Latest / A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast / Hamster Book Club - Ghost Light by Marc Platt (featuring Anthony Carroll)

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Hamster Book Club - Ghost Light by Marc Platt (featuring Anthony Carroll) · A Hamster With a Blunt Penknife - a Doctor Who Commentary podcast

• 0:40
  The Anthony Quintessence of evil.
• 0:47
  Corruption Incarnate. Of course you're not.
• 0:51
  Hello, Anthony. Welcome to the book club.
• 0:55
  Thank you. It's no, you've just instead got
• 0:57
  another chattering, jibbering ape to join you instead.
• 1:01
  That's me, isn't it? According to the wise words of
• 1:06
  Mr. Guernsey, Nick, I think that might be me.
• 1:10
  That's a little weird joke between us which nobody will
• 1:12
  understand. How you doing today actually?
• 1:14
  I'm doing good, I'm doing good rising the high still of our
• 1:19
  latest episode doing on Lucifer rising.
• 1:21
  So I mean the good era of watching your adventures life
• 1:25
  is. Pleased.
• 1:26
  I'm so pleased you have finally read a decent book.
• 1:29
  You know, I, I. Assume.
• 1:31
  When we was talking about deceit beyond obviously the fact that I
• 1:35
  forgot to record it and so you had to try and scramble together
• 1:38
  some kind. I have an edit with my input
• 1:42
  which probably was substantial so I apologise.
• 1:45
  It's all good. I could just sort of see the
• 1:47
  despair in your eyes as you'd gone through, you know, the pit
• 1:51
  and transit and see recently, and I'm thinking, oh, man, he's
• 1:56
  really starting to question life choices.
• 1:58
  And then you read Loose Verizon. Yep.
• 2:00
  And then that that sparkle has returned to my life.
• 2:03
  I'm, I'm finally, you know, able to turn pages and looking
• 2:08
  forward to what I see on the next in a lot of books.
• 2:11
  And you have helped that as well by having me read what we're
• 2:14
  doing today as well. Oh, break out the colonarts.
• 2:17
  I'm so. Happy.
• 2:21
  Oh, sorry, go today. I'm so sorry.
• 2:23
  I'll be the last one, I promise. I don't know if he listens to
• 2:26
  this actually. Yeah, like I would assume he
• 2:28
  wouldn't want to listen to me. If we have sort of cross
• 2:31
  contamination in our audiences, I assume we do, right?
• 2:34
  They're live talking. They didn't talk about the
• 2:36
  books. Yeah.
• 2:37
  I mean, surely, surely it's it's not exactly.
• 2:39
  It's a small pool at the first instance.
• 2:42
  So yeah, surely we'll have that crossover.
• 2:45
  And do you know, I mean, can I say this, please on on the
• 2:48
  actual call. How lovely.
• 2:49
  The you know, you got to go up to Rob Sherman recently at the
• 2:54
  BFI and and he went, my God, you're on that shitty podcast
• 3:00
  with Joe Ford. Weren't you talking about my
• 3:01
  book? Yes, I finally plugged up the
• 3:04
  courage to go up at the bar after the BFI event to be like
• 3:08
  your Dalek. The validation was great.
• 3:09
  And he was like, oh, just you've done that podcast with Joe and I
• 3:13
  was like, he listened to it. So yes, it was very nice to to
• 3:17
  to hear that from from Rob Shearman.
• 3:20
  Thank God we said nice things about it.
• 3:23
  Imagine he got up to him and he said, oh, listen to that you
• 3:26
  prick, you know? Well, indeed, I mean like I mean
• 3:29
  I've before we did the seat, I think I tagged Peter Double
• 3:32
  Evans into our post about it to try and get feedback.
• 3:36
  And I after the episode, I decided to not tag Peter Double
• 3:41
  Evans because I don't think he wanted to hear what we said
• 3:45
  about his literary career. It's a tricky old thing tagging,
• 3:49
  isn't it? I mean, over the years, five
• 3:51
  years I've been doing this now 1000 years, I've been trying to
• 3:53
  sort of how critical can I be and tag somebody is like the
• 3:59
  sort of the line. But then I started like having
• 4:01
  my friends on, you know, and making friends with people that
• 4:04
  I was terrible about in episodes.
• 4:07
  And I thought, well, if I'm slagging off people I like, then
• 4:10
  never mind. Well, I mean, he might well
• 4:12
  still see the post, to be honest.
• 4:14
  I mean, because I follow him on Instagram and he just posts
• 4:19
  things like he's doing that. I think he's doing a conversion
• 4:21
  on his house now, like doing an extension.
• 4:24
  But all the tags are like hashtag Doctor Who, hashtag
• 4:27
  Virgin publishing version, New adventures.
• 4:30
  So he's trying to draw in us to his Instagram life, but I don't
• 4:35
  know if he wants to be drawn into our Instagram life where we
• 4:38
  talk about his sexy novels not. Like hashtag black lace #consent
• 4:43
  hashtag, you know? Hashtag.
• 4:46
  Was it deviant that he called? Himself.
• 4:48
  Oh yeah, no. Pretty illegal.
• 4:50
  Pervert, Pervert. That was what he called all.
• 4:52
  Those things, bless him. Well, I mean, I dread to think
• 4:56
  what that conversion on his house is going to turn into,
• 4:59
  honestly. But probably, yeah.
• 5:02
  Library for the new adventures maybe?
• 5:05
  Yeah, just one Virgin New Adventure, one Blacklace.
• 5:07
  One Virgin New Adventure 1 Blacklace.
• 5:09
  I can't talk. I've got a library downstairs,
• 5:11
  which is mostly doctoral books. All right.
• 5:13
  And all the virgin New Adventures there.
• 5:14
  So, yeah, sing Happy days. Well, actually, what are we here
• 5:19
  to talk about today? I can't even remember whose idea
• 5:22
  this was. Probably mine.
• 5:24
  I think it was yours. I can't remember why.
• 5:26
  Oh no, I think it was because you just wanted me to experience
• 5:28
  some good 7th Doctor work on the page because I was in that sort
• 5:33
  of doldrum. And but we're doing Ghost Light
• 5:36
  by Mark Platt, the target novelization.
• 5:39
  But a big question for you then, before we even start talking
• 5:41
  about the book, and it's the only time I can kind of do it
• 5:43
  when I do targets is the hell do you think of the TV version of
• 5:49
  Ghost Light? I've.
• 5:50
  Always loved ghost light. I got the VHS when I was like I
• 5:56
  bought it on eBay I was desperate to buy it.
• 5:59
  I had to get my dad to buy it because I didn't have an eBay
• 6:02
  account was like 10. So I had to tell him how to bid
• 6:06
  and how to bid for specifically a VHS of Ghost Light.
• 6:11
  And it was mainly because of the cover, because I really loved,
• 6:15
  you know, it's got that stained glass style sort of thing on it,
• 6:20
  that sort of dark cover. And I was like, this is this is
• 6:22
  something I want to watch and. Sort of the, you know, the sort
• 6:26
  of pulsing light thing in the spaceship on the cover, the big
• 6:29
  round thing. Yeah, it had, it had that on it
• 6:32
  as like at the time I thought it was just some form of like, I
• 6:36
  don't know, Victorian like stained glass or something like
• 6:40
  that. It's kind of at the bottom in
• 6:42
  that way and it's got, it's basically what we're doing in
• 6:45
  that early 90s stage when they had the drawn covers and I
• 6:49
  really loved the drawn covers of the VHS's.
• 6:53
  Realistic at times, aren't they? Yeah, exactly.
• 6:56
  And like that one, especially dragon fire.
• 6:59
  I really love the dragon fire one as well.
• 7:01
  Like those covers just yeah, you could have just done it with
• 7:05
  images in that way, but it just brings something to life in a
• 7:09
  sort of very atmospheric way for what a very atmospheric stories
• 7:12
  like Ghostly and yeah, that that cover drew me in and I after
• 7:18
  watching that was I said I don't think I understood it.
• 7:21
  I just was like, whoa, it's cookie Victorian stuff and
• 7:27
  everyone's singing the song and yeah, it's it's just full of
• 7:31
  zeriness and I loved it at the time.
• 7:34
  It absolutely leans into, oh, this is such a cliche to say so
• 7:37
  I apologise. But it leans into the BB CS
• 7:40
  strengths, right? Period drama.
• 7:42
  It's they can do that way better than they can do.
• 7:44
  I mean, Battlefield came before this and they struggle a lot
• 7:47
  with the production there where they're trying to do
• 7:49
  interdimensional war with Knights in the English
• 7:52
  countryside. But if they're asked to build a
• 7:54
  house, you know, in Victoria and London, my God, the production
• 7:58
  value is through the roof. That beautiful set with a
• 8:01
  staircase? Yeah, exactly.
• 8:03
  Enormous, doesn't it? And the fact that it's like it
• 8:07
  just actually feels like a house.
• 8:09
  It feels like you're exploring this, this old mansion.
• 8:13
  And the costumes naturally are absolutely to the point of what
• 8:18
  it needs to be the only place. I mean, like you say, it still
• 8:22
  does fall down in some product. I mean that the actual spaceship
• 8:27
  in the basement is. Mind you, I mean this is
• 8:31
  nostalgia talking now. I mean, I loved it back in the
• 8:34
  day, so I don't think I'm seeing it for a critical eyes.
• 8:38
  Yeah. I mean, it's it's like the very,
• 8:41
  very simplistic crystal things on a small sort of table that
• 8:47
  really space basket. Lozenges in the book, doesn't
• 8:51
  it? Yeah.
• 8:52
  And then like having that old wooden table like halfway down
• 8:56
  the set and it's like it doesn't quite still old salary sort of
• 9:01
  thing when it's thinking to try and do that as it's been
• 9:05
  disguised to be then revealed as a spaceship.
• 9:08
  But it's, yeah, that's the only thing that maybe the tracks and
• 9:12
  the story, but it doesn't detract on the page at least
• 9:13
  because I don't need to imagine what I saw on the on the screen.
• 9:17
  This was my one of my, you know, when you're younger and you try
• 9:20
  and sort of beguile non Doctor Who fans with a Doctor Who
• 9:25
  story. So this was one of my go TOS and
• 9:27
  my friend Luke Cooper Berry. Hello Luke.
• 9:30
  He won't be listening to this. I will never ever forget because
• 9:35
  he never let me forget watching Ghost Light.
• 9:38
  He watched the 1st 2 episodes and he was like, oh, this is so
• 9:41
  creepy. Well, it's got great atmosphere.
• 9:44
  You know, Gwendlyn going around with a chloroform, you know,
• 9:49
  just his face peeling off. He was so on board.
• 9:53
  And then freaking light emerges in episode 3.
• 9:58
  And all I heard, and, you know, kids are cruel, was look at
• 10:04
  these microbes. They're revolving.
• 10:07
  Even as I speak. You know, all I would hear was
• 10:10
  that for 10 years, every time I saw him, I said, I know, I know,
• 10:14
  it's camp. All right, go away.
• 10:17
  It very much is. And well, this is the thing.
• 10:19
  It's like, like I said, I didn't understand fully at the time
• 10:23
  what it was all about. I just moments like that and
• 10:27
  moments like, you know, the cream of Scotland Yard, all
• 10:32
  these little lines and it's just, it's just fun.
• 10:36
  And I didn't follow what was happening.
• 10:37
  I still it took me until I think this week to understand what
• 10:40
  like who like all in. There isn't it?
• 10:43
  I mean, it is in the book, yeah. But like, we're not thick for
• 10:48
  not understanding it. It's just that it's maybe
• 10:51
  communicating on screen is much harder, especially the broadcast
• 10:55
  version because of, of cuts, because of, you know, the
• 10:59
  tightness of what you're trying to do on screen.
• 11:02
  That makes it a bit hard to communicate that story, perhaps.
• 11:07
  I think the information is there on the screen, but it isn't
• 11:13
  communicated in a way with much context or explanation.
• 11:18
  So so there are the lines of like, you know, the surveys,
• 11:21
  Josiah, what control is, you know what light's doing.
• 11:26
  It's all that it's all stated, but it's then it put, it's
• 11:31
  presented in sort of eccentric metaphor and things like this
• 11:34
  all the time. So you, you know, it's all open
• 11:37
  to interpretation as well. So whereas the book is kind of
• 11:40
  explicit about what's happening, thank God.
• 11:45
  No, exactly. It needs and it needs that.
• 11:47
  And it helps to like, you know, folk have said on this podcast
• 11:52
  before about how tennis sticks would cover with a line to try
• 11:56
  and give context and it needed that.
• 11:59
  A lot of skeletal lines to help give context to what is there in
• 12:04
  terms of that story. But given, yeah, those sort of
• 12:08
  reelings to to help navigate you through because to.
• 12:11
  Get trying to be deliberately obscure on screen.
• 12:14
  Or do you think it was just hacked pieces?
• 12:18
  I mean, judging by the time, I mean that that was commonplace
• 12:21
  for that season and the general carpal time was to have things
• 12:25
  cut and hacked away because, you know, writers were coming in,
• 12:30
  huge writers were coming in like Bountiful with ideas and
• 12:35
  couldn't wrangle the script down to fit on the screen and a lot
• 12:39
  of occasions. And you know, judging by it
• 12:42
  because of what is it the walk print they've got on the blue
• 12:44
  ray as well. And I watched that which is.
• 12:47
  Quite a lot of guys, isn't it? Yeah, it expands some of that.
• 12:52
  Not not so much the the explanation side, but just the
• 12:56
  kind of well, building side that helps let you believe about.
• 12:59
  Because there's a lot of like scenes and, you know, drama that
• 13:04
  happens like almost every moment that you have to kind of get
• 13:09
  into the next scene with rather than having time to think about
• 13:11
  what you just saw or whatever. I understand Frank Windsor was
• 13:15
  quite unhappy that so many of Inspector Mckenzie's scene were
• 13:18
  cut out of the final result. Well, I mean, he's not really
• 13:22
  like, even even reading the book, he's not exactly in it
• 13:26
  that much in the first instance, to be honest.
• 13:30
  I, I'd love, I love the script. I think it's one of the best
• 13:33
  scripts that ever came out of classic Who.
• 13:36
  I mean lions such as? I wanted to see how it worked,
• 13:40
  so I dismantled it whilst holding that woman's arm.
• 13:43
  Or scratch the Victorian veneer and something nasty will come
• 13:48
  crawling out. It's just full bursting with
• 13:50
  great lines. Exactly, and especially for
• 13:53
  characterization that I think this is the best Ace and Doctor
• 13:57
  stability. I agree, yeah.
• 13:59
  Like in terms of not just the main thing that everyone
• 14:02
  discusses about, you know, the Doctor taking Ace back to
• 14:06
  Perivale and not realizing that's actually a big part of
• 14:10
  it, but they're actual, you know, dynamic.
• 14:13
  Like they get on so well within the story and the back and forth
• 14:17
  of dialogue and part of between them is just crackling on screen
• 14:22
  and in the book like almost every scene that they have
• 14:25
  together. And they still get to have a a
• 14:30
  blistering row at the end of episode 1.
• 14:33
  But he also gets to comfort her in scenes as well and hold her
• 14:37
  when she's crying. He doesn't realise, does he,
• 14:40
  that she burned the house down. He knows that she's got history
• 14:43
  with the house When he realises he's like, oh shit, what have I
• 14:46
  done? You know, like, what the hell
• 14:47
  have I done? And then you get a wonderful,
• 14:50
  you know, bus stations, burnt toast.
• 14:52
  That scene with the two of, I mean, I, I think that scene on
• 14:55
  screen is Sylvester Mccoy's single best performance in
• 14:59
  Doctor Who. That one scene, he's so word
• 15:01
  perfect. He's so intense and that sort of
• 15:04
  melancholy that he brings to Doctor Who.
• 15:08
  Oh, it's just magic, that scene. Exactly like we have this level
• 15:14
  of like characterization that allows them to be fun together
• 15:23
  and then have really confrontational but serious and
• 15:26
  melancholic moments to give in a way that it's a perfect blend of
• 15:30
  what you want from a doctor and companion relation that
• 15:34
  sometimes balances one way where it's still just happy and lovely
• 15:38
  or like in the virtual new adventures and well.
• 15:40
  I was going to ask you about that.
• 15:42
  Like I'm not doing that to to bait you, but like how does it
• 15:46
  compare? Oh.
• 15:48
  Yeah, I mean, it's hard to compare because it's such a
• 15:55
  different ace to what I'm currently reading right now
• 15:58
  through, you know, new spaces. I.
• 16:02
  Think it's Space Beach I. Mean, true, but she is she's a
• 16:09
  different character in that way. And they do have those moments
• 16:13
  of confrontation and, you know, you know, it explores what their
• 16:20
  relation needs to kind of flesh out.
• 16:23
  And in some ways it's a really helpful thing to do, but doesn't
• 16:27
  have those more tender moments like we have for the book.
• 16:31
  Like, you know, when the, you know, things like the going to
• 16:34
  the to the ace school of etiquette and things like that.
• 16:37
  And just let let little lines that they have together back and
• 16:39
  forth. And we know bats and the belfry,
• 16:41
  all of this stuff that provides. Yeah.
• 16:46
  You know, a level of connection that they have together when
• 16:52
  things in the Virgin You adventures is about the complete
• 16:55
  desk connection that they have and how definitely are those
• 16:58
  people now. But it doesn't evolve past that.
• 17:01
  It just keeps saying or they just they're two separate people
• 17:04
  now that do not get on. And it's a bit of a shame
• 17:07
  because. So interesting if the show would
• 17:09
  continue just one more year, we a sort of been written out
• 17:15
  somewhere in the middle of that year and the new character would
• 17:17
  have come in Reign. She never would have appeared in
• 17:20
  any of those new adventures. I wouldn't have done any of
• 17:22
  that, you know? Yeah, that would have been
• 17:25
  ideal, but. Just.
• 17:27
  How many, you know, just a Betty.
• 17:29
  I just. I love baby.
• 17:30
  Oh. You've seen nothing.
• 17:33
  Yeah, I'd say. All right, You've got the best
• 17:35
  pennies to come. Oh, even what we have in it I'm
• 17:38
  enjoying so far. But like that, that thing like
• 17:40
  Kissy is, is that you can have that level of disconnect with a
• 17:45
  companion that breaks a companion or breaks a relation
• 17:48
  with the Doctor, but you then have to make that a final point.
• 17:53
  Like, you know, I, I say in our episode about Blues for rising,
• 17:57
  I think that should have been Ace's last story.
• 18:00
  In the same way, you know, if Mike Yates, an invasion of the
• 18:02
  dinosaurs kind of betrays the the Doctor and everyone in that,
• 18:07
  you know, that's a final point where you have a disconnect with
• 18:10
  a, with a companion and you leave them.
• 18:14
  I mean, even love and war, right?
• 18:15
  That could have been a good place to leave her because she's
• 18:18
  furious and goes off at the end of that.
• 18:20
  It would have been a dramatic way to palm.
• 18:23
  But but that's yeah, and and if you wanted to do something like
• 18:27
  that to have an evolved version, then it makes sense and you can
• 18:30
  do that within a sort of three book arc structure like you
• 18:33
  would they did do and end it. The Atlas for raising Ace would
• 18:39
  on screen if this was see, of course, like this is this is one
• 18:42
  of the this first instances, along with things like seekers
• 18:47
  fabric, things like that, where you can have you have that arc
• 18:50
  starting to plot about distrust within the doctor.
• 18:53
  And you'd then have it as a sort of third time total break like
• 18:59
  they have in something like Luciferase and where she just is
• 19:01
  like I've had it. I've distrust this guy and maybe
• 19:06
  betrays the doctor in some story and see season 27 I I don't
• 19:12
  think it would have went down that route per SE because.
• 19:17
  Chemistry is so sweet that I exactly would have felt like a
• 19:21
  portrayal of of the actors, even nothing.
• 19:23
  Yeah, I they would have felt like they couldn't portray that
• 19:26
  because that, like we say, the connection they have on screen,
• 19:31
  even in the dialogue that we then see within the book, it's
• 19:34
  it's it's fizzing with that, that connection, that feeling,
• 19:38
  because that's that's what Mark Platt gets even when doing the
• 19:41
  book, is the relationship between Sophie Eldred and
• 19:44
  Sylvester McCoy is, is it's just very natural and it can be very
• 19:49
  playful. Even when they are having really
• 19:53
  strong scenes of disagreement with each other and feelings of
• 19:57
  betrayal with each other. Like it still will shine through
• 20:01
  that they have this bond and connection which we don't get
• 20:03
  sometimes in the virtual adventures.
• 20:05
  I mean, I was very grateful in the book version, I didn't have
• 20:09
  to listen to Sophie Aldridge saying the line, you tricked me.
• 20:13
  This is terrifying. That's all going off in a fit of
• 20:17
  pique for a sort of full on Grange Hill.
• 20:20
  I think this is one of our strongest performances on the
• 20:22
  screen as well. But she's still Sophie Aldridge.
• 20:26
  You know, she she has her ceiling.
• 20:27
  It's quite low. All right, I'm going to because
• 20:31
  I know what last time we when we discussed Sophie out, I think
• 20:33
  I've dragged her a bit too much because.
• 20:37
  Enough ants, you know. Because I did I did drag like
• 20:41
  folk from the love and war audio adaptation and but I think like
• 20:47
  you see with maybe a ceiling like she does for me do well in
• 20:52
  the TV show. I I enjoy her in the TV show.
• 20:55
  It's when we're having books that are not, like I was saying,
• 21:00
  not getting that relation that Sophie and Sylvester have and
• 21:05
  her still doing that ceiling of a performance of teenagers,
• 21:09
  whatever. It doesn't work for me in that
• 21:12
  same way. But on screen and in this story
• 21:14
  in particular, I think she's she's great.
• 21:17
  She really manages to have those moments of of like betrayal with
• 21:24
  the Doctor, but also tending us with other characters like
• 21:27
  Gwendolyn in control. Like there's that there's she
• 21:29
  has a lot to do ace in this study.
• 21:32
  They both raise their game when they're surrounded by really
• 21:35
  great actors. And this is a prestige cast in
• 21:38
  Ghost Light, Yes, And so they don't really want to be held up.
• 21:41
  I mean, you know, I will always go on about the wind whipping up
• 21:45
  for her clothes in Curse of Fenrick and standing on that
• 21:48
  rock at the end guy. And I didn't know it was my mom
• 21:51
  and all that stuff. You know, like, I mean, please
• 21:53
  don't try pretend. To me, that's great acting
• 21:55
  because, I mean, we may have to part ways here.
• 21:59
  No, I mean, I'm not say she's like the best.
• 22:02
  Oh, I'm so pleased. Like acting like companion ever
• 22:07
  but I I always have a soft spot for for a son on TV.
• 22:12
  Everyone does. That's the problem.
• 22:14
  That's why I go on about her so much as I think no one's got any
• 22:17
  bloody critical faculties when it comes to Sophie.
• 22:19
  Audrey, because she's so nice, you know, everyone sort of gives
• 22:23
  her a pass. I mean, maybe I think I've only
• 22:28
  met her once when I was like 16, so I don't have much thoughts
• 22:33
  about how does a person, but it's it's the it's the
• 22:37
  character, it's the writing of the character that carries
• 22:39
  through a lot of stuff for me more often maybe who she is
• 22:43
  because comparing to other eaters of the show, whenever I
• 22:47
  would just go back and watch other bits of classic who I was
• 22:49
  like Ace was just a much more direct companion.
• 22:54
  And that's the thing that people talk about, about how it relates
• 22:57
  more and some more game the companion for folk who watch the
• 23:02
  new series and, and and and stuff like that.
• 23:04
  So it's why I think I've got that soft spot for perhaps for
• 23:08
  this. My, my issue with her is, and I
• 23:11
  thought, I promise you, we'll go back to Ghostart in a minute.
• 23:13
  Is actually, you brought this up.
• 23:18
  Is that the books? This book says it explicitly.
• 23:21
  She's supposed to be a delinquent.
• 23:22
  Yeah, she's supposed to be a lower class delinquent who's
• 23:26
  like 1617. Yeah.
• 23:28
  And rough and edgy. And then you hand that role to
• 23:31
  Sophie Aldred, who is a 20 something middle class BBC
• 23:36
  actress and sounds like it. She doesn't sound rough in any
• 23:39
  way, shape or form. And all of the, the, what's
• 23:43
  supposed to be a really edgy, quite dark character, it all
• 23:47
  gets smoothed out and becomes very PG13, very safe, very
• 23:52
  family friendly. And so I, I think the intention
• 23:56
  of the character is lost. Now saying that, I think her and
• 24:01
  McCoy have fabulous chemistry and they're very enjoyable to
• 24:04
  watch together. But I think what they were going
• 24:08
  for with Ace, which is fire bombs and you know, this angry,
• 24:12
  angry, edgy teenage girl, it's just not there at all for me
• 24:17
  because Sophie Audrey's playing it and she's a nice person.
• 24:23
  I mean for Sophie outed like I I it's hard for me to to know much
• 24:30
  of a difference of what specifically like a working
• 24:33
  class London style person was as a kid because all I had was
• 24:37
  EastEnders to inform me of what working class London.
• 24:40
  Probably right. I'll tell you now.
• 24:42
  They were in my eyes, OK. No, Yeah, I can imagine
• 24:45
  something now these days, yes. But like when watching Doctor
• 24:48
  Who initially and watching this, like when I was young, like I
• 24:53
  just assumed that's because it vaguely sounded like Pat Butcher
• 24:57
  or something. I was like, all right, that's
• 25:00
  that's probably accurate to to what she's surrounded by then or
• 25:03
  whatever she's. Saying far more about your
• 25:06
  upbringing than Sophie Aldridge, you know, Yeah.
• 25:10
  I mean, quite nice childhood, was it?
• 25:12
  You're comfortable. So John, are you wishing spring
• 25:15
  from Jesus? Like, yeah, but that was, I
• 25:19
  didn't have much experience of what that ought to sound like
• 25:22
  for her character and that way. So.
• 25:26
  So sort of, I don't see the caricature of it, but the sort
• 25:29
  of broad strokes of whatever she was going for did it for me
• 25:34
  anyway because I kind of got what she was trying to be as a
• 25:36
  kid, so. Without.
• 25:37
  So was my life growing up. Like, yeah, yeah.
• 25:40
  Not to say work with me, but I'm from a rough London City where
• 25:47
  it was literally like it wasn't handbags at all.
• 25:50
  It was bloody machetes outside the schools, you know?
• 25:53
  And and you know, they didn't say, well, rivet your kneecaps
• 25:57
  together like Ace, they said, you're a fucking cunt and I'm
• 26:00
  going to kill you with a knife. Like, do you know what I mean?
• 26:03
  Like so to me, this all feels very, I mean, of course, because
• 26:07
  it's for a family. Fair enough.
• 26:09
  But I really, I think Cartmel was going for something edgy,
• 26:12
  and I don't think there's anything edgy about it in any
• 26:15
  way apart from the fact she's got a ghetto blaster and a
• 26:18
  baseball bat, you know? Yeah.
• 26:21
  No, I would, I would, I would be this.
• 26:22
  I would be as critical as well if there was like a companion
• 26:26
  from like Spring Bonnet or somewhere in the East End of
• 26:29
  Glasgow and they sounded like there was sometimes verging on
• 26:34
  Alan coming when they were talking like.
• 26:36
  That's how I imagine everyone to sound like from there.
• 26:41
  Yeah, because yeah, they seem to like, because that's the thing
• 26:45
  that I can see in Scottish actors sometimes with him,
• 26:49
  whenever they go in certain productions, you can tell that
• 26:51
  they're maybe from the West End or something where they've got
• 26:53
  that stronger accent of a weaker accent that the event slip into
• 26:59
  when pretending to be a working class character in that way.
• 27:02
  So I can I can appreciate how you can pick up on it.
• 27:05
  As a kid, I wasn't picking up as much on the nuances of a like
• 27:08
  more working class London style accents when I was younger.
• 27:12
  So it's why it brushes for me a bit easier to accept, sort of
• 27:16
  fail to disease perhaps? Like in the 1st chapter of this
• 27:19
  book, I was like, yeah, I absolutely can see what they
• 27:21
  were going for with this character.
• 27:23
  Like, she's in the house, She's angry.
• 27:26
  Her black friend's house has been burnt down to the ground
• 27:30
  that she's close to. You know, she's anxious.
• 27:33
  It is a bit more of that sort of new adventures that, you know,
• 27:35
  really like a very angry young girl and kind of please, we
• 27:42
  didn't see that on screen because I don't know.
• 27:44
  So he would have been able to have done it.
• 27:45
  But yeah, I've dropped like that.
• 27:47
  What I will say about Ghost Light is I have read The Curse
• 27:52
  of Fenrick very recently and done an episode on it and I
• 27:56
  really struggled with it. The book because Ian Briggs, I
• 28:00
  think is a a far lesser writer than Platt and even Rona Monroe
• 28:07
  in that first series. He's he's he's new to writing
• 28:09
  books. And you can sort of tell because
• 28:11
  the prose is extremely meta traumatic.
• 28:14
  And you know, it was it was always pushing very hard, but it
• 28:20
  pushed into sort of pretentiousness.
• 28:22
  And I, I remember saying in the episode, my God, the new
• 28:25
  adventures writers have read this book and they've learnt all
• 28:29
  the wrong lessons from it. You know, whereas Ghost Light,
• 28:33
  I'm going to make a bold claim. I think this might be the most
• 28:37
  in terms of how it's written Now talk about the prose.
• 28:40
  It might be the most sophisticated book in the target
• 28:44
  range outside of the myth Makers, which is an extremely
• 28:48
  sophisticated book in that it's he's using complicated language
• 28:53
  in this book. There are references through the
• 28:57
  Hoo ha left, right and centre for things that you can go and
• 29:00
  explore. I was Googling throughout,
• 29:01
  reading this entire thing, trying to figure out what half
• 29:04
  of the things he was talking about was.
• 29:05
  It's thick paragraphs, it's long sentences.
• 29:09
  You know, it's, it's, it's complicated.
• 29:14
  You you have to work to read this I think.
• 29:17
  It, it can be, but it, it still doesn't lose that imagery within
• 29:22
  the writing as well. Because as much as just like,
• 29:26
  you know, a lot of descriptions of, of things and quite clever
• 29:31
  word play and stuff like that. There's, there's sometimes it
• 29:33
  just goes back to this is a target novelization.
• 29:36
  This is something for kids to help read to, you know, relate
• 29:40
  to what they might have saw on TV a few years ago.
• 29:42
  Like there's descriptions about how when you know when red
• 29:45
  fails, kind of order of the shining light.
• 29:48
  And he says it was like looking into knives or the furnace of a
• 29:52
  frozen son. And it's just it's a very simple
• 29:55
  sort of ideas. And and the same with when he
• 29:58
  says that Mrs. Pritchard is smiling later on, saying Mrs.
• 30:02
  Pritchard gave a smile that might cuddle milk or fighting
• 30:05
  puppies. She's.
• 30:07
  Just flying in this. Listen to this Yeah, all
• 30:09
  consuming outrage at the housekeeper's extraordinary
• 30:13
  audacity blinding him against her resemblance to a snake about
• 30:17
  to strike. Exactly like it has, it has
• 30:22
  descriptions like that, but also things that are just very simple
• 30:25
  and to the point about this is a token evaluation.
• 30:28
  This woman frightens puppies if she smiles.
• 30:31
  Like it gives kids an easy idea of what this person's about
• 30:35
  while it's giving us things like.
• 30:36
  Yeah, she like the the ideas on the clever word play and things
• 30:43
  like that, like. Because there's a lot of that
• 30:44
  with, you know, the like mentions about light and that
• 30:49
  fear of light that I think Ace mentions later on in the book
• 30:55
  when she's literally going through a glossary to to kind of
• 30:58
  find different terms and and the doctors like, yeah, that's the
• 31:03
  use of light too. And it's just like, I think it's
• 31:05
  the figures and that she finds. And it's like, it's nice to be
• 31:09
  word play bits like that that is in there.
• 31:11
  But kids in the 90s, they might just go past their heads in that
• 31:14
  way. But you still have it later on
• 31:17
  or earlier on in the books as well where you know, it just
• 31:21
  like, like literal husks are afraid of light.
• 31:25
  Like, you know #1 puts up the lamp and says they are afraid of
• 31:29
  light. That's like, yeah, Gig.
• 31:32
  It's it's kind of foreshadowing as well.
• 31:34
  So it still gives the message for both the kids reading it.
• 31:37
  And I sold folk decide to read it for you later.
• 31:42
  Oh, excuse me, You are a young nipper compared to me.
• 31:49
  Yeah, well as well, but I mean, there was tons of, there was a
• 31:53
  fabulous reference to Peter Quinn, wasn't there from Turn of
• 31:57
  the Screw in there. Oh yes, Turn of the screw.
• 31:59
  And I didn't realise there was a character called Mrs. Gruce in,
• 32:03
  yes, Turn of the Screw. That was absolutely vital to
• 32:07
  that story. So I went and read out about all
• 32:09
  of that and I was like, OK, so this is absolutely educating me
• 32:12
  as an adult as well. You know, Missus Beaton's Book
• 32:15
  of etiquette was in there, you know, just all sorts of of
• 32:18
  lovely, delicious little things. Maybe it's more like a go with
• 32:22
  me more like a a Disney movie there then where kids can watch
• 32:26
  it and there's lots of visual splendor and it's really
• 32:29
  enjoyable to to watch. Adults can watch it and you can
• 32:32
  see the metaphors and you can see other things that the script
• 32:36
  is trying to say that maybe goes over the kids heads, but means
• 32:39
  that you can watch it and take something from it as well.
• 32:42
  It's sort of working on levels, like I said, no sophisticated.
• 32:47
  Exactly. Yeah, like it has that multi
• 32:49
  layers for everyone who might want to try and read it, not
• 32:52
  just the kids who might want to be trying to pick up a target
• 32:56
  normalization. And it you know, like and it's
• 32:59
  stuff that even appears on screen as well as as with the
• 33:02
  kind of clever word play for write it as well.
• 33:04
  You like, there's still, you know, there must be a foreigner,
• 33:08
  Neanderfall, Gypsy blood. He nodded.
• 33:11
  And Or like, gone to see a man, about a dog, about a daughter,
• 33:15
  about a God. My heart knows that.
• 33:20
  Well done. And, you know, there's, there's,
• 33:23
  there's, you know, like lots of little lines and.
• 33:27
  Which is the Jackals and which is the height?
• 33:30
  And I think this, the book actually comes to the conclusion
• 33:32
  that they're both both right. It says at the end when they go
• 33:35
  off, they're both going to be changing in evolutionary terms
• 33:39
  wherever they like and and poor old Redfest Vancouver is going
• 33:42
  to have to keep an eye on both of them.
• 33:44
  Oh yeah, that's what I was, I was finding interesting
• 33:46
  throughout it because I was, I was, I was reading control in a
• 33:52
  certain way during it. Because at first it's like
• 33:56
  saying there's the madman that's behind the door, then it's about
• 34:00
  it and then it changes to she. It was almost kind of like this
• 34:03
  trans allegory in some way actually about this
• 34:05
  transitioning into, you know, a a a freedom, like the freedom of
• 34:09
  because that's a big thing for controls about the freedom to be
• 34:12
  themselves in a lot of ways. And I was, I don't know, it's,
• 34:15
  it's maybe I'm being too woke for the 1991 talking.
• 34:18
  About It's definitely a 2025 reading.
• 34:21
  Very much so. What's great, you can do that.
• 34:23
  They could do that. And you wouldn't have to say
• 34:26
  it's a trans allegory, it's just there.
• 34:28
  Yeah, because because like there's, there's a whole like
• 34:30
  controls thing is about freedom. And, and ironically in that, you
• 34:35
  know, she just wants the freedom to be herself.
• 34:37
  She goes through a rebellious stage to try and just work out
• 34:40
  the emotion side of it and then evolves into a woman, a lady.
• 34:45
  Like. A lady like.
• 34:46
  Lady, like I'm not going there. That's that's maybe when my
• 34:52
  algorithm falls apart perhaps. But you know, it was it was
• 34:56
  interesting having that area of like her focus about freedom to
• 35:00
  be whoever and she ultimately like succeeds in what, you know,
• 35:06
  Josiah fails to do because he is about control.
• 35:10
  Really. He's about dominance,
• 35:12
  controlling the whole of the society throughout it and wants
• 35:17
  to become Queen Victoria wants to become the a lady like figure
• 35:21
  who runs the empire as it were and feels because all he knows
• 35:27
  is control and not freedom for for others and things like that.
• 35:32
  And it's it's an interesting sort of comparison of of the two
• 35:36
  paths they go down and how controls one of just freedom of
• 35:40
  being herself ultimately succeeds.
• 35:42
  And you know, at the end of the day, whilst Josiah is, you know,
• 35:49
  trying to control too many things and ultimately fails and
• 35:54
  doing anything that he wants to do.
• 35:58
  I I found as well that Platt had taken a good long look at the
• 36:04
  production and I'm sure he was very pleased with the
• 36:06
  production. But he's got the opportunity
• 36:08
  with the book. He's got no budget.
• 36:11
  So there was descriptions like this beneath his dry translucent
• 36:16
  skin. She could make a make out
• 36:18
  another form moving like a snake about to Slough it's skin.
• 36:22
  That's Josiah in the lift. Now in the in the TV version,
• 36:27
  he's just got a bit of a scabby skin on his face.
• 36:30
  That is much fun. I mean, the description of
• 36:33
  light, where is it? And I was like, OK, that's what
• 36:36
  they were going for with light. Where is it?
• 36:40
  Hang on. Robed in liquid gold and silver
• 36:48
  with skin shimmering. It had a noble and terrible
• 36:52
  beauty of a seraph. I hope I've said that.
• 36:54
  Right? Fallen from its place behind the
• 36:57
  throne. I was like, OK, it's supposed to
• 36:59
  be a literal liquid gold Angel, you know, not just Ian Callum
• 37:04
  from EastEnders, sort of shimmering a bit.
• 37:09
  Yeah, no, it's it was very visceral about how luminous that
• 37:15
  that light was as a sort of Angel like creature.
• 37:20
  And I guess that's that's another thing as well with the
• 37:22
  name of the house with Gabriel Chase, you know, Gabriel being
• 37:26
  an Archangel who shone very brightly as well.
• 37:30
  And yeah, the idea of them kind of chasing around to kind of
• 37:35
  stop the Angel kind of being unleashed to offend this house
• 37:37
  as an interesting one. But I see.
• 37:41
  Thank you then. But I am, I found it interesting
• 37:49
  getting more time with lights near the end as well, because
• 37:53
  instead of like, just seeing a little ball fly out the gaffe,
• 37:56
  like, you get to experience what he experiences going around the
• 38:00
  planet as if he's like, you know, in the snowman or
• 38:03
  something flying around. Yeah.
• 38:06
  He actually, he, you know, starts off in England, doesn't
• 38:08
  he? And he goes, yeah, well, he sort
• 38:10
  of travels along rivers and then he's going across the sea.
• 38:13
  Yeah. And I wanted to ask you about
• 38:15
  that because obviously the the TV show deliberately keeps us
• 38:18
  inside the house. But actually, the book opens
• 38:22
  with a journey by that horse and car, by reverse Vancouver, going
• 38:27
  through the countryside and then, yeah, like travelling the
• 38:30
  the world at the end. Yeah.
• 38:32
  Does that enhance or hamper the book?
• 38:36
  Should it all be trapped inside the house?
• 38:41
  No, I get what you mean in terms of like it's, it does have that
• 38:43
  claustrophobic atmosphere. It's meant to be like no one can
• 38:46
  escape the house in that way. But it, it kind of does help to
• 38:52
  have specifically light to that because light is meant to have
• 38:56
  that sort of the ability to just go wherever they wish around the
• 39:00
  house. So it doesn't, you know, having
• 39:03
  that extent to just go wherever they wish is fine for me.
• 39:07
  Because that's what he can do. Whilst everyone else, you know,
• 39:11
  rooms are locked everywhere, people are stuck in places in
• 39:14
  different aspects of the house and they can't go down certain
• 39:18
  bits like there's and I want for everyone else to be trapped
• 39:22
  within the house but light just as they please appears whatever
• 39:26
  they want and so. Yeah, at the speed of thought,
• 39:29
  doesn't he? At the speed of thought, yeah.
• 39:32
  Imagine being able to do that. Imagine the mischief I could get
• 39:35
  up to. I could travel the speed of
• 39:37
  thought. Oh, wonderful.
• 39:40
  But like you said as well-being able to be in his head.
• 39:43
  I think that's where a lot of the, I mean, we get scenes from
• 39:47
  Josiah's point of view, from Nimrods, from controls and from
• 39:50
  lights, right? So all the biggies.
• 39:53
  So it's really clear who they are, what they're doing there,
• 39:58
  what's happening to them. You know where it's in the TV
• 40:02
  show. It's a bit muddy, but there's a
• 40:05
  wonderful bit from Light's point of view right near the end.
• 40:10
  Where? Where was it now?
• 40:14
  As a mind, it existed on the brink of insanity, he was sure
• 40:17
  of that. It's a catalog obsession that
• 40:21
  had driven it here, but it might have started as a work of love.
• 40:25
  But if, if I was as old as the universe and rich and diversity
• 40:29
  of his work had become an unrelenting task and then
• 40:32
  torturous grinding labour that could never be relinquished.
• 40:36
  There will always be new subjects to catalog.
• 40:38
  Is Light a Doctor Who fan? That was actually what I was
• 40:43
  going to be seen at the end. It was very.
• 40:45
  That. That that the final story to be
• 40:48
  made was one where basically Aidan Levine's the villain.
• 40:52
  And he has a breakdown because because he I can't handle it.
• 40:56
  You can't handle change. They keep discovering missing
• 40:59
  episodes that I didn't find, you know?
• 41:03
  Oh dear. Do what?
• 41:04
  That's yeah, him. You know, like turning Mrs.
• 41:08
  Pritchard to stone at the end. And and and such is actually the
• 41:12
  equivalent of E Levine turning William Hartnell and Patrick
• 41:17
  Chase into into EA puppets so that we don't have missing
• 41:20
  episodes. But it's just to do a long
• 41:22
  things don't change. I mean, it's savage if it is.
• 41:27
  And do you know, this is the era where we had those, you know,
• 41:32
  characters in the circus? You know, that was absolutely
• 41:35
  supposed to be the BBC hierarchy, right?
• 41:38
  Condemning Doctor Who with their zeros.
• 41:41
  And that wee guy and the bike as well as.
• 41:43
  The Doctor Who fan. So I don't think it, I don't
• 41:46
  think they're above suggesting that, you know, cataloguing so
• 41:52
  precisely and trying to keep everything in its place sort of
• 41:58
  hampers creativity and imagination.
• 42:03
  Yeah, exactly. Like it is a very lovely analogy
• 42:07
  for that and kind of it's been helpful in the story as well to
• 42:12
  well, interesting in the story to have that kind of you have a
• 42:18
  lot more of dialogue or kind of like in a monologue of light,
• 42:23
  feeling a lot of annoyance about learning more and more about
• 42:26
  Josiah. Because as much as you know,
• 42:30
  there's the evolution side of it, he's more and more annoyed
• 42:33
  about him basically doing what he is, which is someone who
• 42:38
  wishes to control the whole situation in a very like hyper
• 42:43
  focused way. And like it's it's almost this
• 42:46
  jealousy between that you might have.
• 42:49
  I think about it because he's coming out and he's yeah, first
• 42:52
  of all, not knowing what to do about all this evolution
• 42:54
  happening around. But he would be doing what
• 42:57
  Josiah does of just trying to control the whole situation.
• 43:00
  And just like it's, it's an interesting thing of their
• 43:04
  dynamics and how they they kind of interact.
• 43:07
  Because I'm surprised Big Finish haven't dug another whale in in
• 43:11
  the Endless Bottom. Give them our dears, Anthony.
• 43:15
  All right, they have. They have eaten the tale of
• 43:18
  classic Doctor Who Enough. To have had a you know a a pre
• 43:24
  ghost light spaceship with light control and Josiah.
• 43:29
  You've doomed us all that. Because that's exactly what they
• 43:34
  would have done that some. 16 parts, 4 box sets featuring
• 43:38
  Jackie Tyler, River Song, the Fields and the Candy Man.
• 43:45
  For some reason, I mean, I like to think about maybe like, it's
• 43:50
  a terrible parody of those sort of Doctor Who fan groups.
• 43:53
  You're a member of a Doctor Who fan group, aren't you?
• 43:56
  Yeah. So usually you have your sort of
• 43:57
  Levine esque, you know, monster in charge of it all.
• 44:01
  I'm sure you don't, but maybe you do.
• 44:04
  I don't think David Cherry would take.
• 44:05
  I mean, he's very much not a leader living for.
• 44:09
  Well, he's our light character, right?
• 44:10
  He's technically in charge and catalong everything and making
• 44:13
  sure everyone's, you know, sticking to the hierarchy.
• 44:16
  And then you've got the other fans sort of there all sort of
• 44:18
  vying for attention in their own ways.
• 44:20
  That's just hire and control, you know, And then you've got
• 44:24
  Nimrod. He's a very serious, sensible
• 44:26
  fan. You know, he's just sort of
• 44:27
  observing everything from a distance.
• 44:29
  And then it all happened around him.
• 44:30
  It literally says that in the book at one point.
• 44:33
  So he's going to watch the events just take place and he'll
• 44:35
  tell his stories later. That'd be me sort of going
• 44:38
  coming back over and saying, oh, Mark, you won't believe what
• 44:41
  happened at the group today. My goals like.
• 44:44
  And then then Red Veil is is is just kept in his straight jacket
• 44:48
  and being seen. Actually, I think Sophia is an
• 44:51
  OK actress. That's the phrase of Gregory of
• 44:54
  the group. You know, like.
• 44:55
  You have. To keep him straight jacketed
• 44:56
  because he starts going on about how great the Dominators is and
• 44:59
  things like that. He has a he has a point for
• 45:02
  about 10 minutes of the of episode 1.
• 45:05
  But yeah. Who red versus or Fraser?
• 45:09
  Fraser, 10 minutes, you say? You're kind, Anthony.
• 45:13
  That first bit of episode 1 of the Dominators is basically it's
• 45:17
  it's the original slasher film as as that because.
• 45:21
  Nappies. All the all the all the all
• 45:26
  these cool kids going to a place they shouldn't be.
• 45:30
  They all then get absolutely annihilated with their faces
• 45:33
  taking off. It's just it's framed the 13th.
• 45:35
  Just 25 kids for Cox. It looks about 50 collies.
• 45:40
  Amazing adventures on this quarry.
• 45:42
  Wow. My God.
• 45:44
  Maybe we've got 2 dominators one day, Target.
• 45:46
  Let's do it. Yes, I see.
• 45:49
  That's pretty good actually. Did You Know?
• 45:52
  Is going to be super violent then.
• 45:54
  It is properly violent. That bit where what you say it's
• 45:58
  slasher thick where the woman's face gets turned into sort of an
• 46:01
  ink blotch in episode 1. Oh, the way he describes that is
• 46:04
  absolutely horrific. I can imagine.
• 46:07
  Yeah, sort of melting off, you know, And we're acid.
• 46:11
  Did you notice you did? Because I wrote in a message to
• 46:15
  you that episode 1 takes up the entire first half of this book,
• 46:21
  and two and three are crammed into the second-half.
• 46:24
  Why did you imagine that was? I guess what we'll talk about
• 46:27
  earlier of like the the world building that this does or the
• 46:31
  the atmosphere that this book has.
• 46:34
  There's a lot of that really kind of wanting to be fleshed
• 46:40
  out, I think, and, and just wanting to get when we're
• 46:44
  talking early about having time to believe, getting that time to
• 46:47
  believe initially and that basically first episode to
• 46:50
  experience what the house is like, what entering the houses.
• 46:55
  Because you know, like you say, the latter half is like where
• 46:59
  all the scenes are happening of like, oh, someone's in the, the
• 47:04
  toy room, the inspectors coming out the drawer.
• 47:07
  There's things happening there. Nimrod's trying to do something
• 47:11
  that there's a lot happening. But the first half is
• 47:14
  essentially to just get experiences of this as a, a
• 47:17
  standard Victorian house and be lulled into that sense of
• 47:22
  security of just it being a a regular Victorian place with,
• 47:27
  you know, a visitor coming round like with the evidence and
• 47:30
  things. And it just, it sets that a tone
• 47:33
  of normality before absolute bedlam sets off with everything
• 47:38
  in the last half. I mean, I don't think that
• 47:41
  that's it's not a bad instinct to sort of ease you in to the
• 47:47
  brooding atmosphere to introduce you to all of the characters in
• 47:51
  a really detailed way. And then once you set everything
• 47:55
  up, bang, you can go into sort of more of a script to page in
• 47:59
  the second-half because and it is lots of fast, witty, clever
• 48:04
  exchanges, especially in, you know, all that stuff between the
• 48:08
  doctor and lie in, you know, the bad, the snatches, the slimy
• 48:11
  toes even remains change. You know, it's it's very quick
• 48:15
  and you have to have your bits about you.
• 48:16
  But because we everything's established in that first half,
• 48:21
  it means you can sort of have the fun in the second-half.
• 48:25
  Yeah, exactly. Like it makes you also just not
• 48:30
  feel like too rushed into just a lot of the craziness of this
• 48:36
  house because all you know beforehand is that we have a
• 48:42
  reverend coming through to, to challenge Darwinism and
• 48:46
  challenge the, the proprietor of the house about this and, and
• 48:49
  things. And so you just get little
• 48:51
  moments of unease instead to, to build that up with like, you
• 48:56
  know, when, when the raven's going around and just, he's just
• 48:59
  waiting for a lot of of the time.
• 49:02
  And he's, he's told about what, you know, Josiah does in his
• 49:10
  kind of spare time, basically, and talking about how he goes to
• 49:15
  to the theatre or to the opera. And that's just him, you know,
• 49:19
  having a look at his specimens and it it provides little
• 49:24
  glimpses of what the house is like without it going full on.
• 49:28
  We're having a body and a drawer.
• 49:29
  We're having, you know, the eyes of buds stalk around all of all
• 49:35
  of that stuff. Like it just has enough time to
• 49:37
  let it breathe and just have little hints of it throughout
• 49:40
  it. I really noticed as well with
• 49:43
  the Fen Cooper. No, not Fen Cooper.
• 49:46
  Good grief. What's what's the fellow's name
• 49:48
  is? It red verse Fen Cooper.
• 49:50
  No, no, I'm getting it wrong. There's the fella.
• 49:53
  The fella who comes to the house at the start.
• 49:56
  The reference. Ernest Matthews.
• 49:58
  That's it. Ernest Matthews?
• 49:59
  Yes. They've all got fruity names,
• 50:00
  just faint. Cooper, Ernest Matthews.
• 50:04
  His scenes were written in a pleasingly complicated way.
• 50:08
  And then you cut the scenes from Ace's point of view.
• 50:10
  And because it's from Ace's point of view, they're written
• 50:13
  in a lot. Sort of.
• 50:15
  I really loved the scenes from Ernest Matthews and that sort of
• 50:19
  unspoken arrogance that he's got.
• 50:21
  And no, no, I can wait. I can wait because I'm going to
• 50:24
  bring you and your heretical theories of Darwinism down.
• 50:28
  You know, because I've got God on my side.
• 50:31
  Yeah. Exactly like he, he is such a
• 50:37
  such a character that is able to be a lightning rod of, of the
• 50:42
  feeling of that time, which is the only lightning rod you have
• 50:47
  of people from that time really in the book.
• 50:49
  Because everyone else is either an alien or possessed by an
• 50:53
  alien or from another time and or just insane.
• 50:58
  And you just you do not get a lot of lightning rod characters
• 51:01
  of people from that time. And he is one of them that
• 51:04
  really charges what people like Josiah then tries to mimic in
• 51:08
  some ways or mock at the same time to to build up his, you
• 51:13
  know, superiority to that that people.
• 51:18
  I suppose if if we were telling the Before they Came to the
• 51:24
  house story, you would have scenes from Mrs. Pritchard's
• 51:27
  point of view, you know, and her husband who's been killed and
• 51:31
  all of that. But yeah, you're right.
• 51:32
  We've got him and we've got the inspector and that's it.
• 51:35
  Everyone else is from this freak show down in the basement,
• 51:38
  right. But they are much more
• 51:41
  interesting characters, let's be honest.
• 51:43
  Yeah, because I don't think you could even do that sort of thing
• 51:45
  of, you know, like Mrs. Pritchard and the whole family
• 51:49
  beforehand because it would give the game away just about we've
• 51:52
  got. Mrs. Gross Kettering, kidneys,
• 51:56
  sausage and bacon. She was she was a breath of
• 52:00
  fresh air even in the story when she comes in and lightens the
• 52:03
  morning, well, evening up when she weakens herself.
• 52:07
  Let's draw City. Oh no, dear Perry Royal Village.
• 52:13
  What? Butter toast.
• 52:14
  Oh my God, if you came in and delivered all that to me for
• 52:17
  breakfast, actually, it would be love, I'm telling you.
• 52:20
  Oh, maybe not the kidneys, though.
• 52:22
  Actually, yeah, not the biggest. For the casualty if I'm honest.
• 52:27
  Some haggis though, man. Some haggis.
• 52:31
  Oh, delicious. Yes.
• 52:33
  Can I ask you a question about cigars?
• 52:37
  Yes you can. Yes, because my friend Paul
• 52:41
  Quinn stood up and gave a very interesting reading of the Ghost
• 52:46
  Night novelisation at Target Book Day, which is available on
• 52:50
  the recordings on Hamster with Blood Pen Knife.
• 52:52
  You want to go and listen to it. Absolutely riveting and highly
• 52:58
  controversial talk about incest and paedophilia in Goats light
• 53:05
  because Paul is a historian and so and has the brain the size of
• 53:11
  a planet. And so he pulled out some very
• 53:13
  pertinent moments in the book where Ernest Matthews calls
• 53:21
  Gwendoline his Angel at one point or the sweetest of angels
• 53:26
  and recognises the blueness of her eyes.
• 53:28
  So he's been close to her at some point.
• 53:31
  And I don't think just that the opera, but the giving of cigars
• 53:35
  to a young lady has a very specific meaning, is tokens of
• 53:41
  sophistication, power and rebellion, but also has a sexual
• 53:45
  meaning as well. Right.
• 53:48
  Yes. And so there is a, a, a hint,
• 53:52
  shall we say? No, it's not something they're
• 53:54
  going to lean into a lot. But there is a, a suggestion of
• 54:00
  impropriety between the older gentleman of the house and
• 54:06
  Gwendolyn, which I never noticed any of this because I don't know
• 54:09
  any of this. But this time I was reading it,
• 54:11
  having heard the talk, and I was like, yeah, it's all in there.
• 54:14
  It's there. And it literally says Josiah
• 54:17
  chose the cigars. The cigars, yeah.
• 54:20
  No, that's an interesting because I didn't pick up on.
• 54:23
  I just thought it was, I thought it was very weird when reading
• 54:26
  it because, you know, they go into the room, it has dolls, it
• 54:30
  has squirrels stuffed dressed as Victorian people.
• 54:36
  And then this box of cigars comes out and, yeah, it's it's a
• 54:41
  very totally odd to be in a room of a girl who has dolls and
• 54:47
  like, taxidem and such. And I was never sure what it
• 54:52
  really actually be. But that would make some sense
• 54:54
  and adds to the level of great happiness about the idea of, you
• 55:00
  know, Josiah is that cuckoo in the nest who has taken over this
• 55:04
  household. But also, yeah, because he
• 55:06
  hasn't got that seat. He hasn't got that level of
• 55:09
  intimacy, of love with Mrs. Pritchard's.
• 55:12
  Well he's literally taking her from a position of power in her
• 55:15
  own house and leave her the maid.
• 55:18
  Yeah, like it's and yeah, instead of her being some form
• 55:23
  of like, you know, power dynamic within, within the households.
• 55:27
  It's, it's very creepy, you know, it's time for Miss Ace to
• 55:33
  leave us. You know, all of this.
• 55:35
  The first scene with them, he sort of puts his hand on her
• 55:38
  shoulder, doesn't he? And go, I think you should go
• 55:40
  and greet our guests, my dear. It is.
• 55:44
  Yeah. You know, I mean, I, I don't
• 55:46
  think, I think Mark Platts has, it's not the first time it's
• 55:50
  been there in Doctor Who, right? Joanna and King Richard in the
• 55:54
  Crusade. It's not the first time there's
• 55:56
  a suggestion of incest in Doctor Who, but I don't think it's
• 56:00
  anything they were ever going to lean into.
• 56:01
  And if J&T saw it, his big red pen would have come out.
• 56:05
  But I think it's delicately there if you want to see it.
• 56:10
  And it does add an extra layer. I mean, let's not forget the
• 56:14
  targets brought out 73 yards recently with that whole Robert
• 56:21
  Roger at Gillham and that girl, you know, that that rape
• 56:26
  reference in there. So it's not like the targets
• 56:29
  aren't capable of making strong statements about sexual
• 56:33
  impropriety. I just think it is peppered
• 56:36
  rather than sort of presented, and that's probably for the
• 56:40
  best. Yeah, I, I think there's the
• 56:45
  subtlety is perhaps the better way to do it because yes,
• 56:47
  things, things like that, I glazed over, I just went, well,
• 56:51
  that's a bit odd, but. I don't want to think about it,
• 56:53
  Anthony. That's why.
• 56:55
  Yeah, especially in a Doctor Who novel.
• 56:57
  Yeah, save it. Well, yeah.
• 56:59
  Save. Save that for you.
• 57:00
  Exactly. Save that for the new inches.
• 57:02
  Like, yeah, that's cigars are the sort of, Yeah, like the
• 57:06
  cooler nuts of the 19th century. I really loved Nimrod's point of
• 57:13
  view. I love the point of view of a
• 57:16
  Neanderthal stuck in a world of what is it, straight lines and
• 57:20
  smoke. And there was a beautiful
• 57:25
  description. I'm just going to find it now.
• 57:28
  I am the memory teller of our tribe.
• 57:31
  I keep the embers of each story in my mind so that they burn
• 57:35
  fresh with each telling. I mean, that's poetry.
• 57:39
  Yes, it is such A and I come back to what we're talking about
• 57:45
  with having recently talked about Lucifer rising where there
• 57:50
  is one of the main characters and Gado kind of tries to have a
• 57:58
  similar thing of having like almost kind of like race
• 58:01
  memories of his tribe and and people from hundreds of years
• 58:07
  ago. But it it's done in a in a in a
• 58:11
  rather kind of disjointed way. It's not got that level of
• 58:14
  succinctness that you get with that things like description,
• 58:18
  like that of, of how Nimrods feels himself to be and, and
• 58:22
  even like the the simplicity of it, just the simplicity of what
• 58:27
  he he has. But he has determination with
• 58:31
  what that simple role he he believes he has as and it's
• 58:34
  great because like, as simple as that may be, he's one of the
• 58:39
  more signed characters in this book and the story.
• 58:46
  What is it? Is this an asylum with the
• 58:48
  patients in charge? Yes, it absolutely is.
• 58:52
  But we've got at least one person who is sane amongst all
• 58:55
  the madness, and I'm including Ace of the Doctor in the madness
• 58:59
  too. Yeah, exactly.
• 59:02
  I really do love them Rod and, and both the story on TV and,
• 59:07
  and in the book, he's he's just when we're talking about like
• 59:11
  lightning rods with like the Reverend Matthews, ironically,
• 59:16
  he's, he's a lightning rod of, of understanding and kind of
• 59:21
  some level of compassion for the future.
• 59:24
  Despite being a Neanderthal. He's, he's the one of the more
• 59:27
  enlightened within there because he he just has a general level
• 59:32
  of compassion that others do not within this and.
• 59:35
  Yet the person who you would imagine would be most stable,
• 59:39
  the Victorian gentleman, the big game hunter Redford Vancouver,
• 59:44
  has completely lost his mind and is subject to violent outbursts
• 59:49
  and pointing guns at people. And yeah, boy, I mean, I love
• 59:54
  all of that stuff. In Episode 1 of the TV version,
• 59:57
  you know where he's recalling the big game hunts that you know
• 1:00:00
  out in the forests. Yeah, and and even like the
• 1:00:04
  whole stuff box of lights which. Yes, snuff box.
• 1:00:08
  I still that part is perhaps one of the few parts I'm still quite
• 1:00:13
  unsure on as to what that is. Why?
• 1:00:16
  There should have been a specific explanation for that,
• 1:00:18
  shouldn't there? There is for everything else.
• 1:00:20
  Because because I am unsure if that's some form of part of
• 1:00:24
  light entity or whatever that said in the stuff box or.
• 1:00:28
  It could have been like the. Key.
• 1:00:30
  The key. Ship that that that turns on the
• 1:00:32
  spaceship or something like. Just yeah, yeah, something like
• 1:00:34
  that. Yeah.
• 1:00:35
  Because I was, I was a bit unsure.
• 1:00:37
  It was great imagery just seeing the stuff but a light and him
• 1:00:41
  insane beside it and all this. And then the lightning comes in
• 1:00:44
  as well. I mean, it's just incredible
• 1:00:46
  imagery. It's it does have that great
• 1:00:49
  side to it, but yeah, it's not it was one bit I was a bit
• 1:00:51
  unsure on, but the book otherwise covers with
• 1:00:55
  succinctness a lot of parts that otherwise people might get lost.
• 1:00:59
  Oh. I'm so pleased you said that.
• 1:01:01
  Answer me, because the next thing I wanted to bring up with
• 1:01:03
  you was, well, you know, just in case anyone is still a little
• 1:01:07
  baffled by Ghost Light, perhaps you can tell them all what it's
• 1:01:11
  all about. Oh God.
• 1:01:13
  Oh. Come on now, you've read the
• 1:01:14
  book where it's all very clear. The book and.
• 1:01:19
  Let's start with the house and the the spaceship crashes.
• 1:01:22
  Yes, the spaceship crash. There's a household.
• 1:01:28
  It's Gwendolyn, Mrs. What's? What's the original name again?
• 1:01:33
  I think it is Mrs. Pritchard, isn't it still her husband's?
• 1:01:36
  Her husband's surname is Pritchard.
• 1:01:39
  Is it? Sir George Pritchard, Yeah.
• 1:01:42
  Right, so Mrs. Yeah, so she's Mrs. Yeah, Mrs. Pritchard.
• 1:01:44
  Yeah. So yes, household of of the
• 1:01:48
  husband and Mrs. Pritchard and Gwendolyn and then Josiah who is
• 1:01:55
  the surveyor of the spaceship. The spaceship has a surveyor, a
• 1:01:59
  control, an experiment control in that they just remain there
• 1:02:05
  and light on that spaceship. So Light, hang on.
• 1:02:11
  I'm going to try and jump in. Hang on.
• 1:02:13
  So light is the cataloguer. Yeah, he's the one who's right
• 1:02:15
  in the catalog, right Control is, is the person that turns
• 1:02:19
  into the the the species where they go.
• 1:02:23
  So they've got. No, no, I thought control was
• 1:02:26
  meant to be like an experiment control in that they were meant
• 1:02:29
  to not change and remain unchanged and compare itself to
• 1:02:34
  serious. Surveyors turn into.
• 1:02:36
  Yes, yeah, I think, I think the surveyor was meant to the
• 1:02:42
  surveyor was meant to perhaps this is at least about reading
• 1:02:47
  of it is that the surveyor was out there to, you know, enhance,
• 1:02:52
  evolve and create, get specimens and also provide specimens of
• 1:02:58
  their own through their evolution.
• 1:02:59
  So it's why I I think they had different shells of evolution,
• 1:03:03
  perhaps with the husks, and that was meant to be it is to collect
• 1:03:12
  specimens and catalog everything on Earth and then they go away
• 1:03:16
  and do it elsewhere. That didn't happen.
• 1:03:20
  The spaceship somehow just didn't like go away.
• 1:03:25
  I can't remember. I think perhaps Josiah, when
• 1:03:31
  cataloguing, decided to to get the power of the planet by
• 1:03:37
  wanting to become the most powerful form of evolution, the
• 1:03:41
  apex of evolution, Queen Victoria.
• 1:03:43
  Saxe Coburg, yes. Yes.
• 1:03:47
  So I think that was the plan was he then had a feeling of wanting
• 1:03:52
  to evolve to be the most powerful creature on the planet,
• 1:03:58
  and that's why they stayed around for him to try and carry
• 1:04:02
  this out he's been. Making speeches, hasn't he, to
• 1:04:08
  the Royal Society about and Darwinism?
• 1:04:12
  Which is why Fen Fen Cooper has come a representative of the
• 1:04:16
  church to tell him that his theories are heresy.
• 1:04:20
  But he's also invited Fen Cooper, who has the invitation
• 1:04:26
  to Buckingham Palace, so that's why he's in the House.
• 1:04:30
  Because when Yes, so Fen Cooper got invited about a week
• 1:04:35
  beforehand. Because as much as he's making
• 1:04:41
  outrageous stuff about the evolution such, he still sees
• 1:04:44
  himself as someone who's condemned to stare through the
• 1:04:46
  steamy window of Victorian respectability, which is yes,
• 1:04:54
  indeed. So he he feels he still cannot
• 1:04:58
  get an end to control the situation fava so he decides to
• 1:05:04
  try and assassinate the queen through red veils and I assume
• 1:05:11
  as his plan to evolve into Queen Victoria I'm.
• 1:05:16
  Not sure. Well, prosperity to all the
• 1:05:20
  Atlas is pink. I'm not sure.
• 1:05:23
  Yeah, he wants to take over, though.
• 1:05:25
  Yes, he wants to take over. He wants to take control.
• 1:05:27
  That's his ultimate aim and and which is a deviation from the
• 1:05:32
  stated work of the spaceship. I think all help breaks loose
• 1:05:39
  with like Red Veil going insane, Control breaking out of the
• 1:05:45
  basement, Ace and the Doctors causing some shenanigans as
• 1:05:50
  usual. And that then leads to Light
• 1:05:57
  getting escaping through the destruction of some of the stuff
• 1:06:00
  downstairs. And he's like not not just that
• 1:06:05
  he's annoyed that everything's evolving, but he's annoyed that
• 1:06:09
  Josiah has done more than what he ought to have been doing in
• 1:06:12
  his role as a surveyor and wanting to control.
• 1:06:17
  It and the Doctor Who programme guide.
• 1:06:18
  Isn't he right? That's the definitive Doctor Who
• 1:06:21
  programme guide and there shall be no more.
• 1:06:24
  And then the Doctor comes along at the end going no, no, I'm
• 1:06:27
  having way more adventures with bad the snatchers than the slimy
• 1:06:29
  toes. He's like, no, I can't handle
• 1:06:31
  it. And the Doctor goes, oh, you've
• 1:06:33
  got no imagination at all. And he turns into stone.
• 1:06:36
  Yes, exactly. And fossilizes with his lack of
• 1:06:39
  imagination. And that's that's roughly, I
• 1:06:42
  think what happened in Ghost Late, I think.
• 1:06:46
  I mean, I'll give you an alternative review if I may
• 1:06:48
  you're. Welcome.
• 1:06:49
  To choosing very succinct dialogue from the from the TV
• 1:06:53
  show. You ready?
• 1:06:54
  It's an Angel, stupid. Oh, that's just a shape on
• 1:06:56
  Earth. It's called light and it's come
• 1:06:58
  to survey life here. It's crashed out in stone, stone
• 1:07:02
  spaceship in the basement. But while it slept, the survey
• 1:07:04
  got out of control. Control is me and Josiah is the
• 1:07:08
  survey. There we go.
• 1:07:09
  It is all there. It's just all I said the past
• 1:07:13
  five minutes. Just use that because I was just
• 1:07:16
  pulling it out of my ass for. Half an hour because you added
• 1:07:19
  loads of context, which I think is what the TV story lacks but
• 1:07:23
  the book absolutely adds. Yes it does.
• 1:07:27
  It does. And there, you know, there are
• 1:07:30
  wonderful, wonderful descriptions of poor old Light
• 1:07:36
  basically having a nervous breakdown at the end as, I mean,
• 1:07:42
  we're going to go with the metaphor.
• 1:07:43
  The new series comes in and all of this new Doctor Who to be
• 1:07:47
  added to the program guide. It's just too much for him.
• 1:07:50
  And plus Doctor Who's having sex.
• 1:07:52
  And, you know, like all the new adventures have have come in the
• 1:07:55
  meantime. And it's just too much.
• 1:07:56
  You know, the classic series was enough, he says.
• 1:07:59
  And he probably, he's probably catalogued Time Lords and knew
• 1:08:02
  that they only regenerated or maybe maybe used looms, but they
• 1:08:05
  didn't buy you regenerate so that they bought his mind.
• 1:08:09
  A Timeless Children twist came and lie unfortunately self
• 1:08:12
  destructed at that point. I got that lit, the boy says.
• 1:08:18
  The doctor says file under imagination, lack of.
• 1:08:23
  Yes. Oh God, it is what it is
• 1:08:26
  wonderful. Like do you think the both in
• 1:08:28
  the book and in the TV version as do you think the fact that it
• 1:08:33
  does end not on a massive explosion, but the doctor
• 1:08:38
  basically just saying, well, sorry, you don't have a big
• 1:08:41
  enough imagination for what's happening on Earth.
• 1:08:44
  Do you think that's anticlimactic or very
• 1:08:47
  satisfying? No, I think it's great.
• 1:08:49
  I think it just, it doesn't always need to be a big massive
• 1:08:55
  explosion every time. Hoisting A villain by their own
• 1:08:59
  petard can be exactly what the doctor ought to be doing and,
• 1:09:02
  and, you know, resolving a plot sometimes.
• 1:09:05
  And it does it very, very neatly here.
• 1:09:08
  Funny as well, she goes, what, isn't it going to explode?
• 1:09:11
  And because no explode or fly, the energy will be redeployed
• 1:09:15
  for our departure. Thank you very much.
• 1:09:17
  That's very neat. Very neat indeed.
• 1:09:20
  Although I mean the the lion as well.
• 1:09:22
  About what is it? They've gone like a passing
• 1:09:24
  thorn as long as their minds don't wander.
• 1:09:27
  That's gorgeous. Which is an idea he uses kind of
• 1:09:32
  again with cats, Credo times, Crucible, because the Let's
• 1:09:39
  talk. About that, go on.
• 1:09:41
  Well, because I was by about Platt about a year later.
• 1:09:44
  Now what happened? He was so succinct and clear
• 1:09:49
  here. But he has the idea of the the
• 1:09:52
  early Time Lord spaceship been through fault as well.
• 1:09:57
  So it's it's it's ideas that do kind of continue to be used
• 1:10:02
  within later law and later writings by the same guy.
• 1:10:05
  So yeah. I mean, I, I would never
• 1:10:08
  criticize Mark that too much. I think he's a superb writer of
• 1:10:12
  prose. He's got a great handle on
• 1:10:14
  weird, exciting imagery. He can conjure up funny,
• 1:10:18
  eccentric characters, like, but I also think he can disappear up
• 1:10:24
  his own arse on a lot of occasions as well.
• 1:10:27
  And that sort of, you know, I always say the word
• 1:10:30
  pretentiousness, but you know what I mean?
• 1:10:32
  That's sort of weird arrogance of like, you know, everyone's
• 1:10:35
  going to go along with this and I'm going to make this the most
• 1:10:38
  pretentious dog. I mean, cats, Cradle Times,
• 1:10:41
  Crucible. Yeah.
• 1:10:42
  It's packed with great ideas. I don't think it's a very
• 1:10:46
  enjoyable read though. Like I was so confused when I
• 1:10:49
  was reading it. It was a bit of a struggle, like
• 1:10:52
  trying to comprehend 3 different time experiences and all that.
• 1:10:55
  But this isn't though, is it? This is a really enjoyable read.
• 1:10:59
  It is. It is it just riles through.
• 1:11:02
  It's only 160 pages. And like we say, maybe in the
• 1:11:07
  latter part, it is just doing a lot of the more skepticism style
• 1:11:11
  sort of stuff of what you see on the TV.
• 1:11:15
  But it adds those lines, those important lines of context and
• 1:11:20
  like those guiding railings that you need to get yourself guided
• 1:11:24
  through the story. If you're needing that context
• 1:11:27
  around what you saw on screen and might not understand to kind
• 1:11:31
  of put together or it was too fast or such.
• 1:11:33
  This gives you the time to breathe, to explore what
• 1:11:37
  actually is happening. Can I throat it?
• 1:11:41
  It's a joy because I do want to spend more time in this weird,
• 1:11:44
  creepy house that is somehow coming alive around me.
• 1:11:49
  It's it is. That that actually is one part
• 1:11:53
  we kind of I wanted to touch on was about Gabriel Chase itself.
• 1:11:57
  And like you say at the end of the beginning of the book, Ace
• 1:12:01
  kind of going through it. It's, it's, it has that real
• 1:12:05
  sense of itself being alive on top of just the spaceship.
• 1:12:10
  There's some, there's something fizzling within the woodwork.
• 1:12:13
  There's there's something. Coming alive in the.
• 1:12:16
  Drawers, you know, exactly, like there's something about the
• 1:12:20
  house itself that's like, additional to the story about
• 1:12:26
  having something in the basement, whatever it feels like
• 1:12:30
  there's something still lingering there when E returns
• 1:12:34
  to that house 100 years later and.
• 1:12:38
  I think possible, isn't it? It is.
• 1:12:40
  Yeah, it is very much. Tangible, you feel like you're
• 1:12:44
  there. I think I did when I was reading
• 1:12:46
  it. You know, I wasn't in War in
• 1:12:47
  Winchcombe Rd. No, I was in Gabriel Chase when
• 1:12:50
  I was reading this. I mean, there's a bit in the TV
• 1:12:53
  show which is so weird. It's so unusual for Doctor Who
• 1:12:57
  to do visual metaphor, but the bit where Ace is, it's in
• 1:13:02
  between fights with Gwendolyn and all the creatures are sort
• 1:13:07
  of screaming at her in the corridor and suddenly there's
• 1:13:10
  the blue light of the ambulance on her.
• 1:13:12
  Like there's an actual visual representation of her past
• 1:13:17
  there. And Manisha's house on fire, and
• 1:13:21
  it's there in the book as well. It's almost as if the house can
• 1:13:25
  respond to people's memories. Yeah, exactly like this.
• 1:13:30
  Even then the TV, visually you see like there's this thing of
• 1:13:35
  the house having some form of like life in it that can conjure
• 1:13:39
  this stuff on top of, you know what, this the surveying team
• 1:13:44
  being crashed in the basement. Like there was something about
• 1:13:47
  the house and I don't want to say so that suggests that.
• 1:13:51
  Pierre dive Levens does not viso Gabriel chase then I've I won't
• 1:13:56
  mind coming that's. That's what I was going to say
• 1:13:58
  is that I don't know if I want, I want it to be explored perhaps
• 1:14:02
  at some point, but I'm wary about it being explored because
• 1:14:06
  was there not a, a, a a life bitch Stewart book?
• 1:14:13
  Have you have you read this? The Haunting?
• 1:14:15
  The Haunting of Gabriel Chase? Oh no, really, leave it alone.
• 1:14:22
  It was so perfect on its own. It didn't.
• 1:14:25
  I think, yeah, it came here. I think about.
• 1:14:27
  It you just can't do it, can you?
• 1:14:28
  You can't leave anything alone. It came out about four years
• 1:14:32
  ago. Who wrote?
• 1:14:33
  I'd read Andrew Allen. Andrew for Andy Frankham Allen.
• 1:14:38
  Oh, God. He is the writer of the single
• 1:14:39
  worst book I've read for this book club, the Fang Rock one.
• 1:14:43
  Was it great? Yeah.
• 1:14:47
  I wonder it's riddled with with lots of references, as you can
• 1:14:52
  imagine, and I think that was the guiding thing of it.
• 1:14:55
  But it does try to say that the house is more alive and things
• 1:14:59
  at least. But yeah, I think it doesn't
• 1:15:03
  need to be Gabriel Chase. You know, having a house that
• 1:15:07
  kind of brings to like we kind of did with Knock Knock perhaps
• 1:15:11
  in a way. But it's an idea that Doctor Who
• 1:15:14
  can really do well. Or when it's on the screen.
• 1:15:18
  I think you need somebody with Mark Platt's skill and his gift
• 1:15:23
  for the ghoulish, you know, and the Sikh and the macabre to
• 1:15:27
  really bring this and his, his intelligence to pull in all of
• 1:15:32
  the Victorian references and things like that in order to
• 1:15:35
  sort of make this port man 2IN Ghost Light because you will get
• 1:15:42
  your own New adventures version of Ghost Light not too far away
• 1:15:47
  from where you are now in Falls the Shadow.
• 1:15:50
  And that's the book where a lot of people gave up.
• 1:15:55
  So I, I, my, my mate Nathan, he got to Falls the Shadow and he
• 1:16:00
  went, no, life's too short for this.
• 1:16:02
  He goes I read it much better in Ghost Light and it is all set in
• 1:16:05
  a house and it is weird sort of sapphire and steel style
• 1:16:09
  torturous ghostly life forms like light and it it does sort
• 1:16:14
  of devolve into terrible torch porn but it's absolutely doing
• 1:16:18
  the ghost like thing. But it isn't written by Mark
• 1:16:21
  Platt, and so it sort of falls apart.
• 1:16:25
  But but I think you're on to something that perhaps about
• 1:16:27
  what this story feels like it's from.
• 1:16:29
  It feels like a sapphire and steel story.
• 1:16:33
  Like. If you take the dog to niece out
• 1:16:35
  of it about any of that sort of drive of the narrative like and
• 1:16:38
  if it was just sapphire and steel pen, you can very much see
• 1:16:41
  this be one of their cases, which I think it's an
• 1:16:45
  interesting way to view. It but the first one is all set
• 1:16:48
  in the house, isn't it Assignment one?
• 1:16:51
  Yes. Those terrible kiddie wing
• 1:16:53
  actors in it but also ticking clocks that keep stopping and
• 1:16:56
  things. You know, oh, yeah.
• 1:16:58
  And then, yeah. And then there's that later
• 1:17:00
  point and a lot I just say a lot of them in the house is, is it
• 1:17:03
  the third one as well as in the house that's.
• 1:17:04
  They're all single. Location aren't.
• 1:17:06
  They because they wanted to make them cheap, but sort of weird
• 1:17:09
  and beguiling. Yeah.
• 1:17:11
  I think the only person that's sort of gone down that route is
• 1:17:16
  Rob Shearman with stuff like Chimes of Midnight and things
• 1:17:18
  like that again. And Rob, like Mark is a very
• 1:17:23
  accomplished writer and he can do it, you know, in a way that
• 1:17:27
  Daniel Omani reforms The shadow and Andy, Frank and Malin, who I
• 1:17:31
  would struggle to call an author.
• 1:17:34
  Khan, you know, well, let's be honest.
• 1:17:37
  Come on, We may as well be if we're going to be critical.
• 1:17:39
  We may be critical. I have one more big question
• 1:17:43
  before I want to ask you to sort of look at your notes and and
• 1:17:46
  see if there's anything we haven't covered or bits and bobs
• 1:17:49
  you want to mention. And that is, do you think the
• 1:17:53
  one of the great strengths that Cardinal brought to Doctor Who
• 1:17:57
  was thematic resonance? He really did bring some
• 1:18:03
  substance into his Doctor Who stories, whether it's political,
• 1:18:06
  well, whether it's scientific. And here that whole religion
• 1:18:11
  versus science, you know, evolution versus nature versus
• 1:18:16
  nurture, whatever you want to call it, it's laid out very
• 1:18:20
  clearly in the book. It starts with Redfords there
• 1:18:23
  saying, you know, this is blasphemy, what you're
• 1:18:27
  suggesting that the lion of my ancestors could be.
• 1:18:30
  Was it taken back to a protoplasmic globule?
• 1:18:34
  And then in a very dark moment, he gets turned into an ape when
• 1:18:39
  he eats a banana, which is delicious.
• 1:18:43
  And the conclusion that it comes to is that not only did life
• 1:18:51
  evolve, but it continues to evolve.
• 1:18:57
  And we are constantly evolving. And that is a positive thing,
• 1:19:00
  right? That's the stance that it takes.
• 1:19:02
  Is it satisfying it? Does it sort of run through the
• 1:19:05
  story like a stick of rock? Is it sort of there in parts or
• 1:19:08
  not in others? Did you look how it was handled?
• 1:19:11
  I mean, like we were saying about, you know, the Reverend
• 1:19:14
  Matthews been a lightning rod of society at that time, the
• 1:19:16
  lightning odd for the famous control in terms of me what I
• 1:19:21
  feel about it because she is the one who evolves throughout it
• 1:19:29
  with yeah, like that theme of of of the yeah, you're saying about
• 1:19:34
  the nature and nurture. Like there's a line midway
• 1:19:37
  through about when they're trying to get out of the the the
• 1:19:42
  basement and the Josiah is saying to the doctor, don't
• 1:19:47
  don't take control up here. They're depraved and Dr. just
• 1:19:50
  snaps back saying depraved or deprived.
• 1:19:53
  And as soon as you know, there's, there's more
• 1:19:56
  understanding and comprehension for control.
• 1:20:00
  Control is able to kind of have that level of freedom and and
• 1:20:03
  evolve. And it's not just a linear great
• 1:20:06
  evolution. Whatever she she goes through
• 1:20:09
  the turmoil that with Ace at that scene where they feel that
• 1:20:14
  same level of of depression about things.
• 1:20:18
  That is, punch the air. And then?
• 1:20:20
  When she goes better off without you, Governor.
• 1:20:24
  Yeah, exactly. Like there's, there's a level of
• 1:20:27
  evolution that that has the, the bumps and rides of, of, of life
• 1:20:33
  that control kind of is that lightning rod for and the ideas
• 1:20:38
  of the, the kind of the nut shipping side rather than what
• 1:20:44
  you know, Josiah does, which is the controlling side and trying
• 1:20:48
  to control everything and only evolve for the betterment of
• 1:20:53
  himself and not allow anything else change within the house.
• 1:20:58
  Could be an analogy for the church, you know, and men over
• 1:21:02
  women. I mean you, you wanted to read
• 1:21:05
  that? Well, it could.
• 1:21:06
  It could well be. Which makes this very pro
• 1:21:10
  feminist it. Could well be if, yeah, if, if
• 1:21:15
  there's if Josiah was more like in step with the reference,
• 1:21:20
  perhaps. But yeah, it's more so about
• 1:21:24
  that, yeah. The idea of control versus
• 1:21:27
  freedom and how control ironically exemplifies the
• 1:21:31
  freedom of of decisions and evolution.
• 1:21:34
  And and Josiah was having that freedom is the most controlling
• 1:21:39
  and you know, manipulative person when having that.
• 1:21:44
  Freedom. It's satisfying.
• 1:21:45
  Then at the end where obviously she is a fully fleshed person
• 1:21:50
  off to have her adventures and the man that was trying to
• 1:21:53
  control everything is in chains. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:21:57
  Yeah, I, I, I that's, that's for me.
• 1:21:59
  The, the, the thing that you can use as a pinpoint for the theme
• 1:22:03
  basically is how control goes throughout the book.
• 1:22:08
  She's the, I think she's my favorite character and the book
• 1:22:13
  actually, and the episode just to show that plotting of of that
• 1:22:18
  theme. I'm not going to suggest that
• 1:22:21
  there was no intelligence or substance during the mid 80s
• 1:22:25
  during the Erik Saywood era because I think there is.
• 1:22:27
  I think in story, you know, they cover suicide in Mordred,
• 1:22:31
  undead, they cover, you know, video nasties really well.
• 1:22:35
  Inventions of Varos, You know, there, there are smart scripts.
• 1:22:41
  I think this is on another level, though.
• 1:22:43
  I think that dialogue in Part 1 at the dinner table between
• 1:22:49
  Redford's Josiah and the Doctor, and then alternatively the
• 1:22:55
  scenes between the Doctor and Light in Part 3 about evolution,
• 1:23:01
  they're not only richly intelligent, but so funny as
• 1:23:07
  well. So witty.
• 1:23:09
  I mean the cream of Scotland Yard.
• 1:23:11
  Come on, it's so funny. Yes, it's genuinely really
• 1:23:18
  succinct, clever dialogue for it, and it relates very well
• 1:23:22
  with the characters around it. And it's like what you're saying
• 1:23:25
  earlier about, you know, with Andrew Cartmel and how he brings
• 1:23:29
  people who bring different thematic relevance to their
• 1:23:31
  scripts. It's just new, new people.
• 1:23:33
  I mean, this is the thing when you say about, say what?
• 1:23:35
  In the 80s, in the mid 80s, he wasn't really bringing in a lot
• 1:23:39
  of new people in the same way. Stop you there please because he
• 1:23:43
  brought in Pip and Jane Baker. Oh.
• 1:23:46
  Hang on, hang on. Do you not remember the morality
• 1:23:49
  of what is it? Do they think of the lesser
• 1:23:51
  species when they sink their teeth into a lamb chop?
• 1:23:55
  You know, my God, the hard questions.
• 1:24:00
  They really, they really they really dug in their deep onto
• 1:24:04
  the. Vegan agenda, yes.
• 1:24:08
  Oh yeah. Like they, they brought such
• 1:24:12
  subtlety to their message in a way that it's so nuanced and.
• 1:24:18
  Spring, summer, autumn. All captured in a few minutes at
• 1:24:22
  the end of their voice, you know.
• 1:24:25
  Like yeah, but that the cutting edge of technology with the make
• 1:24:28
  a bit more dim like. Riveting stuff, yeah.
• 1:24:32
  And As for the centre of pleasure, in Time and time, I'll
• 1:24:36
  be there in a heartbeat. Yeah, you'd be more plus one.
• 1:24:43
  But yeah, like this idea that the Sea World it, it kind of it
• 1:24:46
  didn't bring in radically new voices who had not wrote for the
• 1:24:50
  show in ways before. And that's what Andrew Cartmail,
• 1:24:54
  as much as some of the times they were overlaying scripts,
• 1:24:58
  what that's what he was doing. He was bringing in new people at
• 1:25:01
  such an innovative time. And I really will always respect
• 1:25:06
  him for doing that and. Catherine Will of Creativity
• 1:25:10
  isn't. It.
• 1:25:10
  Yes, exactly. Ideas to spare.
• 1:25:13
  And sometimes there's too many ideas in there and they're too
• 1:25:16
  excitable in their scripts and they're like, Ryan, we're going
• 1:25:19
  to jam in every fucking idea we've got and you're going to
• 1:25:22
  lump it. And I wonder sometimes if he is
• 1:25:25
  sophisticated enough to structure it so it's an
• 1:25:31
  economically told tale. But fuck for innovation, you
• 1:25:36
  know? Yeah, creativity.
• 1:25:37
  I mean, he was a guy in his 20s doing like a such innovative
• 1:25:41
  world. Yeah, like role for him at the
• 1:25:44
  time. And that spirit is what, you
• 1:25:47
  know, was missing perhaps in the mid 80s is definitely missing
• 1:25:51
  right now. Like we like, I'm just like,
• 1:25:59
  there's been some kind of attempt of that.
• 1:26:02
  But, you know, that's what we need is that we Doctor Who
• 1:26:07
  relies on change. It relies on, you know, we do
• 1:26:11
  not need, not just when we're seeing the Ian Levine of
• 1:26:17
  analogue of, of light. We don't need Russell T Davis to
• 1:26:20
  be like light. And, and just to say, this is
• 1:26:24
  what this is what Doctor Who is, it has never changed.
• 1:26:27
  It has never changed since 2008. That's what the show is.
• 1:26:31
  And yeah, that's what what I'm worried about the now is that we
• 1:26:35
  we have a showrunner who is late.
• 1:26:37
  I've sent. It recently on a on a recording
• 1:26:40
  and you know, I can be as much as I think there are huge riches
• 1:26:45
  in the McCoy, I can be critical about the era because I don't
• 1:26:47
  think it is as refined as it could be.
• 1:26:51
  I said we need an Andrew Cartmel.
• 1:26:53
  We need a non Doctor Who fan who's well read in other things
• 1:26:58
  that isn't Doctor Who who who can bring in a ream of young,
• 1:27:03
  young new writers just teeming with ideas and kick it off in
• 1:27:09
  another direction, just like Cartmel did, you know, And if it
• 1:27:13
  means we've got to go over a few bumps of overrunning scripts and
• 1:27:16
  things like that, well, fuck it. I don't care as long as it's
• 1:27:18
  interesting and funny and creative and enjoyable to watch.
• 1:27:22
  Absolutely. We need, we need a new Carmel.
• 1:27:25
  Let's start the petition now. Exactly, yes.
• 1:27:28
  Never mind sorting out the country, Anthony.
• 1:27:30
  This is where you need to be focusing your efforts.
• 1:27:33
  Start out Doctor Who and move production.
• 1:27:36
  Move it up to BBC Scotland by that attic.
• 1:27:38
  Why not? Just imagine all the accents,
• 1:27:41
  it'll be gorgeous. Yeah, we'll have the same
• 1:27:43
  streets of Glasgow filmed over the northern instead of Cardiff
• 1:27:46
  for once, so that would be nice. Scotland is absolutely
• 1:27:49
  beautiful, I wouldn't object to that at all.
• 1:27:51
  Plus you you could play the doctor.
• 1:27:53
  Well, well, you say that. I mean like we, we, we, we stand
• 1:27:56
  in for many a grimy location like Glasgow is Gotham more
• 1:28:00
  times than I care to mention now on screen, like we can be
• 1:28:05
  anything in Scotland. So yes, move it, move Doctor Who
• 1:28:08
  up here, get some new 20 somethings, take it over and
• 1:28:12
  just let them run wild. I could just see your face
• 1:28:15
  actually coming out of the the great sort of packing also of
• 1:28:18
  the Tom Baker title sequence, you know?
• 1:28:21
  Oh, wonderful. My God.
• 1:28:23
  I mean, I couldn't. I can't believe it.
• 1:28:24
  We've created a whole new series of Doctor Who.
• 1:28:26
  Plus we're going to save the money because there's already 6
• 1:28:29
  police boxes in Glasgow. Enemy.
• 1:28:31
  So we'll do some. Coffee shop?
• 1:28:34
  Yeah, just use the coffee shop here.
• 1:28:37
  Ace, I've created a new market adventure.
• 1:28:40
  Cappuccinos in Time and space. Oh my God, who would be our new
• 1:28:46
  Andrew Cartmel? Who are you?
• 1:28:49
  I wished we can find them. I mean, they'll be out there
• 1:28:51
  somewhere. They just need to be kind of
• 1:28:53
  brought in and given that that that that film because you know.
• 1:28:58
  What's sad Anthony is I think Rusty Davis was that person in
• 1:29:02
  2005. He was the future once.
• 1:29:05
  November he He did bring in a wealth of new writers.
• 1:29:08
  He brought a new vision to Doctor Who.
• 1:29:10
  He brought in a ton of new ideas and a new way of approaching the
• 1:29:13
  show. What happened?
• 1:29:16
  I know. I know.
• 1:29:18
  Well, look, scour your notes. Is there anything we haven't
• 1:29:21
  covered? I've just got a couple of sort
• 1:29:23
  of single lines and things I'd like to point out.
• 1:29:27
  Yeah, I don't really have much else.
• 1:29:31
  Listen to this. He's been announced as a more
• 1:29:34
  heretic than Darwin. Oh, the doctor glowed.
• 1:29:37
  Splendid. He sounds right up my street.
• 1:29:40
  Wonderful there was. Maybe Perhaps we're talking
• 1:29:44
  about just how much the rhyme off really clever rhymes lines.
• 1:29:49
  And there was the ones about Josiah when he's needing to
• 1:29:53
  evolve once again and you know, he's seen that he asked he must
• 1:29:58
  go to change the doctors been saying he seems a little bit
• 1:30:03
  Husky to me. I expect he'll shake it off by
• 1:30:06
  evening. It's just like they just rattle
• 1:30:08
  off this kind of nice, clever, clever writing about him and his
• 1:30:12
  different, different husks. It's.
• 1:30:14
  That clever word play man Mark Plaque could do it in his sleep,
• 1:30:17
  can't he? I did notice that all of the
• 1:30:20
  stuffed creatures that we were going around featuring in the
• 1:30:25
  house, the quagger, the great oak, and the dodo, are all
• 1:30:29
  extinct animals. And the reason I know they're
• 1:30:33
  all extinct animals is because I've recently read The Last Dodo
• 1:30:36
  by Jacqueline Rayner, which is all about extinct animals, so.
• 1:30:41
  See, I just thought it was. I just thought it was a stuffed
• 1:30:43
  Jackie Lane that was in in the hallway.
• 1:30:45
  Oh. Well, you know that she's
• 1:30:47
  absolutely beautiful. Of course you'd stuff her and
• 1:30:50
  put her in the hallway. No, no, but it was making a
• 1:30:53
  deliberate point that whilst we change in an owl fright, yeah,
• 1:30:56
  we also slaughter the species out of existence.
• 1:31:00
  I. Don't know, maybe the human race
• 1:31:02
  does deserve to survive and evolve.
• 1:31:04
  You know, Anthony, sometimes I do wonder, how did you like this
• 1:31:08
  then? I liked the description of the
• 1:31:12
  spaceship, the carved buttress walls and the flickering screens
• 1:31:16
  and glittering clusters of crystals.
• 1:31:18
  Made her think of an Aladdin's cave.
• 1:31:20
  Now that sounds a bit more exciting than what we saw on the
• 1:31:22
  screen, doesn't it? Oh, just just a tiny bit.
• 1:31:25
  Just a tiny bit. Oh, and this the Doctor, He
• 1:31:31
  always has time for servants. Ask the cleaners if you wanted
• 1:31:34
  information about a place. That was his motto.
• 1:31:37
  Cleaners were the eyes and ears of any community.
• 1:31:40
  I thought that was delicious. That is very true.
• 1:31:42
  Anytime you need any gossip, ask the janitor.
• 1:31:45
  Is is usually a good model, so yes, he's on the ball with that.
• 1:31:50
  Oh, and finally, one more. Yeah, really.
• 1:31:53
  Light was pretty dim. It had about as much imagination
• 1:31:57
  as a pocket calculator. I mean, that just made me.
• 1:32:00
  Chuckle. I guess the one I want to finish
• 1:32:03
  on was just about the description of the Doctor as
• 1:32:05
  well, because like we're saying about how you can capture the
• 1:32:09
  character, he does capture the essence of the Doctor quite well
• 1:32:12
  just from the offset. This is I think in the first.
• 1:32:15
  The first chapter he said learned to trust the Doctor with
• 1:32:19
  her life. Perhaps he was editable with her
• 1:32:21
  sometimes, but that was because she didn't always come up with
• 1:32:25
  his up to his expectations. She was only human after all,
• 1:32:28
  however hard she tried. Besides which few people had
• 1:32:31
  experienced what she had all during her 17 years.
• 1:32:35
  The Doctor was the first person for a long time who had even
• 1:32:37
  bothered to accept her for what she was, a delinquent.
• 1:32:41
  She knew that he that, and he seemed to like it that way too.
• 1:32:47
  There were things she understood now that she had never even
• 1:32:50
  dreamed of before. And yet there were still a few
• 1:32:53
  things she could teach the doctor.
• 1:32:55
  Not everyone had their own personal professor, and this was
• 1:32:58
  the weirdest tutorial in the history of the universe, and it
• 1:33:03
  just sums up their nice relationship.
• 1:33:05
  It's. Wonderful.
• 1:33:06
  The idea that he she's a delinquent and he doesn't mind.
• 1:33:10
  And that's the first time she's ever heard that.
• 1:33:13
  Yeah, exactly. Now come on now, we need a bit
• 1:33:15
  of that in the new adventures. I think ACE is a bit too past it
• 1:33:20
  to be to be getting that sort. Of point anymore is she?
• 1:33:24
  She's a terrorist now. Yeah, well.
• 1:33:28
  I would suggest that as a target this is gold tier, but as a book
• 1:33:36
  in its own right it is very good indeed.
• 1:33:42
  Very well written, beautifully characterised and just, you
• 1:33:47
  know, I was reading this in the dead of night, sort of two in
• 1:33:50
  the morning. I'm a dreadful insomniac and I
• 1:33:52
  was going down throwing a sort of duvet around me on the sofa
• 1:33:55
  with a bottle, I hope. What a bottle that is.
• 1:34:01
  I'm just sitting there in the half dark reading this creepy,
• 1:34:05
  you know, beguilingly weird book.
• 1:34:10
  I just think it's a great bit of work.
• 1:34:12
  Yep, very much so. It's, I mean I said in the last
• 1:34:16
  Target novel edition, I have only read 2 Target novels and
• 1:34:20
  that's been Dalek and Ghostly and they are just both bangers.
• 1:34:25
  This one in terms of what we were seeing about trying to get
• 1:34:29
  you fully comprehending what the story is about.
• 1:34:32
  It does that perfectly in terms of what Ghostly is and you then
• 1:34:36
  understand a wonderful story about evolution, about the
• 1:34:40
  changing of of of people was well, and having the doctor and
• 1:34:44
  ace relationship really be at the heart of that as well in
• 1:34:47
  terms of how that's kind of sprinkled throughout it as well.
• 1:34:51
  So yeah, Ghost Light as a target book is probably one of the
• 1:34:57
  best, but I've only read too, so it's not a hard thing to say for
• 1:35:01
  me, but I'm sure it will still be a very good one for time to
• 1:35:06
  come for me. We've got a couple of books
• 1:35:09
  planned in for this book club and there's so many now.
• 1:35:15
  But I would suggest that after those two, you know, let's do
• 1:35:20
  the dominators by and see what, because that's not a popular
• 1:35:24
  story, right? So let's see how that translates
• 1:35:27
  from screen to page. But two, can you, you know,
• 1:35:33
  create a gripping story out of that source material?
• 1:35:37
  Well, yeah, I mean, and this is the thing, I've never read an
• 1:35:39
  Ian Marta 1 and I am tempted to because I I went down to the BFI
• 1:35:44
  for the terror, the Zygons screen and they had in the
• 1:35:48
  morning, the Ian Marta documentary did.
• 1:35:50
  It break your heart off. And it's very good.
• 1:35:53
  It's a very good in depth discussion about him in his
• 1:35:57
  life. And yeah, I appreciate so much
• 1:36:01
  more about Ian, Marta, and, you know, the joys that he had from
• 1:36:03
  writing as well kind of change. Through I would have held your
• 1:36:07
  hands, you know. But yeah, it's, it's, it's going
• 1:36:13
  to be a good documentary when people can, can watch that, I
• 1:36:15
  would say. So I am, I'm now more interested
• 1:36:18
  in in reading an Ian Marta target at some point.
• 1:36:21
  So yes, if that's down the line, then so be it.
• 1:36:25
  I'll just keep you. I'm just trying to keep you
• 1:36:27
  interested in doing this. I love doing them with you.
• 1:36:29
  That's why. Anthony, where are we going
• 1:36:32
  next? We are doing.
• 1:36:37
  Well, where are we going? Dreams of Empire.
• 1:36:41
  That's it. That's dreams of.
• 1:36:42
  Justin Richards, another author that you haven't touched yet.
• 1:36:47
  Well, sorry, Red yet red yet, but you will be fairly soon
• 1:36:52
  because his his debut novel Theatre of War.
• 1:36:55
  It's just in. The near distance.
• 1:36:58
  Yeah, it's, it's not too, is it kind of 1995 or something like
• 1:37:04
  that? I think it is.
• 1:37:05
  So he's he's, he's down the line for me in terms of like Doctor
• 1:37:09
  Who. But that he, I mean, I'll, I'll
• 1:37:12
  give you a little spoiler. He came into the new adventures
• 1:37:15
  and it was a really popular book at the time and I think it still
• 1:37:18
  is now. And he does like puzzle box
• 1:37:22
  books. You know, he really sets up,
• 1:37:24
  he's a bit like Agatha Christie. He sets up a good this is what
• 1:37:28
  you think's happening and then you just get tons of fucking
• 1:37:31
  twists in the last half where you go.
• 1:37:32
  What is that what this was all about?
• 1:37:34
  Oh my God. And obviously he takes over the
• 1:37:39
  range and you've dipped your toes into History 101.
• 1:37:43
  What else we do City of the Dead.
• 1:37:46
  So that's all under his editorship from the burning
• 1:37:50
  onwards. And then what we're doing is a
• 1:37:53
  past Doctor adventure, of which he very frequently would oh
• 1:37:57
  fuck, this book's fallen through, or I'll better write
• 1:38:00
  this in three weeks. And he was good at just knocking
• 1:38:04
  him out, right? And to a good standard, The
• 1:38:07
  Dreams of Empire is a reasonably popular past Doctor adventure
• 1:38:13
  book, so I'm really interested to see how are you going to find
• 1:38:18
  it and whether you're going to have a sandwich stuck to your
• 1:38:21
  bottom whilst you read it. I have, yeah.
• 1:38:25
  I mean, I've read some of the past Doctor adventures in the
• 1:38:28
  past, and when we were talking before, I think about things
• 1:38:33
  like the plotters, for example, where it was it just tried to be
• 1:38:36
  a slice of a story that you might have saw on screen in the
• 1:38:40
  1960s. I'm always curious about how
• 1:38:43
  much someone tries to do that or tries to then have their own
• 1:38:47
  style or spend to to to a story. So yeah, it'll be an interesting
• 1:38:51
  one to do. And the sandwich.
• 1:38:55
  Well, who knows what it'll be. What sort of sandwich do you
• 1:38:58
  like? Oh, and do I have there's
• 1:39:01
  there's one that I go for every time I get my Sainsbury's meal
• 1:39:04
  deal, and that's the. Sainsbury's, you say?
• 1:39:07
  Sainsbury's I don't. It's the nearest one to to to my
• 1:39:10
  office. Don't we all look gorgeous in
• 1:39:13
  that purple? But it's always that bacon, Brie
• 1:39:17
  and chili chili. Jam Yeah, yes.
• 1:39:21
  It's a classic. Absolutely love that sandwich
• 1:39:23
  so. May I suggest instead, you know,
• 1:39:25
  you get one of those fabulous, you know, get a deep fried Mars
• 1:39:29
  bar plus a haggis and put it in one of those big sort of lovely
• 1:39:34
  buns that you have for what they're called the sort of the a
• 1:39:37
  bun. Yeah, you make that sort of chip
• 1:39:39
  butties out of them, things like that at all.
• 1:39:41
  Oh, they're just called rolls. It's just.
• 1:39:43
  Called at all we just We have a rolls up here though.
• 1:39:46
  You do. Oh my God, I'm there.
• 1:39:49
  I have a haggis role, but you'll understand what I'm talking
• 1:39:52
  about. Sticking sandwich stuck to the
• 1:39:54
  bum. Oh, it's so funny, Jesus Christ.
• 1:39:58
  And and we will answer the question how Well, because it is
• 1:40:04
  elusive trying to capture trout and in print because so much of
• 1:40:09
  it comes down to the performance.
• 1:40:11
  So go into it. With that mindset of how well
• 1:40:16
  does he capture trout and imprint because not many people
• 1:40:19
  do. Yeah, that's, that is a worry
• 1:40:23
  that I, I'm sometimes unsure about because, yeah, it can be
• 1:40:28
  very hard to encapsulate, especially older doctors and
• 1:40:31
  especially when you're wanting to try and prove yourself as a.
• 1:40:35
  I'm not saying that this is what Justin Artist is doing, but like
• 1:40:38
  you want to be seen as a, as a writer that can not just have an
• 1:40:42
  old doctor style, but also move things in an, in a different way
• 1:40:47
  or whatever. So yeah, it'll be interesting
• 1:40:49
  how that line is told between the characterisation and the
• 1:40:53
  style of doing something definite.
• 1:40:55
  I do remember 1 description literally still, and I haven't
• 1:40:59
  read that book in 10 years, but I remember 1 description of him
• 1:41:02
  saying that Trout looked like it was.
• 1:41:05
  He was so shocked. He looked like he was chewing on
• 1:41:07
  a marble. I was like, yeah, that's Trout
• 1:41:10
  all right. Yeah, well, very much.
• 1:41:14
  Anthony Yeah, I suppose we better climb up the evolutionary
• 1:41:17
  ladder now, back to society. You know, I'll attempt to
• 1:41:23
  assassinate the Royals or yeah, maybe I'll cut that out and Oh
• 1:41:30
  well, I suppose I'll just say until next time, How do we end
• 1:41:33
  this in a ghost like sort of way?
• 1:41:34
  I don't know, I'm just going to disappear at the speed of
• 1:41:36
  thought, so bye.