who have paid their dues and have found stuff separately, we're pooling our resources.
We're presenting a panoply, not of just one person's views, but of a group of researchers, all of whom are basically saying to the American people, to the British people, to the French, to the Germans, to the world, join us because the hunt is on.
And if we keep the pressure on, eventually they will have to announce this officially.
And are these people interpreting the photographs, the pictures that NASA has made available already, the publicly available pictures?
Absolutely.
And do you believe that NASA has made available everything that it has?
No, of course not.
They're holding back the really good stuff.
And sometimes one of our people is able to actually probe into the archives and find things that you're not supposed to find.
Those will be in this book.
I mean, it's going to knock your socks off.
Howard, you and I have known each other almost 20 years.
I guarantee you, this is how the universe changes.
And whether they do it or we do it in 2017, it will be done.
Well, look, I am a starry-eyed Star Trek fan.
I am an optimist in all of these things.
And there is a big chunk of me.
You know me.
It's in my DNA.
Go on.
Remember how I made the bet with George Norrie?
And then he reneged on the bet.
He welched on the bet.
Obviously, you don't do that.
So I should make a bet with you.
If you really think that I'm just blowing smoke, I can make a fortune.
Wow.
No, I don't think you're blowing smoke.
I want it to be true.
It is.
I'm just not sure that it is.
That's my difficulty.
It's only a matter of when does the American people, the British people, the world, when do they get it that it's true?
I don't want you to blow the contents of this new great book because it's a book that I want to see.
And John, my producer, my technical producer here, John Hearn, wants to see it too.
And I'm sure Emma, my producer, wants to see it.
We all want to see it.
In this book, what do you think, and I don't want you to blow the good stuff, but tell us a little bit of it.
What have you seen in those pictures and this group of experts who are, you say, accredited people?
What have you seen that tells us what you claim is there?
In other words, what's there?
What's there in the pictures that I haven't seen so far?
Well, actually, we should probably turn the question around.
What isn't there?
There's architecture.
There's art.
There's statuary.
There's writing.
There are artifacts.
There's junk.
There are things that are kind of recognizable.
You know, form, follows, function.
There are things that are totally unbelievable in terms of geometry as a machine.
You couldn't possibly figure out what the machines do.
The thing is, there's too much stuff in all these images that NASA's dumping like a fire sale.
Why are they doing this hard?
Why do you think they would suddenly, after decades of not telling us the truth, a la Brookings, why are they dumping this now at wholesale prices onto the internet?
You used to say something great to me, and I know that it isn't a phrase that you coined, but it's one that you use, and that is, you know, whereas the best place to hide a book is in a library.
So if you snow people under with pictures, then the theory goes, and I'm not saying that I necessarily buy into this theory, but the theory goes that they put so much stuff out there that if there are nuggets to be seen that prove your premise, you're going to miss them.
Well, they also have colored images, what we call butterscotch puke.
That's an American expression.
You mean that's not the real color?
No, no, the cover-up goes everywhere from the color to the resolution fuzzing to the introduction of noisy blockies to all different ways to slow down the inevitable.
Because you don't understand that out there, if you put enough pictures of real stuff on another planet, somebody somewhere is going to go, oh my God.
And they're going to happen to be the chairman of the National Bank of Bangkok or, you know, someone people pay attention to.
And they put it on their blog or on their Facebook, and then people start picking up.
In other words, at some point, it's going to go viral.
I'm hoping that this volume, which is a marker in history, is going to be the thing that goes viral because we're putting it all in one place.
The imagery, the current analyses, the possible soap opera, who are we dealing with?
Where do they come from?
What's the relationship to us?
How many different epochs of civilization on Mars can we see in the artifacts?
This is the story that no one wants to tell us, so we're going to tell it ourselves.
So is the story, and again, not wanting you to give away everything that's in this book, is the story that we were on Mars originally and some cataclysm happened that we had to get out of there.
We, the human species?
Yeah.
But it wasn't us now.
It was us back then.
And we had a few more accoutrements genetically than we have now.
I mean, a whole lot of stuff has happened.
Let me give you one stunning example, which is going to be in the book.
Have you heard of this syndrome with people who are Unsighted called non-24?
Tell me, I haven't.
Their circadian rhythms of people who have lost their sight, not everybody who's lost their sight, but some people, they cannot stick to a 24-hour clock.
In other words, since they don't see daylight or see outside illumination as a stimulus, their internal circadian rhythms are governed totally by their so-called biological clock.
Well, it turns out that clock does not run at the same rate as the Earth's clock.
Their day is not 24 hours like ours.
Their day, these non-24 blind people, is 24 hours, 66% of an hour.
In other words, the Martian day.
Their genetics is still linked through the torsion field to the day length where their genetics were created on Mars.
And do you believe that there are other markers and clues within RDV?
That's the most prominent one because that was first found many decades ago when spelunkers would go down in deep caves and they would lose track of what was going on up top.
And they had their clocks and their base camp up top would have their clocks.
And they found these incredibly isolated spelunkers that they would begin to lose track of the daytime and nighttime upstairs.
And basically their own clocks would go back to a Martian day clock.
A Martian clock, Howard.
That's impossible, unless some of us genetically originated.
And when do you believe we exited there?
Oh, this is the soap opera we're going to tell in outline form in this book.
And we're going to have a volume.
We're going to have a series of these.
Volume one, volume two, volume three.
Because the story is too big for one book.
The story is as NASA gives us new data, we get more appurtenances as to what happened and who the players were.
And at some point, they'll simply join the conversation.
They'll simply say, oh my God, look at what you guys found.
It's called in Washington, plausible deniability.
You know, you have your critics, don't you?
You have many of them.
And whenever I put you on my show, I hear from the people who absolutely love you, who outweigh the people who absolutely hate you.
And the ones that hate you say, not Hoagland again, because he just makes stuff up.
They're nuts.
I'm not making anything up.
The data is the data is the data.
Go to the damn NASA archives, look for yourself, take off your blinders, strap yourself in a chair, because your life is about to change, as is everybody's, big time.
Or as our new president-elect says, big league.
Didn't you give a presentation, I know you did, some years ago about possible structures within the rings of Saturn?
What happened to that work?
It's coming.
Remember what they're doing now with the Cassini mission?
And I don't want to say too much.
I mean, it's in England, so maybe I can get away with it.
Remember when Kami Chung said to one of our interviewees, now, just whisper in my ear, it's just you and me.
And of course, it was on 60 minutes, you know, millions of people.
But look, it's only, you know, here we are in the UK.
It's only.
It's just you and me.
Okay.
There is something extraordinary in the rings of Saturn, which we found on some of the early Cassini imagery.
It was taken very far away, so you have the problem of resolution.
You know, are you really seeing what you think you're seeing?
The spacecraft in the last year of its mission, in 2017, is making over 20 close dives right past the rings.
They will get closer, Howard, than any time during the mission and repeatedly.
So we'll have different angles.
So if those images show the same things in higher resolution that we thought we saw earlier, that will be confirmation.
And this orbit, this series of plunges through the rings that they're doing in their final months of the mission seems to be designed to check up on exactly what I found.
Right.
This is where we've got to park it.
You know, I love talking with you.
What you've just said answers those people who are probably writing their emails already to say, Richard Hoagland was talking about that years ago and then he forgot all about it.
Actually, the work is ongoing.
A lot of things are ongoing, Howard, that we don't talk about because we have enemies and we have people in agencies that if they know we're looking for something, they will just make sure that it doesn't ever get taken or certainly not released.
So I try to keep mum until things are too far along for the game to be changed.
Do you believe just finally that there are people, I don't think we've ever asked this question, maybe I have, whether there are people in these agencies who try to thwart you and your researches?
Absolutely.
They even send code.
You know, someday when you and I do another show, I'll tell you about the huge 19.5 code that NASA sent a couple, three years ago about one of its major missions.
Right.
I can't wait for that.
Listen, Richard, I thought you were too busy this year to talk with me on this show, so I'm really pleased that you've been able to come back.
I wish you well with everything you do.
And the new book is called The Hidden...
The Hidden History of Mars.
The Hidden History of Mars.
A war in heaven.
Remember, Mars is the god of war.
We have found out why.
And it has nothing to do with the mythos and the mythologies we've been handed.
And there's another lesson for me.
I must never write anything down in shorthand.
They teach it you as a journalist.
I do T-line shorthand.
I used to do 100 words a minute.
And then if I try and read it back on the radio, not a good idea.
Richard, my very best for the holidays to you and Robin and your dog too.
Have a wonderful time.
We will catch up in 2017, Richard Hoagland.
And the same to you and to your audience.
And a happy and incredibly interesting new year.
Happy dog to you.
And Ralph says, good night to you all, all three of you.
Thank you, Richard, very much indeed.
Richard C. Hoagland, worth his weight in gold.
I look forward to catching up with Richard again in 2017, and we wish him luck with the new book.
If you want to know more about Richard and his work, go to his website, enterprisemission.com.
Now, Doctor Who is a British sci-fi television series that's been seen and enjoyed around the world.
It's very big on PBS in America and just about everywhere.
It's been around for 50-odd years.
There have been a number of people who played The Doctor, who is a time and space traveler, I guess you could describe him.
And a number of people who've played his companion, his assistant, in his time-traveling machine called The TARDIS.
One of them is Joe Grant, the actress Katie Manning.
Many people say that she was the best of all of the assistants, but it's very hard to Pick because they were all good.
I've been a fan of John Pertwee, who played that particular Doctor, and Katie Manning, who played Joe Grant, his assistant, since I was a boy.
So, very recently, just before Christmas, I caught up with the actress Katie Manning, and we talked about Doctor Who.
Katie Manning, thank you very much for coming on my humble show, The Unexplained.
There are a lot of people who are sci-fi and Doctor Who fans who will be absolutely thrilled and delighted that you're on here.
So, thanks for making time.
You're very, very welcome.
As I say, I'm multitasking.
I'm learning lines, making lemon possets, and getting prepared to be a grandmother, all in one, and talking to you all at the same time.
Well, that is pretty damn good.
I hate to betray my ignorance, but as somebody who lives on supermarket microwave meals, what is a lemon posset?
Well, it's a sort of a lovely, creamy, lemony pudding.
It's a very old-fashioned pudding, actually.
And it's just made with sort of creams and lemons, and it's sort of heated cream, sort of one of those.
And it's very delicious.
Which sounds absolutely marvelous.
What a pity we can't get them in the shops.
But Katie, whoever's going to be enjoying those, I hope they're suitably grateful.
That's all I can say.
So do I, and so do I. All right.
Everybody will talk to you.
And I know you do a million other things these days.
But of course, everybody wants to talk about Doctor Who.
Now, I'll tell you very briefly my story.
I remember, like many kids of my generation, being scared into nightmares by early Doctor Who's in black and white when I was about four because I just didn't understand it all.
Of course, I became an enormous fan.
But I really got into Doctor Who when they started on the BBC repeating a complete series across the school holidays, which they used to do over Christmas.
And that is how I discovered you and John Pertwee.
And from that moment, which is many years ago, I was hooked.
It was a marvelous, marvelous show back then, I think.
I think it still is to this day.
In fact, I know more about the current Doctor Who.
And I've seen the, already seen the Christmas special, which is one of the most beautiful things I've seen.
I absolutely loved it.
So I'm actually, I'm much more well-versed on the new one than I am the past.
Okay.
But I'll do my best.
It was a very different show back then.
There was, of necessity, for two reasons, I guess, technical capabilities and money, but it was a much simpler show when you were doing it, wasn't it?
Well, only simpler.
Actually, you know, this is a rather interesting thing.
Only simpler, it seemed, in some senses, but it was actually very complex because we had no computers.
We'd just gone into color, and we were experimenting with things like CSO, which is colour separation overlay, which now I think they call green screen or blue screen or whatever they like to call it.
And there was an extra budget of two and sixpence given to the wonderful Barry Letz, who was determined to take this show to the next level and to bring it into, as it became during my time, like cult viewing.
So it wasn't just the little children, which you also had to remember, were also part of the show.
And so, you know, the complexities of special effects then and, you know, the making of the masks for the aliens and things were turned over from the makeup department to the special effects boy who did the thing.
So it grew, it grew enormously during that time.
And then, you know, after that, each time, and then they started getting computers and it got easier.
But now you think it has a much bigger budget, well, which of course it does.
However, they still have to be as creative.
You know, when you don't have very much, you have to be a lot more creative.
And for what they're doing today, it's magnificent because the budget isn't nearly as big as people think.
They have a lot more technology that they can use, but still, it's very much on everybody so focused on the show and so passionate about the show.
And that has always been the same right through from the beginning.
The passion of everybody working on the show is what made it what it was and what it is.
Now, you starred quite recently in an edition with the late and marvelous Liverpool actress, part of my childhood, Elizabeth Slayden.
I certainly did.
Looking back at past companions of the doctor.
So what was the experience of actually being part of that compared with doing it in the 1970s when the technology wasn't quite as it is now?
I'm guessing.
It's much different.
No, and it's all you just rehearse, shoot, rehearse, shoot.
It's a very tight schedule as it was in our day.
The difference, I mean, in our day, you know, if you weren't finished by 10 o'clock, the sprinklers were on and the lights were out.
But it has exactly the same intensity, exactly the same love that it had back then.
And it was strange.
I mean, as I said, I think it was a great line that Russell T. Davis gave me when I went back into the TARDIS, or at that time, Matt Smith's TARDIS.
And she looks around and it's completely different.
She said, but it still smells the same.
And that's kind of how I feel about the show.
You can't just park that there.
What does a TARDIS smell like?
What does a TARDIS smell like then?
I think it was kind of just really alluding not to the actual odour, but I think it was a rather poetic way of it still feels exactly the same.
And it did, strangely enough.
Well, isn't that good?
Because that means you have, through all of these generations and it's 50 years, you have a sense of continuity going on.
Yes, absolutely.
And of course, you know, with the wonderful big finish, you know, I've come back not only as young Joe, but I've also returned as Joe Jones.
So I've got both the age groups still going, which is lovely.
Here comes a question from all of those Doctor Who conventions that you attend so diligently and loyally.
Mount, but I'll try and answer.
Okay, no, it's not, don't worry, it's not a specific one about what chemical did they use to make the smoking.
To make the love the fans, and that's why I do them.
To make the smoking episode, whatever it was.
No, it's just what was John Pertwee like to work with?
Because I was a huge admirer of him as an actor.
He could turn his hand, it seemed to me, to anything.
He was absolutely wonderful.
And for a young girl who's, this was my second job, I'd done Man at the Top with Kenneth Haig, which was a very different thing prior to this.
And when I came into Doctor Who, I had been a huge fan of John Pertries.
I used to mimic him, would you believe, because I like to do other people's voices too.
And I'm very good at doing men, and so to speak.
And I was so excited and so nervous to meet this man who I'd listened to on the radio, because I'm a very myopic person.
I'm partially sighted, so the radio and voices are my life.
And so I listened to John for years and years.
And when I came to work with him, it was exciting and frightening.
But what I learned was that this was John's first real straight role.
He'd done light entertainment.
He'd done so much comedy.
And he was so known for his voices and his, you know, I mean, his extraordinary athletic little voices that could go anywhere.
And he took this very, very seriously.
And he was a marvelous leader.
He was exactly the right person to lead a show to.
And he and I, from day one, just clicked.
I don't know what it was, but we found that we loved doing voices together.
So we found we'd travel in the car and, you know, we'd see all the different names of places that we were going through and we'd immediately invent characters.
So we bonded straight away, which I think was something that came very strongly across on the screen.
It did.
How much was Jo Grant, the companion to John Pertwee?
How much was she you?
It struck me that you yourself are quite similar to her, but I could be wrong.
No, I think that when one used to do publicity, one used to sort of say, oh, yes, I'm statty like Jo or whatever.
You know, you say those things.
We all know when we look back at interviews that we did when we were young and naive, you think, oh, please, did I really say that?
But because that's what people really wanted to hear.
But in actual fact, I was very young.
And so the great part for Jo was that you got to see her grow up and you got to see her learn and change and eventually go into the life that she decided to go into, which she had gained from the doctor, which she decided to put all that she'd learned from the doctor into saving this planet.
But as in the character, and I also learned from John, and I also grew up during the show.
So I mean, that was something that I thought was a lovely touch because you don't usually see characters grow up in Doctor Who.
And so that was a really lovely aspect of it.
But no, I mean, yes, there are things that, you know, she was wonderfully naive and she also had to be the person who kind of would ask the questions that the younger viewers would be asking.
Equally, she was very much a girl of the now.
So you've got the teenagers.
And then I think the mini skirts might have beckoned the fathers along.
I have a feeling they might.
Very much.
She was very much a girl of her time.
And so she was a great character to play because she had no experience.
I mean, she wasn't really part of unit.
She'd just been roped in by her uncle.
And I mean, one of the great lines is when he said, well, the doctor looks at her and said, I thought you did science and this and that and the other in your exams.
And she said, yes, but I never said I passed.
So she had this wonderful naivety, but at the same time, she was extremely brave.
And she also was so faithful to the doctor and was probably the first girl to actually offer her life for the doctors, understanding how important what he was doing was.
And I thought that was a lovely touch, too, that she was absolutely, you know, she was so dedicated to the doctor that she offered her life for his.
Yeah, amazing.
She was quite a gal, really.
Well, very good at escapology.
She was very good at escaping.
Yes.
And yes, that was about her only talent, really.
But it was ugly.
You watched her learn as she went along.
When you're playing with John Pirtwee, he is such a, I mean, physically tall and imposing character and a man of such great skill, both as the doctor and as himself, you have to find a way to dovetail with that person, don't you?
How did you do that?
I think it was just automatic, really, and very natural because of the age differences and the knowledge differences and Joe having this enormous admiration for him.
So it made the two really terrific.
And Terence Dick said not that long ago, he said, Katie had that, gave you that feeling that you just wanted to take care of her.
John did that to me off-screen as well.
He took enormous care of me and we did everything together.
You know, we had lunch together.
We were just so just that wonderful chemistry that you can't really say what it is, but it was just there.
And it was there both on and off screen.
And I saw recently...
I think that's what's doing this.
I don't know if you've noticed there's a small couple of seconds.
Sorry, Katie, you're saying.
No, no, carry on.
I recently saw some photographs that were taken during breaks in filming.
And those photographs, which you didn't know were being taken, either of you, just revealed a bond of closeness.
It wasn't brother and sister.
It wasn't mother and father.
It was just organic by the looks of it.
It was a special thing, as you say.
Well, that's what Barry Lett said.
He said, when you see that magic happen, You know instantly that part of your job is taken care of when you've been casting the one thing that's what you want.
You want that chemistry, you don't want them to have to perform that chemistry, it's just there.
And that's a great addition when you are casting.
Being in Doctor Who is one thing, Katie, but being out of Doctor Who, finishing your series with the current Doctor, is another thing.
What was it like when it ended and you went on to do other things?
You know, it's something that, I mean, look, 40 years on, people are still talking to you about it.
But in that immediate period after it finished, what was it like for you finding your way again?
Well, it was immediate.
It was absolutely instant.
Douglas Canfield, who had directed many Doctor Who's and was one of the most wonderful, innovative directors, I think, of all time.
I really, really loved him.
He's also one of the 12 godparents to my twins.
That's how close we were.
I'd never worked with him on Doctor Who, but the moment I left, he cast me as the first lesbian on British television doing a real court case.
And then as a junkie in Target with Patrick Mower.
I don't know what that says about me or about my...
Well, it's...
And then I also was doing an arts and crafts programme which went out on BBC on Sunday.
Serendipity.
I saw it.
Serendipity.
And yeah, and I did a film for which John Pertree's brother Michael had written, which was called Don't Just Lie There, Say Something, which with Leslie Phillips and that whole gang, which was quite something, playing Misdemeanor.
And then I, whilst I was doing the serendipity, I was going up and doing a play at the Edinburgh Festival where I was playing a 16-year-old mass murderous girl guy.
Was I kite cast?
Absolutely damn not, no.
I mean, amazing and very exciting.
You know, after you've done something, after you've had the thrill of being in Doctor Who and being a household face and name, then you have to do something completely different, I would have thought after that.
And that's a very comprehensive answer to my question, really.
Yes, but you see, I wasn't a planner.
I didn't come into this business saying, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that.
I came in because that's what I wanted to do.
And I just thought I'd be jolly lucky if I worked.
I didn't come out of drama school being told, you know, we weren't told we were all marvelous.
You know, 15 went in and four of us came out of drama school.
And I went straight into Man at the Top.
So, I mean, I was really very lucky.
Luck's a huge part of our profession.
But I never planned.
I had no idea where I was going to go with it.
We didn't know as much then as people know now.
And as I say, I was never one of these people who walked around saying, oh, I'm going to be a star.
I'm going to do this.
Even when I got into doing my first play in the West End, you know, with my name up in lights and everything, to me, it was just another marvelous job.
And I was really blessed to be doing it.
And I still feel the same way.
You know, it's not about creating a career.
It's about, you know, working.
And I always say to young actors, oh, there go the sirens.
I always say to young actors, you know, success is paying your rent and eating.
And I managed to bring up two children on my own in three different countries by doing what I do for a living.
I used to say to them, while I can talk, we'll eat.
Yeah, practicing your craft, very important.
If you know the thing that you do well, then you never have to fear.
Well, I never know that I've done it well, but I know that I won't do anything else.
And I'm still the same and I'm learning and I'm staying right in the moment.
You know, I've got the old training, but I take on absolutely everything new and I learn so much from young actors and I'm lucky enough to work with.
Keeps you young, I think.
Keeps you young.
Now, look, you were in Doctor Who.
You do all these conventions.
You're so nice with those.
When I was prepping for this, I watched one of the videos from one of the conventions that you were at.
And you are so nice and kind to those people who turn up to the conventions and ask you all kinds of questions.
I am guessing because you still do that, you are a sci-fi fan in yourself.
No, I'm not a sci-fi fan.
No, I love the fans.
Without the fans, we wouldn't be watching Doctor Who today.
I have such respect for them.
And so many of them were going through very difficult times when they were watching Doctor Who and it changed their lives.
It maybe brought them a moment of escape or happiness.
There's some of them who have all sorts of different illnesses and things.
And I care very deeply about that.
And the fact that if I can make a tiny difference, because I hug every single fan at every convention when I'm signing, I take a long time to do the signing because I want to give every fan their moment because I think they deserve that.
And I absolutely adore them.
And I think it's a wonderful gift to have been given.
You know, I've had a young man who'd never been hugged because he didn't like to be touched.
And I hugged him and his mother burst into tears and said, that's the first time.
He now comes back to conventions for Katie's hugs.
And he even gave me a mug with I Love Katie's Hugs on it.
That touches my heart.
And then some of them are so nervous and you hug them really hard and you say, now, how can you be nervous when you're being hugged?
To me, it makes me kind of almost teary, the effect that you can have.
And my fans go from, you know, tiny little children, sort of five years old, right up to sort of, you know, 90.
And they all have their story to tell.
And it's heartwarming.
It really, really is.
Plus, you look at the fans like Russell T. Davis and Mark Gatis, who I've actually just done a photo shoot with, and all these extraordinary people, Gary Russell, you know, Rob Shearman, all these marvelous people, Nicholas Briggs, that we work with.
And those are all people that watched Doctor Who when they were young, and it gave them this desire to go into the business.
It's an extraordinary program.
It is.
what it's given to people.
It is, and so good that after a bit of a hiatus when it disappeared, so good that it's back with us now with modern production values and all the technology that we have now.
Exactly, but it needed that hiatus, in my opinion, because it needed to go to the next level, you know, as it did when Barry took over.
And then, you know, it just needed to go to the next stage.
And that break, I think, was very, very important.
And also, you have to look at it practically.
What are the figures?
You know, so television people are saying, well, if it's not doing this, then, you know, we need to make a space.
And I think by going, if it hadn't gone, you would never have got Russell T. Davis, who brought it back magnificently and with the same love as people like Barry Letz had for it.
And everybody that goes into it now has exactly, you know, I spoken and met Peter Capaldi many times.
That passion for the show is in him.
And it's in Stephen Moffat.
And it's in everybody that works on this show.
the new crop of doctors.
Capaldi is my favorite because he is a dynamic and mature actor, but they're all different, aren't they?
I mean, if you think of the And it's amazing.
And I've worked with, I've been working recently with Tom and I've worked with Colin Baker and I've worked with Peter Davidson.
I've worked with Sylvester McCoy.
And it's fascinating to see what they bring to playing their doctor.
And every single one of them has brought a kind of magic to the way that they've played it.
You know, I have absolute admiration for all of them.
Which is why I'm not going to ask you a question I had planned to ask you, which is, and I'm sure you've been asked this one, you know, of the new crop of doctors, which is your favourite.
And having heard you now, that's not a fair question, is it?
It's not that it's an unfair question.
It's just that I don't have an answer.
I have personal friendships with people.
I think John Pertwees was absolutely magnificent.
You know, I've had lesser favourites, but on the whole, every single one of them has brought something which I have thoroughly enjoyed to the programme.
You know, Tom Baker I loved.
I love Pat Trout and, you know, I loved William Hartnell because I used to watch it when I was younger.
I really have adored them all.
And it was lovely to work with Matt Smith.
And, you know, and I love David Tennant and I adored Christopher Eccleston.
You see, no, I love them all.
I love them all.
From what I've deduced from this interview and from what I've read about you when I've been preparing for this, you have lived your life to the max.
Do you, number one, do you have any regrets?
And number two, is there anything that you would now like to do that you have not yet done?
I'm about to do the biggest thing I've ever done in my life, which I figure if you're going to jump off a cliff, honey, you might as well make it a tall cliff and not just sort of have a little tiny jump.
I figure, you know, the older you get, the more you might as well give it a go.
So I'm about to embark on that this coming year in 2017.
And I like to challenge myself.
I think, you know, if you say, have I got any regrets?
Well, obviously there's one or two that you think, oh boy, did I really do that?
But you can't regret it.
All you have to do is take responsibility for it, take it on the chin and move on.
Would those regrets, Katie, and forgive me for asking this, everybody does, I'm sure, would those regrets include posing naked with a Dalek?
I think that might be one of them.
It was one of the, I mean, one is very careful how one words things.
But I, you know, it was one of those things.
We didn't have computers and internet and things then.
And I confess that I had done a perfectly, you know, something that was perfectly okay.
But then back then, you didn't understand what people could do with things that you did that you thought would never, ever see the light of day.
And certain photographs were sold to a magazine without my knowledge or say-so, which of course you could do back then.
And of course, the rest is history.
But of course, when you look at it, it's actually quite innocent.
I'll just tell you a quick story.
There was a little boy and he came and he was with his grandmother.
And he said to me, I've got a picture of you.
And you have a gotta clothes.
Oh, no.
And I said, well, no, you see, I had to go and save the world and I didn't have time to get dressed.
Oh, excellent.
So, you know, one must never lose one's humour, even if one might have done.
You know, occasionally you think, come on, surely this can't be.
But you look at it now and it's really such an innocent picture.
Well, look, by today's standards, it's absolutely nothing.
I've seen more bosom in Doctor Who, I think, than I showed in that.
Well, thank you, Katie, for answering that.
It was just I chose in a moment, let's say, in a misguided 70s moment of maybe one glass too many champagne to do something really, you know, kind of, oh, yes, why not?
You know, I'm one of those sort of women.
I just say stuff and do it.
It's the child in me.
It doesn't think.
And the outcome was that.
But, you know, when you look at it, it really isn't as awful as all that.
You know, it's not, I didn't do anything sort of totally guzzy.
I suppose it's just a question of where you place the plunger, really, isn't it?
Well, I couldn't have possibly put it better myself, Katie.
One thing that you skirted over very, very nifty, unless I misunderstood, or which is quite possible, you said that you were about in 2017 to do something very big.
What's the very big thing in 2017?
It's something that, you know, up until now, it's sort of been one of those things I thought, oh, yeah, yeah, it wasn't a reality.
And it kept coming to me.
And I have written something which is like a grown-up Alice in Wonderland, for want of another word, where I play about 20-odd characters.
But it's all done with an awful lot of effects and, you know, sort of video and lighting and glass.
so, I'm actually now going to put it on stage.
And it was something that I recorded.
I'd done it in America.
I wrote this piece when I was living in the States.
And then I came back and put it in a cupboard for years.
And then I took it out again.
And Big Finish recorded it as their first audio that had nothing to do with Doctor Who or science fiction.
And anyway, a couple of people heard it, a producer and this particular director, and they'd been nagging me to do it.
And I said, no, no, no, no, it's finished.
Now it's done.
And then I even wrote a rap song that goes in it.
Oh, did you?
Yes, and I record it in that voice.
My son is very proud of me because I was also making a lampshade for my daughter when I wrote the rap song.
And it's a bit naughty.
That is complete polar opposites.
Give me a little bit of the rap voice.
You love voices, then.
Give me a little bit of the rap voice.
I'm not going to do that for you.
I wouldn't dream of spoiling the moment.
It's also got very naughty lyrics.
And I, it's, no.
Oh, well, thank you for sparing me that.
I think the Dalek photograph was about as far as we could go, really, Katie.
My son is still walking around going, Mother, I do not believe that you could even think like that.
But it was necessary for the piece.
But it's something that, you know, as it's come to me all the way through, right from the first time I did it in America and wrote it in America, I figure that maybe it's meant to be, and it is.
It's a very grown-up fairy tale.
Well, I wish you well with it, Katie.
You know, you go into things, it seems to me, from talking to you with a very open heart and open mind.
So in my experience of life, which isn't as broad as yours, but it's fairly broad, when people do that, quite often they don't fail.
I literally, you know, and I don't hang on to anything from the past.
I truly live my life in, and I love this expression, I live my life in the O between the N and the W. It's J.M. Barriotts from Peter Pan.
And I think that if we live our lives, we have only this moment.
Right now, this is all you and I have.
And if you live your life in the moment, you can then fully enjoy it.
If you keep having bits from the past, it doesn't mean we don't have the people we've lost and loved are still in my heart, but they're in my heart in the now.
And, you know, I don't project into the future because it's pointless.
And so staying in the moment, I think is for me absolutely the only way that I can really enjoy this adventure on this extraordinary planet that I love so passionately.
What a wonderful philosophy of life to have, Katie.
I would aspire to doing it your way.
Some of the time I succeed and some of the time I don't.
But that's wonderful to hear.
The government these days is encouraging us all to work until we're 105.
Will there come a point, do you think, Katie, where you will decide, well, I want to slow down a bit now?
It doesn't sound like there will.
No.
I'm speeding up, sweetie, because I've got less time.
You know, when I look what's gone behind and when I've looked what's, no, the older you get, the faster you've got to move to get all this stuff done.
Plus, you've learned as much as you've learnt, you know, up to this point, and we're learning every day, and you want to utilize all that.
And the other thing is, as I said to my children once, you know, life may not get easier, but it will get funnier.
So if I fall on my bottom and fail miserably, I will be able to laugh at it a lot more now than I would have been when I was younger.
And I, you know, I think there are great advantages to being older.
And I welcome it because otherwise you're not once again living in the moment.
You're regretting, oh, I'm getting older.
I'm boo, you know.
And, you know, I wake up in the morning and I think, gosh, another 900-pound elephant has slept on my face.
Hey-ho and on.
The other thing is, if you, people keep saying, actress keep saying, oh, there's no parts for older women.
Well, because so many of us are not allowing ourselves to be older women.
That's a very good way of looking at it because you hear that from actresses all the time, don't you?
Oh, all the time.
And Glenda Jackson, you know, I went to see her as Leah, and there she is, 80 years old, looking 80 years old and being marvelous.
And if you're not going to, you know, if you're not going to allow that to happen, you are going to constantly complain because all the surgery in the world is not going to give you the part of a wonderful old lady.
I mean, I was playing last year at the Edinburgh Festival with Supen Hulligan.
And we were playing these two old actresses.
And they both had sort of, you know, early, well, not early, they both had sort of Alzheimer's and all sorts of things.
And it was wonderful to be able to work with inside these characters.
It was very difficult and actually quite heartbreaking at times.
But I couldn't have experienced that if I didn't look like a couplete.
Do you know, I've really loved this conversation with you.
Sometimes you talk to people about stuff they've talked about a million times and you can tell they're not totally connected with it.
They get a little bit bored when they hear the same questions.
You have a freshness about the answers that you give, Katie, and I'm very grateful to you.
One last thing to ask.
I don't know whether you're going to want to do this because you didn't want to do the rap, but let me ask it anyway.
Can you still do a pertwee?
No, I'm not going to do that.
There's nothing worse than somebody trying to do voices over Skype.
That's true.
You know, there are various ways.
And I would end up by being very, very embarrassed.
I do Popeye.
I do all sorts of things.
But I will tell you one thing, John Fertwee said to me once.
I'd always done television for years Before I, well, years, quite a few years before I went into theatre.
And I remember Douglas Canfield saying to me, He said, I can't stand theatre.
Don't go into theatre, Katie.
And I said, Why not?
Because I'd just been asked to do girl-in-my soup.
And he said, A lot of people standing around shouting in long shot.
And John Pertwee looked at me and he said, No, she has to go into theatre.
I'd not done comedy either.
And she has to do comedy because she's got a really funny little face.
And that's a compliment.
So, oh, I take it.
Yes, I mean, it's like my partner says to me, he said, you know, do I children love you?
And I go, no.
And he said, because you look like a little Muppet.
And they're right.
Well, not everybody would take that in the spirit it was intended in, but I know where he's coming from.
Katie, thank you very much for making time.
It's much easier to go into a room and look like a little Muppet than it is to go in a room and try and look beautiful.
Because you've always got something that you have to keep aspiring to, haven't you?
And you get more laughs that way, darling.
My thanks to Katie Manning, aka Joe Grant, and I wish her continued success.
And the same to Richard C. Hoagland, who you heard before her.
And I wish you everything that you would wish yourself for the year of 2017.
Thank you very much for being my friend through this year.
If you'd like to make a donation to the show, send me a message.
Please go to the website theunexplained.tv.
And you can send me email, a donation, whatever you'd like to do there.
We have plans for 2017.
Thank you to Adam, my web guy who's done so much for me over the years.
Adam, I hope you have a great holiday.
So, until next we meet here on The Unexplained, my name is Howard Hughes.
I am in London, and please stay safe.
Please stay calm, and please stay in touch.
Thank you very much.
Take care.
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