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Hamster Book Club - Jon Arnold Ranks his Top and Bottom Ten Doctor Who Books · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:00
  Welcome back to the Hamster Book Club.
• 0:03
  My name is Joe Ford, and here to thrill, surprise, shock and
• 0:10
  intrigue us is Mr. John Arnold. Hello, John.
• 0:14
  Hello, Joe, How are you? I'm sort of having a week off
• 0:18
  this week, so I'm actually kind of chew.
• 0:22
  Nice. I've been reading.
• 0:23
  I've been reading Anachrophobia, Downtime and Liberation of the
• 0:27
  Daleks this week, and I shall tell you in short order, I love
• 0:31
  one of them. I'm a bit befuddled by one of
• 0:33
  them, and one of them I think is kind of terrible, but I love it
• 0:37
  anyway. There's a conundrum that I'm
• 0:40
  quite looking forward to being resolved.
• 0:42
  I think I know which one you loved, but I'm not going to
• 0:45
  spoil it. I I think I'm going to put that
• 0:48
  in our thread, didn't I not? One of them, yes.
• 0:53
  John, why are we here today? Why have have we assembled?
• 0:56
  We're here because you're very kindly asked me to go.
• 0:59
  What are my top ten and bottom 10 Doctor Who books?
• 1:03
  Obviously something you think about on a daily basis.
• 1:06
  Frankly, yes, since late 1981 at least.
• 1:12
  I wasted a lot of my life on this.
• 1:14
  We did. We talked during our fabulous
• 1:17
  Stranger commentary about sort of how you came into the books
• 1:21
  and how you found them. At the end of this, I'm going to
• 1:25
  ask you to rank the series of books in order from best to
• 1:30
  worst. Please don't put the targets at
• 1:33
  the bottom. Everyone keeps putting the
• 1:34
  targets at the bottom. They won't be at the bomb, don't
• 1:36
  worry. But can I ask you please, how
• 1:40
  you approach this difficult conundrum of assembling these
• 1:43
  rankings? Well, I, I kind of listened to,
• 1:46
  you know, Luke's, I listened to Andrews and Michaels and tried
• 1:51
  to avoid the stuff that they picked.
• 1:53
  Generally there are a couple of cross it was maybe, but I went,
• 1:58
  well, I can't do it. And maybe I want some underrated
• 2:02
  stuff in there or stuff that no one else has quite mentioned
• 2:05
  yet. And then, yeah, I went to
• 2:08
  Wikipedia and I'm like, OK, I'll, I'll make a list of books
• 2:10
  over. And Oh my God, there's whatever
• 2:12
  50 odd books that I was trying to.
• 2:15
  No doubt it's the same with everything on this is like, I
• 2:18
  loved it. The doctor range generally is a
• 2:22
  happy place for me. I could stick so many more on
• 2:26
  there just from the fact that, you know, I've been in there,
• 2:30
  I've been absorbed them, read them to death.
• 2:33
  And yeah. And then I made the bottom 10.
• 2:36
  It was, which was really, really.
• 2:40
  And this, this, it was so much harder.
• 2:43
  Harder than your top 10? Yeah, yeah, I'm just.
• 2:47
  That and you've got a lot of books written down on your pads,
• 2:50
  yeah. Yeah, it's.
• 2:51
  Changeable as we talk or do you have a set list?
• 2:54
  Oh, I, I, I picked the top ten. I picked the top 10 on there and
• 2:57
  I'm I'm going to probably stick to that now.
• 3:01
  Probably it's a. Little secret, I actually
• 3:03
  secretly love hearing the bottom tent list more than the top.
• 3:07
  I thought I'm so. Excited to see which authors are
• 3:10
  going to be buried. Oh, I I can tell you something.
• 3:14
  I've managed not to put any Christopher Bulis in there.
• 3:18
  What on IVA list? And well, he wasn't getting on
• 3:21
  the best list actually. But but yes, the one, the ones I
• 3:27
  had dating for the bottoms just outside that top ten were the
• 3:31
  Chris Boulis ones. Possibly because I've never been
• 3:34
  able to rewrite something like Shadow Mind ever again.
• 3:37
  I bounce off it. The prose is are did he write?
• 3:41
  Sorcerer's Apprentice. Yeah, that's all right.
• 3:43
  I like that go down quite well, isn't it?
• 3:45
  I think his First Doctor books are a lot better and I didn't
• 3:49
  mind Mike van der Deakin's children.
• 3:51
  I thought that had an idea it was an old fashioned sci-fi
• 3:54
  thing that he was trying. I remember that other more than
• 3:56
  the book, that spaceship that looked like Babylon 5.
• 4:00
  God, yeah, so that was quite nice.
• 4:02
  But I I had so I can say the ones that just missed out with
• 4:06
  bottom 10 were all his and it was I couldn't pick to him
• 4:09
  through him. So it was Shadow Mind, a
• 4:11
  divisive death, which is, oh it, I, I have re, I have reread it,
• 4:18
  but how the hell I got through it even once, I still have no
• 4:21
  idea. It's dull.
• 4:22
  Is that the 4th Doctor? It's 4th Doctor towards the end
• 4:27
  of the yeah, towards the end of the adventures range and the
• 4:31
  ultimate treasure. Because it was.
• 4:33
  And I can tell why it's on there.
• 4:35
  It was obviously written for much younger readers just after,
• 4:39
  you know, the BBC had grabbed the license back and just going,
• 4:43
  Oh my God, is this the future? Are we doomed to be?
• 4:46
  Am I going to have to go into kids section time after time
• 4:49
  now? You just finished.
• 4:51
  This isn't. Transit.
• 4:52
  Anymore. You just finished the 8 Doctors
• 4:54
  and then you read the ultimate treasure.
• 4:56
  You're like oh what's happened? Help.
• 4:58
  Me. Came out, you're like, oh, thank
• 5:01
  God, OK. The relief was a vampire.
• 5:04
  Science was kind of hope. Hope in a doomed world?
• 5:07
  Steve Lyons one that was, because that was sort of kiddie
• 5:10
  friendly murder. Murder game.
• 5:12
  Yeah. The salacious one.
• 5:14
  Yeah, that that was all right. I didn't mind that because the
• 5:17
  Virgin books had quite trouble doing Trek books, I thought.
• 5:20
  Never quite got the doctor right on them.
• 5:23
  But then that one, it was it was it was more fun.
• 5:26
  It was more apt for that doctor because it was something like
• 5:29
  trying to the the missing major who's trying to fit Trenton into
• 5:33
  a mall, maybe adult stories. And then this one.
• 5:36
  No, it's this is kind of what you might be expected in the
• 5:40
  late 60s. You could have made that in the
• 5:42
  late 60s as a script I got with assuming you could have, you
• 5:45
  know, stretched as shark aliens. I I've recently dipped my toes
• 5:50
  into the Dark Path, which was another Second Doctor one.
• 5:55
  That's a missing adventure. Gosh.
• 5:57
  Look into why did you just not write a Star Trek book?
• 6:00
  I mean, that's clearly what you wanted to write.
• 6:03
  God yes at that. And I, he's like BBC at that
• 6:07
  point. He seems to be motivated by what
• 6:09
  he can put in continuity wise. It's a, you know, first word
• 6:13
  tier. He goes, oh, I can put a new
• 6:14
  master in Dark path. I can do the second Doctor in
• 6:17
  the master bullet type. I can shoot Sarah Jane Smith.
• 6:21
  Face of the Enemy I'm going to put on every bit of continuity I
• 6:24
  can possibly grab from the 3rd Doctor's era.
• 6:27
  Yeah, it's probably even more constituted now than something
• 6:29
  like Crisps on a rational planet, which has how many 150
• 6:34
  something references? I called them the trio.
• 6:38
  It was the continuity. Writers were Hinton, McKinsey
• 6:42
  and Gary Russell. Oh, yeah.
• 6:44
  If you're going to get those free, then gaps in continuity
• 6:48
  were going to be. Blocked.
• 6:50
  I did nearly put one of Craig's books in there because I I do
• 6:54
  love him. What?
• 6:55
  Oh, on your top ten list? Yeah.
• 6:57
  Man, I'm so intrigued. I loved.
• 7:00
  Him. I love, I love these lists
• 7:02
  because I never know what's coming.
• 7:03
  So this is going to be very exciting.
• 7:05
  Can I just ask if Beulis was sort of just outside of your
• 7:08
  bottom 10s? Yeah.
• 7:09
  What's just outside of your top 10s?
• 7:12
  Well, the it's because it's Craig's one.
• 7:14
  I I does because I'd love what he's trying to do with not so
• 7:20
  much Kwan's bark Angel, even though that was kind of better
• 7:22
  on reread. But the crystal Bucephalus and
• 7:25
  millennial writes because he wants it's not that he wants to
• 7:29
  just use his concept. He wants to go and have fun with
• 7:32
  them because, you know, I I I wasn't a close friend of great,
• 7:36
  but I did know him and they're all very much in his
• 7:40
  personality. That kind of big, you know,
• 7:43
  almost Queenie at times, but very kind of welcome.
• 7:45
  He wanted to welcome the readers in.
• 7:47
  So use the Valley Yard, I think is, which was completely ripped
• 7:51
  off from X-Men storyline called Inferno.
• 7:53
  But that's just exactly a conflict, you know, a crossroads
• 7:57
  of my interests. So I just went.
• 8:00
  So it was just that. And the cover is gorgeous.
• 8:02
  You know, you've got Colin in that Valley Yards outfit and you
• 8:05
  know, that says to me, yeah, Colin should have gone had that
• 8:08
  black leather jacket felt that you wanted or whatever gorge a
• 8:12
  male in kind of that Bride of Frankenstein style.
• 8:17
  She's an argolian, doesn't? She Yeah.
• 8:20
  It's this, this little world turns Canary Wharf into this
• 8:24
  fabulous kind of fantasy world, and she's this lady of it or I
• 8:30
  can't think. It's a sorceress of some kind.
• 8:32
  And it's, oh, it is gloriously grumpy.
• 8:37
  That's totally off piece when I say, because I say this a couple
• 8:39
  of times on the book club that Hinton just suited the 6th
• 8:43
  doctor because he's writing star was quite more dramatic and you
• 8:47
  know his dialogue is always a bit over the top and his
• 8:50
  character is full of energy and that's a safe doctor here,
• 8:53
  right. So I always feel like some
• 8:54
  Vespians, the two you just said there from the missing
• 8:57
  adventures, and I'll even include quantum Archangel as
• 9:00
  well. They sort sort of play to his
• 9:02
  strength is like God Engine where he's trying to write a new
• 9:05
  adventure is let's go a bit off the rails.
• 9:08
  Oh, God. And I think what the other thing
• 9:10
  that was kind of happy with God engine was the proofreader
• 9:14
  basically took out all the contractions.
• 9:16
  So it's like they like having data in doing the writing.
• 9:20
  So you know, rather than you've got haven't, you've got have not
• 9:23
  every time, I don't know, cheap proofreaders.
• 9:27
  I suspect so. So yeah, he was.
• 9:31
  He wasn't happy with that himself from what I remember.
• 9:33
  I did have a chat with him. Baby, literally the first time I
• 9:35
  met him went that wasn't very good, was it?
• 9:37
  No, it's terrible. But he didn't take it to heart
• 9:40
  and he did. It was just like no talk.
• 9:42
  The rest, love the rest. He was lovely.
• 9:44
  So pleased you said that, you know, because I just did.
• 9:46
  Aware of all stories. In the end, I'm gone and Jen and
• 9:48
  I absolutely buried the fucking thing.
• 9:50
  So if even Craig himself said it wasn't very good, well then I'm
• 9:54
  pleased. Yeah, exactly.
• 9:56
  And some of the others, what I, I went to leave them out because
• 10:00
  I thought they were there are there are obvious choices in
• 10:03
  there because you have to have obvious choices.
• 10:05
  You can't say this is revered, but I'm just going to bury it
• 10:08
  because it, I think it's terrible.
• 10:10
  No, there's some that are there for right Reese, but it's stuff
• 10:13
  that I think other people will pick up.
• 10:15
  So something like Stephen Moffatt's Day of the Doctor
• 10:18
  novelization, which is terrific because Stephen Moffatt won't
• 10:22
  just go, OK, I can just like take page, run the script and
• 10:25
  just do a I would would call it Terrance, but slightly because
• 10:30
  Terrance always fixed up little bits and pieces.
• 10:33
  They're always slightly better. But there's Doctor it totally
• 10:38
  reframed the story, considers your point of view, takes it
• 10:41
  all, takes it all in. And it's got a running gag,
• 10:44
  which beautifully pays off towards the end.
• 10:47
  I might even say on the last page, but that would be giving
• 10:49
  it entirely away. You shouldn't go there.
• 10:52
  Something like the giggle novelization, which again, it's
• 10:57
  phenomenal. It's totally in the spirit of
• 11:00
  the story, but it's just knows it's playing in an entirely
• 11:04
  different medium. What it can get away with, you
• 11:07
  know, it's quite clever. Why can't you?
• 11:09
  Why you can't represent a song in prose very easily.
• 11:12
  So what I do with that are, but I was putting the book down to
• 11:16
  laugh every 5 minutes. James Goss is such a brilliant
• 11:21
  writer on that front. In terms of like, having fun
• 11:25
  with what's on the page. And so I don't mean the writing,
• 11:28
  but fun, quirky bits that happened in that book.
• 11:31
  I'd not read a book like that for Doctor Who since Jim
• 11:36
  Mortimer's campaign. Like, that was the last time I'd
• 11:39
  seen something where they were trying to do something visually
• 11:43
  with a novel in such an interesting way.
• 11:47
  Yeah, and it matches the TV. So because TV stories,
• 11:49
  absolutely. As wild as it can be, it's
• 11:52
  pushing it. Yeah, it is.
• 11:53
  Whatever you think can happen. No, that can happen.
• 11:55
  That's impossible. No, that's happening.
• 11:58
  We're going there. We're doing that.
• 12:01
  And again, that's that's perfect, kind of perfect meeting
• 12:04
  of the writer and the material as well.
• 12:06
  You know, it's, it just pushes it somewhere completely new,
• 12:11
  completely fresh. And James Goss is so good at
• 12:14
  that kind of medium thing. Even his Torch novel.
• 12:17
  Does it do do we do, do we do spoiler warnings for the things?
• 12:23
  Something like no, no, that's fine, that's all right.
• 12:26
  It's like been out for 12 years, so I haven't read it.
• 12:28
  It's your fault. Even if they came out last week.
• 12:31
  Marv dead of winter it was. Fabulous, yeah.
• 12:35
  I was reading that for the first night you paid just going and I
• 12:39
  thought James Goss is good at characterization.
• 12:41
  So I was like this, this looks off because the Doctor and Rory
• 12:43
  said different And then you're going it gets a bit.
• 12:46
  Oh, it's like, yes, that is damn, he's good.
• 12:51
  He. Approaches, whatever he's doing,
• 12:52
  whether he's doing a big finish or whether he's doing a book, he
• 12:56
  always approaches it in a unique way.
• 12:58
  The one that he's writing, you know, in a way.
• 13:00
  So that's all letters, isn't it? Dead of winter.
• 13:03
  Yeah, it's less. Yeah, lots of letters in there.
• 13:06
  Really clever. And yeah, and there's one I
• 13:09
  would have picked if it was a prose, but it's an audio Dead
• 13:12
  air. Oh, that is fun.
• 13:15
  BBC World. Oh, how?
• 13:17
  Oh, it's ABBC audio book 2000 and 8:00-ish again.
• 13:21
  It plays with the medium so, so beautifully.
• 13:26
  I, I won't spoil it for you. I, I just Yeah, listeners can be
• 13:29
  spoiled. You are keep.
• 13:31
  You know, I'll have to get that off the.
• 13:33
  Shelf Oh, dig it, dig it out and listen to it as soon as you can
• 13:35
  because it's, it's one of the best audio stories.
• 13:37
  Doctor Who's done and yeah, David, it's, it's I think it's
• 13:40
  David Tennant's solo story. So yeah.
• 13:44
  Well, never mind all these backbench books that.
• 13:46
  We're. Out let's get to work so we'll
• 13:50
  go between top and bottom are you I hear you're a verse kind
• 13:58
  of guy are. You anything twice.
• 14:01
  Or is it? No, God knows it's just 10:00.
• 14:05
  I could probably doing this somewhere, but well, can we?
• 14:10
  Start positively all. Right then we're.
• 14:12
  Coming from your top ten list. Let's go with and I know I've
• 14:17
  mentioned this before and we might do it again for you.
• 14:19
  Let's go with borrowed time. And Naomi Alderman.
• 14:23
  Naomi Alderman, who is, you know, an author who's now fated
• 14:27
  by ex presence of the United States, the ones that you can
• 14:31
  respect at that. In fact, I picked up her the
• 14:35
  power the. Power.
• 14:36
  Spoils yesterday. Oh.
• 14:38
  It's fantastic. Again, you look at it, there's
• 14:42
  an intellect is is whole proper philosophical point behind it,
• 14:46
  just as is to this one. But she but it's also such a
• 14:51
  compelling story. It's a character.
• 14:54
  It's not just this is the idea, it's how would this work with
• 14:58
  these characters in different situations?
• 15:02
  And you're going, how the hell did she write a Doctor Who's
• 15:05
  book first? You know, so it's, it's like, I
• 15:08
  think probably, you know, her and Ben Aronovich are ultimately
• 15:12
  2 most successful in terms of how big they've been since in
• 15:16
  terms of their literary success. But Cornell in there as well.
• 15:21
  I'll I'll say he's done pretty well.
• 15:22
  He's, he's got, oh, oh, I'd say in terms of ability, certainly I
• 15:25
  think he's more kind of a broader range of things he's.
• 15:29
  Television. Absolutely might go to him later
• 15:33
  to Elizabeth. Television, comics, you know,
• 15:38
  books, audio, he can he can go across these various mediums and
• 15:43
  it's not that that easy to switch ahead between mediums.
• 15:47
  I think we talked about this when we're talking about Ruby
• 15:50
  Red. Sometimes your head can be, if
• 15:52
  you've written for one medium, you're writing, your head is
• 15:55
  just authentic to the strength of that medium.
• 15:58
  And he seems to be able to just switch almost effortlessly.
• 16:01
  I'm sure it's there's effort there, but if you're making it
• 16:04
  look so easy, it's fantastic. But you know, I think this comes
• 16:11
  at the time where the new series books are right at their
• 16:14
  strongest. They are.
• 16:17
  I think there's a rainbow said Dead of Winters in there.
• 16:19
  Johnny Morris is Touched by an Angel is in there as well.
• 16:23
  Yeah, that's great. I can hit a top 10.
• 16:25
  List. I can't.
• 16:26
  I think it was one on Andrews, that one.
• 16:28
  Oh God, I I I did consider. I think it's up there with.
• 16:32
  I'll say it as Anachrophobia is my favorite of his books.
• 16:36
  He it I think it's just, and they're so different books as
• 16:38
  well. Johnny Morris.
• 16:40
  He's a Swiss Army knife of a writer.
• 16:41
  As Johnny Morris, he goes across genres.
• 16:44
  He'll use anything. He's kind of magpie like.
• 16:46
  I I love it. Actually saw him in the bar on
• 16:48
  Sunday, Saturday as well. Lovely.
• 16:51
  Yeah, the PFI, he'll. Probably be there at the Big
• 16:55
  Finish thing live next Saturday. Oh, quite.
• 16:57
  Yeah, quite possibly. I shall say I was talking to
• 16:59
  someone about your books. I absolutely love them, but what
• 17:02
  is it about borrowed time then? Borrowed time with with these
• 17:07
  books, you don't necessarily expect them to say something
• 17:11
  because for a lot of the new series books, particularly since
• 17:14
  series come back, they're never the driving force of the series.
• 17:17
  So I'm never quite sure they're saying a great deal.
• 17:21
  They don't have a, a real philosophical point behind them
• 17:24
  bar to tell a a good Doctor Who story in 240 pages.
• 17:30
  But this one, it's it's using, you know, that kind of inbuilt,
• 17:36
  inbuilt concept of Doctor Who of, you know, time travel and
• 17:43
  use it to kind of look at the way modern life is and make it.
• 17:49
  I would say it's not gently still, it's very, it's quite
• 17:52
  sharply pointed at times because the idea is you have these
• 17:57
  people who are so essentially they will give you extra time to
• 18:02
  live your life and that, but you know, it's, and it's alone.
• 18:10
  So they will give you a watch and you can wind it up.
• 18:12
  So I, I think the example they use is some guys in the city.
• 18:17
  So, and you know, they want, you know, is living in London, they
• 18:21
  want as much time as possible to do as much as possible, get
• 18:25
  their job done. Then they can go out afterwards,
• 18:27
  have fun, go back and still live it.
• 18:32
  And Amy gets one of these watches because there's a CEO.
• 18:35
  They land in London, she goes up to Leadworth, has a good day
• 18:39
  with her parents, comes back again.
• 18:40
  I think it's about the only time her parents appear outside the
• 18:43
  wedding in The Big Bang. But these got the guys who do
• 18:48
  it. They're loan sharks, almost
• 18:50
  literally, kind of shark like. And they charge interest on the
• 18:53
  compound, interest on the time. So you see people, they have
• 18:56
  these times, they get their extra time, you can't repay it
• 19:00
  obviously. So and then boom off, you know,
• 19:03
  they crumble to dust the skeletons and there's some
• 19:06
  really quite beautifully visceral stuff on that.
• 19:10
  And it's a great concept. It's a brilliant concept.
• 19:13
  Essentially, like you said, talking about when have we ever
• 19:17
  got enough bloody time. Nowadays, if someone held out
• 19:20
  their hand and said, well, you could do that and that I'll be
• 19:22
  like, Oh yes, please. Yeah, it's the old monkeys.
• 19:25
  Poor thing, isn't it? Be careful what you wish for
• 19:27
  him. We just come and it's funny as
• 19:29
  what she gets Matt Smith's doctor, she gets Amy, she gets
• 19:33
  Rory and makes them really funny, but still has them in
• 19:37
  these threatening situations. And it it's just such a
• 19:42
  beautiful welding book. And maybe if, you know, I was
• 19:44
  thinking the the end of the 10 range is good, but, you know,
• 19:47
  you're thinking it's nice. They're plodding along.
• 19:50
  They're a happy place, but they're not as vital as you want
• 19:52
  them to be. And then I've got both on.
• 19:55
  You're going. Yeah, these books are still.
• 19:57
  Absolutely. But they're still worth keeping
• 20:00
  it for. They're still worth loving.
• 20:02
  And I'm pretty sure they've reissued it as well if I'm not
• 20:04
  mistaken. Because obviously Noemi Alden
• 20:07
  has gone on such success and there's no better book to be
• 20:11
  reprinted. They do.
• 20:12
  In fact, there was two books they reissued with with new
• 20:15
  covers and they were both by authors that had written Doctor
• 20:18
  Who books and gone on to have a spectacular career.
• 20:21
  Oh yes, they cashed in on that. I do wonder.
• 20:24
  I'm so pleased you got a new series adventure on your top ten
• 20:26
  list. That's wonderful.
• 20:27
  I do wonder if like, it just took them a while to figure out
• 20:31
  what they were doing with the new series adventures.
• 20:32
  I do think 10 had some good ones in the middle.
• 20:35
  Yeah. Eyeless Sick building.
• 20:37
  There were some really nice ones in the middle there.
• 20:40
  I do. And then I feel as if as time's
• 20:42
  gone on, there's been peaks and troughs, but they kind of, they
• 20:46
  keep doing new things, don't they?
• 20:47
  They did the BBC books, did the Pirate Planet, and then they did
• 20:51
  those Capaldi books, Blood Cell. That was really good.
• 20:54
  James Gosskin. Yeah, yeah.
• 20:56
  I mean, recently they've found this.
• 20:57
  Bonnie Langford, Jacqueline Rayner.
• 21:01
  It's an interesting mix as it's gone along, but I think they've
• 21:04
  been along OK. Yeah, they they put and there
• 21:09
  might be another one from this kind of ear in there as well.
• 21:12
  Not no spoilers later on as well welcome, which is less, but
• 21:15
  let's. Get Let's go to my favorite list
• 21:17
  then. Oh, all right.
• 21:18
  Select one you know to bury. Can I, can I just say I'll, I'll
• 21:22
  select A slightly boring first, ease my way into it because you
• 21:25
  know, you want to warm yourself up for the maybe slightly more
• 21:29
  controversial choices. So.
• 21:30
  So I'll go with Parasite first. Oh boy.
• 21:35
  OK. You don't like talk to you,
• 21:36
  Paul, man. No, not not in this like this,
• 21:40
  and particularly not when there's several fucking books of
• 21:42
  it in a row. You got to the end of that year
• 21:46
  94. It was you know, it's great
• 21:48
  exercise. I could do with something.
• 21:50
  It's just easy ease my mind. It's like holy Christ.
• 21:54
  And so again, it's at this point go Jim, what really needs a good
• 21:59
  editor to get the best out of him.
• 22:03
  I've written eternity weeps with Ian on on we all we're all
• 22:07
  stories in the end. And I was quite happy that
• 22:10
  because it's much sure that it follows through on what it's
• 22:13
  saying. I know there's again horrific
• 22:15
  torch points. It's a small dose though, this
• 22:17
  one. Oh, it's just OK.
• 22:21
  I want to read back these characters having adventures in
• 22:23
  which anything, I know bad things have to happen to them,
• 22:27
  but geez, you know, I don't want them having broken bones
• 22:30
  everywhere and to reset and to slog their way through this
• 22:35
  absolutely hostile, tedious environment.
• 22:39
  And there's no, you know, there's no, there's no big
• 22:42
  antagonist to either. And that's kind of an artifact,
• 22:46
  literally, ha ha, of the way Jim is, the things Jim is writing
• 22:50
  about because he's doing one of his big science fiction concept.
• 22:54
  Yeah, it's a great idea. The actual parasite itself, it's
• 22:57
  a fabulous idea. But I used to be able to get to
• 23:03
  go with ideas much more easily. But I again, it's, it's kind of
• 23:08
  as you get older particularly, I think you find it your way to
• 23:12
  book his characters. Yeah.
• 23:14
  There's there's no one in there like everyone who's not a
• 23:18
  regularist book is just designed to die.
• 23:20
  And you know, Jim Watts more, if he could, he'd be doing the same
• 23:23
  thing regular as well. He'd be chopping heads off
• 23:25
  everywhere in the most gruesome possible way.
• 23:29
  Oh gosh. Because I think Mortimer is a
• 23:32
  really intelligent, really engaging writer.
• 23:35
  But he's so imaginative, he's. Self indulgent as well.
• 23:38
  Yes, absolutely. And you do see that in even in
• 23:45
  campaign, which is a wild and often brilliant book.
• 23:47
  But I think there's expanded editions Eastern as well, and
• 23:50
  I've got 1 and it's just OK. You do need an editor.
• 23:54
  It's the benefit of an editor. Just while rein in those kind of
• 23:58
  Wilder excesses, please. I'll just do Natural History of
• 24:02
  Fear for Big, for Finish big. And I think it's a brilliant
• 24:07
  script, but I do think it could have been three episodes because
• 24:10
  it does play its tricks sort of over and over again.
• 24:13
  Yes. I almost want to say to him,
• 24:14
  look, whatever you're going to do, just cut him off.
• 24:16
  Yeah, the extremes you're going to take it to take it down the
• 24:20
  hall, you know? Oh, I do I I love that.
• 24:23
  I love that shows good mute mute did the script book of it.
• 24:25
  I think essentially just go that was it was lavish.
• 24:29
  It brilliant. I've got a copy of it because of
• 24:31
  what? Frankly, it's so 1 you need it.
• 24:34
  Yeah, totally. And you've.
• 24:36
  Oh, that's what's happening there.
• 24:37
  It's brilliant. Yeah, but again, don't don't
• 24:39
  divergent ridges, they that one splits neatly in half, doesn't
• 24:43
  it? It's just, it's not like the
• 24:45
  Star Trek films. It's except in reverse.
• 24:47
  It's. The odd numbered ones are good,
• 24:49
  and the even numbered ones are Yeah, not going back there
• 24:51
  again. I and it's it's good to choose a
• 24:55
  Jim Mortimer book because I think he's probably a writer
• 24:57
  that we both like, but it's proof that even the better
• 25:02
  writers can have their off days as well.
• 25:04
  Absolutely. And it was coming down because
• 25:07
  bloody I still love bloody. Haven't read that again.
• 25:10
  Yeah, I know it's got a lot of those albums, but it's in a,
• 25:13
  it's a shape. It's the shape it's in.
• 25:15
  It's much, much better, much healthier.
• 25:17
  Oh. I love Eye of Heaven of his.
• 25:20
  I still think that's really I. Did.
• 25:22
  I did have that on the edge of my top list as well.
• 25:25
  It's so beauty, so beautifully structured.
• 25:28
  Circle back around to your top ten list then and oh would you
• 25:33
  like to praise? Do you fan?
• 25:35
  Do you fancy an EDA or or do you fancy an NA?
• 25:39
  Let's have a Let's have an EJ. We just had an NA.
• 25:42
  OK, certainly. Well, I'll go with the Turing
• 25:44
  test. Oh, Paul Leonard.
• 25:47
  Fucking love this book. Tell me what?
• 25:49
  A book it did. It's one of the great kind of
• 25:52
  acts of literary ventriloquism with Doctor, you've got the
• 25:55
  three writers it it's a book of thirds and it's written in their
• 26:01
  styles as well. And it's it's that and it's such
• 26:05
  a perfect use the 8th Doctor, because it's the 8th doctrine is
• 26:07
  kind of your is a blank slate. And this is a really interesting
• 26:12
  way to treat him. You put him literally into the
• 26:16
  work of other authors. You know, you've got you've got
• 26:19
  Graham Greene, you've got jugs of Heller at the end, very short
• 26:22
  one. And it's just a beautiful book.
• 26:27
  I'm sure someone will tell me why he didn't do those voices
• 26:32
  perfectly. But I was reading them.
• 26:33
  I was going, no, that's Graham cream quite nicely, as well as
• 26:38
  Joseph Allen absolutely perfectly.
• 26:41
  And yeah, it yeah, again, it's it's not a book with a
• 26:44
  particular particular, it's not a book with a moustache twirling
• 26:49
  villain in it. But it's got those that grey
• 26:53
  area of evil as well. And it's one of the few times
• 26:56
  Doctor Who goes into using the Nazis and actually uses them
• 27:03
  without reducing them to this kind of cartoon threat.
• 27:07
  It is some kind of apology for, you know, tying away at time of
• 27:10
  accidents. And it's.
• 27:13
  Really, it it shows a real new shade of that amnesiac Dr. in
• 27:17
  that because I love the the Turing section.
• 27:19
  I just love he's utterly bewitched by the Doctor, isn't
• 27:23
  he? There's a where the doctor says
• 27:24
  let's go upstairs and Turing. Oh God, yes.
• 27:30
  And he's all awkward with him and the Doctor doesn't
• 27:32
  understand what's going. But the Doctor manipulates him,
• 27:35
  doesn't he? He used.
• 27:37
  Ruthless. Because he knows he fancies him
• 27:39
  to try and get to these aliens and get off Earth at the end of
• 27:42
  the story and then just discards at the end and and it's like, it
• 27:47
  didn't work out for me. Fine, I'm done.
• 27:50
  It's kind of picking up from that cat that the way Dr. acts
• 27:53
  at the end of the burning, isn't it, where he just actually
• 27:55
  demolishes the villain right there.
• 27:57
  No mercy, no nothing. Yeah, it was that that kind of I
• 28:02
  think there's a pretty much the first time the doctors had that
• 28:05
  was it was it after year of intelligent tigers?
• 28:08
  I can never remember the orders these days.
• 28:11
  But yeah, it's that queer romancing of the doctor because
• 28:14
  let's let's up at Red Bush. Paul McGann, particularly then a
• 28:18
  very good looking man. Indeed.
• 28:22
  I tell you've yet to with now that I know some of the framing
• 28:25
  of him in that you will absolutely adore I'm sure I.
• 28:27
  Think does he get his gear off? No, only in only in the stranger
• 28:32
  section of that. Yeah, it's it's just an ideal
• 28:42
  use of that amnesiac Dr. which it wasn't always well realized.
• 28:46
  You know, sometimes he was dumped into straightforward Dr.
• 28:48
  stories. And I think the two you know,
• 28:51
  the two in that that make real good, really good use from her
• 28:53
  father time and and this because but sorry, lads, I'm not
• 28:58
  sticking out of your books on the list.
• 28:59
  You've got enough for ego there. So you just.
• 29:04
  Highlighted there though, Turing and Father Time, they justify
• 29:07
  that arc. They're so good.
• 29:09
  Totally. They kind of justify.
• 29:12
  Fabulous choice. OK, well then, come on, let's
• 29:15
  produce another writer to tears. Right.
• 29:18
  Again, this is a writer. I'll go with the next doctrine.
• 29:21
  Again, it's a writer. He's done other stuff I've I
• 29:25
  have liked, but I it might just be my mood.
• 29:28
  The book I've just put this one in to represent the Doctor Who.
• 29:32
  I kind of like, I don't like. It's just kind of bland science
• 29:36
  pictures because for me, Doctor Who and this is chat to my
• 29:39
  friend Dave. We've both come into Doctor Who
• 29:42
  via the kind of it's funny. It's not science fiction, it's
• 29:47
  it's entertainment as much as anything else.
• 29:49
  These so often forget that often, yes.
• 29:52
  And. Both the Nas and the EDA often
• 29:54
  forget the Doctor Who can be enjoyable.
• 29:57
  Totally. And this is a book which just
• 29:59
  represents that for me, without being Christopher Boolelist.
• 30:03
  It's just a really bland science fiction that I just remember
• 30:09
  taking weeks to finish because it was such a trudge and it I
• 30:13
  think there's a literal trudge, most of it, and it's Cold Heart
• 30:15
  by Trevor Baxendale. Oh God, I don't remember a thing
• 30:19
  about that bizarre orifice on the cover.
• 30:23
  Yeah, the the are they trying to draw like vagina dental today?
• 30:28
  You know, it's it's it badge with teeth.
• 30:31
  My God, what it looks like. Yeah, it's like, yeah, that,
• 30:34
  that's the first. You go, OK, fine.
• 30:37
  I'll buy it. It's, it's just, oh, it, it's
• 30:40
  just that. Annoying for where it's.
• 30:41
  Played. I think that's.
• 30:42
  Quite a good run from Shadow of Avalon to Ancestor Cell.
• 30:45
  I think it's a fairly solid run of books.
• 30:47
  I was. Looking at I was going to pick,
• 30:51
  I was thinking, yeah, I could pick a few from there.
• 30:53
  And this one, yeah, I think it's for, again, a lot of these books
• 30:57
  is where they're cushioned. And it's if it comes in the
• 31:00
  middle of a dead run, that makes feel even worse about it.
• 31:04
  And how can I say I I did love, I think, you know, prisoner of
• 31:08
  Daleks. I think he's done really.
• 31:09
  That's a really nice Daleks book.
• 31:11
  And I think they're really hard to write in a literary fashion.
• 31:17
  But ether wasp as well. There's some work he can do, a
• 31:21
  really good kind of horror Doctor Who is.
• 31:23
  It's got in that kind of 70s pop horror fashion and I think
• 31:28
  that's really a direct. Target you can really eat or
• 31:30
  wash it in a few hours. Like it's such an easy read.
• 31:33
  It's a lovely, I love it. And again, the cover is
• 31:36
  gorgeous. I love that he.
• 31:38
  Likes an orifice, doesn't. He yeah, yeah.
• 31:40
  And I feel the darkest half. Pete Davidson Space is based a
• 31:43
  little more, makes a little stone.
• 31:44
  Memorial. Oh, the doctors.
• 31:46
  The doctors, Crystal, Yeah, Crystal Ghosty thing, yeah.
• 31:50
  But this one, again, I think Janice Condition had had more
• 31:54
  interesting ideas to play with. And then this.
• 31:57
  Let's go. And I don't see why it was
• 32:00
  commissioned. It's what we what we saying
• 32:02
  earlier. It's a filler book.
• 32:03
  It's it's just there because you need to put out 11 books a year.
• 32:09
  And this is a stop that needs it.
• 32:10
  And this is a guy who can deliver on time.
• 32:14
  So yeah, it's that just that horrible, terrible bit of stuff.
• 32:20
  I listened to the wearable stories in the end episode about
• 32:23
  cult heart recently and they're talking about the plot details
• 32:26
  and none of it had gone in. I'm going no does that happen?
• 32:30
  Who's that character? And I have read this book.
• 32:32
  Yeah, I, I know. I've read twice and I'm going
• 32:34
  no, I don't remember, don't remember.
• 32:37
  It's so funny, you know, some of these books you'll just never
• 32:40
  forget. Yeah.
• 32:41
  And others. It's just in one ear and out the
• 32:43
  other. And bless you.
• 32:44
  And he's so positive about it all as well.
• 32:45
  I just like, no I can't do it. I can't remember it, I hated it
• 32:49
  and I cannot change my mind on it.
• 32:51
  Sorry, I've realised I just said I I see you through my ears then
• 32:55
  if it's in one ear and out the other, I apologise for that.
• 32:58
  That's all right. I could.
• 32:59
  I can see it's like it's like the echidine in thing when
• 33:01
  they've got see through and they for yours on your ears.
• 33:03
  Yeah. I don't have to put them round.
• 33:06
  OK, All right. Well, Cold Heart's so
• 33:08
  unmemorable, we can't really think of much to say about no.
• 33:13
  What's next on your top 10? Well, let's go with an easy one.
• 33:17
  Let's go with you also, people. Oh yes, now the here's the
• 33:22
  emergent author, right? Yeah.
• 33:24
  It it, you know, transit. I can understand why people
• 33:27
  don't like transit. It's, you know, it was a first
• 33:29
  draft thing. It's it's quite a
• 33:30
  confrontational book in a lot of ways because it's a first draft.
• 33:34
  You're up. Yeah.
• 33:35
  You know, you've got the, you know, the taste of semen being
• 33:37
  the obvious that everyone. Picks up I found it impenetrable
• 33:42
  when I and I read it recently for the book club and I was like
• 33:45
  I've got you know what there's there's a certain amount of work
• 33:48
  you can do for a Doctor Who book yes out of work I had to do to
• 33:52
  retransit No, no, I'm not give I need some borrow time from Naomi
• 33:56
  Alderman through this. Yeah, and it was quite raved bet
• 34:01
  on the on the Jake Pagoda list at the time because I was on the
• 34:04
  Jake Pagoda list approximately. I know exactly the books that
• 34:07
  were raved about on that. List Yeah, exactly.
• 34:12
  And I was going, I liked a lot, a lot of what I did, but I
• 34:15
  didn't like the story. I it was just this dull,
• 34:20
  horrible future dystopia. And you know, dystopias were in
• 34:24
  vogue at the time, but and it was just you're slogging through
• 34:29
  it. So everyone, it was kind of the
• 34:31
  early Pete Darwin's Nas. They much more lenient to that
• 34:36
  science fiction side of things. It's less than the kind of
• 34:39
  fantastic, less than humour. There are writers who do bring
• 34:42
  that which again we might come today and no promises.
• 34:45
  And the first laughter I can remember, the first smile I can
• 34:49
  remember on my face. Reading in NA is the highest
• 34:51
  science. It's that late into the run.
• 34:55
  Because they they are dark, aren't they?
• 34:57
  And sort of depressing. Yeah, you can tell that a lot of
• 35:00
  the writers are bringing fans. It's young men.
• 35:03
  They're very serious about Doctor Who.
• 35:06
  They haven't had it off yet and they're angry.
• 35:08
  They yes, they're not getting his own.
• 35:11
  What changed then with the author People?
• 35:15
  The also the thing about your screen, well, it's such a
• 35:18
  relaxed book because because it's it's the thing that I think
• 35:25
  it was it was pitched back in the theatre.
• 35:28
  It might be done sound. The Doctor goes on holiday and
• 35:32
  they go on hot. Where's the Doctor go on
• 35:33
  holiday? He goes his kind of fabulous
• 35:35
  Dyson Spear, which is infamously very, very close to Ian M
• 35:40
  Banks's Culture novels, which is frankly virtually admitted to on
• 35:44
  the early pages of those novels and.
• 35:46
  What is it again? You can have an original idea,
• 35:49
  it doesn't necessarily have to be your original.
• 35:52
  Yeah, what was he saying? Talent.
• 35:54
  Burrows, Genius steel. New adventures authors get off
• 35:57
  the back of a lorry. If I remember France.
• 35:59
  Oh, it's so. Accurate.
• 36:04
  It's but again, it's characters you want to know, you know, I, I
• 36:09
  can't pronounce it because it's there's a lot of clicks and
• 36:12
  glottal stops in there in the names.
• 36:15
  So I won't even try to go with it because it'd be frankly
• 36:17
  embarrassing on a podcast, let's face it.
• 36:21
  But they're people with lives because it is taking advantage
• 36:25
  of novel fight to build a whole culture through the individuals
• 36:28
  with lives. You know, I think Ross in
• 36:33
  particular is such a fantastic and underrated companion.
• 36:36
  Just this older woman more cynical.
• 36:40
  Yeah. And then, you know, the doctor
• 36:41
  always trying to file the edges of that at times and she and
• 36:45
  it's like, and there's there's a the four shouting at the end is
• 36:47
  lovely because he's going because I think it's you read
• 36:50
  the parable at the end. It's it's written as an African
• 36:54
  fairy tale. I can't remember.
• 36:55
  You have doctors, the tricks to God and you and you're reading
• 36:58
  it and you go that's is that saying Ros is going to they're
• 37:01
  going to kill a companion off really.
• 37:03
  No. Exactly.
• 37:06
  Am I Robbie thinking that because I remember she has the
• 37:09
  romance in this or she has to date somebody.
• 37:13
  And the sort of the most stressful thing that occurs in
• 37:15
  this book is, is it a robot gets deactivated and that's like
• 37:19
  murder on the dot. So it's basically a murder
• 37:22
  mystery. And then the twist is, sorry,
• 37:25
  guys, you've had years to read this.
• 37:27
  Spoilers, it's her fella that did it and that's the turn I
• 37:31
  mean. It's like, yeah, it's like Ace
• 37:34
  in remembrance of that extent, but but done as a proper adult
• 37:37
  romance. So it's this complicated and you
• 37:40
  know, and the emotions are there.
• 37:42
  This is genuine. So you don't know which way
• 37:44
  Roger is going to jump at the end of that and how often you
• 37:47
  get the Doctor Who know. We don't know quite when it's
• 37:50
  going to end thanks to the companions decision.
• 37:52
  It's gorgeous. Just that world building.
• 37:56
  I can, I can still vividly see that world building in that
• 37:59
  book. You know how he depicts it, all
• 38:01
  the detail, all the different characters.
• 38:03
  It's it's brilliantly like quirky imagery.
• 38:07
  I said the cover, how perfect is the cover doesn't often sum up a
• 38:12
  new adventure because you know, they try to take a seat out of
• 38:14
  it. But like that the Doctor drink
• 38:16
  your tea in space talking to God.
• 38:18
  That's glorious, that. Sounds up the 7th Doctor quite
• 38:22
  well, didn't it? It's perfect.
• 38:25
  I must do. That on a book club soon you
• 38:27
  know they also. There you go, but add add it to
• 38:30
  the pile. How big's our pile reading pile
• 38:32
  now? It's long.
• 38:35
  OK, what? Fabulous choice.
• 38:37
  Fabulous, right? Coming in.
• 38:39
  What am I not going to read in a hurry?
• 38:41
  OK, I'll go one of the ends. Let's have the Rebus operation
• 38:45
  target novel. Oh, OK.
• 38:47
  Ian, Marta. Ian Marta.
• 38:50
  Ian Marta. He's already does one thing
• 38:53
  well. He's really good, right?
• 38:54
  In the vein of kind of yo yeah, Len Dayton's that kind of mid
• 38:59
  70s pulp writer that Ian Fleming even action, it's hard.
• 39:05
  It's brilliant. And you're I I love what he does
• 39:08
  with say the enemy of the world, what he does with the invasion,
• 39:11
  because those stories do really benefit from that kind of edge
• 39:14
  to it. Even though the shark.
• 39:15
  I did that on the doctor literature podcast.
• 39:18
  Yeah, it's a lot better than I remember it.
• 39:20
  It works because the story's gel with his style.
• 39:25
  And then you get the the Rebus operation and it's terrible fit.
• 39:32
  It's the worst fit I can think of for any single writer on the
• 39:35
  Rage. It's not his fault.
• 39:38
  I don't think he's seen it, and I think it's probably days
• 39:40
  before most people had their videos.
• 39:43
  So right from the start, it's pretty obvious he doesn't know
• 39:48
  it's a comedy. How does he present the Rebus
• 39:51
  operation as a series? Great as a straight serious but
• 39:57
  and it completely miss sells that story.
• 40:02
  It is just so you know I remember, you know, OK, the
• 40:06
  reason the key to time on VHS or whatever.
• 40:10
  So I sat there watching it go. Why did no one tell me this was
• 40:13
  funny? You put those actors in it and.
• 40:17
  It's like. It's brings to life.
• 40:19
  Because I'd like, you know, Stacey Smith's first.
• 40:22
  I know you've written a few reviews on those pages, Stacey
• 40:24
  Smith's review site, and you're going, yeah, this the Reeves
• 40:30
  operation, a terrible story. It's weak stories, yes.
• 40:33
  If you try and sell it like this, it's not a big story.
• 40:36
  It's all it is. It's just a car man trying to
• 40:37
  say, but it's just big. You know, it's there for the
• 40:40
  characters. You know, it doesn't even sell
• 40:41
  that Bin Row was right moment, which is a slam dunk because
• 40:46
  it's not the kind of thing Ian Mart is interested.
• 40:48
  Not that kind of beautiful little emotional moment.
• 40:51
  It's just he is. There were other Robert Holmes
• 40:54
  stories he could do, you know, he could, he could have done
• 40:56
  something along lines, something with the two doctors or any of
• 41:00
  his types. Obviously he's so good at
• 41:02
  describing the horror because it's not really a huge amount of
• 41:06
  characterization in The Architect.
• 41:07
  It's beyond the regulars, so it's more the setting and the
• 41:10
  horror of what's going on. He's perfect for that because
• 41:12
  he's he writes scripted prose. He he does make that story into
• 41:17
  Alien, essentially puts it into the properly into the horror
• 41:20
  genre, not just horror like the kids, but you know, it's good
• 41:23
  and there's there's fluids everywhere in that.
• 41:26
  If I remember just the duck was the weird it's.
• 41:28
  Cracking open and things. Yeah, it's like.
• 41:31
  But like, I'm assuming you've read The Two Doctors by Robert
• 41:35
  Holmes. Is he anyway?
• 41:36
  That again, that was on the list and.
• 41:40
  Had Holmes novelised Rebus himself, this would cynically
• 41:47
  funny you. Know there are kind of four
• 41:49
  scripts I can remember I can think of Holmes did well
• 41:52
  obviously did the two doctors Carnival of Monsters or time
• 41:56
  warrior and this and if he had done those because he did he did
• 42:03
  the prologue for the time warrior before inside you
• 42:05
  couldn't write again and that's glorious.
• 42:07
  It's, you know, it's, it's linked landing and going, oh
• 42:10
  bloody hell, what's going on here?
• 42:12
  There, read the rest of the Time Warrior and you're like, Dicks
• 42:16
  is trying to emulate homes. Yeah, his writing of The Time
• 42:20
  Warrior is trying to emulate that prologue.
• 42:22
  It's one of it's one of his best books, quietly, isn't it?
• 42:25
  And no one mentions it really. I've not read the Rebus
• 42:29
  operation for years, and frankly, after that damning
• 42:32
  indictment, it will remain so. Let's go with it.
• 42:38
  So let's go back to your more positive list.
• 42:42
  Then. What have you got on your top
• 42:43
  10? I am going to go because I
• 42:46
  always read ton of comics growing up.
• 42:48
  So it's kind of it's kind of representative then, but I know,
• 42:52
  but I'm going to go for the graphic novel of Voyager.
• 42:55
  Oh. OK, now I've talked about the
• 42:58
  graphic novels a little bit, but everyone sort of aired towards
• 43:01
  that very popular 8th Doctor period and no one talks about
• 43:05
  the stuff before so I am so intrigued.
• 43:11
  Even when I kind of wasn't in love with the Colin Bacon era,
• 43:15
  which I had, I had problems around trying the Thai milk
• 43:18
  going up around because I was thinking it's not that great.
• 43:22
  I've come around a bit since because you rewatch it times a
• 43:25
  bit kinder and you with Doctor, you always come back to
• 43:28
  something and go after it's gone and go.
• 43:31
  It wasn't that bad really, was it?
• 43:34
  But for me, this kind of was my 6th Doctor era because this, I
• 43:42
  mean, first of all, John Ridgway's art, my God, the guy.
• 43:47
  I look at the pictures and go, so you did take him back like 3
• 43:51
  days to draw every single panelist because the detail of
• 43:54
  all the lines on these things is gorgeous.
• 43:58
  It it's beautiful. And he draws such a good Colin
• 44:01
  as well. Plus, probably if if I push to
• 44:05
  it, you have, as in most theories, you have a great
• 44:09
  TARDIS team. You have Frobisher in there of
• 44:12
  Frobes, you know, the Doctor and a Penguin.
• 44:16
  This was the kind of thing Tom Baker wanted back him back his
• 44:18
  talking cabbages as well. It's glory.
• 44:21
  And you know, frogs is this wise crank.
• 44:23
  I don't know I ever pitched him quite as the New York Private
• 44:26
  Eye of, you know, the Maltese Penguin or anything.
• 44:29
  But it's these are people you want to hang around with.
• 44:31
  It kind of didn't have Colin's bigger, harsher, more acerbic
• 44:36
  edge that maybe came through on television at times.
• 44:38
  It's kind of that little tone down and muted thing and it had
• 44:43
  and it you know what was I8084? I think that's where I was 10
• 44:48
  where this was going. And it's quite self consciously
• 44:51
  epic. So you start off with the doctor
• 44:54
  that kind of tied to this ship having odd dangerous with this
• 44:58
  ancient terrible being kind of big collars, almost time lawless
• 45:02
  behind him being very ominous and these kinds.
• 45:07
  This this story, it's kind of four, four story thing is linked
• 45:11
  by 1. He's he's not a villain, but
• 45:14
  he's kind of unscrewed this character called Astrolabus.
• 45:18
  And it's this old guy who has this secret who who Voyager this
• 45:23
  I suppose he's like a guardian, you know, like one of the white
• 45:25
  black guys, that kind of level entity.
• 45:30
  And it had a big kind of mythic sense to it that you didn't have
• 45:36
  in the TV Showtime just playing with and you know, it was
• 45:40
  looking to play with myths and legends in in kind of a deeper
• 45:43
  way that or a more how do I put it a straightaway then they've
• 45:49
  been played within, you know, the Graham Williams era.
• 45:51
  You know, it wasn't playing with it a remove.
• 45:54
  It was no, we can do this. There's there's this guy and it
• 46:01
  and it comes it all comes ahead in something that's called Once
• 46:04
  Upon a Time Lord, which somebody bid me on a page 4 recently on
• 46:09
  on an auction house because they were selling it.
• 46:10
  I was like, oh, gutted, because it's my one of my favorite
• 46:12
  stories. I wanted, but it it goes into
• 46:16
  completely mesteric. It's like it goes through a
• 46:18
  whole chapter on the Doctor running through a roof at the
• 46:22
  bare strip. Yeah.
• 46:26
  And I think there's the last page, the Doctor, it's a Chase,
• 46:29
  a Doctor Chase Astro labours and it ends with Doctor Chase Astro
• 46:33
  across a blank page as well. And it, it, it's using the
• 46:38
  medium really cleverly to tell this story, which you've gone
• 46:42
  through almost these straightforward Doctor Who sort
• 46:43
  of says something like Poly, the glot in the middle, which is a
• 46:46
  standard Doctor Who story with which they kind of integrated
• 46:50
  into the middle of it. You know, with, with an ongoing
• 46:52
  comic story, you do have diversions.
• 46:55
  But this ending of and it's it's I think it ends up with the
• 47:00
  picture against using the medium.
• 47:03
  He ends up with like Astra leaps, having a map of the
• 47:05
  universe. The time goes map of the
• 47:07
  universe tattooed all over his body.
• 47:09
  And it's that's why voyage is after him.
• 47:11
  And it's OK, you did this and it's it's this you made the
• 47:15
  bargain with the devil. Now you pay a pending the doctor
• 47:18
  isn't, I don't think, particularly active in the end,
• 47:20
  except to make sure that he's delivered to the devil.
• 47:24
  But it's again, that sense when you're 10 years old that there's
• 47:30
  this big stories, bigger universities, big wild myth,
• 47:33
  something so hugely powerful outside your understanding.
• 47:37
  Oh, I adored that. And.
• 47:38
  Just a visual scope of it as well.
• 47:40
  I, I mean, I read it years back, but I can still remember a
• 47:44
  couple of panels of the doctor going over the edge of a
• 47:47
  waterfall and a shock on his face.
• 47:50
  And this waterfall just goes down to nothing.
• 47:52
  And then he's just. Falling and it's a dream
• 47:55
  sequencing at the start. Yeah.
• 47:57
  His hands are tied to the wheel. Yeah.
• 47:59
  It's the doctor's terrified. What's going on here then?
• 48:02
  These events are bigger than anyone.
• 48:04
  And it's pretty much Colin Baker's first comic strips.
• 48:07
  So it, it was kind of the introduction to me.
• 48:10
  And that that was a six Doctor I absolutely adored at the time.
• 48:14
  Yeah, I said I've got on with the TV, you know, a lot better
• 48:18
  now, particularly, you know, particularly with you hearing
• 48:20
  you talk about it and what it means.
• 48:21
  See, that's obvious. But that at the time was what it
• 48:24
  meant to me, was the kind of Doctor Who was special to me at
• 48:28
  the time. Yeah, that was good.
• 48:31
  And yeah, the only thing I've put with it from the time would
• 48:33
  be the two docs and novelization, which is work of
• 48:37
  art. Oh, I'm glad there's a Colin in
• 48:39
  there as well. OK, are you going to bury next?
• 48:44
  I'm actually going to I'll tell you what, I'll bury one that
• 48:47
  you've mentioned, and I'll bury the highest science.
• 48:51
  OK, OK, well I mean I don't object to you burying that
• 48:55
  problem, so please. Explain.
• 48:58
  Sorry, it's, it's not burying him completely because he is,
• 49:03
  he's a obviously he's a distinctive.
• 49:06
  He. Kept.
• 49:06
  Yeah, yeah. But he's a good writer for
• 49:09
  nostalgia, for old doctors, for Wendy's, a kind of framework for
• 49:14
  him to work in. So is Tom Baker novels, and
• 49:18
  particularly the plotters is just such a gorgeous piece of
• 49:22
  literary. Doctor here.
• 49:24
  It's, yeah, it's, it's funny. It's it's he's working on a
• 49:26
  pastiche of Shakespeare beautifully, beautifully carried
• 49:31
  off you and you won't put on the same level or literary sense,
• 49:33
  obviously, but the highest science.
• 49:38
  I always I'm never quite gelled with kind of Gareth Frost when
• 49:42
  he's doing his new adventures. I don't think any of them
• 49:45
  particularly good because this one, it's literally just he's
• 49:49
  going to land a bunch of characters on a planet and
• 49:53
  that's it. Just put them through.
• 49:55
  It's almost like sketch comedy kind of thing.
• 49:58
  There's no kind of real structure or through line to it.
• 50:02
  Yeah, But there's moments. There's lots of real pathos in
• 50:05
  you, which you don't get in other Gareth, not Roberts.
• 50:10
  But ultimately I always kind of felt this is not all that's
• 50:12
  punching down. It's like the 8 twelves, They're
• 50:16
  just there for him to basically have someone there who can be
• 50:19
  kicked to to the kerb every single time.
• 50:22
  It's. It's someone who.
• 50:24
  Yeah, it's a morning commute. It's a basis on the morning
• 50:27
  commute that he doesn't like and he's just constantly punching
• 50:32
  down on them. And I, I don't like that kind of
• 50:35
  comedy because it's just too as. You mean to go on?
• 50:38
  Yeah. Oh, God, yeah.
• 50:40
  And I always, I feel like he he had a good idea with the
• 50:43
  Chelonians, and they're a fun race, but I think he thinks it's
• 50:48
  a lot cleverer than it actually is.
• 50:50
  It's just a fun race, you know? Yeah.
• 50:53
  Did he do? Zamper and Tragedy day.
• 50:57
  OH. I don't really remember.
• 51:00
  Tragedy Day is Tragedy Day is kind of funny enough for this.
• 51:05
  It's got a world based on that's based itself on Smash Hits
• 51:08
  Yearbook, I think. Oh God.
• 51:10
  Which is, which is like, yeah, I can see that's a great funny
• 51:13
  idea. It's a bit, maybe it's comedy,
• 51:15
  Star Trek basically that one. But last time we paid it just
• 51:18
  it's just a kind of screened against telethons, you know, the
• 51:21
  charity TV stuff, which, yeah, they can do with the kicking,
• 51:24
  but it's easy targets. Yes, that I think that's it.
• 51:30
  It's I'm kind of reluctant to put first novels in here
• 51:35
  because, you know, they're right.
• 51:37
  They're trying to get everything they can do to show what they
• 51:40
  can do. But again, but again, the thing
• 51:43
  that most annoyed me about it, after all the pages, you know,
• 51:47
  after all this book, you're going OK Is there any pay off?
• 51:50
  It literally just stops. That's it.
• 51:54
  Nothing more, nothing else. I haven't thought that's it hit
• 51:57
  the word limit off I go and it's just a it's a A at the end of
• 52:02
  Rena. I just felt cheated by that
• 52:05
  ending. It's it's a OK, at least make a
• 52:07
  kind of perfunctory gesture to it.
• 52:09
  I. Was just so happy someone was
• 52:11
  having fun with that. Oh God yeah, there's a few good
• 52:15
  gags. The weird thing about Gareth was
• 52:18
  I'll never forget there was this DWM interview with him.
• 52:21
  It was after we'd written Only Human, which I did think was a
• 52:24
  good book, very funny book. And he goes in the interview,
• 52:29
  you know, of course I got a spot on the TV show.
• 52:32
  In like a moment of utter arrogance, he goes, I wrote one
• 52:35
  of the all time best Doctor Who books in Only Human and I was
• 52:39
  like, well, you're clearly who thinks a lot about your own
• 52:42
  work. And you know how much he thinks
• 52:45
  about that book? It's that he he's reused that
• 52:48
  five brigging times, that whole concept of just.
• 52:50
  Yeah, the after goes into domestics.
• 52:53
  That's it by bloody stories. I'm sorry we got to the
• 52:57
  caretaker. We were like enough, please.
• 52:59
  God, yeah, If you don't bin that on strictly, I'm going to have
• 53:02
  words. Oh please, that.
• 53:04
  Oh well. Oh absolutely, that will be
• 53:05
  happening. I will.
• 53:07
  OK, the highest science. That wouldn't have been my
• 53:09
  Gareth Roberts of choice, but an interesting choice.
• 53:13
  But there has to be something interesting on there.
• 53:16
  It's. All interesting.
• 53:17
  Well, let's hear another interesting story to Lord.
• 53:21
  I should say one of the ones I did kick off the list was
• 53:24
  Menagra, because we're doing that for book club coming up, so
• 53:27
  I wasn't going to talk about that.
• 53:28
  Would that have been on your top 10 then?
• 53:30
  It would have been on the top 10 but I thought I'll leave it.
• 53:33
  All so save your faults because we got a whole episode of that
• 53:36
  coming up. Plus it was on Luke's top 10 as
• 53:38
  well, so I was like. OK, too much love.
• 53:41
  Yeah. OK, I'm gonna go.
• 53:43
  There is only one target on the on my top ten list, but it might
• 53:49
  not be the antics or I'm going to put on the Eaters of Light I
• 53:58
  I was. Sure, you were going to choose a
• 54:00
  recovery target then. It was tempting for remembrance
• 54:05
  again, it's that's the one you've which is so obvious.
• 54:09
  It's a wonderful book. It is.
• 54:11
  It is great. I mean, it's a world away from
• 54:14
  the Eaters of Light, so I've got to hit this.
• 54:18
  You just I've just I've not long rewatched theatres like any I I
• 54:24
  love, I love survival. You know, I'm a big McCoy fan,
• 54:27
  Love that era and survival's great.
• 54:30
  It's it's not the most memorable Doctor Who's story story.
• 54:32
  It's quite dull, but I do appreciate a target that takes
• 54:38
  its source material and goes right.
• 54:41
  It basically bins the idea that it was ever ATV story.
• 54:45
  How would it be written as a book?
• 54:47
  And this is what Esolat does. It takes it's a completely
• 54:51
  different take on the story. You know, the the the Eaters of
• 54:56
  Light themselves weren't a particularly interesting
• 54:59
  adversary on what I don't think particularly.
• 55:01
  Figure out what they were. Yeah, exactly.
• 55:03
  In this one, they they kind of become more tentacles of
• 55:08
  darkness that can always come out from anywhere.
• 55:10
  They turn into this really terrifying kind of creatures and
• 55:14
  you and it really does kind of get that concept of the light
• 55:18
  and, you know, like being equated with time.
• 55:20
  So it's, you know, it sucks the light from your body and they
• 55:23
  they go after you and it's, it really brings home that culture
• 55:27
  class between the Romans and the early Celts and it has such a
• 55:32
  lovely, you know, it takes you to have that the the, you know,
• 55:36
  the gay Romans. It really, really digs into that
• 55:42
  perspective because it's one of the halves of the story.
• 55:45
  It's perspective. You get both perspectives.
• 55:48
  The car sitting in Julius Lucy's, can't remember that now,
• 55:52
  but it brings those perspective. And I just went, it's a kind of
• 55:57
  a great kind of lyrical story. And the prose is so gorgeously.
• 56:00
  It's, it's almost, it's not pretentiously poetic, but it's
• 56:04
  it's got meat to it. It's got weight and it's
• 56:06
  beautiful. I recently read Survival, the
• 56:11
  target of survival for the book club, and I was astonished at
• 56:15
  one, that the changes she made to it, because she made it far
• 56:19
  more vicious and terrifying than it was on TV.
• 56:23
  Because you had with the book, obviously you're not actually
• 56:25
  seeing it on the screen, but yeah, her writing, the prose
• 56:29
  itself, it was really essential, really.
• 56:32
  Like, yes, put you in the scene. All of you are tempting me with
• 56:36
  this. It's it's a really, really good,
• 56:39
  yeah. It's one of the best ads.
• 56:41
  I wasn't expecting that necessarily from either, but.
• 56:45
  When they kept that came out, you know, whenever, when they
• 56:47
  announced that everyone was going.
• 56:49
  What? Yeah, I'll ask her which one.
• 56:52
  As it's, it's Ronald Monroe basically, but no, she because
• 56:55
  she, I think she said, you know, she was an inexperienced writer
• 56:58
  when she's doing survival, but now she got an, you know, she's
• 57:02
  got an extra. It was the 30 odd years behind
• 57:05
  her. So I can do I can actually do
• 57:08
  this justice. I think she wrote it during
• 57:09
  lockdown. So it was one of her lockdown
• 57:11
  projects. So she had time to just really
• 57:14
  make an absolute job of that story.
• 57:17
  And I know it's not your ear particularly, but it is it it's
• 57:22
  does things that some of the best.
• 57:24
  I would say it transforms this kind of mid level Doctor Who
• 57:27
  story to, you know, mid, lower, mid level to something really
• 57:33
  that is close, so close to what must have been intended.
• 57:36
  Barbara it is gorgeous and I don't.
• 57:39
  It is a chance for us, isn't it, to actually you have a proper
• 57:42
  look at what the writer intended without the director of the
• 57:45
  actors, the cinematographer and all that getting in the way.
• 57:49
  A proper look at what was in their head and how they
• 57:52
  envisaged. Because I found the same with
• 57:53
  The Witch Finders. I thought that was a good
• 57:56
  episode, and it was atmospheric and spooky and funny, but the
• 58:00
  novel really got under the skin of the characters in a way that
• 58:04
  didn't hit the screen. Those targets are pretty
• 58:07
  invaluable for the new series. Yeah, because, because you
• 58:11
  wonders when they first came out.
• 58:13
  Really. Yeah.
• 58:15
  What what is the point of them? And then you get get Russell
• 58:19
  absolutely expands Rosette and Crimson Horror puts a whole a
• 58:22
  whole huge prologue. Dave the Doctor completely, you
• 58:28
  know, it's very muffled. He delves into the engineering a
• 58:30
  bit. Dalek all the all the stories.
• 58:33
  What's it? It's only about what, 30 pages
• 58:35
  are there? The actual episode itself, it's
• 58:39
  an action. Oh, it's impossible to novelise.
• 58:42
  Well, I think it's just an action film.
• 58:44
  But because of what Rob does as a short story writer, he can
• 58:48
  expand it out, bring it. He gives it so much weight to
• 58:52
  all the deaths, you know, because dark individual.
• 58:55
  And then it's not the individuals on the other side
• 58:57
  don't necessarily think about. Oh yeah.
• 59:00
  I'm like, wow, coming to a book club near you.
• 59:03
  I've got to read it now, add it to the list.
• 59:09
  And Joe, Joe, it's Blackpool Tower back there now.
• 59:13
  It's Blackpool Tower of Books. Blackpool Tower, it's like you
• 59:18
  remember that huge anthill at the end of the Gallifrey
• 59:20
  Chronicles that the Doctor jumped?
• 59:23
  Yeah. And on top of that now?
• 59:25
  There you go. Oh yeah, I'm jumping if you
• 59:27
  want. Well, I'm assuming that the
• 59:28
  Gallifrey Chronicles is not on your bottom 10 list.
• 59:31
  No, I couldn't put Lance on it. That's it.
• 59:35
  But. What's What's your next one?
• 59:37
  What next time we throw it on the pyre?
• 59:40
  On the pyre and my 9 year old self would probably kill me for
• 59:45
  this, but I'm going to throw on Doctor Who A celebration by
• 59:48
  Peter Haining. Oh, good grief.
• 59:52
  OK, I don't think I've got this and I don't think I've ever read
• 59:55
  it, so you're going to have to educate me.
• 59:56
  Oh, God, it's a it, it was, you know, it was a large form of
• 1:00:00
  hardback came out. Peter Haining did I think four
• 1:00:04
  or five of these from 1983 to 1988.
• 1:00:08
  So this was the big 20th anniversary coffee table book.
• 1:00:12
  But doctor's anniversary, you know, you had a profile of every
• 1:00:16
  one of the doctors you had. And I think there's enough time
• 1:00:20
  travel in there. But what I'm Benny it for is
• 1:00:26
  because it has that thing by Jerry Bentham where he runs
• 1:00:30
  through every single story and. As a?
• 1:00:35
  As a like a. Yeah, it's kind.
• 1:00:39
  It's kind of a prissy and a view.
• 1:00:41
  So it's kind of a history of Doctor Who by Rich Story and in
• 1:00:45
  particular. This is Doctor Who, in the
• 1:00:47
  opinion of Jeremy Bentham. Yes, and I think that's the
• 1:00:51
  absolute problem with it because it's it's at such a point that
• 1:00:54
  fandom has developed. It's it's you've got the people
• 1:00:57
  who grew up with it, who were into the organised fandom.
• 1:01:01
  It really, it's one of those kind of received opinions and it
• 1:01:04
  forms those received opinions. Did he not like the gunfighters?
• 1:01:09
  It's not just that he did like the gunfighters, it's that he go
• 1:01:13
  he links for up to the savages by going from the ridiculous to
• 1:01:19
  the sublime and God bless because but the savages, even
• 1:01:25
  though we can't see the vigils, are going to have to be pretty
• 1:01:28
  fucking spectacular to justify that decision.
• 1:01:32
  Supply, right? Wow.
• 1:01:34
  God, yeah. And you know, you've got, you
• 1:01:36
  know it's a it's the monster season, all those things forming
• 1:01:41
  in and you go. Uni era I'm sure when he loved
• 1:01:45
  the unit era. Yeah.
• 1:01:47
  Oh, God, yeah. I think, I think it was
• 1:01:49
  everything except the gunfighters.
• 1:01:50
  He'd be loved. Up from memory, but it's just
• 1:01:54
  it's presented a scripture. There was a few voices, Jeremy
• 1:01:58
  Ben from there housed Amazon Walker, the people that were
• 1:02:02
  writing these books because we didn't have the videos at the
• 1:02:05
  time, did we? No, we had the targets where we
• 1:02:07
  could kind of read the books, but that's not the same as
• 1:02:09
  watching them. And then you have these these
• 1:02:12
  big coffee table books where people are basically telling
• 1:02:15
  you, well, this is how it is. And again, this was book.
• 1:02:18
  It just was that that was what was so rushing about the
• 1:02:21
  discontinuity guide. It's because it was the next
• 1:02:24
  generation which was more my generation, writes Kevin Long
• 1:02:27
  going, no balls here. This is what we think.
• 1:02:32
  This is a, you know, and it wasn't possessive presented as
• 1:02:35
  a, a definitive view. It was a view rather than that
• 1:02:39
  kind of no, these are not texts. This is not what you should
• 1:02:42
  think about these Doctor Who stories.
• 1:02:45
  And in that very sort of 90s way.
• 1:02:48
  Of. Pulling something apart and
• 1:02:50
  taking a piss a little bit as well.
• 1:02:52
  Not treating it as sacred text, but as something that can be
• 1:02:56
  mocked a little bit. Exactly.
• 1:02:58
  And that that's was that's how you interact with stuff.
• 1:03:00
  I think that's the best, healthiest way.
• 1:03:03
  Yes, you, you've got that leopard, but don't be so
• 1:03:06
  reverent that you put it on a pedestal here and, and, and say,
• 1:03:09
  you know, it's not a museum piece.
• 1:03:11
  And that's kind of what that whole section did to me was it
• 1:03:15
  was kind of Doctor Who as this museum piece, as this piece of
• 1:03:19
  history. And I said, I'm not interested
• 1:03:21
  in this history. I'm interested in this kind of
• 1:03:24
  living, breathing thing in, you know, getting a hold of these
• 1:03:28
  stories in whatever way I can with let's have the gunfighter.
• 1:03:33
  I don't see the target or give me on the give me on CD, give me
• 1:03:37
  on whatever. I don't care.
• 1:03:38
  I want these stories. I It's when you get into them
• 1:03:42
  after that, you know, you realise what these people think
• 1:03:46
  is often eccentric, shall we say, or just.
• 1:03:51
  Their opinion, yeah. Rather than, yeah, as you said,
• 1:03:55
  you know, Holy Scripture. Yeah.
• 1:03:57
  So as time has gone on and now we dissect Doctor Who as a
• 1:04:02
  whole, right? As as a group, because through
• 1:04:05
  podcasting, through online review sites where there's all
• 1:04:08
  those different voices, you know, through anthologies like
• 1:04:11
  Stacey Smith's ones where there's a different voice for
• 1:04:15
  every single story. It's changed so much from the
• 1:04:19
  days when there was just a few powerful voices to body to
• 1:04:24
  everybody sort of questioning everything.
• 1:04:27
  And maybe there's too many voices now, or maybe it gets too
• 1:04:30
  loud, but, or maybe too passionate.
• 1:04:34
  But but I think as a result I think all opinions are now
• 1:04:39
  valid. Yeah, it's, it's more
• 1:04:41
  interesting having conversation and there will be bad faith.
• 1:04:45
  Bad faith, you know, particularly not my doctor Craig
• 1:04:48
  particularly, you know, who will come up with this particular and
• 1:04:51
  everyone else is wrong. Are they still on that kind of
• 1:04:54
  spectrum from the, you know, from the 80s where there's one
• 1:04:57
  all powerful voice? It's not, it's not interesting.
• 1:05:01
  Doctor Who is this thing particularly now let's have a
• 1:05:04
  chat about with my mates. It's that's all it's all about.
• 1:05:08
  And. I even saw, I saw a tweet
• 1:05:11
  earlier today and someone said something really lovely about
• 1:05:16
  Hamster. Just saying if I'm having a bad
• 1:05:18
  day, I don't know those people on Hamster, but I feel as if I'm
• 1:05:22
  hanging out with my mates when I'm just listening to them talk,
• 1:05:25
  you know. And so that means we're not
• 1:05:27
  doing a celebration. We're not saying, oh, you're out
• 1:05:30
  there. This is the law.
• 1:05:32
  You know, yeah, you don't set yourself up.
• 1:05:35
  But then ultimately, let's face it, apart from Brussel, GA with
• 1:05:39
  Steve Moffatt, are we just people who watch Doctor Who and
• 1:05:42
  love it? And if we don't know the things
• 1:05:46
  because that even better. I think that's a great choice
• 1:05:49
  and it's the first non fiction choice on anybody's list, which
• 1:05:53
  is wonderful. OK so then do you have a non
• 1:05:56
  fiction top 10? I've got a lot of non fiction
• 1:06:01
  books I can stick on the top ten.
• 1:06:03
  I will put I've got one in that's in my top ten and I will
• 1:06:05
  stick it in. License denied.
• 1:06:08
  Oh I love this. Is this the the fanzine article?
• 1:06:11
  Yes, it it was the one that Virgin published just after
• 1:06:14
  they'd lost their license, so this is what they could get away
• 1:06:17
  with. You'll remember the time there's
• 1:06:19
  one about Tegan being in love with the Doctor and someone
• 1:06:22
  writes a whole essay about like this romantic reading of oh it
• 1:06:27
  was fabulous. It was, yeah.
• 1:06:29
  Again, I think this that sounds nice because it's it wants there
• 1:06:34
  to be this multiplicity of voices.
• 1:06:36
  And it again, it's it's also Pocono paying it forward, I
• 1:06:40
  think, because he added his collection and he just finds
• 1:06:45
  articles he loves by or by some friends he loves as well and
• 1:06:49
  think which he thinks deserves wider exposure than just, you
• 1:06:52
  know, having it was a couple of 100 people reading a a badly
• 1:06:55
  photocopied or, you know, badly types out fanzine.
• 1:06:59
  I think Matt, Matt Jones on the Happiness Patrol all day.
• 1:07:04
  I remember that one, yeah. Glorious on that.
• 1:07:08
  You know it's it's that OK yeah, it's all about, you know, a gay
• 1:07:12
  experience. You went is it?
• 1:07:13
  And it's really questioned in a deeply engaged way.
• 1:07:18
  You know, I think again, it's one of the things that made you
• 1:07:20
  a doctor about. And you've got people being
• 1:07:22
  silly. Gareth Rock's doing a great joke
• 1:07:24
  about yeah, we we should boycott certain things until the BBC
• 1:07:28
  released the Androids of Tower on VHS.
• 1:07:31
  That's a completely worthwhile thing.
• 1:07:34
  You know what, we've got to add that one to our list.
• 1:07:36
  I'll need to reread. I just remember as well, they
• 1:07:38
  were all like every single essay was like a contentious subject,
• 1:07:43
  but it wasn't treated in, like we said, put like in a really
• 1:07:46
  serious way. It was intelligently written,
• 1:07:49
  but they were sort of having fun.
• 1:07:51
  Yes, after exploring the ideas. I think Paul what the capture
• 1:07:55
  that kind of fandom of the time as much as anything else,
• 1:07:58
  because that is a fandom. The new adventures does
• 1:08:01
  ultimately can act on which the the playfulness might get lost a
• 1:08:06
  little in certainly in the early adventures, but he brings it out
• 1:08:09
  so much here. It's just so many, you know,
• 1:08:13
  good rights and it's writers who summarised went on to absolutely
• 1:08:18
  sort of, you know, be on the TV show and some, you know, just
• 1:08:22
  didn't bother going beyond fancy.
• 1:08:23
  Now it's just again that multiplicity voices the idea you
• 1:08:28
  could have fun with this thing, the idea that you could just
• 1:08:31
  write about this thing, even if, even if you're into just to make
• 1:08:35
  a few people laugh, it's all great.
• 1:08:39
  When I read that, it was like I was there at the Fitzroy Tavern
• 1:08:43
  with somebody coming out with some outrageous suggestion, like
• 1:08:47
  Tegan is in love with the Doctor and you can just hear everyone
• 1:08:51
  going, oh, what? And then all the different.
• 1:08:53
  Voices and that's it. It's abandoned as a
• 1:08:56
  conversation, essentially. That's why I would have it on
• 1:09:00
  any list. You know, because Cornell.
• 1:09:03
  Yeah, yeah, I I do. I find it's Doctor Who books hit
• 1:09:07
  and miss and I'm looking forward to exploring that sort of in the
• 1:09:09
  future in the book club. Why do you think He's a great
• 1:09:13
  editor? And and he sort of gets this
• 1:09:15
  notorious reputation of being quite difficult to work with
• 1:09:18
  because he's very passionate about his work.
• 1:09:21
  But that was really well edited. He edited 2 anthologies for Big
• 1:09:26
  Finishes, Bernie Sample Life Through Wartime, Which was he
• 1:09:31
  assembled just the most astonishing list of writers for
• 1:09:34
  that. And on the yeah, it's Kate
• 1:09:38
  Orman's story in that I think is the.
• 1:09:42
  The Joe Lister 1, Summer, holiday, summer affair, that's
• 1:09:46
  it. Where she's having the affair
• 1:09:47
  with the Nazi Miss Jones. It's just, I just think, I think
• 1:09:51
  he has other talents away from writing novels, Paul Cornell,
• 1:09:55
  that we haven't tapped into enough.
• 1:09:58
  Oh, absolutely. Like the surprises I think is
• 1:10:01
  yeah. So I remember being on the the
• 1:10:04
  Benice Manlius when someone came up with that one with the title
• 1:10:08
  for it. Oh forget it, just how to do it.
• 1:10:10
  You are in all this at the time. Oh God, yes it was.
• 1:10:14
  I was only on the periphery really on on this one and then
• 1:10:17
  in the Tavern for most of it. But it's just exciting being
• 1:10:22
  it's it's like you're at the cutting edge of Doctor Who.
• 1:10:24
  Even when it was quite obviously fading towards the end of the
• 1:10:27
  Edas and the PDAs, it still felt thrilling.
• 1:10:30
  You, you know, Big Finish was starting up as well.
• 1:10:33
  And my God, the war's between Big Finish and you know, and the
• 1:10:36
  book fans, because it would there was some really
• 1:10:38
  oppositional stuff. I was like.
• 1:10:40
  Really. Oh my God, is it like, you know,
• 1:10:42
  chippers versus Moffett fans? Yeah, exactly that.
• 1:10:45
  You had to be one or the. Other it's it's always.
• 1:10:48
  Yeah, that was good. You can do both.
• 1:10:51
  There's no reason why not to. Let's divide more opinions then
• 1:10:55
  and head back to your bin list. OK, I'll.
• 1:10:59
  I'll go with one and I'll put it on that because, you know,
• 1:11:02
  Doctor Who has a history of insensitivity and this was one
• 1:11:05
  that I, I didn't particularly pick it until my friend Mondy,
• 1:11:10
  Ian Mond, Kevin said he gets name checked in blue box, if I
• 1:11:13
  remember rightly. But I'm going to pick Matrix
• 1:11:20
  Harry and Tucker and not normally again, I'd say they're
• 1:11:23
  solid writers at best, but they kind of had this thing where
• 1:11:26
  they seem to have this thing where they're going to try and
• 1:11:28
  overwrite the new adventures that their version of Doctor Who
• 1:11:32
  was definitive because Mike had worked on it and that and I
• 1:11:36
  think Mike Tucker's book was Rob Perry generally better than his
• 1:11:39
  solo work, which. Is matrix.
• 1:11:43
  Is it both of them? Yes, OK.
• 1:11:45
  I think it's this second one. I think it's after it's after
• 1:11:48
  loving the alien. But the thing it with this and
• 1:11:53
  because it's in the late 90s and it's totally more sensitive.
• 1:11:56
  It's the use of the wandering Jew.
• 1:11:58
  And as my as mummy pointed out, because he's Jewish, it was one
• 1:12:03
  of the book doctor. He immediately chucked the book
• 1:12:05
  to one side because it's massively, stupidly offensive to
• 1:12:10
  use. It's such it's an anti-Semitic
• 1:12:13
  trope of a horrible potency and Doctor Who does kind of get more
• 1:12:21
  better, I think particularly in recent years where I, I don't
• 1:12:26
  know that, you know, but it's more aware of what it's doing
• 1:12:29
  with these things that. I think you have to.
• 1:12:32
  Be a story, yes. Yeah, but there are some.
• 1:12:36
  Again, it it's it's like with interference that that whole
• 1:12:41
  section with the doctor being tortured is almost Lawrence
• 1:12:44
  Miles trying to prove that the series can't engage with real
• 1:12:47
  life. It's fine.
• 1:12:48
  We know he can't. It's, you know, spy Fall really
• 1:12:51
  falls foul of that towards the end with the Doctor DOB in the
• 1:12:55
  Master of Skin Colour or Noreen Yap Khan.
• 1:12:59
  Yeah, Going Oh yeah, it's fine to be executed.
• 1:13:01
  She'll be executed. That's where she's meant to go
• 1:13:03
  and you're going. Hang.
• 1:13:04
  On you're just this this is just like exposing the series can't
• 1:13:10
  actually go to those places. It can't deal with real life
• 1:13:13
  horror. It's the one thing that doctor
• 1:13:15
  really cannot deal with. And this is this is exactly, and
• 1:13:21
  it's just treating that that wondering, Jim Deal as pulp, as
• 1:13:26
  essentially Pulp Fiction, as entertainment and not engage
• 1:13:30
  with, if you're going to use that, you have to engage with
• 1:13:35
  it. You have to exactly, you have to
• 1:13:39
  at least undermine it if you're going to do that.
• 1:13:43
  And it never does that because they're not writers who are
• 1:13:45
  interested in doing that. Is it my imagination because
• 1:13:48
  it's been a while since I've read this one.
• 1:13:50
  Is this the one with the Valley art as Jack Ripper?
• 1:13:53
  Yes. Yeah, I do remember it being
• 1:13:56
  sort of dark and a bit scary, but very confusing.
• 1:14:00
  Yes, that's that's a fundamental good.
• 1:14:02
  It's not a particularly good, but you know, it's not as much
• 1:14:04
  fun as say, Crake into getting hold of the valley on the
• 1:14:07
  millennial rights and just having a whale of a time.
• 1:14:10
  It's just they can use this as a he uses, it's an icon and it's
• 1:14:17
  just, it just, OK, the Doctor, if you went to dark side could
• 1:14:22
  do this kind of thing. That's not Doctor Who I'm
• 1:14:25
  particularly interested in. It's not interesting.
• 1:14:27
  It's not doing anything new with it.
• 1:14:29
  It's not saying anything that you know.
• 1:14:31
  The general concept of value doesn't say by itself.
• 1:14:35
  It's almost a shame as well, but like what you said there about
• 1:14:37
  them pushing away from the New Avengers and trying to do their
• 1:14:39
  own thing. I kind of get it because maybe
• 1:14:43
  if you look at Ace as an example, you know, she started
• 1:14:47
  off somewhere OK in Genesis and then ended up somewhere terrible
• 1:14:51
  around Falls of Shadow where she's just a fucking sadist.
• 1:14:54
  So they're sort of harkening back to that sort of Season 25
• 1:14:58
  Seventh Doctrine Ace. And with Storm Harvest and with
• 1:15:02
  Prime Time, they're sort of light.
• 1:15:04
  There's a lot of killing in it, but they're sort of light,
• 1:15:06
  adventurous books. Yeah.
• 1:15:10
  But then with Matrix and with loving the alien, with loving
• 1:15:13
  the alien, I think they kill Ace, don't they?
• 1:15:15
  She gets short. Yeah, it's because the it's the
• 1:15:18
  multiple deaths of ace thing, isn't it?
• 1:15:20
  It has it's it's you get ace of Ice.
• 1:15:22
  But could they kill pull in from alternative timeline?
• 1:15:25
  Stop killing the companions. But right.
• 1:15:27
  It's yeah, it's, yeah. You know, there is a fault in
• 1:15:30
  Doctor Who that we do write a lot of books to resolve
• 1:15:32
  continuity points or stories, and that's a major because no
• 1:15:36
  one cared. It was fun.
• 1:15:38
  I just wonder if like if whenever these writers have a
• 1:15:41
  like right back to basics, we're going to just do fun adventures,
• 1:15:45
  you know, like like that run like that run from the burning
• 1:15:50
  fridge. You know, we're just going to do
• 1:15:51
  some traditional stories. We're going to come time zero.
• 1:15:54
  We're so complicated again, like they just can't do it.
• 1:15:57
  And with Harry and Tucker, they're like, right, fun
• 1:16:00
  adventures for the 7th doctrine ace.
• 1:16:02
  No, wait, we're going to do the Valley hard murdering women and
• 1:16:04
  we're going to kill off ice. And I don't know, maybe there's
• 1:16:07
  just always that draw to make it darker again.
• 1:16:09
  Yeah, I think, and this is where they fall down on.
• 1:16:13
  It's just not particularly interesting.
• 1:16:16
  It's, you know, I'm, you know, I, I grew up through the 80s
• 1:16:19
  notes where you had what they call grim dark developing, You
• 1:16:22
  know, that from stuff like Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, they
• 1:16:27
  make, you know, the old kind of pure superhero thing, grimmer.
• 1:16:32
  So, you know, they, they bring, they bring it into the adult
• 1:16:36
  world almost, in fact. Yeah, that's what they do.
• 1:16:39
  So, and this is kind of halfway what this is trying to do, but
• 1:16:44
  it doesn't work in the slightest.
• 1:16:49
  It has. Trouble with with Perry and
• 1:16:51
  Tucker is, yes, what I said about Andy Frankenmalen's piece
• 1:16:56
  of Fang rock recently. And that is these are writers
• 1:16:59
  that would not be writing books if they they didn't have that
• 1:17:03
  Doctor Who connection. You know, they're not good
• 1:17:06
  enough to write mainstream novels.
• 1:17:09
  So they're sort of knocking out these books and they are fun,
• 1:17:12
  but I wouldn't say they're especially sophisticated.
• 1:17:14
  Half the time. I wouldn't even say they're
• 1:17:16
  particularly competent. No, I didn't say.
• 1:17:20
  Well, they said there are three things for a writer to get to
• 1:17:24
  work. You're a nice guy, you deliver
• 1:17:27
  on time. And what was the other one?
• 1:17:30
  Yeah. Nice guy, deliver on time or an
• 1:17:32
  absolute genius. And most, most people say get 2,
• 1:17:35
  but if you've got 3, then you go and you.
• 1:17:37
  Mike Tucker. Yeah, I've met him a couple of
• 1:17:39
  times. He is a lovely fella.
• 1:17:42
  I'm sure he delivers on time, which is go for it.
• 1:17:46
  No, no. I.
• 1:17:48
  Did not do the other way around like the Lawrence Miles of this
• 1:17:52
  world. Nice guy, No Delivers on time.
• 1:17:55
  Almost definitely not Genius, yes.
• 1:17:58
  Definitely. You can understand, yeah, you
• 1:18:01
  can understand why he's burned so many bridges down the line.
• 1:18:05
  OK, wow, Matrix. An intriguing choice that I
• 1:18:08
  think Mark and Mills will be coming after you because he
• 1:18:10
  loves those Tucker and Perry books.
• 1:18:12
  I'll, I'll, that's all right. If you want to set up a fight,
• 1:18:15
  we'll you know, we'll meet in a. Will there be Greece involved?
• 1:18:19
  If you want brilliant all you like.
• 1:18:23
  What colour then? Let's be positive.
• 1:18:25
  Take us back to your top ten list.
• 1:18:26
  OK, I've got 2 new benches. Sorry, I'm going.
• 1:18:29
  So I'm going to I'm going to go. We talked already a lot about
• 1:18:32
  poker now, so let's go with one of poker now and then I'm going
• 1:18:35
  to go. I've talked, I thought I'm sure
• 1:18:36
  I've mentioned this to you before, but it was all I think
• 1:18:39
  the desert planet pick. So I'm going to go with Time 1,
• 1:18:41
  Revelation. Oh, this was your one where you
• 1:18:43
  were studying and you were supposed to get on with?
• 1:18:48
  Get on with revising for my A level marks.
• 1:18:50
  Because you picked up Time Worm, Revelation and read the whole
• 1:18:54
  thing. Yeah, it weren't bells.
• 1:18:56
  Yeah, could be. Responsible for your entire
• 1:18:58
  career today. That book.
• 1:19:00
  So my entire, yeah, my entire career, in one sense on doctor
• 1:19:04
  literature, and in the other sense on the fact that I'm not
• 1:19:08
  particularly interested in their career at all.
• 1:19:11
  Rather be reading Doctor Who books.
• 1:19:14
  Ah, totally. And again it it's going back to
• 1:19:18
  this theme of being playful with Doctor Who, of doing new things.
• 1:19:24
  Don't you know, the New Avengers open up kind of solid.
• 1:19:28
  I was reading at the same time these the Star Trek Next Gen.
• 1:19:31
  novels. The early ones.
• 1:19:33
  Oh God loads of them were a slog.
• 1:19:35
  Yes, I remember masks contagion. Oh, dreadful.
• 1:19:40
  Don't you get someone like Peter David?
• 1:19:43
  Who's again? Who knew it it was funny, was
• 1:19:47
  funny was good. He could he could make his
• 1:19:49
  characters great. You know, he even wrote a funny
• 1:19:52
  look Sound of Troy novel Q in Law I.
• 1:19:55
  Take some doing. Tell me about it.
• 1:19:57
  I just like it's like man from heaven.
• 1:20:00
  And it's similar to this because the first read books.
• 1:20:04
  Yeah, yeah. X this is funny.
• 1:20:06
  It's it's Terence having fun. So you're fine with that?
• 1:20:11
  The other two. Yeah, I know.
• 1:20:13
  I read them because I wanted Doctor Who novels for years.
• 1:20:16
  I'd wanted these kind of original novels for so long
• 1:20:19
  that, you know, I, I remember reading Genesis twice in a
• 1:20:22
  fairly quick succession and I'd look back and go, how the hell
• 1:20:25
  did I do that? Enthusiasm.
• 1:20:27
  That was that. Explains a lot about your mental
• 1:20:31
  state as well. You know, ice on the bounce.
• 1:20:34
  I was, I was 17. What do you expect?
• 1:20:36
  A 17 heterosexual. You hate yourself at 17, right?
• 1:20:39
  Exactly that. It was hate reading.
• 1:20:41
  Oh, and and there's bare boobs in it.
• 1:20:43
  Well, fine, it's them. I keep going.
• 1:20:47
  But no, they they aren't. I think if the new adventures
• 1:20:51
  had gone on like that, they'd been dead in fairly short order
• 1:20:56
  because it wouldn't have been doing anything interesting.
• 1:20:59
  But then, you know, Cornell is he has the sense to introduce
• 1:21:06
  wider conceptual series. I I'm pretty sure you can detect
• 1:21:09
  he's been reading Alan Moore's work.
• 1:21:11
  He's been reading the Sandman. Not if if that was going at a
• 1:21:15
  time, but he's he's engaging in other stuff and bringing it into
• 1:21:19
  Doctor Who. The more fantastic elements.
• 1:21:22
  He's willing to go further and wider with you to go into
• 1:21:26
  allegorical storytelling. And they're still, you know,
• 1:21:32
  straight, sort of quite straightforward ish Doctor Who
• 1:21:35
  story in there. But it's told in such a
• 1:21:38
  different way. It's the thing it's doing
• 1:21:42
  because Doctor Who up till that point, there's a gesture towards
• 1:21:45
  this with the characters, Doctor Who never particularly engaged
• 1:21:49
  with contemporary culture. It's got hints in the
• 1:21:52
  background. It's got, you know, maybe, you
• 1:21:54
  know, there's the old Beatles reference.
• 1:21:55
  You know, Polly and Ben are deliberate from the time, but
• 1:21:59
  it's never, you know, mentions, you know this mentions, you
• 1:22:03
  know, the Stone Roses, Simon Groom.
• 1:22:05
  It's a stuff that you'd know with growing up.
• 1:22:08
  You're going hang on a second. This can be for my generation.
• 1:22:13
  It doesn't need to be for that older generation, because Doctor
• 1:22:17
  Who up till the Carmel era is written by almost exclusively by
• 1:22:21
  people who were born pre war. I think you know, Doug's Adams
• 1:22:23
  and Andrew Smith are the only ones, but after Pip and Jane
• 1:22:27
  Baker, it's all writers born post war who can talk more to
• 1:22:32
  us, to my generation. And that, that's, and again,
• 1:22:38
  revelation of quantum from that, because Polkos not that much
• 1:22:42
  older than I am, I think 5-6 years maybe.
• 1:22:46
  But he absolutely goes, this is a series which should be
• 1:22:50
  engaging with what's happening now, which we're just engaging
• 1:22:53
  with wider culture. And he puts it back in there and
• 1:22:57
  it it works. And you all of a sudden it's,
• 1:23:01
  it's a spark. I I can't show you.
• 1:23:03
  It's, it's it's totally better. Yeah, totally.
• 1:23:08
  And sort of all the, the dreamscapes, all the stuff in
• 1:23:12
  their minds. You know, I'll be honest, when I
• 1:23:15
  first read Revelation, I was quite young and I rejected it
• 1:23:19
  outright. I hated it.
• 1:23:21
  And it was because of that bit where the rock gets picked up in
• 1:23:24
  the playground and the kid gets killed.
• 1:23:26
  Smashes that in the playground. Really.
• 1:23:27
  Scared me as a kid and I was like Doctor Who for me was like
• 1:23:31
  my escapism. I had a pretty tough child and
• 1:23:33
  it was my escapism from all that.
• 1:23:34
  It was running around in Daleks and silly and this was like, it
• 1:23:37
  was so adult and and visceral. That scene.
• 1:23:42
  I just was like, I don't want to read it.
• 1:23:44
  And so I stopped. I didn't pick up any new
• 1:23:45
  adventures after that at all. Now I think it's the boldest
• 1:23:50
  thing he could have done, taking that step away from sort of
• 1:23:55
  doing old Doctor Who, you know, the Nazis and all this bullshit
• 1:23:59
  and taking it in a genuinely too broad and too deep for the small
• 1:24:04
  screen direction. And the plot that that is that
• 1:24:07
  takes his childhood bully coming back, that is he that's knowing
• 1:24:12
  your audience. Because Doctor Who fans weren't
• 1:24:15
  generally on that, you know, on the what we'll call the jock
• 1:24:18
  side, the playground. They were the guys who were, you
• 1:24:20
  know, none of us. Any Doctor Who fans has been on
• 1:24:24
  the jock side of the playground? No or very.
• 1:24:27
  Few but yeah. But yeah, he knows the audience.
• 1:24:31
  It's engaging with that, with us as as band, as human beings.
• 1:24:37
  And yeah, I, I and yeah, there there is.
• 1:24:41
  I think the bold, possibly over bold, claimed that it invents
• 1:24:44
  modern Doctor Who, but it's a it might not do, but it's the first
• 1:24:48
  one to point in that direction, I think.
• 1:24:51
  I I don't know if it invents modern Doctor Who.
• 1:24:54
  It definitely reinvents the new adventures from that.
• 1:24:58
  Yeah. And that thing you said there
• 1:24:59
  about it's spot on, that thing you said about engaging with
• 1:25:04
  now, because the new ventures, a lot of them just scream of the
• 1:25:08
  90s, right? They've all got tracks of their
• 1:25:11
  chapter titles. And there's always and whoever's
• 1:25:15
  in fandom at the time that the writer knows, of course, Nathan
• 1:25:18
  Bottomley is there in human nature, you know, like it's so
• 1:25:22
  90s. And in a way that's a huge
• 1:25:24
  strength because the the people that loved them at the time
• 1:25:28
  grabbed hold of them and said, yes, this is my Doctor Who for
• 1:25:30
  now. The trouble is, it also dates
• 1:25:33
  them terribly because you go read them and go, oh bloody
• 1:25:36
  hell, the 90s. This is exactly why I wouldn't
• 1:25:40
  go to anyone. Yes, this is the best Doctor Who
• 1:25:42
  book ever written because it's so much of that time.
• 1:25:46
  It's like Rose, it's Rose is and I've got I've written a book on
• 1:25:50
  this, so I bought too long with it.
• 1:25:52
  It's in it's so, so of it's time.
• 1:25:55
  It's of the the TV, the direction, the writing.
• 1:25:59
  And it's so rapid. It's meant to be because that's
• 1:26:02
  how you get that audience in. That's how you get people, you
• 1:26:06
  know, a bigger audience relating to your work.
• 1:26:09
  Don't you know, don't hold yourself.
• 1:26:12
  I think again, this culture, you know, this what we're talking
• 1:26:15
  about. Yeah, that Jeremy Bentham type
• 1:26:16
  of there is a voice. Doctor Who is set in stone, one
• 1:26:20
  of the first ones in licence. No jam.
• 1:26:22
  Vincent Rescue is what has happened to the magic of Doctor
• 1:26:24
  Who. It's got to change, it's got to
• 1:26:27
  go. You know, that's what Doctor Who
• 1:26:30
  does. It can change with the times.
• 1:26:32
  It's perverse not to do that. You can't.
• 1:26:34
  It doesn't stick in that 1 shape.
• 1:26:37
  And I think a lot of this stuff from perhaps Paul's motivation
• 1:26:42
  with our relation, but in a lot of people's heads, Doctor Who is
• 1:26:45
  stuck in that shape of Tom Baker and John Perry.
• 1:26:48
  Yeah. I think for me, when I first
• 1:26:50
  picked this up, it was Yeah. And I probably would have said
• 1:26:52
  at the time, it is perverse. This dreadful, terrifying book
• 1:26:57
  of school bullies and the Doctor dancing with death on the moon
• 1:27:00
  and what is all this, you know, metaphysical?
• 1:27:03
  I've got to try and figure out what's going on through the
• 1:27:05
  fucking imagery. Just tell me the plot like the
• 1:27:07
  classic series does now. I'd call it ground breaking.
• 1:27:10
  Now I'd say it's utterly At the time, I mean, there was a lot of
• 1:27:14
  this. Later on in the new adventures
• 1:27:15
  it sort of set the mold, but at the time it was unique.
• 1:27:20
  Yeah, and if you see the books go through, you don't see the
• 1:27:24
  immediate response. And the other thing it does, I
• 1:27:28
  think it's the the first, the first time Doctor Who is
• 1:27:31
  properly written by fans. And ever since, it hasn't been
• 1:27:35
  written as by anything but fans, really.
• 1:27:39
  That's really true, yeah, apart from occasionally with the TV
• 1:27:43
  series. But.
• 1:27:44
  Not often. Overseen with by wrestling
• 1:27:47
  Stephen and Chris though. So the voice is always in the
• 1:27:51
  sense, but you're the fans. And I wonder, we're always stuck
• 1:27:54
  in the past. OK, well, I mean, that's a
• 1:27:57
  fabulous choice. That's probably your most
• 1:27:59
  predictable choice so far, though.
• 1:28:00
  I had to put something predictable in there.
• 1:28:03
  So let's head back to, you know, the grave digging list.
• 1:28:08
  Oh, welcome. I'll stick a target on there,
• 1:28:11
  but again, it's a month target. I'm going to put Revelation of
• 1:28:14
  the Daleks in there. A popular, not recommend choice
• 1:28:18
  on the OH. God, I mean, part of it is
• 1:28:24
  because I know Eric Saywood can do better.
• 1:28:28
  He is you know what he does to the twin dilemma and attack
• 1:28:32
  assignment is fabulous. You know he it checks, I think.
• 1:28:35
  That was really funny, yeah. It it's pretty, you know, he
• 1:28:39
  looks at and goes, how do I do this?
• 1:28:41
  And OK, the only way to do this is just to lead into it, into
• 1:28:46
  all the stuff like rock snake into, you know, Robinson,
• 1:28:50
  Remus's dad being a complete alcoholic, all that.
• 1:28:53
  Fucking terrifying in that book. 2 of them.
• 1:28:56
  They're psychopaths. It says as much.
• 1:28:59
  But you think Sword is past his best by the time he wrote these
• 1:29:03
  two Dalek books? I don't know, because I do like
• 1:29:05
  his Omega comic. I think, I'm sorry, not Lytton.
• 1:29:09
  Lytton, because he's obviously having fun.
• 1:29:13
  He's engaged with that character.
• 1:29:16
  But I think, you know, the author's probably been on the
• 1:29:18
  table to novelise Resurrection and Revelation for a long, long
• 1:29:23
  time. And it's just like, you know, oh
• 1:29:26
  God, this will shut them up. It just seems to be this will
• 1:29:29
  shut the bastards up. I could do with a holiday.
• 1:29:32
  All right, I'll do it. Yeah.
• 1:29:34
  The resurrection I could understand not particularly
• 1:29:38
  being because of the plot. The underlying plot framework is
• 1:29:42
  non existent shall we say. So I can understand him not
• 1:29:46
  wanted that not wanted Bond but revelation.
• 1:29:49
  You know, I I remember going to the BFI screening when they
• 1:29:52
  launched the season 22 BF Oh. God damn it, everyone was.
• 1:29:58
  Yeah, exactly. It's going.
• 1:30:00
  It's going. I knew it was funny.
• 1:30:01
  I'd forgotten just how funny everyone.
• 1:30:04
  That Joe Bell said. Yes, lovely, lovely, lovely.
• 1:30:09
  Those red Ruby lips were made for kissing.
• 1:30:15
  It's a it's a good, it's good material to be novelised because
• 1:30:20
  again, you have got that thing where you can it's it's got Eric
• 1:30:23
  say it was fault on his TV where the doctor and Perry don't
• 1:30:27
  arrive anywhere till the end of the first part.
• 1:30:29
  So basically you're you're Part 1 of those of that season.
• 1:30:34
  Isn't isn't elongated Part 1 where it would normally be.
• 1:30:38
  So it's one episode worth plot stretch 45 or by three episodes
• 1:30:42
  compressed down to 45 minutes and you've got a chance to read
• 1:30:47
  that. But no, it it it's like you
• 1:30:51
  could make yeah, Cara and Cara accountant.
• 1:30:56
  So the master of the double entry stuff.
• 1:31:00
  Beautiful, Yeah, really kind of witty lines and it's just winks
• 1:31:06
  up and yeah, it does, but it doesn't mix with that kind of,
• 1:31:10
  I, I won't say Sub Douglas Adams, but it's, it's clearly
• 1:31:13
  indebted to Douglas Adams. But it's not as bad as Sub Adams
• 1:31:17
  would say. It's just it's.
• 1:31:25
  With the script is good dialogue occasionally, yes, dialogue.
• 1:31:29
  And the actors that Graham Harper assembles, they spin it
• 1:31:33
  into gold God, just every scene is just full of sparkling lines.
• 1:31:37
  Just you know what a shame. Do you know how difficult it is
• 1:31:40
  to find a good accountant? The liars just so brilliantly
• 1:31:44
  delivered. That was terrible.
• 1:31:45
  I apologize, but what he's also with this book is he kills every
• 1:31:49
  joke with his plans. It's like he's forgotten how to
• 1:31:52
  do it. There's no, yeah, it's a it's
• 1:31:55
  like a bad comedian. It's a horrible standard.
• 1:31:57
  Like, OK, you can see where the joke's supposed to be.
• 1:31:59
  You can see the shape of it. It's just like, no, it's like
• 1:32:05
  someone. Who's Dave?
• 1:32:05
  Ross said. Well, he mentions about how his
• 1:32:08
  head is swiveling around 360° in its usual fashion.
• 1:32:12
  I'm like, is that, is that what normally happens with Dave Ross?
• 1:32:15
  The four Sort of. Yeah, I didn't think it was.
• 1:32:18
  It was like, Dara said, hey was kind of locked forward
• 1:32:20
  generally. Yeah.
• 1:32:23
  Do you know what? I've never heard anyone say a
• 1:32:26
  good word about this book. So I think because there isn't,
• 1:32:29
  it's kind of universally. Packed Oh God, yes, OK, I know
• 1:32:33
  it's principle, but I was just thinking what really will you
• 1:32:36
  know me and again, it's it's kind of the opposite to the job
• 1:32:39
  of the Reeves operation. It just makes a it's a good
• 1:32:44
  story, just botched completely away from what it what made it
• 1:32:51
  good. There's a reason it's the Colin
• 1:32:54
  Bake story that most people like about everybody else.
• 1:32:57
  It's weird because then you get to The Two Doctors, which is
• 1:33:00
  like a story that people generally, they don't mind, but
• 1:33:04
  a lot of people don't like it because it's quite tasteless.
• 1:33:06
  I think that's the point. But it's quite and then the
• 1:33:09
  novel everyone loves, it's, it's the reverse revelation of the
• 1:33:12
  Daleks, you know? It's it's again, it's the
• 1:33:15
  opposite, because you say this is got you can't deliver the
• 1:33:18
  jokes. Robert Holmes, yes, he could
• 1:33:20
  have, because he has that kind of all Florida style at times
• 1:33:25
  what he does. Is and it's.
• 1:33:26
  It's empty. Yeah, it's gross.
• 1:33:30
  I love it. It's.
• 1:33:31
  Glorious. Just the the the leg bit.
• 1:33:35
  That's nice though, because you've had a a later target on
• 1:33:38
  your top and your bottom if your pardon the button.
• 1:33:43
  Oh, let's go back to your top. I don't know where we are on
• 1:33:46
  your list. Let's have a look.
• 1:33:48
  I tell you what, I'll take the one that people might not think
• 1:33:52
  of. I'm going to take The Winter
• 1:33:53
  Time Paradox by Dave Ruddon. I've never read it.
• 1:33:57
  I don't know. What it is they they go.
• 1:34:00
  I'll just hold this up. That looks very pretty.
• 1:34:03
  Oh yeah, it's Dave K Dave Ruddon's origin stories.
• 1:34:08
  I've found this is fascinating to me because he, I think as he
• 1:34:12
  said it on Twitter, his basic way into Doctor Who was finding
• 1:34:17
  a random copy of Alien Bodies in his local library and reading it
• 1:34:22
  long after Alien Bodies was published.
• 1:34:24
  Not at the time. And that's the way he came into
• 1:34:28
  Doctor Who. Well, that's how he fell in
• 1:34:30
  love. I can understand.
• 1:34:31
  Yeah. Totally, totally.
• 1:34:33
  Because you, you read that and you go, wow, all the ideas, all
• 1:34:36
  this history, all. This is Doctor Who all like
• 1:34:38
  this. Yeah, no, no.
• 1:34:42
  Then you read the rest of the 8th Doctor.
• 1:34:43
  Then you read what's. Next saw when he was like.
• 1:34:50
  But what he did 2. But I think 2 Christmas books
• 1:34:54
  and these are like a series of 12 short stories and they're
• 1:34:59
  like, and it's what I come back to.
• 1:35:01
  They are really playful with it. It's it's like the first story
• 1:35:06
  in this book is a pantomime of I think it's time N history with
• 1:35:10
  the Doctor and Rose going to watch it in the audience.
• 1:35:14
  It's just like, OK, it's fine. Davros having Christmas with the
• 1:35:18
  Daleks. And.
• 1:35:22
  Then the last yeah, we're talking.
• 1:35:23
  This came out 2020 Odd, I think, And it's a Faction Paradox story
• 1:35:29
  in an official Doctor Who publication in 2020, yeah.
• 1:35:35
  So truly is going back to his origins.
• 1:35:38
  Yeah, and it's great. And oh, it's because it takes
• 1:35:41
  the, you know, it opens with the the Faction Paradox, the cousin
• 1:35:46
  from Faction Paradox, you know, watching the end of Last of the
• 1:35:50
  Time Lords or the middle of it with, you know, the masters
• 1:35:53
  doing the thing. And he's going, yeah, someone's
• 1:35:55
  going to press a reset button on this soon.
• 1:35:59
  My God, I need to get this. Yeah, there's two, he did two
• 1:36:04
  volumes of this and I was dithering about which one to
• 1:36:07
  pick. And it's the winter time paradox
• 1:36:09
  or 12 Angels weeping. They're both they're both
• 1:36:12
  Christmas themed stories, anthologies, but it's it's there
• 1:36:18
  are many of these, you know, the the BBC books did a lot of short
• 1:36:23
  story compilation volumes. So in that kind of decade in the
• 1:36:28
  20 tens, but they've readied A1 author set of volumes.
• 1:36:34
  And I'm just going, where's he getting all these ideas from?
• 1:36:36
  Because they are out there that he's engaging with Doctor Who.
• 1:36:41
  But a different it it's to me, it's the next generation coming
• 1:36:45
  in and picking up the, you know, they're going to that toy box
• 1:36:49
  that we've left them and they're picking up and they're making
• 1:36:52
  the interesting shapes and interesting shapes that run with
• 1:36:55
  it. So remember, you said like
• 1:36:57
  Cornell was generation after the classic series writers were
• 1:37:01
  done? Yeah, bringing in the new voice.
• 1:37:03
  So this is after the corner. They're sort of new adventures.
• 1:37:06
  And EDA's, yes, this is the next generation after that.
• 1:37:10
  Yeah, it's just people you see come through with Big Finish now
• 1:37:14
  as well, that next generation and I, I'm really interested in
• 1:37:18
  that stuff because I want to see stuff that we couldn't think of.
• 1:37:23
  What will you know that Doctor Who by our generation?
• 1:37:26
  That perspective, I know it, I've read it, I love it, I adore
• 1:37:30
  it, but I also want to see what's next.
• 1:37:32
  I always want to see what's coming next with Doctor Who.
• 1:37:35
  If if Doctor Who's going to survive in print, it just cannot
• 1:37:38
  be recycling, we may want it to be the mid 90s again and oh.
• 1:37:42
  God, yeah. When it was really immersed in
• 1:37:46
  adult and and you know, there's all those arcs happening and
• 1:37:49
  things like that. But yeah, it's got to keep
• 1:37:52
  evolving, otherwise it's going to die.
• 1:37:54
  Yeah, just these I would love to see more of these kind of one
• 1:37:58
  volume short stories. Suddenly it was really close,
• 1:38:02
  you know. So you talked about imaginary
• 1:38:03
  friends recently? The Oh.
• 1:38:05
  I loved it, yeah. That range, it was fascinating.
• 1:38:08
  I don't think all of them work, but but three or four of them
• 1:38:12
  are extraordinary. Again, different voices coming
• 1:38:15
  in from, you know, different worlds and in new generations
• 1:38:20
  and and there were yeah. The last one's a prose poem tell
• 1:38:24
  from the perspective of Weeping Angel and I I did consider that
• 1:38:30
  one as well. Plus the cradle again.
• 1:38:34
  I think it's even talk ducks or even you might enjoy.
• 1:38:37
  I do wonder with the books if there is a lot of stuff that has
• 1:38:39
  sort of gone under the radar undiscovered.
• 1:38:43
  I picked up like the Missy Chronicles.
• 1:38:45
  I am a pastor and all of this, all of this sort of weird stuff,
• 1:38:49
  that River Song. Oh yeah, Gunsmokers, the
• 1:38:52
  detective that. Tales of Transalore, Summer,
• 1:38:56
  Summer Falls, all those. Yeah, this stuff is just buried
• 1:39:00
  and no one's book. Club will be going on for
• 1:39:02
  decades to come, yeah. Oh, so, so we're made for life.
• 1:39:08
  That's a wonderful choice and well, can you say it for me
• 1:39:10
  please? I'll add it to the list, but.
• 1:39:14
  Coming to you, but coming to you soon.
• 1:39:17
  The winter time paradox. OK, so that was another pro, so
• 1:39:22
  give us a con. OK, yeah.
• 1:39:26
  I wonder if it's in bottom this now.
• 1:39:28
  OK, this is one of the first times I can.
• 1:39:31
  When they launched The Missing Adventures, I wasn't so keen
• 1:39:35
  that the Wrench came back because I was like, I always
• 1:39:38
  thought the story of Doctor Who, like I just said, it should be
• 1:39:40
  moving forward as much as possible.
• 1:39:43
  And I think the book did lose power in kind of when Big Finish
• 1:39:45
  came along because they weren't the pride for everything in
• 1:39:47
  particular when the TV series came along, they weren't that
• 1:39:50
  priority. But this book, and I'll say it's
• 1:39:56
  Evolution by John Peel, is. That the first one.
• 1:40:00
  It's it's a second, wasn't it? Second.
• 1:40:02
  Yeah, we've. Started off with Cornell
• 1:40:06
  vampires, you know, modern day 90s Manchester or very exciting.
• 1:40:12
  And what's the worst part of goth opera?
• 1:40:15
  All the continuity that chapter with glitz and the thrashings.
• 1:40:19
  Yeah, exactly that where you just run through it and this was
• 1:40:22
  what it was Doctor Who concentrated on its past and
• 1:40:27
  kind of fetishizing it. And this was what evolution did
• 1:40:30
  for me because it was like, I don't know if John Peel had
• 1:40:32
  pitched the Sherlock Holmes novel, but that was what it came
• 1:40:35
  up, came up as to me. He wanted, you know, Tom Baker
• 1:40:39
  in his Talon skier. He wanted it in 1977.
• 1:40:42
  He wanted that style of thing again.
• 1:40:46
  And it's just, I was just so freaking bored reading it.
• 1:40:51
  So I was just like, no, this is John's is nice.
• 1:40:57
  I've met John Peel. He isn't.
• 1:40:59
  Again, lovely fella, but but he's a terrible Doctor Who
• 1:41:03
  writer. Awful.
• 1:41:05
  And like, you can't really get bored reading War of the Daleks.
• 1:41:08
  You can tear your hair out and scream and want to play, but
• 1:41:13
  it's not boring because it's just it's so inept on so many
• 1:41:17
  levels. I I read both his eighth After
• 1:41:20
  Dark novels in one sitting. Because you can.
• 1:41:25
  A car crash is, you know, something you cannot take your
• 1:41:29
  eyes on. I was really worried as I was
• 1:41:31
  going, they're going to get off this bloody spaceship at some
• 1:41:33
  point. It was like 200 pages in or
• 1:41:35
  something like that, like Jesus Christ.
• 1:41:38
  Tell me about. I don't remember.
• 1:41:40
  What I remember about evolution is it looks like the Brigadier
• 1:41:43
  or the fish on the cover. It's not the Brigadier because
• 1:41:48
  it's an older, it's back into Victoria.
• 1:41:51
  It's again, it's a Victoriana fetish stuff.
• 1:41:54
  And I, I just wiped the plot from my mind.
• 1:41:56
  I can't remember the plot of it now because I just.
• 1:42:00
  Oh, OK. Yeah, it was, it was Doctor Who
• 1:42:03
  not doing anything interesting. It's you.
• 1:42:06
  I couldn't see a reason for the book to exist beyond the fact
• 1:42:10
  they wanted to do a Doctor Who book.
• 1:42:13
  And yet then again, we might have a few spoils later on.
• 1:42:17
  This is probably the reason I loved Monagra so much when it
• 1:42:19
  came along about a year later, because it was more ambitious.
• 1:42:23
  It wasn't just going, I want Tom Baker, you know, as I was
• 1:42:28
  walked, you know, on beans, on toast on my lap in 1977.
• 1:42:32
  You can always imagine it going, OK.
• 1:42:34
  There's cliffhanger all the way through Cliffhanger halfway
• 1:42:37
  through cliffhanger 3/4. It's structured, structured like
• 1:42:41
  that. John Peel's prose is serviceable
• 1:42:45
  at best, I think. Actually, like, was there
• 1:42:48
  continuity? If you're, if you're going to
• 1:42:50
  build a story out of that, yeah, out of you feel like one or two
• 1:42:54
  ways, go the Hinton Way, and that is go to town and and
• 1:42:59
  literally just throw it all at the wall.
• 1:43:01
  Yes. See the the insane picture that
• 1:43:03
  emerges or the Paul Mars approach with something like the
• 1:43:07
  degree where you subvert it all and you're sort of gently
• 1:43:12
  mocking it whilst being very affectionate with it as well.
• 1:43:16
  So, and it's just no engagement. It's no, it's it doesn't throw
• 1:43:21
  enough at the wall. He does that with that second
• 1:43:25
  Dalek book, doesn't he? Because you've got.
• 1:43:28
  OK, Susan. She yeah, she's wearing a wig.
• 1:43:31
  She's. Oh, Jesus.
• 1:43:34
  With the Daleks and the Master, the aftermath garlic invasion of
• 1:43:38
  Earth. And she sends him off the
• 1:43:40
  terserus at the end. He's like, oh Jesus.
• 1:43:44
  I mean, that's a script from Big Finish.
• 1:43:46
  You've ever I heard one. Yeah, I wonder if he pitched
• 1:43:49
  that to him afterwards. Poor old Jump.
• 1:43:52
  I would say Jump Hill sort of lulled us into a false sense of
• 1:43:56
  security when he novelized the two Dalek books.
• 1:44:00
  We did more that the chase. He did master plan and then he
• 1:44:04
  did power and evil. See, that's trouble is, he's
• 1:44:06
  there. He's taking great writers works
• 1:44:09
  and just bringing it to the page.
• 1:44:10
  You know, with all that, the dialogue and plotting already
• 1:44:13
  done for him. We thought, my God, he's going
• 1:44:15
  to be writing original novels. How wonderful.
• 1:44:18
  And then we've read them. Yeah, but have you read that
• 1:44:21
  first chapter or that prologue for Para the dialects recently?
• 1:44:25
  No. Oh, this pure fan wank.
• 1:44:27
  Oh. Was there really?
• 1:44:28
  Is it all past and the future? But in a Hinton kind of way, he
• 1:44:33
  does Chuck it all of all friends so that I could live with that.
• 1:44:37
  You know, it's it's unit, the Cybermans invasion.
• 1:44:41
  This is what happens after Oh. There's certain writers, when
• 1:44:43
  you see them coming up in the schedules where your heart sinks
• 1:44:46
  a little bit. Oh, God.
• 1:44:49
  John Peel. Christopher Beulis.
• 1:44:51
  Yeah. There's a few names.
• 1:44:53
  Oh, Crockett. OK, what's month after?
• 1:44:57
  Yeah, OK. That's that's hitting the wall
• 1:45:00
  in the marathon, that is. Well, swing us back to the
• 1:45:04
  positive again. Swing it back to the positive
• 1:45:07
  and let's see what we got that how many we got left.
• 1:45:09
  Is it just one? I think, oh, this is a lot.
• 1:45:13
  No2, it's 2. Nope, it's two.
• 1:45:15
  I tell lies. I tell you what, I'd stay on my
• 1:45:19
  stay on the days. And again, I think a certain
• 1:45:23
  book clubber might cheer. I'm going to go with a Steve
• 1:45:26
  Lyons. Luke will be delighted.
• 1:45:30
  So I'm going to go with conundrum.
• 1:45:33
  Oh yes, didn't. You do.
• 1:45:35
  That on we're all stories in the end.
• 1:45:37
  I did. I did because I, I saw and I, I
• 1:45:41
  literally begged him. I have, you know, promised my
• 1:45:44
  first born to him. Whatever, just let me do
• 1:45:46
  conundrum because I, it was, I didn't know anything about it
• 1:45:52
  before it's coming out. I just, you know, I'd seen,
• 1:45:54
  maybe seen the cover. I was like interesting cover.
• 1:45:57
  Didn't know the plot beyond what was on the blurb because the,
• 1:46:01
  the new adventures distribution schedule was, shall we say,
• 1:46:05
  eccentric. I think it merged from I got
• 1:46:08
  something like a month and 1/2 after it came out and the
• 1:46:12
  earliest I got anything was to Ghost of End Space which would
• 1:46:15
  before the previous books were supposed to come out.
• 1:46:18
  That got just hours. And a half.
• 1:46:19
  Yeah, just there you go. Don't.
• 1:46:21
  Please, please take it before you realise how we promise you
• 1:46:25
  more is coming. OK.
• 1:46:27
  Oh God, yes, it will get better. You'll have two months to wait
• 1:46:30
  for the one afterwards just to remember how terrible that book.
• 1:46:35
  God. But.
• 1:46:38
  It's hard to tell you this, but Andrew twisted our arms beyond
• 1:46:42
  our back for that book club group to do the Ghosts of Men
• 1:46:45
  space, which you are now a part. Of OK, there's always some fun
• 1:46:56
  going back to a bad book, though, isn't there they're.
• 1:46:58
  The best ones to revisit? Yeah, because you can all you
• 1:47:01
  can just have. I'm very blessed.
• 1:47:03
  God bless him. He was a lovely fella.
• 1:47:05
  But he's no longer with us. So there's no, no one's going to
• 1:47:07
  be offended where we I don't. Think.
• 1:47:09
  I don't think people have been kind when it came out though
• 1:47:11
  either. No, but.
• 1:47:16
  Conundrum. Conundrum.
• 1:47:18
  OK, I was yeah, I was in the middle of a degree at this, but
• 1:47:21
  English was part of it and I, you know, I did.
• 1:47:25
  I was like, OK, the narrative voice straight away is
• 1:47:28
  interesting. I didn't quite twig what was
• 1:47:30
  going on. I was like young and dumb and
• 1:47:32
  pretty ish. Very pretty.
• 1:47:36
  Thank you. I'll show you some pictures as
• 1:47:38
  you can see then. Don't get happy now.
• 1:47:40
  What are you talking about? There you go.
• 1:47:43
  That's 30 years on top though. Can you imagine?
• 1:47:45
  I'll. Dress you think back then it.
• 1:47:49
  Was yeah. And it was just this this novel
• 1:47:52
  that was playing games with the narrative voice that it's just
• 1:47:57
  like, yes, again, I'm young pretentious student.
• 1:48:01
  This would perfectly and I could write about my degree as well,
• 1:48:04
  which are fabulous. So yeah, I've got some neighbour
• 1:48:07
  as well and it's stuff that we came to it.
• 1:48:12
  It uses Doctor Who's history in a playful way.
• 1:48:15
  It's thought about what Doctor Who continuity, what concepts
• 1:48:22
  would work as a novel. And let's face points, it's a
• 1:48:26
  land of fiction. It's someone taking a land of
• 1:48:29
  fiction and using it to write a Doctor Who novel.
• 1:48:32
  And it's you know, it's very meta.
• 1:48:35
  It's again, I said Gareth brothers was mean spirits, and
• 1:48:38
  you can see this has been kind of mean spirits.
• 1:48:39
  It's a kid in is it a Metallica T-shirt?
• 1:48:42
  It's a it's like a it is it is a metal band T-shirt, if I
• 1:48:46
  remember, and him writing this version of Doctor Who and it
• 1:48:51
  kind of folding in on itself. All these characters not acting
• 1:48:55
  the way he wants. And then it has this real
• 1:48:58
  pathos. It turns out that all these
• 1:49:00
  people are actually real people who were trapped in the land of
• 1:49:04
  fiction on the spaceship. And you go like that horror of
• 1:49:07
  putting them through these stories.
• 1:49:10
  And it's kind of a way of absolutely critiquing this, this
• 1:49:13
  grim, dark aesthetic of everything being adult, of
• 1:49:17
  everything being grim. It's like you put these people
• 1:49:19
  through this and it makes it more eloquent than it's say even
• 1:49:22
  Lawrence does in interference when he tells the doctor
• 1:49:25
  tortured and realised and the consequences of that.
• 1:49:28
  This is, you know, it's probably, I would say the
• 1:49:32
  smartest Doctor Who book that's ever been written.
• 1:49:36
  And it's not maybe talked back because it does it so lightly
• 1:49:40
  with so much wit and again, with engaging characters.
• 1:49:45
  It it's just a gorgeously written book.
• 1:49:48
  And if I've ever been disappointed by a couple of
• 1:49:51
  Steve Lyons books, it's only because nothing can match this
• 1:49:55
  start. Not even The Crooked World or.
• 1:49:57
  Anything. The header isn't it.
• 1:49:58
  He's really consistent. Steve Lyons, Oh.
• 1:50:01
  God, you and yeah, he again. First he wrote for the X-Men and
• 1:50:06
  X-Men novel or trilogy and X-Men novels actually.
• 1:50:09
  And they, they were fun as well. This guy, he's such a ever
• 1:50:13
  writer. He owns.
• 1:50:15
  I'm going to write a war story and I'm going to put the second
• 1:50:19
  Doctor, Jamie and Zoe, in it because they never had that
• 1:50:21
  story, he said. I'm going to do Looney Tunes,
• 1:50:24
  Doctor Who, and we're going to have a cartoon cover, you know?
• 1:50:28
  A cartoon doing a cartoons in a book.
• 1:50:32
  How does that work? It cannot work.
• 1:50:35
  And I think this might be the first, truly.
• 1:50:40
  Like, there's so many meta jokes in Conundrum about stories and
• 1:50:46
  about books themselves. I think this might have started
• 1:50:50
  the trend, you know, that was becoming more common with stuff
• 1:50:54
  like Buffy talking about the medium itself.
• 1:50:57
  That kind of, yeah, self reflects of it, postmodern kind
• 1:51:00
  of stuff, which is I think it's partly there in Revelation Fraud
• 1:51:06
  that hates wonderful and does new things.
• 1:51:07
  Revelation is quite inward looking, but this one is also,
• 1:51:11
  but in a engaging and smart way. That's not all about that.
• 1:51:17
  It's about you could give this to someone and you wouldn't need
• 1:51:21
  to explain necessarily what it was about.
• 1:51:22
  They would just be able to see, OK, hang on.
• 1:51:25
  So this is this is how it working.
• 1:51:27
  This is what's going on. Brilliant and the Doctor.
• 1:51:31
  Found this one in that that bookshop.
• 1:51:33
  I'm sure he would have been just as enamoured with Doctor Who.
• 1:51:36
  God. Yeah, it just means.
• 1:51:37
  His anthologies would have been all about the land of fiction,
• 1:51:40
  rather. Than I mean, it turns, it turns
• 1:51:42
  the end of a chapter into a plot point.
• 1:51:44
  You know, the Doctor talks to the readers.
• 1:51:46
  That's brilliant. Isn't there a bit where Ace just
• 1:51:49
  jumps out of the story? Yeah, took me.
• 1:51:51
  She gets she gets attacked by new adventures, literally.
• 1:51:55
  Oh, you know, you're laughing. It's dangerous, the character,
• 1:52:00
  but it's funny. It's great.
• 1:52:02
  And it is worth remembering with this incredibly serious range of
• 1:52:07
  books, that every now and again a writer would just have the
• 1:52:10
  best time writing one of them. Oh, exactly.
• 1:52:13
  If the writer's having fun, you'll be having I mean this.
• 1:52:18
  If if this is one of the kind of the top two contenders, I say my
• 1:52:21
  favorite top two books of all the other one we haven't done
• 1:52:25
  yet might be the other one, man. It's it's just that's what I
• 1:52:30
  want to doctor. I want the right to have been
• 1:52:31
  played, but I want, you know, to get you to put sparks in your
• 1:52:35
  brain almost, you know, I don't want them to tell a story.
• 1:52:38
  I've heard of variant of 100. Times before, to quote Michael
• 1:52:42
  Mills, deaf to the Daleks again, yes, that's not what we want.
• 1:52:48
  And Steve Lyons, just one more thing to say about him is that
• 1:52:52
  he's such a clever writer. He writes really layered
• 1:52:56
  applause. Yeah.
• 1:52:57
  He can write very funny dialogue as well.
• 1:53:01
  He gets his regulars right every time, no matter who he's writing
• 1:53:05
  for. Yeah.
• 1:53:06
  His prostyle is effortlessly simple to read.
• 1:53:09
  Yeah. And.
• 1:53:10
  And. Not in, not in that kind of
• 1:53:13
  where you go. It's an easy to read, not like.
• 1:53:15
  Dicks like it's evocative but he doesn't use really complicated
• 1:53:19
  language. But he tells complicated.
• 1:53:21
  Stories. There's no ego to him, I don't
• 1:53:23
  think on that. No.
• 1:53:24
  And I, when I did an interview with him for the book club, he
• 1:53:27
  came across as such a humble bloke.
• 1:53:30
  And I expected to meet someone with a huge ego who've written
• 1:53:33
  all these fabulous stories for BBC Books and for Big Finish.
• 1:53:37
  And he was just like, now it's just a job and writer, you know,
• 1:53:41
  like, wow. That's tough.
• 1:53:43
  You love them just Yeah, you need that kind of They don't.
• 1:53:47
  They don't have. They don't want to be admired.
• 1:53:50
  They want you to enjoy those stories above.
• 1:53:52
  It there are some that do but. Yeah, of course there are.
• 1:53:56
  Everyone probably does. Well, let's see who's your
• 1:54:01
  second to last to not be admired.
• 1:54:04
  I can either link it from there or I'll go with a different way.
• 1:54:06
  I'll go a slightly different way and I'm going to go with Robert
• 1:54:09
  Holmes. The Life and Words by Richard
• 1:54:11
  Molesworth, OH. Isn't it boring?
• 1:54:15
  It's the the thing about it is, to me, if you're going to write
• 1:54:19
  a Doctor Who non fiction book, it should have a point of view
• 1:54:24
  or some fact that you haven't considered before.
• 1:54:28
  And this has next to nothing of that.
• 1:54:32
  It's a biography of. His work isn't it.
• 1:54:34
  He did. It's.
• 1:54:35
  Frigging it's frigging Wikipedia.
• 1:54:37
  Yeah, it's. Extended Wikipedia entry and
• 1:54:41
  you're going, you've got something like on a similar
• 1:54:44
  point of view, you know, people who knew, knew him on the point
• 1:54:47
  of view, people who knew most of him, mostly dead or gone.
• 1:54:51
  It's difficult to track down, but you look at the job Simon
• 1:54:54
  Gurry has done for his biography of David Whittaker, which is
• 1:54:57
  wonderful. It's so thorough.
• 1:54:59
  You know, it traces people in Australia, it traces you
• 1:55:04
  ex-wife, it goes everywhere. It's it's a forensic kind of
• 1:55:08
  work. The The JNT book by Good Grief,
• 1:55:13
  Oh. Richard Marson is it?
• 1:55:15
  Richard Marson, who he pulled in hundreds of interviewees.
• 1:55:20
  Oh God, provide us such a broad scope of opinion about the guy.
• 1:55:24
  And I went to Jonathan Pell, who was very, very honest in that
• 1:55:28
  one, if we remember. But I.
• 1:55:30
  Think what we're saying is it's a sort of low effort.
• 1:55:32
  It, it, Yeah. Again, I, I don't like accusing
• 1:55:36
  writers of being lazy because there may be circumstances we
• 1:55:38
  don't know. But it's, it's someone who is
• 1:55:41
  not good at writing, you know, non fiction, who is not, has not
• 1:55:47
  done any research essentially that you could get a Wikipedia
• 1:55:50
  entry. I think a friend thought that he
• 1:55:55
  might have had some paperwork access and paperwork that no, no
• 1:55:59
  one else had. You know, it was in, I think it
• 1:56:02
  was in a chest and Rob Holmes's house or something.
• 1:56:05
  And if that was true and he didn't use it, I think that
• 1:56:08
  that's criminal. It was just.
• 1:56:12
  Saying Toby Haydock that he's another one who's forensic with.
• 1:56:15
  His oh, love those documentaries.
• 1:56:17
  Toby does that, you know the looking For series.
• 1:56:19
  Oh I'm so looking forward to that.
• 1:56:21
  Looking for Dirty 1. The best thing about this book
• 1:56:25
  was the memos Yes, the other writers.
• 1:56:29
  Now, if he had published a book of Robert Holmes, his memos to
• 1:56:32
  people, that would have been absolutely riveting because his
• 1:56:35
  memo to Jerry Davis about revenge of.
• 1:56:38
  The song. It was it, Doctor Who has moved
• 1:56:41
  on a bit since you were writing for it on a regular basis.
• 1:56:44
  This is not quite to our highest.
• 1:56:46
  I mean, it's so bitchy. I love it.
• 1:56:49
  Yeah. That's.
• 1:56:49
  They're few and far between, those sort of little Nuggets.
• 1:56:52
  Oh. God, yeah.
• 1:56:54
  And it's did you like to 1 friend of years ago where you
• 1:56:58
  look like a young Robert Holmes and if you have a look at he's
• 1:57:01
  got the same jaw line and he had the same sort of hair because oh
• 1:57:03
  Jesus, I'll take that as compliment every day.
• 1:57:06
  I actually was going to get a pipe just to do the full cosplay
• 1:57:12
  but. Well, you're certainly
• 1:57:13
  frightening the little buggers with this list.
• 1:57:19
  But the yeah, this one is just OK.
• 1:57:21
  I've paid. I've got some biographical
• 1:57:24
  insight, but it's, it's true. He, he like literally, he was a
• 1:57:27
  policeman. He was out in Singapore where it
• 1:57:29
  was and that was it. And it's covered in no time
• 1:57:33
  whatsoever. There's no effort to attract
• 1:57:35
  anyone who might have known it. Yeah, they might all be dead by
• 1:57:38
  now. They might hit dead ends, but
• 1:57:40
  there's nothing you could say that it's.
• 1:57:42
  I I gave up halfway through this.
• 1:57:43
  I was just so engaged with the style of the rock and the facts
• 1:57:48
  that were so dry. I was like.
• 1:57:50
  Oh, Matt, Matt Barber has a love for for Richard Molesworth pros
• 1:57:54
  and I think you should talk to him about that.
• 1:57:55
  Oh, does he orgasm? Yeah.
• 1:57:57
  Yeah, just a bit. Yeah, even even White Matt can't
• 1:58:01
  stand. Well then, let's swing back two
• 1:58:06
  more positive pros and your last but I'm sure not least top ten
• 1:58:12
  Doctor Who book. Again, I'm going to finish on
• 1:58:16
  some of your it's an Eighth Doctor adventure and then maybe
• 1:58:19
  another cheer coming up from someone we both know quite well.
• 1:58:23
  But this, you know, this book, it was, you know, it was again
• 1:58:26
  the late 90s. They had taken the take the BBC
• 1:58:29
  books, taking the range back and you know, you're disillusioned
• 1:58:32
  and you know, then these this write comes along with this
• 1:58:37
  vision of Doctor Who. That's just wonderful that
• 1:58:40
  chimes with you. And it's the Scarlet Empress by
• 1:58:43
  Paul Mars. I'm proud of it.
• 1:58:45
  Yeah. You know, if there's a bill that
• 1:58:47
  I'm you're never going straight for it.
• 1:58:50
  I I love alien bodies. I love what Laurence says.
• 1:58:54
  But all Mars's vision of Doctor Who it you know, alien bodies in
• 1:58:59
  the story you can imagine being told because it's Laurence Miles
• 1:59:03
  taking what Grant Morrison was doing in the comics and 90s put
• 1:59:06
  it I'd I'd read that kind of thing.
• 1:59:08
  My mind was it putting Doctor Who into the Arabian Nights like
• 1:59:13
  that. What a genius.
• 1:59:15
  And it was just OK. This has completely reframed
• 1:59:18
  what again, what I can see being done with the store, with the
• 1:59:22
  show. And for years I would go, I I
• 1:59:25
  thought the Blue Angel was the better book and I'll go, no, I
• 1:59:29
  love the Blue Angel. I love that kind of allegorical
• 1:59:32
  story on the side. I love that you know the Noel
• 1:59:35
  plot taking the piss out of Star Trek.
• 1:59:38
  And again as a pretentious as that by the next English
• 1:59:40
  student. I love that it just ended with
• 1:59:42
  20 questions asking the. That's still my favorite ending.
• 1:59:48
  I laugh my head off. Making up yourselves.
• 1:59:51
  Yeah. You'll only be unhappy with what
• 1:59:53
  I do. Again, it understands Doctor Who
• 1:59:57
  fans so perfectly and. Yet people were still annoyed.
• 2:00:03
  Yeah, and but it reminds you of, I think one of my favorite
• 2:00:06
  comics, The Wicked and Divine. The ending of that is a blank
• 2:00:09
  page, which is essentially now it's your turn.
• 2:00:13
  And that's exactly what Paul Marter is doing.
• 2:00:15
  Paul and Jeremy, sorry on that one.
• 2:00:18
  It's such it wants you to engage with the story.
• 2:00:22
  It wants you to be part of it. But Doctor Who fans are going,
• 2:00:25
  what is this? And check it off to one side.
• 2:00:28
  I can imagine Paul after that again at those people doing that
• 2:00:30
  because it's what they do. Do you think the Scarlet Empress
• 2:00:35
  is the 8th Doctor Ranges Revelation where we said, you
• 2:00:40
  know, a voice comes along and it kind of we're turning a corner
• 2:00:44
  again of like this is unlike anything we've had before.
• 2:00:47
  This is a completely unique voice and it's opening doors.
• 2:00:51
  I think that is alien bodies is the revelation of that range.
• 2:00:57
  But because I think cool, it's it's much easier to follow
• 2:01:02
  Lawrence Miles style. You know, the big ideas that the
• 2:01:06
  cool ideas be like poor Mars doesn't care about being cool,
• 2:01:11
  and that's again something to adore because he what the novel
• 2:01:16
  in stance is that cool is kind of a death because it's trying
• 2:01:20
  to exclude people. It's trying to put the story,
• 2:01:23
  the author, everyone above other people.
• 2:01:28
  Paul's just, you know, he's this wonderful code.
• 2:01:30
  He, he just want everyone he could can to read these books,
• 2:01:34
  to read these stories to, to let you in on it.
• 2:01:38
  That is a that is a beautifully realised world in like that.
• 2:01:44
  That for me is the ultimate. I wish I could go and visit.
• 2:01:48
  Oh, where they're climbing down, up and down the ladders as well.
• 2:01:51
  And, and those jars of all the former emphasis.
• 2:01:56
  Oh, the image, the pure imagery. And obviously, Iris Walton,
• 2:02:01
  you're going across the desert. And that joke of her having all
• 2:02:06
  the adventures that the doctors had, but we've all shaped
• 2:02:09
  monsters. It should be so cold.
• 2:02:12
  It's really because he gets more angry about it and more she does
• 2:02:16
  it. It's a reaction to the doctor.
• 2:02:18
  It's a doctor to sell it. It's a doctor's as a straight
• 2:02:22
  man. And and he, he wants to have, he
• 2:02:25
  wants magic to be a part of Doctor Who, which is something,
• 2:02:28
  yes, never done before. And there's always been a logic
• 2:02:31
  to it. And I love his get out clause
• 2:02:33
  where the Doctor goes, well, yes, it does appear that magic
• 2:02:36
  is indeed happening on this planet, but it's just a, a
• 2:02:40
  sophisticated science that is beyond our comprehension.
• 2:02:43
  And that's all you need. And then you can do whatever you
• 2:02:46
  want. One line, that's all.
• 2:02:48
  Yeah, who kid this one line? That's a boring bit.
• 2:02:51
  Let's go and have some more fun. And it's interesting, isn't it,
• 2:02:54
  that, you know, they made the mistake of following a Lawrence
• 2:03:00
  Miles book with Peter Angelidi's castle.
• 2:03:03
  And well, we know how well that went.
• 2:03:05
  The only writer they would dare to have follow Lawrence Miles
• 2:03:08
  from that point on is Paul Miles.
• 2:03:11
  Totally. It's the contrast of the styles,
• 2:03:14
  isn't it? It's because the they are, they
• 2:03:19
  have, they are putting doctor into their own form.
• 2:03:21
  It's but I think Lawrence never quite gets to grips with the
• 2:03:25
  fact that other people have to play with these toys too for a
• 2:03:29
  monthly range. He it's I don't want to call it
• 2:03:33
  ego, but it's it's he. It should all be that shape.
• 2:03:37
  And he does get there with the the faction paradox.
• 2:03:41
  And I nearly did stick book of the war on this this because
• 2:03:45
  that is fabulous kind of book, an encyclopedia that you can
• 2:03:49
  follow all over the place and read the various stories come to
• 2:03:52
  things. But skull Empress again, Paul
• 2:03:58
  leaves these tools around for other people to write and they
• 2:04:02
  it doesn't get taken. And I, I would love to see the
• 2:04:06
  EDA range where people receive the skull Empress like alien
• 2:04:11
  bodies, you know, if you switch them and it's, it's become this
• 2:04:14
  more magical, more fantastic and basically funnier range.
• 2:04:20
  What I think happens is I think it takes some time.
• 2:04:24
  By the time you get to Earth World, that's between Earth
• 2:04:29
  World and Time Zero. I think there's a higher
• 2:04:31
  quotient of funny stroke, quirky books than any other period
• 2:04:36
  because you have that. You have the Slow Empire, which
• 2:04:39
  is trying to be funny, Grim Reality, which is really quirky.
• 2:04:42
  Mad Dogs and Englishmen, The Crooked World.
• 2:04:45
  You know, there's quite a lot of.
• 2:04:47
  It's inventive, yeah. Crazy stuff going on in that,
• 2:04:50
  but it does take a while because we're so obsessed with this
• 2:04:53
  future war and faction Paradox and all of this.
• 2:04:56
  We have to wipe all of that out of existence before we can get
• 2:04:59
  there. I mean, for all the controversy
• 2:05:01
  around the ancestor self, you had to write the end of that
• 2:05:04
  book. You couldn't have that going on
• 2:05:06
  in the background forever. People would you know, you tease
• 2:05:10
  that story long if you need an ending and then you're you
• 2:05:13
  didn't need to go back to Sabbath.
• 2:05:15
  You didn't need another complicated arc where people
• 2:05:18
  wanted to follow it. Just plainly, you know, I have
• 2:05:22
  just finished an Aquaphobia. I did love the twist at the end
• 2:05:25
  of that. Oh, it's so smart, isn't it?
• 2:05:29
  So. Oh, cool.
• 2:05:29
  It makes sense. Yeah.
• 2:05:30
  The killer makes sense, though. Yeah, I.
• 2:05:34
  Really need someone have to spell it out to me, but that was
• 2:05:36
  Faction Paradox. I didn't know that I should have
• 2:05:40
  done OK. Well, what a fabulous final top
• 2:05:44
  ten choice. What is the very last book?
• 2:05:48
  Well, you know I'm going to put the shovel away in a minute, but
• 2:05:51
  I'm willing to shovel across some more dirt for one last.
• 2:05:54
  Book, but I do hate to do this to new series books.
• 2:05:59
  But you remember what Michael's line was that you mentioned
• 2:06:01
  about the same old stories? Oh.
• 2:06:03
  Death to the Daleks again. Yeah, which writer likes to do
• 2:06:07
  Death to the Daleks again and again?
• 2:06:11
  Oh, you're not talking about The Dalek Generation by Nicholas
• 2:06:14
  Briggs, are you? I'm talking about Nicholas
• 2:06:16
  Briggs is the Dalek generation. I certainly.
• 2:06:19
  This has turned up on a list. Oh God, Nick Briggs had Oh,
• 2:06:27
  don't. This is fundamentally obviously
• 2:06:30
  my recommendation. It is he's he's not a prose
• 2:06:34
  writer by any means. I I did hear a room that he had
• 2:06:38
  hadn't read any books barred the Doctor Who novelisations and
• 2:06:42
  this kind of shows. Any other books at all?
• 2:06:48
  I, I don't think so. He might have read a few for
• 2:06:51
  school or something, but I don't think he, he's a big reader off
• 2:06:54
  the top of my head. But again, OK, I wouldn't say
• 2:06:58
  anything anything personally, because the only time I met him,
• 2:07:00
  he gave me a bottle of wine. It was fabulous when Rob
• 2:07:03
  Cheaman's book launches and he was like, doesn't need to go.
• 2:07:06
  Do you want that? Yeah, yeah.
• 2:07:07
  I could give you a bottle of wine.
• 2:07:09
  I don't mean I can write a book. You could.
• 2:07:13
  You could talk. You can't write a book about
• 2:07:15
  videos I put out there. I wouldn't dare.
• 2:07:19
  But this, he can't. He can't even construct, he
• 2:07:24
  can't construct the story that goes across the pages.
• 2:07:27
  It just, it just kind of goes on.
• 2:07:30
  He wants to write the Daleks. He wants to have fun writing
• 2:07:32
  prose about the Daleks. But, and yes, he does understand
• 2:07:37
  the dialects quite well. I think he has his own vision of
• 2:07:40
  dialects, his same vision that was here in Planet of the Daleks
• 2:07:44
  in, you know, in a death of dialects, Terry Nations books
• 2:07:47
  or, you know, Terry Nations version.
• 2:07:50
  But it's not a particularly interesting thing and you can't
• 2:07:52
  get a book out of it. And it's nothing like as fun as,
• 2:07:58
  say, Trevor Batchendale did we had with Prisoner of the Daleks.
• 2:08:03
  Which in a superb job in prisoner.
• 2:08:06
  I mean, try writing the dialects in prose.
• 2:08:11
  It is so tough because simply, you've got no facial expressions
• 2:08:15
  to work with. You've got virtually no vocal
• 2:08:17
  expression to work with. It's all that, and they all talk
• 2:08:19
  in that one monotone voice is extraordinarily difficult to
• 2:08:25
  make them interesting in prose. Acendale's starting point is
• 2:08:28
  these are the evilest fuckers in the universe and I'm going to
• 2:08:32
  show you just how they are. Whereas Briggs's approach is
• 2:08:35
  often like, oh, it's the Daleks from Dalek Invasion of Earth,
• 2:08:38
  you know? Yes, it's exactly it's relying
• 2:08:41
  on that iconic status of the Daleks.
• 2:08:44
  And no, I understand why they wanted a Doctor Who book for the
• 2:08:50
  50th anniversary year, but it's it's just not even the kind of
• 2:08:54
  engaging with what's interesting about it that there's no
• 2:08:58
  viewpoint of Daleks beyond they're these monsters that
• 2:09:01
  scared me when I was, you know, six or seven in front of that TV
• 2:09:05
  and they're automatically scary and everyone should still find
• 2:09:08
  them in scary as I do. They they're not isn't it kind
• 2:09:12
  of half hearted attempt to make them clever and cunning.
• 2:09:16
  But I don't think Nick Briggs is the writer to write that story.
• 2:09:20
  He he's he has done some some decent audio and I will be
• 2:09:26
  talking to Dylan about at least one of his audios in on to OP TV
• 2:09:32
  in the future. Because we've agreed to do that.
• 2:09:33
  I don't know when, but as a pro, as a prose writer, it's just
• 2:09:38
  that some people aren't meant to write prose.
• 2:09:41
  Some people because it it's one story where all the basics of
• 2:09:45
  what you want in a book breaks down that you know, there's the
• 2:09:48
  characterisation is non existent.
• 2:09:50
  The doctor is poorly done. The, the, the story has no
• 2:09:56
  weight to it. The plot has no surprises and no
• 2:10:03
  actual ending that I could discern.
• 2:10:06
  It just, you know, it just sort of Peters out, shall we say,
• 2:10:10
  like I said, you know, like if someone doesn't know where
• 2:10:13
  they're going. So they're just like, no, they
• 2:10:14
  don't know what's going to. Yeah.
• 2:10:17
  I think Nicholas Briggs is a man of many talents.
• 2:10:24
  I think he is a superb audio director.
• 2:10:27
  I. Think he's a.
• 2:10:28
  Superb visual director because he directed Alton one and two
• 2:10:33
  and I was really surprised at how pacey and how cleverly he
• 2:10:37
  used his tiny budget to create a lot of atmosphere in those.
• 2:10:41
  I mean, and you compare it to some like Christopher Barry
• 2:10:44
  doing data and Christopher Barry is, you know, you're 20 years
• 2:10:47
  out of date at this point as director and it's just quite a
• 2:10:50
  dull, flat thing. No, Alton is very, very watch.
• 2:10:54
  Both of those are very, very watchable.
• 2:10:56
  He's trying to do a modern drama, but just.
• 2:10:58
  Yeah, you know, and I think he's brilliant at sound design.
• 2:11:02
  His Dalek Empire sound design is out of this world immersive.
• 2:11:05
  He's a great musician as well. He's got a real keen eye for
• 2:11:08
  dramatic music. Yeah, I just personally, I do
• 2:11:13
  not think he is a good writer. And it's the well he keeps going
• 2:11:16
  to. And I think he struggles on
• 2:11:18
  audio and I can only imagine he struggles in prose.
• 2:11:22
  And I just don't think there's anyone there saying you're not
• 2:11:26
  very good at this. So bring all the talents that
• 2:11:29
  you have, because he has huge talents.
• 2:11:31
  Yeah. And he's a brilliant actor as
• 2:11:33
  well. He's a great actor.
• 2:11:36
  Just stop writing, Doctor Who's. Stories, please.
• 2:11:39
  I mean, yeah, I've said my my dad's been doing the marathon
• 2:11:43
  and you're watching some stuff like Asylum with the Daleks
• 2:11:46
  where he's doing those. You know, he's having to merge
• 2:11:49
  with Jenna Coleman's voice on that and almost act as Jenna
• 2:11:52
  Coleman, and he does a terrific job on those.
• 2:11:55
  Do you believe his His voice is out of this world.
• 2:12:00
  That fabulous slimy mutant in resolution that was on Charlotte
• 2:12:03
  Richie's back. Oh, God, yeah.
• 2:12:04
  Just you can do superb work. But, yeah, I mean, I'm too
• 2:12:08
  scared to approach this one. One day I will read it.
• 2:12:11
  But. Oh, God, yeah.
• 2:12:12
  But again, he's been doing those dialect voices for 20, nearly 20
• 2:12:16
  years. And yeah, I can say what people
• 2:12:18
  some people are bored. But he was still doing finally
• 2:12:21
  something new to do nearly 20 years in with those voices.
• 2:12:25
  And that is no me fee. I think he's.
• 2:12:27
  Yeah, again, he's served the Daleks brilliantly with his with
• 2:12:31
  his acting, with his voices. Just not so much with his words.
• 2:12:35
  I'll recall him, Liberation of the Daleks Book Club tonight,
• 2:12:41
  right? And there's a fabulous panel
• 2:12:43
  there where you see Nick Briggs as doing the Dalek intercom in
• 2:12:47
  this theme park, and he gets exterminated by a Dalek gun.
• 2:12:51
  Frankly, it's the only way he would ever want to go, isn't it?
• 2:12:54
  I'm living his dying, his dream, shall we say.
• 2:12:59
  Well John, what an amazing list. And you did.
• 2:13:02
  You went to everyone. Non fiction EDA's New
• 2:13:05
  Adventures, Missing Avengers. I don't think there was a past
• 2:13:08
  Doctor adventure on there anywhere though.
• 2:13:09
  That was the only one. Past on do you have any other
• 2:13:12
  past doctor adventures on there? There we have oh, I have heaven
• 2:13:19
  witch the witch hunt. I didn't even put oh, relative
• 2:13:23
  dementias was nearly on there. That's.
• 2:13:26
  Yeah, that was mid to late. Yeah, second thought for an Ace
• 2:13:30
  1 wasn't it? Yeah, Michael Austin came on
• 2:13:32
  quite a but he's a great writer. Yeah, he was another fun voice.
• 2:13:36
  Yeah, he'd do really peppy ideas and dialogue.
• 2:13:39
  Yeah, Half life and relative dementia.
• 2:13:41
  Yeah, at least one of those to the pilot as well.
• 2:13:44
  Well, OK, I did say I was going to ask you as.
• 2:13:47
  Well, OK. So for you to rank the ranges,
• 2:13:50
  so I'll just quickly go over them, It's New adventures,
• 2:13:54
  Missing adventures, EDASPDAS targets and Nsas.
• 2:14:00
  Oh, not having to tell us novellas in there or anything.
• 2:14:02
  If you'd like to include those as well.
• 2:14:04
  Oh, fair. Yeah, I'm guest.
• 2:14:06
  There you go. Do you want do you want to go
• 2:14:08
  from the top to the bottom or top?
• 2:14:10
  To the top, start at the top. Start at the top.
• 2:14:12
  Top has to be new adventures for all the reasons we just I've
• 2:14:15
  just outlined it. It was Doctor Who basically did
• 2:14:20
  me at the time and it was and it was looking forward every month.
• 2:14:24
  Those guys you know, it's go OK, it's coming to release date.
• 2:14:27
  No, might be up early. Waterstones was on my walk from
• 2:14:31
  my my uni house to uni. It was like OK in there every
• 2:14:35
  day looking, checking for them, trying to find them and then
• 2:14:38
  just reading engage it. Oh, and then you're going home
• 2:14:42
  buzzing afterwards. It's like you're getting home
• 2:14:44
  with the original said reading that in one saying because it
• 2:14:46
  was wonderful. Oh yeah, it I cannot have
• 2:14:50
  anything but the new events on there, as much for nostalgia As
• 2:14:54
  for anything else. And just I think because it was
• 2:14:58
  Doctor Who before the 90s must be progressive.
• 2:15:02
  And boy oh boy, yeah, there was some lows, but like me, there
• 2:15:05
  were some highs. It was, I mean it was, it was
• 2:15:08
  taking chances. You're always going to have
• 2:15:11
  misses if you go to take chances, but they you know they
• 2:15:15
  would take the big strings. That took chances more often,
• 2:15:17
  I'd say. Absolutely.
• 2:15:20
  OK, so with the new adventures are right at the top.
• 2:15:23
  And I'll have the the 8th Doctor adventures next.
• 2:15:26
  It's always these two at 1:00. It has in different orders.
• 2:15:30
  Yeah, they were the ongoing adventures because they had that
• 2:15:33
  vitality to them. And again, I I would say exactly
• 2:15:36
  say once you get past that kind of initial batch where you know
• 2:15:39
  new Isle of Buffini had commissioned who who self
• 2:15:44
  admittedly didn't know anything about Doctor Who.
• 2:15:46
  Again, these these books are happy to take big swings and
• 2:15:51
  everyone was grumpy abandoned to taking the license from virgin
• 2:15:53
  at the start. But you go into it and I think
• 2:15:58
  particularly, you know, towards the start of Steve Cole's time
• 2:16:00
  towards in towards the end of it and then to start just in
• 2:16:05
  Richard's time. These were genuinely fun and
• 2:16:09
  exciting. But it that we're looking to
• 2:16:11
  take big swings. But it was kind of at a point
• 2:16:16
  where I came to a more critical fandom is it's when I was on
• 2:16:20
  yeah, say, I'll say Jay Pagolda on on and talking to other
• 2:16:23
  people about Doctor Who bugs. And it's a bit of a cruel world,
• 2:16:27
  a lot of ways it kind that early average one where you're looking
• 2:16:31
  to you you. You think that being critical
• 2:16:36
  means being a complete bastard. To all have that period.
• 2:16:39
  Totally. I'm so embarrassed by some of my
• 2:16:42
  earlier reviews. Oh God, anyway that it's even
• 2:16:45
  bothers me throughout. All right, all right, I'll, I'll
• 2:16:49
  rewrite the fucking thing. No, don't do it.
• 2:16:53
  We don't. You're right.
• 2:16:54
  It's, it's, I think it's a necessary part of it.
• 2:16:57
  You're you're, you're getting to fully understand the work and
• 2:17:02
  know stuff really, I think. What's strangers?
• 2:17:05
  And you've come out of that period like overly being overly
• 2:17:09
  critical. And then you sort of look back
• 2:17:11
  and go, oh God, all of that stuff I was overly positive
• 2:17:15
  about. It's more flawed than I
• 2:17:17
  remember. All that stuff I was massively
• 2:17:19
  critical about. Actually, there's more good
• 2:17:21
  there than I remember as well. We're constantly re evaluating
• 2:17:24
  this stuff. Totally.
• 2:17:26
  That's the thing. That's why I always rating
• 2:17:29
  stuff. It just doesn't kind of, it's
• 2:17:31
  kind of trying to put in concrete of how good this is.
• 2:17:34
  Oh, you've just wasted the last two hours then.
• 2:17:36
  I know, but it's just well let's say like give me it 7 out of
• 2:17:39
  1010 whatever I can do it. I can roughly at the end of that
• 2:17:42
  last, but you can't put these things in concrete, you know,
• 2:17:46
  you change your monster. OK, so new adventures, 8th
• 2:17:50
  Doctor adventures. I'm going to stick with Telstra
• 2:17:53
  novellas next actually, because again, they are a love, they're
• 2:17:58
  leverage and they were three or four of them.
• 2:18:01
  I was really thinking of because timing relative is the obvious
• 2:18:05
  one that because it's it's got that viewpoint, it's got Susan's
• 2:18:08
  diary, it's what it's, it's OK. That was an interesting thing to
• 2:18:11
  do. The Cabinet of Light, again, I
• 2:18:14
  think it's Daniel Almoni's most interesting works.
• 2:18:18
  It's what he's not quite ripping off Grant Barcelona, The Dalek
• 2:18:25
  Factor at the end, Again, it's it's that kind of strange way to
• 2:18:30
  tell a Doctor Who story and it's not called Doctor Who story.
• 2:18:34
  Think is all the way through and 1:00.
• 2:18:36
  Somebody's asked to do the Dalek Factor, so oh, intrigued to read
• 2:18:40
  that one. Great and the other one is blood
• 2:18:43
  and hope, which is historical. You should set in the America
• 2:18:48
  during the American Civil War with Doctor Perry and Eminem
• 2:18:51
  Erem Eminem he's. A writer of Erem, isn't it Ian?
• 2:18:55
  Yes, Ian McLaughlin. Yeah.
• 2:18:57
  And it it's so and you're going OK as well as you go.
• 2:19:00
  I don't expect anything from it to start with.
• 2:19:04
  And it's just a really well told old school historical story.
• 2:19:09
  And again, it's a range that was willing to take these big swings
• 2:19:12
  with small kind of books. Andrew Cartmel's foreign as
• 2:19:16
  well. And John Allman's, John Allman
• 2:19:18
  and Kate Blum's won the city Australis and an actual award.
• 2:19:25
  Fallen Gods. This it's such a good range of
• 2:19:28
  quality. And there's there are very few
• 2:19:31
  deathers in there at all. They're all looking to try and
• 2:19:34
  do something interesting. And they're all quite, you know,
• 2:19:36
  none of them are particularly big.
• 2:19:38
  So I I would, if you can find them, I I would thoroughly
• 2:19:42
  recommend going to that range for almost anybody.
• 2:19:45
  I think it's sad about the telescope.
• 2:19:47
  I don't think they found the audience that they wanted them
• 2:19:49
  to have because they pulled in some prestige riots.
• 2:19:51
  Didn't they like him to that that would they can sort of make
• 2:19:55
  a bit of a splasher. I just remember seeing them
• 2:19:57
  lingering on the shelves in Forbidden Planet.
• 2:20:00
  Oh God, years and years unsold. It's kind of a shame because I
• 2:20:04
  think you're right. I think they're pretty
• 2:20:05
  consistent. There's a couple of the old
• 2:20:07
  names from. The BBC version that you're
• 2:20:10
  like, oh, Keith Toppins in there.
• 2:20:12
  All right, that's going to be interesting.
• 2:20:14
  Is that Ghost ship? I think on the whole, yeah.
• 2:20:19
  I I just wonder if they don't make the impact because there's
• 2:20:21
  so few of them and they're so short.
• 2:20:25
  They just don't have the life of the bigger Rangers though.
• 2:20:27
  And it's, no, it's from a niche press.
• 2:20:29
  They're not the ones that were on the shelves in Smiths.
• 2:20:32
  So that weren't in the public eye at all, that you you weren't
• 2:20:35
  going to bump into a task file. You had to go and look for them.
• 2:20:39
  Kind of wonder if that's part of the appeal at that point.
• 2:20:41
  Intriguing. Well, what is your 4th?
• 2:20:46
  See, this is where please. That'll be the targets.
• 2:20:50
  Finally, they're not last. They're not last.
• 2:20:52
  I couldn't possibly put them last because again, I didn't
• 2:20:57
  grow up on the early target, but I grew up on that kind of mid
• 2:21:00
  late period where they would be way to experience the stories.
• 2:21:03
  You know, they they were bringing that heart lira.
• 2:21:05
  They were doing the trekking you.
• 2:21:07
  So you, you these stories, you couldn't actually get any of us
• 2:21:10
  bar in synopsis. Yeah, at that point I didn't
• 2:21:13
  know why anyone who had a video copy of whatever the dominators
• 2:21:16
  or anything. So it's just you could read
• 2:21:19
  them. They were doing interesting
• 2:21:20
  things with it at that point. You know, it was past that kind
• 2:21:23
  of early 1980s. But where they where they going?
• 2:21:26
  Oh, we'll just get Terence to do another one where they find, you
• 2:21:30
  know, Nigel Robbins came in and went.
• 2:21:31
  We'll find those original writers to go and look at their
• 2:21:34
  scripts, to go redo them and put their voice in.
• 2:21:38
  And sometimes you, Ian Stewart Black, say they are particularly
• 2:21:41
  good. But you get, you know, John
• 2:21:44
  Lucarotti actually get going. This is what I wanted to do with
• 2:21:47
  the massacre or. Cons.
• 2:21:51
  Yeah. Bloody hell they are.
• 2:21:53
  They are. I read the Mythmakers last year
• 2:21:55
  for the first time. It blew.
• 2:21:56
  My oh God. It's so good.
• 2:21:59
  It was. I was told it was good at the
• 2:22:02
  time. I was too young to understand
• 2:22:04
  how good it was. I went.
• 2:22:07
  You go back to it when you're like 1617 or older and it's just
• 2:22:10
  like, God, this is actual. The Gunfighters is similarly
• 2:22:16
  great. Not quite on that.
• 2:22:18
  And then the Romans, it's just like, yeah, I'm going to have
• 2:22:20
  fun in a completely different way.
• 2:22:22
  I just go gonzo on it completely.
• 2:22:24
  It's like the idea of Ian writing letters back to his the
• 2:22:27
  headmaster of coming to school beautifully.
• 2:22:32
  You know you could have that kind of creative approach and
• 2:22:35
  they you know, they allow Victor Pendant to just do a very good
• 2:22:39
  adaptation of future Deep expand it because it was there.
• 2:22:43
  You know you you do get some of them.
• 2:22:44
  I I nearly put on the list was Pip and Jane Baker's the
• 2:22:48
  ultimate foe because that that is a dreadful.
• 2:22:51
  Novelisation, so it's hard to Riley, but I love it so much.
• 2:22:55
  Oh God, yeah. But oh, the thing that I get to
• 2:22:58
  on on the ultimate Foe is just half the chapter is just like in
• 2:23:04
  they're trailing what happens in the next one and they're all
• 2:23:06
  short chapters and it's just. It's just their sentences they
• 2:23:10
  put together words that never ever belonged in a sentence
• 2:23:13
  together. No and.
• 2:23:16
  Every time with the rally, every chapter ends with, you know,
• 2:23:19
  trapped exclamation mark, something like that, you know.
• 2:23:23
  It's written for, again, I think the same Doctor.
• 2:23:26
  They think they're writing for a very young audience for Doctor
• 2:23:29
  Who, not the quite the slightly older audience.
• 2:23:32
  If you ever want to hear, if you ever want to hear somebody
• 2:23:35
  giving an impossible and Simon and fucking acing it and then
• 2:23:40
  some, listen to Bonnie Langford's reading of Time in
• 2:23:42
  the Ronnie, because she doesn't care how terrible that book is.
• 2:23:47
  She sells it. She's wonderful.
• 2:23:50
  Oh. That's Bonnie, isn't it?
• 2:23:51
  She's a total pro. You can just imagine though that
• 2:23:56
  weren't, you know, when she's having a tip of water and thing
• 2:23:58
  going off. This isn't it.
• 2:24:03
  Oh God, what what ranges have we got left and we got so it's the.
• 2:24:06
  Two, it's the two the. 2 past doctors types and the Nsas.
• 2:24:13
  I would probably put the Missing Adventures in there because the
• 2:24:15
  Missing Adventures do have some of my absolute favorite books in
• 2:24:20
  there. You know, I just said we're
• 2:24:21
  going to be doing Monagra. I said Craig Hinton's books,
• 2:24:24
  which is just funny as hell. Yeah, I I like goth opera bar
• 2:24:30
  that one chapter. And even Paul Cornell doesn't
• 2:24:32
  like that continuity chapter. I think he not long after it
• 2:24:35
  came, he apologised for writing that chapter.
• 2:24:38
  He could because yeah, because he went.
• 2:24:40
  I've just closed up all the gaps in the 5th Doctor.
• 2:24:43
  You screwed voice. Sorry.
• 2:24:45
  Hold your hands up like that. But yeah, you you get the the
• 2:24:50
  bullishes towards you. And you know, Gareth Roberts's
• 2:24:52
  books, again, don't endorse a man himself, but he could write
• 2:24:57
  a comedy doctor, He could write a light doctor book beautifully.
• 2:25:00
  He had that era nailed and it and it's not easy to do that
• 2:25:06
  era. There's a couple of Steve Lyons
• 2:25:08
  in there as well. Time of your life and killing
• 2:25:10
  ground not. Killing ground particularly,
• 2:25:12
  again doing interesting things with the sidemen, engaging with
• 2:25:16
  it, and it's gorgeous. So it's the missing adventures
• 2:25:21
  next, so your penultimate range. I'll go with the Nsas again
• 2:25:26
  because I think they start off quite limply, shall we say?
• 2:25:32
  Yeah. It's OK, You know, You know what
• 2:25:36
  you say about. Oh, you see these writers names
• 2:25:38
  coming up? You're going.
• 2:25:39
  OK. Yeah.
• 2:25:39
  Justin Riches is right. Another one.
• 2:25:41
  Great. Oh, there's Mike Tucker.
• 2:25:43
  There's Steve Cole. Oh great.
• 2:25:46
  I mean, I'd always light up when I saw Jacqueline Rayner's name.
• 2:25:49
  Oh. God, yeah, it's all right.
• 2:25:50
  Go. She.
• 2:25:51
  She will do something funny. She will do something with
• 2:25:53
  energy. She will do something that makes
• 2:25:55
  her book interesting. It's like in the last Dota when
• 2:25:57
  she does the that that list, the the tick, you know, top Trump's
• 2:26:02
  list. Martha ticks them off.
• 2:26:04
  And you. Oh, it's great.
• 2:26:06
  It's funny. Jacqueline Ray doesn't
• 2:26:08
  necessarily get the credit of being such a funny writer.
• 2:26:11
  And she should. Then you start seeing names in
• 2:26:14
  the schedules. Old Mars is there.
• 2:26:17
  Yeah. Harkins there.
• 2:26:19
  That kind of going. Oh, what?
• 2:26:20
  What? Sherman's doing a short story in
• 2:26:22
  the story of Arthur. How interesting, you know.
• 2:26:25
  Dale Dale Smith is quite an interesting voice coming back as
• 2:26:27
  well. I'll do that day I've quite
• 2:26:29
  remember, like in bunker soldiers.
• 2:26:31
  Oh, what bunker? Bunker is great.
• 2:26:33
  OK, it's on the list somewhere, I hope.
• 2:26:38
  Yeah. And you saw those interesting
• 2:26:39
  and then sort of names coming in from EXO fan that, you know,
• 2:26:42
  they big boy. I I know there's the hardbacks
• 2:26:45
  and God, was it the the chemical terror.
• 2:26:49
  Michael Moorcock here, a big name fancy author.
• 2:26:51
  It's like, OK, we will shoot for the stars at this point and try
• 2:26:54
  to get as we said earlier. Stephen Baxter, for God's sake.
• 2:26:58
  Yeah. That. 3rd Doctor one that big
• 2:27:02
  hardback. Alistair Reynolds Reynolds, Yes.
• 2:27:07
  Yeah, Alistair, somebody. Yeah, and that was that was
• 2:27:12
  actually quite traditional. Surprisingly, I thought it was.
• 2:27:14
  It understood how to tell a Doctor Who story.
• 2:27:17
  It was Euna McCormack came in, didn't she?
• 2:27:20
  Yes, that's that's where she keeps.
• 2:27:22
  Yeah, King's. I keep going demons now it's.
• 2:27:28
  Yeah, it was that kind of fantasy 1.
• 2:27:30
  It did a same thing to what Chris Burst did in sources
• 2:27:34
  Apprentice, but lean much more into fantasy.
• 2:27:37
  You bring it. I think that's the last time
• 2:27:40
  that range brings in a load of interesting voices, but I really
• 2:27:44
  appreciate it. Joel Dawson does come in, of
• 2:27:46
  course, later on with the, but that's when the range is kind of
• 2:27:50
  fade away around the whiskey era.
• 2:27:51
  They don't seem to know what to do with this.
• 2:27:53
  So it's kind of dribbles away to nothing.
• 2:27:55
  And I think they're coming back round to it now because there's
• 2:27:58
  more attention being paid. But yeah, it's, it's kind of
• 2:28:02
  it's one of those ranges that it, it's just got, it's got
• 2:28:05
  really great highs. Equally, it's got stretches
• 2:28:08
  where you just go. Why am I still reading this?
• 2:28:14
  I can't read another art of destruction.
• 2:28:17
  Oh God. No.
• 2:28:20
  Oh my God. What's that?
• 2:28:21
  James Goss? Johnny Morris?
• 2:28:22
  I'm there. OK.
• 2:28:23
  Yes, yeah. Please come back.
• 2:28:25
  Please write more. And that means you are put in
• 2:28:28
  the past Doctor adventures right at the bottom.
• 2:28:32
  It was just a rain again. I might just be kind of having
• 2:28:37
  it distorted by that starting kind of block of books, but I
• 2:28:42
  couldn't, I could never engage with them.
• 2:28:45
  I just it was just again, what I'd said.
• 2:28:49
  Why am I reading these? But they they didn't do that
• 2:28:52
  much interesting. And then you get the odd one,
• 2:28:55
  which kind of raised your hopes, Eye of Heaven.
• 2:28:59
  If you actually did the story of Eye of Heaven.
• 2:29:02
  It's quite straightforward. It's there's nothing to it but
• 2:29:04
  the way it's structured and the viewpoint you get of Leela.
• 2:29:08
  That's where I thought, you know, that's the interesting
• 2:29:11
  things you can do with of that range where they didn't do
• 2:29:14
  enough of it, though. It the witch hunt.
• 2:29:19
  You could have some really good trad novels and the last of the
• 2:29:23
  gathering. It might just be Mark Gatiss
• 2:29:26
  getting to write the purpose or he always wanted to write.
• 2:29:29
  But it's such a great pastiche. It's that's his wheel, that's
• 2:29:32
  Mark Gates's wheelhouse. He's, if he's writing something
• 2:29:37
  about the stuff he loves, he's so he's energised.
• 2:29:41
  It's something like the Crimson Horror.
• 2:29:43
  It's compared to, you know, some like Night Terrors or or the
• 2:29:47
  Elias Lantern and you go, yeah, this guy really is really
• 2:29:51
  enjoying the writers having fun. So I'm having fun, but there was
• 2:29:57
  never quite enough of it. It was picking up towards the
• 2:30:01
  end. I think it was, again, the Perry
• 2:30:04
  and Tucker books. It just as a New Adventures fan,
• 2:30:11
  I was kind of always halfway affected by it.
• 2:30:14
  Not intentionally not, you know, sorry, but, and they had to be.
• 2:30:19
  But it was that kind of proprietorial attitude towards
• 2:30:23
  it sometimes. I wonder if if there's two types
• 2:30:27
  of fan. Yeah, I think there's the New
• 2:30:30
  Adventures fan who was rejecting the more traditional approach of
• 2:30:37
  the BBC books when it came out. So the past Doctor adventures
• 2:30:40
  were the absolute sort of anathema of what he wanted.
• 2:30:45
  That's right, Kevin. It's just not what he.
• 2:30:47
  Wanted and then there's the the ones that read the new
• 2:30:50
  adventures people like sigh heart and just rejected them out
• 2:30:53
  and went this is 2 adult too grim too miserable for me.
• 2:30:57
  You know too deep too broad for the small screen.
• 2:31:00
  And then the past doctors and the BBC came in and actually
• 2:31:03
  they embraced them like they like Mike Mills and and was just
• 2:31:06
  like yeah, this is everything kind of our one because I just
• 2:31:10
  I'm pretentious adventuring. What's great about having all of
• 2:31:14
  these books is both of those fans are catered for at various.
• 2:31:17
  Totally, totally. And the thing about Ranky, there
• 2:31:21
  are great things with every one of these range.
• 2:31:23
  You know, I, I think you've mentioned fear itself towards
• 2:31:25
  the end of that range. Glorious blue box I love.
• 2:31:28
  Yeah. It's full of death rags.
• 2:31:31
  I hope no one likes rags, but I love it.
• 2:31:33
  Oh God, Rags is trying to do something interesting.
• 2:31:36
  I think Combat rock doesn't work.
• 2:31:38
  It's trying to say, but it works because it's engaging with the
• 2:31:41
  70s and you see that kind of it's trying that punk ethos
• 2:31:45
  applied to that late purview and that that kind of worked
• 2:31:48
  conceptually. Which is, for all intents and
• 2:31:51
  purposes, a new adventure. Oh, God, it's brilliant again.
• 2:31:55
  Yeah, I think it was again. Stacey Smith said it was like
• 2:31:57
  the best novel of the year or something at the time.
• 2:32:00
  Or one of the best. Not for a long time.
• 2:32:02
  And she wasn't wrong. Oh, God.
• 2:32:05
  Algebra of Ice, you know, Lloyd Rose had a doubt.
• 2:32:08
  And Lloyd Rose, I wish I could have fitted her into the top
• 2:32:11
  ten, because those two faith Doctor adventures, my God,
• 2:32:16
  they're some of the best written books you will ever have on
• 2:32:18
  Doctor Who. I just, I always think I'm going
• 2:32:22
  to go towards Camera Obscura. Yes.
• 2:32:24
  I just remember how fucking confident sitting here the death
• 2:32:28
  was. How vivid is that new onion set?
• 2:32:32
  That is one of the best realized worlds, should we say, of Doctor
• 2:32:37
  Who? It's just, you know, in that
• 2:32:38
  light about the magician putting a hook in your heart.
• 2:32:41
  And just like straight away I can, I haven't read it in tier
• 2:32:44
  of 10-15 years and I can still go that line, still grasm bits
• 2:32:50
  of that prose still get. I know I think Cam Skewer has
• 2:32:55
  that kind of virtue of it's in that Sabbath, it's engaged with
• 2:32:59
  that Sabbath. It has the the moment with the
• 2:33:02
  heart. You son of a bitch.
• 2:33:07
  It's. His heart's still beating.
• 2:33:12
  In Sabbath, yeah, it's glory, it's glory.
• 2:33:15
  I I would happily go with I again.
• 2:33:18
  It's I think it's like with with Paul Mars as I head there.
• 2:33:22
  It's I always went with the Blue Angel and I'd go actually, yeah,
• 2:33:25
  I just remember saying everything from that happens in
• 2:33:27
  the Skull Empress. The world didn't fit it this way
• 2:33:30
  all and I go yeah, they're both great.
• 2:33:33
  But I might lean towards that first one as an absolute kind.
• 2:33:38
  I I know understand it's a different thing with Paul Miles
• 2:33:41
  compared to a lot of people. But it's understand compared to
• 2:33:43
  what followed. It's not as out there it's yeah,
• 2:33:47
  those are such good things. They're mass.
• 2:33:50
  You know it's it's a writer with instinctive voice came to a mass
• 2:33:54
  odd and. I just think like Lloyd Rose was
• 2:33:56
  a massive New Adventures fan and you can see that.
• 2:33:59
  Totally. Leaning into a lot of the
• 2:34:01
  tropes, but doing it absolutely as a naive Dr. Burke Oh yeah,
• 2:34:04
  all the comfort stuff. And again, there's two types of
• 2:34:10
  first writer. There's, you know, Christopher
• 2:34:13
  Beulas writing Shadow Minds, and there's Lloyd Rose writing City
• 2:34:17
  of the Dead. Yeah, in your face, this is
• 2:34:21
  what? I can do then if we got 15
• 2:34:24
  Christopher Beulas novels and only three from Lloyd Rose.
• 2:34:28
  Because I don't think Lord Rose had the ambition to just tick
• 2:34:31
  off every Doctor's right for. Yeah, she had a career to think
• 2:34:35
  about. Oh God, yeah, you think we
• 2:34:37
  should run for TV for God's sake?
• 2:34:39
  John, this has comfortably been the longest top and bottom 10
• 2:34:44
  list episode, but that's because we've not only talked about your
• 2:34:47
  list, but we've sort of done a around the universe of the book
• 2:34:51
  range. I said there's another.
• 2:34:53
  There's another 20 bucks that we haven't talked about.
• 2:34:57
  Well, I'm off. No, I'll go out some dinner
• 2:34:59
  tonight. Yeah, yeah.
• 2:35:02
  Apologise to Mark for me if you would, of course.
• 2:35:05
  You and I have many adventures still to have with Luke and
• 2:35:10
  Andrew where I don't know if you know what's on that list, but
• 2:35:13
  there are about 15 books there at the moment.
• 2:35:16
  Well, I know what the next one is.
• 2:35:18
  I don't. Head in next.
• 2:35:19
  I can't remember. Oh, where's?
• 2:35:21
  Where's and we're heading, Yeah, we're heading to New Europa.
• 2:35:25
  But I will, I've just got to get here out of the way, and then
• 2:35:28
  I'm saving a week for that one. So I really want to immerse
• 2:35:31
  myself in what is apparently this fantastic read.
• 2:35:36
  Oh, it's what? Once you've entered that world,
• 2:35:38
  you won't forget it, I tell you. It's.
• 2:35:41
  Is that another first time writer who swings and hits?
• 2:35:44
  It is and I I read his Judge Dread book just after this as
• 2:35:49
  well, and that is equally big, bold and beautiful are.
• 2:35:55
  As ever, you entice me. Thank you very much.
• 2:36:00
  Thank you for putting so much effort into this.
• 2:36:02
  Thank you. I mean, it's become my favorite
• 2:36:05
  things to talk about now is the books on hamster.
• 2:36:07
  And it's so lovely to find people that are just so immersed
• 2:36:10
  in this stuff that we can bang on for a couple of hours about
• 2:36:13
  it. Beautiful, isn't it, though?
• 2:36:15
  Yeah, I was just listening to 10 that lay in this morning.
• 2:36:18
  So I'd I'd completely gotten everything, but it's usually an
• 2:36:21
  adventure chapter of it's like, yeah.
• 2:36:23
  And that MO, oh, that MO chair went, you know, I'll turn the
• 2:36:27
  lights off. Oh my God.
• 2:36:30
  So you don't see my face. It's like, yeah, even in a book
• 2:36:34
  I didn't remember. That's such a great bit of
• 2:36:36
  writing. And and and we will explore all
• 2:36:41
  that writing, but for now, let's how do we how should we sign
• 2:36:45
  off? Keep reading.
• 2:36:47
  I don't know reading. All I will say is thank you very
• 2:36:54
  much for your what, 11 for doing these episodes, but two for
• 2:36:59
  taking the time to read the bloody books as well.
• 2:37:01
  I don't know you do that for pleasure, but a massive thank
• 2:37:04
  you from me to you. Thank you.
• 2:37:07
  Oh, it's it's a joke to have someone to talk about with them.
• 2:37:11
  So engaged. It's wonderful.
• 2:37:13
  Thank you. Let's keep geeking on then.
• 2:37:15
  You're on and I'll add it there.