Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Hamster Book Club - History 101 by Mags L Halliday (featuring Anthony Carroll)

Transcript

Hamster Book Club - History 101 by Mags L Halliday (featuring Anthony Carroll) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:00
  And she checked the guards were still watching the square and
• 0:03
  tucked. A block of plaster came free,
• 0:06
  revealing the wooden framework of the wall and sat on the
• 0:09
  horizontal crossbar. A key to fit the doors lock, the
• 0:13
  secret equivalent of a plant pot.
• 0:15
  She said triumphantly, shoving the plaster plug back into
• 0:19
  place. She tried the key and felt the
• 0:21
  tumblers reluctantly turn over inside the lock.
• 0:25
  Taking a calming breath, she stepped into the room.
• 0:28
  It was impossible. 2 rooms lay beyond the door.
• 0:32
  One room was empty, filled with bird shit and the smell of mold.
• 0:37
  Overlaid were hundreds of images, tiny frames frozen and
• 0:41
  hanging in mid air. Nothing supported them, they
• 0:43
  just drifted and twisted in the faint breeze from the open door.
• 0:47
  As she stepped in completely and turned on her heel, Angie saw
• 0:51
  the semi transparent images dance backwards, as if they were
• 0:55
  reacting to her presence, to the draft of her passing.
• 0:59
  Yet the room was. Empty, abandoned even by the
• 1:02
  militia. She could feel the floorboards
• 1:04
  soft beneath her, bending slightly under her weight.
• 1:07
  She tried to look closely at one of the frames, but it got more
• 1:10
  blurred the more she tried to focus only on it.
• 1:13
  She'd heard Fitz's versions of Ganika and thought it
• 1:16
  implausible, but now Angie's started to doubt her reaction.
• 1:20
  Wherever she looked, there was both an empty room and one
• 1:23
  crowded with impossibilities. The two seemed to be flickering
• 1:27
  so fast that she saw both at the same time.
• 1:29
  It was like that stupid toy she'd had as a child, a piece of
• 1:33
  card on a string with a drawing of a bird on one side and an
• 1:37
  empty cage on the other. Yet if you twisted it fast
• 1:40
  enough, the bird was caught in the cage.
• 1:43
  She thought the whole room was spinning, closing her eyes,
• 1:47
  letting her head settle a little, and she tried to think.
• 1:50
  This wasn't ordinary. This was something that linked
• 1:53
  missing Blair to the whole problem that I had come here to
• 1:56
  resolve. She was sure of it.
• 1:59
  Something had remained, some persistence of vision from the
• 2:02
  flickering room. A bit.
• 2:05
  She opened her eyes and looked. Yes, in both versions, a basic
• 2:09
  camp bed was set up in the corner.
• 2:11
  As she moved through the dancing images which flowed away from
• 2:14
  her and then closed in her wake, she finally saw the thing that
• 2:18
  was bothering her the most in this bobbing, swirling montage
• 2:22
  of images with thousands of images of herself, this and the
• 2:27
  doctor. And she tried to grab hold of
• 2:30
  the bobbing images, but they danced away from her, slipping
• 2:33
  and sliding out of her hands. Or her hand would pass through
• 2:37
  empty air and the room would flicker between the two states.
• 2:41
  Someone, something, had been compiling files on them, making
• 2:45
  a record of their movements, noting where they had been when
• 2:49
  they had been there, who they had been with.
• 2:52
  It wasn't even grainy photographs taken from hidden
• 2:55
  cameras. It was personal.
• 2:57
  In some, their faces have been close to the camera, smiling or
• 3:00
  talking, laughing. Someone, something, had made a
• 3:05
  file of her life, made into an object, a subject to study, and
• 3:10
  not a real person at all. She felt faintly nauseous.
• 3:13
  Her privacy had been violated by this watcher, this stalker.
• 3:18
  Not just her, but the Doctor Fitz.
• 3:21
  There were other faces she recognizes in the montages.
• 3:23
  Elena, Who are this Blair Alberto Pier?
• 3:28
  She realized now why Elena had been so upset.
• 3:30
  Then she noticed something else. Fitz and whoever's working
• 3:34
  together. Laughing, she dashed about the
• 3:36
  room. He was wobbling on the uneven,
• 3:38
  warped floor, trying to make sense of the notations at the
• 3:41
  bottom of the images. A time date stamp, she supposed,
• 3:45
  but she couldn't correlate the numbers with the dates on which
• 3:47
  she knew certain depicted events had happened.
• 3:51
  Fitz and whoever's. They'd not met yet.
• 3:54
  Whoever, whatever this was, they had images from the future as
• 3:58
  well. She wasn't sure what to make of
• 4:00
  this. She needed the doctor's brains.
• 4:02
  He needed to see this himself. He would probably have some
• 4:05
  amazing conclusions, solve the whole thing as soon as he saw
• 4:09
  this. She had to get back.
• 4:11
  As she pulled the door behind her, it clunked loudly in its
• 4:14
  frame, and she glanced quickly towards the guards on the roof.
• 4:18
  They had vanished, though she could hear distant shouting at
• 4:20
  the clatter of bullet fire over twitchy fingers on triggers.
• 4:24
  The city had become so tense, it was hardly surprising.
• 4:27
  Were they shouting after her? Angie speed up quickly.
• 4:30
  She wasn't supposed to be here, and if someone had figured that
• 4:33
  out, what if they were all in league with whatever had built
• 4:36
  that room in the attic? How could they not be?
• 4:38
  Who wouldn't have noticed something odd about it?
• 4:41
  She almost skidded through the foyer, cursing her heels as the
• 4:44
  metal slid on the barcade. Stupid bloody shoes.
• 4:48
  She slammed into a swing door before her.
• 4:51
  Chaos had come to the streets. The guards who had let her in
• 4:54
  were backed up by their sandbags, firing desperately.
• 4:57
  The one who had vouched for her was fumbling with his rifle,
• 5:00
  panicky fingers trying to ram bullets.
• 5:02
  Him even in the second she watched, dumbfounded, something
• 5:06
  hit his shoulder, jerking him backwards.
• 5:08
  Someone grabbed her, roughly flung her into the corner.
• 5:11
  If you can't fight, get inside. She stumbled on the low step,
• 5:16
  fell backwards, and crashed into the sandbag.
• 5:20
  The noise was insane. Too loud, too unpredictable to
• 5:23
  let her think. Chips and stone.
• 5:25
  Flew from the wall above her, whoever was firing on the
• 5:28
  ratatatted line along at head height.
• 5:30
  She felt a sting on her hand and saw it was grazed.
• 5:34
  She did not dare move, just huddled lower, desperately
• 5:37
  hoping she was out of the way, that no one would notice her,
• 5:41
  that no random. Bullet would hit her.
• 5:50
  Claro Casey a Bienvenido. I'll club the lipros.
• 5:55
  The hamster. I don't know the Spanish for
• 5:57
  hamster. That's one of the green folds
• 5:59
  apart. I was going to say I'm stare but
• 6:01
  that sounds more like French. That was gorgeous.
• 6:05
  My God that's yes. You've got 2 sexy accents there.
• 6:08
  You've got a Spanish one and a Scottish.
• 6:10
  One blokes like me don't have a hope.
• 6:15
  Hello, Anthony, How are you today?
• 6:18
  I am not too bad, thank you for having me on.
• 6:20
  Well, it's absolutely delighted to have you back, and I'm just
• 6:23
  very pleased that we're continuing this sort of minor
• 6:27
  education into the 8th Doctor adventures as you yourself on
• 6:32
  Too Broad and Too Deep are heading your way through the
• 6:37
  early stages of the new adventures.
• 6:40
  So please let us know how. Things have been going since the
• 6:43
  last time we spoke. Well, we thankfully took the
• 6:46
  stunnel out of the station of transit, which was quite a
• 6:52
  journey. I I did find it quite, almost
• 6:56
  like a Seminole book in a lot of ways.
• 6:57
  So lots of ideas in it. Did you really can enjoy
• 7:05
  Seminole? Yeah.
• 7:06
  I don't know if there was any cola nuts involved, but they
• 7:09
  were. It was certainly a Seminole in
• 7:12
  some ways. Are cola nuts an actual thing?
• 7:15
  I actually don't know if they are they're.
• 7:18
  Smirched now in the minds. Of all Doctor Who fans.
• 7:22
  Yes. I don't think anyone could take
• 7:23
  them seriously after thinking the only time to have them is at
• 7:27
  a certain time after a certain activity.
• 7:30
  Fired Ben Eronovich from the marketing team and.
• 7:35
  What's been? Saying, have you?
• 7:36
  Have you read any of us since? Then no, I've just been starting
• 7:41
  the highest science. So we're doing that one next.
• 7:44
  It's written by I, I don't know, because my book covers got the
• 7:49
  the office scrolled out. So I just, I think it's an
• 7:52
  anonymous publication. I I don't think it's written by
• 7:54
  anyone so. Yeah, I love how your.
• 7:57
  Podcast doesn't call any controversy whatsoever going.
• 8:01
  From. Transit to a Gareth Roberts
• 8:04
  book. I mean, yeah, but you've always
• 8:05
  got plenty to talk about. Oh yes, and that's the the the
• 8:09
  gift that keeps on given as as as the new adventures.
• 8:13
  Trust me, you've got some more. Fun to come yet?
• 8:15
  I mean, I suppose I shouldn't really blame your podcast for
• 8:18
  that. You're just doing them in order,
• 8:20
  right? Yeah, it's, it's a way to get me
• 8:23
  to do it because otherwise I won't.
• 8:24
  So it's it's the best way to to force yourself to do something
• 8:28
  is to make others suffer with you and listen to what you feel
• 8:31
  about it. Well.
• 8:33
  Without making you too nervous, can I force you to do something
• 8:37
  today? OK, sure there was a.
• 8:41
  Mild note of panic in your voice.
• 8:43
  Then would you be pleased? You know, as we go through this
• 8:46
  episode, we're talking about history.
• 8:49
  One O one that is not, you know, your dissertation or thesis from
• 8:53
  your graduate course, is it? It's actually a book by Max L
• 8:57
  Halliday in the halcyon days of the 8th Doctor Adventures.
• 9:02
  Would you please do me the great honour of providing me, because
• 9:05
  I know you know a little bit about this period in history
• 9:09
  and. You're one of the.
• 9:11
  Rare hamster guests that actually does some fucking
• 9:13
  research for this thing. Would you educate me about this
• 9:17
  period a little bit? Sure, I'll, I'll try my best.
• 9:20
  And I guess the last time I did delve into the Spanish Civil
• 9:25
  War, we had some classes on it at uni because so my degree was
• 9:28
  in French and Spanish. So we actually had a bit of
• 9:32
  history on it. So yes, for folk, they might not
• 9:36
  know as well, Spanish Civil War was just before the Second World
• 9:39
  War in 36 to 39. And there was a republican
• 9:44
  government at the time. It was kind of a progressive
• 9:47
  socialist government. But because of what was
• 9:51
  happening at the time, there was the rise of the far right and
• 9:54
  all of us, they decided to have a try, test stage a coup.
• 9:57
  And yeah, that's what the war then elaborated on for the next
• 10:02
  three-year. This book has to be 101.
• 10:06
  It's set in Barcelona. I went to see, is it 1937?
• 10:09
  I went to see it set. Yep.
• 10:12
  And that's about a year. And and you can see some of the
• 10:17
  fractions within this battle because you might just think
• 10:20
  your usual sort of maybe civil war, you've got the Republicans
• 10:24
  on one side and the Nationalists like Franco and that on the
• 10:27
  other. But below it is where there's a
• 10:31
  bit of fraction. And this book gets into that.
• 10:35
  And what could be the most accurate description of and left
• 10:38
  fighting that anyone who has an experience of left politics will
• 10:41
  experience? Angie Kapoor certainly
• 10:44
  experiences it anyway. Oh yeah.
• 10:47
  We will get there. Did you say the rise of the far
• 10:51
  right dark days? Oh.
• 10:54
  Couldn't couldn't be now you couldn't be seen any fractional.
• 10:58
  Prisoner taken over now. Yeah.
• 11:01
  We're, we're in, you know, sort of the beginning of Star Wars,
• 11:04
  when the dark side is in charge of everything.
• 11:07
  That's sort of where we are now, isn't it really?
• 11:10
  Yeah, it's, yeah, we're in the it's, it felt quite relating.
• 11:14
  Let's kind of reading some of these these parts of these
• 11:17
  books, the current day situations.
• 11:20
  Well, thank you very much for that.
• 11:21
  And I was sort of discussing this gently with my Co host from
• 11:25
  the Star Trek podcast, Nathan Bottomley.
• 11:27
  And I said, oh, the Spanish Civil War.
• 11:29
  And he went, he goes, have a good.
• 11:31
  Look, he goes, that thing I said to you about there's always
• 11:33
  religion involved in every war. He goes, you have a good look
• 11:37
  and I Oh yes, the church is definitely in there, isn't it?
• 11:41
  Well, well, I mean, this is the thing.
• 11:42
  Like there's even within those who are wanting to restore, like
• 11:47
  see Frankel with taking the the Republican government on.
• 11:52
  There's fractions within that side as well.
• 11:55
  So there's ones who are, yeah, ones who are just like Christian
• 11:58
  reformers who want to bring a Christian state and, and to
• 12:02
  being. There's ones who are fans of
• 12:05
  that but then want the king to be sort of the high heating for
• 12:09
  all. There's, there's still like, you
• 12:11
  know, you know, factions in that side, but kind of nothing like
• 12:15
  what happens in on on the left in terms of the Republic and
• 12:19
  what you see here in, in history of 1 and kind of till like still
• 12:26
  happens to an extent today within Catalonia.
• 12:29
  It's still, it's got some of the, you know, hangover of that
• 12:33
  still within Spanish politics to this day.
• 12:36
  I mean, you certainly feel that we'll obviously we'll get there
• 12:38
  as we discuss the individual parts, but you can certainly
• 12:41
  feel in the last third of the book, because Andrew and the
• 12:45
  Doctor aren't, you know, nestled in with the left, aren't they?
• 12:48
  That's where they're stuck. But it's not a safe place to be
• 12:52
  like Jesus Christ. It's a powder keg and the
• 12:55
  matches are flying about all over the place.
• 12:58
  Yes, and and and the brilliant stuff as as we'll get into with
• 13:00
  the book is, you know, it's it's you know, we've been
• 13:04
  entertaining in terms of the drama and all of us that we're
• 13:06
  having of our favorite characters been in this
• 13:08
  situation, But it's also educational because this did
• 13:11
  happen, like the assault of soldiers.
• 13:13
  Did you know, come in and try to cause, cause a rubble, A rabble
• 13:19
  with the, with the factions of this the the front because the
• 13:27
  assault of soldiers were from the republic's people's army for
• 13:32
  the national state and Catalonia, you might know from
• 13:36
  the news and such has always had this kind of strong kind of
• 13:39
  separatist sort of fence in a way.
• 13:42
  So there's the Catalonian kind of communist parties, things
• 13:47
  like this and within the area and the anarchists who are also
• 13:53
  kind of fighting against fascism.
• 13:55
  But one of the Catalonian communist parties is is at the
• 13:59
  time kind of anti Stalinist and Stalin's in power at the time.
• 14:04
  And Stalin's the one that is given the supply of the weapons
• 14:08
  and all that to the national government because they because
• 14:12
  of the international agreements, they can't get much arms from
• 14:16
  anywhere apart from Russia who would support their cause.
• 14:19
  So there's that intra left fighting there that you know,
• 14:25
  when you see the assault us in this book, you know, have that
• 14:29
  fight with the the kind of unified Marxists and the
• 14:33
  anarchists. It's because of this actual
• 14:36
  fight that takes place in history.
• 14:38
  And yet we get it from the perspective of Anji getting
• 14:41
  hackled around the joint and thrown into prison and
• 14:44
  everything. And it's it's really something
• 14:47
  else to add that historically to.
• 14:50
  It's like you're feeling like that you're you're a civilian
• 14:53
  and you could be just be dragged into the back of a of a car at
• 14:57
  any minute, tortured, interrogated.
• 15:00
  Oh boy, police. I wasn't around in 1937, you
• 15:04
  know, because I would have been on the left side and that
• 15:06
  probably just the more dangerous place to be.
• 15:08
  I can't believe I'm saying that Also let you know, God, I wish
• 15:13
  you was about, you know, when I was sort of 11 years old and and
• 15:16
  learning history at school. You know, if I someone as
• 15:18
  handsome as you teaching me history, I might have paid
• 15:21
  attention and actually known some of this stuff.
• 15:24
  Oh boy. Well, I already learned it in
• 15:26
  the aim of favouring my knowledge of a Doctor Who.
• 15:28
  Studying it, in fact, you know what, right.
• 15:31
  I get very excited when, you know, we do quizzes and things
• 15:34
  like this and it's questions about history.
• 15:37
  But from Doctor Who stories, which is the only appearance of
• 15:39
  history I know anything about. My God, the Aztecs.
• 15:41
  Yes, the massacre of some Barfol and New Zealand I know.
• 15:44
  It and people are, how do you know that?
• 15:47
  Paying attention at school, you know.
• 15:50
  But you know, it's not just about.
• 15:51
  You know, what we learn from the history of the stories as well
• 15:54
  is how they frame a lot of the stories too.
• 15:58
  And so, you know, just folk who might have not read this book.
• 16:02
  One big key part of this, it's about the perception of the
• 16:05
  bombing of Guernica and how that has been altered in some way.
• 16:13
  And you know, with it's, it's fitness who can have goals on
• 16:17
  that journey to literally witness it and, and perceive
• 16:20
  what happens. And it's, it's horrifying, you
• 16:23
  know, parts of the book to go through and that that the
• 16:26
  journey that he goes through in that way is you genuinely feel
• 16:29
  exhausted for him as he goes through chapter by chapter just
• 16:32
  to get back to the TARDIS. And several times, right?
• 16:36
  Because he sees it again and again, but with a different
• 16:40
  perception each time. A different.
• 16:43
  Person responsible as this alien being is sort of trying to alter
• 16:47
  things to so so history runs by a specific perception, which of
• 16:53
  course we know that is impossible.
• 16:54
  Oh my God, there's so much to talk about already.
• 16:56
  I know, but on on that sort of, you know, journey that fetch
• 17:00
  goes through, it's something you can you can see in the other
• 17:02
  historical stories and how you kind of tell those historic
• 17:05
  stories like mention with the massacre, like that journey that
• 17:08
  Stephen goes through. I am for that story is an
• 17:12
  example of, you know, history taking a toll on someone just to
• 17:16
  get through that adventure. And there's, to me at least,
• 17:20
  that parallel was there for me when reading Fet's journey
• 17:25
  through from Guernica to Barcelona.
• 17:27
  The conclusion at the end of the massacre where Stephen goes, you
• 17:30
  know, if your investigations into history are going to be
• 17:34
  like this, I'm off. I want the own part of it that
• 17:37
  is so horrific. Well, I remember when first
• 17:41
  listening to Jubilee. Why on earth is he talking about
• 17:44
  Jubilee? I hear you asking.
• 17:46
  But the very first scene is Evelyn Smyth saying to the
• 17:50
  doctor, doctor, I can't believe you just said that.
• 17:54
  And he basically says your job as a history teacher is useless
• 17:58
  because history isn't how we remember it.
• 18:04
  Like history is basically a series of contradictory
• 18:08
  perceptions, you know, which can absolutely over time be
• 18:12
  rewritten to suit the facts or the the opinions.
• 18:16
  And that that they certainly go into that here.
• 18:18
  But Jubilee doesn't really. Jubilee's got so many other
• 18:20
  things to do. It doesn't really delve into
• 18:23
  that. Whereas this book starts with, I
• 18:26
  think, an ingenious way of suggesting that the perception
• 18:32
  of the bombing has shifted because the Doctor Fitz, now
• 18:37
  you're on holiday, they're in France, you're on holiday and
• 18:40
  they're seeing the Picasso painting, aren't they?
• 18:42
  Of what's what's? It called the picture.
• 18:45
  It's called Gwennica OH. OK, I just want you to say it
• 18:48
  again. It sounds like sexy and they're
• 18:51
  not getting the feeling from the picture, but they normally
• 18:55
  would. And I just think that's a really
• 18:57
  clever way for them all to go. Well, that's odd because I've
• 19:00
  seen this picture before and it absolutely horrified me.
• 19:03
  The doctors like, aha, something is wrong with history.
• 19:06
  Let's go. Yeah, that's, that's the genius
• 19:09
  about this is that it's, it's not just so much something is is
• 19:13
  wrong with history and that something has clearly changed.
• 19:16
  As in, you know, the painting of Guernica isn't suddenly like a
• 19:20
  nice wee field or whatever. It's, it's, it's this, it's the
• 19:23
  same painting. They they describe it kind of a
• 19:26
  lot of the same stuff, but it's not got the same feel about it.
• 19:29
  It's like conflicting in, in their response.
• 19:32
  And it's, it's, it's different to see things in like the Tyne
• 19:36
  Middler where they're like, what is changing?
• 19:38
  Like the, the the lineman goes through and just changes
• 19:42
  something very directly. It's, it's about perception and
• 19:45
  about the conflict of which reality is true that has
• 19:50
  changed. And it's a it's a good example
• 19:54
  of that because we never really had that sort of take on
• 19:58
  meddling with time before. It's a real I'm surprised we've
• 20:01
  done this many historicals in Doctor Who in so many different
• 20:05
  forms, as on TV, in books, in audios, and this approach hasn't
• 20:09
  been taken before that it's not the historical event that's
• 20:12
  wrong. Everyone's agreeing that the
• 20:14
  event takes place. It's it's the, the consequence
• 20:18
  of it, how people feel about it. Who was responsible for it?
• 20:21
  I just think that's so interesting.
• 20:23
  So then obviously we head back-to-back in time to
• 20:27
  Barcelona to witness this first hand.
• 20:32
  Yeah. So when we get, well, I think
• 20:35
  they they arrive in Bilbao in the northwest to drop.
• 20:39
  Well, this is the the fun bit is to essentially go undercover and
• 20:42
  just see first hand what's going to be happening.
• 20:45
  But they just tell Fetch to do it, which it just feels, yeah.
• 20:51
  Like I was like, really? Like you're just going to leave
• 20:53
  them to literally witness one of the most horrific atrocities
• 20:57
  that have happened in the 20th, 20th century, I mean.
• 21:01
  Actually, that's not the worst. Thing, he asked.
• 21:02
  It's to do in this story. We will get there all right.
• 21:07
  Well, yeah, but yeah, it just, it's it has that feeling of, you
• 21:13
  know, the doctors are just having people and play in terms
• 21:20
  of what he needs to get done. He doesn't want to do it
• 21:22
  himself. And a lot of ways in this book,
• 21:24
  he gets agents, as it were, to do that work for him.
• 21:29
  And there's a parallel that we'll get to later, but that
• 21:31
  with him who is ultimately trying to change history.
• 21:37
  But yeah, I really did quite find that.
• 21:40
  But surprising that was just going to be a companion in their
• 21:43
  own right doing that because I thought, oh God, it's going to
• 21:46
  be like a Doctor Light sort of book in some ways.
• 21:49
  And it's a bit, but it really picks up and doesn't become just
• 21:53
  a Doctor like Book. Now, like, you know, we'll get
• 21:56
  into fits in some in more detail in City of the Dead, one of your
• 22:00
  very few criticisms was actually, what does he do in
• 22:03
  this book? He's not really.
• 22:06
  We can't really say that about History 101.
• 22:09
  He's. Quite present in this book.
• 22:11
  This is like his, I mean, despite Favo who read two of the
• 22:15
  books, his magnum opus, he is like the main star of this book
• 22:18
  in terms of what he goes through, the experiences he has
• 22:23
  on that journey and witnessing so many different fashions of
• 22:26
  the the bombing of Guinaca. At the same time.
• 22:30
  It's it's genuinely not just for fits, but also for Angie too.
• 22:35
  A book for the companions and for them having proper agency in
• 22:39
  a way that we don't often see in this range and other ranges too.
• 22:45
  You know, I mean, I'll say this a million times.
• 22:46
  This was a great time for the regulars in the 8th Doctor was
• 22:51
  like the book after book. I know sitting there wasn't a
• 22:54
  great but it was a great doctor book.
• 22:55
  But they came tons to do in this run.
• 23:00
  But another level that this is working on because it's still
• 23:03
  Doctor Who book. And maybe if this was just a
• 23:07
  lecture on the perceptions of history, that might be a bit dry
• 23:11
  and dusty. So by pure chance, a member of
• 23:15
  the absolute, this unknown alien race that we don't really
• 23:19
  discover too much about them, but we understand what they do.
• 23:24
  And that is the sort of taking some notes.
• 23:27
  Let's see what I've written, documenting all of history in an
• 23:30
  unbiased, observational way, recording the truth like a
• 23:34
  camera. So that's the idea, right?
• 23:36
  Is they take snapshots and it's supposed to be like a specific,
• 23:39
  this is literally how this happened.
• 23:42
  You know, no room for sort of multiple opinions on the matter.
• 23:47
  And they get info or they request information from
• 23:52
  something called the Hub. So it sort of sends it, it sends
• 23:56
  its pictures back and that all goes into the harbour's
• 23:59
  information. And then it can request
• 24:01
  information to come back to it. And through the prism of its
• 24:08
  system, it can see multiple times and locations and
• 24:12
  perceptions. There are some big ideas.
• 24:15
  There it's, it's very dense. It's a very dense idea to think
• 24:19
  about in terms of how, you know, how do how do you have a whole
• 24:25
  network of entities that are, you know, seen everything all at
• 24:29
  once. And in fact, actually that's a a
• 24:32
  film that can help visualize that a lot of ways with
• 24:35
  Everything Everywhere all at once about how you can get into
• 24:38
  that network. But yeah, there was, I think
• 24:44
  that it always takes back to this sort of image of a quote
• 24:48
  about the what a camera is essentially like, is the camera
• 24:54
  like passive and impartial? And, you know, can can people
• 24:59
  just have an old, can an entity provide an ultimate perception
• 25:05
  of what actually does happen? And that's what this kind of
• 25:09
  absolute being tries to achieve. And then it's it's stuck by
• 25:15
  meeting time travellers who change the perception of what
• 25:17
  they see once they, you know, see a different form of that
• 25:21
  reality. It's sort of seeing them in all
• 25:24
  these different time zones. How is this possible?
• 25:26
  Hang on a minute. They look younger there in that.
• 25:28
  What is going on? And the doctor, there is a great
• 25:32
  quote towards the end which actually deals with that idea of
• 25:35
  is the camera unbiased? Of course it isn't.
• 25:38
  The person that's choosing to take the picture is taking it
• 25:41
  from a particular angle. The person, if they know they're
• 25:43
  being observed, will moderate their behavior like.
• 25:47
  Exactly. There was loads of interesting
• 25:51
  observations like that where I was just going tick, tick, tick,
• 25:53
  yes, gorgeous. I mean, I mean, this is this
• 25:56
  thing I genuinely like, you know, kind of looking into
• 25:58
  Maxwell Halladay's, you know, walk.
• 26:01
  This is her only Doctor Who book, but she has another kind
• 26:05
  of other kind of fiction. But she did an article about
• 26:11
  kind of disinformation and how to kind of fight that on her
• 26:15
  blog and goes into her professional work as well
• 26:19
  because she works in public relations.
• 26:21
  And the, the perception of what you do in that field is, is, you
• 26:25
  know, a very key thing, creative thing you do for that job.
• 26:28
  And I, and it doesn't surprise me that that's her, you know,
• 26:31
  her first open gambit into the Doctor Who are old is to do a
• 26:35
  book about that, given her experiences within that field
• 26:39
  and this information. And and there's references to it
• 26:42
  in the the more political sphere with like some of the characters
• 26:47
  kind of whispering in hotels and saying, well, this thing's
• 26:49
  happening. They are not things.
• 26:51
  And talking to them basically like they're spin doctors before
• 26:54
  spin doctors are a thing. And yeah, it's it's got some
• 26:57
  really good kind of connecting that ideas or perceptions at the
• 27:02
  height of a civil war when that matters the most for so many.
• 27:06
  How she I think she's a great science fiction writer as well
• 27:10
  in this book. So how she actualizes the
• 27:13
  absolute in the book, as in he's trying to say like, he, he comes
• 27:18
  to this time period and he is just so confused by that.
• 27:23
  You know, he, he, he looks into the mind of 100 people and
• 27:26
  they're all seeing the events in 100 different ways.
• 27:30
  And that's just not how they work.
• 27:31
  So he tries to take over somebody doesn't he tries to
• 27:35
  bring somebody into the system and literally flips that person
• 27:40
  inside out. I think that's, that's how it's
• 27:42
  described, which that's enough of me.
• 27:44
  I don't need to hear. Anymore Yeah, no, I mean like
• 27:47
  the way it's it's so like inhuman and clinical in terms of
• 27:51
  it just doesn't comprehend that, you know, it needs to understand
• 27:56
  what a human is and why it's got this idea of closing out some
• 28:00
  perceptions and and accepting some of the facts at once and
• 28:03
  ignoring the others. So it tries to take a human
• 28:06
  within its system and it isn't a human cannot operate and live in
• 28:11
  their world quite literally. So they just spit it out again
• 28:14
  because it the IT runs counterintuitive to such a
• 28:20
  reasoned being to have such irrational or illogical beings
• 28:26
  like humans in their system. So yeah.
• 28:29
  And it's that that's the start of its downfall in terms of
• 28:33
  dealing with the rationality of humans in a lot of ways by
• 28:36
  having one put into the system. Sort of dealing with the science
• 28:39
  fiction E bits first because there's so many interesting
• 28:41
  historical things to talk about, but then the absolute invades
• 28:47
  the telephone system because it figures that's the best way to
• 28:51
  to figure out the but again, everything is is in conflict.
• 28:55
  So then it starts casting off all of the data that doesn't
• 29:00
  make sense into like series of it's a bit like holographic
• 29:05
  photographs in the air, isn't it?
• 29:06
  That's how it's described. And there's a wonderful bit
• 29:09
  where Angie goes into she goes exploring in the telephone hub
• 29:13
  place and all of these images of her hundreds and thousands of
• 29:17
  images of her fits and the doctor are all hanging.
• 29:19
  And as she sort of goes towards them, they sort of nervously shy
• 29:23
  away from her, you know, and go around.
• 29:25
  Man, you can just see how that would look on on TV or fail,
• 29:29
  can't you? No, honestly, yeah.
• 29:31
  I mean, and similar when when the Doctor encounters the
• 29:33
  remand, the flickering of the different images in terms of who
• 29:38
  that being is, in terms of how they polarize themselves in this
• 29:42
  in this real world. It's it's you can imagine that
• 29:46
  take place and and it has a sort of like not quite human face
• 29:50
  because it's it's trying to flicker in the realities of what
• 29:54
  that should be in things. And you can really imagine that
• 29:56
  flicking and, you know, different images creating that
• 30:01
  being like in an episode or something like that of actual TV
• 30:05
  stuff. Essentially, Angie does a lot of
• 30:07
  research that makes her realize there is like some kind of a
• 30:11
  monster on the loose in Barcelona.
• 30:13
  It turns out that monster is sort of like the actualized
• 30:18
  different perceptions that they absolutely has cast off, sort of
• 30:22
  in the form of a person. Sort of this pixelated weird,
• 30:27
  you know, like 15 versions of a person all moving at once.
• 30:31
  I don't know. It's just freaky and weird and
• 30:34
  hallucinogenic and grey, I think.
• 30:36
  Yeah, I mean, the reason it gets into that creation is from the
• 30:40
  IT can goes to a rabbit hole from itself being perceived when
• 30:44
  it shouldn't be perceived itself as a, you know, you know, a
• 30:49
  neutral person, a boyfriend who just wants to get to be there to
• 30:54
  observe stuff. Like they get perceived by one
• 30:58
  of Sabbath's agents who now I'm going to touch.
• 31:04
  I don't know a thing about Sabbath before this book.
• 31:06
  I kind of got a rough idea from the book, but yeah, to kind of
• 31:13
  reading this, I was like, I assume this is just someone the
• 31:16
  doctor has encountered and because he's he's he's key to
• 31:21
  this book, but he's in literally about two chapters are.
• 31:25
  You too. Same.
• 31:26
  It's that's it. Yeah, just so.
• 31:28
  I'll do it in a. Nutshell, again, like I did with
• 31:30
  City Dead. So the the book after City Dead
• 31:33
  Adventurous on Henrietta St. the doctor sets up.
• 31:37
  So the doctor sets up a shop in a whore house in Victorian times
• 31:42
  and marries somebody. It's all very strange but
• 31:44
  fabulous. It's Lawrence Miles, but
• 31:47
  basically Sabbath. When the time laws were wiped
• 31:51
  from existence in the ancestor cell, a new force inevitably
• 31:56
  took its place in the time vortex because nature abhors a
• 32:00
  vacuum and Sabbath is the agent of that force attempting to in
• 32:08
  some way, like stabilize all of time in this higher powers
• 32:16
  design. That's basically what he's
• 32:17
  trying to do, which is why this makes sense here, where he wants
• 32:21
  the absolute and the Harper and all that out of the way because
• 32:24
  they have powers of their own. And there's there's like another
• 32:27
  story where a whole race of beings is fleeing from the time
• 32:32
  vortex and he's trying to have them executed and there's all
• 32:35
  sorts going on at it. But basically, yeah, he's
• 32:36
  working for the for the new Gods of the universe, right?
• 32:41
  Who are trying to order all of time and space to their own
• 32:45
  design. Right.
• 32:47
  OK, no, that's good to know. Because yeah, I was thinking he
• 32:51
  was almost kind of like a rogue character for something like
• 32:55
  that. Just in terms of the reason he's
• 32:58
  wanting to collapse them about is, is is to try and get rid of
• 33:01
  information about how he was escaping from someone, I think
• 33:03
  it said at some point. So I was assuming he was up to
• 33:07
  something that just covered his tracks.
• 33:08
  Tracks. Yeah, exactly.
• 33:09
  Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
• 33:12
  But yeah, I am like, yeah, I quite, you know, have having
• 33:16
  that as the key, the key kind of pen to help bring this down and
• 33:20
  bring this anomaly as, as a it, it could be, it could have been
• 33:24
  anyone in terms of if you were to do this now in terms of TV,
• 33:26
  it could just be any rogue Time Lord or someone like that who's
• 33:29
  got that ability to be able to have a being like the absolute
• 33:34
  to, you know, kind of bring to its their spiral by being
• 33:41
  perceived. Because it's, it's, it's such a
• 33:44
  a matter of like, it's such, yeah, a different context in
• 33:49
  terms of what we we tend to, to see with like people who've made
• 33:53
  a lot of time because it's not them directly made a lot of time
• 33:56
  that they're just, they're not, they're literally doing nothing.
• 33:59
  They're just seeing someone else who shouldn't be there and in
• 34:03
  time. And it causes this in that way,
• 34:05
  which is is a unique way to to meddle when you're not, you've
• 34:08
  got no fingerprints on it. Like I, I think I sent you a
• 34:11
  message at one point and I said, like, you gotta keep your wits
• 34:14
  about you with this book. This isn't a book where you can
• 34:17
  sort of just like a nice old Terence Sticks book where you
• 34:20
  can just sort of half read it and go, well, this is lovely.
• 34:23
  Doctor Who. Not only is it offering you a
• 34:25
  detailed account of history, it's offering you several
• 34:28
  versions of that history. It's also giving you this very
• 34:33
  weird indefinable alien that you have to try and sort of figure
• 34:38
  out as well. It's also tying into the arc of
• 34:41
  what's going on in the 8th Doctor books, and it pulls a
• 34:47
  time travel twist where 2 completely separate characters
• 34:53
  in this book are the same person.
• 34:56
  Well, yeah, yeah. Well, more, more than two.
• 34:58
  There's this like everyone's got a double like name in this book,
• 35:02
  but no, again, you mean like his?
• 35:04
  One very important one though, where he still goes, right?
• 35:06
  I've done that bit of stuff. Now take me back in time and
• 35:08
  I'll go and deal with the other Doctor companion.
• 35:10
  Let's go. Well, yeah, well, I mean, others
• 35:13
  as well. I mean, yeah, there's there's,
• 35:15
  you know, a whole George Orwell subplot have been going on and
• 35:20
  all of us as well. But no, yeah, I get you.
• 35:22
  Because it's like quite. It can be a dense book in that
• 35:25
  way if you just want to casually come into something for a Doctor
• 35:28
  Who read. But it's dense in a good way
• 35:31
  compared to say, for example, transit that I've just read
• 35:37
  within this book compared to transit.
• 35:39
  It has maybe a similar kind of narrative thing.
• 35:44
  And in transit, there's a lot of like we're in this setting at
• 35:47
  this time in bold and a kind of documentation of what someone's
• 35:51
  doing in their job or whatever. Similarly, there's there's some
• 35:55
  insertions, not a lot, just very small insertions of a kind of
• 36:01
  riff on home ash, the Catalonia from George Orwell.
• 36:05
  And and because I was double checking how much the Catalonia
• 36:08
  to see is this pulled directly from it?
• 36:10
  Like, I don't think it is, but it's certainly covered in the
• 36:14
  same things he wrote in In Homage to the Catalonia when he
• 36:19
  signed up with the Independent Labour Party to go overseas to
• 36:23
  to fight and. Angie's terrible joke near the
• 36:27
  beginning of the book. The catatonia joke.
• 36:31
  Did you read? That oh I I I missed that one.
• 36:35
  Jesus Christ, Angie. Oh, OK.
• 36:38
  I can't remember it. I don't think I took a note of
• 36:40
  it. It was it was about the song and
• 36:44
  and the singers, but it was absolutely referring to what
• 36:47
  you're talking about there. Yeah, no, it's, it was.
• 36:51
  Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised because
• 36:52
  yeah, it have you noticed if you have your copy at the back, they
• 36:57
  are so many kind of bibliographical references.
• 37:00
  I said to I sent doing all this bloody homework.
• 37:03
  To read a Doctor Hoover, thank you very much.
• 37:05
  I've got a very smart friend who's going to tell me all about
• 37:08
  it. Like there's genuinely about
• 37:10
  2468 every eight books that's kind of put in for the kind of
• 37:18
  as a selected, but be all the logger for this, like not a
• 37:22
  comprehensive one. No, I did not.
• 37:25
  I did do the easier thing which was recommended viewing and I
• 37:30
  did watch I, Camilla which was it's quite a good film but you
• 37:34
  can only watch it in Spanish. I couldn't find an English dub
• 37:38
  or English sub so I just. Is your Spanish like good?
• 37:41
  Is it? If I've got subtitles, I can
• 37:44
  bear it. But then it went into the issue
• 37:47
  in that film is that it has also Italian scenes, lots of Italian
• 37:51
  scenes. I was like, right, this is this
• 37:53
  is too much for me. Bastard.
• 37:55
  Yeah, I can't deal with this. But it has an interesting idea
• 38:01
  that you'd kind of some of the stuff you can see within the
• 38:06
  book, because it's about some travellers who are entertainers
• 38:11
  and they end up going into kind of nationalist territory and
• 38:16
  they have to then start performing and very cool with
• 38:20
  the Republic, even with the republican like performers and
• 38:23
  that. And it felt like that sort of
• 38:26
  like in a switch sort of way that you have to be.
• 38:30
  And then areas like that when you're not on the one side is
• 38:33
  sometimes what, you know, like people like Fitz was trying to
• 38:39
  do on his journey because he was just trying to survive and get
• 38:42
  through. And I kind of felt that kind of
• 38:46
  parallel there with his journey, which, yeah, I quite enjoyed
• 38:50
  because, yeah, it was a good film.
• 38:53
  But yeah, you don't need to do all the recommended viewing.
• 38:56
  And we didn't understand the book, thankfully.
• 38:58
  She didn't have a heart with me. I'll tell.
• 39:02
  You, I think the one big difference between the denseness
• 39:06
  of transit and the denseness of History One O 1 is that one, I
• 39:11
  think the individual scenes in History One O 1, even though
• 39:14
  there are tons of characters and perspectives and all sorts going
• 39:18
  on, the individual scenes are all extremely well written,
• 39:21
  really vivid, lots of great imagery and #2 all told through
• 39:27
  the eyes are very likeable, engaging people.
• 39:31
  So you wanna, you like, you like the Doctor and you like Fitz and
• 39:34
  you like Angie. And a lot of the book is told
• 39:37
  from their point of view, which is good.
• 39:38
  We're Doctor Who fans. We want the regulars and they
• 39:42
  are going for really tough stuff, but very different
• 39:46
  journeys and dealing with things in very different ways.
• 39:50
  Yeah. So I just think, yeah, there's a
• 39:52
  lot happening here. But I think just like you just
• 39:57
  need to sort of dial up your, your patients a little bit.
• 40:01
  And relax into the brilliant characterization and prose.
• 40:05
  Yeah, not exactly. Like when we're doing this, you
• 40:09
  genuinely feel the the fatigue of people who've been working,
• 40:13
  have been going through a war and including fits and sorry
• 40:17
  Angie and the doctor, because they have to live for the they,
• 40:20
  they arrive in Barcelona five months early to meet fits.
• 40:24
  So they just have to live in Civil war Barcelona for five
• 40:27
  months and by the end they are really feeling it like the way
• 40:31
  Angie is like just sick of washing her hair with a soap
• 40:35
  bar. And you know, his his wide eyed
• 40:38
  that's the most bitter bar of chocolate she's had, but she's
• 40:41
  just happy to see it. There's so much of, of the
• 40:45
  atmosphere and, and, and the people in the city itself, like
• 40:50
  I think it's Elena who lives in a in a block with her brother,
• 40:57
  who was the person who was spat out by the absolute being.
• 41:03
  And there's always the neighbors who are like kind of keeping an
• 41:07
  eye and watching her. And they have just disdain of
• 41:11
  all that's happening and all of this and scenes of like old men
• 41:14
  who just want to, when they hear the bells, they just resigned
• 41:16
  themselves to go down to the refuge.
• 41:18
  And it's just you, you feel the the sense of what this set is
• 41:22
  about and how it how it feel at the time for folk.
• 41:25
  I felt like there was an edginess in the air all the time
• 41:29
  and there any minutes everyone was grabbing guns and he could
• 41:33
  get killed. And when that did eventually
• 41:35
  happen, yeah, I was, I was reading it like.
• 41:38
  The pages really fast, like please be OK.
• 41:41
  And you know when Angie's being bundled off and I'm like, Oh my
• 41:43
  God. And I know this isn't.
• 41:45
  The book she leaves in, but I was convinced for a little
• 41:48
  while. Well, and that's the thing, like
• 41:50
  when you get to that point, reading stuff like this, that
• 41:52
  you're convinced, you know, not just that Angie could get
• 41:55
  bungled away and kept in a torture chamber on behalf of
• 41:59
  like the the Republic, but you can also, or even others, like
• 42:05
  you can feel that there's a sense of danger for everyone.
• 42:09
  Like there's a whole part where Angie's like, well, even if I do
• 42:12
  get out of this, like, where do I go?
• 42:13
  Do I start on your life here? And can I read that?
• 42:17
  I just, this is a great example of why I think Angie Kapoor is
• 42:20
  one of the best Doctor Who book characters because she's just
• 42:24
  such a realist, right? So she thinks the Doctor's dead
• 42:29
  or or not coming back and that she's she's stuck here right in
• 42:32
  this really impossible. And and so it goes.
• 42:34
  What Angie was wondering what to do if she was stuck here
• 42:37
  forever. She turned back now, accepted
• 42:40
  that others helped to get her out.
• 42:42
  She'd sorry if she turned back now and accepted, accepted
• 42:45
  others to help her out. She'd feel she had abandoned the
• 42:48
  Doctrine Fitz, that she'd given up on them, or are getting home
• 42:51
  to the 21st century. It seemed such an abstract
• 42:54
  concept here so far in the future, she couldn't connect it
• 42:58
  with the future that they talked of.
• 42:59
  She could go to America, start a life of sorts, then live through
• 43:03
  the McCarthy witch hunts when her time in Barcelona would make
• 43:06
  her a suspect through the Cold War, Maybe return to London in
• 43:10
  the 60s and pass her days a few 100 miles from her parents from
• 43:14
  her childhood and never be able to contact them.
• 43:18
  No, she didn't want to give up on Fitz and the Doctor yet.
• 43:21
  She wasn't prepared to live here.
• 43:23
  That is just that is so Angie, so pragmatic, such a realist,
• 43:28
  But also. Thinking of.
• 43:28
  Shit, this is what I'm going to have to go through if I'm stuck.
• 43:32
  Here, yeah. And I just I just love how kind
• 43:36
  of fresh and pragmatic she has for this book, just for out
• 43:41
  every kind of encounter she has. Like she is constantly like
• 43:46
  trying to just get through in the same way.
• 43:49
  Like even when she's stuck in one place, she's, she's having
• 43:52
  to adapt because like, she's, she's not as naive as some folk
• 43:57
  in the book try to paint her to be.
• 43:58
  I am about the dangers within Barcelona at a time in terms of
• 44:03
  all the different factions of, of the, the, the front.
• 44:07
  And like she is always thinking about how to get through it and,
• 44:11
  and genuinely after this book, like she is probably despite
• 44:15
  only doing two of them, like one of my favorite Doctor Who
• 44:17
  companions full stop. Like I can just see her work
• 44:21
  perfectly on TV. Michael Mills made a brilliant
• 44:24
  observation to me recently where he said the genius of Anji
• 44:27
  Kapoor is is that she's not a Doctor Who companion.
• 44:31
  Sorry, not not a Doctor Who fan that's gone along for the ride,
• 44:33
  which often Doctor Who like fits is that.
• 44:36
  She's she's basically a Doctor Who fan's girlfriend.
• 44:40
  That's been caught in the adventures.
• 44:41
  She's the Jackie Tyler, you know, She doesn't want to be
• 44:43
  here, she never wanted. She doesn't want to be a time
• 44:46
  traveller. But fuck me, if she's going
• 44:48
  along for the journey, she's going to be useful, you know?
• 44:50
  Yeah. Well, hopefully that's what we
• 44:52
  can get from this new companion, Belinda, if if that's the same
• 44:55
  energy. That would be nice, wouldn't it?
• 44:58
  I would love that to be translated on screen because
• 44:59
  that's the energy that we do need.
• 45:01
  She don't want to be there sometimes.
• 45:02
  Does she buy? All of them, yes.
• 45:05
  And that's that's what I'm hoping that energy is, is worth
• 45:09
  doing because you need that dynamic sometimes.
• 45:11
  And the dynamic of this TARDIS team is like what you see, like
• 45:15
  she's that sort of big grudging character to be stuck there
• 45:19
  because she's always reminded the Doctor he never to get me
• 45:22
  back to to modern day Earth and all of us to London.
• 45:25
  It's. Remarkable how accurate your
• 45:27
  TARDIS journeys are. Except getting me home.
• 45:31
  Yeah, and even with a like constant kind of beckoning with,
• 45:37
  with, with fits, like they always are constantly at each
• 45:39
  other and particularly about him smoking and all of us.
• 45:42
  But you get it's an adherence towards it.
• 45:45
  Like they care about each other exactly like you.
• 45:48
  You constantly have them kind of at each other like that.
• 45:51
  And near the beginning, Doc, the doctor comes in as like great
• 45:54
  children, that's enough. But then near the end when
• 45:58
  they're back, then the case smoking again or whatever, and
• 46:01
  because they don't know what to do next, because they don't know
• 46:03
  where the dog. So there's he just says
• 46:05
  children. That's enough out in the blue.
• 46:07
  And you're like, like the unit, the unit is back.
• 46:10
  They've got them together. And and it's the most kind of
• 46:14
  perfect encapsulation of that sort of relationship and I love
• 46:18
  it. That, that bit at the end after
• 46:20
  everything they've been through, because there's not, they're not
• 46:22
  massively tactile like Fitz and Angie, but they're just, she's
• 46:26
  knackered and they're on the stairs and she's described as
• 46:28
  sort of just leaning on his legs and he's smoking his cigarette
• 46:31
  and she just doesn't care because.
• 46:33
  After everything he's been through.
• 46:34
  She's like, I just don't care, you know?
• 46:36
  And she and you are the one person I can be close to in this
• 46:39
  God for the second place. But certainly.
• 46:43
  The other thing I loved about Angie, and this is obviously she
• 46:45
  adapts to this life far better than the Doctor does and she
• 46:49
  makes friends and, you know, she she makes takes the incredibly
• 46:54
  intelligent decision that he's been sealed off from all the
• 46:57
  information in the TARDIS. Fine, I'm going to get every
• 47:01
  scrap of information I possibly can get and start building up a
• 47:04
  databank as well as I can for you.
• 47:07
  That might be useful. That's just, that's so Angie,
• 47:10
  right? Yeah, like she is student the
• 47:13
  proactive work that you'd think the Doctor would do, but he's
• 47:18
  he, he is quite passive for quite a bit of the book in terms
• 47:22
  of yeah, like proactively trying to get any information because
• 47:27
  he's for the most but a bit bereft after the TARDIS kind of
• 47:31
  shuts itself out and becomes like a skeletal TARDIS for a
• 47:35
  while after that. Describe that all the so the
• 47:39
  absolutes basically tried to get get in touch with the TARDIS,
• 47:43
  shall we say, and extract information.
• 47:45
  So the TARDIS has just knocked everybody out so you can get in
• 47:49
  the doors, but behind all of the in front of all of the
• 47:53
  bookcases, there's like glass, isn't there that are Doctors
• 47:56
  literally trying to get take a crowbar to and smash to get to
• 48:00
  all the areas that you can normally get to.
• 48:02
  And so the TARDIS is effectively dead in the middle of this
• 48:05
  really explosive period of history.
• 48:08
  Yeah, like, I mean, you have to, you know, crank the doors shut
• 48:12
  and all of this like it's proper, you know?
• 48:15
  She's seen deaf to the darks, you know.
• 48:19
  Yeah, no, I felt that with that one there.
• 48:21
  But yeah, it's, it's a proper like basically that in the broom
• 48:24
  cupboard of the TARDIS. And that's how they have to work
• 48:29
  with it because it's it's shut itself a way after getting kind
• 48:32
  of probed by the absolute because otherwise it was going
• 48:35
  to take over this whole system to store all those memories they
• 48:39
  want to discard and all those perspectives.
• 48:42
  Which is a good plot device to have to make your characters be
• 48:48
  stuck in a place so that they can, you know, Fast forward five
• 48:51
  months and just go and be fetched whenever.
• 48:53
  It's shit. We are stuck here loud, like a
• 48:56
  Hartnall historical. Basically in all those Hartnall
• 48:58
  historicals, the TARDIS has taken off them somehow, isn't
• 49:00
  it? And it's like, yeah, balls.
• 49:02
  OK, well, let's get on. Let's go on with this long
• 49:04
  journey, Marco. Polo, shall we?
• 49:07
  No, exactly. And it's a great mechanism to to
• 49:11
  kind of force the TARDIS to not be utilised as much.
• 49:14
  And it does however find some interesting usage of TARDIS
• 49:21
  related material. So you see when there's nearly
• 49:26
  the end of the book where the absolute and the the splinter of
• 49:33
  it in terms of the the perspectives they absolute
• 49:38
  rejects are kind of confront and the Doctor are confronting each
• 49:43
  other about what's happening. The Doctor uses a unmodified
• 49:48
  version of one of the Jean Paul Satka's books for proof that,
• 49:54
  you know, Quinnico really did happen or whatever.
• 49:57
  And so he cuts up and there's a weak kind of look and they all
• 50:01
  jump into it and they're suddenly.
• 50:03
  I didn't know what going on. I didn't have a clue.
• 50:07
  I was like, OK, magic, fine. I yeah, I did try to kind of
• 50:11
  track what that was did. You find anything?
• 50:18
  No, I, I did look at it. So it was, it was basically
• 50:23
  like, because there was like TARDIS and TARDIS element to it,
• 50:29
  because it still had an unlike an unchanged perspective to it,
• 50:37
  it decided to transport everyone to with the TARDIS energy of
• 50:42
  that to Guernica somehow. Go with it.
• 50:45
  Just go snod your head and go. Yeah.
• 50:47
  I mean, you know what, Right, I'll take it.
• 50:49
  I took my copy of Transit after that, right, and started sort of
• 50:52
  cutting holes in it. And then I made a big circle
• 50:55
  around myself. And I hope to find myself in the
• 50:57
  sole transit system. But unfortunately, I was just on
• 51:00
  my floor surrounded by paper. It didn't work at all.
• 51:03
  I thought I'd try it with your books.
• 51:04
  All right. Well, yeah, I thought it would
• 51:07
  it would have worked in you. That would make much more sense
• 51:09
  as to who this this energy mass travelling for this system was
• 51:13
  because we released. What be how rude it.
• 51:18
  Was Joe Ford going through the? Madison, Benny.
• 51:25
  Oh, that's tempting. There's quite a bit of smart in
• 51:29
  that book, actually. Maybe I was there, but but the
• 51:32
  whole, the whole thing about the TARDIS being dead now, obviously
• 51:35
  that leans into that amnesia arc when he lost the TARDIS for 100
• 51:40
  years and he has no clue who he was.
• 51:42
  So he's sort of bereft because he's just got the TARDIS back.
• 51:46
  He's going out on adventures and now all of a sudden the TARDIS
• 51:49
  is dead. So the the sort of description
• 51:52
  of him howling in anguish, like I get all of that because I've
• 51:54
  read all those books and I know what what he went through in
• 51:57
  order to get the TARDIS back. But yeah, then that does mean he
• 52:02
  is a bit passive for sort of the middle section sort of or, or he
• 52:05
  doesn't really appear too much. It's more far more about Fitz
• 52:08
  and Angie. Yeah, no, it focuses upon them
• 52:12
  quite a bit in terms of, yeah, Angie getting all the goods and
• 52:17
  Fitz's journey to Guernica. But it it was nice to have that
• 52:24
  grand puppets eventually, because he does have his Yudica
• 52:27
  moment. And when he does have that
• 52:28
  moment, he's genuinely back in action.
• 52:29
  He's like, right, this is what I need to do.
• 52:32
  I know who I'm going to go. And it really does get going
• 52:36
  with him connecting to the discarded perspectives and
• 52:41
  capitalizing them and, you know, taking on the absolute with
• 52:47
  them. The discarded perspectives and
• 52:49
  him couple realizing them. You would only say that about a
• 52:52
  Doctor Who book, wouldn't you? Oh yes.
• 52:56
  It's, it's less tense when I make it sound with such
• 52:58
  language. But like it, you can really
• 53:01
  imagine that because it's it talks about this sort of entity
• 53:05
  walking through the streets of Barcelona and, you know, it's
• 53:08
  things like, you know, the statues, I suddenly move and
• 53:13
  follow people because the variations of things are
• 53:17
  flickering in and out. And it's.
• 53:19
  Yeah, it's like you see, it's just really well written for
• 53:21
  that. It describes it quite clearly
• 53:23
  and what the impact of such a being in our world would be.
• 53:28
  I sometimes when. I read a book.
• 53:30
  I'm like, I wish I could see that.
• 53:31
  And I was like, no, I can see that.
• 53:33
  Yeah, I don't need that on TV. I mean, for me, like, it felt at
• 53:38
  least visually wise in terms of what I was imagining.
• 53:40
  I could very much imagine this being like a season 11 Jodie
• 53:43
  Whittaker historical episodes. Yeah, like, like the filmic
• 53:48
  elements of how that that season was filmed and the more kind of
• 53:53
  rustic nature of like the Spanish Civil War and the the
• 53:57
  countryside when they're going out to places.
• 53:59
  Like I could really and visualize that being filmed in
• 54:02
  that way. And even, you know, tonally
• 54:03
  about that sort of style of Doctor Who is historical with us
• 54:07
  sprinkling on of of Sci fighter. And I could really imagine in
• 54:13
  that sort of era and yeah, this is one of them that I'm
• 54:17
  genuinely would love to see adapted into an episode and
• 54:21
  ideally at that area. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 54:26
  Possibly so. Possibly so.
• 54:27
  But you know, we've still got we wouldn't cost.
• 54:30
  You, an entire town and people running away screaming in flames
• 54:35
  three times. Over very.
• 54:37
  Dumb A. Lot of CGI one thing like did
• 54:41
  love about the Doctor towards the end of the book though, and
• 54:43
  I'm going to read something out again was when he just before he
• 54:48
  he has his triumph moment where he goes.
• 54:51
  I'm restoring anarchy to history, which is a great.
• 54:57
  That one don't the moment. Doesn't he where he goes?
• 55:00
  Wouldn't it be better? He wondered if things were all
• 55:04
  seen the same way. Conflict came from difference of
• 55:06
  opinion, from believings. 11's own view was truer and more
• 55:11
  real, without the distortions created by different
• 55:14
  perceptions. People wouldn't argue, wouldn't
• 55:17
  believe so strongly that they would fight and die for that
• 55:19
  viewpoint. Wouldn't that be better?
• 55:22
  And then he goes, no, because it would deny the individual, deny
• 55:26
  their pleasures, their idiosyncrasies that made them
• 55:29
  unique and different and interesting.
• 55:32
  Enrique was taking away people's freedom of thought, making them
• 55:35
  believe one single version. Maybe they made the wrong
• 55:38
  decisions. Maybe they read things the wrong
• 55:41
  way and made some bad choices because of that confusion.
• 55:44
  Maybe they made history messy and contradictory and anarchic.
• 55:49
  I just loved all of that because I was like, yes, OK, I'm glad
• 55:52
  somebody said maybe, you know, maybe this is a good thing,
• 55:55
  right, If we all think the same way.
• 55:57
  But then isn't that basically, you know, isn't that like the
• 55:59
  Nazis, you know? Like, oh, quite literally, yeah.
• 56:02
  I mean, that's what the yes, that's what I think with the the
• 56:07
  kind of parallels there and how some of the perspective perhaps
• 56:13
  as well on Stalinism within this book as well, because that's one
• 56:18
  of the big, I think parallels. We'd naturally assume it's
• 56:22
  about, you know, like he also mentions about Franco Spain and
• 56:26
  and that says him within that bit there.
• 56:28
  But the parallels fill out the book about Stalinism in
• 56:30
  particular, and you know, the the people who are disappearing
• 56:35
  the party line in terms of members who are not agreeing
• 56:40
  with him. Like I said earlier about the
• 56:42
  the United Marxists who in Catalonia were anti Stalinists.
• 56:49
  They were Trotskyists. They weren't kind of for
• 56:52
  Stalinist. So that kind of, you know,
• 56:57
  despite being communists, but not agreeing with Stalin meant
• 57:00
  that they were ones who are not in favour and well, disappeared.
• 57:03
  And, and I think there's that sort of side to it as well, kind
• 57:08
  of parallel to the life leanings of of people from the Popular
• 57:13
  Front and all of this. And what this book might be
• 57:15
  saying about that and the the atrocities of of Franco and the
• 57:20
  Nationalists. That is that parallel as well to
• 57:22
  it, which I find quite interesting because it's you'd
• 57:25
  you'd assume it would be about Frankel just throughout this
• 57:28
  book or like about how Guenica was carried out and things like
• 57:32
  that. But there's this little detail
• 57:35
  about the nationalists themselves in this book,
• 57:36
  actually. I mean.
• 57:37
  I have to do a bit of bit of Youtubing to get more details
• 57:41
  about that because the book sprinkles it, but you like you
• 57:43
  said, it's not really the focus. No, it's, it's, it's like, it's
• 57:48
  the parallels that can be found within, you know, other aspects
• 57:53
  of, of that time as well. Like people who who are
• 57:58
  disagreeing with not not just, yeah, like stylism, but also
• 58:03
  like when we were hearing about the the fight that happens in
• 58:07
  terms of on the streets and between the anarchists, the
• 58:13
  tchotchkes, communists and the People's Army and all this and
• 58:17
  the conflict as to why they're doing that.
• 58:20
  And at the time offend Catalonia.
• 58:23
  So the cat, the national government had to move to
• 58:27
  Barcelona after everything kicked off.
• 58:31
  And there was a big issue in terms of how the national
• 58:34
  government were running things, in particular things like
• 58:38
  munitions and things like that. Like it wasn't being run as
• 58:40
  efficiently as what the Catalan government were doing.
• 58:44
  The national government had a national Spain kind of feeling
• 58:51
  to them in terms of, you know, we're we're here to fight for
• 58:55
  our Republic Spain and it's united Spain and we're not going
• 58:59
  to cede anything to those separatists and all of this.
• 59:01
  So they had a disdain for a lot of the kind of Catalonian kind
• 59:05
  of separatists who were who were fighting fascism at the same
• 59:08
  time. But well, but but separatists
• 59:11
  and that we are. So many sides, Anthony.
• 59:13
  I'll be confused. Whose side are you on?
• 59:16
  Oh, you're. On, that's fine.
• 59:18
  OK good, but half half the folk in the book on when they just
• 59:21
  end up shooting each other. They do, they do.
• 59:23
  It literally just bursts, doesn't it?
• 59:25
  In that last word. Yeah.
• 59:27
  And and that's, and that's the point of it, I guess, as well as
• 59:29
  about, you know, the, the, the fighting about the the one
• 59:34
  Unitaries perspective when they are wanting to provide that
• 59:38
  unity on, you know, fighting fascism in the book.
• 59:44
  Like that's, that's the the fault, like the thing that does
• 59:47
  unite them all. But how, how they have how they
• 59:51
  do that and how they operate and how they feel of each other then
• 59:54
  boils over. And they kind of instinctive
• 59:57
  stuff about, well, no, you know, are more kind of Stalin
• 1:00:03
  supportive members are going to go with this route and want the
• 1:00:07
  true united Spain. Use who are separatists are are
• 1:00:11
  really going to undermine that if we were to to win in the end
• 1:00:14
  of the day and all this. And yeah, it boils over to be
• 1:00:17
  the more factional fights because that's that's what
• 1:00:21
  anything happens with one of the left is there's a lot of
• 1:00:24
  factional fighting a lot of the time.
• 1:00:26
  And the idea that there's one true absolute in terms of single
• 1:00:32
  vision that will win the day is what is the downfall in that
• 1:00:37
  area. And the end of the book for a
• 1:00:40
  lot of the the Republic front. And is is a big set back in
• 1:00:44
  terms of the historical sides as well for the war, because, you
• 1:00:48
  know, I think it says in the book about 500 folk die during
• 1:00:52
  that battle. And in terms of resources as
• 1:00:55
  well, like the People's Army put in about 5000 out of the front
• 1:00:59
  fighting fascism to go over to to Barcelona and fight dissident
• 1:01:05
  Republic, distant fascist fighters within the anarchists
• 1:01:10
  and crazy isn't it? Yeah.
• 1:01:14
  Yeah, I mean. But no wonder everyone's so
• 1:01:15
  bloody paranoid, right? One wrong word, 1 wrong, wrong
• 1:01:19
  opinion or perception. That's it, You know you're dead.
• 1:01:22
  You're accused. Yeah.
• 1:01:24
  And and that's what we we see through, I think.
• 1:01:27
  Is it Pierre who is the secretary of of the United
• 1:01:33
  Marxist Party or is she? This is the thing I I do
• 1:01:37
  struggle to. My one criticism is is that
• 1:01:40
  there are maybe too many recurring characters that I do
• 1:01:44
  forget. I.
• 1:01:45
  I what? Part of the factions they do
• 1:01:47
  work. I can.
• 1:01:48
  Peer and Elena. At times I'm like, Oh no, sorry.
• 1:01:51
  I think Elena is a is an anarchist who's cat Catalonian.
• 1:01:59
  Pia, I think is a communist who then I think works in the the
• 1:02:10
  the the United Marxist Communist Party I think.
• 1:02:16
  See, they do go there, don't they?
• 1:02:17
  And they go, oh, I had no idea. And she goes.
• 1:02:20
  I had no idea that. You were with it.
• 1:02:23
  Yeah. And then she gets a new boss.
• 1:02:28
  Who is Burton? Who is Is this Eric Blair?
• 1:02:37
  Is this George? Orwell.
• 1:02:39
  So yes, apparently as George Orwell.
• 1:02:42
  Why does George Orwell torture Andrew Kapoor in this book?
• 1:02:45
  I mean. And I thought the same thing
• 1:02:46
  that should be going on. Is it?
• 1:02:48
  Yeah, it's, it's a good question.
• 1:02:50
  He's. Taken over though, isn't he?
• 1:02:52
  His perceptions have been shifted so he's behaving in AI
• 1:02:56
  mean an appallingly racist way. That line?
• 1:03:00
  That line where he calls her a black bitch.
• 1:03:02
  I just recoiled from the beige. It was so explicit.
• 1:03:07
  Yeah, I mean, and, and the vessel response she gives, I
• 1:03:10
  think, I think she calls him like a racist bastard or
• 1:03:12
  something. But it's like, you know, it's
• 1:03:14
  it's it's vessel and you feel her reaction to it.
• 1:03:18
  Yeah, no, like I was trying to kind of, I kind of understood
• 1:03:22
  some of the logic, but wasn't quite sure how that happened.
• 1:03:28
  So George Orwell becomes Barton because I think he's been
• 1:03:36
  touched by the tendrils of the absolute and the absolute
• 1:03:39
  essentially makes him an immoral version and focus upon the party
• 1:03:45
  lines that the absolute assumes he should have due to being a
• 1:03:49
  communist or being within the the the United Marxists.
• 1:04:00
  And then I think maybe mixes it up and has this been this sort
• 1:04:05
  of like, yeah, kind of interrogator at large sort of
• 1:04:12
  figure who is going through so many people who have a distant
• 1:04:16
  line and and things. And I think that's, I think
• 1:04:20
  that's how he quite came to be that I'm not sure.
• 1:04:24
  That was sort of the blurriest section of the book for me.
• 1:04:28
  And it's like we said, there are double s and there are people
• 1:04:31
  with the book twice and there are.
• 1:04:32
  And I was like, maybe there, it's a bit like we said about
• 1:04:35
  Sick of the Dead. Maybe there's one twist too many
• 1:04:39
  here. And I could understand if
• 1:04:40
  somebody wasn't interested in history and, and just sort of
• 1:04:44
  like relaxing into Doctor Who books by this point, they're
• 1:04:47
  going what, who is who? What's going on?
• 1:04:51
  Yeah, because like, I mean, yeah, like there's some of it
• 1:04:55
  kind of fitted through, like, I mean with All Way or Eric Blair
• 1:05:00
  kind of, you know, going from and getting his passes for the
• 1:05:05
  Independent Labour Party to get into the United Marxist Party
• 1:05:09
  lines to fight for them. How that evolved into him been,
• 1:05:14
  you know, the chief interrogator.
• 1:05:15
  I I genuinely don't know And then.
• 1:05:17
  He snatched out of it straight away, doesn't he?
• 1:05:18
  Like, oh, I'm so sorry. Yeah, I wasn't myself.
• 1:05:21
  Quick. Which to that which I think,
• 1:05:23
  yeah, it's very convenient, but I do, I do get that because I
• 1:05:26
  think it's at the same moment as when the doctor gets the
• 1:05:31
  absolute and the the other disregarded memories combined.
• 1:05:36
  So that's when everything kind of returns as opposed to
• 1:05:39
  everything. That they've touched is back to
• 1:05:42
  normal. Every influence that they've had
• 1:05:45
  is back to normal again. Yeah, I mean.
• 1:05:48
  So so yeah, I got it happen then.
• 1:05:49
  Because we don't want to see how do you get tortured anymore.
• 1:05:52
  No, no, not at all. And yeah, I think like, yeah,
• 1:05:56
  that that's my main. My main.
• 1:05:58
  My main issue is, is that there are so many characters that I
• 1:06:00
  did, yeah. I, I, I, I would have been
• 1:06:03
  fighting for just being some sort of like communist kind of,
• 1:06:10
  you know, interrogated or something like that, rather than
• 1:06:13
  needing to be, I don't know, George Orwell there, There was
• 1:06:17
  quite a few characters that kind of filled in that those gaps as
• 1:06:20
  well. We've had was that General Dirty
• 1:06:24
  probably had like 3 different perspectives of his his death,
• 1:06:28
  which was a good way to explain what this is about in terms of
• 1:06:31
  how you show, you know, the difference between someone's
• 1:06:35
  seen someone experiencing getting shot, someone meant to
• 1:06:39
  protect that person getting shot and someone shooting the person.
• 1:06:43
  But it was like, yeah, we had, I've had too many characters, I
• 1:06:49
  think kind of going around from, yeah, from that to there's.
• 1:06:52
  A few times when I went to TARDIS wiki and I was like,
• 1:06:55
  who's that person again? They've got a whole list of
• 1:06:57
  characters. And then you click on the names
• 1:06:59
  and it tells you who they are. I was like, oh, OK, great.
• 1:07:01
  Right. And I shouldn't really have to
• 1:07:03
  do that. I wanted to read the book.
• 1:07:06
  Although I did, I did like when Angie talked to Elena about
• 1:07:11
  Dorretti's death and she had her own perspective on it, didn't
• 1:07:16
  she? And then which went against what
• 1:07:20
  actually happened. And then later in the book, her
• 1:07:23
  perspective is completely shifted.
• 1:07:25
  So like throughout the book, things are changing a lot.
• 1:07:29
  You know, like you're seeing one version of something, but then
• 1:07:32
  people's perceptions of it are shifting.
• 1:07:34
  So you really have to keep your wits about you.
• 1:07:38
  Yeah, like, I mean, it's it's a good it's really nice seeing
• 1:07:41
  that kind of threaded in that local level that you see, like,
• 1:07:43
  I mean, when duty dies, there's a big massive commemoration in
• 1:07:48
  Barcelona for it and being hailed as a hero.
• 1:07:50
  And then a few weeks later Elena's like actually just got
• 1:07:55
  shot by some staple. He he was, he was passed it
• 1:07:57
  anyway. And all of us say, well, hang
• 1:07:59
  about why, why we're going different routes now.
• 1:08:03
  Now I think one thing that's maybe worth touching upon is is
• 1:08:06
  the the journey to Guernica with Fetz and his companion who gets
• 1:08:12
  him now, Sasha, I think. I think these scenes were the
• 1:08:16
  best scenes in the book, like the journey and then the bombing
• 1:08:20
  I think are the most vivid scenes in the book.
• 1:08:23
  Yeah, like so he has a kind of German potentially communist spy
• 1:08:29
  who is helping him get into to Guernica and they have some like
• 1:08:35
  some interesting ventures going there together because he's he's
• 1:08:39
  not trust trusting him, but he's got no other choice really but
• 1:08:42
  to to take him there and quite. Cosy at one point isn't it when
• 1:08:47
  they have a bit of dinner and drink some liquor?
• 1:08:49
  I mean I thought they were going to fuck at one point.
• 1:08:53
  Sorry. Please continue.
• 1:08:55
  No. Yeah.
• 1:08:55
  I mean like they're up. They do have a tender relation
• 1:08:58
  with each other like they do, you know, because they go
• 1:09:01
  through so much like they do tend to despite all this sort of
• 1:09:05
  end streak and the wink wink nudge stuff that that Sasha's
• 1:09:10
  can have up to, like they have a genuine connection after
• 1:09:12
  witnessing Guernica together like the oh the.
• 1:09:15
  Payoff is great when Fitz has to do something and Sasha does it
• 1:09:19
  for him because he's just, we'll get there.
• 1:09:23
  Sorry, take us back to the journey.
• 1:09:25
  So yeah, like so he takes them to get kind of bubbled up to
• 1:09:30
  take Guernica and whilst doing so, you know, fits tails one of
• 1:09:38
  the tiles with a blunt pen knife.
• 1:09:40
  I may adds. Oh.
• 1:09:42
  We're so excited. I swear I did.
• 1:09:45
  I send you the picture. I was like Oh my God, let's fit
• 1:09:48
  some China blunt pen knife. Yes, crying with a blunt pen
• 1:09:53
  knife. That's the new episode.
• 1:09:55
  I'm going to put that I'm going to do a new version of the music
• 1:09:57
  just for this. Hey, crying with a blunt pen
• 1:10:00
  now. Yeah, so he he sabotages the
• 1:10:05
  card he's and they get stuck in in Gwynnaca or just outside.
• 1:10:10
  And yeah, they they witness in the same way with that kind of
• 1:10:13
  with to do is death. There's, there's different
• 1:10:15
  perspectives that happened, one of them being the bombing that
• 1:10:19
  takes place, another with direct explosions taking place in the
• 1:10:23
  town and, and, you know, Republican fighters actually
• 1:10:27
  causing it and, and another one as well, kind of taken from a
• 1:10:31
  different perspective. And they all like, are so
• 1:10:36
  visceral. Like some, I wrote in some of
• 1:10:39
  the descriptions that we had, like, you know, there's some of
• 1:10:45
  the pictures that he that he sees of people running up the
• 1:10:48
  street helping each other. And there's, there's a nun who's
• 1:10:51
  helping him, helping folk and he's, he would find that
• 1:10:54
  normally funny, but then he sees the nun and she's covered in
• 1:10:56
  blood. And there's nuns dead on the
• 1:10:58
  streets coming up the roads from what he sees.
• 1:11:03
  There's a child who's been injured for kind of stumbling up
• 1:11:08
  the street as well. Someone else whose skin has been
• 1:11:11
  blacked because of Thermite, a priest whose blessing, you know,
• 1:11:16
  anarchists, communists and farmers alike.
• 1:11:20
  There's there's so many scenes like this that just paint the
• 1:11:24
  like horrifying images that Fitz can do nothing about but
• 1:11:28
  witness. I was because that's very, you
• 1:11:31
  know, the fires of Pompeii at the end of that where they're up
• 1:11:33
  on yes, Cliff looking over and I'm like, did Rusty Davis read
• 1:11:37
  this book? Because that's literally what
• 1:11:39
  Fitz does is witness an atrocity from up high of the whole town.
• 1:11:45
  Like the lion that killed me was the first time he sees it.
• 1:11:48
  And he he literally says Christ, they don't have a hope fits
• 1:11:52
  watch nums and unable to react to it anymore.
• 1:11:55
  Dust falling, but the city glows turning sky blood red.
• 1:12:01
  I was just like that is, yeah. And he focuses on people like at
• 1:12:06
  one point in probable like traditional fits fashion, he's
• 1:12:11
  like ogling at some woman who's being at the washing or
• 1:12:13
  something. And he's just like, but then you
• 1:12:19
  know that all of that happens and he's just like, he, he, he
• 1:12:24
  can't even think about, you know, saving one person like
• 1:12:27
  that. There's so many people who are
• 1:12:29
  just being murdered at that point.
• 1:12:33
  And like you say, you're like like Pompeii or Faiza Pompeii,
• 1:12:35
  like like the massacre as well, where, you know, Stevens, Wanton
• 1:12:41
  and Shapley at least saved out of the thousands who will be
• 1:12:44
  massacres. There's there, there's genuinely
• 1:12:48
  that tension that is built up within him because he can't, he
• 1:12:53
  doesn't want that to happen. He doesn't want to witness.
• 1:12:57
  And yet he must. He's he's, he's essentially
• 1:12:59
  doing the absolute job he has to witness in in some way and
• 1:13:04
  partially a massive atrocity take place in front of his eyes.
• 1:13:07
  I was like kissed. I went across to YouTube riot.
• 1:13:10
  So I saw a couple of videos about the bombing, and I had a
• 1:13:14
  reaction to the details being spelled out to me about this
• 1:13:18
  sort of violent injustice that occurred, this enormous violent
• 1:13:22
  injustice. The thought of being there and
• 1:13:25
  witnessing that, well, I thought, sure, my little brain
• 1:13:30
  could handle it, you know? No, but I mean, that's the, this
• 1:13:34
  is the getting impact of, of the Doctor Who books.
• 1:13:37
  And when I talked earlier about the more adult we dealt with
• 1:13:40
  like, you know, new adventures when they, when they try and do
• 1:13:44
  adult things for adults sake, like we're talking about with
• 1:13:48
  bloody cool and nuts and all of this.
• 1:13:51
  It's that's one sort of superficial way.
• 1:13:54
  But when you're having an adult man witness others commit
• 1:14:01
  atrocities and having to try and process it, it's it's a
• 1:14:06
  completely different experience of Doctor Who because it's it's
• 1:14:11
  something that that the show has done in its past, like in the
• 1:14:16
  mask of symbolic palm is even the fires of Pompeii.
• 1:14:20
  But it's an completely adult thing to try and deal with in
• 1:14:24
  terms of how do you process absolute grief for what you're
• 1:14:28
  witnessing and and trauma for that.
• 1:14:32
  And throughout the book after the bombings, every like Fetz is
• 1:14:38
  so knackered in this book because he has he doesn't sleep
• 1:14:42
  because every time he closes his eyes, he can see the the red
• 1:14:47
  fire of Guernica. He can see the people screaming,
• 1:14:52
  the blood, everything. And that being highlighted for
• 1:14:57
  because the bombings take place maybe about 100 pages in and the
• 1:15:01
  rest of the book, that's all he sees and witnesses and feels.
• 1:15:05
  It really is something that sticks with him for like this.
• 1:15:07
  It actually, it goes on to impact because in the next book
• 1:15:11
  he basically says to the doctors, you know, I've seen
• 1:15:15
  truly terrible things recently and I actually want to go off
• 1:15:21
  and make a difference. So he asked to join this sort of
• 1:15:24
  expedition and go and actually make an impact, a positive
• 1:15:27
  impact on history. So I'm pleased that don't forget
• 1:15:31
  this. Because no.
• 1:15:32
  Because it's a Seminole for it, Yeah.
• 1:15:35
  Exactly, but as well just the hardship he goes through in the
• 1:15:39
  journey as well you. Know.
• 1:15:42
  And what he faces and sort of the way he.
• 1:15:46
  Slept back into town, into Barcelona as a right old state,
• 1:15:49
  isn't it? And there's no welcome or
• 1:15:51
  anything. Yeah, no, I mean, like Sasha
• 1:15:55
  takes him as far as he can. He's he's he, he, he's his only
• 1:16:03
  person that he can relate to about what he saw.
• 1:16:06
  And so, you know, they, they sit in an abandoned house after,
• 1:16:11
  afterwards and kind of just try to discuss it.
• 1:16:14
  And, and they just, yeah, they, they have different perspectives
• 1:16:18
  of it. But even even that they don't
• 1:16:20
  want to discuss just because of the lack of trust.
• 1:16:22
  But even to how we'd even start that conversation of what you
• 1:16:26
  witnessed, It's it it would be hard, but they they have that
• 1:16:30
  connection without even needing to say things to each other.
• 1:16:33
  You really feel it, don't you? Like, I really feel like despite
• 1:16:36
  the fact that, you know, he's trying to catch him out with
• 1:16:38
  songs from the future to figure if he's a time traveller or not,
• 1:16:42
  that that they, they really do have a connection.
• 1:16:45
  What I thought initially was unfortunate was learning.
• 1:16:50
  Oh, OK, Sasha's Sabbath's agent and he's been it forced him to
• 1:16:56
  go along with Fierce and go through all of this.
• 1:16:58
  And I was like, oh God, I wish it wasn't as manufactured as
• 1:17:01
  that because I really love the journey and the two of them.
• 1:17:04
  But then the payoff when the doctor says to Fierce, you have
• 1:17:10
  to call in and restore history. You have to be responsible for
• 1:17:16
  the fucking bombing. I mean, for God's sake.
• 1:17:19
  So what else can this? Poor man go through in this book
• 1:17:22
  and. You know, he's like, I don't, I
• 1:17:24
  don't want to do this. You know, it's like, again, it's
• 1:17:27
  like Pompeii. It's that bit where their hands
• 1:17:29
  are on the lever and it's like, this happens.
• 1:17:32
  This has to happen this way. This is the only way to solve
• 1:17:34
  this. I've got to do this.
• 1:17:36
  And then Sasha sees how hard and, and what contacting the
• 1:17:41
  absolute is going to do to him. And he has developed a
• 1:17:44
  friendship with him at that point.
• 1:17:46
  So he basically and does it for him.
• 1:17:47
  He says, I'll, I'll take that responsibility of you.
• 1:17:50
  That's beautiful, I thought. It was great.
• 1:17:52
  How genuinely, because at first I was reading it thinking, yeah,
• 1:17:57
  he's he's doing this in some way to, you know, maybe even be some
• 1:18:02
  form of trick for like, you know, Sabbath in some way to tie
• 1:18:08
  up their loose ends or whatever. But for him to kind of realize
• 1:18:11
  like, what was what have you been through?
• 1:18:15
  What's been happening to you? Is is genuinely, I can't
• 1:18:19
  tolerate, you know, making you do this after everything?
• 1:18:23
  Even though he's one of South Asians.
• 1:18:26
  Even though they'll. Probably be repercussions.
• 1:18:29
  Yeah, and that's. That's fixed his power, right?
• 1:18:32
  You said today, what is it about Fizz?
• 1:18:34
  Is it he's just such the everyman?
• 1:18:36
  He's so likeable and normal and gets beaten.
• 1:18:40
  Around so much like there's one part of this book where he goes.
• 1:18:44
  I can't believe I no one's broken my nose.
• 1:18:46
  Yet you know, because I happen to.
• 1:18:48
  Stream in every single book. It's like somehow, but because
• 1:18:51
  he just endures, despite every hardship thrown at him, you
• 1:18:55
  can't help but kind of love him. Yeah, and that's the thing.
• 1:19:00
  Like he he is doing, even when he's battered, bruised, barely
• 1:19:05
  can walk up to the TARDIS, he's still thinking of doing it.
• 1:19:09
  Like he doesn't. He does at first think, I don't
• 1:19:12
  know how I could deal with doing such an atrocious thing.
• 1:19:17
  But in the end of the day, that needs to happen.
• 1:19:21
  And the doctor says that needs to happen.
• 1:19:24
  And that should, despite any, you know, cavocations they might
• 1:19:29
  have, he does it. He's willing to do it at least.
• 1:19:33
  And it ties into, you know, Sabbath having Sasha as an
• 1:19:38
  agent, ending up doing what the doctors really wants.
• 1:19:44
  If he didn't, that's probably could have done that.
• 1:19:48
  And, and there's a point at the, I think near the end when
• 1:19:52
  Sabbath meets the Doctor and asks, has the Doctor how his
• 1:19:56
  agents are doing And the doctors, like, they are my
• 1:19:59
  friends, they're my companions. And he's like, oh, it's a matter
• 1:20:02
  of perspective. That's the great light after
• 1:20:06
  everything. It felt it felt brilliant.
• 1:20:08
  It felt like like a a many a many version of, you know, David
• 1:20:13
  Ross and the stolen of and things like that.
• 1:20:14
  Where, you know, are these really your friends?
• 1:20:18
  Are these really people you are using for exactly using for your
• 1:20:22
  tools to an end for what you want to do rather than doing
• 1:20:26
  them yourselves, yourself? So yeah, I think that's a good.
• 1:20:31
  After this, he takes them on another holiday, like he tried
• 1:20:34
  at the start of this to the Crystal Palace, you know, when
• 1:20:37
  it first opened, you know, the Great Exhibition and all of
• 1:20:40
  that. Things like they deserve a bit
• 1:20:41
  of a treat, Boy do they. Yeah, I mean, yeah, like this
• 1:20:49
  despite the fact that he's, you know, he's got that very warm
• 1:20:53
  relation with this true. And I'd love that that kind of
• 1:20:57
  relation of of the TARDIS team. He's just as manipulative as as
• 1:21:02
  ever. Like I mean that that whole
• 1:21:04
  thing of having fits to it. Just because he's a willing
• 1:21:06
  participant doesn't mean that the dog that is using him to do
• 1:21:12
  some stuff that the doctor does not want to ever do of yeah,
• 1:21:16
  witnessing things like Whenica or making sure that that act is
• 1:21:22
  committed in the end of the day, like he is using his companions.
• 1:21:27
  In the last third of the book, I mean, they're all, they're used
• 1:21:30
  for out the book, all the regulars really well.
• 1:21:32
  But in the last bit of the book they were just so active.
• 1:21:35
  And this was something that used to annoy me about the New
• 1:21:37
  Adventures is you'd lose the Doctor for whole swathes of the
• 1:21:40
  book or you'd lose Benny or whatever and you'd be like, come
• 1:21:43
  on, it's Doctor Who. But we want, we want a story
• 1:21:46
  about the doctrine and his companions despite everything
• 1:21:48
  else that's going on. And you had fits going through
• 1:21:50
  that terrible agonising decision.
• 1:21:52
  You had Angie dealing with the the, the sort of the torture.
• 1:21:58
  So she was seeing first hand the horror of the absolute influence
• 1:22:03
  on things. And then you have the doctor
• 1:22:06
  trying to bring these two together.
• 1:22:08
  And I'll say it again, restore anarchy to history.
• 1:22:12
  Yes, I mean that genuinely. I think that's one of his
• 1:22:15
  triumphant lines of restoring anarchy to history.
• 1:22:18
  I don't know if did you watch Colin Cleave, the recent film
• 1:22:21
  that came out? It's it's really good.
• 1:22:23
  It's basically like Gossip Girl in the Vatican.
• 1:22:26
  It's it's fantastic. I am sold.
• 1:22:31
  But one of the kind of more like serious moments they have about
• 1:22:35
  who they're going to choose next for Pope has a line of basically
• 1:22:40
  about the political wintry stuff.
• 1:22:42
  And you know what needs to kind of drive anyone who has an idea
• 1:22:47
  of an absolute, an absolute single vision or things like
• 1:22:51
  that, similar to what the absolute has in in in this.
• 1:22:55
  So Ralph finds his cardinal characters like says that
• 1:23:00
  certainty is the great enemy of unity.
• 1:23:03
  Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance.
• 1:23:06
  And, you know, they wouldn't have that the faith if it didn't
• 1:23:11
  walk hand in hand with doubt. And I was thinking of it when
• 1:23:16
  kind of that line hit about, you know, the anarchy of history
• 1:23:19
  because, yeah, that's, that's what the doctors restored in
• 1:23:24
  here is that uncertainty is that is, is that doubt to have that
• 1:23:30
  multiple perspectives and it being in a in a rational thing
• 1:23:35
  to those kind of absolute bodies was was, yeah, it was, it was a
• 1:23:40
  joyous moment for him to kind of unleash the the true kind of
• 1:23:45
  spectrum of of reality, which was nice.
• 1:23:48
  Normally he's fighting the agents of Chaos.
• 1:23:50
  In this one, he is the agent of chaos.
• 1:23:55
  He's. Pretty great.
• 1:23:56
  You can see McGowan doing it as well.
• 1:23:57
  All wild hair, can't you screaming?
• 1:23:59
  Out that line and he has an interesting look through this as
• 1:24:02
  well because he's he's got a red velvet coat and a dark red shirt
• 1:24:07
  as well I mean. There is a picture from the TV
• 1:24:09
  movie, isn't there of him in a red in a red jacket.
• 1:24:13
  Isn't. It.
• 1:24:13
  Yeah, yeah. Because that's the picture
• 1:24:14
  they've got on the cover with that weird sort of distorted
• 1:24:17
  cover. Yeah, I do like that cover.
• 1:24:20
  I just don't think they're quite there to pull off what they're
• 1:24:23
  trying to do. I like what they're trying to do
• 1:24:25
  with have that mixed perspectives on the one picture.
• 1:24:30
  Yeah, it's kind of going for like that sort of Picasso
• 1:24:33
  design. Yeah.
• 1:24:35
  You can see this kind of Sagrada Familia in the background and
• 1:24:38
  that, but it's, yeah, it's it's. Like.
• 1:24:41
  It's not as well like especially because it's one painting when
• 1:24:46
  it could be the whole the whole cover could be that painting or
• 1:24:49
  something, I don't know, but. No, it should have been the
• 1:24:51
  painting that they're talking about, shouldn't it?
• 1:24:55
  Well down, they should have got the right well the rates to have
• 1:24:58
  done that, I don't know. I don't know.
• 1:25:00
  Although they did put our Brunel, that famous picture of
• 1:25:03
  Brunel on the front of engineering with the skull face.
• 1:25:06
  Mind you I don't think he had a skull face.
• 1:25:09
  So as you could say, it is well. I don't know.
• 1:25:11
  I don't know if the estates of Eisenberg, Kingdom Put a Nail
• 1:25:14
  and Pablo Picasso are as equal, but.
• 1:25:19
  And I don't think they care about a book that's being read
• 1:25:21
  by 2000 people. Yeah, probably not.
• 1:25:24
  Let them have it. Well, look, yeah.
• 1:25:26
  Is there anything we haven't covered about History 101 that
• 1:25:29
  you would like to cover? I mean, I've got one thing.
• 1:25:31
  I did love the fact that all of Angie research.
• 1:25:33
  So I thought, well, OK, she's done all that and we we actually
• 1:25:36
  have a whole chapter talking about her research.
• 1:25:40
  Eleanor's reaction going you know, you're so stupid.
• 1:25:44
  You've detailed all of my, you know, documented all of my
• 1:25:47
  actions. It's this got into the wrong
• 1:25:49
  hands and A and. A very funny moment when Angie
• 1:25:53
  realises the Absolute has done exactly the same thing to her
• 1:25:57
  and she's appalled, isn't she? She's like, oh.
• 1:26:01
  She has a great line about it because she says like that she
• 1:26:03
  felt faintly nauseous and that primarily that she's been
• 1:26:08
  violated by this by this entity and this this stalker she called
• 1:26:14
  was it. And it's like it adds her
• 1:26:17
  personal lines about what this is to her.
• 1:26:19
  And in a lot of ways, and it's quite a vivid image of.
• 1:26:23
  What's not there to going? Isn't that what you were doing
• 1:26:26
  to me? You know, have some perspective,
• 1:26:29
  Angie. And towards everyone year
• 1:26:31
  within, like Barcelona at the time.
• 1:26:33
  But in a very funny moment, the doctor takes all the data and
• 1:26:37
  runs it through the ticker tape machine and the Sardis.
• 1:26:39
  So a little flash of state of decay there and, and it all
• 1:26:44
  leads to the telephone exchange. All the information that she's
• 1:26:47
  got leads him to the the place where he needs to be to find the
• 1:26:51
  absolute. So I was like, OK, all of that
• 1:26:53
  research is paid off. Yeah, and I quite like the idea
• 1:26:57
  on it's kind of touched upon and I'm, I still have been, I've
• 1:27:02
  been walking in my body in the back of it to try and figure out
• 1:27:04
  how this has been. So any time that people have a
• 1:27:09
  particular fear and kind of offend them and it does manifest
• 1:27:14
  with something manifest within that reality to be their fear.
• 1:27:19
  So like there's a guy who who works in like the Sagrada
• 1:27:23
  Familia and he sees the the gargoyles come to life.
• 1:27:28
  Angie sees Klebis turn into a fascist soldier in the monster
• 1:27:34
  throughout the streets, and Elena as well sees the doctor
• 1:27:38
  turn into a fascist you. Say her name again for a second.
• 1:27:42
  Which one? Angie's fella.
• 1:27:45
  Klebis oh is it? Hot in here.
• 1:27:47
  Sorry, sorry. Continue.
• 1:27:49
  Please. Yes, so like those folk could
• 1:27:53
  turn into, you know, the the the person or perspective that they
• 1:27:57
  feel most. I wasn't quite sure how that
• 1:28:01
  happened, but it seemed that it only happened to people who had
• 1:28:07
  travelled in time in terms of the Doctor and whoever is it's
• 1:28:11
  again for you. And yeah, I didn't know if that
• 1:28:15
  was what was making them flicker between realities, because the
• 1:28:19
  they absolute didn't know how to perceive them, perhaps.
• 1:28:22
  And so they were being perceived as like fascist monsters in all
• 1:28:25
  of us. And that's one of maybe like 3
• 1:28:28
  things you've mentioned here that are bit in screws but a bit
• 1:28:31
  ambiguous. So that's another reason like,
• 1:28:34
  and I don't mind that, but I can imagine somebody else who likes
• 1:28:39
  all the TS crossed and all the IS dot you're going.
• 1:28:42
  Excuse me? You can't have these random
• 1:28:44
  things happening in this book, you know?
• 1:28:46
  But I guess that's the joy of it because we're coming, you know,
• 1:28:48
  that's, that's my perspective of, of what I think is causing
• 1:28:52
  it. You might have a different
• 1:28:54
  perspective everyone will have. I mean, I loved it.
• 1:28:56
  If I needed this. But we were sort of chimed in
• 1:28:59
  that respect. Yeah, true, but but they'll
• 1:29:01
  everyone when they read it will have a different perspective as
• 1:29:04
  to you know, like I was reading folks comments about it was like
• 1:29:08
  saying, you know, that someone was saying I they thought there
• 1:29:11
  was like a, a massive typo error because it was replaying the
• 1:29:15
  same scenes of like, dude, he's death and stuff.
• 1:29:17
  And I was like, right, come on, Chief, you need to get used to
• 1:29:20
  the thematic relevancy. That's not another.
• 1:29:23
  Perspective. That's just someone being really
• 1:29:25
  stupid. But you know that people, people
• 1:29:28
  will come to it in different ways when they read anything so
• 1:29:31
  well. They're Cloister Library, which
• 1:29:32
  I often go to. That's Stacey Smith's Doctor Who
• 1:29:36
  book blog. She's she's reviewed basically
• 1:29:37
  everything and she was saying like lots of well written scenes
• 1:29:41
  but none of it sort of added up. And I was like, oh, see.
• 1:29:44
  Even very clever people have the wrong perspective sometimes.
• 1:29:46
  You know. Then I went to the ratings
• 1:29:48
  guide, The Doctor Who Raised, which is run by Stacey Smith,
• 1:29:51
  but that's all other people's reviews.
• 1:29:53
  And actually I was surprised. There was I think 8 reviews.
• 1:29:57
  Seven of them were massively positive and the other one was a
• 1:30:00
  bit on the fence. So I was like OK, so maybe there
• 1:30:02
  was a good reaction to this. I remember the Doctor Who
• 1:30:05
  magazine review was Matt Michaels, who's a friend of
• 1:30:09
  mine. It's a good thing he's so hot,
• 1:30:12
  honestly, you know, because honestly, his opinion on Doctor
• 1:30:14
  Who books is terrible. And he wasn't talking.
• 1:30:17
  He said it was a bit too academic and he prefers
• 1:30:22
  something a bit more involving. Involving, I mean, watching
• 1:30:26
  someone, well, witness the burning, burning of will you say
• 1:30:30
  it for me, Kwanika? Oh, boy.
• 1:30:34
  You know, like, come on now. So yes, basically we're saying
• 1:30:38
  other perspectives are available.
• 1:30:41
  They are, but I guess, you know, it's interesting hearing what
• 1:30:44
  people thought at the time as well, because I, you know, I
• 1:30:47
  didn't read it at the time, but I did read it a few years later.
• 1:30:50
  And I genuinely was just what I just came across like finding.
• 1:30:55
  And I was like, well, I've never heard of that.
• 1:30:56
  I'm just going to see what it's like.
• 1:30:58
  And that's what got me into it. And like, you see, like there's,
• 1:31:02
  there's need perhaps to be a new perspective on it because I've,
• 1:31:06
  I've not had anyone talk about it.
• 1:31:08
  I've not seen many folk talk about it in general, but it's
• 1:31:13
  such a unique book from, you know, having that historic,
• 1:31:18
  having a historical the first instance.
• 1:31:20
  But in terms of the way it tells that historical story and the
• 1:31:25
  way it twists what you could do with a time travel element and a
• 1:31:29
  historical story, it's something that I thought would be ripe
• 1:31:33
  for, you know, being on anyone's top list.
• 1:31:36
  It's certainly on my top lists I think these days.
• 1:31:39
  We certainly have in Doctor Who stories.
• 1:31:41
  We certainly have different perspectives within a story,
• 1:31:44
  right? Because there's usually a war.
• 1:31:46
  So there's two sides, 2 perspectives.
• 1:31:48
  They're fighting over something, you know, or something.
• 1:31:51
  The Doctor and the companion disagree.
• 1:31:52
  They've got, you know, Doctor Donna, I'm going to go warn
• 1:31:55
  those people to get out of town. No, you're not, you know.
• 1:31:59
  But what's it called? Fixed points in time?
• 1:32:02
  No, you can't do that. So we do get, but we don't get
• 1:32:05
  the discussion about perspectives that we get here.
• 1:32:09
  That's what I found so interesting about this book and
• 1:32:12
  just how, one, how important they are and two, how damaging
• 1:32:18
  they can be as well. So it sort of shows you the the
• 1:32:21
  the really quite terrible sides to all of these different
• 1:32:27
  perspectives and absolutely why they're essential as well.
• 1:32:32
  Yes, exactly. It's it's something that's
• 1:32:35
  reflected not just in the characters of the book in terms
• 1:32:38
  of who the doctor and Andy Wackwith and and and the
• 1:32:42
  anarchists and the communists, but also within the system
• 1:32:48
  itself. Like the absolute have that,
• 1:32:50
  that that single vision, whilst the teacher who is the sideline
• 1:32:55
  of it is, is the ones with the rejected viewpoints.
• 1:32:59
  And that's that's the main kind of kind of driving force of this
• 1:33:05
  as the the the kind of creation of of unity through all
• 1:33:09
  perspectives in this. And yeah, I think that's a it's
• 1:33:12
  a very good book for bringing that view, as it were, together
• 1:33:17
  of of the unity of doubt, of the unity within uncertainty, which
• 1:33:24
  yeah, I I think drives anyone who have in this book political
• 1:33:28
  beliefs and and in terms of the system having a holistic view of
• 1:33:33
  what happens for their monitoring of the universe.
• 1:33:36
  I. Mean I don't want to say
• 1:33:37
  anything more. That was so beautiful.
• 1:33:40
  I couldn't possibly say anything more intelligent than that.
• 1:33:43
  I mean, I'll sort of sum up my thoughts on the book, and I
• 1:33:46
  think it works as a Doctor Who book because all three of the
• 1:33:49
  regulars are vivid and they go on a journey and we absolutely
• 1:33:53
  understand them. You know what they've been
• 1:33:55
  through. At the end of it, I think it
• 1:33:57
  works as a historical book because it absolutely gives you
• 1:34:00
  a ton of information about a really, I want to say
• 1:34:04
  interesting but terrifying period of history that's worth
• 1:34:08
  exploring. And I don't think he's spoken
• 1:34:10
  about enough. Doctor Who often goes for that
• 1:34:12
  obvious bits of history, doesn't it?
• 1:34:14
  Whereas this is, I can see why it's avoided.
• 1:34:18
  It's bad things going on, but there's lots of drama there.
• 1:34:23
  I mean you can see Tosh and Wales would have done something
• 1:34:25
  like this if they got another season.
• 1:34:29
  Think about the Spanish Civil War.
• 1:34:31
  Yes, let's put the Doctor, Polly and Ben in whilst it's being
• 1:34:36
  bombed. Oh God, actually, genuinely, you
• 1:34:40
  could, you could imagine that because yeah, the Doctors is
• 1:34:44
  kind of slightly Doctor late so Hartnell can get a break in
• 1:34:47
  episode 2. Polly has secretarial skills, so
• 1:34:51
  can very much collate information.
• 1:34:53
  Ben's ready to go up the hills for the Pyrenees.
• 1:34:56
  He's he's so. Sorry to make a joke out of
• 1:34:59
  this, but. Duchess quick, get under that
• 1:35:01
  bloody nun. You know the bombs are coming.
• 1:35:04
  I'm so sorry. That's terrible taste.
• 1:35:07
  But also as well, I think it works as a science fiction book
• 1:35:10
  because it has some really, really interesting original
• 1:35:14
  creations in it and some startling imagery as well.
• 1:35:18
  So sort of on those 3 levels it it just is a banger.
• 1:35:22
  Like I said to you before, I think the reason why this gets
• 1:35:25
  neglected is it is surrounded by more important books for the
• 1:35:30
  ark, but also even more vivid. You know, a cartoon world.
• 1:35:36
  The episode where the Doctor literally goes to hell and is
• 1:35:40
  tortured by death is the next book you.
• 1:35:43
  Know like, there's a lot going on at this.
• 1:35:45
  Time so and I can see it happening sometimes in the TV
• 1:35:47
  show where there's massive hit big hitters on the TV and then
• 1:35:51
  sometimes the ones just next door which are very very good
• 1:35:56
  get forgotten about. I think what we're saying is
• 1:35:59
  justice for history one O 1. Yes, yes, that's that's what we
• 1:36:04
  want. Like you see, I can't even speak
• 1:36:06
  Spanish anymore. Go on, La Justicia Justice.
• 1:36:10
  For I'm going to fight in a minute.
• 1:36:12
  Ciento you know. Spanish is so sexy, isn't it?
• 1:36:17
  It's a good luck, I just wish I spoke him more because it was
• 1:36:19
  not my main laughing question unfortunately.
• 1:36:21
  Most I've heard on the habs of a blood penknife before, you know.
• 1:36:24
  Probably others are. Slacking.
• 1:36:26
  Yeah, when I was in, Oh no, I maybe I shouldn't tell that
• 1:36:29
  story on on camera. Oh, well, when I was in
• 1:36:31
  Colombia, right, I had a three month romance with a lovely
• 1:36:35
  fella over there, a six foot Colombian model.
• 1:36:37
  But I didn't care what he looked like.
• 1:36:39
  I just wanted to talk Spanish to me because it was so sexy.
• 1:36:41
  It's a lovely language. As, as it's, it's like, so I had
• 1:36:46
  a, I was speaking earlier about, you know, teaching in France for
• 1:36:51
  a year and my flatmate was a guy from Columbia, actually 12 and
• 1:36:55
  he was the Spanish teacher and he always, constantly had a
• 1:36:59
  guitar and he was always playing like Latin American songs that
• 1:37:02
  he was learning. It's just it's great you're.
• 1:37:05
  Not having a romance of that man already.
• 1:37:08
  I don't know how, but yeah. Is he a heterosexual?
• 1:37:12
  Well, that would explain it all. I think you think he was.
• 1:37:15
  I'm sorry. Here I am prying into your
• 1:37:19
  personal life. I mean I did at the start of the
• 1:37:22
  previous. One anything else or are you
• 1:37:25
  happy to tie the knot on history?
• 1:37:27
  One nanomas that's all for me. I just Yep please.
• 1:37:30
  If anyone does want to to get a good pocket of an atypical
• 1:37:36
  Doctor Who story with a proper solid historical set, and then
• 1:37:41
  yeah, this is this is 1 to go back into.
• 1:37:44
  Yeah, dial your intelligence up, folks, and enjoy.
• 1:37:47
  And what a shame Maxo Halladay didn't write anymore Doctor Who.
• 1:37:51
  I know of all I think she is doing maybe or has done some big
• 1:37:55
  finish recently ish. Has she?
• 1:37:57
  Oh, I'll be so interested to to listen to that.
• 1:38:00
  She did a Faction Paradox book which was universally greeted
• 1:38:04
  with acclaim. So.
• 1:38:07
  Yeah, because she was doing like, yeah, like you see, like
• 1:38:12
  the, the, the fashion para stuff back got a few years ago now, I
• 1:38:16
  think. But yeah, like when I saw on her
• 1:38:24
  website that she has she was doing, I don't know if it was
• 1:38:27
  Big Finish. It's it's some of the short
• 1:38:30
  trips. Oh yeah, it's Big Finish kind of
• 1:38:33
  Tales from the Vortex that's coming out actually this month.
• 1:38:37
  So she's done a short story called Dark is the Devil That
• 1:38:40
  Walks as part of some short trips.
• 1:38:45
  So she is, she's back in back in action for Doctor Who.
• 1:38:50
  So good to see her back because I might actually give that a
• 1:38:52
  listen because yes, I was quite a fan of this book.
• 1:38:57
  Well. Thank you very much for reading
• 1:38:59
  it and so soon after Sitting the Dead as well.
• 1:39:01
  I know you've got a lot of readings too for your own
• 1:39:03
  podcast, weirdly enough. You know, you're doing all the
• 1:39:07
  ones that are called too broad and too deep for the small
• 1:39:10
  screen. But I rather wonder, you know,
• 1:39:12
  if our last two on Hamster, those are the two books that
• 1:39:14
  have been too broad and too deep for the small screen.
• 1:39:17
  Genuinely like, yeah, it's I don't know why that that Monica
• 1:39:20
  wasn't used for for this either of the 8th Doctor books. 6 magic
• 1:39:24
  parties and towns being bombed I mean.
• 1:39:27
  It's all going on. On here, would you?
• 1:39:31
  Now, we've already had this discussion, but let's pretend we
• 1:39:33
  haven't. All right?
• 1:39:34
  I've got an idea for us to do a third book, which might be quite
• 1:39:38
  a quicker read because it is a target book.
• 1:39:42
  But how would you feel about heading underground with me and
• 1:39:47
  facing some glistening wet tentacles?
• 1:39:51
  Sounds like a regular Wednesday evening here so.
• 1:39:55
  What goes down at that Doctor Who club?
• 1:39:57
  Oh, nothing. Oh, is it all orgies?
• 1:40:00
  You're all pretending you're sitting around talking about the
• 1:40:02
  twins dilemma, but actually. Yeah, this is Morvindale.
• 1:40:05
  I'm what's happening. Yeah.
• 1:40:07
  No, no, I am. Yeah.
• 1:40:08
  I I would be quite interested in that proposal do.
• 1:40:12
  You think Eddie Bob will have a clue what book I'm talking about
• 1:40:14
  on that? Description.
• 1:40:16
  I'll be curious. We've given that 30 seconds to
• 1:40:19
  try and attempt to figure out what book you're on about.
• 1:40:21
  Why don't you tell them? It's Dalek.
• 1:40:26
  Robert Shearman. And he's about to, bizarrely
• 1:40:29
  enough, novelise Jubilee, isn't it?
• 1:40:32
  Which Dalek is based on. Yeah, it's a quite an
• 1:40:34
  interesting choice to do. And you know, I, I don't know if
• 1:40:39
  they've, I think this is the second big finish that they're
• 1:40:42
  doing as a target. Like I think he's there was
• 1:40:44
  times at midnight as well. Yeah.
• 1:40:46
  And I don't like to get that one.
• 1:40:48
  Yeah, like I'm curious how that adaptations of those go as well
• 1:40:53
  down the line compared to like TV episodes, which can in itself
• 1:40:58
  vary quite wildly from ATV episodes, but from an audio,
• 1:41:01
  like the visuals are going to be different.
• 1:41:04
  Since you've proven to be a man who's not frightened of a little
• 1:41:07
  research, can I ask you to do a small bit of research for this
• 1:41:10
  one? That will be a lot of fun.
• 1:41:13
  Sure. Well, I was going to say, right,
• 1:41:14
  If you could just somehow squeeze in watching the episode
• 1:41:18
  and listening to Jubilee as well, then we can have a really
• 1:41:22
  interesting conversation about how this thing is mutating over
• 1:41:26
  time. Is it the only Doctor Who's
• 1:41:28
  story that started as an audio, became ATV story, then was
• 1:41:31
  novelized, and then was novelized again but as the
• 1:41:35
  original version? Yeah, it's kind of went in a
• 1:41:37
  whole kind of, I don't know what that word is to describe words
• 1:41:41
  that spell the same backwards in terms like say race car, but
• 1:41:47
  that's what's essentially happened there.
• 1:41:48
  When you've went to Jubilee and Dalek, then the novelisation of
• 1:41:52
  Dalek and the novelisation of Jubilee.
• 1:41:55
  So we're back to the we're back to Jubilee level.
• 1:41:58
  But yeah, it's it's when the. Shipment just can't let it go.
• 1:42:00
  Do you know what I think I can give that later spin?
• 1:42:04
  You. Know it's a good idea I You can
• 1:42:06
  never stop selling your good ideas and if that's what you
• 1:42:10
  want us to do while you're in. Well, if you're prepared to
• 1:42:13
  experience free versions of the same story, I can't wait.
• 1:42:16
  Let's do it. Anthony, thank you very much for
• 1:42:19
  your time. Will you do one last very small
• 1:42:22
  plug for your podcast please? Yes.
• 1:42:24
  So if anyone wishes to catch our episodes on the virtual New
• 1:42:29
  Adventures with the 2 broad 2 Deep podcasts.
• 1:42:32
  So that's at 2 broad 2 deep pods with the number 2 on Blue Sky
• 1:42:36
  and Instagram and two broad 2 deep Doctor Who podcast on
• 1:42:41
  Facebook as well. We've just done transit, so you
• 1:42:45
  don't need to worry about our state of health after that.
• 1:42:48
  Definitely need to listen to it though.
• 1:42:52
  But yes, we're looking forward to continuing down the line next
• 1:42:57
  with High Science and others. I think the pet might come out
• 1:43:02
  by the time this is out. So I'll be in the doldrums
• 1:43:04
  trying to go through that. You know, I'm doing the pit soon
• 1:43:08
  as well. We'll do it together.
• 1:43:10
  All right, we'll set, we'll set up like a therapy group.
• 1:43:14
  Yes, a group of solidarity at people's front for the PET.
• 1:43:20
  Although I'm fairly slow and we will have exactly the same
• 1:43:23
  perspective on it. I'll tell you what, I'll cut it
• 1:43:26
  there.