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Transcript

Hamster Book Club - Survival (featuring David Gillespie-Pratt) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:01
  The Master leapt and closed his hands around the Doctor's
• 0:04
  throat. At first, the Doctor was only
• 0:07
  aware of the choking weight of those hands clenched around his
• 0:10
  windpipe. As he struggled to break their
• 0:13
  grip, he noticed that the air was hot and full of smoke, that
• 0:16
  there was beaten earth beneath his feet.
• 0:19
  He was back on the planet. He was wrestling his enemy in
• 0:23
  the centre of the valley, surrounded by spoiled heaps of
• 0:26
  bones where the Cheetah People fought their ritual battles.
• 0:30
  Part of his mind was aware of all this and that they were in
• 0:34
  grave danger. Fissures were opening in the
• 0:38
  rocks. Lava was gushing down gullies.
• 0:41
  The planet was in its death throes.
• 0:44
  Most of his mind was consumed by a savage desire to fight, to
• 0:48
  kill. The power of the planet had
• 0:51
  never been so strong as it was now, when it's very substance
• 0:55
  was breaking up into violence. The Doctor wrestled his enemy
• 0:58
  with only one thought clearly in his head, to kill.
• 1:02
  Before he was killed, the Master toppled the other Tyne wool onto
• 1:07
  his back. He raised a huge bone, wounding
• 1:10
  it like a club ready to bring it crashing down on the Doctor's.
• 1:14
  Head. The Doctor pushed him, sending
• 1:17
  him sprawling, and then pinned the Masters struggling body to
• 1:20
  the earth. With his free hand he raised the
• 1:23
  bone club in his turn. He looked into the Masters eyes.
• 1:27
  In the split second before he killed him, the Doctor paused.
• 1:32
  He looked round. All the mountains were erupting
• 1:35
  into great explosions of flame. The air was full of cinders.
• 1:40
  It was too hot to breathe. The Doctor felt his sanity
• 1:44
  returning. The planet was dying.
• 1:48
  All the wild things that could were escaping to new homes.
• 1:52
  So must they. He lowered his weapon, looking
• 1:55
  down at the Master. Time to go.
• 1:59
  The master stared back up at him, his eyes still blazing with
• 2:03
  madness. Go where?
• 2:05
  He snarled. There is no escape, except for
• 2:08
  the animals. He bared his teeth.
• 2:11
  I do not choose to live as an animal.
• 2:14
  His hands closed again with renewed fury on the Doctor's
• 2:17
  throat. As the Doctor fought back, he
• 2:19
  felt rage consume him. If we fight, we'll die, beheld,
• 2:25
  hardly understanding what he had said.
• 2:28
  If we fight, we'll die. He saw the land around them
• 2:32
  dissolve into flame. With the last bit of himself
• 2:35
  that remained to him, he remembered that he, too, had
• 2:38
  somewhere to escape to. He leapt.
• 2:53
  Welcome back to the Hamster Book Club.
• 2:56
  My name is Joe Ford and I'm going one-on-one survival of the
• 3:01
  fittest today. And if we fight David, we will
• 3:06
  destroy this podcast. We will destroy ourselves.
• 3:11
  Oh, I think you're overdoing it a bit.
• 3:12
  I think you make it. You're making Sylvester McCoy
• 3:14
  look subtle. If we fight like animals, No.
• 3:18
  OK, I'll stop. We are here to Talk about
• 3:22
  Survival by Rona Munroe, only my second foray into the classic
• 3:28
  Target novels. But I don't want to go there
• 3:33
  first. I want to throw an icebreaker
• 3:36
  question at you because I never know what answers I'm going to
• 3:40
  get with these things. My question for you today is
• 3:45
  which Doctor Who orphan do you think is undervalued or
• 3:49
  underrated or just not spoken about enough?
• 3:54
  Do I give my joke answer or not? The world?
• 3:56
  No, No, I'm not going to. I'm not going to do that.
• 3:59
  I mean, when you asked this, I was like I kept thinking of
• 4:04
  people going, you know, especially like the one off
• 4:05
  writers going, but not in the TV and sometimes in the books.
• 4:08
  The one off writers actually are sometimes quite loaded and kept
• 4:13
  coming back to Rona Monroe. And I think it's possible
• 4:15
  because I've just read her book and it's a great book, you know,
• 4:19
  no spoilers. But in terms of the TVTV authors
• 4:23
  as well, you've got someone like Barbara Clegg who wrote
• 4:25
  Enlightenment. You've got Rona Monroe, who
• 4:27
  wrote this And then bringing in the sort of wider, I was going
• 4:31
  to say universe. But you've also got someone like
• 4:36
  Jacqueline Rayner as well. And I think, you know, writing
• 4:41
  things like novels like Earth, Will and particularly stuff like
• 4:44
  Marrying conspiracy and the pirates, doing the kind of
• 4:48
  proper emotional dramatic stories before the series came
• 4:51
  back. And it became what everybody
• 4:53
  does now and doing these brilliant things with character
• 4:57
  and and also just evolving the 6th Doctor as well.
• 5:01
  And you know, when people say about big Finnish authors and
• 5:04
  and a book author said they should write for the TV series,
• 5:07
  I don't think people mentioned Jacqueline Rayner enough.
• 5:11
  You know that it's always the sort of obvious candidates who
• 5:14
  are all good, good writers. Always good.
• 5:16
  She's always good. She's often great, but she's
• 5:20
  never bad. I don't think I've read or
• 5:22
  listened to anything that's been less than good and and I think
• 5:29
  you know and now they may well, there's an obvious connection
• 5:32
  between the writers that I picked which is obviously that
• 5:34
  they're all women and that's not me getting my soapbox or
• 5:38
  anything. But Doctor Who writing is still
• 5:42
  very male dominated. And I think what was refreshing
• 5:46
  reading this book and looking at some of the other scripts that
• 5:49
  are written by women is that they bring something slightly
• 5:52
  different to the sort of tone of voice of what they write.
• 5:56
  I mean, you look at Baba Clegg writing Enlightenment, Look how
• 5:58
  she writes Tegan. You know, Tegan's actually got
• 6:02
  a. She's got a second dimension in
• 6:04
  the. Development.
• 6:04
  She gets character development in that story.
• 6:06
  She actually compared to how she is in Terminus, where she's
• 6:09
  locked in a ventilation shaft on film for a week.
• 6:12
  During the line when she thinks he's dead and the fella goes to
• 6:15
  where you've lost the sparkle in your mind and that's, I think
• 6:18
  maybe the one hint actually, that she's got feelings for him.
• 6:22
  Yeah. And so the just and it's
• 6:27
  certainly we didn't see until suddenly the ace era of
• 6:29
  companions getting depth and actually getting some proper
• 6:33
  character development, which I feel culminates in the book that
• 6:37
  we're going to talk about. Because I think this is Ace's
• 6:39
  story, and I think Ronan Monroe writes it brilliantly, and I
• 6:45
  think better than the original version, we'll.
• 6:50
  Definitely get to that. So is Ronan Monroe your pick
• 6:52
  then? I think it's somewhere between
• 6:54
  either Ronan, Ronan Monroe or Jacqueline Rayner.
• 6:57
  I think now I'm going to pick Jacqueline Rayner because I
• 6:59
  think I would love to. I need to add the certain some
• 7:03
  of the more recent stuff I haven't listened to, and I
• 7:05
  really need to because I've heard nothing but good things
• 7:08
  about them. Yeah, Gwendora Lemerer and all
• 7:10
  that fantastic stuff. But I mean, look how long it
• 7:12
  took us to get a woman. It was set piece, wasn't it?
• 7:15
  Kate Ormond's first one. It was all men up until that
• 7:19
  point, and I think it was only Kate Ormond that was right in
• 7:22
  new adventures. That was a woman, right?
• 7:26
  I think you're right. I can't think of maybe.
• 7:29
  Maybe I am wrong. There, there's one other and
• 7:32
  then you skip over to BBC and it's Kate Ormond, Jacqueline
• 7:36
  Rayner. And then Lloyd Rhodes jumped in
• 7:39
  as well, didn't she? Spectacularly.
• 7:42
  Did she do camera obscura? Yeah, yeah.
• 7:44
  The absolutely of the dead, Yeah.
• 7:46
  Camera I loved Camera Obscura. That's one of my favourites.
• 7:48
  Gorgeous. Oh wow.
• 7:49
  Coming to a book club near you. Camera Obscura featuring David
• 7:53
  Glaspie Pratt. Lovely.
• 7:54
  There we. Go just throw that one out
• 7:56
  there. And I'm trying to think of more,
• 8:00
  more women, right? And I can't think of anyone
• 8:03
  else. They are sorely
• 8:05
  underrepresented, aren't they? But always, I think.
• 8:10
  Always decent? Yes, there are a lot of bad dogs
• 8:13
  who books. I don't think there's any bad
• 8:15
  Dogs Who books written by women. No doubt somebody in the
• 8:18
  comments will mention that one that we can't think of.
• 8:21
  Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to kick myself.
• 8:24
  I'll be listening back to this guy.
• 8:26
  Oh no. What about dot, dot, dot.
• 8:29
  But never mind. Never mind.
• 8:31
  Well, look then I am going to give a slightly controversial
• 8:38
  answer to the same question which you muted before we press
• 8:42
  play. But I said if you don't, I will.
• 8:46
  And I don't want to talk about his politics because I think
• 8:49
  he's an appalling individual, but I do think he is a very good
• 8:54
  writer of Doctor Who books and that is Gareth Roberts, who we
• 8:59
  can't talk about anymore. That's the problem.
• 9:00
  It's not that they're undervalued or underrepresented.
• 9:04
  We can't talk about him because he's so appalling.
• 9:06
  But back in the day he was much celebrated.
• 9:09
  Author of those brilliant 4th Doctor Missing adventures,
• 9:14
  English Way of Death. What's the other ones?
• 9:17
  English way of death, Romance of crime and the well managed war.
• 9:23
  So the trilogy of 4th Doctor Romana's story.
• 9:26
  Fabulous. I mean, to mimic Douglas Adams
• 9:29
  takes some skill and he does it well, but the plotters as well,
• 9:32
  which is a very funny first stop to book.
• 9:35
  I don't know if you remember. Have you read that one?
• 9:37
  It's on the shelf. I never got round to reading.
• 9:39
  It man, that you got to read it as a very funny scene where
• 9:41
  they're trying to get back to the TARDIS and they think
• 9:43
  they're witches. So they put all these sort of
• 9:45
  briars in front of the TARDIS and they're doing this ritual
• 9:47
  dance around it and setting it on fire just so they can jump in
• 9:50
  the door and get away. Very, very funny scenes of Vicky
• 9:54
  being mistaken for a boy and King John fancies her because
• 9:57
  he's gay. Actually, that does tie into
• 10:00
  Gareth Roberts is outside of Doctor Who.
• 10:02
  That's not to go. Let's not go.
• 10:06
  But also only Human, which is one of the best new series
• 10:09
  adventures I. Think again.
• 10:11
  I didn't read it, but I remember when that came out that got rave
• 10:14
  reviews. People absolutely loved that
• 10:16
  when it came out. But I think it's just one of
• 10:20
  those, you know, the when people write, separating artists and
• 10:23
  art and everything like that. And you know, I'm not one of
• 10:27
  those people who's like I I can't watch or listen to people
• 10:30
  who have different points of view to me.
• 10:32
  But there there is a line that you have to draw at some point.
• 10:36
  And I think it's, I think it's a line that's personal to
• 10:39
  everybody because like I know some people that won't read HP
• 10:43
  Lovecraft and other people that absolutely Revere his work.
• 10:46
  While I was thinking he's a terrible man, I know some people
• 10:48
  that have difficulty watching William Hartnell because he's a
• 10:52
  famous racist, you know, and I feel like you sort of have to
• 10:56
  have a a general overlook about these sort of things.
• 11:00
  You can't sort of pick and choose who which offensive
• 11:02
  person that I said we wasn't going to go here and here we
• 11:06
  are. Oh well with Gareth Roberts it
• 11:09
  is particularly annoying because he he really has done some
• 11:13
  terrible things and those books are really, really good.
• 11:18
  So one day I will get around to covering one of his very funny,
• 11:22
  very imaginative Doctor Who books.
• 11:25
  But not today. Not today.
• 11:29
  No. Well, look, let's let's push on
• 11:40
  from this and talk about what we are here to talk about which is
• 11:44
  survival by Ronan Munroe. And I've got a question for you
• 11:49
  to open up the conversation. Very simple question.
• 11:54
  Do you like this story? Now I'm talking about the TV and
• 11:58
  the book here, which, you know, they've got the same story.
• 12:03
  Short answer, yes, I think it's a good story.
• 12:09
  I I think one of the the strengths of it and it's only
• 12:13
  kind of when you watch Survival and then kind of go straight
• 12:17
  into rows is that Survival is kind of a little bit of a
• 12:23
  prototype for some of the stuff that come in the new series.
• 12:28
  In terms of more focus on the companion, the domestic setting
• 12:31
  even like where it's set in terms of you know you're
• 12:34
  getting, you're going to tower blocks in London, you've got
• 12:37
  Asus Gang and friends. These are all things that are
• 12:40
  now quite staples of what Doctor Who is now and this survival was
• 12:46
  kind of the first one to really do that.
• 12:49
  So kind of ended at a point where the connections between
• 12:53
  Survival and Rose are actually, yeah, production wise they're
• 12:56
  million miles apart. But thematically there are
• 12:59
  connections. And I think actually, you know,
• 13:01
  you could take a storyline like Survival and you could possibly
• 13:05
  do a streamlined version of that now and still televising the
• 13:10
  story, I think you. Could do it with Rose, yeah.
• 13:14
  I think it would work with Rose, I think.
• 13:17
  And there's certain themes in the story, stronger in the novel
• 13:22
  than they are on TV, but they are in there in the TV version
• 13:25
  and the themes of the characters and the motivations and
• 13:27
  everything, which is just really interesting.
• 13:30
  So I do think that it meant the, you know, the classic series
• 13:34
  ends strongly. There's certain things about the
• 13:38
  production of the TV version, the the cat.
• 13:43
  Oh, I thought. You were talking about Sylvester
• 13:45
  Mccoy's arse hanging out of that sofa.
• 13:47
  So pretty. Yeah, a blank in that.
• 13:50
  I'm forgetting about that. But yeah, the you know, the the
• 13:54
  cat, the the the one thing about reading this book is that you do
• 13:57
  not have to put up with the animatronic monkey looking,
• 14:01
  whatever the hell that is. Did you?
• 14:03
  Know how? In the book, David, those
• 14:05
  Kittlings are in practically every scene.
• 14:08
  But they resisted doing that on the TV show because it looks so
• 14:11
  terrible. Because they.
• 14:13
  Could, because everyone would laugh, but the the Kittlings are
• 14:16
  ever present and I think they are so much better done in the
• 14:20
  book. And actually, because it's
• 14:23
  prose, Bruno Monroe is able to actually explain better what
• 14:28
  they are and what they're doing. And that and that relationship
• 14:32
  between them and the master. Is.
• 14:35
  Better the cheater people. All of that.
• 14:38
  It's all fleshed. Out so much better and I think
• 14:43
  it's done in a way I think when you look at because you know
• 14:47
  this is one of the last target books and the adaptations,
• 14:53
  there's so many different ways that scripts are adapted and
• 14:57
  you've got the ones like the massacre and the Romans and ones
• 15:01
  which are complete reimaginings of those scripts.
• 15:05
  And then things like I always bang on about time flight,
• 15:08
  because time flight is probably one of the worst ones I've ever
• 15:10
  read, where it's basically just the script with some, he said,
• 15:14
  she said added. And it's that.
• 15:16
  Script as well. It's that.
• 15:18
  Script. If anything, if somebody said
• 15:19
  you could actually improve on this, you could actually make
• 15:22
  some of this work and make sense.
• 15:24
  It's like, no, it's so basic. And then you get ones like some
• 15:29
  of the early ones, some of the early Terrance books where they
• 15:31
  are really good retellings of those TV scripts, but there's
• 15:34
  just a little bit more through the.
• 15:36
  Ruins of a city stalk the ruins of a man.
• 15:41
  And yeah, and a bit more lyrical and they've got a bit more, a
• 15:44
  little bit more. And.
• 15:46
  And what was it? Because when I read, I read
• 15:48
  Underworld Time Flight and Tara the Autons on holiday last year.
• 15:52
  And I was always amazed, and I've probably said this before,
• 15:55
  that Luigi Rossini and Tara the Autons gets more character
• 15:59
  description on the one book he's in where he's a minor character,
• 16:04
  than they do covering Adrick's death in Time Flight.
• 16:08
  You know which. Is about half a page and so
• 16:12
  there's kind of broadly this different, you know, different
• 16:15
  levels of adaptation. Survival is kind of in that
• 16:18
  early target vein in terms of it's a pretty if not really
• 16:23
  faithful apart from some stuff in the second-half.
• 16:27
  It's pretty faithful. I mean it follows all the plot
• 16:30
  beats. It's almost following it scene
• 16:32
  by scene. You know, it's there's no
• 16:33
  deviations, there's no prologue or anything.
• 16:36
  It is a very St. telling and retelling sorry of the TV
• 16:41
  script. I was, I was talking to Sy Heart
• 16:44
  before this call and he said he always found this novel
• 16:47
  disappointing because it isn't doing what all the other novels.
• 16:51
  I'm going to ask you a question about the other novels this
• 16:53
  season later. And I said, are you mad?
• 16:56
  I said because tonally this is like way more brutal than the TV
• 17:01
  version and like there there's much more blood and violence and
• 17:07
  like this really feels like survival of the fetish.
• 17:10
  Whereas the TV version, obviously, because it's going
• 17:12
  out at 7:30 opposite Coronation Street, they can't do all of
• 17:15
  that. And the you know, they can't do
• 17:18
  the cat. And the cheeser people are the
• 17:21
  cheeser people, very cuddly. They're very yes and.
• 17:27
  It's not too bad in close up, I don't think, no.
• 17:29
  The Certainly they put their money in Mr. Bowman's mask,
• 17:33
  because when you get the close-ups of that in later on in
• 17:36
  the story, it's like I was watching it this morning.
• 17:38
  It's like that's the close-ups hold up really well.
• 17:42
  It's just when you see them with their paws and their claws in
• 17:46
  longer. Shots, you know, in the desert.
• 17:47
  Yeah, I can't think I can hear, you know, Jellicle cuts and
• 17:52
  Jellicle cuts. You know, they do look like
• 17:55
  they're they're belonging on in a pantomime or something like
• 17:57
  that. It is very, very pussy boots.
• 18:01
  But they just, they get away. It's it's a good, I think it's a
• 18:03
  good, it's a good story and I think it's Ace's story and you
• 18:08
  know, it's leading with the companion, which is really good.
• 18:12
  And that's something I think the McCoy era particularly 25 and 26
• 18:17
  get better at is giving the companion not just lines but
• 18:22
  actually giving them character development, giving them agency
• 18:26
  within a story. And I think this is 1 where Ace
• 18:30
  is actually driving the plot and and you know in TV so it's one
• 18:36
  of Sophie Organs best performances.
• 18:39
  But the the way Ace is written in the book they they runner
• 18:45
  Monroe adds just more and makes that character a bit deeper.
• 18:52
  Well, let's start there then. Although I just want to very
• 18:55
  quickly say and it's not really a spoiler because it's coming
• 18:59
  out on Sunday, but I have real issues with Sophie or just
• 19:02
  performances across season 26. I think in Battlefield she comes
• 19:07
  across as a little kid and in Ghost Light it's very mature
• 19:11
  performance. Then in Curse of Fenrick,
• 19:14
  unfortunately this sort of angsty material, it's a bit
• 19:18
  beyond the and it's a bit embarrassing.
• 19:20
  And then in survival, they're actually deliberately taking a
• 19:24
  younger character and maturing her and that suits Sophie Alder
• 19:28
  brilliantly because she is an older actress, she's something
• 19:30
  like 26 or something like that and she's playing supposedly a
• 19:33
  17 year old. There's a line in this book.
• 19:36
  Oh yeah, we're almost of age to buy alcohol so I'm like, oh
• 19:39
  shit, she's supposed to be 17. Sophie Aldridge done in in any
• 19:43
  way look 17 years old. And I think from what's on the
• 19:49
  page in Survival, that depiction of ACE.
• 19:54
  It's not what Sophie Aldridge is doing for most of her run,
• 19:58
  because Sophie Aldridge is an older actress.
• 20:00
  She is playing the role in quite a mannered and almost middle
• 20:05
  class. The way she talks is quite posh,
• 20:09
  and as written in this book, Ace is a young edgy delinquent.
• 20:16
  Who comes from a very rough area and was involved in sort, you
• 20:22
  know, they talk about smashing people through windows in the
• 20:24
  Goof Club and you know Molotov cocktails and things like this.
• 20:31
  There's I think they're saying the TV version oh we we
• 20:33
  sometimes we do a bonfire. But it's it's much clearer in
• 20:35
  the book that it's like they're just burning stuff because they
• 20:38
  can't and then angry, you know, and.
• 20:41
  Violent and and pissed off and. So her her conflict, because
• 20:47
  obviously there's a whole bit where she's talking about being
• 20:49
  in the youth club when she's growing up and Sheila's trying
• 20:52
  to do a hair maker, all a girly girl, and then she's getting
• 20:54
  into fights with Major and having a head smashed through a
• 20:56
  window. It's good stuff, isn't it?
• 20:58
  It's and it's. Like the and what the hell I've
• 21:03
  been. I've written it down as one of
• 21:04
  my themes. It's the theme of home and
• 21:06
  belonging. And that is good right
• 21:10
  Throughout in terms of aces looking to belong somewhere.
• 21:13
  And she thinks it's not in Perivale, it's with her gang
• 21:17
  that's gone. And I think then when she gets
• 21:21
  to the Cheetah planet and she's been bewitched by it, that comes
• 21:26
  over so much more strongly. That TV version, it's just, oh,
• 21:29
  she's bewitched by it. But because it's the the draw of
• 21:32
  belonging somewhere and that's what the planet is kind of
• 21:35
  drawing her in with, that is just like that feel so much more
• 21:40
  logical. It feels like a proper theme
• 21:42
  woven throughout the story. And that's the advantage of
• 21:44
  doing something in a in a novel form.
• 21:46
  You can't really easily do that in 325 minute episodes where
• 21:50
  you've got to have a cliffhanger every 3rd you're, you're.
• 21:54
  Not it's explicitly hearing, you know, Ace's thoughts on the
• 21:58
  telly. Whereas we are in the novel and
• 22:00
  there's you're right, there's a proper through line in the book
• 22:03
  of her landing where she belonged, you know, back in the
• 22:07
  day, but no longer belongs. And I love it because there's
• 22:12
  something a bit Rose about her in those early scenes where
• 22:15
  she's written as oh, you know, you know, I'm going to be really
• 22:18
  smug and I've been off on all these adventures and I'm going
• 22:20
  to show off a bit. There's a few passages where you
• 22:23
  know and then when someone mate, you know sold in the collection
• 22:27
  tin outside the shop. Oh yeah.
• 22:29
  Tries to like because she doesn't know she's been off
• 22:31
  having an event. She and she compares her to the
• 22:34
  fella who's gone off to to Birmingham to be a window
• 22:36
  cleaner. And she's so angry, isn't she?
• 22:39
  She's like, how, how dare you compare this amazing lifestyle
• 22:42
  I've got with that and she's a bit arrogant and a bit cocky.
• 22:46
  She did that. She does that thing of they're
• 22:49
  going to be so happy to see me. They're going to want everything
• 22:51
  that's going on. They're going to be like, oh,
• 22:53
  it's all about you. And in fact, actually, they're
• 22:56
  gone. The one mate that she doesn't
• 22:58
  counter is and she was just unimpressed.
• 23:00
  But I think she's unimpressed by everything.
• 23:02
  And the one other person who remembers this is Patterson, who
• 23:06
  gives her bollocking. And so the the the great unseen
• 23:11
  character of this era is Ace's mother and I and I asked this
• 23:15
  question on on Twitter the other day and it's like ignore the new
• 23:19
  adventures in the books. Do they ever actually say in the
• 23:22
  series she hates her mother? That's evident, I think, pretty
• 23:26
  much from dragon fire. And she ain't got no mum and
• 23:30
  dad, Yeah, but she hate and. But do they ever explain why?
• 23:38
  Just that it's a fractious relationship.
• 23:40
  And you know why that with my parents, So I can completely
• 23:43
  understand. And was there any temptation,
• 23:47
  particularly in either the TV version or in the book to have
• 23:50
  Ace's mother in it? And I actually think it's better
• 23:52
  to not have it. No.
• 23:53
  Oh. My God, that's one of the best
• 23:55
  things they can ever do in television.
• 23:57
  It would be like showing Sheridan and keeping up
• 24:00
  appearances. All the jokes wouldn't land
• 24:02
  anymore because everyone's got an idea in their head of this
• 24:06
  terrible character, I think. And for me, Ace's mum actually
• 24:10
  would be quite mundane. Quite a boring, mundane woman
• 24:16
  who just did. It didn't work out.
• 24:18
  As a parent and somebody else, it'll probably be this.
• 24:23
  You know, horrendously. Sort of violent, horrible woman.
• 24:27
  And I think you end up going into things that this story's
• 24:31
  not trying to tell. And if you have Ace's mum turn
• 24:34
  up and she's all kind of quite nice and everything, that just
• 24:37
  makes Ace look like a total cow and you don't want that and then
• 24:40
  you don't necessarily, you know, do you want her to be a victim
• 24:43
  as well? They don't really want to tell
• 24:44
  that story either. So it's just, well, we just
• 24:46
  don't talk about it. There's there's a wonderful
• 24:50
  line, the running on railroads. Ace wished she'd never come
• 24:53
  back. She wished she could leave, but
• 24:56
  she couldn't think of anywhere to go.
• 24:58
  And that's somewhere in sort of like the first third of the
• 25:01
  book. And then you're right.
• 25:03
  She goes through the whole experience of being bewitched by
• 25:05
  the planet. And then, wonderfully, the
• 25:08
  conclusion is the scene, which wasn't on the TV but probably
• 25:12
  should have been between her and Schriller, right at the end,
• 25:15
  where she goes, Are you ever coming back again?
• 25:17
  Ace thinks for a second. And goes no, I don't think so.
• 25:21
  And then at the very last line is her.
• 25:23
  Home Back to the TARDIS. And.
• 25:26
  And I think that's the line we lose because they put on the
• 25:30
  other the the, the speech at the end of it.
• 25:32
  And that's the theme of it that you know, when she leaps back
• 25:36
  home, Same with the Doctor as well.
• 25:38
  They leaped to the TARDIS and that's what that's where home is
• 25:42
  now. But that whole bit at the end
• 25:44
  where a sets of a funeral pyre for for Cara is so much better
• 25:50
  than what the. She uses, she makes something of
• 25:54
  that ridiculous set piece with with the the motorbikes.
• 25:58
  Because she uses the bikes, doesn't she?
• 26:00
  To set on fire, she does. And and when I first read it, I
• 26:03
  was like, oh, is that a pyre for Midge and Cara?
• 26:06
  It's like it's not massively clear because I think she says
• 26:08
  Midge's body's at her feet, but I think no, she her relationship
• 26:13
  with Major is interesting because that's really built upon
• 26:16
  because in in in the TV version it's just the the Baker and
• 26:20
  whatever, but he's one of the gang in the novel.
• 26:23
  They hate each other and he was the one who, I think he's the
• 26:27
  one who smashes their head through a glass window and it's
• 26:31
  kind of they were not mates. They were maybe at the youth
• 26:35
  centre, you know, together, whatever, but they weren't
• 26:37
  friends. And the antagonism that, and
• 26:40
  that actually makes that relationship between the two of
• 26:43
  them much more interesting. So it's not just, oh, he's he's
• 26:47
  a bit of a hot head. It's like they genuinely despise
• 26:50
  each other. I've got to.
• 26:52
  Say Freed from Sophie Aldridge and Will Barton, those
• 26:58
  characters really come alive in the book.
• 27:01
  Ace as a genuine sort of delinquent, slightly reformed by
• 27:05
  the doctor, but with loads of issues still to resolve.
• 27:09
  But but Mitch's character was a revelation in the book and, you
• 27:12
  know, I don't want to fret too much.
• 27:14
  Shame on Will Barton, who's doing what the script says.
• 27:17
  But that's one of my big sticking points with survival on
• 27:20
  TV is his performance and you know, all that, what he was up
• 27:23
  with, that ketchup and all that stuff.
• 27:26
  Whereas in that book, man, he is a nasty piece of work.
• 27:30
  And what's really interesting at the book, and this is I was
• 27:35
  trying to say, is it a feminist piece?
• 27:38
  I think the way that the men are treated and the way the women
• 27:41
  are treated is that generally the men are quite weak.
• 27:46
  They're easily corrupted. And there is a bit.
• 27:49
  I'm going to see if I can find it because it caught my eye and
• 27:53
  was like it is when Asian Sharia have could have been at the
• 28:01
  They're in the sort of gathering where they're hiding from the
• 28:03
  Cheetah people. And Asian Sharia tried to come
• 28:05
  up with a plan to go and do something about it.
• 28:10
  And there was just the way it was written and there we go.
• 28:13
  It's on, it's on page 50 and it's Asian.
• 28:16
  Sreena began to walk determinedly up the gully.
• 28:19
  Ace looked back over her shoulder at Major and Derek,
• 28:21
  come on, make yourself useful, can't you?
• 28:24
  The young men looked at each other and reluctantly trailed
• 28:27
  after the women. And I just when I read that and
• 28:30
  I was like, that is just pretty much setting out of store.
• 28:33
  One of the themes of of this book is that it who's got the
• 28:38
  agency? It's not just ACE, because Sri
• 28:39
  has also got some agency as well.
• 28:41
  She's the one who wants to do something, but she hasn't quite
• 28:43
  got the background that ACE has got, and it's these characters
• 28:48
  who are driving things you've got.
• 28:51
  A man who is bewitched by a man in this, and that's midged by
• 28:56
  the master, but he's bewitched to do terrible things, very
• 29:02
  masculine things, destroyed to kill people and all this.
• 29:05
  And then you've got a woman, Ace, who's bewitched by a woman,
• 29:11
  Cara, and that's far more just liberating her.
• 29:16
  And you know, all those passages.
• 29:17
  There's a wonderful passage about Ace just running and the
• 29:20
  pleasure of running and sort of being connected and all of this.
• 29:25
  I think there is a feminist reading in this.
• 29:27
  There is. And I think there's throughout,
• 29:30
  I think it's Chapter 5 because chapter when I was reading it,
• 29:32
  it's like that making notes going.
• 29:34
  Chapter 5 is just, which is about the second-half of the TV
• 29:37
  episode for a bit of context. And I thought that's the best
• 29:40
  chapter of the book because it's got Mitch kind of being, I'm
• 29:46
  going to keep saying bewitched. But it's where Mitch starts to
• 29:48
  transform, A starts to transform.
• 29:50
  And they're almost in parallel because you've got his act of
• 29:53
  violence against the downed cheater person, and then you've
• 29:56
  got her compassion with Cara. And they're kind of going back
• 30:01
  and forth between these two storylines.
• 30:03
  And it's like he's kind of giving in to the savagery and
• 30:08
  she's not letting. She's keeping hold of her
• 30:11
  compassion. And I think the scenes are in
• 30:14
  the TV version, the scenes are sort of parallel, but the kind
• 30:16
  of the the way it's written, the way that's all drawn out.
• 30:19
  And then occasionally you'll go back to Patterson, Shriller and
• 30:22
  Derek and you go, yeah, they're just cat food.
• 30:24
  I mean, I don't, I don't want to shit all over the TV version
• 30:27
  like this. Like Roman Monroe wrote this
• 30:29
  script. All the ideas in this book are
• 30:31
  in the TV version. They just made a sanitized
• 30:33
  version that could go out at 7:30, you know, and it's still
• 30:36
  quite edgy and is pushing what it can do.
• 30:40
  I just like the fact that this is the unshackle of it, that you
• 30:42
  said that the scene with Midge where he kills is he's described
• 30:46
  as killing that Cheetah person and feeling invincible.
• 30:49
  And then in the next scene when he comes up to all of them, you
• 30:52
  know and says and he's you know, he's got the the tooth in his
• 30:54
  hand his arms are covered in blood flow to kill the book just
• 30:59
  makes him really scary. It's it's it's definitely like
• 31:04
  kill or be killed. You know it's a.
• 31:06
  It's a dangerous character. And then where they then take
• 31:10
  that in the final chapter? Is it the final chapter?
• 31:14
  Second, last chapter, because obviously they all get home and
• 31:17
  TV version Derek runs off and like Hooray, he's so happy and
• 31:22
  in fact actually the beginning of when he comes back he's happy
• 31:25
  because they, you know, running around because he says oh he's
• 31:28
  happy if he's playing football by himself or something and he's
• 31:30
  he's in a good mood. And then Midge and the the
• 31:34
  hoodlums turn up and they've they've specifically say they've
• 31:38
  changed out of their gym shoes. They're wearing boots.
• 31:41
  And then proceed to kick Derek to death.
• 31:43
  Oh, it's. Horrible.
• 31:44
  It is a. It is a.
• 31:46
  Patterson's death as well. He's described as being sprawled
• 31:51
  in the centre of the gym, staring sightlessly at the
• 31:54
  ceiling. And they literally, the lion
• 31:56
  says he appeared to have been battered to death.
• 31:58
  And I remember reading that on the train going like because I
• 32:01
  didn't get that from the TV version.
• 32:04
  No, the the the the Slightly Amdram gym group sort of look at
• 32:08
  him menacingly and then he's on the ground.
• 32:11
  But the the Patterson's death then Derek and then in the TV
• 32:17
  version Midge sort of kills himself or does something.
• 32:22
  It's not in the book the and again this is actually
• 32:27
  something. So in the TV version, what is
• 32:32
  not clear the control or how Midge and the Master have over
• 32:37
  that gym group, it is so much explicit that they are
• 32:42
  mesmerized. They are basically the masses
• 32:44
  hypnotize them either through his own hypnosis or through the
• 32:47
  chiefs of people. It's not still not entirely OK,
• 32:48
  but basically he's got control of them and he uses them like a
• 32:52
  gang and he basically turns them on Mitch and suffering a similar
• 32:58
  fate to Derek and Patterson, he's then kicked to death.
• 33:03
  Yeah. Oh, it's horrible.
• 33:04
  You. Know it, it, it, it's, it's
• 33:07
  described. As his charred, crippled body
• 33:10
  hit to death by the defence group.
• 33:13
  And I went, oh God, what's going on?
• 33:14
  Like, I mean, it's so horrific and obviously they could never
• 33:18
  show any of this, but I think it really, in terms of the themes
• 33:22
  of the book, of it absolutely turning you into an animal.
• 33:27
  It it it's so explicit it it leads into the themes so much
• 33:31
  more potently. And other themes.
• 33:35
  You've got that, the feminist theme, you've got the theme of
• 33:38
  home. You've also got the anti hunting
• 33:41
  vibe as well, which is coming especially with the stuff with
• 33:44
  ANG early on. But there's a whole thing I
• 33:46
  think the doctor comments on hunting at some point, you know,
• 33:48
  all that, all that noise to chase one small creature.
• 33:52
  And again, this is, this is if this was done now, if this was a
• 33:59
  new novelisation, it would be woke.
• 34:01
  It would be, you know, this is this, this is such a hate the
• 34:05
  term, but this is a woke book and everything about it there
• 34:09
  is, it's got something to say and all the stuff about animals
• 34:16
  and animal rights and stuff with Angie stuff.
• 34:18
  I did kind of wonder like what of all the people got kidnapped
• 34:21
  by the Cheetah people. They left Angelo, they took
• 34:24
  everybody else's in Aces gang, but they left her alone.
• 34:27
  I was like, probably because she'd been totally unimpressed
• 34:30
  as a. Side note on the TVI love that
• 34:32
  character I I. Think she's great?
• 34:34
  I think she would have just been sarcastic at them, or she would
• 34:36
  have sneezed on them with a hay fever.
• 34:38
  You know, I thought. You was dead.
• 34:40
  Either that or you'd gone to Birmingham.
• 34:44
  Well, did you see the lines? She got talk about things they
• 34:47
  didn't put on the TV. Where she goes, I can't, hay
• 34:51
  fever. And then in the book she goes.
• 34:53
  It's most likely glue though. She's a glue sniffer.
• 34:59
  JNT is there with a pen. Go and take that out.
• 35:01
  You could get that out for a star.
• 35:04
  And no pun intended, the survival rate in the book is
• 35:08
  worse because the other characters that they bring back
• 35:11
  are Harvey and Len. We go back, we go back into the
• 35:15
  shop. Explains why Bitch is wearing
• 35:18
  those levers and then suddenly he's in that dreadful like
• 35:21
  business suit where did. He get the money for where he
• 35:25
  took it from the shop and Harvey and Len, well, we assume they're
• 35:28
  dead. They get taken away to the
• 35:30
  blinds of the streets of people. And I think that book ends from
• 35:34
  episode one really well, to have them come back and then have a
• 35:37
  purpose because in in episode one you're like, well, OK, it's
• 35:40
  just a chance to have Halo pace in this.
• 35:43
  But in the book it it does make sense that we go back there.
• 35:46
  That's why we went to the shop at the beginning, to establish
• 35:48
  those characters so we could find that money.
• 35:51
  And actually, yeah, they get a cruel failure like everybody
• 35:53
  else because that planet goes up at the end.
• 35:55
  So they're dead. At the end of this book, they're
• 35:57
  dead. They're definitely dead.
• 35:58
  All, you know, they transformed very, very quickly into cats.
• 36:01
  You know, there's there's a sequel, it's a big, there's a
• 36:03
  big finish box set waiting for you.
• 36:06
  But the other thing I really liked going right back to the
• 36:09
  start because you talk about because we've got the shop and
• 36:12
  it's they talk about Sunday opening and I think it's kind of
• 36:16
  there, but it's definitely the book is that sense of Sunday.
• 36:19
  Now, this is when you're kind of of of our generation, Sundays,
• 36:26
  our generation. I beg your pardon, No call grew
• 36:28
  up in. The late 80s Sundays could be
• 36:34
  fucking tedious the length. Of a Bible, I'll tell you,
• 36:37
  Sundays felt like they went on forever and.
• 36:39
  You know, if people think Sundays can be a bit dull now,
• 36:44
  it's like there was a point when hardly anything was open and
• 36:48
  there was there was a boredom of to Sunday afternoons, which I
• 36:52
  think the the first chapter of this book captures really well,
• 36:57
  that sense of boredom and to. Be fair, I think the TV show
• 37:03
  does as well, yeah. And what?
• 37:05
  In fact, she describes it as eerily empty streets, like a
• 37:08
  ghost town. And I also like how they capture
• 37:11
  suburbia in there. Because it's all all the
• 37:14
  neighbours are Mr. This and Misses That and everything.
• 37:16
  And it's got that dull suburban Sunday afternoon vibe and I get
• 37:24
  out of my. Garden go on another.
• 37:27
  Another performance we're saved from.
• 37:30
  Yeah, Jesus flipping cats. Jackie Tyler making her first
• 37:34
  appearance in Doctor Who. But I I love the atmosphere.
• 37:39
  I think that's the thing with the what the book can do is set
• 37:43
  that scene a little bit better. The TV, the TV version seems a
• 37:45
  little bit wandering around. We're also saved from some
• 37:50
  really dodgy direction which will be when Aces chased through
• 37:55
  the playground, climbing over swings and slides which just
• 38:00
  looks. Silly.
• 38:02
  It's a poor director. He's only, he's trying to work
• 38:04
  with what he's got, isn't he? But on that book, it feels like
• 38:07
  a a chase to the death. It's.
• 38:09
  It's a. Proper chase to death.
• 38:10
  And then when she goes through the the portal and she ends up,
• 38:13
  you know, the idea that she is still running, She knows she
• 38:17
  doesn't have to pause for a special effect, she's just kept
• 38:19
  kept going. And I think that the the stuff
• 38:24
  with the Kittlings, the Kittlings are ever present,
• 38:27
  they're described. As shadows at one point shadows
• 38:30
  going around the TARDIS I. Thought and so many chapters or
• 38:35
  paragraphs end with, you know the red eyes of a kittling
• 38:39
  staring. You know, they they always there
• 38:41
  muscles. It says, dripping with blood.
• 38:44
  Things that you hadn't used couldn't do on telly, but the
• 38:47
  relationship between the Kittlings and the Master is
• 38:51
  great. The idea that they're
• 38:52
  telepathic, they're kind of literally clawing at the door of
• 38:55
  his mind because they even the Doctor says he can feel them
• 38:58
  trying to get in and he won't let them in.
• 39:01
  And it's like, that's the book explains that dynamic between
• 39:05
  the Kittlings, the Cheetah people on the planet.
• 39:08
  So much better it says it. Says the Kittlings.
• 39:11
  They could smell blood even across the vacuum of space.
• 39:15
  Why that's a such a great line and.
• 39:19
  I I sometimes wonder whether or not part of this book is Runner
• 39:23
  Monroe giving some of the story a second draft, another draft
• 39:26
  because there are certain things that are explained better.
• 39:30
  So one, how does the Master control the the youth group?
• 39:33
  But also, I watched this for years going bit of a coincidence
• 39:38
  that it just so happens to be they're Imperia Vale.
• 39:41
  It just so happens to be a coincidence that they're hunting
• 39:44
  Ace's mates and and there is a line.
• 39:47
  Anyone. Would think this is a coming of
• 39:49
  age story for ace you. Know, and I think there's one
• 39:52
  line in the TV version where the The Master says to the Doctor
• 39:54
  something like that's why I brought you here.
• 39:57
  But of course, he's brought him with Patterson.
• 39:59
  But actually the book. Much more explicit, says
• 40:03
  bringing the cheetahs to Perryvale at this time was part
• 40:08
  of he He was trapped. He needs the Doctor.
• 40:11
  I know, I know how to get him here.
• 40:14
  And so the whole reason they're in Perryvale hunting Ace's
• 40:17
  friends is because it's the Master setting a trap on the.
• 40:20
  TV episode. There is the line, isn't it?
• 40:22
  He does say I need your help, Doctor, but it seems like, oh,
• 40:25
  it's a coincidence that the Doctor's landed on the planet.
• 40:28
  He's realised he's here and oh great, you can help me get home
• 40:31
  now, You'll get get me away from here.
• 40:33
  Whereas yeah, it's all part of a big plan, isn't it?
• 40:36
  He's sorting. Out.
• 40:37
  And I think, again, another reason why I like that Chapter
• 40:40
  5, is that they do a whole bit about the Doctor's relationship
• 40:43
  with the Master, and I think it's so well explains that
• 40:48
  relationship. And.
• 40:51
  The the the short version is that when they were at the the
• 40:55
  Academy or whatever, the Doctor was the one who always won the
• 40:56
  prizes, always came first, and he was getting these accolades
• 41:02
  that he didn't want. But the Masters coveted them so
• 41:05
  much, and the more the Doctor didn't want them, the more
• 41:07
  frustrated the Master became. And that was the beginning of
• 41:11
  their rival, right? It's.
• 41:13
  It's the best ever reading of the doctrine, the master I've
• 41:17
  seen on TV or in prose, because it actually gives the master a
• 41:22
  motivation that I can believe in beyond, you know, he's just
• 41:26
  fruit loop. I'm, I'm the best, the absolute
• 41:30
  best part of that whole passage. And it's a big passage, isn't
• 41:32
  it, where it's talking about their relationship.
• 41:36
  Ronan Monroe goes to the Master and spent hundreds of years
• 41:39
  plotting the Doctor's destruction, but there was no
• 41:42
  indication that when their paths cross that the Doctor had even
• 41:46
  thought about him. Burn that is Root and and the
• 41:51
  way that's written it's it's it's one of the best readings of
• 41:58
  that relationship because it feels really believable and it
• 42:01
  it does away with the whole the master is mad and and and stared
• 42:06
  into it is that basically they were just he's jealous.
• 42:09
  He's jealous and that's why he's he.
• 42:13
  And he wants the it's almost he wants the doctor's attention and
• 42:17
  he wants him to notice him. You.
• 42:18
  Must have. I certainly have the people I
• 42:20
  know. I've seen jealousy turn into
• 42:22
  anger, turn into hate. And the weird thing that it
• 42:26
  reminded me of, because I was reading going, I know this
• 42:29
  story, this story sounds familiar.
• 42:31
  There's an episode of The New Avengers, which is basically
• 42:32
  that story. Oh my.
• 42:35
  God, what? When the fellas going off the
• 42:36
  speed, all the things he loves, yeah.
• 42:38
  And it's the same thing. It's the same thing.
• 42:40
  Dead men are dangerous. It's it's the same.
• 42:42
  It's basically the same story. It's basically a childhood rival
• 42:45
  who could never bet best the main character.
• 42:48
  The only time he did was by cheating and the end of The
• 42:53
  Sense, wouldn't you you'd. Think reducing them to.
• 42:55
  That would actually belis all the characters, but it just
• 42:58
  makes perfect sense. I think sometimes doing things a
• 43:02
  bit more down to earth for these larger than life can't simpler.
• 43:05
  It works so much better because it's it's a bit more relatable
• 43:08
  and I prefer, I do prefer that kind of reading of it than it
• 43:14
  was and there are some great stories I think Master on audio
• 43:17
  big finishes audio is one of the best but that is meant that is
• 43:20
  so melodramatic as well. Timeless children.
• 43:24
  I do love the fact that he's so angry about the fact that, you
• 43:27
  know, he's got the Doctor's DNA mixed in with him and the
• 43:31
  Doctor's that important. But that could tie into this.
• 43:33
  Again, that does. Kind of tie into this It kind of
• 43:36
  not only did he win. Every fucking trophy.
• 43:39
  Now you're telling me, here's the basis of time lost society.
• 43:43
  I'm going to kill him. And I think the the, the, the
• 43:47
  master in this story is properly scary.
• 43:51
  Again, I think and again this is anime's best performance on TV.
• 43:55
  And I don't want to take away from that because I think he
• 43:58
  he's finally given the chance to underplay it and be quite softly
• 44:01
  spoken. I don't think he shouts all that
• 44:04
  much in it apart from towards the end when they're having that
• 44:08
  fight at the end. But the desperation that he has,
• 44:12
  the fact that he's been, he's been worn down that the whole
• 44:17
  thing with it's much clearer in the book.
• 44:20
  I keep saying that but it is is his relationship with the
• 44:23
  Kittlings and the cheetah people is that he the reason why he's
• 44:26
  helping them hunt is because it's distracting them from
• 44:31
  basically coming for him. He's desk doing anything to
• 44:34
  survive himself, which makes sense of all those.
• 44:37
  Scenes where he's looking through their eyes and saying,
• 44:41
  yeah, Hunt, take that one, take that one and that.
• 44:44
  He's struggling to control them because again, you see so much
• 44:48
  more. Interesting.
• 44:49
  Don't you think that he's vulnerable?
• 44:51
  He's. He's very vulnerable in this and
• 44:54
  there are times where he was trying to use the Kittlings to
• 44:58
  follow Ace and the Doctor, but they're more interested in.
• 45:02
  I think it's when they're looking at was it.
• 45:04
  There's a group of kids at one point and it's like, no.
• 45:07
  And in the TV, in TV version it's just, Oh no, not them.
• 45:10
  But actually, in the book, the Kittlings are really quite scary
• 45:14
  because they would just go for anything if they could.
• 45:18
  But he's actually doing, he's doing the right thing.
• 45:21
  Smell blood across space. Oh God.
• 45:25
  And the real that that relationship when it's spelt out
• 45:28
  and the fact that the Doctor can sense them as well, What?
• 45:34
  What what happens then is because you have all of that
• 45:37
  insight into the Doctor and Master relationship, it means
• 45:40
  the scene at the end where they fight as the planet is literally
• 45:43
  being torn apart around them, that genuinely feels like the
• 45:48
  sort of the the rock and back falls moment, like finally it's
• 45:51
  all led to this, you know, and we're both savages and we're
• 45:55
  going to tear each other apart. Yeah.
• 45:57
  And the Doctor says, no, I'm not doing that, you know, we're not
• 46:00
  doing this. We're going home.
• 46:03
  And the master's like, no, I'm just going to fucking kill you.
• 46:06
  I hate you. You know what I mean?
• 46:08
  I. Finally got what I need.
• 46:10
  The, the, the, the rage of this planet is what I need to destroy
• 46:14
  you. And it's not enough.
• 46:17
  What that? Means is is that you have two
• 46:21
  parallel stories taking place, but it isn't really the Doctor
• 46:26
  an Ace, it's the Master, an Ace. Ace's homecoming story and
• 46:32
  deciding that she belongs to the TARDIS and the Masters story of,
• 46:37
  you know, his, his jealousy of the Doctor and that's sort of
• 46:40
  coming to a climax. Weird enough, I think both on TV
• 46:44
  and in the book, the Doctors a little bit back from the action.
• 46:48
  You know, he's he's sort of having fun with the cats in at
• 46:52
  the beginning and he's offering advice in the middle sections
• 46:56
  and then he's on the bike and all that at the end.
• 46:59
  So he's there. But the focus isn't really on
• 47:02
  the Doctor. It's.
• 47:04
  Not his story. And you know they have that tiny
• 47:08
  little bit at the end where he's got the yellow contacts in just
• 47:12
  it's starting to affect him. And it's like because again the
• 47:17
  the the TV version doesn't get the opportunity to go into that,
• 47:20
  but in the book is the fact that he's been fighting it off, it's
• 47:23
  much more explicit that he's been fighting off.
• 47:25
  So the fact that in that moment of weakness where the master
• 47:28
  attacks him and I think there's another theme as well because
• 47:31
  there's almost an anti war theme because basically they kind of
• 47:34
  say when the creatures of the planet fight, it causes the
• 47:37
  explosions that destroys the planet and it's like well this
• 47:40
  is the late 1980s, it's. Kind of.
• 47:42
  It's kind of now. You know that fighting ready to
• 47:46
  tear the. Planet apart if we.
• 47:48
  If we fight amongst ourselves, we're going to destroy this
• 47:50
  planet. It's what we do.
• 47:53
  David except on this podcast. Oh, this.
• 47:57
  This is where the podcast that just stands stands still and
• 48:00
  doesn't move. Don't.
• 48:03
  Move. Or if you see the outtake, yeah,
• 48:07
  he says. A lot more fucking.
• 48:08
  Stay still, right? Although you say anti war?
• 48:15
  Definitely. Because then you've got
• 48:16
  Patterson in there spouting all of that militaristic garbage,
• 48:21
  and then actually, you know this, this brute of a man on the
• 48:26
  SAS survival is a total fucking wimp when it comes to it.
• 48:30
  You know, when he's in a situation of extreme peril where
• 48:34
  he's got to use his instincts, he's a he's a cow and he's
• 48:37
  terrified. He's.
• 48:39
  He he can. Even to the very end, he's still
• 48:42
  so sure of himself and I think there's just that moment when he
• 48:46
  sees Mage in the community centre and there is that kind of
• 48:50
  oh fuck moment he's kind of he knows he's done, but he used to
• 48:55
  pass it. Off like it never happened,
• 48:56
  didn't he? You know?
• 48:58
  Yeah. He's oh, yeah it it didn't
• 49:01
  happen. He's imagined it or whatever and
• 49:03
  call yourself a doctor and. Yeah and and it's a bit like
• 49:07
  what they did. I was just you saying that just
• 49:10
  made me think going because Julian Holloway, who does a good
• 49:15
  performance. Totally committed, but.
• 49:19
  In a way, if physically should they have had somebody like with
• 49:22
  pecks in paradise Towers, you know, should they have had
• 49:25
  somebody who was a bit bigger and broader to kind of really
• 49:28
  sell that? So it's.
• 49:29
  Quite a surprise when you know he's running away.
• 49:33
  You know that actually he is a total coward.
• 49:35
  And I mean not coward. I think just he thinks he can.
• 49:40
  He's one of the people who thinks they can handle the
• 49:42
  situation bluster. That mask, I can.
• 49:45
  I can take on anything, throw anything at me, you know, I can
• 49:48
  do it. And then he's in one situation
• 49:51
  that's out of his control and he can't handle it and.
• 49:54
  Yet he's still there, and there's that bit.
• 49:56
  So I think it's during where Aces Ace is having her moment
• 50:00
  with Cara and Midges transforming.
• 50:02
  And then every now and again you go back to Patterson, Schuler
• 50:05
  and Derek. And Schuler's just rolling her
• 50:07
  eyes at him constantly because he just keeps going on about, Oh
• 50:10
  yes, I only ate the worm Stew and stick with me and I know
• 50:12
  what I'm doing. And she's just like she's
• 50:15
  totally unimpressed, whereas she's.
• 50:17
  Very competent, isn't she? And she's trying to think up
• 50:20
  ways to capture the cheetahs and all sorts.
• 50:23
  And she's taking charge and it it was good that they could have
• 50:26
  because she just disappears from the story they bring.
• 50:29
  They bring her back with a can of petrol to basically start a
• 50:31
  bonfire. You know, she she's actually.
• 50:35
  That that image, because it's like, do you remember that?
• 50:38
  Do you watch Shameless? I watched it for a while and
• 50:41
  then I got a bit bored of it. But yeah, I think you.
• 50:44
  Know the title Secret opens with the bonfire and the council and
• 50:46
  all that. I really was getting that
• 50:49
  imagery when they were doing the bonfire at the end and I could
• 50:51
  see the two of them, all the councils like and I can see the
• 50:54
  sort of characters that that that Ronan Monroe perceives them
• 50:58
  to be. Because there's sometimes with
• 51:01
  Ace that you kind of think she's from Perryvale she probably like
• 51:04
  acts like she comes from like you know the rough council
• 51:06
  estate but she probably because it's the the rest of suburbia
• 51:09
  there was all very nice and middle class.
• 51:10
  I mean she probably comes from a very nice you know faced a very
• 51:13
  middle class upbringing. She's just being a bit of a
• 51:15
  delinquent. So she just she makes out that
• 51:17
  she's rougher than she is and that would have been quite a
• 51:19
  nice twist if it turned out that all the the stupid insults and
• 51:24
  everything, that's just her trying to sound hard and just
• 51:26
  being really rubbish at it. Because it does sound a bit
• 51:28
  rubbish and and we've spared a lot of that in the book, the.
• 51:32
  Script. And the book makes it explicit
• 51:36
  that she is a rough, yeah, sort of council estate girl, you
• 51:41
  know, And she was part of a gang and they were doing fires and
• 51:45
  Molotov cocktails and throwing each other through windows and
• 51:48
  stuff like this, you know, And that.
• 51:51
  I think if had they hired a really edgy young actress and
• 51:56
  there must have been some around, there must have been if
• 51:59
  they'd cast the net wide, I think the ace we would have got
• 52:03
  on TV maybe would have been less sympathetic because I think her
• 52:06
  relationship with McCoy, so everybody was so cute and
• 52:09
  watchable, but I think it would have been a bit more interesting
• 52:14
  and uncomfortable. I mean I I feel bad for
• 52:18
  criticizing people's performances because you know I
• 52:22
  think their chemistry is fantastic.
• 52:24
  I think that's what carries you through these well the online
• 52:27
  stories that they do is that they they clearly like each
• 52:31
  other. They clearly have a great
• 52:32
  dynamic together. Just that they're not the
• 52:36
  neither, more the greatest performers.
• 52:38
  And I think sometimes when they're.
• 52:40
  Getting challenging material like Fenrik and stuff like that,
• 52:45
  it's very frustrating because I can see what they're going for,
• 52:49
  but for me it doesn't work and I.
• 52:50
  Think that's why one of the reasons why I think this book is
• 52:54
  stronger than the TV version is that it's removed from You know,
• 52:58
  he hasn't. Caught McCoy and Aldrin in it.
• 53:01
  I mean, the best way to do it is you've got a good example of
• 53:04
  Mccoy's of Mccoy's acting is, if you look at that line, if we
• 53:09
  fight like animals, we die like animals.
• 53:11
  He does it twice. The first time when on the
• 53:13
  Cheetah planet, great. I think that's iconic moment.
• 53:18
  You then cut. He does it again in the street
• 53:21
  and I was looking at going. I'd have cut that because it's.
• 53:26
  Sort of like we find like animals what die like animals.
• 53:29
  Oh, oh. You know and and it's like you
• 53:34
  could have just had that the last syllable of animals and
• 53:37
  just that's so it's it's like he can do it but he just couldn't
• 53:42
  have that that particular scene I think.
• 53:43
  It's for me the Hawaii thing. It reminds me of the kangs in
• 53:48
  Paradise Towers. They are supposed to be sort of
• 53:51
  dirty rough. Urban.
• 53:53
  Girls. And unfortunately I've dragged
• 53:56
  in a load of, you know, drama students from Eton to play them
• 54:00
  so that it's, you know, middle class people playing rough day
• 54:04
  urban girls. And you know, I don't want to
• 54:07
  labour the point too much, but I do really think this book shows
• 54:10
  a window into what could have been.
• 54:12
  And because this is what this is, this is #150 of the target
• 54:18
  books. And at the end is it Peter
• 54:20
  Darvill Evans? It is, the postscript says,
• 54:24
  well, you know, we're nearly done, but we've got, we've got
• 54:28
  exciting plans for the future and obviously we know where that
• 54:31
  goes. You're going to be.
• 54:33
  Broader and deeper than you've ever been before, baby and.
• 54:37
  I think so. Some of the the, the themes and
• 54:41
  the character choices from this book feed into what comes with
• 54:46
  how they take the character. I think there's always that
• 54:49
  thing about them, people say about some of the McCoy novels
• 54:51
  as they're pro to new adventures.
• 54:54
  I've only read. I haven't read a huge number of
• 54:56
  this era, but I can kind of see where people are coming from
• 55:01
  the. Trouble is, is they do try and
• 55:02
  rough up Ace like this and and turn her into new Ace.
• 55:06
  But unfortunately they squeeze her into this PV suit and make
• 55:09
  her desperately unlikeable when she's trying to hurt and torture
• 55:13
  Bernice, who we love at every turn.
• 55:16
  And it's like, no, no, go read Survival the book again.
• 55:19
  That's what you're aiming for, you know?
• 55:22
  I was quite glad when they finally got around to writing
• 55:24
  her out. So it was like.
• 55:25
  By a woman as well. Kate Allman.
• 55:27
  Yep. One of the women that actually
• 55:29
  could writers that actually could make that character work.
• 55:33
  Well, look, I've got, I've got another question for you,
• 55:35
  because I'm sort of completely away from the characters.
• 55:38
  It's sort of three questions. It won.
• 55:41
  So good luck. But how did you find the prose
• 55:46
  of this book, like how it was written?
• 55:48
  Because the page count isn't high, so it isn't.
• 55:51
  It isn't like Remembrance or Cos Fenrick, which run to nearly 200
• 55:55
  pages. This is 100 and.
• 55:56
  To 130, Yeah, not. Many.
• 55:59
  But also how do you think she, Rhonda Monroe, wrote sort of the
• 56:05
  the wildness of the planet and you know, the the the volcanoes
• 56:08
  and all of that. How, how was that?
• 56:10
  How well was that depicted? Because that's one of the things
• 56:12
  I would think works brilliantly on the TV story, especially with
• 56:16
  the score as well. Oh the.
• 56:17
  Score's fantastic. I think she writes it really.
• 56:21
  It's really pacey. I mean, it's 130 pages.
• 56:25
  It covers everything the TV series, TV story does with a few
• 56:29
  bits added. But it it, it rattles through
• 56:34
  the pace of it is, is, is great. And I think I say she captured,
• 56:39
  you know, the the first couple of chapters where you've got
• 56:41
  that sort of Sunday afternoon lethargy.
• 56:43
  She captures that so well. I was reading that going.
• 56:46
  I remember those Sundays. I remember that kind of that
• 56:48
  boredom, that sense of there's no one around and everything
• 56:51
  like that. I think she gets that.
• 56:53
  Then when you get to the Chisa planet again, it's not done in
• 56:58
  chunks. Huge chunks of detail.
• 57:00
  Every bit that she uses to describe the planet of the
• 57:04
  Kittlings or the Carrot, it's it's telling and driving the
• 57:07
  story. It's not a word wasted.
• 57:09
  It's always a. Line in every scene that's
• 57:12
  reminding you that this planet is about to burn.
• 57:17
  I went for it when Ace first lands there, it just says the
• 57:19
  area was the desert was ringed with volcanoes.
• 57:23
  You're just always aware of this sort of turbulent explosion
• 57:28
  that's due she's. Great at setting that scene and
• 57:31
  keeping you in that scene and by doing that constantly reminding
• 57:35
  you of this, the danger of this planet, you know that it's about
• 57:37
  to explode. I think it's a little bit there
• 57:40
  in the TV version because you've got the the landscape, but it
• 57:44
  really kind of hammers home that this is a dying planet.
• 57:48
  What's? Nice is in the book she gets
• 57:49
  more of a chance to talk about the back story of the planet as
• 57:52
  well. She she says that it had huge
• 57:54
  cities, fleets of ships, but they were all reduced to ashes,
• 57:59
  bone and blood, which I thought was great.
• 58:01
  You know, basically it's all devolved into this savagery and
• 58:05
  wildness, this wonderful, gleaming sort of science fiction
• 58:09
  cities. It's.
• 58:11
  Again, even you know a Time Lord can be corrupted.
• 58:14
  These great cities can be corrupted.
• 58:15
  You know this is a the the the power of this planet is massive
• 58:19
  in you isn't. It it's something that's inside
• 58:22
  you, it's a. Primal force that's in all of
• 58:25
  us, and it's whether or not you give it.
• 58:26
  It's not so much if you give into it because Ace kind of
• 58:29
  gives into it, but she gives into it in a different way.
• 58:32
  She gives into it as age. The Midge gives into it due to
• 58:35
  his anger and his hatred and his terror, and Ace gives into it
• 58:40
  because of her compassion and longing.
• 58:42
  The longing for home and so effects them in different ways
• 58:48
  and I think the planet feels properly dangerous.
• 58:52
  I think there's, you know, it's you get a sense of that in some
• 58:56
  of the direction and everything but the book, it's kind of this
• 58:59
  is a bad place to be. There was.
• 59:01
  One line, right in the book. Once the power of the planet
• 59:04
  awoken you, you would share it's strength, it's wildness and it's
• 59:08
  savagery. There, it's in one line and it
• 59:11
  says everything. The.
• 59:13
  The the planet is a character and and and and very much you
• 59:18
  know it is one of the most interesting planets I think the
• 59:21
  classic series ever did. And I think it's so well
• 59:24
  characterized both on television and in the book.
• 59:27
  And I think the way she writes it, the the, the descriptions,
• 59:31
  the sense of danger, it's it's what it's some of the targets
• 59:37
  can be very functional. And this one it's functional,
• 59:41
  but it's written so well and it's just it adds those extra
• 59:45
  layers to it as well and and layers to the character as well.
• 59:48
  Like having Angie, who's basically just a 2 scene
• 59:50
  character and only but she's given enough, OK.
• 59:53
  She's off her face on gloom. You know, she invests that
• 59:58
  character with enough personality because she doesn't
• 1:00:03
  really do it. She doesn't drive the plot much
• 1:00:04
  apart from giving a bit of information.
• 1:00:06
  Right. But she makes her interesting.
• 1:00:07
  She's carrying some of the themes of the story, you know
• 1:00:10
  that. It's actually everybody.
• 1:00:12
  Does every character does far more, far more explicitly in
• 1:00:16
  the, in the and and? I think you know everything.
• 1:00:18
  There's no, I said. There's not a word wasted in
• 1:00:22
  that. 130 pages. Everything is pages.
• 1:00:24
  You can't. Can't you?
• 1:00:24
  You know. Everything is driving the story
• 1:00:27
  and it's and what I sometimes find with some of the targets is
• 1:00:34
  when you look at how the the episodes and page counts split,
• 1:00:38
  I find quite a lot of them have a lot from the first episode and
• 1:00:42
  then gradually they have less and less.
• 1:00:44
  This felt fairly even. I mean, I thought the third
• 1:00:48
  episode was the one that the and the book was what deviated the
• 1:00:51
  most that last third. And and kind of doing the things
• 1:00:55
  that what you couldn't do on TV. But also just, I think this is
• 1:00:59
  what I think sometimes. I think whether or not this was
• 1:01:01
  just an opportunity maybe to fix some of the, you know, was she
• 1:01:04
  fixing some of the bits that she thought didn't quite work on
• 1:01:06
  television? Definitely.
• 1:01:07
  Did you know? Did you watch the the
• 1:01:09
  documentary on the series 26? I probably did.
• 1:01:13
  A very long time ago. We've got Lisa.
• 1:01:14
  Baumann on there going. We've got this script through
• 1:01:17
  this amazing lyrical character filled script about this planet
• 1:01:23
  that bewitches people and survival of the fizz and all of
• 1:01:26
  this, she goes. And then we saw what hit the
• 1:01:29
  screen and she goes and like Rona and I, we were our hearts
• 1:01:32
  sunk because this could have been something so powerful.
• 1:01:37
  And unfortunately we've got a Doctor Who budget which isn't
• 1:01:39
  massive and you know they did their best and there's great
• 1:01:42
  things about it like we've said, you know, the realization of
• 1:01:44
  planet, the score, some of the performances, all of that.
• 1:01:47
  But yeah, I think ultimately a feeling of disappointment was
• 1:01:53
  there that what hit the screen wasn't quite what was in Rona
• 1:01:58
  Munroe's mind and absolutely she's taken the opportunity to
• 1:02:01
  rectify those and. And I think as well Lisa
• 1:02:06
  Bowerman does the audio book and I think that's a fantastic
• 1:02:09
  reading and and and highly recommend it because I think she
• 1:02:13
  does it so well. And again, I think it's only
• 1:02:17
  about 3 hours, three and a bit hours as well.
• 1:02:18
  It's certainly one of the shorter of the McCoy audiobooks
• 1:02:21
  as well. And I think the the best thing
• 1:02:24
  about that is the cover, the cover to the book which I think
• 1:02:27
  is fabulous and it is one of my favourites is it looks so much
• 1:02:31
  better when they've got rid of that slightly.
• 1:02:35
  They don't quite know how to position that logo because
• 1:02:39
  you're looking at and look at it.
• 1:02:40
  I was looking at kind of closely going it's not it's a bit too
• 1:02:43
  big and it's like when on the CD version it's got I think it's
• 1:02:49
  got the began logo on that one and it's it's just integrated as
• 1:02:53
  much better and. Called such a creative way.
• 1:02:59
  And it's very pink. It's very pink.
• 1:03:01
  I like a bit of pink, though. You know there's.
• 1:03:03
  Something about That's this book and the last book are the
• 1:03:06
  garishly pink covers, because we did Mad dogs last.
• 1:03:09
  So yeah, and we're due, and we're due to do Quantum
• 1:03:12
  Archangel, which is not pink, but it's garish.
• 1:03:14
  Very. Purple though, isn't it?
• 1:03:17
  We're due as a gay as Doctor Who books.
• 1:03:19
  We're definitely. So here is a is a is a question
• 1:03:22
  there because there's there's a reading, certainly the TV
• 1:03:25
  version about the lesbian subtext between Ace and Kara.
• 1:03:34
  I don't think it's. I sometimes wonder whether or
• 1:03:37
  not people, certainly with the TV version of people reading
• 1:03:39
  into something that may or may not be there, I'm I'm not sure
• 1:03:42
  it's one of those ones I'm I'm on the fence with.
• 1:03:45
  Well, Runner, Monroe says absolutely.
• 1:03:49
  That it was there in the writing, not obviously
• 1:03:52
  explicitly said, but it was more the awakening of something
• 1:03:56
  inside you and being afraid of it rather than ace fancies Caro
• 1:04:01
  and wants to have, you know, cheetah sex like it.
• 1:04:04
  It was more about that you know that that very powerful
• 1:04:07
  realisation. There's something different
• 1:04:08
  about you and being afraid to explore it and I think you can
• 1:04:13
  definitely give that reading because that's sort of general.
• 1:04:17
  Whereas as an actual sort of reading on lesbianism and ice
• 1:04:22
  being bisexual, no. And I don't.
• 1:04:25
  I think maybe the moment where she's cupping Cara's face like
• 1:04:29
  you can maybe read something into how that's performed.
• 1:04:32
  But no, I don't really see it however.
• 1:04:38
  And and and I think because it so that's when I, you know got
• 1:04:42
  the book going. I wonder if it's going to be
• 1:04:44
  because have you seen that reading?
• 1:04:45
  And whether I've picked up on or not, is it going to be, is it in
• 1:04:48
  the book? Is that where maybe people are
• 1:04:50
  getting it from? But did you not?
• 1:04:51
  Think in the book it was even less.
• 1:04:53
  I thought the relationship between Ace and Carl was far
• 1:04:56
  more in your face on TV than it was in the book and that.
• 1:05:01
  Was my the focus? Was all on what's going on
• 1:05:03
  inside Ace and how you know how she's changing.
• 1:05:07
  Yeah, I I was expecting there to be more of it in the book.
• 1:05:11
  And so I I was a bit surprised when actually it was less the
• 1:05:14
  the Cara actually probably feels a bit less of a character in the
• 1:05:18
  book. She's probably she's probably
• 1:05:20
  the one that actually has less to or feels less present
• 1:05:25
  compared to a lot of the other characters who get built up and
• 1:05:27
  get we know we. Said about Will Barton's McCoy
• 1:05:31
  and Audrey sort of ruining things.
• 1:05:32
  This is the other way around. We haven't got the fabulous Lisa
• 1:05:34
  Baumann playing her in the book. So except on the, on the audio
• 1:05:38
  and. And and elevating what is
• 1:05:40
  probably a very, very small proof to the thing as part
• 1:05:43
  behind all of that stuff. And you're watching that go and
• 1:05:46
  she's giving so much into that or do you see that?
• 1:05:48
  Doesn't she? Yeah, and then with that just
• 1:05:50
  like 1 scene where she gets the player as herself is great and.
• 1:05:55
  It's one of the scenes, it's great on TV and it's great on
• 1:05:58
  the page is Cara and the Master at the end and it's Do you
• 1:06:03
  Believe? Yeah, I love.
• 1:06:05
  That I thought that was you know that sense of scary thing get
• 1:06:10
  scared which I think that's a Buffy line.
• 1:06:12
  But basically the the the master is briefly shaken by the fact
• 1:06:18
  that he can't control her. And I love that bit because it's
• 1:06:21
  it's that's that's not in the performances at all in but in
• 1:06:25
  the book there's that that moment where it's like he's
• 1:06:29
  genuinely scared of her. He's really.
• 1:06:32
  Confident, isn't he? When he's saying you could do
• 1:06:33
  nothing to me and then that just like one line up do you bleed?
• 1:06:37
  And except he steps back in the book, doesn't he, Like he does?
• 1:06:40
  He recoils. And it's like I can do, I can if
• 1:06:44
  I can do something to you, if you bleed or something like
• 1:06:46
  that. And and then he dashes for the
• 1:06:49
  knife as well. Which again, it's the the rage
• 1:06:54
  and the fury and everything as opposed to oh, it's because the
• 1:06:56
  master did stuff like that all the time.
• 1:06:58
  You know, casually. We casually kill people all the
• 1:07:01
  time. But the idea that this is him
• 1:07:03
  giving into his rage and again, it's just that those little
• 1:07:08
  details and I I think it's one of the best master stories
• 1:07:12
  because it gives him that character development.
• 1:07:15
  I think it's worth pointing out as well in both versions of the
• 1:07:19
  story, that Andrew Carmel is pushing the TV show in so many
• 1:07:26
  fascinating directions that that it's never touched on before.
• 1:07:30
  The exploration of the companion, the urban, the
• 1:07:33
  setting in this, the the, you know, wildly experimental ideas
• 1:07:37
  like the planet that that bewitches you, All of this
• 1:07:41
  stuff, like Doctor Who, just five years ago wouldn't have
• 1:07:44
  touched anything like this. It wouldn't have dared to be as
• 1:07:47
  sort of edgy and interesting as this.
• 1:07:51
  It's a story that's something to say.
• 1:07:52
  Because if you, you know, fires before this, you'd be season
• 1:07:57
  2021. Yeah.
• 1:07:57
  What's our convenity trying to tell us?
• 1:08:01
  Pulse loop the very thing, fetch it.
• 1:08:03
  Thalia. You know it.
• 1:08:08
  I think Doctor is the most interesting when it has got
• 1:08:10
  something to say. I think that's why some of those
• 1:08:12
  early Target books, the perky books, are so loaded because
• 1:08:16
  they're taking what was on TV where there was a message or
• 1:08:19
  there was a political slant or something and building on it as
• 1:08:23
  well. And I think this is very much a
• 1:08:24
  book in spirit of some of those Malcolm Hulk books and stuff.
• 1:08:28
  It's it's got a message, it's got a voice.
• 1:08:32
  It's not just taking a script and adding some bits to it, it's
• 1:08:36
  it's. Got an identity of its own.
• 1:08:38
  It's unique. And I think you can say that
• 1:08:41
  about a lot of these McCoy stories.
• 1:08:43
  They're not just hackneyed nostalgia trips, like like the
• 1:08:48
  mid 80s, They are trying to do fresh things.
• 1:08:52
  Well, look, I'm going to, I'm going to sort of round off the
• 1:08:54
  survival thing by throwing a couple of questions at you.
• 1:08:58
  One, I want to know what you think, how this compares to the
• 1:09:02
  other McCoy novels of this season, because I think this is
• 1:09:07
  a bit of an outlier compared to the others.
• 1:09:11
  And two, just if there's anything we haven't covered in
• 1:09:15
  your notes or anything that that you would like to to add before
• 1:09:19
  we sort of move on to the recommends?
• 1:09:22
  Oh yeah. So I with me and Target books,
• 1:09:29
  I've probably listened to or read about half of them and I I
• 1:09:32
  tend to focus more on either the early target books or the stuff
• 1:09:35
  from 60s and stuff because that's generally where I always
• 1:09:39
  gravitate towards in sort of the classic series.
• 1:09:41
  And I never read this until you suggested it because we
• 1:09:45
  originally we would said we'd do commentary and you said should
• 1:09:47
  we do the book. I was like OK that that thing
• 1:09:50
  people talk about you know the the late McCoy books were kind
• 1:09:54
  of pro to new adventures and I love the new adventures.
• 1:09:56
  So it's like fine, OK I'm I'm going to see how true that is
• 1:10:01
  and there is some truth. And after I'd read this, I went
• 1:10:05
  and picked up Remembrance, because I think that's the one
• 1:10:08
  most people seem to talk about in terms of loading and with
• 1:10:13
  good. Reason very.
• 1:10:14
  Good reason, I think. Again, it's a fairly
• 1:10:19
  straightforward retelling of that script, but just the
• 1:10:22
  layers. The PO VS.
• 1:10:25
  I mean the the Dalek POV is incredible.
• 1:10:28
  And and all the stuff that's added to that, just building up
• 1:10:31
  that story. And I did listen to Ghost Light
• 1:10:34
  a while ago and I remember really enjoying that as well,
• 1:10:37
  and that would also as well. Was it a?
• 1:10:38
  Really good reading as well. And you know they're taking the
• 1:10:42
  opportunity because it's if it's not by the same writers.
• 1:10:46
  I think they're written by other authors who were writing at the
• 1:10:50
  time. Because I cut it was was it Mark
• 1:10:51
  Platt who did Battlefield A? Sterling job of it as well.
• 1:10:55
  He actually takes what's a very frothy TV story and makes it
• 1:11:01
  kind of hard hitting in places, so.
• 1:11:03
  I'm going to try and pick most of these up because I'm kind of
• 1:11:06
  really quite intrigued. I think at the same time,
• 1:11:08
  because I had it on an audible credit and somebody was bad
• 1:11:12
  mouthing it, I picked up Eric Saywood's revelation.
• 1:11:15
  Oh, bless. You.
• 1:11:17
  And and then then again with. Good reason.
• 1:11:20
  And then I. Listened to this and it's like
• 1:11:21
  even though that's a more modern adaptation, there's a good
• 1:11:24
  example of how not to do it. And it because that was poor.
• 1:11:30
  That was really poor. And that's a that's a story for
• 1:11:33
  another day. But maybe we should do that one
• 1:11:36
  day. Oh, I think a high.
• 1:11:39
  Episode, you know. I just want to know how many
• 1:11:43
  times Eric Saver refers to him as the Time Lord, because he
• 1:11:45
  just seems that that's keeps returned.
• 1:11:47
  He's like think of another description and and Davros
• 1:11:52
  turning his head 360°, that's not quite what you think it
• 1:11:56
  means and he usually. Does I think he just got, Does
• 1:11:59
  he OK. So I I think I've only reread
• 1:12:04
  two or three books from this period, and it does.
• 1:12:07
  I suppose in a way it is a bit slighter.
• 1:12:10
  You know, it's not adding the reams and reams, it's not adding
• 1:12:13
  the, as I said, it's not adding a prologue and an epilogue and
• 1:12:17
  all this stuff. Reams of backstories for all of
• 1:12:20
  his characters. This story doesn't need it.
• 1:12:23
  No, no, that's, yeah, that's the difference and I think.
• 1:12:27
  The thing I noticed watching this and reading this is one of
• 1:12:31
  the problems of season 26 is is great.
• 1:12:34
  It is and I love 26 is that the stories are overwritten.
• 1:12:37
  That's why we've got extended versions of two of them.
• 1:12:40
  There's Ghost light that probably would benefit from
• 1:12:43
  adding in quite a lot of the stuff they cut, but I know
• 1:12:45
  that's difficult. This is 1 where I think you
• 1:12:50
  don't get the sense they've had to cut huge chunks out of ATV
• 1:12:54
  version, which is then being rectified in the book.
• 1:12:57
  It's it's better structured story.
• 1:13:00
  So therefore it translates really well to a PC130 page
• 1:13:05
  novel. It doesn't need to add in all
• 1:13:07
  the stuff they cut from the TV version.
• 1:13:10
  It's added a few bits in that final third.
• 1:13:12
  It's built up and kind of made things a bit more dangerous, a
• 1:13:15
  bit more serious. But it doesn't need to go, oh,
• 1:13:19
  actually, you know, we dropped that plot from the book and we
• 1:13:21
  dropped from the TV and we had to cut these bits out and we can
• 1:13:24
  put them all back in. And oh, actually, we can make
• 1:13:26
  these things make more sense, because one of the common
• 1:13:28
  complaints for ghost light and cursive Fenrick on TV is
• 1:13:31
  sometimes they don't make sense. Yeah.
• 1:13:35
  But. As well, like you said, it
• 1:13:37
  doesn't need it as well because what's important about survival
• 1:13:40
  is what these characters are going through now, that
• 1:13:42
  transformation they're going through right now.
• 1:13:44
  We don't need oodles or back story about Patterson in order
• 1:13:48
  for his input in this book to make more sense.
• 1:13:52
  You know it. It would be bloated if they
• 1:13:56
  start putting like entire, you know, chapters about Patterson's
• 1:14:00
  back story. We get enough.
• 1:14:01
  We get, we get enough to tell us who that character is and yet.
• 1:14:05
  She subtly makes this more mature, more adult, more
• 1:14:09
  violent, just and but not with like elongated descriptions of
• 1:14:16
  like the new adventures would go on to do, of torture scenes and
• 1:14:19
  things like this. It's just sort of gentle
• 1:14:22
  descriptions of the savagery of what's going on and I.
• 1:14:26
  Think like you say midge covered in blood and stuff like that.
• 1:14:29
  You know it it it doesn't need reams and reams of description
• 1:14:33
  or anything, just a couple of sentences.
• 1:14:34
  You know there's. People just killing off at the
• 1:14:36
  end. The fact that it's described as
• 1:14:38
  leaving a trail of bodies for the Doctor and Ace to, to then
• 1:14:43
  get to that hill where the motorbikes are, you know, just
• 1:14:46
  that so simple one line, one. Line.
• 1:14:48
  And there was. There's one, and I'm touched on.
• 1:14:53
  So Derek's fate is like a paragraph or two, and it's just
• 1:14:57
  Derek was playing happily outside his home.
• 1:15:00
  One sentence. You don't need anything more
• 1:15:02
  than that. It's basically she sets it up as
• 1:15:05
  he's back home, he's happy after everything that's happened to
• 1:15:09
  him, and therefore you don't need more than that.
• 1:15:12
  So when gets kicked to death, it's horrible, but she's just
• 1:15:18
  that in one, one line. Establishing that character
• 1:15:21
  again, I mean. Going back to the original
• 1:15:23
  question, I think, I do think there is a certain
• 1:15:27
  pretentiousness to some of these McCoy novels where they are
• 1:15:32
  trying to elevate these TV stories way above just being
• 1:15:37
  four part bits of bump for the kids to watch on the telly.
• 1:15:41
  And I for the most part, it works really, really well.
• 1:15:46
  You know, Curtis Fenrick, it's a great book, but you know it
• 1:15:50
  ain't a fucking Bible or anything like it.
• 1:15:52
  It's not a great work of literature.
• 1:15:54
  It's a pot boiler at the end of the day about a load of vampires
• 1:15:57
  converging A1 coastal town, you know, and a chess game playing
• 1:16:02
  like that's what the story's about.
• 1:16:03
  But suggesting it's this huge treatise on religion and and you
• 1:16:08
  know, evil since the dawn of time and all of this, they can,
• 1:16:14
  they can sort of get above themselves a little bit and this
• 1:16:17
  doesn't do that. This just tells the story that
• 1:16:20
  was on TV really bloody well. For a slightly more adult
• 1:16:25
  audience, it. Does it does what it needs.
• 1:16:27
  It's a it's a strong novelisation and it's not in a
• 1:16:32
  way it's not one that I see when people talk about, you know the
• 1:16:35
  the Mccoys that became the New Adventures, it's Remembrance and
• 1:16:40
  Custom. Fenrick and Ghost.
• 1:16:41
  Like they don't. This one doesn't really get
• 1:16:43
  mentioned and so that's not terribly fair.
• 1:16:44
  They shouldn't get overlooked. This is a really strong book and
• 1:16:50
  I'm curious to look at some of those others now.
• 1:16:53
  I think you know when more Audible credit is in, I might
• 1:16:55
  get because the friend records because it's a story I enjoy on
• 1:16:58
  television. So I was like I would like to
• 1:17:00
  see what the books like but. It'll be a lot longer than this
• 1:17:04
  audio book, that's for sure. I.
• 1:17:06
  Think it's about 6 hours and there are times when I do go.
• 1:17:12
  That's a lot of time. It's sometimes it's down to
• 1:17:17
  who's reading it as well. I think if you've got a good
• 1:17:20
  reader, it's fine. If you've got one of the not so
• 1:17:24
  good ones, I'm like, I can't get, I can't get on with it.
• 1:17:30
  I mean, I try and listen to the power of the dialect, the new
• 1:17:34
  power of the dialects that they brought out, and I just can't
• 1:17:39
  get on with Nick Pricks reading, you know, I empathize.
• 1:17:44
  Entirely. Well, look, any any other points
• 1:17:48
  about this book? I've only got one other point
• 1:17:51
  that I want to bring up and it is another comparison to the TV
• 1:17:54
  episodes. Again, I want to reiterate, I
• 1:17:57
  think there's great stuff happening in the TV episodes,
• 1:18:01
  but this just sort of explains how to sort of very vividly how
• 1:18:08
  stuff can so much easily be smoothed over in the books.
• 1:18:11
  So it's the bit where the milkman appears where they they.
• 1:18:15
  And in the book you've got them sort of going through a sort of
• 1:18:19
  gully in this quarry and the Cheetah people would look like
• 1:18:23
  Puss in Boots are going around them, you know, and sort of
• 1:18:26
  clawing at the air Mccoy's going.
• 1:18:29
  And then, you know, they all get through and go, oh, thank God.
• 1:18:33
  And then the milkman appears and he's like and the music's like
• 1:18:38
  it's like comedy, like what is going on?
• 1:18:40
  Like in the book? It is absolutely.
• 1:18:45
  If they rouse these Cheetah people that are just lazing
• 1:18:49
  about in the sun, they're going to die and they are literally
• 1:18:52
  going to be taught and they're going to be eviscerated by these
• 1:18:54
  things. And it's a really tense sequence
• 1:18:57
  and you get to the end and everyone's breathing a sigh of
• 1:19:00
  relief. And it literally the line at the
• 1:19:02
  end is and then the milkman appeared or something like that.
• 1:19:04
  And it just lands brilliantly, brilliantly in prose in the way
• 1:19:09
  that on TV they just couldn't quite do it.
• 1:19:13
  It's. It was just that tiny thing of
• 1:19:18
  just a little bit beyond them in terms of, you know, pacing that
• 1:19:21
  and getting that thing. I think the design of the
• 1:19:24
  Cheetah People probably really doesn't help.
• 1:19:29
  Let's tell you that have. You got.
• 1:19:30
  Have you got any other Any other tidbits before everyone sort of
• 1:19:33
  recommends? I think I've got most, I mean I
• 1:19:37
  sat, I sat going through making all these notes and I think one
• 1:19:41
  way or another because you know we we we've done this in no
• 1:19:45
  logical order because I was like I'm going to try, you know
• 1:19:47
  that's usually the way. And that's the.
• 1:19:48
  Best way? That's the most interesting way.
• 1:19:51
  Who does? Who does?
• 1:19:53
  Ace ring on the phone because I've always wondered that guy
• 1:19:57
  who does she ring who she who she called you know she called
• 1:20:00
  home who she and there's a a bit where whether or not it's a
• 1:20:07
  deliberate thing or not is obviously there's a whole thing
• 1:20:10
  like 10 pence and that's that's what Ace puts in and just tin.
• 1:20:17
  And I thought is that sometimes I look for patterns that don't
• 1:20:20
  exist, but it's like, well that's a.
• 1:20:22
  Nice one though. That's a 10 pence where she
• 1:20:24
  could have called home. Because I think she says
• 1:20:27
  something like, oh, you're not even got 10 P and she puts it in
• 1:20:30
  the collection jar. So it's just little things like
• 1:20:33
  that. So there are bits, yeah?
• 1:20:35
  She called home that, that. Forgive me that, because, you
• 1:20:38
  know, she's bisexual now. She called out.
• 1:20:41
  That girl that she nicked out at that time.
• 1:20:43
  Just to say I'm still thinking of you.
• 1:20:44
  All right. OK.
• 1:20:46
  All those latent feelings are are coming up inside me since
• 1:20:49
  I've been on this planet. I'm joking.
• 1:20:52
  I'm sorry. Yeah, and there's a lot about
• 1:20:56
  aces. There's things that they, you
• 1:20:59
  know, they set Ace up as this rough character and there's bits
• 1:21:01
  that they don't talk about. I like that.
• 1:21:03
  I like the bit where she talk about her experience in the
• 1:21:04
  brownies. Which, like the Molotov
• 1:21:07
  cocktail, Yeah, which is too violent for the brownies.
• 1:21:10
  She blew. Up the brown owl or something
• 1:21:12
  like that. I just, I just love stuff like
• 1:21:15
  that. It's just like, yeah, she's a
• 1:21:16
  total delinquent. My.
• 1:21:18
  My, my biggest take away from survival sort of summarise, it
• 1:21:21
  is this, this rare glimpse at ACE, conceptualised as a total
• 1:21:30
  delinquent, slightly unsympathetic, but given a
• 1:21:36
  chance at a better life because of the doctor and deciding in
• 1:21:42
  this book, after going back to the place that sort of created
• 1:21:46
  this wild creature. Now I'm done with that and I'm
• 1:21:49
  ready to move on from it. And it's a it's a great I'm not
• 1:21:54
  the biggest lover of ACE, it's a great ACE book, and for that
• 1:21:58
  alone I just adored this. It's been one of my biggest
• 1:22:01
  surprises in the book club so far.
• 1:22:03
  I I I think it it's a it's it's an A story I was writing you
• 1:22:07
  know little things for each character and it's like this is
• 1:22:10
  an A story this is I've always kind of said if you you know how
• 1:22:15
  important a character is to a story is if can you write a
• 1:22:17
  synopsis without a character being mentioned.
• 1:22:20
  Because you know you talk about like classic early in the
• 1:22:23
  classic series you could write a synopsis of certain stories and
• 1:22:25
  you don't have to mention the companion at all because they do
• 1:22:28
  absolutely nothing to drive the story couldn't do that here this
• 1:22:32
  is this is a historic and she drives it and drives that plot
• 1:22:37
  and I can see why when they started doing the new adventures
• 1:22:41
  when they ran out of target books they wanted to continue
• 1:22:44
  keep that going because because the way both the bookends the TV
• 1:22:48
  series ends open-ended. I can see why people were
• 1:22:52
  clamouring for more adventures with these two particularly from
• 1:22:55
  in in prose form as well because this was one of the last ones
• 1:22:58
  going. I'd love to see where these two
• 1:23:00
  characters at the end of this book go next.
• 1:23:02
  Well, you know, why don't you, David?
• 1:23:04
  There are Wilds out there where the sky is burning when the seas
• 1:23:08
  asleep. But the rivers dream I won't do.
• 1:23:11
  The whole thing before the series kit that was such an
• 1:23:14
  important speech, It was it. Impeccably.
• 1:23:19
  And and the the teas are getting cold becomes such a you know
• 1:23:23
  that that kind of the whole thing like tea becomes a big
• 1:23:26
  thing in the new adventures as well and the doctor.
• 1:23:29
  And so that is such an important speech.
• 1:23:32
  Which isn't in the book because it wasn't meant to be.
• 1:23:35
  I don't know, but I do. Think what you and I should do
• 1:23:38
  then is you. We should choose an early new
• 1:23:42
  adventure that has Ace in it, and let's see where they take
• 1:23:47
  her and see if if they do similarly good work.
• 1:23:52
  Oh, but should it be one of the one of the good ones?
• 1:23:57
  Well. I think I'm going to let you
• 1:23:58
  choose that one. You go and have a think I'll
• 1:24:01
  have a. Think I'll have a think because
• 1:24:03
  there are some good ones in that early run.
• 1:24:06
  There are. I I I've only read, I only read
• 1:24:09
  the last of the cat's Gradle books.
• 1:24:11
  I needed because it was one. It was one of the first pick
• 1:24:14
  one. Of those please.
• 1:24:15
  I think when I started collecting them, which mark was
• 1:24:17
  one I found in the charity shop and that was when I started
• 1:24:19
  collecting them. And I remember reading that
• 1:24:21
  going the next one better be better than this because this is
• 1:24:25
  awful. So maybe we'll do it.
• 1:24:28
  We'll do, we could well do that. Maybe I'll maybe I'll end our
• 1:24:34
  survival conversation by just saying, come on David, we've got
• 1:24:38
  work to do. Well, look, OK, let's let's move
• 1:24:52
  on to. Do you have a recommend?
• 1:24:55
  You know, I I kind of half forgot, but I'm going to, I'm
• 1:24:57
  going to pluck one out of the air and and it's what I've
• 1:25:03
  mentioned, because if you want an example of how not to do
• 1:25:08
  this, OK, go and pick up the Revelation of the Dialects book,
• 1:25:12
  because it is. I think there's an idea that
• 1:25:17
  doing these novelizations is easy, or that they're just
• 1:25:20
  straightforward retellings or whatever.
• 1:25:23
  But actually, what when you You get a much better respect for
• 1:25:28
  the skill of people like Terence Dicks, Ronald Monroe, and the
• 1:25:31
  others who write these really strong adaptations is when you
• 1:25:36
  read some of the really bad ones.
• 1:25:39
  And bearing in mind that Revelation is a relatively new
• 1:25:44
  ish adaptation, you would have thought especially that it would
• 1:25:48
  have gone through God knows how many people in Cardiff as well.
• 1:25:50
  I'm actually surprised at times that that was allowed to go into
• 1:25:52
  print. It is a very good example of how
• 1:25:57
  not to do it and how to overflower your language.
• 1:26:01
  It is that it is almost the the antithesis of survival.
• 1:26:05
  And that's why I would recommend it, because it's like it makes
• 1:26:08
  you appreciate how strong some of these other books are by
• 1:26:13
  reading some of the ones, but it doesn't.
• 1:26:18
  Good that you read this so you can see how good stuff is all
• 1:26:21
  right. Yeah, so there you go.
• 1:26:24
  Left field on. Go and read a book.
• 1:26:26
  That's terrible. Well.
• 1:26:27
  Actually, do you know, weird enough because I've not read the
• 1:26:29
  revelation of the diets one, but I will get around to it
• 1:26:32
  eventually. But my least favorite target
• 1:26:40
  novelization is the one directly before it.
• 1:26:42
  Glenn Mccoy's Time Lash, which I think you saw quite fun on the
• 1:26:46
  TVI, mean it's terrible, but it's quite fun.
• 1:26:48
  That book, man, it takes all the fun out, and it's just all the
• 1:26:51
  tedium of the story. There's a line in it in the
• 1:26:53
  first page. I thought, I'm in travel here,
• 1:26:56
  where it said Perry waited for a pregnant pause.
• 1:27:00
  I went a pregnant pause. What the hell does that mean?
• 1:27:05
  That's on a level with Davros head spinning 360° and yeah.
• 1:27:11
  Really, I think one of the best target novelizations ever is the
• 1:27:15
  one directly before that, The Two Doctors.
• 1:27:18
  Robert Holmes is retelling of that as is very sick, very funny
• 1:27:23
  novel is terrific. Slightly removed from the
• 1:27:28
  brilliant direction of Peter Moffat, which I I developed a
• 1:27:32
  new appreciation of having wandered around Seville a few
• 1:27:36
  weeks ago. And you.
• 1:27:37
  You think this is a beautiful city Doctor Who is here?
• 1:27:41
  They should bugger all of it, Yeah.
• 1:27:43
  You would have shot that in a more dynamic way than Peter
• 1:27:46
  Moffett, you know, on your camcorder, I'm sure, walking.
• 1:27:49
  Around recreating scenes from Doctor Who, but we would not.
• 1:27:52
  We would not have been the first fans to do that.
• 1:27:56
  Well, see now I haven't prepared to recommend either, so I'm
• 1:27:59
  going to have to plug one straight out of the air too.
• 1:28:02
  And I think I am going to go for Oh my God, I can't figure.
• 1:28:16
  OK, OK, no, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
• 1:28:18
  I am going to go for Wolfsbane by Jacqueline Rayner.
• 1:28:31
  Oh, which is a really interesting book which tells a
• 1:28:39
  fourth Doctor story. And then somewhere along the
• 1:28:42
  line, Harry Sullivan gets blasted back in time and becomes
• 1:28:46
  an Eighth Doctor book. And clearly Jacqueline Rayner is
• 1:28:50
  deeply in love with both the 4th Doctor, Sarah and Harry and the
• 1:28:54
  8th Doctor. And so she writes this fabulous,
• 1:28:57
  romanticized versions of all of them in a way that just makes me
• 1:29:02
  love all those characters even more.
• 1:29:04
  But then, in a shocking twist because it's a werewolf, turns
• 1:29:09
  Harry Sullivan into a werewolf at the end of the book and
• 1:29:13
  doesn't resolve it. Was that during the period when
• 1:29:17
  the BBC books was killing off or getting very unpleasant things
• 1:29:22
  to previous companions and then you?
• 1:29:24
  Get that wonderful scene and sometime never where you realize
• 1:29:28
  that the Counselor, they have been excising all of the
• 1:29:31
  Doctor's companions from his timeline because what?
• 1:29:35
  Because they basically he's infected because they were never
• 1:29:38
  supposed to meet him. They were supposed to just have
• 1:29:40
  normal lives and he's come along in time and infected all of
• 1:29:44
  their timelines, so they're sort of cauterizing time by taking
• 1:29:48
  them out of it, which is such a brilliant idea.
• 1:29:51
  And the Harry werewolf thing is described as they tried, they
• 1:29:55
  were going to just kill him and it went wrong that their their
• 1:29:58
  involvement in his involvement went wrong.
• 1:30:01
  And so he went off down a different timeline completely
• 1:30:03
  where he's a werewolf and it's it's sort of storytelling on a
• 1:30:06
  grand level, but Wolfsbane itself is such a it's a
• 1:30:10
  brilliantly cosy Doctor Who horror book written in a way
• 1:30:17
  that only Jack Rayner can, which is with some very descriptive
• 1:30:21
  prose, wonderful character moments, twists and turns, witty
• 1:30:26
  lines. It's a really, really gorgeous
• 1:30:29
  book. In a period where the past
• 1:30:30
  Doctor adventures were very hit and miss, this really stood out
• 1:30:35
  as something quite impressive. I.
• 1:30:37
  Think By that time I tuned out the pack, I was mostly focusing
• 1:30:40
  on EDA, even though he's in it in that one.
• 1:30:43
  And it's set. It's it's set for the Doctor
• 1:30:45
  during his Trapped on Earth cycle, isn't it?
• 1:30:49
  Yeah. So why I never went back and
• 1:30:50
  picked that one up because I thought that cycle of books was
• 1:30:52
  absolutely fantastic. I might have to considering I
• 1:30:55
  was recommending the writer before.
• 1:30:57
  It's one of the one of the books I never managed to pick up.
• 1:30:59
  But it might just seek that one out.
• 1:31:02
  I mean, it comes up you. Know with Sarah Jane in this
• 1:31:05
  beautiful forest covered in blossom, and it just takes you
• 1:31:09
  back to Mask of Man Drago, you know, which is in that lovely
• 1:31:11
  forest. She just captures the nostalgia
• 1:31:14
  of the characters just beautifully.
• 1:31:17
  I only think I might have to take that.
• 1:31:18
  Recommend. Do you?
• 1:31:19
  Have that one. No, but I might say The thing is
• 1:31:23
  some of the books are really easy to get hold of.
• 1:31:26
  And then every now and again you go.
• 1:31:28
  I wonder how much lung barrows going for these days 5. 100 have
• 1:31:31
  gone to Dylan Reece last time he looks yeah.
• 1:31:34
  It's that's. They need to reissue it just to
• 1:31:37
  annoy those people. They need to reissue it or just
• 1:31:43
  put them out there in e-book because they did the e-books for
• 1:31:47
  on BBC website for a while and they did Dying Days.
• 1:31:51
  They did Long Barrow, they did those two.
• 1:31:53
  It's like, yeah, but I like, I like having a physical copy.
• 1:31:57
  I know some people are quite happy with digital, but I like
• 1:31:59
  having the book because I with Revelation, I listened.
• 1:32:02
  I got it with my Audible credit. But I was like, I know I did
• 1:32:06
  actually go and buy the book. I was like, well, I listened to
• 1:32:09
  it. I like and I didn't like it, but
• 1:32:12
  it's like I quite like the idea of having it on my shelf.
• 1:32:16
  So yeah, if you. Do find a copy of War Space
• 1:32:18
  somewhere. And those pass up tours are
• 1:32:19
  usually quite easy to find a reasonable price.
• 1:32:23
  Maybe we'll cover that one day as well.
• 1:32:24
  You know I do need to do more of those I've managed.
• 1:32:27
  To find quantum Archangel quite easily that that that was quite
• 1:32:30
  a common one I wished. You hadn't?
• 1:32:32
  Yeah. I did suggest it you.
• 1:32:35
  Yeah, you did as well. Yeah, we'll, we'll get there.
• 1:32:39
  David, thank you as ever for your input.
• 1:32:43
  I mean a great book and a great discussion as well, all the
• 1:32:46
  themes and all the fabulous characters.
• 1:32:48
  Can I ask you to direct people to, you know, you're becoming a
• 1:32:52
  bit of a hamster mainstay now. We've done quite a bit together
• 1:32:55
  and we've got loads to come, but where can people find you
• 1:32:58
  elsewhere? You.
• 1:32:59
  Can find me on ex. Formally Twitter at Pi 1883.
• 1:33:05
  That's generally where I am most of the time, Usually either
• 1:33:09
  stuff about Doctor Who or running one of the two and also
• 1:33:12
  sharing stuff for my YouTube channel which I just
• 1:33:15
  occasionally will randomly throw some stuff out.
• 1:33:18
  And the last one that I did was on the Myth Makers on the back
• 1:33:22
  of our commentary on that particular story, which is still
• 1:33:27
  one of the, I think one of my favourite ones that we've done.
• 1:33:31
  I think that that that came together really nicely.
• 1:33:34
  So I thought I'd like to do so I'd like to do a video on
• 1:33:36
  something Myth Makers. So if you if you're interested
• 1:33:39
  in Katarina's lost dialogue from Episode 4, it is nowhere near as
• 1:33:45
  interesting, I think as people expected it to be.
• 1:33:47
  Always. In fact, my only disappointment
• 1:33:49
  with that video, which was fabulous, was when I clicked on
• 1:33:52
  the link and it was only 4 1/2 minutes long and I was like, no,
• 1:33:55
  come on now. But it's as ever, they're not
• 1:34:01
  long videos, but they're packed your content.
• 1:34:03
  Absolutely packed. I like as somebody was said to
• 1:34:07
  me, it's like, but I like your videos as they're short.
• 1:34:10
  I was like good. Occasionally they might get a
• 1:34:12
  little bit longer if there's the content, but I'd like to keep
• 1:34:15
  them short but informative and actually.
• 1:34:18
  Do you know we got a thumbs up from Tim, from the Missing
• 1:34:20
  Missing Episodes podcast, And I consider that the greatest
• 1:34:23
  endorsement ever for our Myth Makers commentary.
• 1:34:25
  Do you know if those people are giving us the thumbs up we've
• 1:34:28
  done all right, I think. That if they're happy, if
• 1:34:31
  they're not telling us off for getting things wrong, I'm quite
• 1:34:34
  happy in fact fed we didn't do too badly getting told, he said.
• 1:34:37
  That your. Research was superb, I saw in
• 1:34:40
  that tweet. I think I like to The worst
• 1:34:45
  thing you can do with Doctor Who fans is go in and and and not
• 1:34:47
  have your facts right because you'll spend the next week
• 1:34:50
  fending off. I think you'll find I haven't
• 1:34:54
  got time for that. I've got to say to you as well
• 1:34:56
  David, that if you ever, you know, doubting whether you're
• 1:34:59
  any good at this sort of podcast in malarkey that a very well
• 1:35:02
  known podcast or our short name is Shame did actually come with
• 1:35:05
  me the other day. And when that David Gillespie
• 1:35:07
  Pratt, he's a bit good isn't he? I said I know if one of mine now
• 1:35:12
  fuck off you, but I can reliably inform you, you have recently
• 1:35:20
  been on this podcast. We are all sharing you.
• 1:35:25
  But no, it's been it's it's a delight.
• 1:35:27
  It's a bit of a delight to find you, to get to know you and just
• 1:35:32
  to talk about these wonderful things.
• 1:35:34
  And it's great fun to do. I, I, I look forward to doing
• 1:35:36
  them. I mean, I know you jokingly with
• 1:35:39
  access. Are you doing your own podcast?
• 1:35:41
  And I'm quite happy just turning up on other peoples.
• 1:35:43
  Oh. Yeah, you ain't going to have a
• 1:35:45
  fucking idiot in, do you? You just come along and have all
• 1:35:47
  the fun. I I.
• 1:35:48
  I haven't got my own editing to do, I I've got my own stuff.
• 1:35:52
  I come on, we've been way far too indulgent.
• 1:35:54
  Now how do we end this thing? I haven't got a bloody clip.
• 1:35:59
  Should we say something about tea getting cold?
• 1:36:01
  Is that Is that appropriate? Shall I do the whole speech?
• 1:36:05
  Shall I see if I can do it? Do it.
• 1:36:06
  OK. There are worlds out there where
• 1:36:08
  the sky is burning, where the sea is asleep and the river's
• 1:36:12
  dream cities made a song and Oh no, what is it people made?
• 1:36:17
  A smoke and cities made a song. People made a.
• 1:36:19
  Smoke and Cities made a song. Somewhere there's danger,
• 1:36:23
  somewhere there's injustice. Somewhere else that he's getting
• 1:36:25
  cold. Come on, David.
• 1:36:27
  We got work to do. Brilliant.